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The fish opens its mouth to reveal jagged sets of teeth, and suddenly, regret pools in my stomach.
I should have stayed onshore like Chase, who's been dipping in one leg at a time to wash, splashing himself with water, sticking to the platform.
Fuck me.
The shark pushes forward a swell of water that crashes over us as it surfaces at a blistering pace.
Luckily, unbelievably, Dev's faster than the fish.
His claw shoots out and scrapes four jagged red lines across the shark's nose, and the force of his hit sends the shark reeling sideways, off course. I clamp my arms down harder across Dev's furry chest, though I can't even begin to describe the relief coursing through me when he bats away a bastard that's as long as a multistory building is tall.
If the shark were a dog, I'd imagine it would whimper. Its big black eyes look like shiny marbles as it glances back at us repentantly before it retreats.
"See. Slow?" Creep calls out.
I chuckle, but the sound is hollow because my adrenaline is still racing.
"Guess what, Aliana!" Creep taunts as he swims. "Dev touched you. He was it. That means you're it now." The blue bastard sticks his tongue out at me before he dives under the waves.
I frown, wishing I could yell after him that I'm not playing, but he won't be able to hear under the water.
Dev pulls me toward his side so he can turn his head and see me. His ruby eyes snag mine, and he whispers, "Ride on my back, and I'll help you get him."
There's an urgent playfulness to his tone that I've never heard before. Of course, the arch of his furred brow is still as cocky as ever, even though the blue ear takes his entire scary alpha persona down a peg. But this impish side of the Devourer is new to me, and it's a facet I want to explore.
I give him a wide grin as I nod, and a genuine smile spreads across his face as he helps me "saddle up" on his back and lock my ankles around his waist.
"Let's go take the blue fucker down," he mutters.
My response: "Yippee ki yay!"
15
ALIANA
Devand I cut a sharp line through the water, chasing Creep, who decides to mimic the sharks by swimming around with only his horns peeking above the waves.
Jerk.
“Get me close enough to kick him,” I command.
For once, Dev doesn’t argue with my orders, just chuckles as he lowers his chest into the water and begins to propel his arms in wide sweeping motions, moving us forward.
Creep is a surprisingly good swimmer, which makes no sense to me because I can’t think of any scenario in which he’d ever have needed to swim. He can portal wherever he wants. But his legs are circling like eggbeaters behind him, and he’s cruising through the water, punching those sharks whenever they get too close.
Dev taps my thigh and points down, whispering, “Hold your breath.”
I do just before he dives three feet beneath the surface. Unlike when I sank with Tesq, at this level, the water isn’t terrible. It stings my eyes a bit, but there’s no squeezing pressure inside my rib cage, just the strangeness of water flowing continuously over my face as Dev propels us toward Creep.
I let go of Dev’s furry chest to extend one of my hands toward that bark-like blue leg of Creep’s, past the bubbles he’s leaving behind as he churns up waves. Almost there. Almost?—
The fucker portals.
“Goddam—” My mouth floods with water as I start to curse, and Dev quickly shoots us up to the surface, where my anger is interspersed with a hacking coughing fit.
“Aren’t you even going to try?” Creep calls out as he lazily lies on the surface and backstrokes across the far side of the pool.
“Dickwad,” I grouse under my breath while I secretly wonder if I could just make this whole fricking tank into a popsicle to freeze the cocky bastard in place.
