Perfect Pride

by Kaye Draper

  Halstad was at the wheel, staring out over the water. I went to join him, gripping the back of his seat as the floor moved and my stomach roiled. Morning sickness—or all-day sickness, in my case—and high sea adventures did not go well together.

  "Do you have any idea where you're going?" I asked the mage.

  He shrugged. "Not a damned clue. I'm a hired bomb, darlin', not a damned sailor."

  I squeezed his shoulder and he sighed, reaching up to cover my hand with one of his own gloved mitts. "We'll find your sea monster, gryphon. Don't get your panties in a twist."

  I snorted. "Oh, so now you're interested in my panties."

  He shook his head and flicked a glance back at me. "Shut it."

  I lifted my hand to ruffle his tangled blond waves. "Aww, little guy's so cute when he's growly."

  He didn't justify that with a response. Like he was above it all.

  I sighed and dropped down beside him, sitting cross-legged on the floor. It felt better down there, somehow. Like if I couldn't see the water, it didn't exist.

  Funny how easy it is to delude yourself so thoroughly.

  "I'm trying to stay near the little islands around here, not get too far from the sirens, but stay far enough away that we don't have to deal with 'em." He heaved a massive sigh. "But have you noticed those clouds over there?"

  I followed where he was pointing, to a small bank of harmless-looking gray-blue. "Probably just a little shower," I said, stupid as always. "Now whose panties are all twisted?"

  He scoffed. "Joke's on you gryphon. I'm not wearing any."

  I choked, laughing so hard my chest hurt. "Gods."

  He cracked a smile. It was a rare expression, but it looked good on him. I noticed he did that more and more since he was free of the mage guild. Hopefully he kept showing that little bit of softness after I dropped the baby bomb on him.

  The boat rocked, and I curled up with my back against the seat and my head on my knees. Somehow, I managed to drift off to sleep, despite the nausea and the fear for my missing pride member.

  I woke to the first big splatters of rain.

  "We're headed back toward that last island we passed," Halstad told me when I opened my eyes. "Water's getting choppy and I ain’t seen hide nor hair of your damned octopus."

  I stretched the kinks out of my back and pulled myself up into the seat next to his. "You're the boss. I don't have a fucking clue about water."

  A wave hit the side of the boat and rocked us more violently than usual. I pressed a hand to my mouth and swallowed down bile. "Fuck."

  Halstad's face was grim. Well, grimmer than usual. Hisashi and Oisin joined us, crowding behind our seats. "When I suggested a swim earlier," Oisin said in a bored tone, "I didn't mean in the middle of the damned pond."

  Hisashi was half-shifted, his fox ears pinned back against his head in agitation. Both of the guys looked a bit more with it than they had when I'd last set eyes on them. Their power was re-balancing and stabilizing. Something inside me relaxed a little bit at that. I had been more worried about them than I cared to admit.

  Then I saw it. A weird black shape among the waves, off in the distance.

  "Is that what I think it is? Or have I been staring at the water too long?" I pointed at the dark, undulating shape.

  Hisashi nodded. "I think it's a kraken. Hopefully it's our kraken."

  "Well, I'm not stopping for her. She can catch up," Halstad ground out, fiddling around with the throttle. "This damned storm blew up faster than I expected. And I'm pretty sure it's only going to get worse."

  I clenched the seat cushion to keep from sliding around or spewing as the boat rocked and heaved. We were all drenched, and even though it had been warm all day, the wind was chilling against my wet skin.

  The undulating black shapes in the waves got closer and closer. Like some sort of still frame photography, they'd be leagues away one moment and half-way to us the next. Kai wasn't joking when she said she could cover distance fast in the water.

  When Kai finally reached us, I was relieved. She could wrap her tentacles around the boat and drag us to the safety of the island that had disappeared from sight thanks to the pounding rain.

  I should have known better. Nothing is ever that easy for me.

  Long, eggplant-colored tentacles as thick as my waist wrapped around the boat from below, making the hull groan, and the whole boat rock up onto its side. My back slammed into the edge of the seat behind me, and Hisashi slipped and tumbled into me. I snagged a handful of his shirt, heaving with my enhanced strength to keep him inside the damned boat. The fox scrabbled, tangling his legs with mine and gripping the bottom of the seat as the boat was heaved up out of the water.

  We all dangled from the boat as the rain pounded down around us and thunder rumbled overhead. The waves were angry, stirred up by the storm above and the giant fucking kraken below.

  "Kai!" I screamed, my voice barely carrying over the roaring of water above and below us. "For fuck's sake kraken, what the hell are you doing?"

  My fingers slipped, talons digging into fake leather and metal to try to keep a hold on the boat. We were way too far away from shore to be going for a dip in the churning darkness below. My wings were out, but I doubted I could take off from here. And even if I could fly, I wouldn't leave the others behind.

  The kraken roared. A glowing, vertical-slit pupil blinked at me from close up. The damned thing was bigger than my head. "Kai," I pleaded. "Please--"

  I didn't have time to finish that sentence. The mass of roiling tentacles below me heaved and boiled. The boat was lifted further up into the air. The fabric of the seat tore beneath my claws and I felt myself slipping. Halstad was dangling from the wheel, both hands too engaged in clinging for dear life to be casting spells.

  Oisin managed to toss a ball of fae magic at the kraken's head. "Wake the fuck up, fishy!" He shouted. The effort only seemed to enrage the kraken, and it thrashed beneath us. The move cost Oisin his grip on the seat he'd been clinging to. The little fae went arching backward toward the water.

  I shrieked, preparing to try to launch myself hard enough to fly. But Hisashi was faster. He bent at the waist, planted his feet on the edge of the boat so he was squatting in an awkward sideways position, then he shot out, leaping backward away from the boat with the grace of a professional diver.

  It would have been a beautiful thing to watch, in any other situation. Hisashi uncoiled in a powerful but fluid move that echoed the quick grace of his animal form. I screamed again. But there was nothing I could do about it now.

  Hisashi managed to wrap his arms around Oisin just before they hit the water. Their auras twined together, and they disappeared behind a glowing blue ball of magic. A wave crashed over them and they were gone.

  My heart hammered in my chest. It was all happening too fast for me to react. The kraken reared back.

  Then she fucking threw the boat. With me and Halstad still attached to it.

  My whole world narrowed to a wrenching sensation in my shoulder as my grip was torn from the boat, and that rushing feel when you ride a roller coaster. Something flashed in my peripheral vision—lightning or magic, I wasn't sure.

  Then I slammed into something solid.

  I gasped in pain as what felt like every bone in my body broke on impact with the water. But, you know, water, so all I managed to do was suck in a lungful of salty brine. I thrashed with my broken body, not knowing what was up or down in the dark, churning water.

  A glow in the edge of my vision. Something hard gripping my wrist, wrapping around my body and squeezing with the force of a tentacle monster.

  Things got a little hazy after that.

  Chapter 12

  I woke up with a pounding headache and itchy skin.

  It took a while to realize what the hell was going on. I was wet and uncomfortable, and my body had this dull ache—like when I healed a broken bone, only all over.

  And something was pulling at my feet.

  I
lay there, staring up at the dark sky, while the waves tugged at my feet and the salt and sand drove me nuts as they dried on the upper half of my body. A boat. A pissed off kraken.

  I sat up.

  A thick arm was draped over my hips. I remembered the sensation of something grabbing me and squeezing. And that glowing light under the waves.

  Not a kraken, there at the end. A really determined mage.

  I lifted Halstad's arm and rolled him off me. He had a bruise on his temple, and a little gash that had already stopped bleeding. His broad chest rose and fell with deep, even breaths.

  I shuffled to my feet, groaning as I bent down and got my hands under Halstad's armpits. Giving a heave, I dragged the mage backward, up the sandy beach, away from the water. He twitched and snorted, and his mismatched eyes fluttered open. He went tense, on-guard and ready for battle. But when he took in the situation, he slumped into my hands, limp and trusting.

  "Jesus, Buddha, and Odin," he muttered. "Thought those sharks were back."

  I raised an eyebrow as I continued to drag him up the shore—and he continued to let me. "Sharks?"

  He waved it away. I saw he'd lost one glove along the way. And a boot. "Not my best moment, trying to keep your heavy ass above water when the fishies came looking for snacks."

  We hit vegetation and I stopped, releasing him and flopping onto my ass beside him. "Thanks. I have no clue what happened."

  He sighed and sat up, bracing himself with his hands behind his back, exhaustion written in every line of his body. "Well, we flew. And coming down into water from that high up is like falling onto concrete." He gave me a raw look, filled with a hint of terror. "I pulled up a shield to protect myself and absorb the impact. But you were too far away. You hit that motherfucking water like a ragdoll flung from a sling-shot." He shook his head. "I found you and dragged you up above water. Put a shield around us both. But it was a long ass way to land."

  He flopped backward to lie on his back and stare up at the emerging stars. "Not sure what happened to the others. I could only focus on getting the two of us the fuck out of the water. You were bleeding pretty good there for a minute, and the sharks came." He laughed. "I blasted the fuckers with magic. Overdid it, apparently. Managed to make it 'til my toes could touch the bottom, and that's it."

  I ran a hand over his face, smoothing his tangled, salt-crusted hair out of his eyes. "Thanks for saving my ass."

  God, I really had hit the water hard. Felt like I'd broken every bone in my body. And probably some organs….

  I froze as icy terror sank its claws into my heart.

  Fuck. The babies.

  I put my hands on my stomach and tried to sense if anything was wrong. But of course it was way too early for me to feel them moving. I drew my knees up and hugged them to my chest. I started to hyperventilate, everything going fuzzy around the edges.

  Halstad sat up, and I felt his eyes on me. "Gryphon?"

  I couldn't get enough air. The babies. What if the babies didn't survive all that trauma? What if I had to tell Hisashi I'd let his babies die? What if Hisashi wasn't even alive anymore and this was all I had left of him and now it was gone forever? My vision kept on closing in, tunneling to gray.

  "Gryphon!" Halstad's gruff voice regained its usual commanding tone. "Head between the knees." He gripped the back of my neck and forcibly shoved my head between my knees, holding me there when I would have moved. "Breathe in," he counted out loud. "Out. In. Out. Slow down."

  He held me there and made me breathe for what felt like centuries but was probably only a few minutes. The grayness receded from my vision. But the stupid tears wouldn't stop.

  "Now," Halstad said, voice a bit softer once I was back in control. "What the hell was that? You worried about the others? They shielded themselves before they hit the water. The fox might have already pulled them back home to the bookstore, for all I know. But he was pretty drained from earlier. They'll be back to get us once the magic equalizes and he's up to the trip."

  Right. Yeah. They were fine, probably.

  But the babies…. I sobbed harder. Gods, I was a mess.

  Halstad didn't seem to know what the hell to do with a crying woman. But he put his big boy panties on and wrapped an arm around me, pulling me against his side and making shushing noises. "Your pride's okay," he said again. "We're all fine."

  At least he understood that part of me. He knew, apparently, that I cared deeply for every one of them. So much so that normally, the panic attack would have been worry over Kai, and Hisashi, and Oisin.

  "It's not that," I managed to get out, hiccupping and gasping like a teenage girl crying over her first crush.

  It was gross.

  But right then, I didn't give two fucks about how silly it was to cry. I bawled my heart out. The thing I wanted more than anything in my life—I hadn't realized just how much I wanted it until right that moment. Until it was probably gone.

  "My babies," I hiccupped. "The water."

  His big hand on my back faltered for a minute, then resumed patting and stroking. "Babies?"

  I snuffled and dragged a hand across my face. I was not a pretty crier. "I'm pregnant, Halstad. Twins. Or…I was…." The crying took over again and I couldn't force words past my aching throat and heaving diaphragm.

  Halstad just kept patting my back and stroking my hair. "You're a gryphon, right?" he said calmly.

  I nodded, not knowing what the fuck that had to do with anything.

  "Gryphons aren't made of glass," he said firmly. "Sit up."

  I did as he commanded, tucking my chin to my chest to gaze down at his hand as he placed the ungloved one under my shirt and over my womb. Magic danced over my skin, heat traveling from his palm to my guts and coiling there. He frowned in concentration.

  "I can't sense anything wrong with you," he said, withdrawing his hand. His mismatched eyes met mine. "I can't do anything fancy, but I can do a little healing magic. Field stuff. Enough to sense when something major is out of whack. I would know if you were bleeding internally, or if something was broken."

  He gave me a wry smile. "I know it's not much, but I don't feel any…disharmony in there."

  I let out a strangled sigh.

  "Does anything hurt? Any cramping or anything?"

  I shook my head. "No. I feel…fine. Just stupidly fucking scared. I didn't even think of it at first. Then it just hit me."

  He patted my back again. “If there’s baby shifters in there, they probably heal faster than you do.”

  He was right, of course. Shifter babies were really hardy. You know, if Gryphon genetics didn’t kill them before they developed.

  I stood. "Sorry for unloading all that baggage on you that way. I won't blame you if you have the urge to run for the hills."

  He stared up at me. "The fae is right. It's obvious that blond color doesn't come from a bottle or a spell."

  I narrowed my eyes at him and held out a hand to help him up.

  "You should blame me, if I was that much of a dumbass," he muttered. "Run for the hills because the woman I love is pregnant? For the love of fuck. I might be an asshole, but I'm not that kind of asshole."

  I snorted a laugh. "What kind of asshole are you then?"

  He nudged my shoulder with his. "The kind who doesn't even care whose kid it is, because fuck, by all rights, I shouldn't have even lived long enough to see kids grow up. But now I just might."

  I wrapped an arm around his shoulders as we shoved under some trees and followed an animal path into the forest. "Don't make me cry again, asshole," I said in a flat voice.

  He stopped and pulled me into a real hug, wrapping his burly arms around my middle and pressing his forehead to my shoulder. "Gods, I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to go home with you and the moron crew."

  I looped my arms around him and rested my cheek on the top of his head. "Aww…see, and you said stupidity wasn't catching. Looks like even all-powerful mages can be wrong."

  We just stood
there for a while, breathing. Glad to be alive.

  Finally, Halstad shivered and pulled away. "Let's find some damned dry wood and a place to make camp. I'm fucking freezing and every inch of me is pruned."

  I smirked at him in the dark. "Every inch?"

  He shook his head and moved off, stooping to root around for dry branches and kindling, a softly glowing orb of mage light bobbing along by his feet. "I wouldn't be surprised, at this point. If I never see another body of water again, it will be too soon."

  I chuckled and joined him in hunting and gathering. We lucked out and found some ripe avocado and the extra-sweet little bananas we’d eaten back on the siren’s island. As we headed inland, Halstad stopped to do some sort of divining rod thing with a forked piece of wood. It led us to a small spring-fed stream that flowed across the island toward the ocean. We followed the fresh water back to the edge of the beach and made a fire on the sand, where we could shelter under the vegetation, but not cause a forest fire.

  We both stripped down with the roaring fire at our backs and washed off the saltwater and grime in the cold stream. With my belly full of sweet, sticky fruit, my skin baked by the fire, and nearly dry finally, I gazed up at the amazing field of stars appearing above us. "How long do you think it will be before they come back for us?"

  Halstad poked the fire with a stick and held out his blue-scarred hands to the flames. "I don't know for sure. Maybe in the morning? Hopefully they're resting, not tiring their damned fool selves out looking for us and thinking we're dead."

  I stared into the flames and leaned sideways, my head falling against the mage's shoulder. "They'll worry. It's what we all do. But they'll probably come to the conclusion that we're together. And they know you'll protect me, since I'm such a helpless little flower and all."

  He scoffed. "More like they know both of us are too stubborn to die of a little thing like surprise skydiving, drowning, or shark attacks."