world rotated. Her view narrowed and receded like she was looking down a periscope.
Gailen jumped with her over the railing. They plunged into the ocean.
Gush.
The water closed around her body like a plastic bag. Gailen’s fingers sank into her biceps.
It was supposed to get better. She was supposed to transform.
But there was only blackness and thrashing and panic. Her heart thudded in her ears. Gailen’s worried face flashed across her vision. Panicked, just like she was.
It didn’t work. Nothing worked.
The world receded into blackness.
Six
Starr thrashed in Gailen’s arms.
Her soul grew darker and darker.
He tore off her shirt and pressed his palm to the flat of her back. No gills. She was not transforming.
Her mouth flopped open and closed. She fixed on him with terror.
But she resonated. She drank the elixir. She was his soul mate.
“Starr, listen to me.”
She writhed in his arms. Her fingernails scratched down his chest as she clawed to get free. She could not hear him vibrating.
He clapped her cheeks and pressed his mouth to hers. “Feel our resonance.”
Her struggles grew weaker, and her lashes fluttered. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her lids came down.
A sharp pain stabbed the center of his chest. “Starr!”
She went slack. Little bubbles in her parted lips drifted for the surface.
No. Impossible!
This could not be. How could…
Her soul abruptly flared like a nova. Whatever had stopped them from connecting before was gone. Her soul swirled within and around him, surrounding him with reassurance. Her mouth opened, and her body fully relaxed. Her color improved. Gills emerged in her lower back.
She had transformed.
He pressed his forehead to hers, dotted kisses to her brow and her cheeks, crushed her to him, and then pushed her back to double-check once more that she was still alive.
She was. Very, very much alive.
Relief drained him. He would never ask for another thing, because she was okay right now.
He folded her carefully into his arms against his chest. She was unconscious, heavy with the weight of deep sleep.
Precious weight.
And unwieldy.
He couldn’t afford to leave his trident, but he also couldn’t leave her.
Gathering his strength, he vaulted onto the deck with her in his arms, all his muscles shaking from the recent fright. He scooped his trident from the deck and rolled into the water once more.
She vibrated a moan. Then she nestled more securely against him.
Good.
He tucked her to his chest and his trident to his elbow.
And then he turned and very carefully kicked into the currents to take them back to Atlantis.
Starr awoke with a gentle swish of wind through her hair. Distant fairy lights twinkled. Ambient music played.
She’d fallen asleep at her computer again.
Her cheek ached from pressing into the hard keyboard. Any moment now, her back would creak from pulling yet another all-nighter hunched over her screens.
But bad guys weren’t going to stop themselves, so she did what she had to do.
She squeezed her eyes shut and stretched.
Gailen’s voice rumbled beneath her chest. “You are awake.”
Oh.
She opened her eyes again.
Her face was resting not against a desk, but his hard shoulder. The granite was muscle and bone, and those beautiful tattoos swirled over his skin. And the light breeze wasn’t the hum of her computer fan firing up nor her air-conditioning cooling the server room, but an actual breeze. No, not a breeze. A current.
“Gailen?” Her back and sides weren’t warm from slumping against her armrests, but because she was comfortingly contained by his strong arms. “Where am I?”
“The fastest current back to Atlantis.”
Underwater?
She pulled back. The blue sky wasn’t blue. It was clear, see-through, like air. The air had a texture, but it stretched beyond the limits of her focus. If she squinted, she would see into the great sparkling infinity of the sea.
Then… She’d shifted?
She didn’t remember shifting. All she remembered was blackness and panic.
Fear zipped through her.
“Starr, do not retreat.” The long toes of his fins stopped kicking, and he lifted her chin to look deep into her eyes. “Stay with me. Let our connection flow through you. I will be your strength if you will let me.”
“What happened? Why can’t I remember?”
“You suffered an allergy on the boat.”
Yeah, she remembered that. “I knew my allergies wouldn’t be cured. They’re a natural process gone rogue. Not an illness.”
“It is more than that. You closed yourself off from me. That should be impossible because our souls are linked.”
“Maybe you made a mistake.”
“I am not wrong. We are linked.” He pressed his lips to hers. Stirring heat flared through her, flooding