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.”