by Plum Pascal
I thrust shallowly again, trying to pace myself. The warmth of her mouth, closed tight around me, has my vision flashing white. I’m still aware enough to notice the others.
Sorren has her bent over the bed, fucking her from behind while Leith thrusts up and into from below. It’s strange, exhilarating, and intensely erotic to be together, fucking her like this. This little thief we all love. I clamp down tight, tugging her hair as I thrust into her one more time before release hits me.
My release triggers hers. She’s getting sensitive to her powers these days, able to sense and siphon emotion as well as energy now. Her body quivers, her eyes glaze over with pleasure and she spasms once more in ecstasy before she’s through. The release spills over to Sorren and Leith as well, who roar with their own climax.
We slump in a boneless pile on the bed. The captain graciously gave us his quarters, as it was the only one with enough room for all four of us. His generosity may also have something to do with the priceless jewel-encrusted sword Kassidy gifted him—one that belonged to a fabled dragon.
We all bask in the moment until I’m the first to speak.
“Next time,” I pant. “I’m fucking her properly. Understood everyone?”
Kassidy grins wearily. “Understood.”
“Ah shut up, Nash,” Leith responds.
Sorren just grunts. He’s usually the first asleep.
“Now sleep, you brute,” Kassidy whispers. “There’s a week left of travel before we reach Delorood.”
EPILOGUE
Hook
I smile thinly at the ghostly shape of the moon on the horizon, glimmering white-gold like a galleon flung into the sky. The stars are a thousand crushed diamonds spread across midnight blue velvet. The night is warm, the wind high. We’ll make it early to Delorood at this rate.
I spend many a night imagining what it would be like to find that spot where sea meets the sky, to see if I could climb to the stars. It’s a fanciful notion, but I think the sky above is much like the sea: dangerous and cold, full of monsters. But a damn fine place to be, when all’s said and done.
I’m used to hearing a great many things when I voyage. The incessant, pleading cries of gulls as they scavenge. The lapping waves on the sides of the Jolly Roger. The creak of wood as the old girl settles herself after particularly violent tosses. The flap of a mainsail.
What I’m not used to hearing are loud, protracted female moans coming from my cabin. Particularly when I’m not the one drawing them out from some lucky lass. It’s been some time since that’s happened. Aye—a depressingly long time.
I’ve been too busy. The Guild has me running all around Fantasia more often than not, though I refuse to set a course for Neverland ever again. There are some things you can never return to, no matter the price.
My good hand strays down to my trousers and I discreetly adjust the bulge that’s growing there. Can’t help it—the lasses cries of pleasure are impossible to ignore.
Kassidy’s not mine, and I’m not fool enough to challenge her three werebear husbands for the privilege of bedding her. As if she’d even let me, if I somehow managed it.
Kassidy Aurelian is beautiful and a damn fine bedmate, if the sounds coming from within are any indication. But she’s an ally, not a conquest.
Not far off, my first mate, Sam, is also trying to block the sounds coming from the deck. I’ve only got a few surviving crew members after the Lost Boys got through with them, the little bastards. Not that the four I’ve got are strictly necessary. The Jolly Roger can fly in a pinch and sails itself well enough, if need be. A gift from a faerie for whom I did a favor.
“Quite... spirited, isn’t she, cap’n?” Sam says slowly, tiptoeing around the subject as gingerly as he can. That’s my Sam. Always the diplomat. Probably why he has two hands and I only have the one.
I glance down at the false hand. I’ve normally got a blade or a hook installed there, but I thought it would be more respectful to wear a fake appendage for Kassidy’s wedding.
“Aye, quite a loud fuck, she is, Sam.”
Sam colors prettily around the edges of his ears—it’s quite easy to embarrass the lad. It’s part of the reason I try to frazzle him so often. He’s only just now eighteen and has such light blonde hair, it looks almost white. He pulls his red cap down over his eyes and looks everywhere but at me. Sweet lad. If I can’t have a lass moaning for me like the one in the cabin, the least I can do is draw a blush or two from Sam.
“I’ve never...” he says, trails off, and then blushes again.
I grin. “I’ll give ye shore leave when we reach Delorood. Find yerself some pretty young thing in a bordello an’ show her a proper good time.”
Sam is positively ruddy now. This night isn’t so miserable after all.
“Think it’s true, what they say?” he asks.
“Aboot what?”
“The sirens.”
“What aboot the Sirens?”
“That they live around Delorood?”
“Aye, ‘tis true. Seen one in me day. Dove beneath the waves seconds after, boot they’re real. Dinnae expect to fuck one, though. Triton is a monster, an’ his children are monsters. Nary a single one of them sided with humans during the war. Sooner drown ye than look at ye. Stick to human women, Sam. I like ye, lad.”
“What about the other rumors?”
I shrug, pretending I don’t know what he’s going on about. To say the thing out loud makes it more frightening. I’m not a superstitious man. I don’t bar women from my ship or throw them overboard if the portents prove dire. What I do believe in, though, is fate, and that tempting it with whispers is a bad idea.
“Dinnae know what you’re talkin’ aboot, lad.”
Sam casts his gaze around, but for nothing but heaving sea. The water is black only feet down where the light doesn’t touch. It’s probably fanciful to imagine something moving below—my own fevered, sex-starved imagination taking over and playing tricks on me.
“The other rumors,” he insists. “The ones about the monsters. That the seas are getting more dangerous because Morningstar is back.”
“He’s nae back.”
Sam’s eyes are huge, almost as big as silver coins in his face. I want to pity the poor lad. He’s a good first mate, a good person, but he’s lousy at keeping a poker face. He’s scared and has been for weeks while we docked in the harbor, doing only short-term, local work while we awaited Kassidy’s arrival. Being on the open sea again almost has him pissing his pants.
“How do you know? He could be…”
“He’s not,” I cut him off firmly. “If Morningstar was back, there’d be reports, lad. He’s hard to miss—a winged giant, he is. Cannae exactly fold himself down into human shape, now, can he?”
Sam is silent for a few seconds, and I’m confident the matter’s settled.
“The water, Cap’n. Look!”
At first, I ignore him. He’s more prone to flights of fancy than even I am, which is a feat. Born anywhere but in Neverland, and I’d be a poet or a bard. Perhaps a playwright. But not in Neverland. Nothing so gentle for a boy who grew up in Neverland.
But when I finally do look, I see what he means.
White foam begins to churn around a point around fifty miles off to the east of us, the waves tossing even more violently. The wind reaches a shrill pitch, whipping the main sail so hard, it threatens to tear. There is definitely a shape stirring in the inky darkness below, a shape even more solid and midnight-black than the water itself.
Fuck.
I didn’t want to believe the rumors were true—that Triton is allowing the monsters free reign to terrorize merchant vessels. He truly does mean to isolate Delorood. Which means the Jolly Roger has gone from safe harbor to a target. I have to get the happy foursome and my men off this ship.
“Below!” I bellow at Sam. “Get Harlen, Vince, an’ Sham oot of bed, an’ get their cargo sealed in one o’ them fancy capsules. I’ll get the passengers!”
&nbs
p; Sam is frozen in shock, clearly unsure of what to do now that his worst nightmares are coming to fruition. I give him a shove. He staggers and almost falls to his knees, then recovers himself, scrambling down the stairs and calling for his mates.
I stalk over to my cabin and rap on the door only once to give them a chance at privacy before I yank the door open.
They’re all huddled in my bed. The room reeks of male musk and the potent scent of female pleasure. If I survive this, I’m going to see to it I make a woman smell like that one more time before I die.
Well, death might be waiting around the corner.
“Up!” I yell. “We’re abandonin’ ship!”
“W-what?” Kassidy stammers. “Why?”
“Sea monster rising from the depths, lass. Trust me, ye dinnae want to be here when it surfaces.”
She goes pale as death but doesn’t argue with me further. The bunch are surprisingly speedy in a crisis. It’s a trait I value highly, giving them some added credit in my mental ledger.
They’re up and ready to board in only half a minute, while Sam and the others have piled into their lifeboat and I lower them down to sea. Four to a boat, is the general rule. None of them have done the math yet. That’s all right. I’d rather Sam believe I’m still coming with him, but the truth is a captain never leaves his ship.
Once Kassidy and her men are loaded into the second boat, I lower them down with the pulley system that allows the boat to gently touch the roiling waters below. The one with the darkest hair grips the oar and pushes away from the Jolly Roger.
“Cap’n Hook?” Sam calls out as his boat begins to shift away from the ship. “Are you goin’ to jump?”
I see the shock and betrayal play out on his face an instant after I shake my head. “Aim for the shores of Bridgeport, Sam!”
“Hook!” Kassidy yells at the same time as she stands up in the small boat and screams at me. “What the fuck are you doing!”
The small boat jars back and forth with the heaving waves, and Kassidy is forced back down, pulled into one of her bears’ laps, I know not which one. I don’t have time to watch both boats float away. I need to lead this sea creature away from them.
Every rune etched into the wheel flares to brilliant life as I steer the Jolly Roger up and out of the waves. I’ll be faster unencumbered by the water. The wind whips my hair into my face as I sing a sea ditty and try to quell the surge of fear plaguing me. The truth is, I live on that fear—it’s what drives me, what wakes me each morning. I’m grinning like a lunatic, heart throwing itself at my ribs like a prisoner against the bars of a cage.
The thing finally breaks the surface. A hundred tentacles rise above the waves, a massive oblong squid’s head emerging from the deep. It fixes glowing red eyes on my position as I turn the ship to face it. It stays hovering in place even when I release the wheel and stride over to the nearest long nine.
With more calm than I feel, I draw a sleeve of matches from the pocket of my velvet frock coat and strike one. I light the fuse. Take aim.
“I’m Hook,” I yell out at the creature as it releases an air-shaking bellow. “An’ now I’m gonna call ye one-eye, ugly.”
The cannon bucks.
A monster screams.
A tentacle comes hurtling down and bats the Jolly Roger into the sea.
The Happily Never After Series
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ONE
ARIA
The kraken’s tentacles scythe the inky water and grip Bastion around the middle, sending him sailing a thousand feet downward, spiraling out of sight into the fathomless oblivion of the deep. The water foams, obscuring everything in my field of vision for a distressingly long moment, and the action displaces the sea enough, I can’t get nearer, no matter how hard I pump my tail.
“Bastion!”
The cry falls uselessly from my lips, bubbles into the blackness to be heard by almost no one.
This can’t be the end! Not the end of my dearest friend in all the world! Especially when he was protecting me…
The deep bellow of the behemoth vibrates every molecule of water for miles around. I’ll be shocked if the humans above can’t hear it.
Every muscle in my body burns with the effort to keep propelling myself downward, after Bastion. But there are just too many of them—too many krakens. Hopefully Aunt Opeia’s spells won’t lead us astray…
The krakens keep emerging in droves from the leagues-deep Rheaic Trench. They come filing out of the narrow gorge in numbers I’ve never seen before.
The rumors have to be true, then. My father must have lifted the edict that kept the grotesquerie contained, allowing them to wander free in an effort to isolate the land-dwelling kingdoms above.
The tentacle of a kraken lashes down toward me—each sucker bears down on my position, as large as boulders, as deadly to the touch as a manta’s sting. I’m saved from being knocked into the abyss by a muscled arm that brackets my waist and paddles upward with surprising strength. I glance down to find the teal luster of my aunt’s shimmering skin. I needn’t have looked, though; I’ve been counting on the strength of these arms for many, many years—since my banishment from Aspamia when I was a mere girl.
“Foolish child,” Aunt Opeia scolds me. “You know better! Never rush in!”
Yes, of course, I know better. I’ve been navigating the frigid depths for over fifteen years. Stealth and caution are the only things that keep one alive when the grotesquerie roam the black waters. But this is Bastion we’re talking about. My steadfast friend. The only companion who followed me from the Aspamian reef to this remote wasteland. If he dies, I’ll never forgive myself.
Opeia’s face softens just a mite as she takes in my panicked expression. “Bastion’s strong. He’ll emerge, you’ll see.”
But that brief exchange is all we have time for. Because the kraken has spied us again. It’s in motion, and we only escape its crushing weight and the deadly poison of its suckers by a margin of inches. The one advantage we have over the beast is speed. Krakens are fifty feet long, on average, and at least five hundred pounds. It makes their movements clumsy, and their reaction time dismal. We’d be swimming circles around this one—an unusually large specimen that’s closer to sixty feet long—if we hadn’t been at this for hours already.
I’m more concerned about the flocks of anglerfish swarming up toward us. The bluntnose, frilled, and goblin sharks move as quickly as any barracuda, as quick as or quicker than a merperson. The barreleye and the monkfish are terrifying and they can swim even faster after they’ve had a taste of merflesh, which they have. Three of Opeia’s finest warriors have already lost their lives to stop the grotesquerie.
It wasn’t enough.
In my periphery, I can see one of the kraken—a small one, probably an adolescent, given how stubby the tentacles are—break away from the horde and begin swimming for the surface. The glimmer of light above is like the pinprick of a distant star, wavering and far beyond my reach. If I’m spotted outside the trenches, news will get back to my father. And there will be a reckoning for it.
But I can’t risk letting the kraken reach the shore. Even the smallest of kraken are able to destroy port towns and lay waste to human fleets. And that’s exactly what my father wants—destruction and devastation. I’ve committed the last decade and a half to defying my father’s will.
“I’m taking the small one,” I say to Opeia, wriggling free of her arms as we come to a spinning stop yards away from the enormous beast before us. “It can’t be allowed to reach Delorood. Tell Bastion to come after me if he...”
I trail off, refusing to conclude the thought.
Bastion will live!
He has to. I can’t live without my unwavering and fiercely protective friend.
There’s a flinching around Opeia’s eyes. She
knows what I’m risking by going to the surface. She knows I’ll be in danger—and it’s not retribution from the krakens she’s worried about. The worst thing I can fear from the grotesquerie is death. At my father’s hands, however, I’ll face imprisonment and torture, at the very least. Perhaps he’ll set his flesh-eaters on me slowly, allowing them to devour me from the tail up. It’s one of the more gruesome punishments I’ve seen—the victim left to propel themselves away from the devouring teeth of some hideous creature with only their human-like arms until they inevitably die either of exhaustion or their eaten to death.
Or my father, Triton, could have me raped, the way he’d done with the captured princess from the glacial southern waters, Princess Avicia. The princess was chained and used by any male who cared to, until her belly grew great with child. Then Triton killed the babe before her eyes, causing her eventual decline into madness.
Yes, my father is a monster.
And Bastion, Opeia and I are risking a lot for the humans who’ve traditionally hunted us. Sold us as curious sideshow attractions. Mounted our stuffed bodies on the prows of their ships like macabre war trophies. In other circumstances, Opeia would tell me not to go.
But we don’t have a choice. The grotesquerie can’t be allowed to prevail, they can’t be allowed to populate the waters any more than they already have. We must stop them here and now.
I won’t give my father his way.
Opeia must be thinking along the same lines, because she inclines her head just a fraction in that way that means she’s considering something. I know she loves me, in her way. Me, her brother’s eldest child, her first niece. Opeia was exiled for having an opinion that differed from the King’s, just as I had been.
