Her breath hissed.
What was she doing?
It was one thing for her to risk her own happiness on a relationship that would not last, on a man who would not stay. She would not compromise her children’s sense of stability.
“I have to get up.” She pushed on his shoulders. Their legs tangled. She blundered from the hammock, knocking over the glass of wine. “Shit. Oh, shit.”
“Elizabeth, what is the matter?”
“Nothing.” All she could see was an image of Zack walking through the house and out the back door to find them. To find her, naked. “It’s not broken, see?” She set the wineglass by the back door, the cool air tickling her bare ass, and tugged on a sleeve of her blouse until Morgan rolled to release it. “I need to get dressed.”
Slowly, he sat upright, watching as she scrambled for her clothes.
Hopping on one leg, she shoved her other foot inside the damp fabric. “Damn, I have to change my pants.”
“Then you will change.”
“Right.” She pulled herself together, summoned control and a smile. “No use crying over spilled wine.”
He eyed her oddly. “Indeed.”
“Thank you.” She buttoned her waistband, bundled his clothes, and thrust them at him. “That was wonderful. You should go.”
“Why?”
A flutter of panic. Because her voice wanted to shake, she sharpened it. “Zack will be home soon. I don’t want him to find you here. To find us together.”
“The one has nothing to do with the other.”
Maybe not. But she couldn’t separate out the pieces of herself, the mother and the lover. And she couldn’t put them together.
“You can say that because you’re a guy. Men can compartmentalize.”
“Zachary is male,” he pointed out.
“Zack is . . .” She bit her lip. “He’s not ready for this.”
She wasn’t ready for this.
“I am here. He must accept that.”
“Not now. Not like this. You said it yourself.”
“Said what?”
What was his problem? Sixteen years ago, he couldn’t roll off her fast enough. Now, when she wanted, needed him to go, he was stalling.
She stuck out her chin and looked him in the eye. “One night doesn’t change anything.”
Zack found the beach, his private cove, even in the dark. There were some advantages to being a freak after all.
He shifted his grip on the grocery bags. Ten pounds of cat litter, seven pounds of cat food, a plastic litter box, and two metal bowls, everything the kitten would need or his mom could want. But he couldn’t face her yet, her anxious eyes, her too bright smile, her questions. How was work? What did you do? What do you mean, think, feel, want?
His throat closed. He couldn’t breathe. He dumped the bags at the foot of the trail where he’d be sure to stumble over them on his return.
He wanted to be left alone. Alone in his bed, listening to his music, with the Victoria’s Secret catalog stashed under his mattress. He grimaced. Not that he could beat off with his mother and Morgan downstairs. If Stephanie . . .
But Stephanie was seeing somebody. Some guy. Not him.
And now he would be stuck seeing her every day at work, knowing he owed her his job, knowing she liked him but not . . . enough.
He sat on a clump of weeds to pull off his boots. Maybe he’d just get his feet wet this time.
His heart beat faster with shame and excitement. His clothes chafed. Maybe not. Probably not.
He stood.
The night swam with stars and scents, throbbing, close. He couldn’t pick out the constellations, but he recognized the smells, pine and brine, kelp and loam. The sky was black and soft as velvet, the sea gleaming with reflected light. Zack couldn’t see where one left off and the other began. The waves ran over the rocks with a sound like chains. They called to him, dragged at him hard. Pulling his shirt over his head, he dropped it on the sand.
His skin pebbled in the night air. His nipples poked out. So did his dick. The water chuckled and rustled closer as he shivered with cold and energy and desire.
There was no one to stop him, no one to see. Anyway, he wasn’t hurting anyone. He could do it once, once and get it over with, and then he wouldn’t come back for a long time. A week. He had a job now. He might not get another chance to come back anyway.
He undid his pants, stripped off his underwear and socks.
The waves’ chant filled his head. The cool air caressed his body. Inside him, needs twisted and stirred like eels in an aquarium, like the monster in Alien, fighting to burst out.
He took a deep breath. It would be all right. He knew what he was doing now. He knew where he was going. Everything would be all right once he got into the water.
Barefoot, naked, he padded over the narrow strip of hard, damp sand. His body tightened in anticipation. His mind drifted to the slow, warm summer nights of childhood, fishing from the pier with his dad, the floodlights on the foam, the smells of brine and bait, beer and blood, the sound of the surf and men’s voices.
He raised his head, absorbing the stars and the murmur of the tide. He was a man now. This was his place.
He waded into the water.
Cold.
It seized his balls, locked his knees, jolted his blood. This was the worst part. Baring his chattering teeth, he slogged forward, the waves surging from calf to thigh, from thigh to waist, grabbing at his balls, pumping through his veins. He shuddered with tension and cold. His belly and legs trembled. Deep, deeper, almost . . .
There.
The Change ripped through him, convulsive as orgasm. His heart pounded, his lungs exploded, pain and ecstasy coursing along his bones. So good. So hard. He let himself go, let everything go, as the spasms went on and on, milking his body. He arched helplessly under the waves, under the water, flailed and felt the flat slap, the cool slide, of fins and tail.
He gasped, and salt flooded his mouth, pushed into his chest and choked him. He floundered, suffocating in the oxygen-rich water. Oh, shit, oh, Christ, oh . . . Gills ripped from his throat, shuddered and swelled. Terror melted into triumph and relief. All right, then. All right.
The water was in him, he was in the water, rushing, pulsing, free. Everything else forgotten.
He spiraled into the depths, and the cold clear darkness claimed him.
Morgan stalked along the broken asphalt in the dark.
He never stayed with a woman after sex. Over the centuries, he had left hundreds of lovers for spurious reasons or no reason at all.
But he had never before left at the woman’s insistence. Elizabeth’s insistence.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. He’d given her what she wanted, had he not? All he knew how to give. Yet still somehow it had not been enough, or he would not be walking back alone to his room at the inn, pushed out of her house to accommodate the whims of an adolescent boy.
“One night doesn’t change anything.”
But it had. She was inside him now like a virus, like a fever, an ache in his belly, a pang at his heart.
An irritable wind swirled around him. Shadows scudded across his path. Morgan glanced at the clouds threatening the moon and realized he had allowed his foul mood to leach into the atmosphere.
His lack of control disturbed him. Weather magic was the first learned and most easily mastered of elemental powers. But judging by the turbulent sky, those clouds would start spitting soon. He needed to cool his blood, to clear his mind, to calm the turmoil inside him and above.
He turned left, following the track to the beach.
And nearly stumbled over some grocery bags dumped at the foot of the trail. Human litter. He almost passed it by, but a familiar scent teased at his nostrils, tickled his attention.
Zachary?
Morgan’s head snapped up. The boy’s scent mingled with the weeds, lingered on the plastic.
Zachary had been here. Was here still?
Morga
n’s gaze raked the beach, found boots, shirt, pants. No boy.
His lips drew back in a silent snarl. Zachary had gone into the water alone and unwarded. Dangerous enough for an inexperienced shifter with no guidance or instruction. But for Zachary . . .
Cold fingers traced Morgan’s spine. There were demons in these waters. Gau knew the boy was finfolk, had threatened him already. “We will take them from you. The boy and the woman both.”
Morgan’s throat closed. Swearing, he yanked at his boots, tore off his jacket. He ran for the water, breaking the surface in a low, fast dive.
If Gau touched the boy, there would be Hell to pay.
The orb rested on the sea floor, glowing with blue green phosphorescence. It was the light—not warm, not cold, eerily beautiful—that had attracted Zack the first time, almost a week ago. He’d felt it flickering like a fallen star and followed it to this crevice at the base of another island, hidden in the roots of the earth.
The glow spilled from a fissure in the rock. He felt a catch of excitement. Like when he and Ryan used to go into the woods behind the middle school looking for snakes. Once they’d found a copperhead coiled under a log and poked it with a stick to watch it strike.
The danger was part of the thrill.
The light pulsed like a heartbeat, piercing the darkness, reaching, seeking, drawing him on. Everything else faded and fell away from that blue radiance, the flowing kelp, the twisting worms, the armored crabs and mollusks. The sea bottom around was barren. The odd light played over stones and bones and the shells of small creatures that had died.
Zack felt a brush of caution, a moment of misgiving, an instant’s unease.
He shook it away. He was invulnerable in the water.
He was close enough now to see the orb itself, half-buried in the sand. The opaque surface ran with color like a garden globe, blue, green, silver, pink. The light throbbed around him, moved into him, its beat reflected and magnified by the surrounding rock
like the surge of the sea
like the flow of his breath
like the rhythm of his blood
like a mother’s heartbeat to the child swimming in her womb.
Closer. The whisper reached into his head.
Closer. The command twined around his heart.
Touch me. He shivered with excitement.
Release me. Entranced, he drifted nearer, trapped by the primal beat.
The water shivered. Faint vibrations dragged along his skin, tugged at his attention.
Not the orb.
His sharpened senses identified turbulence. Something coming, hard and fast. Boat?
Predator.
Panic pumped his heart. The globe. The thought slid into his primitive brain, sharp as a heated knife. He couldn’t let his precious orb be seen, touched, taken by another.
A small, rational part of his mind protested another shark would hardly covet a submerged garden ornament, but its voice was drowned by the rush of fear, the possessive swell, the compulsion beating in his brain.
Hide. He must hide it.
He backed clumsily, confined by the narrow crevice in the rock. Sand stirred and settled over the orb’s surface, veiling the glow. Yes, yes. He writhed around, swept the sea bottom with his tail. A great dark cloud of debris boiled and billowed, choking him, cutting off the light.
Yessss.
He shot from the cloud into the clean salt dark, his blood pounding as he raced through the open sea, adrenaline and triumph coursing through his veins. Free, clear, fast, fearless, at the top of the fucking food chain.
WHAM.
The impact exploded out of nowhere, catching him broadside, slamming his ribs, knocking him yards off course. He floundered, struggling to orient himself in the dark sea.
Aggression flooded his brain. He turned to attack.
BAM.
Another punch from below. The force hurtled him to the surface. He lashed wildly, twisting to defend himself.
In the shadowed depths beneath him, a monster slid into sight. Broad white snout, massive pale sides, a flat, dark gash of a mouth . . .
Another shark.
Holy shit.
The thing was huge, twice his size. Panic stabbed his chest. His heart hammered. His ribs throbbed.
Flight or fight? His shark self screamed for blood. But he was battered, bruised, afraid. In open sea, the monster shark would certainly outswim him. Maybe, if he could make it to the island, he could lose himself in the rocks?
Zack dived.
The other shark glided to intercept him. Zack switched course, but his pursuer changed direction, too, anticipating his moves. He braced for another blow.
But instead of striking with its snout, this time the monster merely brushed him, bumping his side. Zack bunched his body, whipped his tail to get away.
The shark circled after him, its movements graceful, almost lazy in the clear black water. Zack plunged and zipped, back and forth, making another run for the rocks. The shark cut him off with a second warning bump. Abandoning his plan, Zack fled.
Water streamed. Fish scattered. The monster pursued, moving occasionally to bump or block him.
He was being driven. Herded, Zack realized, with the portion of his brain that still functioned in his terror. Forced in the direction of World’s End.
His body was stretched, his strength depleted. His sides hurt. He couldn’t concentrate. His mind darted behind, ahead. If he could reach the cove, the shallow water might save him.
In a last burst of hope and energy, he drove himself at the shore. Waves churned. His belly scraped bottom. With luck, the monster behind him would beach itself on the rocks.
Frantically, he flailed and felt his limbs pop and change, felt his skin shrink and wrinkle, felt his tortured lungs expand. His mouth gaped as the surf foamed around him, as the cold air struck his shivering back, his starving lungs. He was naked. Vulnerable. Human. If the shark caught him now . . .
He clawed his way up the beach on numb knees and frozen hands, desperate to get up, get out, get away from the rush of the water.
He collapsed for a moment, his cheek pressed to the sand, the webbing melting from between his fingers, his face wet with salt and tears and terror. Must breathe. Must move. Summoning his last strength, he crawled to his discarded clothes. Stared, dumbfounded, at the pile on the sand.
That wasn’t his shirt. Those weren’t his shoes.
“You must not go into the water,” Morgan said behind him, “until you have learned to defend yourself.”
13
HIS SON SPRAWLED, BEACHED, BLINKING, NAKED on the sand. No longer shark, but human.
The fear and temper that had driven Morgan to herd the boy ashore threatened to explode in all too human ways now they were on land. He clenched his fists, willing them to subside.
The boy was back and safe for now.
He strode out of the surf. “Get up.”
Zachary spat. “Get away from me.”
Not an auspicious beginning to the discussion they must have.
Perhaps he had been rough on the boy, but the threat, and his own pumping terror, had taken him by surprise.
“Are you all right?” Morgan asked.
Zachary curled to a sitting position, covering himself. “Leave me alone.”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. The boy appeared unharmed. Bruised, embarrassed, angry, but unharmed. But there had been a definite taint of demon in the water where he found him. The children of the sea were immortal, but they could still be killed. Possessed. Zachary, half-human and inexperienced, was particularly vulnerable even before he was targeted by the demon lord.
“You have no idea of the dangers out there.”
“I was fine until you came along.”
“Which only proves how little you know.”
Zachary tossed back his wet hair. His gaze speared Morgan’s, his eyes accusing and curiously adult. “Whose fault is that?”
Morgan was silent. In truth, he could have sp
oken to the boy before this. He had an obligation to his prince and his people. Zachary belonged on Sanctuary, where his power could be assessed and trained. Morgan should have made an opportunity and forced the issue. He had not, because of Elizabeth.
Because he wanted to bed her.
A flare of remembered fire licked his belly.
His plan had been simple and ruthless: claim Zachary, fuck Elizabeth, and go. Now that he had achieved both goals, he had no excuse to dally on World’s End.
The fire sank down to chill and ash.
“One night doesn’t change anything,” Elizabeth had said.
But she was wrong.
They both were wrong.
“Put your clothes on,” Morgan said. “Your mother will be worried about you.”
“She doesn’t know anything.”
“She knows when to expect you home.”
Sullenly, the boy rolled to his feet and reached for his clothes. He hitched up his pants, fumbled with the buckle. Without looking at Morgan, he asked, “Are you going to tell her?”
He heard and understood the desperate anxiety in the boy’s voice. The days when the children of the sea were acknowledged, feared, and revered were gone. There was no guarantee Elizabeth would believe their son.
Or accept him.
“That is your responsibility,” he said as gently as he could.
“I can’t.” Panic made his voice higher, like a child’s. “She wouldn’t believe me.”
Morgan stifled a flash of compassion. “Then you must show her.”
“Forget it. She already thinks I’m a freak.”
“You are not a freak. You are finfolk.”
Zachary sneered. “What is that, like, a mermaid?” “Merfolk.”
“Whatever. It’s not me. I turn into a shark.”
Morgan reached for patience, remembering what it had been like for him so many centuries ago. The boy had a lot to learn, in more ways than one. “Not only a shark. You could take another form.”
“No, I can’t. It’s always a shark.”
Morgan sighed. Was this what Griff had gone through with the new changelings on Sanctuary? It had been almost a century since the young roamed Caer Subai, free and feral as dogs. But Morgan was fast developing new respect for the gruff castle warden who had taken them in charge.
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