Kaia nodded. “Habitat four.” The shine of her hair caught his eye, had his hand rising to run down it before his conscious mind could overrule his need.
Kaia stilled for a moment but didn’t reprimand him for the contact. The silken feel of her hair lingered on his fingertips as the scent of her infused his every breath.
She took him toward the left exit out of this habitat and onto a wide connecting bridge that was transparent on all sides and surrounded by water. He couldn’t help craning his head, trying to see everything at once.
Sleek and fast and mysterious creatures unlike any he’d ever before seen swam beyond, some only suggestions of a shape in the black, others huge behemoths who sailed above the bridge like majestic ocean liners. Below his feet, streamers of tiny bioluminescent fish passed in a silver river.
“What’s that?” He was pointing to a creature on the seabed that glowed a haunting blue when he caught a sense of movement out of the corner of his eye and—
“Damn it, Oleanna!” A large octopus had whooshed over at manic speed to slam onto the glass, causing him to fucking jump.
Kaia’s startled laugh was a caress. “How did you know it’s her?”
“She’s the only woman who’s ever propositioned me by whispering I have tentacles across the room.” Scowling at the octopus when she peeled away her suckers to slide into the water, he continued on with Kaia.
“As an octopus, she actually has arms, not tentacles,” Kaia told him.
“Yeah, somehow I can’t see Oleanna giving up tentacles for something as prosaic as arms,” Bowen muttered.
Laughing, Kaia said, “No, definitely not.”
They had to cross another habitat to get to habitat four, and from what he saw, it had the quiet feel of mostly living quarters. Going over the second bridge was no less fascinating than the first—even if a certain octopus did insist on swimming alongside them, delicately waving a tentacle just as they were about to head out of view.
Bo had been expecting a lap pool for those sea changelings who wanted to get exercise but didn’t want to go out into the ocean. What he got was a massive pool on an unexpected lower level of this habitat. Roughly circular—though the edges were uneven—it hugged the seaward wall. Not only that, it wasn’t the blue of an ordinary pool. No, this water was the greenish-blue hue of the ocean under sunlight, complete with seaweeds waving gently below, tiny fish darting through the clarity in silvery flashes, and what might’ve been coral in the far corner.
“Don’t damage the coral.” Kaia’s soft voice sang with an open love for the water. “We mostly don’t go in that corner so it can grow without being hurt.”
Amazed by the beauty of this piece of ocean inside the habitat walls, Bo crouched down to dip his fingers in the cool but not icy liquid. “Why do you have this when you can swim outside?”
“Not everyone has long periods to head off into the black. This pool allows for short dips when clanmates have a half hour in the day.” She raised her cover-up off over her head in such a quick movement that Bo sucked in a breath, half expecting smooth, naked flesh underneath. But she was wearing a simple autumn-brown swimsuit that hugged her body with a lover’s possessiveness.
Throwing the cover-up on a nearby recliner, she dived into the water, a wild and enigmatic creature whose long hair danced in the air for a fraction of time before she disappeared under the rippling surface and came back up to sleek the water over her head. “Don’t waste time.” An imperious order. “I have to get back to supervise the dinner prep.”
That got Bo moving. He didn’t want to waste a single moment he had with this complicated, intriguing, astonishing woman. It took him only seconds to toe off his trainers and pull off his shirt.
Dex had insisted on issuing him a pair of goggles.
Not wanting to miss out on what might lie beneath the surface of the pool, Bowen took a minute to open the small case he’d slipped into his pocket and—using the mirror on the back of the lid—slipped the protective lenses over his eyes. Larger than ordinary contacts and reusable, they’d give him clear vision even in salt water.
Setting aside the case, he walked to the edge of the pool and dived in.
The water was an exhilarating shock to his system. It told him he was alive, that his heart was beating, his lungs pumping. Breaking the surface after his dive, he saw Kaia waiting for him, brown eyes unreadable and droplets running down her neck and into the soft valley between her breasts.
He wanted to touch her, wanted to taste her. When she came toward him, his heart turned to thunder. He was just beginning to reach for her when she jumped up without warning and pushed him under the water.
As he came up spluttering, the first thing he heard was the sound of her laughter. She sounded as young as he suddenly felt. He grinned and took off after her. She swam like a fish, which was unsurprising. What was surprising was her incredible playfulness, as if the touch of salt water had awakened a hidden part of her nature.
She’d disappear beneath the water and then he’d feel a grip on his ankle taking him down or she’d taunt him by staying mere inches out of reach, pure delight in her expression. He let her tug him under, just so he could hear her laugh when they both came up for air.
And though he was far slower than her in the water, he’d been born with an acute understanding of strategy. He managed to trap her against a corner at one point, but instead of pushing her under, he stole a kiss that made her gasp. Not giving her time to think about it and maybe talk herself out of her instinctive response, he lifted her up—thank God for the metal bugs—and threw her toward another part of the pool. She gave a little scream as she went under, was grinning when she came back up.
Swimming over, she said, “Do that again.”
So he did and she arced through the air in a twisting dive that should’ve been impossible. This time when she came up, she said, “You’re fun to play with.” Unhidden joy, no edginess, no distance.
“Your eyes,” he whispered, realizing her irises weren’t brown any longer but a vivid black that was nothing human.
Tiny droplets of water hung off her eyelashes. “Do you see me?”
“Yes,” he said, feeling sucker-punched by the gift she’d given him. “I see all of you.” The wild and the woman, the creature of the deep and the cook who fashioned magic with her hands.
“Here, take my hand.” A smile that held so much joy. “I’ll show you the bottom. If you start to lose your breath, just let go and swim back up.”
At that instant, Bowen would’ve followed her anywhere.
Closing his hand around her own, he took a deep breath and they dived under the water. Tiny colorful fish swam past their bodies, seaweed fronds waved, the world cocooned in a living silence.
He wondered if this was what it was like for Kaia and her people when they went into the ocean. She tugged him. Kicking his feet, he went. The bottom of the pool—of the habitat itself—was glass, or whatever engineered material it was that they’d used to build. Thanks to the lights that speared softly downward from the edges of the pool, he could see straight through to the sand of the seabed, while in front of him, the lights of the habitat lit up the ocean.
Schools of fish swam by on the other side, their slight bioluminescence when they danced out of the light telling him they were creatures of the black. Something else went by and it crackled as if it burned with electricity. The mysteries here would never fully be known, he thought. Because, as Kaia had said, the deep was never static.
He could’ve stayed below for hours, but his lungs protested and so, reluctantly releasing Kaia’s hand, he swam his way back up to the air he needed for life. But even as he left, he kept his eyes open; he saw her watching the fish on the other side while her hair floated behind her, and he saw the slits open in her neck.
Erupting to the golden warmth of “daylight,” he gulped in a breath and waited for Kaia to join him. When she did, he saw that the slits had disappeared as if they’d never existed. “You had gills.” Wonder had him reaching his fingers to the smooth line of her neck.
Kaia allowed the touch but gave him a watchful look. “I’ve been told humans find that disturbing.”
“If I could have gills, I would.” He’d be able to swim with her in the deep, would be able to glimpse more of its mysteries. “How do you do it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot of us in BlackSea just can.”
“Is it what the wolves and cats call a semi-shift?” Bowen had witnessed the predatory changelings release their claws, their eyes going inhuman while the rest of them stayed unchanged.
But Kaia shook her head. “No. Carlotta can do it even though she’s an air breather. Maybe Atalina should study that next.” Dancing eyes. “Gills on aqua-mammals: a treatise.”
She splashed water at him without warning.
Any defenses he might’ve had in ruins, he splashed back.
They were having the water fight to end all water fights when the doors to the pool opened.
“Kaia’s here!” cried more than one voice before at least five teenagers cannonballed into the water, causing the pool to erupt into smashing waves. What happened next was so extraordinary that Bo hauled himself to the side so he could just watch.
Chapter 28
I miss them and it hurts my heart.
—Kaia to Bebe (2068)
IT SEEMED TO be a game, with Kaia playing the prey and the teens attempting to catch her. Except that she was so fast and so clever that they stood no chance. Even when they got smart and attempted to surround her by working as a group, she was gone moments before they arrived.
Shouts bounced off the walls, followed by groans and laughter.
There was no such cheerful noise at Alliance HQ. None of his knights had kids—but he decided at that instant that when they did, those children would have a place at the HQ. He’d build a nursery inside the HQ, make it a place of family. They’d be a clan, a pack.
When Kaia came up next to him at last, telling the children to chase each other instead, her chest was heaving—hell, her breasts were gorgeous—and her cheeks flushed with color. “They never catch me.” Pure adorable smugness.