Filed To Story: The Saltwater Curse Book PDF Free
Monsters stare me down like they want to eat me alive and gnaw on my bones like a drumstick. I’ve seen that look on the Gallagher men a hundred times. But now, I have no doubt I may very well be turned into octopus chow.
They could be talking about how to season me right now, and I wouldn’t have a clue. Nothing in their language sounds remotely similar to anything I understand—not Indonesian, Thai, or English. There’s a lot of weird clicking and gulping being thrown around.
I wouldn’t stand a chance against them. With every fiber of my being, I trust Ordus to protect me, but one against thirty isn’t exactly a fair fight.
They’re frightening. Hideous-looking. The stuff of real nightmares. Not a single one of them has Ordus’ beauty—shit, if I didn’t have context, I could be convinced they’re an entirely different species.
They have elongated oval skulls that protrude well over the top of their spines. Their heads look squishy. If I were to poke one, it’d cave under my fingers as I imagine would happen to a real octopus. I think it’s called a mantle—something Ordus most definitely doesn’t have hiding beneath his hair.
The similarity with Ordus starts with eight tentacles and ends with two arms and a humanoid torso—minus the webbing between their ribs and biceps.
It’s a good thing. A very, very good thing. If any of them showed up at my house and kidnapped me, I would have put a blade through their chest, and I wouldn’t have missed.
No two kraken look the same, other than the general attributes of their bodies. Some have spiked ears like Ordus, others are tube-shaped like Shrek. Hell, some don’t look like they have ears, just a hole in the side of their head.
That’s not the worst part.
A couple don’t have lips that close, so their sharp, toothpick-shaped, yellowed teeth are on display. My skin prickles imagining what those incisors would feel like turning my skin into ribbon.
There’s no two coloring that’s the same either, but they all remind me of the octopuses I’ve seen in the area; the blue-ringed octopus, coconut octopus, reef, mimic, and a bunch I can’t name. Deedee is obsessed with them and always took me out to snorkel.
But none are nearly as big as Ordus. A few are my size—one male who’s at least a foot shorter than me, with a face weathered with age.
The females are differentiated from the males by the small lumps on their chests and the—dare I use this word—
softer, more feminine faces. Although, their build isn’t impacted by sex. They can be as big and burly or as small as the males.
One woman at the very back of the congregation has a protective hand over her rounded stomach, pressing herself to a male’s side every time Ordus speaks. She flicks her sunken eyes between me, Ordus, and the lanky kraken who keeps talking. It doesn’t land on Ordus and I with hatred. The same goes with the male beside her.
It’s fear.
Not of Ordus, but for themselves. For the life growing in her.
Even from this distance, I can count her ribs poking out against her baby belly. The edges of her bones stick out against her taut, pale skin. My heart aches as I study each bony finger and deep ridge of her collarbones. I may not be familiar with kraken biology and anatomy, but there’s no way she has enough meat on her to be carrying a baby. It can’t be healthy. It must be a miracle she was able to conceive, let alone carry the child this far along.
None of the krakens here look like they’re well-fed. All of them have the same exhaustion written over their gaunt faces, with bodies that consist of more skin than flesh. The evidence of their starvation is clear in their emaciation.
Yet Ordus looks like he spends three hours at the gym each day, hits his protein goals, and meets the necessary sleeping requirements. He couldn’t be more different from his subjects even if he tried.
Is this…is this my fault? These people—
monsters
—will die because of me? My selfishness.
I glance at the pregnant kraken. Oh, God. There would be children as well.
Kids, little babies, would be dying because I can’t say yes to Ordus. I’m so in my own head over what I want to do with my life when there are people who want me dead and people who will die.
An entire species has been turning to flesh and bone while I’ve been playing fucking house, caring for chickens and tending to a garden on an island in the middle of nowhere. And what else have I been doing? Complaining I haven’t been getting enough attention, that I want to go back to the mainland when I don’t at the same time. Worrying about a marriage proposal that isn’t being forced upon me.
This is too much.
There’s no way I’m supposed to save them when I can’t save myself.
I make eye contact with one of the women off to the side. My cheeks burn. It’s hard to look at any of the women when their nipples are pointed right at me with not an ounce of shame. It’s even harder to stare at any of the men when they’re looking a lot like the Gallaghers.
I drop my gaze, which was a big fucking mistake. Bile lurches up my throat at the empty eyes staring back at me. A lone head bobbing in and out of the beach floats along with the waves. Dark blue ink seeps from the hole into the water, washing out into the sea—the same ink splattered over Ordus and smeared across my skin from his tentacles.
My breathing comes out in shudders.
Oh, God.
I think I’m going to puke.
Movement from the crowd stops me from losing it to hysteria. The talkative kraken turns, and the others follow suit. A few grab their fallen friends and the severed head. The talkative one throws one last barbed comment before diving beneath the waves.
I can’t move a muscle, frozen even when the only creatures in sight are Ordus and a growling Vasz. Dread seeps into my bloodstream, poisoning me until the fear leaks from my pores.
He’s going to force me to marry him.
He’s going to force himself on?—
No.
No.
I can’t live like that again. I won’t do it. I refuse.
A hand clamps over my mouth. I scream, kick out, thrash my entire body against the tentacle tightening around me. We’re flying through the island, between the thickets of palm trees and shrubs, heading west toward the tunnel into the den.
He’s really going to do it. He said I had to be willing. He lied to me. Ordus lied, and he’s going to prove my fears true. He’s just like Tommy, manipulative and violent. They take, take, take, even if I don’t want to give.
I let my guard down. It crumbled to the fucking floor, and I spread my legs and let it happen. I let him in without remorse, and now, he wants to sink in his teeth.
I’m so stupid.
It’s happening again.
I didn’t learn the first time.
“Calm yourself, Cindi,” Ordus growls against my ear.
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