Page 33 of Salt and Knot

I take a deep breath. “Like a fish? A merman?”

There’s a short silence.

“Tentacles,” he says simply.

All my certainty about making Dylan bond me melts, and I gather it up like carrying water. It seeps through my fingers just as I think I’ve got it. Tentacles. This makes perfect sense.

“I have a half-shifted form, with myself on the top half, and the bottom half…”

“Of an octopus.” I finish for him. A sea monster.

I thought Dylan knew the creature that took my body like it owned me, and gave me endless pleasure in return. But I didn’t make the obvious connection.

He gives a tiny shake of his head. “A kraken.”

Dylan is the monster.

Chapter 16

Dylan

I tighten my grip on Isla as fear crashes through me. She’s going to reject me. But I could see the realisation in her, caused by my lust-drunk ramblings, and suddenly keeping who I am from her was too much to bear.

And when she tries to leave, will I let her?

I’m not at all certain.

“You’re the creature that…” She swallows, then panics, pushing herself away, and our locked bodies scream at the attempt, my knot holding her onto me.

“Stop, you’ll hurt yourself,” I command, and she sobs. “Stop.”

I brace my arms around her as she fights. I assaulted her. Claimed her physically based on instinct alone. No questions.

Scent. Fuck. Take.

And now I’m keeping her knotted though she wants to get away. She’s gone from relaxed and pliable in my arms to rock. I can’t let her break.

“The kraken is my fully shifted form.”

“It wasn’t you?” Reluctantly, she looks up at me. Suspicious.

I’m still inside her, and I’m clinging onto that connection, but it’s physical. The sense of being totally in accord has been ripped away.

And it’s my fault.

“He’s…” I struggle to articulate the difference between me and my kraken half. “It’s more like being a conjoined twin. He has his own set of needs and desires, but we’re also the same. His own thoughts, but we’re linked. He’s a monster. But your monster. He’d never hurt you.”

“He tried to drag me under!” Her voice goes high with distress. But the combination of my arms and my involuntary knot mean she can’t move.

“He’s not as into informed consent as I am. He wanted to bite you,” I admit.

“Yes, I got the vibe that he was going to drown and eat me. I didn’t want to be kraken-lunch, Dylan,” she snips, eyes blazing.

I grip her tighter in frustration. “A mating bite.”

Her expression changes, softening to confusion.

“He’d have claimed you as his mate—my mate—right there and then. And as soon as you’d been bitten, you’d have been able to breathe underwater.”