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“Like Skadi did?” I muffled a laugh, remembering how he’d made himself into a sheepman and a shark before settling on a far-too-large human form, with a double-knotted glacier cock⁠—

The cock in my hands plumped up a little more at that thought. “Are you not pleased with this form?”

Oh my Goddess, he was offended. I bit my lip, trying to think of a tactful way to soothe him. “Lusca. It was impossibly big,” I assured him. “Like, physically impossible.”

He hmphed as I let my fingers trail to the base of him, feeling the large knot there.

“You took the form of an Alpha, I see.” I’d glimpsed his knot before and quietly decided back then that there would be no knotting with him. Omega vaginas were magical, but there was a limit.

He was obviously in my thoughts. As I held him, the knot and the length attached to it began to grow smaller, until they were the perfect size.

“Perfect?” he grumbled. “It’s not even as big as Goran’s now.”

“Don’t tell him, but there can be too much of a good thing,” I assured him, stroking him firmly until he groaned and pulled away slightly. “Aren’t we going to consummate our bond?” I wasn’t sure how krakens did such things, but I’d assumed there was some hide-the-special-tentacle involved.

“I wish with all my heart we could.” Still laughing, he wrapped his arms around me, all of his tentacles moving away, vanishing into wherever he kept them until he needed… whatever he might use one for.

I shivered, though not because of that thought. The water was becoming incredibly cold.

He sighed. “But I’m afraid we have company.”

It was my turn to sigh, too, as I felt a blossom of frost just below my belly button. “Skadi.”

RADA

At first, I couldn’t see much of the ice god through the fog.

A fog that was apparently emanating from him. He lay on a raft with Kellin and Lachlan towing him, the dense white clouds pouring out from behind him and obscuring more and more of the sea as they moved closer. The raft looked exactly like the driftwood and bamboo one Goran had been working on.

Kellin broke away and swam toward us, barking something I didn’t understand. “He goes to the longhouse to guard the Omegas and children while we help Skadi,” Lusca explained without slowing. “Your Warlord and your priest will meet him there.”

A tiny bit of my worry eased. Those three were as good as an army.

Lachlan called out, “Lusca? I think we’re out of time.” His voice was strained, and I felt true fear in our bond.

When we were close enough to see the ice god, I cursed. Skadi was skeletal, his long limbs falling over the sides of the raft. His long face, which had been angular in a masculine way, now reminded me of sharp, broken glass. His eyes were closed and sunken, but the thing that worried me most was the latticework of black veins that began at the base of his throat and radiated outward to stretch from his lips down to his groin, and halfway down his biceps.

“Shit. Lachlan, get to shore and bring me the tonic I made.” Without hesitation, he slid into his pelt and dove beneath the waves, vanishing into the fog again.

Lusca seemed as worried as I was, and when I laid a hand on his arm and found it trembling, I knew why. “You’re still losing strength,” I breathed. “I’m not. I feel much improved. But you⁠—”

“He bonded with me to save me.” Lusca reached the raft and laid a hand on the pendant that hung around Skadi’s neck. There was a black wound beneath it, and the pendant was sending out tendrils of blue to confine it. But it wasn’t working.

The poison had spread throughout his body. “What if he were in his dragon form?” I wondered aloud. “More area to disperse the poison?”

“He can’t shift,” Lusca answered. “He barely has enough power to cling to consciousness. He’s sapping the strength I have. Which is far less than I had before. His stupidity and my pride was almost the end of us both.”

“Will he… Will he take us all down with him?” I asked, thinking of my mate bonds. “Goran, Lachlan, and Kellin—they’re bound to me, too.”

Lusca’s brow furrowed. “I can carry him to the deepest trench and keep him there. We were there before, and the poison slowed. I can weigh him down, pin him in the rocks.”

I saw a flash in my mind that had to be Lusca’s thoughts. A memory of Skadi describing doing that, but to Edan. Pinning him under a volcano.

“Absolutely not,” I hissed. “Skadi may be an ass god, but he’s my ass god.”

The fog was starting to disperse properly now, so I was able to see one eyelid flicker up, and the dulled turquoise eye fix on me.

“Give me my knife,” I told Lusca, who was doing something to the pendant. I could feel his pool of infinite ocean power growing shallower and knew he was feeding Skadi more strength.