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Kalina heard the whoops and hollers of what sounded like a group of noisy frat boys excitedly leaving a party. When she walked into the cold, grey stone building with the Shark Safety Unit sign out front, she saw what all the hoopla was about. At first, she thought maybe it had only been a break in, a robbery of some sort. Office equipment was strewn all over the place. The floor was soaked with dead fish of all kinds lying still. Then she noticed the trail of blood leading from the back of the room out the front door, and her heart went still.
Rafe! Oh, please. No.
“Rafe!” she yelled.
Silence.
“Rafe!” she tried again as she made her way through the front room and back toward what looked like office cubicles.
“Kalina!” he replied.
“Oh, thank God!” she said as she rushed to him and found him hunched over, talking to a cute older woman with her tear-covered face hidden behind her hands.
She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Kane kicked the shit out of those assholes. I wasn’t any help.”
This was getting out of hand. She didn’t need them to tell her it had been Evelyn and her new group of thugs. If Cobalt had come in to meet Kane, he wouldn’t have ripped apart the place like this, and more than likely, he would have preferred to fight in the water. That was where Cobalt was strongest. Plus, Kalina had spoken with him the night before, once he’d returned to the island with Sylvia. Poor Sylvia. She’d been bitten in so many places and cut in even more. It was the great white way. Where tiger sharks simply bit the shoulder at the moment of orgasm to seal the deal and transform their mate, great whites needed to claim the other by multiple bites. They seemed to believe that each time the teeth drove through the flesh, it was like stapling a note that said, “You’re mine.” Sylvia was his now and not even Kalina knew quite what that meant. Cobalt was a nomad. He’d never be content with a life of brother and sisterhood like her people shared. More than likely, Sylvia would never settle down in a permanent home. She’d roam freely with her man by her side. The only thing Kalina knew for sure was that his loyalty would never be matched. She’d heard stories about great whites and their honor. It was one of the reasons Cobalt was so adamant about getting retribution for Poet. As the older brother, it was a dash to his honorable armor if he didn’t right that wrong. Cobalt would never leave Sylvia. For him to do so would mean showing weakness. If he cheated on her or left her, it meant he wasn’t alpha enough to make her satisfy all his needs.
Late last night, when she finally got the chance to talk to Cobalt, she’d explained everything to him. She’d told him about her childhood and about what had happened to her family. She’d told him about what that meant for her brother, Keelan. He’d lived his entire life trying to get vengeance for what had happened to her. Cobalt had listened intently, keeping his eyes out on the ocean as if afraid if he looked into hers, he might bend to her will or feel human in a way he wasn’t comfortable with. She hadn’t fought to make him look at her but instead continued speaking, knowing her words had to be at least seeping through his ears and into that stubborn head of his. After everything she said to him, she waited patiently for him to reply.
“Did he kill Poet?” he asked.
There was no point in lying. If he’d asked Kane himself, Kane would have admitted it. He practically did last night on the beach.
“Yes,” she said. “He did. But I don’t think it was personal. He has been on a warpath ever since he lost me. He sees a shark and he thinks it’s best to kill it. That way it’s one less shark that can hurt another little girl and it’s one step closer to getting the one who killed his sister.”
“But you’re not dead,” he said.
“He knows that now,” she replied. “So, I think he will calm down.”
“But he killed Poet,” he said. “So, he must die.”
“Are you the shark that tried to eat me when I fell off the boat as a kid?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of things in the past. Some not so nice. It is possible. But if it was me, I wouldn’t have eaten a child. I may have considered it, but if I got close and saw it was a child, I wouldn’t have struck.”
Cobalt was dangerous. He wasn’t opposed to attacking a boat with an innocent family on it. She knew that. But if it had been him circling around her as a child, he may have backed off when he saw how small she was. Kane wouldn’t have known that. He would have only seen a fin and then he would have seen that she’d disappeared when Thane’s father had rescued her.
“Please don’t fight Keelan Kane,” she’d begged Cobalt. “Nothing good can come from it. He had a reason to attack. You had a reason to attack. You both have your reasons.”
“I didn’t kill you,” Cobalt said. “But he killed my brother. Only I have a reason. You think he was on a warpath? You haven’t seen anything yet.”
That had been the end of their discussion. Looking around the office, she knew this wasn’t Cobalt’s kind of warpath.
“Evelyn is planning something dirty,” Kane said.
She looked at him and saw him so differently than she had before. She’d always hated his guts. She’d seen him as the enemy, as a poor excuse for a human, as a man whose mission had been to make her kind miserable. Now, she understood him and saw pain in his eyes. Pain mixed with hope as he looked at her and seemed to ask her for forgiveness without saying the words.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
Brother?
She thought it, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to be so familiar with him yet. It didn’t feel right. They were strangers. They were on opposing sides, or had been for so long, and she couldn’t bring herself to wrap her arms around him like she wanted to and kiss his cheek. She wanted to tell him that she was okay and that she forgave him and that all would be fine from now on. She didn’t say a word.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Evelyn said war is on its way and a lot of innocents will die,” Rafe told her. “We’re thinking it has to be the festival.”
