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I caught a strong, echoing wave of his amusement on the connection between us. “Do you think krakens wear clothing?” he asked, and I had to bite back a grin.
“Are you okay?” Donna asked, coming up to give me a worried look.
“Yeah. So far.” I brought my hands up out of the shackles to push my hair back, and then stood, as Donna helped shuffle the chair away. “I mean, it’s weird, don’t get me wrong,” I said with a shrug, knowing Cepharius could hear me. “But it’s not...bad?”
I inspected my newly freed wrists and saw where one of his suckers had given me a hickey over my half-a-heart tattoo—and suddenly I felt him rush up.
“Did I injure you?”
His concern slammed into me like a physical thing, and I stumbled beneath its force. Marcus caught me fast and hard around the waist before I could fall into the wall, at the same time as I saw two tentacles lash out of the water behind him, either to keep me from falling over—or to drag Marcus in.
“I’m fine!” I told all interested parties, aloud and with my mind, firmly stepping away from the red zone.
Marcus and Donna hadn’t seen Cepharius’s tentacles intrude, but I sure as hell had.
“What was that?” I thought as loudly as I could in Cepharius’s direction.
“Nothing, apparently,” he responded, sounding slightly wounded. “But the marks on your wrist?—”
I inhaled and exhaled, trying to calm the both of us down. “You just broke some capillaries is all. And the stronger line is a marking I chose—” I started, and then decided to not excavate everything in front of him if I could help it. “It’s not a big deal. My skin is softer than yours,” I finished quietly inside my mind.
“I had noticed,” he told me just as quietly back.
I stared into the water and swallowed.
“Earth to Elle,” Donna said, snapping fingers in front of my face, before giving Marcus a worried look. “You’re going to need to be on your A-game down there, missy. You can’t fade off at weird times. Just because you’ve got a bodyguard doesn’t mean the water’s safe.”
Which brought up a pertinent point. I stared out at Cepharius. “Just what will you be guarding me from?”
He considered this deeply—and I would’ve sworn I felt the rumble of his thoughts between us, like a purring lion.
“Knowing humans?” he eventually offered. “Most likely yourself.”
chapter 13
ELLE
After that, there was just the matter of getting into the tactimetal suit. I’d read the manual on it when I was on the submersible; it would keep me at ALRI’s precise pressure, oxygen/helium atmosphere combination, while simultaneously monitoring my metabolism. It was a two-layer procedure, first the drysuit underneath, and then I needed to get into a protective metal shell, to guard me from the additional pressure outside.
I kicked off my pants readily, but when it came to pulling off my top, I paused. My swimsuit was a one piece, and there was no hiding that post-mastectomy I was flat as the proverbial board.
No one else but Grant had seen me—and look what it had done to him? But I changed my mind’s course quickly. English tea sets. Small white dogs, I thought, and internally groaned.
Maybe being bonded with a kraken was going to be like a really strange version of cognitive-behavioral therapy.
“You okay?” Donna asked.
“Yep!” I said with fake cheer, then got into the drysuit’s boots. I adjusted them around my feet and quickly wriggled myself into the rest of the thing, slipping off my scrub-top at the same time as I shrugged the shoulders up around me.
After that, stepping into the armored half was easy. It was like this suit had been made for me—and with Arcus Industrial’s money behind it, there was an actual chance it had been.
Marcus took his spot back in the crane-operating nest and started unlooping the umbilical cable I’d be dragging into the sea behind me. It held all the plumbing I needed to stay alive at depth: my air filtration system, my heating system, and the power for the cameras collecting footage on everything I saw. The suit was covered in them, and I had bright lights on either side of my helmet.
After putting it on, I felt like an Autobot.
“Are you finally ready to meet me?” Cepharius asked when I was finished. He sounded amused.
“I’m more worried about meeting the ocean, currently,” I muttered in my head as I went through the checks on my suit to make sure all of my connections were secure.
