Love at Sea

by Preston Walker

  True enough.

  Linden glanced down at his radars, didn’t see much on them, and looked back out at the fading dawn as morning took hold of the sky. A soft sigh escaped his throat, and then he leaned forward to put his face in his hands.

  Suddenly, a knife stabbed him in the heart.

  He sat up straight and gasped, grabbing at his chest and staring around. He even looked at his hand, to make sure that he actually hadn’t been wounded and wasn’t bleeding.

  “What was that?” he muttered.

  The ache hadn’t faded. In fact, it seemed to be growing and growing. It was spreading throughout his whole being, seizing his muscles and stretching them all taut. A moment later, he realized that the pain was not his own.

  It was coming inside him, from very deep in his soul.

  “No,” he grunted. “I don’t want anything to do with you. Leave me alone. Please.”

  The pain came even worse, and he clutched at his chest with both hands this time, bending forward so that his forehead touched on a button. What button it was, he didn’t know until suddenly Skip was at his side, shouting at him.

  “What’s wrong? What is it? Linden?!”

  Linden struggled to sit up again, helped by the other man pulling on him. Skip was trying to drag him out onto the deck, frantic.

  “Stop,” he gasped.

  Skip kept pulling on him.

  “Stop! Skip!” he snarled.

  He was released, and he collapsed back into his chair, staring into Skip’s round, terrified eyes. Some of the pain was starting to fade now, or maybe he was simply getting used to it.

  “What button did I push?” he asked.

  “The fucking emergency siren. What happened? Heart attack? Move. Get out of the chair. I’m taking us back to Dutch Harbor.”

  “No,” Linden managed, struggling to find control of his tongue. It felt thick and heavy in his mouth, like some dead thing. “No, not a heart attack. I’m okay.”

  “Aye, says the man clutching at his chest!”

  “No,” he insisted, staring down at his radar again before looking out the window. There were no other boats anywhere within sight. Damn. “No, not my heart. It’s… It’s Ash. I felt him.”

  Skip sucked in a deep breath, suddenly understanding. For Linden to have had that severe of a reaction, something terrible had to have happened. “What did you feel?”

  “Just pain,” he muttered and shuddered.

  Suddenly, Matteo was there. Judging from the clanging sounds, Degasi was dismounting the hydraulic lift and was also coming. “You can feel Ash? Search deeper. What’s going on?”

  Linden held both hands over his heart, hardly daring to breathe. “I don’t think I can. We…we haven’t…we aren’t…”

  Matteo reached into the bridge, shoving past Skip as he clutched at his captain and shook him by the shoulders. “You damn idiot! It doesn’t matter what went on between you two before! The kid is obviously in trouble, and he’s on a strange boat surrounded by strange men! You have to feel for him!”

  He was right.

  Everyone else in his life had been right, and he was always wrong.

  Snapping his eyes shut, Linden forced himself to focus on the source of the pain. It continued to radiate throughout his whole entire body, but it was coming from deep within his chest. It wasn’t physical, not for him, but he reached deeper and slowly became aware of Ash. He had shoved his awareness of the omega away so fiercely that it was difficult to find him again, but he was there, now. Small and warm, a gentle blue light. Yet, not so gentle now. It was wreathed in a stark red aura of agony.

  But this doesn’t tell me anything. Have to go deeper. Find him. Like when I knew he was at the dock.

  Doing that would mean opening himself up to all the pain, even more than he was feeling now, but the fact that his mate was in pain overrode absolutely everything else. Shoving past the angry red glow, he wrapped the sense of himself around his awareness of Ash.

  Opening his eyes, he turned his head and pointed out directly south. “There,” he said roughly. “Very far south. It’s faint.”

  “Then, we have to go,” Skip said. “You can’t tell anything else?” Linden shook his head, and his second-in-command nodded. “Right. Then, let’s go. Screw the crab pots. Screw the fishing season. Everything in the world can be replaced—except for a mate.”

  The alpha looked at his three betas, and understood that they knew his pain. They knew even more pain than he did, in fact.

  “Right,” he rasped. “Let’s go. Let’s find the Hornet’s Nest.”

  Chapter 14

  “Agh…”

  The whole world was upside down, with the deck in the sky and the sun on the floor. Ash lay on the salt-slick surface, curled up into as small of a ball as he could possibly manage. He clutched at his hurts with his hands, but he didn’t have enough hands to clutch at everything. Everything had been going so smoothly. The men working on the ship had been so accepting of his presence, not quite friendly but certainly nowhere in the realms of dangerous.

  He had done his best, asking just the right amount of questions about certain things, not pushing at any sensitive spots, but apparently he hadn’t hidden his intentions well enough. Something had gone wrong along the way. Perhaps it was the fact that there was clearly something different about him now, something that he himself didn’t even understand. Maybe it was the questions, no matter how careful he tried to be.

  Maybe it’s the fact that Murphy was paying so much attention to me, the wounded omega thought, coughing up a mouthful of blood. He had bit his tongue when he fell, knocking his chin against the surface of the deck. The other fishermen were probably jealous of it and had been plotting against him this whole time, just as he had been scheming against them.

  In reality, the reason for this sudden attack was probably a blend of all those things at once, accompanied by the fact that he had just resisted Hank’s attempt at making a pass at him. The alpha’s hand went out and wrapped around his ass, and Ash had said some choice words that he hadn’t even known existed until he spent some time out on a boat.

  The alpha smiled coldly at him and walked away, making Ash think that that was the last of their interaction… But then he had come back with Murphy, and suddenly all the accusations against him were spilling out from every single mouth. He was sunk. Trapped. And when they hit him, he instinctively protected his stomach and then tried to throw himself out of their grasp.

  Unfortunately, his feet slipped, and now he was just lying there as they advanced on them. A ring of grimacing, grinning faces, they nudged at him with their boots and then started to kick at him in earnest.

  “Look at the little fairy bitch, can’t even defend himself!”

  “Damn, he’s got a nice mouth, though.”

  “And a real nice ass! Hey Murphy! I want a piece of that ass!”

  Hank’s voice cut through the other men’s voices, far deeper than theirs because he was the most dominant of all present, man and shifter alike. “He rejected me. I get him first.”

  So, now it’s come to this, Ash thought bitterly. Looks like Mom was right.

  Someone leaned over him, and then cruel hands were grabbing at his crotch, feeling for his zipper. Tears stung his eyes and he shut them tightly, knowing that giving these men any reaction at all would only spur them on even further.

  What was it that they used to tell young girls in the Victorian Era, when faced with a sexual encounter?

  Close your eyes and think of England. That was it. Close his eyes and think of something that would give him sanctuary.

  The first thing that came to mind was none other than Linden. And strangely, thoughts of him were not painful, but instead…welcome. The shape of his body, the bulge of his muscle, and the way their physiques had complemented each other when pressed together…

  Suddenly, it was as though Linden stood over him now, instead of these cruel men. And his voice was there, loud and clear and fine. “I�
��m coming to get you, Ash!”

  “As if,” he muttered to himself, and then caught the side of a boot with his cheek.

  “The hell’d you say, little fairy?”

  Ash opened his mouth and looked up at the face looming over his. He grinned and then spat a great mouthful of bloody saliva at the man. “I said—I”

  Just then, the whole world gave a great lurch and went tumbling. It felt like the same drastic jerking of the Storming Lady as she caught against her anchor, when she just barely avoided a collision with this very boat. Except, this time, it felt as though there had never been an anchor involved, and the impact happened.

  Darkness exploded behind Ash’s eyes as he was tossed and thrown, his ears full of impossible metallic sounds that didn’t quite match up with anything he had ever heard before.

  Had all of this been just a daydream before his death? Was he just standing there out on the deck, imagining a different future, seconds before an impact killed them all?

  Then, he heard something else through the powerful cacophony of rending and tearing.

  It was a howl, thick and rich and aching.

  Ash scrabbled at the deck weakly, a small wail of his own rising in his throat in answer. Stretching out his arms, he clutched at something solid and used it to pull himself up to a sitting position. Then, he opened his eyes.

  Blood dripped down his face, obscuring part of what he saw. The rest of what he could see was further hidden from him by huge swathes of black, billowing smoke that snared all other scents and replaced them with a foul, chemical reek. Somewhere, he felt blasts of heat, and thought he saw scarlet tongues piercing through the smoke, but it might have just been the blood in his eyes.

  Then, a flash of fur and muscle and a peal of howling.

  Snarls erupted all across the boat, followed by heavy thumps of contact and gnashing fangs that clicked together, and shrieks of pain. Human cries were present as well, filled with confusion and fear before being rapidly cut off and ending in bloody gurgles.

  Ash drew his legs up tighter against his chest, shuddering and trembling weakly. What’s going on? What’s happening?

  From the smoke, two bodies rolled across the deck right in front of him. Wolf tangled with wolf, snarling and lashing at each other with blows meant to kill. Two dominant males, both of them as grey as doves in coloration, struggling for control of the fight. One broke free of the other and prepared to lunge, but his forepaw twisted against a piece of debris; the other, much larger wolf, took advantage of the opening and closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye. Fangs flashed, muscles jerked, and the smaller wolf fell away, dead.

  The large wolf turned towards Ash, and he transformed now as well. Sluggish and heavy and hurt, he knew he didn’t stand a chance. He wasn’t going to go down without a fight, though!

  Raising his tail high up in the air behind his back and bracing his wiry muscles, Ash lifted his head with a grimace to let his nemesis know that he wasn’t going to go easily.

  Deep, brown orbs gazed right into his pair of golden suns.

  It can’t be…

  The grey wolf, who was not grey so much as pure white stained grey with smoke, leapt at him, knocked him to the ground with furious licks and frantic whines. Wolf against wolf, they howled and yapped, writhing together. At some point, they became human again, and Ash found himself clutched tightly to Linden’s chest, hardly able to breathe because of how forceful those arms were.

  “Ash! Ash!” the alpha cried. He was really, fully crying, with his shoulders and chest heaving with great sobs. “I’m so, so sorry!”

  Dizzy, overwhelmed, Ash just slumped against his mate and let himself be held. In the distance, the sound of emergency helicopter blades could be heard. When they arrived, they would find a devastating crab fishing boat crash, with the smaller vessel having slammed right into the side of the larger one, piercing her fuel tanks and setting them ablaze. There would be only five survivors, with all the other bodies either presumed burned completely, or lost to the sea.

  But, at the moment, Ash didn’t know any of that. He didn’t understand anything of what had happened, or how Linden had managed to find him just in time.

  All he knew was that he was, once again, right where he belonged. Linden had done that, rammed right through his own walls to get here.

  That didn’t mean things were going to be perfect from now on, but he figured it was a damn good start.

  Chapter 15

  “I was born on the sea, you know.”

  Linden began his tale in the early hours of the morning as Ash lay in his hospital bed. After a chaotic night full of interviews by police and media, they had finally been left alone so that they could get some rest. Ash’s wounds were minor, but his lethargy as of late had been reason enough for the doctors to want him to stay until the next day. He agreed readily, wanting nothing more than to sleep.

  The last thing in the world he had expected was for Linden to return for him, with determination on his face and a mission in his mind. The omega could feel his intent and understood it immediately. This couldn’t wait any longer.

  The truth was coming out now.

  “I actually didn’t know,” Ash whispered softly. That would be the last thing he said for quite a few minutes, as Linden slowly worked his way through the story that needed telling: that of his life.

  “Of course not,” Linden sighed. “Sorry. That was dumb of me.”

  Wordlessly, Ash started to play with his hair. It was sticky with salt and needed a trimming quite badly, but he felt his mate immediately relax because of it and so kept toying with the dirty strands anyway.

  “My father was a sailor. I don’t know who my mother was. I guess she might have stuck around long enough for me to be weaned from her, but maybe not. Father never talked about her. He said we were all we ever needed from each other.” Linden paused. “Part of me thinks she might have been a human, but I’m not sure. Anyway.

  “For the first five years of my life, I lived with my father and we went from one boat to the next. That was all he ever knew, the only thing he had any experience with. There was a lot of work. I’m sure it must have been hard for him, but for me…it was a playground. It was a constant adventure, everything that every little boy ever dreams of when he imagines his future.

  “And you might think it would be difficult to smuggle a child aboard a working vessel, but I don’t remember a time when I was ever a secret. They treated me like a little page. Everyone on every ship did. And there were sometimes when I had to be a wolf for the whole journey, pretending to be my father’s trusty sea dog, but that was joy in its own right. Ash, there is nothing more free than the ocean. Nothing more loyal…and nothing more terrifying.”

  The story had been mostly happy up until this point. Ash gave a little tremble, sensing that was about to change.

  “There was a storm one night. I think we were near Africa, although where exactly I don’t know. I was young. We were all trying to get inside, and Father sent me on up ahead.” Linden squeezed his eyes shut tight, and Ash felt his pain inside his own chest. It was bitter and ragged, like a tender wound that hadn’t quite healed. “He never came inside, swept away by the wind. He wasn’t the only one who didn’t make it, but damn… He was the only one with a child left on the ship.

  “They kept me. Instead of dropping me off once they got to the mainland, letting the police take care of me, they kept me, those sailors did. I didn’t understand what they were saying at the time, but they spoke of children being lost in a system, and they didn’t want that to happen to me. I lived on that boat until I was eleven years old. No one knew I was a shifter.”

  Linden hugged his arms tighter around his mate before continuing on. “Then, one day at a port, I stumbled across a group of other shifters. Not a pack, or any particular grouping, but a mix of all different sorts. Their leader was a woman with beautiful, long legs, and she invited me to join them. And of course I agreed.

  �
��It started out harmless, Ash. I went from one family to another, and there were far less rules with this one. I got my first real taste of alcohol before I turned twelve, and I lost my virginity to some native girl on my thirteenth birthday. Can you even imagine?”

  Ash couldn’t.

  “But, I’m getting sidetracked. It started out harmless enough. They would have me stand somewhere and watch out for people while they went inside somewhere, or did something. Or, they would have me pilot the boat to some spot to meet them wherever they had gone. I didn’t understand, but I was the lookout, the getaway vehicle.

  “They were pirates, and pretty soon I was quite a good little pirate. I was young. No one suspects children to be thieves or liars, and I had nimble fingers. And who suspects an animal of crimes? No one.” Linden gave another shudder, and turned his face towards Ash as he spoke. Ash did the same, and they took comfort from looking into each other’s eyes.

  “I met Skip, Degasi, and Matteo on my journey, all at separate points. They knew who I was. And they themselves aren’t so clean either, but that’s not my story to tell.

  “When I was nineteen years old, we screwed up. We had just invited a newcomer into the fold and he turned out to be an undercover investigator. They captured us and poisoned us so that we couldn’t shift and get away. And Ash…prison is a terrible place. But you think our prisons are terrible? You should see the places across the ocean, and hear the stories from there… None of us wanted to go like that. We would all die.

  “I fought against the poison and broke through it, but none of the others were strong enough. So, our leader, Natalia…she asked me to kill her. All of them asked me to kill them. Quickly. To avoid years of suffering. And then to escape.”

  There was a pause in the story, but Ash filled in the blank on his own.

  “I stole our boat and I decided I had had enough of exploring and adventure, and of a wild life. Yet, I didn’t want to leave the sea or the thrill. I looked into fishing jobs and discovered the crab fisherman’s life, and decided that would be my purpose. I gathered up my crew, and we came here and settled. I sold the pirate boat and commissioned the Storming Lady, and that has been our fate ever since. Occasionally, we leave port and go wandering the Bering Sea for a bit, but those days are far behind us.”