Chapter 35 The rocks´s strenght

Chapter 35 The rocks´s strenght
Even if I used my arms, I’d be more of a liability than help. Kam maneuvered to keep the giant fangs from grabbing him as they did me, but Rinus’s other teeth were tearing him apart. He was losing.

My mate. I hated him. I didn’t trust him, but he’d been everything to me for thousands of years. He protected me. He did whatever it took for me. And while that didn’t excuse the last twenty-two years, I couldn’t forget all of that either. I couldn’t forget that he only hurt me so badly because I loved him so much.

I looked up at the rock wall beside me. I had to do something.

I never asked exactly where we were. I knew it was northern California. The way the rocks jutted out of the wall was very distinctive. Worn divots were carved in where tentacles repeatedly used the rock to climb. It may have been twenty years ago, but old creatures like this didn’t feel twenty years at all. When I’d brought Kaylen for his ceremony, old Loison was in the area. Was he still here?

Time to bring in another fighter. 

A

nother chomp pierced my side. I could only hope Mal managed to get out of here. No. That was too much to hope for. No matter what Mal

had implied before, she wasn’t going to run off and let me die.

I could only pray she didn’t get herself killed, too. I didn’t know what god to pray to, since Ocio would never help against Rinus.

Let’s face it, the prayer was useless. No one else had power down here.

I searched for Maleene and found her scaling up a wall. Maybe she was searching for a crevice to hide in until Rinus went to sleep again. Whether that was five minutes or fifty years from now.

“Sink into the deep.” I heard her voice clear as day, and so did Rinus. He roared, remembering who his real target was.

It didn’t matter that this was a doomed cause. The most important person in the universe was locked in this deadly creature’s sights. I tore into him the best I could, aiming for the tender scales around his mouth. He got his teeth around me and squeezed until my organs cried from the pressure, but I didn’t stop. The moment I stopped was the moment I died, and so would Mal.

“Play with me.”

A creature poured out of a hole in the wall like purple silk; a kraken. My devious bitch of a mate lured out a fucking kraken. Rinus spat me out. I was no longer a big enough threat to require immediate disposal.

Krakens were almost as temperamental as serpents, but nowadays, the last kraken minded his own business. Rinus and Loison had old blood between them. If Rinus hated anyone more than Mal, it was Loison.

Mal floated weirdly between them. Why wasn’t she moving? Then I remembered how he got ahold of her in the first place. She couldn’t swim. I pushed myself as hard as I could. Each flick of my tail was agony, but I couldn’t leave my mate stuck between two feuding titans.

They didn’t seem too interested in her, but they were a flail of bodies, tails, and tentacles. It was only a matter of time before she became collateral damage.

I surged under Rinus’s body just to get whipped in the nose by a tentacle. The smack sent painful shocks through my body, and my brain stopped communicating with my fins. I rolled onto my side and was unable to send commands through my body anymore.

Fuck, that hurt.

My eyes landed on Maleene as she used her arms to come to me. No, I was right in the middle of these two. Move.

It hurt, but Maleene dying would hurt more. She was strong, so I needed to be stronger, more powerful. I struggled to get up and went after her. She grabbed my fin when I got close, and I sped away as fast as my fins could take me. It wasn’t as fast as I would’ve liked, but at least it was in another direction. I tried to dodge the limbs, but Rinus’s body slammed into us, throwing us to the ocean floor.

Don’t stop. Failing Maleene wasn’t an option.

She groaned when her back hit a reef, but shook it off. She grabbed back onto me, and I moved low, navigating around their tangle of angry bodies. Loison wrapped his tentacles around Rinus and let out a massive wave of his toxic ink.

I sped up, not willing to let Mal turn into melted goo on a reef, and once we had a decent distance, I stuffed us into a tiny cave I almost couldn’t squeeze into. One of them hit the rock wall, shaking our temporary hiding spot.

Mal fussed over my injuries, but I kept my eyes locked on the fight. If they moved closer, this place would go toppling down, and we couldn’t be caught inside if that happened.

Rinus wrapped around Loison’s body and squeezed like a python, restraining all of the kraken’s tentacles. Fuck. After billions of years, one of

them was finally going to win. Rinus impaled one of his huge fangs right through Loison’s skull with a sickening squelch. I barely breathed, afraid of bringing any attention to us.

Rinus roared, lifting to the surface so every creature in the world would know he was victorious. That there was no one left in the sea who could rival him. The king of the serpents was now the undisputed king of the sea.

These old creatures didn’t know that up top we didn’t act like this anymore. That we worked together instead of against each other. He didn’t care because you could send a hundred megalodons to attack him and it would do nothing. Send an army, and he’d destroy them. He only needed himself.

His body swayed around, and I poked my nose out just enough to try to get a glimpse of what he was fighting against.

“Is he fighting something up top?” Maleene asked, but kept smearing algae on the wounds along my sides to keep me from bleeding out.

I strained to hear a muffled roar that was too deep to be Rinus. He certainly was. A tiny person splashed into the water. Silver moon magic lit up their fingers.