The Master Shark's Mate (Fire & Rescue Shifters Book 5) Read online

  She folded her arms on his chest, leaning her chin on them. “Like people do in Atlantis?”

  Silently, he nodded.

  “If I join you there, then I’m going to find out, you know.”

  He lifted his head, staring at her. She met his eyes steadily, her own very serious.

  Is she truly still considering it?

  “I showed you my animal.” Martha sat up, the movement swift and decisive. “I think it’s time you showed me yours.”

  Chapter 13

  Magnolia nudged Martha in the ribs with her elbow. “The water must be deep enough now,” she whispered, casting a surreptitious glance at the back of the boat. “When’s he going to shift?”

  Martha folded her arms, scowling. “Probably never, since you folk have made such a production out of it.”

  Yesterday, she’d thought it would be simple. That they’d just walk on down to the sea, and he would show her. But apparently he couldn’t shift close to the shore. Whatever sort of shark he was—and she still didn’t know—required a lot of space.

  Hence why they had joined today’s whale-watching expedition. Or, since gossip seemed to spread like wildfire on this island, what was now unofficially a shark-watching expedition. Martha was pretty sure the boat wasn’t usually this packed. Especially not with off-duty resort staff.

  “I promise, I did not breathe a word to anyone.” Magnolia held up one hand like a Boy Scout. “But the staff already knew who he was. You can’t blame them for being curious.”

  Martha switched her glare to Tex and Breck, who were perched on the narrow benches opposite. The pair at least had the decency to look moderately guilty. Tex tipped his hat at her in a sorry, ma’am sort of way.

  Martha sighed. As a coyote, she really couldn’t take anyone to task for nosiness. She had to admit, she’d have done just the same, in their place.

  “Well, I expect we’re all going to be disappointed,” she said grumpily. “He’s no fool. He’ll have worked out you all haven’t developed a sudden fascination with dolphins.”

  Though if Finn was aware of the ulterior motives of half the party, he gave no sign of it. He stood at the very back of the boat, staring out at the churning waves with an expression even more impenetrable than usual.

  “Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” Travis called from the tiller. He steered the boat one-handed with the ease of long practice, his other shading his eyes as he scanned the horizon. “We’re coming up to the area where the humpback whale pods are usually found, so keep your eyes peeled.”

  Well, that answers the question of who’s genuinely here to see whales, Martha thought, as the half-dozen or so other resort guests eagerly craned their necks.

  “Sorry,” she muttered to Magnolia, feeling a little sheepish. “You were telling the truth about not gossiping. I shouldn’t’ve snapped at you.”

  Magnolia patted her knee, smiling in understanding. “No apology necessary. Keep a lookout for those whales. They really are quite a sight.”

  “I see a fin!” one of the other resort guests called out excitedly, pointing. “Coming right at us! Is that a whale?”

  Travis narrowed his eyes. “No, wrong shape. That looks like a…oh. Hm.”

  “A what?” Martha asked, when he didn’t finish his sentence.

  “That’s definitely a tiger shark.” As people jerked back from the sides of the boat, Travis hastily added, “Don’t worry, they’re perfectly harmless. We’re lucky to see one, actually. They’re very shy.”

  Martha glanced at the back of the boat, but Finn was still there. His gaze followed the circling shark. He tilted his head a little, eyes going distant.

  “There, see, it’s gone,” Travis said, as the fin slipped back under the water again. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Balancing herself against the rocking motion of the boat, Martha made her way back to Finn. “Did you do that?” she asked under her breath.

  He shot her a wry, sideways glance. “Do you mean call her, or send her away?”

  “Her?”

  “She was a female. A proud grandmother, in fact, the matriarch of these waters.”

  “You could tell all that just on sight?”

  He shook his head, returning his gray gaze to the dark waters. “She told me.”

  Martha could communicate somewhat with wild coyotes, but not like that. Then again, she wasn’t the Master Coyote or any other such grand title.

  “Uh, no, those aren’t dolphins,” Travis was saying. “Those would be, um, more sharks. Hammerheads, I think.” He cleared his throat. “Ah, sir?”

  The Master Shark glanced back at him.

  Travis grimaced. “Are we likely to see any whales on this trip?”

  “No.” The Master Shark looked past him at the other guests, who stared back with confused expressions. “My apologies.”

  “Well, I for one am just fascinated by all these wonderful sharks!” Magnolia said brightly. “What’s that fine fellow over there, Travis? He’s a real beauty.”

  Travis followed her pointing finger, and made a slightly strangled noise. “That…that would be a Great White.”

  Magnolia didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. “How lovely. Never seen one of those before.”

  The Great White shark swept under them, a sleek, silent shadow nearly as long as the boat. Martha leaned over the side, fascinated. Despite its name, it wasn’t actually white. Its upper side was a steely blue-gray, perfectly matching the water around it.

  “It really is quite pretty,” she said. “Though it’s not as big as I expected, from the movies.”

  Beside her, Finn let out a short rasp of laughter. “You would like to see a bigger shark?”

  “That wasn’t a very subtle hint, was it?” Martha admitted. She met Finn’s eyes, lifting her chin in challenge. “Well? You going to show me one?”

  He surprised her with a brief, fierce kiss, his jagged teeth hard and hungry against her lips. Then, without a further word, he dove into the sea.

  One of the guests shrieked, her hands flying to her mouth. “He fell in! He’ll be eaten alive!”

  “He’ll be just fine, ma’am,” Tex drawled. “He’s—whoa!”

  They all grabbed for the rail as the boat bucked like an ornery bull. Travis cursed, fighting the tiller against the sudden surge of the ocean. Martha’s stomach flipped over as the boat bobbed and spun.

  The waves settled down again, and so did the boat. Martha prised her fingers off the rail, breathing hard. Several of the guests had been flung clear out of their seats, although thankfully no one had fallen overboard.

  “What was that?” Breck gasped, helping Magnolia back to her bench.

  “I think that,” Tex said, staring down into the ocean, “was that.”

  Martha looked over the side, and the breath froze in her throat.

  Great White? she’d asked him once, and No, he’d replied.

  The Great White shark sported around his vast form like a Chihuahua begging a Great Dane to play. The other sharks joined it, circling around the huge, rising shape in silent worship. That enormous maw could have snapped any of them up in a single mouthful, yet none of them showed any fear.

  Why would they? Martha thought, dumbstruck with awe. He’s their Master.

  “Now that has to be a whale,” one of the other guests commented, raising a camera.

  “I’m…pretty sure it isn’t.” Travis’s knuckles were white on the tiller. “Please don’t take any pictures. They’d make headlines worldwide if they leaked out, and I doubt he’d appreciate being front-page news.”

  “Travis?” Even Magnolia had gone pale under her tan. “Exactly what kind of shark is that?”

  “One that’s been extinct for about five million years.” He swallowed hard. “That’s a megalodon. Biggest predator that’s ever existed, land or sea.”

  The boat rocked again as that vast shape swept underneath them. He was eighty feet long if he was an inch, iron-gray from nose to tail. And oh, he was beautiful.
She’d thought him overwhelming enough on land, but it was as nothing compared to the sight of him in his natural domain. He moved as fluidly as water, like the soul of the sea made flesh.

  Several of the other guests screamed as his back broke the surface alongside the boat. They clutched each other in fear, staring up at the enormous fin rising higher than a yacht’s sail.

  “It’s all right! It’s all right!” Travis yelled, trying to calm the panic. “He’s a guest. He won’t hurt anyone.”

  Martha reached out, stretching to her limit. Her hands hungered to touch that powerful gray form, just as he’d buried his own hands in her fur.

  “Uh, ma’am?” Travis cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but could you please not do that? If he gets any closer, he’s going to swamp the boat.”

  Finn must have heard him, because his huge bulk backed off a little. He rolled in the water, looking up at her through the waves. His deep black eye looked tiny in comparison to his enormous bulk, but it was still bigger than her entire head.

  “I see you,” she said softly, just for him. “I still see you.”

  That vast jaw worked. She was certain he was smiling.

  Then he dove back into the depths, and was gone.

  He came back out of the sea at dusk, emerging from the waves like some ocean god. Martha was waiting for him on the beach, her legs comfortably propped up on a deckchair, a margarita in her hand.

  “Hello, you,” she said, smiling. “Have a good swim?”

  He bent to kiss her. “You were not worried?”

  She shook her head, curving her hand around his damp neck to pull him back down again. His lips tasted of salt and wildness, more intoxicating than any cocktail.

  “I guessed you needed to spend some time out there,” she said, when they broke apart at last. She passed him the towel she’d kept ready. “I get antsy if I don’t shift every few days, so I thought it was probably the same for you.”

  He nodded, drying himself off. There was something looser, more relaxed about the set of his shoulders. When he sat down, he actually leaned back into his deckchair rather than sitting bolt-upright like a soldier on duty.

  “I had not visited these waters for some time,” he said. “The sharks needed to speak with me. Some trouble with illegal hunters, and pollution from a wreck…small matters in the grand scheme of the Pearl Empire, but important to my people nonetheless.”

  “There are shark shifters here?”

  “A few. But mainly just sharks. They are mine, as much as the shifters are. And it is my responsibility to speak for those who have no voice.”

  Martha took his hand, interlacing her small fingers through his broad, rough ones. “Travis said you were a—I forget the word. Some kind of ancient shark.”

  “Megalodon.”

  “That was it. I didn’t even know that you could get shifters from extinct species. Were your parents like you?”

  “No.” His eyes were fixed on the horizon. “A megalodon is only born in times of great change, as a sign that the sharks must unite behind a single ruler in order to survive. My mother was human, my father a bull shark. When they realized what I was, they gave me up to be raised by the Circle of Teeth—the five most powerful shark shifters in the sea, our leaders at the time—so that they could prepare me for my destiny.”

  “To be the Master Shark?”

  “No.” His mouth quirked. “To be the Pearl Emperor. Ruler of all the shifters of the sea.”

  She stared at him.

  He made his dry, rasping laugh. “I was not very good at fulfilling my destiny.”

  “I’m glad of that,” Martha said, faintly. “I don’t think I’d’ve made a very good Empress.”

  His smile widened, and warmth flooded through her as she realized he was no longer trying to hide his jagged teeth. “I was once a king. But you will always be a queen.”

  “Oh, you.” She leaned against him, his bare skin cool and damp against hers. She wasn’t sure she should ask, but a coyote never could resist a story. “So what happened? With your destiny, I mean.”

  To her relief, his massive shoulder stayed loose and relaxed under her cheek. “The Circle believed that I was born to overthrow the sea dragons, and usher in the age of sharks. They trained me in war from the age of five. I embraced my role. I honed myself into a weapon with one purpose—to hunt down and kill the sea dragon Emperor. And one night, after years of battle with his defenders, I caught him. Alone and unguarded.”

  His gray eyes were distant, looking back across the decades. “And I found that he was just a young man, the same age as myself. Not a monstrous, all-powerful tyrant. Just a lonely, quiet man, raised from infancy to perform a particular role whether he liked it or not.”

  “Just like you.” She squeezed his hand. “So you let him go?”

  His chest vibrated with his wry chuckle. “No. I tried to kill him.”

  Martha blinked. “Okay. That was not where I was expecting this story to go.”

  “We fought, and the sea turned red around us. But I was so focused on the battle, I didn’t realize that I too was being hunted. A human submarine. They could not see the Emperor, for mythic shifters can hide themselves from human sight, but they saw me all too well.” He touched a pale, starburst-shaped scar that marked his side. “I had his throat in my teeth, a heartbeat away from delivering the kill bite, when their torpedoes hit me. And when I woke up, I was on a deserted island. And he was there too, swearing at me, his hands pressed to my side while his magic kept my life-blood in my veins.”

  Martha traced the radiating lines of the scar. It wrapped around him from backbone to belly button. She shivered at the thought of the torpedo exploding inside his body.

  “Why did he save you?” she asked.

  “He always claimed that it was so that he could kill me himself.” His gray eyes were the color of spring rain, softer than she had ever seen before. “He was a sea dragon, with a sea dragon’s honor. He said it would be shameful to take advantage of my wound. So for a month, he tended to me, alone and in secret. And by the time I had recovered enough to resume our battle…neither of us wanted to.”

  “Most problems can be solved by folks just sitting down and listening to each other.” Martha nestled closer to him, running one finger up the line of his abs. “What did the other sharks say when you told them you weren’t going to kill the Emperor?”

  His muscles flexed under her touch, the rippling ridges hardening. Parts further south were hardening too. “If you persist in that, you will not hear the end of the story.”

  Martha giggled, her own heat rising at the feel of his cool skin. “Better make it quick then.”

  “There is not much more to tell. I did not tell my people what had transpired, because they would have turned on me as a traitor. Instead, I publicly challenged the Emperor for the Pearl Throne. If I won, he would step down; if he did, the sharks would swear fealty to his Empire. He accepted. We fought one-on-one, before the eyes of both the Sea Council and the Circle of Teeth. And this time he bested me, fairly and honorably.”

  Martha cocked an eyebrow at him. “Did you let him?”

  His sharp teeth gleamed. He didn’t say anything.

  “Cunning as a coyote.” She nipped his shoulder teasingly. “So you were born to lead the sharks to a new destiny. But it was to bring them into the Pearl Empire rather than overthrow it.”

  He nodded. “The Circle of Teeth was disbanded, and the Emperor named me the Master Shark. The first and only one of my kind to have a place on the Sea Council. I was…not loved for it. By either the sharks or the sea dragons.”

  Her heart went out to him. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must be like, to be viewed as a failure—or even a traitor—by his own people. Or how hard it must be to have to work every day with age-old enemies who thought he was some kind of blood-thirsty monster. No wonder he was so closed and remote.

  “But you had the Emperor on your side, at least?” she asked. “You
r friend?”

  “My oath-brother,” he said softly. “For a time, yes.” His hand captured hers, flattening it over his heart. “But that is a longer story, for another day.”

  She leaned on his shoulder, watching the sun sink into the sea, his heartbeat slow and steady under her palm. She thought over all he’d told her.

  He can’t ever leave the sea.

  Some small, selfish part of her still wanted to ask him to come home with her, to join her pack. But her tiny family dramas paled in comparison to his huge, empire-spanning responsibilities. How could she ask him to walk away from his life’s work? From who he was?

  And beside which, he was a shark. There was nowhere for him to shift in the dry Arizona desert.

  Nonetheless, she was certain that he would come, if she asked. He would burn himself to dry skin and bone for her sake, and never count the cost.

  Love meant sacrifice. She knew that, down to the marrow of her bones.

  She’d sacrificed romantic daydreams of finding her one true mate for the homely, everyday love of a good human man. She’d sacrificed sleep and time and sometimes her own sanity to raise her children. She’d shed blood and tears and sweat to protect her pack.

  So many sacrifices in her life. And she’d never regretted any of them. Not a single one.

  I won’t regret this one either, she told herself.

  Nonetheless, it took her a few minutes to work up the courage to do what she must. “Finn?”

  He looked down at her, resurfacing from whatever depths of memory he’d been lost in.

  “I want…” She licked her lips, throat dry. “I want to come with you to Atlantis.”

  Chapter 14

  This is wrong.

  Every one of his instincts screamed it at him as he watched Martha struggle into the wetsuit she’d borrowed from the resort. She was a desert creature, made for light and laughter. What was he doing taking her into the cold, silent depths?

  But she’d been adamant that this was what she wanted.