Oh, Bite Me (Guardians of the Deep 1)

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Kalina said. “Come on. You need to learn more about us if you’re thinking about sticking around.”

Ruby sat on her front porch, in a wooden rocking chair. Swaying back and forth next to her lay Poet in a hammock. As with the night before, he held a notebook and was busy jotting something down in it. He smiled at Penny as they stepped onto the porch.

“Poet,” Penny said.

Always a man of few words, Poet only nodded in her direction.

“I see you got some clothes,” Ruby said. “Here, this is for you too.”

She handed Penny a plastic laundry basket full of random clutter. A pack of feminine hygiene pads, a box of condoms, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste…all the necessities.

“Hailey said you were pretty loud last night,” Ruby said with a smirk.

Penny winced, not only with embarrassment, but out of worry that Kalina might feel bad hearing about her sexual escapade with Thane.

“Oh, stop it,” Ruby said. “Don’t be all shy and shit. We’re very open people. No jealousy or anger allowed on Shamrock Island. We all know you’re going to look at our men, especially when they walk out of the water with their cocks hanging. We’ll look at Thane too.”

She laughed out loud and Kalina did too. Poet snickered from inside his hammock.

“Oh, now you wanna talk, you silent motherfucker,” Ruby said. “I’ve been trying to get this guy to talk to me all morning. All he does is keep his nose in that book.”

“I did talk to you,” Poet argued. “You always have so little to say. Or at least you say things of little significance.”

Ruby snatched a pillow off the empty rocking chair next to her and launched it at Poet. He laughed and blocked it with his notebook.

“When is the baby due?” Penny asked.

She hadn’t had many pregnant friends but that seemed the polite thing to ask.

“Soon,” Ruby said. “But not soon enough. I can’t wait to get back in the water.”

“You can’t swim while pregnant?” she asked. “I thought it was good for you.”

“It’s good for you,” Ruby said, letting her forehead drop in Penny’s direction, pointing at her with the crown of her head instead of simply wagging a finger. “Me? Not so much.”

It must have been obvious that Penny was confused because Kalina jumped in to explain.

“For us, the salt water makes us shift,” she said. “We can do it at will too, anytime we want. So…like jumping off a bridge into water, we can shift in midair. But we don’t have to if we don’t want to. We can control it.”

“But with salt water, we can’t,” Ruby said. “Our bodies react to it. I can’t dip a pinky finger into that water over there without going into full beast mode. And that…that would rip this baby apart.”

The mental image was too much. Penny could practically see the baby being torn apart as Ruby’s body morphed into a shark. She figured it made sense. How could an unborn child handle something like that?

“So…” Penny said, thinking of how to ask the question she’d been dying to ask. “How do you get pregnant?”

Ruby looked at Penny as if she’d been asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard.

“How do you get pregnant?” Ruby asked.

Penny rolled her eyes.

“Same with us,” Ruby added.

“So, it never happens when you’re in shark form? I mean sharks have sex too. What if you have sex as a shark?” Penny asked.

Kalina laughed. Poet did too. Ruby only stared at her.

“We don’t do that,” Ruby said matter-of-factly.