Page 88 of Crashing Tides

Then he lets go. A hand fists in my hair, slams my head into the ground. The shorter guy is basically sitting on my back, keeping me in place. I’m strong, but I’m also injured and he has no trouble holding me down when my face is mashed against the floor, no matter how hard I fight against him.

“Huh?” I mumble. My voice is muffled by the tiles.

“The people who closed off access,” the short man snarls.

That sounds bad. For half a second, I stop struggling. “What?”

“They closed everything off.” Jordan gestures around us, like this should make sense to me somehow. “We need access. This is how we’re gonna reopen it.”

“No,” I argue. “Whatever you’re doing⁠—”

“It was so easy to get you here,” he says, laughing. “Werewolves are a dime a dozen. Worth a couple hundred thousand at most. You don’t know anything.”

“Fuck you,” I hiss.

He shrugs. “That’s just business, baby. And we’ve been in business a long time.”

“Who’s we?” I spit blood onto the floor.

Jordan looks down at it in disgust. “Hunters, obviously,” he says, scowling at me like I’m being intentionally obtuse.

I deflate at his words. He’s a hunter. I kind of already knew that, but hearing it spoken out loud makes my heart sink.

“How did you know about me?”

A laugh. “You think it’s hard to put together? You and Duncan Stirling—who is an obvious fucking shifter, by the way, clearly nobody at Halea is checking—get back from the hospital after a dip in the ocean, and suddenly you’re wearing rain boots on the beach and clinging to him and whispering? It’s pretty obvious that something is up with you. And the damn symbol.” He rolls his eyes. “The fuck are you doing drawing that on yourself? Just cemented all my suspicions.” Laughter rolls out of him like thunder. “And then we called you and asked and you didn’t even deny it!”

I really need to stop drinking. All of this could’ve been avoided if I’d just been sober when I answered my phone.

There’s a knee in my back, a sharp reminder that I’m still pinned.

“Look,” he says. “Don’t feel bad. You never had a chance. I was always gonna find you. It was only a matter of time. Tobias is dead, but your mom went to an awful lot of trouble to keep you alive. Which is really too bad,” he adds. “Because this is gonna suck.”

I’m scrambling for extra time. I don’t know what’s wrong with that pool, but I know that I’m fucked if they shove me in there. “What’s in here? What do you need?”

“You wouldn’t understand in a million years,” he sneers. “You did your job. Now we take what we need.”

“I don’t understand,” I plead, but his face is closed off. A purple bruise spreads across his cheek, his chin.

If he’s gonna kill me, then I’m glad I managed to get in a couple of good hits. I may be dead, but his face will hurt for a few days, and right now, that’s the closest to revenge I’m ever gonna get.

“You don’t need to understand,” the short man says. He breathes heavily into the back of my neck. I flinch, stiffen. “It was closed. Now it’s open. Now you need to die.”

Hands close around my throat. I panic, thrash, but I can’t throw him off. Not when I’m already struggling to breathe, beaten to a pulp, dehydrated, weak. No amount of writhing and kicking dislodges him. I wrench at his arms, but it’s no use—he won’t fucking let go, even when I tear with all my strength, then try to pry his hands free. Thick fingers crush my windpipe. The pain is agonizing. It rips through my neck, down my chest, up into my jaw. Tears pour down my face. I wheeze, but my lungs are empty, I can’t pull in air⁠—

And then, just as I start to lose consciousness, he releases me. As I’m gasping for breath, Jordan shoves me into the pool.

I’m too weak to fight back. I plunge into the water and drift down toward the tile floor.

Wake up, I think. Move. But I’m sinking, and my arms feel like they’re made of lead. I inhale water when my lungs convulse involuntarily. It burns all the way down my throat. I cough, gag, choke on more water. Darkness eats at the edges of my vision.

And then somehow, in spite of everything, the shift happens. Agony ripples through me. My bones change shape. Scales burst out of my skin. My entire body transforms in a matter of seconds and the whole process is completely outside of my control. Everything is raw, exposed, ripped open.

The pain fades, and I am staring up at the surface of the water, clutching my still-aching throat. Talons pierce my skin, but I hardly notice.

I can breathe again. I’m not inhaling through my mouth or nose, but I can breathe. I don’t understand how it works and I’m afraid to question it at this point.

Gills, Duncan said, and that’s probably the only explanation.