Blood in the Water (7 page)

There was a simple solution. If he couldn’t catch Brady’s scent, he’d leave. All he really needed to do was eliminate Brady as the attack shark. That was his goal. No blindly searching for hours in the hopes that he’d get lucky and stumble across his son.

The reef where the attack had taken place was an easy, twenty-minute swim. Koenraad was careful, his senses alert. If the attack had been by a shifter who expected the Council to send someone to get him, then Koenraad wasn’t immune from an ambush.

It would have been easier to swim deeper, but he needed to change depth frequently in order to expose himself to the maximum amount of water.
 

To his relief, he reached Eden Underwater without catching even a hint of his son.

It wasn’t difficult to find where the attack itself had taken place. The blood molecules were well diffused, but Koenraad was able to pinpoint the location without too much trouble.
 

He swam in the area for a few minutes. He didn’t smell Brady. Didn’t smell any other shifter, either. Or any shark.

Cursing the
sick
, he doubled the area he was scrutinizing. Then tripled it.
 

There were simply no clues.
 

Time to head home.
 

He took a slightly different route back on the chance that he’d catch something. His mind was already on Monroe, on how they’d spend the night—in bed, the storm raging outside. He hated being apart from her, had hated it even before mating and claiming her.

He was so deep in his thoughts that when he first caught Brady’s scent, it took him a moment to process it. He’d had Brady on his mind so much that he almost thought the scent was a memory that had pushed its way to the forefront of his mind.

But no. Brady had been here. Recently.

Very recently. The scent was overwhelming, and Koenraad knew that Brady was most likely still in the area.

Every other thought fled from his mind. This was his chance. He could feel it. If he didn’t catch Brady now, he might not get another opportunity.

His skin was on high alert, sensitive to anything in the water that might be Brady’s size. But he didn’t feel anything.

As he circled, narrowing down the possible area Brady could be in, he wondered if the
sick
had interfered with his electroreceptors so much that they weren’t working. Kind of like how they hadn’t been working for Darius and Victoria when Koenraad had approached them in the water two days earlier.

But that didn’t explain why he was able to sense other things: schools of fish, two sea turtles, jellyfish, a few small sharks.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t feel Brady.

But oh, he could smell him. At the moment, his son was surely within thirty feet of where Koenraad swam. The scents were so strong that they presented a vivid image in Koenraad’s mind. He hesitated, unsure what to do next.
 

So he continued his desperate loop.
 

Twenty feet.

The sheer concentration was exhausting him. He sifted through every molecule of water. Had the
sick
screwed him up so badly…

A dark shape flashed past him, and in an instant Koenraad gave chase. He wasn’t going to let his son get away again.

It took an hour for him to herd the young shark back toward the inlet, but as determined as Brady was to keep his freedom, Koenraad was even more desperate to keep his son from harming and being harmed.

And Koenraad had experience on his side. He’d patrolled the coasts of Tureygua for two years, and he’d learned a thing or three in that time.

It was relatively easy to run Brady to exhaustion, but to be certain, Koenraad did it over and over again, pushing his son, forcing him to expend precious energy. Brady had to know what Koenraad had in mind, but he just wasn’t fast enough, nimble enough.

Brady’s only advantage was in being smaller, and Koenraad knew how to use that against him, constantly setting up little opportunities for Brady to slip through his defense, then thwarting the move at the last second.

Now for the difficult part. He needed to get Brady into the inlet, but the gate was closed. To open it, he’d need to shift human.

But if he left Brady unattended for even a second, he’d muster up the energy to swim off.

So Koenraad forced him right up to the gate.
 

Brady’s movements were frantic, even more desperate. Koenraad knew they’d both have nightmares about this later, but failure wasn’t an option.

When the boy was exhausted, Koenraad launched himself out of the water, shifted, then opened the gate just enough for Brady to enter.
 

In a flash he was back in the water. Brady had fled, but he hadn’t gotten far. Koenraad drove him toward the gate, nipping at Brady’s caudal fin.
 

When Brady saw the small opening, he practically flew through it.
 

Koenraad shifted human and slammed the gate closed. He could see his son circling the inlet, his movements jerky.

Koenraad would feed him in a minute. First he had to pull the top of the gate closed as well. Now the fact that the inlet was closed off was well visible to anyone standing on the beach or passing in the ocean. It didn’t matter. Brady wasn’t going to be in there very long.
 

When everything was locked to Koenraad’s satisfaction, he dragged himself onto the beach. He was going to need a few hours of sleep to put himself back together, but that would have to wait.

He grabbed his pants and shook them. The phone tumbled onto the sand.
 

Exhausted, he leaned over to collect it. Brady was launching himself out of the water, then crashing back with loud splashes.

Guilt almost drove Koenraad to his knees. Seeing his son like this, desperate, terrified, was intolerable. But the alternative was worse.

Koenraad scrolled through his phone book until he found the number he wanted. He pushed the button and held the phone up to his ear.

Brady was slamming against the gate.

“Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“This is Koenraad Van Buren. I have a shark I need removed immediately.”

“It’ll have to wait—”

“No. Now. Money isn’t an object. I’ll triple your fee.” He watched as Brady hurled his body recklessly into the gate. “You’re going to need tranquilizers.”

Watching Brady get drugged and loaded into the special truck was painful, and Koenraad found himself questioning, repeatedly, if he was doing the right thing.

An hour later they were at the aquarium, Brady in a holding tank in the rear, and Koenraad was staying close until the tranqs wore off.

Everyone else was gone. The aquarium had closed for the day, and the night employees had performed their jobs quickly so they could get home before the storm hit. As far as the employees were concerned, Brady was just a young white shark who’d been injured, and only the fictitious veterinarian listed on the file would be allowed to deal with him. The other employees would steer clear. The aquarium’s current owner had given Koenraad carte blanche without asking any questions.

It was one of the advantages of being a Van Buren.

Koenraad half-squatted against a wall that faced the enormous tank. It ran three-quarters of the size of the room, and was equally deep. There were plenty of fish and plants in there, and Koenraad just hoped Brady didn’t eat any endangered species.
 

His fingers steepled in front of his face, he contemplated his next step.

The most important thing was to keep Brady from harm. Maybe it was also the most difficult step. But he couldn’t leave his son in a watery prison forever, even if he wanted to, which he wholeheartedly did not.

The truth was that white sharks couldn’t be kept in captivity, and at the moment Koenraad didn’t know if Brady was more shark than human. Great whites died in tanks. One hundred percent of the time. The clock was ticking. They had a week, tops.

Brady wasn’t going to be here anywhere near that long.

Koenraad pressed the tips of his fingers to the middle of his forehead and closed his eyes so he could better focus.
 

He had two problems. First, Brady had attacked Monroe. Whether the young shark was responsible for aggressing the other humans was frankly irrelevant. If what Brady had done ever came out, he’d be put to death.

No one knew about that attack except Koenraad and Monroe. And, of course, Brady. And Spencer, who certainly suspected the truth, because why else would Koenraad have suddenly given Monroe a significant blood transfusion?

But that was it.
 

The second problem was the matter of Brady being a danger to humans. There was only one solution to that, and it was for Brady to live his life in the open ocean, far from humans. And Koenraad was more than willing to accompany Brady.

Which brought him to a third problem.

Monroe.

If they weren’t mated, it wouldn’t have been an issue. He would leave, just as he’d planned directly after the attack.
 

But they were mated. He couldn’t leave her.

But could he take her? Could he really ask her to spend the rest of her life living on a boat in the middle of the ocean?

It was unfair. She was human. She needed the company of other humans. Koenraad couldn’t impose that sort of life on someone he loved.

Which put him back at square one.

Chapter 10

Monroe watched as Dunphy and Theo noisily scraped up the last of the casserole she’d served them.
 

She’d barely touched her own plate. The storm had started an hour ago, and the sound of the wind tearing at the windows and the roof was enough to make her yearn for a nice, deep basement to hide out in.

Even though the bodyguards didn’t seem overly concerned that Koenraad wasn’t back yet, Monroe was close to freaking out. When they went outside, she was going to have nothing to distract her.

“Would you like another helping?” she offered, and she wasn’t surprised when they both shook their heads. She’d already pressured them once into eating more than they wanted, to staying longer than they should have.
 

They’d been taking turns going outside to check the perimeter.
 

The wind gusted against the side of the house, rattling the shutters. Monroe shivered. “You don’t have to go back out there,” she said as the shifters pushed back their chairs.

“Don’t worry about us,” Theo said. “The outdoors is our element. Thank you for dinner. It was delicious.”

The shifters went to the door, Monroe on their heels. The rain seemed to have slowed, but it was still a wicked storm. She watched as the shifters’ graceful bodies merged into the shadows.
 

Where the hell was Koenraad?

She covered the casserole with plastic wrap but left it sitting atop the stove while she filled the dishwasher.

What Theo had said bothered her. If the outdoors was their element, then it was Koenraad’s element, too. The idea that he might prefer to be out in that… It was a little unsettling.

When everything was tidy, she dug out the two paperbacks she’d picked up at the store. They’d been the only two books available in English, and neither was exactly her style. She should have had the shifters drive her to the hotel area. Plenty of books to read there.
 

After skimming the blurbs, she settled on the medieval fantasy. She desperately hoped that her entertainment options would improve before she had nothing left to read but the sports biography.

Maybe Koenraad would want it, though she had no idea if he liked sports.

The book wasn’t bad, and as the hours ticked by, she moved from the chair to the bedroom.
 

The next thing she knew, Koenraad was pulling the book from her loose fingers and brushing a kiss over her forehead. “No need to get up,” he murmured.

“What time is it?” Outside, she could hear the storm raging. The wind seemed to be trying to pry the house from its foundations and fling it into the ocean.

“A little after midnight,” Koenraad said. “I found Brady.”

Now she was wide awake. “Where is he?”

“Somewhere safe.” The way he said it gave Monroe pause. Something was wrong; she was sure of it.

“In the inlet?”

“No. Anyway, I’m sorry I’m so late. How was your evening?”

She listened to the wind and shuddered. “Fine. Ran some errands in the afternoon and, oh, I made dinner. There are leftovers.”

“I saw. It smells wonderful.”

Monroe sat up. She wanted to brush her teeth.
 

She freshened up in the bathroom, and when she came out Koenraad stood over the sink. He was forking up the last bits of food off a plate.
 

“You ate it cold?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I was hungry, and it smells good.”

She walked over and squeezed her arms around him. His body was rock solid and so very warm. Her hand slid under his shirt to brush the warm granite of his stomach. As he placed his dirty dishes into the sink, his muscles felt like satin-covered steel bands.
 

“Do you have to work out, or does your body just naturally stay like this?”

He poured a glass of water and turned to hand it to her. She waved it away.
 

“I’m pretty active,” he said. “Being a shifter isn’t magic.”

The hell it wasn’t. But Koenraad was kissing her before she could tell him that she disagreed.
 

His lips were hungry and impatient, like he’d been waiting for this all day.

When he eased up, she had barely a moment’s respite before he was on her again, this time with his large hands sliding under her heavy hair so that he could tilt her head and devour her thoroughly.

All the kisses they’d shared the last few weeks, and each one felt like a surprise.
 

His tongue licked between her lips, and she thought he was going to step away now, but to her surprise he tightened his grip.
 

She wasn’t sure how she ended up on the counter, Koenraad using his hips to push her knees apart. He pulled her closer against him, and she could feel the tease of his rigid bulge pressing against her thighs.