Except.
Except I’m the daughter of James Morgan, who dove into the darkest waters without hesitation, and Katherine Morgan, who to this day is off discovering the ocean’s secrets on expeditions across seven seas. They didn’t raise me to hide under my covers when things go bump in the night.
“Dammit,” I mutter, already moving.
The emergency kit is exactly where it should be, by the door to my private living quarters. I’m nothing if not organized. Rain gear, heavy-duty flashlight, and a flare gun. Standard lighthouse keeper equipment.
Lightning strobes across the sky as I make my way to the main entrance, each step feeling heavier than the last. The wind’s really picking up now, screaming around the lighthouse’s stone walls like something alive. Something hungry.
Another crash echoes from the distant boathouse as I grab the door handle, and this time there’s something else—a sound that vibrates through my chest, something between a groan and a roar that absolutely, definitely isn’t thunder or waves.
I check the flare gun one more time, tighten the straps on my raincoat, then push open the door.
The storm hits me like a wall. Rain lashes sideways, driven by the wind, and the beam of my flashlight barely penetrates the darkness. The boathouse is only fifty yards away, but it might as well be miles. Each step feels perilous, my boots slipping on the moss and wet rocks.
Another inhuman sound cuts through the storm, louder now. I sweep my flashlight toward the boathouse, but the rain diffracts the light into useless scattered beams. The boathouse hunches against the coastline like a wounded animal, its salt-worn walls almost luminous in the storm-light.
It’s then that something moves inside—a massive form displacing the darkness, making the old structure groan with its weight.
I pause, rain streaming down my face. The old boathouse has always been creepy at night, with its looming shape and the way storms make the timber creak.
But this is different.
Something’s inside, and the air feels wrong, electric, like the moment before lightning strikes.
Five more steps. I force myself to breathe slowly, deliberately. The wet rocks are treacherous under my boots, and the last thing I need is to slip.
Two more steps. The boathouse door swings back and forth in the wind, each movement revealing a new slice of impenetrable darkness within.
One more step.
Something scrapes against the wooden floor inside—something heavy. My flashlight beam catches the door, illuminating deepgouges in the wood that weren’t there this morning. They’re fresh, still splintered, each groove wide as my thumb.
The wind dies for just a moment, and in that sudden quiet, I hear labored breathing. Not human breathing. Not even mammalian. It’s a wet, desperate sound that raises every hair on my body.
My hand shakes as I reach for the door, making the beam of the flashlight dance wildly. Inside, something massive shifts in response to the light. I catch glimpses: a gleam of shiny skin, the curve of something that might be muscle or might be tentacle, the glint of what could be blood.
Lightning splits the sky, and for one frozen moment, I see everything.
Fishing nets, tangled and twisted around a creature that defies explanation. His torso is startlingly human-like—powerful and bare, with skin the color of deep ocean waters that shifts with subtle bioluminescent patterns.
Where human legs should be, six massive octopus tentacles spread across the boathouse floor, writhing against the ropes that bind them. His powerful, muscular arms—surprisingly humanoid despite their clawed hands—struggle against the netting. Inky blood streams from a deep gash along one of his lower tentacles, spreading across the wooden floor.
But it’s his face that stops my breath entirely—an otherworldly fusion of human and octopus. His eyes are dark and speckled like a galaxy, and smaller tentacles frame his face, writhing like aliving beard. Beneath this writhing mass, I glimpse what appears to be an actual mouth with lips, hidden behind the curtain of smaller appendages.
There’s an impossible grace to his features, something both terrifying and mesmerizing, like staring into the heart of a storm.
Then darkness crashes back, leaving me with only those eyes. They’re gold-flecked and ancient. Intelligent. Desperate with pain. And somehow, impossibly, human in their plea for help.
They hold me transfixed. They’re not the mindless gaze of a monstrous beast. There’s something in them—something that makes my chest ache with recognition.
I should run.
Every survival instinct I have is telling me to abandon him here and lock myself up in the safety of the lighthouse.
Instead, I step inside.
Chapter 2
