Karin fought a sinking feeling when Poseidon threw down the gauntlet, urging the sea Shifters to obey him. Whose side was the sea god really on? And what had Amphitrite been thinking? Judging from her face, she wanted to pound her consort into a million bits of seal meat.

She tried to pay attention while Daide told an amusing story about Recco and how he pissed off a whale who then made it his personal mission in life to crush him. The whale Shifters were practically rolling around on the floor, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Poseidon.

Him showing up when he had couldn’t possibly be coincidence. No. He’d materialized not because they’d called him but because he had ulterior motives. For all she knew, he’d been hovering in the ether hunting for precisely the opportunity they’d handed him on a platter...

Easy access to their group.

“So long as ’tis roasts we’re after, Karin has the goods on Aura.” Zoe ran lightly to her table, jarring her out of the bleak pit her thoughts had become. Karin looked up, and Zoe’s smile vanished. “Och, and whatever is the matter with you? Perk up, darling. ’Tis my wedding day.”

Karin smothered her thoughts fast before Zoe could mine for details. “Not so very much wrong. I haven’t laid eyes on a Kelpie in close to two hundred years is all.” Karin made light of things and glanced around the room until her gaze fell on Aura. “Are you certain you want me spilling your secrets?” Karin arched a brow.

“It wasn’t me who suggested it,” Aura retorted. Color spread across the bridge of her nose turning her fair skin a lovely shade of pink.

Daide walked to Karin and offered his arm. “Would milady care for an escort?”

Karin swallowed a snort. “To the front of the room? I’m fairly certain I can make it there on my own, but if I run into problems, you’ll be the first to know.”

“So long as I’m not the last.” Daide dropped a hand on her shoulder for one lengthy, delicious moment.

Damn him. He was attractive as sin, and he knew what effect his touch had on her. She shelved her worries about Poseidon, burying them deep as she made her way across the room. Aura and Zoe and their men deserved at least a few unfettered hours where they weren’t worried sick about some monster lying in wait around the bend. Grabbing a glass off the tray next to the cake, she tipped the nearest bottle into it, noting it was whiskey.

Good enough. I could stand a bit of a break from being stone-cold sober.

She took a deep swallow, enjoying the burn as the alcohol made its way down her throat. “Aura, sweetheart.” She sashayed close.

Aura cringed. “Crappity, crap. Not that one.”

“But I haven’t even opened my mouth yet,” Karin protested.

“You don’t have to. I know that look. And that tone.”

The crowd took up a chant of, “Karin. Karin.” At least it drove her worries away from center stage. Even if Poseidon out and out betrayed them, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Karin set the glass down and clasped her hands in front of her. She’d always loved telling tales, maybe because when she was born it was the primary means people had of entertaining themselves. “There’s a good reason Aura majored in history,” she began.

Aura groaned and dropped her face into her hands. Juan placed a protective arm around her and murmured. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Just wait.” Her voice was muffled, but Karin heard her clearly.

“Once upon a time, Aura planned to be a doctor,” Karin went on. “Only problem was she needed chemistry and zoology and physics to get into medical school. Math never was her strong suit, so she leveraged magic to bypass the normal channels. She took the classes and bluffed her way through exams. Almost made it too, until the day she blew up the chemistry lab. Hell, she nearly burned down Weber Hall, the building the lab was in. Luckily, it was a Saturday, and she was the only one there.”

Karin took a measured breath and another sip of her drink before continuing. “Her bondmate was so freaked out by the fire, it forced a shift, and the campus cops ended up chasing a mountain lion down the college’s main street until it headed for the woods. Shot at it with tranquilizer darts. Some even hit it, and no one could figure out why the creature didn’t drop in its tracks.”

A snicker emerged, followed by another. Karin bit her lower lip to keep herself from bursting out laughing. “The Shifter community found the whole thing hysterical, a sore point for Aura when she finally surfaced, which was a couple days later.”

“I was almost killed.” Aura tried for dignity, but missed the mark by a mile. “No one cared. You still think it’s hilarious.”

“Yeah, I do.” Karin nodded. “There are a whole lot of disciplines where you can take shortcuts and get away with them. Medicine isn’t one of them. If you’d been doing something other than daydreaming in chemistry class, you’d have understood you couldn’t mix whatever reagents got away from you.”

“I didn’t listen in class. It’s why I was in the lab that day. Trying to make sense out of the gibberish in my textbook.” Aura shrugged. “I was young. It’s no excuse, but that fire was a real wakeup call.”

“You never would admit that out loud before. You have no idea how many nights’ sleep I lost worrying about you misdiagnosing someone or blundering through a procedure and—”

“Enough!” Aura sputtered. “No one realized that better than I. My cat gave me nine kinds of hell about that incident. For years.” She shook her head. “Are you done? Or were you planning to share more pithy anecdotes?”

“I vote for more.” Juan smirked. “Only way I’ll find out everything about my blushing bride.”

“You’ll have to pry them out of her on your own,” Karin said and moved to where Daide stood.

He poured more liquor into her glass. “Cheers!”

“Back at you,” she said and drained the tumbler.

“Would you like more?” he asked.

Viktor had begun spinning a story about Juan, one that turned the Argentinian’s face a shiny red.

“No thanks,” Karin said. “I need food before I drink any more anything.”

“That can be arranged. I can make us plates.”

Karin smiled fondly at him. “How about if we both sneak into the kitchen.”

“Don’t you want to hear the end of Vik’s tale? Who would have guessed Juan was such a hellion as a Vampire?”

“You, for one.” She leveled her gaze at him. “You were there.”

“So were you, but not in quite the same capacity.” He gazed intently at her. When he looked at her that way, she felt stripped naked, like he was seeing through the layers she hid behind.

Viktor finished talking amid applause, hoots, and hollers from the crowd. While everyone was occupied, Karin slid around the back of the room and through the galley’s swinging door. All the food had long since grown cold, but it still smelled delicious, and she piled items on plates for both of them.

“Let’s carry the platters into the dining room before we eat,” she suggested. “That way, everyone won’t have to detour through the galley.”

“And we’ll have it to ourselves.”

“Exactly.”

Daide picked up two serving dishes and shouldered back through the doors. Karin followed him. It didn’t take many trips before all the food was arranged on the long table near the cake. Karin ferried plates and silverware next. Once they were done, she retreated to the kitchen and stood over the one of the plates she’d prepared.

“If it’s privacy you’re after, we could go to one of our cabins,” Daide suggested.

“I’d love to, but I don’t want the gals to think I abandoned them.” Karin dragged two three-legged stools over and hoisted herself onto one of them.

Daide positioned the other one closer to her before sitting. He chewed and swallowed thoughtfully. Just when she was convinced he hadn’t picked up on her worries about Poseidon, wasn’t planning to pin her to the wall with questions she had no answers for, he angled a pointed look her way. “Well?”

“Well, what?” she hedged.

“If you didn’t want privacy to talk, we’d be out there”—he waved an arm toward the swinging door—“with everyone else. Besides, I know your worried look. What got your goat?”

She finished swallowing and set her fork down. “You missed the precise usage for that expression.”

“Not what I asked.” He twisted to face her. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s bothering you, say so. I won’t pry.”

Karin pushed strands of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t have anything like hard evidence,” she began.

“Maybe not, but something beyond our run-in with the Kelpies upset you. I figure it’s bound up in Poseidon’s unexpected announcement.”

Karin offered him points for shrewdness. “Doesn’t the timing seem awfully coincidental to you?”

“What do you mean?”

She took another small bite of the dried beef casserole before answering. “We know a few things.” She counted on her fingers. “One, Poseidon vanished during the Cataclysm. Two, he allowed virtually all his subjects to die, apparently without lifting a finger to intervene. I don’t buy for a moment he was trapped. He’s a god. They can teleport and go where they wish.” She stopped to suck in a ragged breath.

“Go on,” Daide urged, his tone somber.

“Three, he’s Johnny on the spot when the women and I called the sea Shifters. When he showed up, both he and Amphitrite were the embodiment of attentive lieges, and Leif was far too ill to contradict them.”

Daide narrowed his eyes. “You believe he was close and searching for an opportunity to come aboard.”

“That’s exactly what I think. The question is why, except he answered that today, albeit in an oblique manner. For whatever reason, he doesn’t want us running around loose on Earth’s oceans.”

“I don’t know. He helped with the Kelpies.”

“Maybe it only appeared he was helping. For all we know, he was plotting strategy when he followed them part of the way to that island.” She jumped off her stool and walked to the sink where she flipped the taps to fill a glass with water. “Want one?”

“Sure. This beef dish is salty, but you don’t have to wait on me.” He joined her at the sink and drank from his cupped hands, not bothering with the glass she held out. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “Poseidon stood by while you murdered one of the Kelpies.”

Karin shrugged. “Collateral damage, plus it makes it appear he’s on our side. So, when he pitches what he’s really after, which is for us to turn around, we’re more likely to acquiesce.”

“Makes sense. Do you think they’ll come back?”

“Who? The Kelpies?” At his nod, she said, “No. Even they understand they wouldn’t fare well fighting all of us. And they figured out we’re not about to roll over and give up Arkady. For all we know”—she shrugged again—“Poseidon put them up to the attack.”

“He was pretty convincing when he was whaling with his staff on that one we killed.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t the one who meted out the death blow. Not that I’ve ever run into gods before, but legends are quite clear they can kill with a look. They don’t have to get down and dirty with weapons.”

“Have other gods fallen from grace? Beyond Satan, that is.”

“Satan was an angel, but oh my, yes. Anubis, for one. He was the first known wolf shifter, leader of those like me. I suspect it’s why we no longer have a structure ruled by alphas.”

“What happened?” Daide steered her back to their places at the counter and lifted her onto her stool, letting his hands linger on her waist.

His touch ignited longing, but Karin’s attention was focused on his question. She ground her teeth in helpless rage. The Anubis tale always made her wish she’d been the one to kill him. “He sold out to a Vampire but continued to masquerade as our leader for a thousand years.”

“Who took him down?” Daide had returned to his plate and was eating quickly.

“A group of Shifters and gypsies, of all things. In Germany, during the Nazi regime in the 1940s.”

“Fascinating and not that long ago. For some reason, I assumed it occurred back in the Dark Ages.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems like the sort of thing you’d share sitting around a fire.”

“Sharpening stone tools?” Karin asked wryly.

“Something like that.”

They ate in silence until their plates were empty. “You’re quiet,” Karin observed.

“So are you. Any ideas how to proceed?”

“Not really, since we don’t know anything beyond my suspicions.” Her shoulders sagged, and she longed for a simpler time. She’d give anything to move backward to before a Shifter spell gone bad had spawned the Cataclysm that damn near destroyed their lives.

“What’s the worst part of this for you?” His question was soft, almost not there.

“You’d think I’d have gotten used to there being no safe haven,” she replied. “Those years in Ushuaia should have hammered that expectation out of me, but they didn’t.” She turned to face him. “I never expected Ketha’s plan to defeat the Cataclysm would work, but we didn’t have any other options. When we beat it back, and the ocean started to return to normal, I let myself hope.”

“Like the Pandora myth.” He smiled softly. “Wasn’t Hope at the bottom of the box?”

“Not sure about that, but she emerged last, at the tail end of all the world’s evils.” Karin inhaled briskly. “Mythology aside, it felt good to hope. Right in a way not much had since we ended up trapped in Ushuaia. I’d been hanging on by my fingernails for so long, wondering what grisly death would befall us, I wasn’t careful. Didn’t apply my usual, inductive approach. Or deductive, either. Nope. I figured we had good shit coming our way. After everything we’d lived through, we deserved the cards to yield aces.”

She shook her head. “I should have known better. I was a fool.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.” He placed a hand over where she’d folded hers in her lap.

“No. I’m not. If I hadn’t been lost in a fantasy world, I wouldn’t have been so shocked when we ran into one form of evil after another within days of leaving Argentina.”

He stood and moved behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. “No matter what happens, we’ll get through it.”

Karin yearned to say something optimistic, but she didn’t want to lie. “Maybe we will. If we get as far as Siberia, our odds of coming out on top against whatever’s determined to keep that gateway open aren’t good.”

“Maybe not, but we still have to try.”

Karin got to her feet and turned so his arms crisscrossed her back. She leaned into him, breathing him in. “Of course we have to try. I never said we didn’t.”

He tilted her chin with a finger. “Are you willing to take a chance on me? We’ve been dancing around our attraction, and I’ve done my damnedest to give you space, but I want you in a way I’ve never wanted a woman before. Maybe you don’t feel quite the same way. Not yet, anyway, but—”

“Hush. I...” What could she say? That she didn’t think she could survive if she opened her heart all the way and he was killed? Life didn’t work like that. When you stopped taking chances, you obliterated parts of yourself and ended up a shell of a person.

“Good insight,” her wolf inserted dryly. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Was that your wolf?” Daide asked. He looked away. “I know my coyote might not quite measure up, but I love you both.”

Karin’s eyes widened. “Love? You can’t know you feel that way about me. Not this soon. Of course you’d love your coyote; it’s how the Shifter bond works, except—” She shut her mouth abruptly, aware she was babbling.

“It’s an emotion, Karin. Not a null hypothesis that requires A and B split testing to confirm.”

Slowly, taking his time, he closed his mouth over hers. His lips were warm and firm, and he kissed her with a singlemindedness that stole her breath. She traded kisses, bites, and suckles as they moved from mouth to ear to neck and back again. He caressed the length of her spine, and she hooked her arms beneath his, loving the feel of his firmly muscled back beneath her fingertips.

Breath caught in her throat, and desire surged. The same need she’d been riding herd on since the first time he kissed her raced through her in a scorching tide. She moaned, a low, urgent sound that shocked her because it meant her control was crumbling.

“Karin.” The way he said her name was part entreaty, part prayer. His voice was filled with hunger, need. A raspy catch in it made her crotch flood with lust and turned her nipples to exquisite points of delight.

She stopped thinking, choreographing every movement, every nuance, and dragged magic into a sloppy shield around them. “Hurry,” she said. “No one will notice us when we cross the dining room.”

“Even if they’re looking through their psychic views?” he teased.

“Maybe then, but everyone’s getting drunk. No one’s worried about us. If they were, they’d have come hunting long before now.”

He swept an arm beneath her knees and picked her up as if she weighed nothing. Her first instinct was to demand he put her down, but being cradled against his chest felt too damned good, so she wrapped her arms around him and held on.

Daide carried her out of the galley, along the back wall of the dining room, and through the door into the corridor. The glimpse she’d gotten of everyone eating, drinking, and laughing warmed her. They’d earned today, by God, and they were right to take advantage of it. She’d been worried the Kelpies would ruin things, but that was before Poseidon’s bombshell.

“You can put me down, now,” she said and let go of the magic shielding them from curious eyes.

“What if I don’t want to?” He walked down a side corridor past the lab and kicked open a door that led to a small cabin. “I’ve taken a catnap or two here,” he said. “It’s how I know about it.” He placed her on the bed and shut the door firmly before turning back to where she lay.

Daide bent and tugged at her boots, pulling them off one at a time. He ran his hands over her feet, rubbing the arches as he stripped off her stockings. When he reached for the fastening of her pants, she batted his hands away.

“What?” he teased. “Feet are all I get to look at?”

“No one’s doing much looking. It’s dark in here.” Karin kindled a mage light, and it cast a bluish glow, making the cabin look like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. “Take your boots off and lie next to me.”

He bent to his own boots, toeing them off. While he did that, she tugged off her vest and slithered out of her long-underwear top. She’d given up on things like bras long before her stint in Ushuaia.

Daide glanced up from his boots and made a wonderfully male noise, somewhere between a growl and a purr. “Jesus.” Breath whooshed from him. “You’re gorgeous.” He captured a breast in each hand, rubbing her nipples between thumb and forefinger.

Sensation cascaded through her, and her hips writhed, settling into their own rhythm. She made a grab for his cock but couldn’t reach it. Her breath was coming fast now, and she had to fight to get words out. “Naked. I want you naked.”

His lips parted in a lascivious grin. “Do you now? Purely for clinical observation purposes, right?”

“Purely.” She grinned back and arched into his touch. No one had set eyes on her breasts for years, and she’d been afraid he’d find her lacking, particularly if he’d been used to women in their twenties and thirties.

He bent and took a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard. Her belly tightened, reminding her of the empty place between her legs. And the cock she had yet to lay eyes on. “Naked,” she panted.

He raised his head from her breast. “Tell you what,” he said, sounding breathless himself, “I’ll let go, and we each get out of our clothes as fast as we can.”

“What does the winner get?”

“We’re both winners because we get each other.”

A rush of feeling so profound it nearly brought tears followed his words, and she struggled with what to say to express how lucky she was to have him in her life. He straightened and shrugged out of his jacket. Next came his stretchy top.

“Better hurry.” His dark eyes sparkled with merriment, but passion burned in their depths.

“Or what?” She undid her pants and pushed them down her hips, followed by her panties.

“Or I’ll be forced to finish what you began.”

He unzipped his trousers and slid them over his high, tight ass and down his legs. Karin surged forward and placed a hand over the tented-out front of his shorts right before she pushed them out of the way. His cock looked the way she’d imagined it from feeling him grow erect against her belly. Long, thick, perfect, it sprang from a mat of black hair.

She took a moment and gazed at him, enjoying the smooth expanse of bronze and the scattering of dark hair around his nipples. Muscles stretched over bone in a beauty that made it hard to stop staring at him.

“Do I pass?” he asked.

“By the goddess, you’re exquisite,” she managed around a narrow place in her throat.

“So are you.” He ran a hand lightly down her belly, resting it atop the vee between her legs. She bucked into his touch, wanting everything all at the same time.

“Tell me what you’d like,” he said as if he’d discerned her thoughts.

Rather than words, she repositioned herself and took him into her mouth. Running her tongue up and down his shaft, she explored the velvety head as she sucked and teased.

He threaded his hands into her hair and groaned. His nipples had formed peaks, just like hers, and every muscle was outlined in bas relief. Daide pulled out of her mouth. “I need to be inside you. We can save the fancy stuff for when I’m not so close to coming.”

Karin tumbled onto the bunk on her belly and then rose to her hands and knees. She’d barely stabilized herself when she felt his cock between her legs, pushing for entrance. He entered her slowly, so slowly she wanted to scream at him to hurry, to fuck her hard and fast.

Instead, she let lust build. He reached around and took a breast in each hand, twirling her nipples. Moving a hand to her nub, he sank full length into her, rocking his cock back and forth as he rubbed the center of her sensation. Heat and need and desire spooled into a vortex that pulled her over the top. Orgasm cascaded through her as he worked her between his cock and his hand.

“That’s right,” he crooned near her ear. “Come for me, darling.”

She’d moved beyond words to reply. As her climax subsided, she thrust back toward him, urging him to move. He withdrew and pushed back inside, his tempo increasing until he was driving into her. A second climax seeded itself from her first, building in her belly. When it crashed over her, she felt him release, white-hot gouts of semen splashing her. They ground their bodies together, draining every last spasm of passion before they fell on the narrow bunk in an untidy, gasping, panting heap.

Karin cuddled into him. It felt so good to be in a man’s arms. She hadn’t allowed herself to recognize how much she’d missed skin-to-skin contact. “Thank you,” she murmured. “You were amazing.”

“I love you.” His words vibrated with emotion. “You’re mine, now. Truly mine. We belong to each other.”

The same fear of losing herself that she’d always harbored reared up at mine and belong, but she pushed it aside. She’d find a way to make this work. Find a way to shutter her fears that giving herself to a man, heart, body, and soul, would make her less than she was.

“Yes.” Her wolf was back. “You will.”

Daide pulled himself from her body and turned her so they faced each other. He cupped her face with his palm. “I’ll never hurt you, Karin. I’ll care for you, protect you.”

She started to blunder through a half-assed explanation of the fears that had kept her single, but it felt too complicated. Instead, she asked, “Do you think we should rejoin the festivities?”

“No, but we could move to your cabin. Or mine. The bunks are bigger than this one.”

She smiled and pushed her hips into his still-erect cock. “I take it you have plans?”

“Big ones. The night is young, and we’ve only just discovered one another.”

Her smile grew. If she didn’t watch it, he’d batter his way through the last of the walls around her heart. To her surprise, she didn’t snatch up her clothes and run out of the room. Maybe the independence she’d valued more than any treasure was overrated after all.