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“Disgusting,” she sneers and rolls off my body.

The loss of heat and pressure jolts my lust-addled mind back to the present.

Too bad my arousal doesn’t deflate in the slightest. She takes the cloth with her when she jumps to her feet, leaving my tented trousers for all to see.

Half a dozen people stand over me, wearing matching scowls.

“He’s not on fire. His clothes are ruined, but he’s got trunks of them.

Chub and Catty, I trust you will clean up this mess and educate this man about the dangers of a fire at sea.

I’ll be at the helm for this shift. The rest of you—back to work! ”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Thankfully, nobody looks in my direction after she gives them their orders. They march out of the galley after Betts storms from the room like a cluster of thunderclouds after a hurricane.

“You know, I got my nickname in a similar predicament,” Chub says as he squats beside me.

“You set your boat on fire and shoved your marriage rod at your captain when she tried to rescue you?”

“Avast ye, no! Nothing that bad,” he says with a hearty laugh.

“Blackbeard gave me the nickname Chub because my whippersnapper self pitched a tent like yours in a brothel. Aye, I wasn’t the only hearty to chub up, but I was the youngest. Old Crockpot noticed and made a mockery of me on the stage.

I survived and learned to identify with the nickname. You will survive this, too.”

“Do you think I’m about to earn a nickname from Captain Betts?”

“Not one that you want,” he says, raising to his feet and offering me a hand. “Go to your bunk and lick your wounds.”

“As long as you understand the dangers of setting fires aboard,” Catalina adds as she enters the kitchen.

She wraps her soot-coated arms around Chub’s shoulders.

Huh, she’s almost half a foot taller than him.

With his big personality, I considered him as tall as Eze and Greenhorn, even though I knew better.

A short king wouldn’t be out of place on the high seas like they would be in Boston.

Hell, on this boat, I’ve met a bearded woman, a woman with lizard skin, a man with four arms, a man with a lion’s head, and many Others who would conceal their differences on land.

Could there be a place for a satyr? Is that why my father sent me to this boat?

Was he trying to get out of leaving his legacy to an Other ?

One thing doesn’t fit though…Captain Betts.

Why did they elect her as their leader? She’s not Other that I can see, but they fall in line behind her. What am I missing?

“He’s not listening to a word you say,” Catalina says as the soap bubbles of my thoughts pop.

“I got it,” I reply quickly, although I missed the entire lecture. “Be careful with fire because there isn’t a fire brigade like in Boston. Got it.”

“And you aren’t to enter the kitchen again—at least not until my beloved is safely on land in Mexico. You endanger my wife again, and I’ll hang you from the Crow’s Nest by your nutmegs. Savvy?”

“Clear.” These clothes are ruined. I loved this shirt. Would Catalina mend it for me? I pick the singed cuffs. Are they salvageable?

“Oh no,” Chub says with a growl. “I see the wheels turning in your head. Don’t go guilting or begging me hearties to mend your clothes. You take your carcass to the forecastle deck and mend them yourself. There’s a band of men mending the mizzenmast sail from yesterday. They can help you.”

“What, I?”

“I think the words you’re looking for are aye, aye, quartermaster .

If you can’t handle that, just salute and move your arse out.

You can disrespect those landlubbers, but I won’t have it on my boat.

You owe Catty an apology and Betts some gratitude for saving your arse, but those are for another day.

I doubt your yellow belly could apologize now. ”

I hate that he’s right. I hate that I’ve been coddled and don’t measure up to the pirates who surround Betts.

What I hate most is how much I crave her admiration—I’d settle for approval at this point.

Is it because I’m used to charming the chemise over a woman’s head in the first hour of knowing her?

Is Betts a challenge, so I want her? Or is it because she puts limits on my behavior and defends her boundaries with the fierceness of a lioness?

“I’m sorry, Catalina,” I mumble as I retreat to the galley where my hammock hangs at the back. I don’t wait for a response, nor do I meet their gazes. What I’ll find there, I won’t be able to stomach—not in this mental state. My nerves are as frayed as my cuffs.

I kick my hammock, sending the books on it flying.

Dust shrouds me as the stolen captain’s logs clomp on the floor.

If only Magda were Captain again. She was Other and understood the desperation to fit in while maintaining what makes you special.

Being a vampiress made her a prisoner of the captain’s quarters during the day.

Well, my father’s master plan made this boat my prison—a plan everyone knows but me.

What would she do?

She would storm the helm and demand that Betts share the plan. How many times did she describe such a scene with Branko in her logs? Too bad I’m not made of the same salt as her…but what if I could fake it?

They want me to mend my own clothes? Fine, I’ll sew every hole closed and reinforce it with the iron will of a satyr—including the hole my family punched into my heart.

Then I’ll tuck the troublesome organ in the deepest recesses of the sea with the octopi, starfish, and creatures of the darkness…

the brothers and sisters to the best Captain who ever lived…

Magda. I’ll learn her cold, vicious ways from her writings.

Maybe someday, I’ll wear a shell frostier than Betts.