by Smith, S. E.
Aja lunged toward Randall. “Were it up to some of us, you would not be—”
Rhea caught Aja’s arm and yanked her back, shoving her against the wall. She pinned her in place with her forearm across the other female’s chest and held the claws of her other hand at Aja’s throat. In her peripheral vision, Rhea saw Melaina carefully pick up her container and move behind Thana.
“Have you forgotten so easily that this human is under Dracchus’s protection?” Rhea asked, voice low.
“You are as much a betrayer as he is!” Aja snarled, struggling against Rhea’s hold.
Rhea caught Aja’s wrists with her tentacles, forcing the other female’s hands down to her side, and leaned more of her weight against her captive. She cocked her head. “Do you challenge me, Aja?”
Heaving through clenched teeth, Aja only glared at Rhea.
“There’s no betrayal happening here, and no need for a challenge,” Randall interjected. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“Be silent, human,” Rhea commanded, though gently. She didn’t remove her gaze from Aja. “Do you?”
Aja shook her head sharply.
Rhea released her and moved back.
Sagging slightly, Aja rubbed at her chest with one hand. She glanced at Randall, face tight with anger and humiliation, glared once again at Rhea, and then spun away. All the females save Thana hesitantly followed her. Randall pressed himself against the wall as they passed him; none so much as looked at him while they were near.
“Has she sided with Kronus?” Rhea asked.
Thana sighed and lifted her hands, palms up. “If she has not yet, she is likely to now. I believe Leda has been whispering in her ear.”
“These jealous females will start a fight they cannot win.”
Thana looked at Randall. “Even threat of Dracchus’s retribution will not deter some of Kronus’s supporters. Though they despise Arkon, they gladly used the wounds he suffered at the hands of the human hunters as proof that humans are our enemies.”
“I’m not trying to incite more violence,” he said, frowning. The hunters who shot Arkon had been under Randall’s command until they’d betrayed their leader. Randall still bore scars as evidence of their treachery.
“Your mere presence does that,” Thana said.
“It’s not like I asked to come here.”
“But here you are,” Rhea said. “Thana, tell the other females he is under my protection, as well. An insult to him — to any of the humans here — is an insult to me.”
Randall clenched his jaw, and a crease appeared between his eyebrows. “I can’t say I don’t appreciate the gesture, but you don’t need to welcome trouble on my behalf, Rhea.”
Rhea grinned at him. “It is no trouble.”
Randall’s gaze dipped to her mouth. Humans had mostly flat teeth, and she supposed hers were as odd to him as his were to her.
“I am glad Melaina is safe,” Thana said. She looked from Rhea to the youngling. “I will see you both soon, I hope.”
Dipping her head in a silent farewell, Thana set off down the corridor in the same direction the other females had gone.
Randall offered Thana a warm, uncertain smile as she passed. Once she was gone, he ran his hand through his hair. Rhea had been tempted many times to comb her fingers through it, too, to feel its softness against her fingertips, to feel it brush along her palm.
He walked up to her, now that no obstacles remained in his path. “Like I said, I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. I’ll leave you to it before I’m the cause of another fight.” He turned away.
“You are a hunter,” she said quickly, bringing his attention back to her.
“I was.”
“Why would you think you are one no longer?”
He shrugged. “I look around me sometimes, and my brain says everything I’m seeing — this place, your people — can’t be real. Kind of hard to figure out who or what I am when I haven’t quite reconciled everything else yet.”
“But here we are,” Rhea said, spreading her arms and tilting her head. “You were a hunter before you knew of our kind. Our existence did not affect what you were, then.”
“The foundation was already cracked before I found out your people were real. That discovery just served as the catalyst to break everything apart.”
“But it does not change who you are here.” Rhea placed a hand on her chest with fingers spread wide, over her hearts. His eyes followed her gesture and widened slightly.
“Maybe not,” he replied, glancing down at his own chest, “but it made me realize I don’t know who I am as well as I thought I did. Again, I appreciate it, but you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll figure things out. You have your own problems to deal with.”
“Can you help him?” Melaina asked, lifting her container toward Randall.
He arched a brow, glancing from Melaina to Rhea and back again. “Him?”
“A hunter knows about creatures, yes?” Rhea asked.
Melaina approached Randall. “He’s hurt.”
Randall squatted and looked into the container. “Where did you find this? Prixxir are all over the coastlines, but I didn’t think they came out this far.”
Melaina’s guilty glance confirmed that the girl had gone even farther from the Facility than Rhea would’ve suspected. Rhea cast a disapproving glare at her daughter, who quickly averted her gaze and turned back toward Randall.
“He was hurt and alone,” Melaina said. “Can you help him, Randall?”
The prixxir placed a webbed paw on the side of the container and lifted its head, whiskers twitching.
Reaching down, Randall gently touched the creature; it let out a squeaking yelp and curled up on the bottom again. “I’ve never taken care of anything like this, Melaina. That’s… It’s not really what hunters do.”
“But like any hunter, you watch; you learn. You know their habits,” Rhea said.
His gaze shifted up to meet hers. “I’ve only dealt with these things on land. And I don’t know how serious its wounds are, or how to treat them.”
“Aymee might,” Melaina said.
Randall’s frown deepened. He regarded the prixxir in silence for a long while.
Perhaps it was wrong for Rhea to pressure him into accepting the responsibility, but what did she — or any kraken, for that matter — know about caring for an animal? The only sea creatures kraken interacted with were prey. The only other options were to return the prixxir to the sea, where it might perish, or kill it and use it for food.
But after the tumultuous emotions of the last few hours, Rhea couldn’t bear the look of disappointment Melaina would wear if the creature died. Was it selfish of Rhea to burden Randall with her daughter’s happiness?
Rhea straightened and inhaled deeply. “Please.” The word felt strange as it left her lips; female kraken didn’t ask, and they most certainly didn’t beg.
Melaina echoed her mother.
Running a hand over his stubbly cheeks, Randall sighed. “All right. I’ll figure something out. But I can’t promise anything.”
Melaina’s face brightened with a huge smile.
“And I have a condition,” he continued.
Rhea frowned and furrowed her brow. “What is this condition?”
“Melaina has to help take care of it.”
“Yes!” Melaina exclaimed, her tentacles writhing on the floor. “I will!”
Randall lifted his eyes to Rhea in question.
Rhea nodded once.
“Good. Now, my father told me when I was little that you shouldn’t name animals, because they were bound to…well, move on. But my sister named them anyway. I think you should give him a name. Having something that belongs to him will help him be strong.”
Melaina stared down at the prixxir. The creature stared back up, shifting its attention between Randall and the youngling. Opening its mouth, it released a high-pitched call and attempted to leap out of the container; it fell back into the
water with a splash.
“Ikaros,” Melaina said.
“Come.” Rhea placed a hand on Melaina’s shoulder. “Randall will tend to it, and we will visit soon.”
“Ikaros, Mother, not it.”
Rhea raised a brow.
Melaina offered Randall a smile. “Thank you.”
Despite thanking Dracchus earlier, Rhea’s instinct was to tell her daughter never to thank a male; it was a male’s duty to provide. But she held it in. Things were changing. The kraken were changing. And Randall wasn’t a kraken, anyway. Rhea had been learning from her human friends, Macy and Aymee, and they frequently expressed appreciation to their males. Perhaps it was a good thing to do, from time to time.
“Hopefully I’ll earn that thanks.” Randall’s smile, despite his strange human teeth, was the most charming that Rhea had ever seen. She stared at his lips and wondered what it would feel like to have them pressed against hers.
2
All was quiet as Randall walked through the empty corridors save for his own footsteps, the gentle sloshing of water in the container, and the occasional whine from the prixxir within. The creature’s calls were high-pitched, chirruping, and heart-wrenching. Though some part of Randall thought it was ridiculous to empathize with an animal — his father would’ve called him a damned fool — he couldn’t help but think he knew how Ikaros felt.
As though things aren’t grim enough, now I’m comparing myself to a baby sea-lizard.
He grinned. Fortunately, no one was around to see it; he worried it was the expression of a desperate man losing touch with reality. The thought shouldn’t have amused him that much.
He took a meandering route through the Facility; his mind wandered often lately, and he lost himself in thought as he went to check the spots Aymee frequented when she wasn’t in her room — the mess hall, the infirmary, the chamber she and Arkon had cleared to use for painting.
The thought of Aymee and Arkon gave him pause. Randall had wanted Aymee from the first moment he’d seen her — she was beautiful, yes, but she was also passionate, bold, and intelligent. If circumstances had been different for them both, he liked to think he would’ve had a chance. They’d enjoyed one another’s company on the few occasions during which they’d been able to relax. But she’d fallen for Arkon.
That had hurt a lot more than Randall had expected it would.
He searched for that bitterness, for the ache of rejection, for the constriction in his chest, but he could not find them anymore. He’d seen Aymee and Arkon together often in the weeks he’d spent here in the Facility, and it had stung every time. That sting had lessened a little with each passing day.
Somehow, Rhea had chased the last of that feeling away. She’d been kind — if sometimes overbearing — during Randall’s time here, and she made little effort to hide her interest in him. While he’d recovered in the infirmary, it’d been Rhea who was there each time he woke, Rhea who’d often tended to him. Now, she’d stood up for him to other kraken without hesitation.
And said I’m under her protection…
The first time he’d seen her — while he was in extreme pain and on the verge of exhaustion — he hadn’t known what to think. The kraken had been so new to him, then, so alien, and the females were hairless and bare, their breasts on full display. But he’d grown more accustomed to their appearances since, and he couldn’t deny Rhea’s exotic beauty and effortless grace. Her features were deceptively delicate, belying her impressive physical strength, and her gray skin was so soft to the touch.
His curiosity felt dangerous; was it right for him to be attracted to her? Was it natural?
Randall had spent his life hunting dangerous creatures, and that’s what the kraken were supposed to have been — prey. More threatening than anything else he’d hunted, perhaps, but wild beasts all the same. Something that needed to be killed to protect human life. Shaking that manner of thinking had proven difficult; it had been ingrained in him since childhood.
Pushing away those thoughts, he shifted his attention to his surroundings, stopping to lean into Aymee’s painting room. She wasn’t there, so he continued walking.
In some ways, the Facility reminded Randall of home. Like Fort Culver, this place had been constructed with clean, impersonal aesthetics favoring practicality and functionality. Despite centuries of inhabitation by the kraken, it was clear that everything in the Facility had had its place, and that everything had been arranged in a fashion that favored organization. It’d come as little surprise when he was told this place — like Fort Culver — had been utilized by military personnel.
But Fort Culver wasn’t sixty-five meters below the surface of the ocean, nor was it inhabited by human-animal hybrids.
Pausing in the doorway of the mess hall — called simply the Mess by the kraken — he glanced inside. The large room, which had undoubtedly been utilized as a dining area long ago, was empty, and the kitchen beyond was dark.
As he walked toward the infirmary, he glanced down at Ikaros. The prixxir stared up at him with those wide, dark eyes, looking so small, so helpless.
“Damnit,” he muttered.
His sister, Elle, would’ve laughed if he told her he saw his feelings reflected in the gaze of an animal, but there wouldn’t have been judgment in her laughter. This was what she’d so often talked about. This was the sort of connection she’d made with so many of Halora’s creatures.
He’d never thought less of her for it, though their father had little patience for what he called her bleeding heart. She could outpace most other rangers, was the best shot in the fort and everywhere else they’d gone, and maintained her cool better than anyone Randall knew, but she had always been too soft in Commander Nicholas Laster’s eyes.
Too much like their mother.
Randall shook those thoughts away as he peeked into the infirmary; the lights were dimmed, and all was quiet within. He turned toward the cabins — once the quarters of the Facility’s crew, now home to the few humans who lived here — and resumed his walk.
The prixxir chirruped and poked the tip of its snout out of the water, little nostrils flaring.
Sighing, Randall shook his head. Maybe this was a belated acknowledgment of his days as a ranger being over, a subconscious effort to move on.
The betrayal he’d suffered at the hands of his fellow rangers should’ve been the best indication. Men he’d known for his entire life, who he’d hunted with since he was old enough to lift a firearm, had attempted to relieve Randall from command through use of deadly force. He’d always butted heads with Cyrus Taylor, who’d been a close friend of Randall’s father, but how had those disagreements in method escalated into attempted murder?
The main directive of the rangers had been simple — protect the colonists from whatever came. Had that always meant something inhuman was the enemy? Had it always meant destroying things before understanding them?
Had Randall always been so damned naïve?
By the time Randall reached Aymee and Arkon’s den, his left shoulder ached. He’d taken a stray bullet there when he’d first confronted the couple on the beach, two months ago, when Cyrus attacked Aymee and the weapon in her hand accidentally discharged. The bastard might as well have shot Randall twice himself.
He shifted the container to his right arm. The prixxir wobbled in the sloshing water and made another of its little sounds as Randall stepped in front of the door, which was cracked open about ten centimeters, and knocked on the doorframe.
Cloth rustled inside, followed by a shriek of laughter and footsteps. The door slid open to reveal Aymee. She wore a broad grin, her curly hair wild around her shoulders.
“Randall! Hi!” Aymee’s happiness shone in her brown eyes.
Arkon slipped a tentacle around Aymee’s waist and settled a hand on her shoulder as he came up behind her. He regarded Randall with narrowed eyes. Though he was leaner than most of the male kraken Randall had seen, he still towered over most humans; he had to be at least
two and a half meters long from the top of his head to the tips of his tentacles. With pointed teeth and wicked claws thrown in for good measure, Arkon looked every bit an apex predator.
Randall couldn’t fault the kraken for his jealousy or possessiveness — whatever tension existed between he and Arkon was warranted. Their history, however brief, hadn’t exactly been conducive to building trust and friendship.
“Hi, Aymee. I don’t want to bother you, but I was hoping you could help me with something,” Randall said.
“You’re not bothering me.” She glanced at Arkon — whose expression made it clear he was bothered — and gave his tentacle a pat. “Let me talk to Randall, and then we can get back to our game.”
A bit of the stiffness eased from Arkon’s posture. He brushed his thumb along Aymee’s neck with a simple intimacy that would’ve set a jealous fire in Randall’s gut only a month ago.
“I will be waiting, quite eagerly,” Arkon said. He leaned his head down and kissed Aymee’s cheek, lips lingering for several seconds, before moving back into the room.
“You two playing some Blind Man’s Bounty?” Randall asked.
Cheeks reddening, Aymee cleared her throat, but her smile didn’t fade. “Something like that. So, what can I help you with? Is it your shoulder?”
Randall moved aside as she stepped into the hallway. “No, shoulder’s fine as long as I don’t overwork it.” He took the container in both hands and held it up. “I know you’re not an animal doctor, but I was hoping you might be able to help me tend to this critter. His name’s Ikaros.”
Aymee’s brows rose. “A prixxir? Where did you get it?” She reached into the container and gently rubbed Ikaros’s snout with the tip of a finger. Ikaros leaned into the attention, closing his eyes.
Randall smiled. He couldn’t deny that the little prixxir was cute. “Melaina found it, and I graciously volunteered to take care of it.”
“So, Rhea told you to, huh?” Aymee glanced up at him, smirking.
“Actually, she asked me to do it. Guess I’m the animal expert around these parts.” He lifted a leg to brace the bottom of the container on his thigh and reached into the water, carefully slipping a hand under Ikaros’s belly. He lifted the prixxir out of the red-tinted water. “Something tried to make a meal of him. Is there anything we can do?”