Light of Kaska

by Michelle O'Leary

  “How do I get there?” he asked, hearing the hoarseness in his voice but not understanding why it hurt to look at her.

  “Yes,” Myelle mused at his side as if she hadn’t heard him, still intent on his face. “She always did have a way with wild animals.”

  He turned on her, ready to explode into fury, but she held up a placating hand and almost smiled.

  “Funny, she never used to be comfortable with predators,” she said dryly. “I’ll show you the way to the grotto. But I wonder…” she let her voice trail off, studying him. “Do you even know why?”

  “Why what?” he snarled, still on the verge of violence, confusion and anger tangling inside him.

  “Why you need to see her so badly,” she answered with humor accumulating around her mouth again.

  He stared at her, baffled. The answer was no. He had no idea why Keza was so irresistible to him. He had never known.

  She shook her head and resumed walking, not waiting for him. Speaking over her shoulder without looking at him, she said, “There’s nothing magical about her gift with animals. When she was small, I thought it was magic the way they would approach her and follow her as if they were tame. It took me a while to understand, but when I did it was easy to see. Of course, there is her gentleness and patient nature. But the key, the thing that makes them follow her and lie down for her as if they’ve fallen in love is her ability to love them as they are. She opens herself to them like a gift without asking them for anything, even mercy.” The woman shot him a look that was clearly a warning. “Which is why she’s not so good with predators. She can be hurt too easily.”

  Stryker felt the impact of her words, understood her warning, but shook his head anyway. “You’re wrong,” he rasped, not sure which part he was negating. He was still falling inside and it was distracting as hell. Keza had brought him here to be her mate? It seemed impossible, though he had very clear, stunning memories of their time together. She had let him touch her, had responded so sweetly that he was starting to think it had been a dream, but he’d felt no permanence in it. He was sure the pleasure had been so crippling because it was so fleeting, a moment in time that wouldn’t come again.

  But she’d brought him here. To create a child with him. He had to concentrate hard not to trip and tumble as Myelle led him down a set of long, winding stairs.

  Myelle waited until they were at the bottom of the stone stairs to turn on him again, placing her slim, determined form in the archway to what he knew had to be the grotto. The dim, flickering light was the same as the holo and the air was heavy with moisture and the hint of brine.

  “If I allow you to stay, you’ll have a year to prove your worth, to prove that you can conceive a child with someone. Universal Law is very strict—if you do not fulfill the requirements for candidacy within that year, you’ll be remanded back to the Collectors. Also, if you do not adhere to Kaskan laws we will expel you. Do you understand?”

  He looked into those flinty amber eyes and gritted his teeth. Oh, yeah, he recognized a jail warden when he saw one. “Screw my brains out and toe the line. Got it,” he snarled without any effort to hide his rebellion.

  She snorted, looking him up and down, hands back on hips. “What the hell does she see in you?”

  “Move or I’ll go through you,” he said with deadly calm, hands fisting and relaxing in slow rhythm.

  Myelle’s eyebrows lifted, sour humor lurking in the lines of her face. “Must be your charming personality,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ll have clothes ready for you when you come back up.” She stepped around him with the calm arrogance of command and glided back up the stairs.

  Chapter 10

  Stryker didn’t watch Myelle go. He stepped through the archway and a short, curved stone tunnel that opened onto the rocky shelf he’d seen in the holo of Keza. It was wide and arched along the large cavern in a half circle, waves lapping at its edge. The cavern was open on one end, but in the distance a ridge of jutting rock prevented the white-capped waves from smashing through to the enclosed space. The water was still restless and edgy, but all the violence had been filtered out of it before it entered the grotto. The wind was also muted, twisting through the grotto in fretful bursts of ocean-flavored air.

  Seeing those white-capped behemoths rolling toward him and flinging themselves with reckless abandon on the rocks, Stryker understood now the sound he’d heard in the small room where he’d awakened. The rhythmic thunder had been the ocean.

  Keza stood next to the restless water, watching him with wary eyes. The selkie was gone.

  Stryker moved toward her, feeling the unfamiliar wet stone surface beneath his bare feet with a distant sense of wonder. He’d never seen an ocean before. He hadn’t realized you could taste it in the air and on your lips, like tears. But what concerned him most was that damned wetsuit. It was excruciatingly provocative, showing every curve and line while covering every bit of her skin. The way the blue fabric molded to the black was an unbearable enticement, a taunt he almost couldn’t withstand. He had to stop meters away and look past her at the open ocean just to breathe, just to speak.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked through clenched teeth. The thunder of the waves echoed in the cavern, but she heard him.

  “They were hurting you,” she said, her voice faint with distance and drowning in thunder. “I finally understood what you meant about the bands, about what they did to you. It was worse than the chains and I couldn’t stand it.”

  Pain and pleasure collided deep inside him at her admission, and he reacted to both like a scalded cat. “How is this different, Keza? Maybe you should stick the chains back on,” he said as harshly as he could and saw her flinch in his peripheral vision. A low quiver of satisfaction and dismay ran over his skin and he stared hard at the water as if it was to blame.

  “I didn’t give you a choice and for that I’m sorry,” she responded after a moment, her voice tight and careful. “But I couldn’t let them take you and I couldn’t think of anything else. If it wasn’t for Bella and the twins, I wouldn’t have been able to do even this much. But they helped me and the band is off. Didn’t you tell me anything would be better than being banded?”

  Stryker risked a quick look at her but had to look away an instant later because she was watching him with that intent, focused expression that drove him wild. He tensed to contain a shudder of need. “Bella helped you? Do the Collectors know that?”

  “No, no, she’s fine. They don’t know about her involvement. And the Maltbys are okay, too—my mother vouched for them, so they were released. At this point I’m the only one in serious trouble.”

  Stryker’s eyes snapped back to her involuntarily, a spike of alarm racing through his nerve endings. “Trouble?” he rasped.

  She was no longer looking at him, her head bent to watch her fingers turn a pair of goggles over and over. She gave a delicate shrug. “The Collectors don’t like it when somebody steals one of their prisoners out from under them. They’re trying to bring action against me, saying I didn’t have a claim on you before they banded you. Mom doesn’t think they’ve got much of a case, since they found us in bed together.”

  She flashed him a look from beneath her lashes and Stryker felt the effects of that glance burn through his insides like wildfire. Reminding him that he’d been over her and inside her and had touched every part of her was not the safest course of action she could have taken. He clenched his fists and ground his teeth, striving for control.

  “I wanted to be there. When you woke up, I mean. But Mom told me that she needed to speak with you alone.”

  “And you always do what your mama tells you?” he gritted through his teeth, unaccountably angry at her passivity.

  Her head came up but she didn’t look at him, turning instead to face the water. He watched her profile, just as thrown by the grim certainty on her face as he had been by her wetsuit. Her hands clenched at her sides, the thin, flexible goggles crushed in one small fist.
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  “She was acting in her capacity as Head of our House. When she is the Marish Mater, I always do what she tells me to do. Did she explain everything to you?” Her voice was tight again.

  He sensed anger in her and it whetted his appetite for a confrontation. He wanted—needed—to fight with her, not only to release his own rage at his circumstances, but also to ward off his ever-increasing desire to strip her naked and cover her with his body. It had been easier to resist when he hadn’t known what it would be like to be inside her.

  “Oh, yeah,” he drawled. “She was real thorough. I gotta say, stud service sounds like a sweet deal, but I think I’ll pass. You people think you can keep me here, but there’s a way off any rock. Unless you chain me up, all I gotta do is walk out your front door.”

  “Than go!” she cried, turning to face him. He was stunned to see no trace of anger in her strained features, in the glossy reflection of her eyes. She was dead in earnest. “I was trying to free you, not trap you. If this place is just another cage, than go. Just—” She looked away, blinking rapidly, then fumbled with her goggles a moment before settling them in place on her head and over her eyes. “Just don’t get caught,” she finished in an unsteady voice so soft that he shouldn’t have heard her. But he did hear because he’d moved without being aware of it, lurching toward her in obscure alarm, as if she was in need of rescue. Or maybe he was the one in need.

  She didn’t see him though. She’d already turned toward the water, slim body moving with the confident grace of long practice as she took a step, bent her knees, and launched out over the water. She cut into the waves so cleanly that the restless water scarcely seemed to notice her intrusion.

  Stryker skidded to the edge of the ledge, arms wind-milling for balance and heart thumping a near frantic rhythm in his chest while he searched the water. She’d had a wetsuit on and was obviously a practiced swimmer, but logic was overridden by an irrational certainty that she was slipping away from him, going beyond his reach. He couldn’t dive in after her—he didn’t know how to swim. The grim water refused to show him its depths, its reflected opacity a threatening glower while he searched the surface for Keza’s return. She did not appear.

  Just when he was about to fling himself in the water after her in spite of his lack of experience, the sound of running feet distracted him. He glanced over to see a young boy burst through an archway on the opposite side of the ledge from where he’d entered. The boy’s thin face was filled with anticipation and brightened to glee when he saw Stryker.

  “Keza went back in?” the boy asked with breathless delight, sliding to a stop just inside the arch.

  “Yeah, but she hasn’t come up—”

  The boy whooped, spinning with youthful agility back towards the archway. “I knew it!” he crowed, sprinting away into what sounded like another tunnel. “She’s in, she went back in…” His words faded, but Stryker could still hear his high voice calling clarion off the rock.

  Stryker stood undecided, searching the water again. The kid didn’t seem to be concerned, but then he was just a kid. Stryker only had a moment to worry about it when the sound of feet came again, multiplied by what sounded like a thousand. This wasn’t quite the case, but the rambunctious mass of children was still overwhelming to the senses, making Stryker recoil a step before he could stop himself. They boiled into the grotto, shrieking and laughing like wild things, their bodies clothed only in swimwear. Sand speckled their sun-bronzed skin. The voice of reason strode in behind them, bellowing, “Don’t run! You will slip and fall and break open your heads!”

  They ignored the older girl completely, though several slowed to stare at him with wide eyes as they passed. None of them seemed interested in the water, moving with mass purpose toward the rear of the grotto. They seemed to melt right into the rock and Stryker realized that they’d disappeared into a passageway concealed by the angle at which he stood.

  The older girl made a disgusted noise as she approached him, her eyes on the last of the little bodies darting out of view. On her hip she balanced a child just out of infancy, a girl with wide silvery-blue eyes and a tangle of golden hair. The older girl had darker hair, but it was just as tangled as the little one’s, curling in generous disarray to her sun-gold shoulders. Stryker hazarded her age to be somewhere around fifteen, though the bold amusement in her light brown eyes when she looked at him suggested more maturity.

  “Hi, you must be Chase,” she said when she drew near. “Welcome to the Marish madness.” She gestured after the horde of children and rolled her eyes. “I’m Liss, Keza’s sister.”

  Ignoring the introduction, Stryker pointed at the water. “Keza hasn’t come up for air.”

  “Oh, she’s fine,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Her suit filters oxygen from the water. The air tube is attached to her collar.”

  The little girl said something that sounded like, “Wannameemeesa,” in a high, plaintive voice and Liss patted her gently on her chubby thigh.

  “I know, baby. We’ll go see Auntie Keza in just a minute.” Liss returned her attention to Stryker, her eyes sliding down his form with a curl of her mouth. “Nice outfit, by the way. Really…enlightening.”

  He ignored that too. “What do you mean, you’ll see her in a minute?”

  “Come on,” she said, tilting her head toward the back of the grotto. “She’s swimming with the selkies. We can watch from the pit.”

  With a last frown at the blank water, Stryker followed the young woman. The passage was narrow and dark, leading to a sharp switchback and a flight of stairs. At the bottom sat a room like a flat-bottomed bowl. The front half was made of a clear material from the ledge above to beneath their feet. The children all pressed to the front, whispering excitedly to one another as they watched the scene beyond. Light filtered in from the water, the room itself unlit. One wall of the cavern had a large opening, unseen from the surface, almost like a lopsided archway through which sunlight shone in long bars and rippling streams. It made the underwater cavern brighter than its air counterpart, but the shapes moving through the water beyond the bars of light were still indistinct.

  “Hey, Liss, can we turn on the lights?” asked the boy who’d first pelted into the grotto.

  “Ask Keza,” the young woman said, moving forward to set the child down against the clear front.

  The boy grunted and shuffled over to one wall. Stryker couldn’t see what he was doing, but a moment later a soft ping sounded all around them. A breathless hush fell over the children, their little bodies straining forward as if they would dive into the water at any moment. Then a dark shape appeared, moving with effortless speed through the water until it was right up against the clear barrier. The selkie paused, placing what looked to Stryker like webbed hands against the glass. It stared in at the children, its expressive eyes and round muzzle giving the impression of a smile.

  With the creature’s appearance, light began to fill the basin of the cavern from some hidden source. The streams of sunlight continued to be the brightest spot in the underwater grotto like a spotlight on a stage, but now they could clearly see the rest of the cavern’s bowl.

  The children shrieked with delight, fighting with one another to place their hands against the barrier opposite the selkie’s, but Stryker’s attention was captured by the wonderland the light revealed. Some kind of green plant covered the floor of the cavern, waving sedately in the currents, but he barely noticed, his eyes following the curves and whorls of the fantastic, coral encrusted structures that rose from the greenery.

  “What is it?”

  Liss answered, “Selkie playground. First of its kind. Keza thought of it when she was young and several scientific groups jumped on the idea. They were dying to study Keza’s family group, because they’d never seen selkies return so often to one place or be so friendly with humans. They built this room, called it the observatory, and tried to build the playground to her specs, but they freaked the selkies out so bad that they disap
peared for months. Keza actually threw the whole bunch of scientists out and didn’t let them come back until her babies were happy again.” Liss snickered softly. “I suppose now that she’s back, they’ll want to set up shop again.”

  Stryker heard what she said and some part of him took it in, but the rest of him was focused on the blue and black figure that appeared to one side of the clear barrier. Keza didn’t look inside at the humans. She slid through the water like she’d been born in it, her movements sinuous and languid, bubbles streaming from her mouth and nose. But the selkies that darted around her made her look like a slow, graceless lump by comparison. She caught one along its back ridge as it passed and the creature pulled her through a twisting structure like a vine shaped into a warped tube. Keza let go of the animal and grabbed a handhold as she exited the structure, spinning in slow motion through the water to sit on top of it. Then she lifted her hands above her head and another selkie barreled toward her in a burst of speed, grabbing her wrists and taking off with her through the lacy structures. The other selkies immediately gave chase as if the first animal had taken their favorite toy.