“My clothes got wet,” I replied, ignoring the sweet, minty scent that rose as his eyes moved over my skin.
“Don’t fall asleep and get burned.” He dropped to a seated position, closing his eyes in meditation. “A merfolk mate?” he said softly. To himself, I thought.
I ignored him and drank some more, keeping an eye on the waves. “The only thing that might make this an even better trip would be—” I hiccupped.My twenty-eight orgasms, I had been about to say, but then I wondered. What if this wine wasn’t from Kellin?
What if therewasa merman around? I wouldn’t want to give him any ideas.
“Don’t get any ideas, fish boy,” I grumbled, then took another small sip, looking up as an albatross flew high overhead, its wings locked in place. “But if you want to send more wine, or a tin full of honeyed cakes, it’s a free ocean. I won’t stop ya.”
LUSCA
My young mate’s teasing voice lilted over the waves, reaching me where I lay in the depths below, waiting. I flung my consciousness up and out of the water, sliding into the mind of the albatross that flew overhead. Its eyes were easy to shift toward the small boat as I nudged it to do so.
I was glad the bird wasn’t intelligent enough to judge me. I was the Emperor of Emperors, a creature nearly as old as the ocean itself, and I was using it to stare like a besotted fool at the naked form of my mate.
The human with her stared up at me, anger etching his brow. He knew I was there, though he couldn’t see me. I liked his suspicion. My Rada should have watchful guards around her, even here, where I would allow nothing to touch her.
She still had six full moons until I could approach her directly. If she hadn’t taken off the pendant I gave her, the one she’d sworn to wear until she could be mine, I wouldn’t have come this close. It was painful for me to be so near and not touch her.
It was laughable. Who would have thought a few short years would feel so eternal to the eldest of my kind? When she’d toldme how long she had before the Goddess would require Her avatar again, I had assured her and myself that five short years would seem like seconds.
Before I’d spent that perfect year with her, it would have. I’d resigned myself to my own end only a century or so ago, though I had lost track of exactly when I’d stopped swimming, caught in my torpor. I’d rested for so long on the ocean’s floor, I’d half-gone to silt, as most of my kind had before me, allowing their bones to become sand and their souls to live as froth on the waves.
I’d believed this world had nothing new to show me. Nothing to entice me to surface, and live among the mortals. Then the waves had brought me a story of change in the world, and I’d left the ocean floor to see the truth. And found her.
My own Empress. Far too young, brash and brave, as glorious as the sky filled with stars. Standing with my youngest brother, Leviathan, and his Omega mate, and her other males. She’d taken the crescent-topped scepter from me that the waves had brought with their story of change, and smiled at me.
My heart had raced as I recognized her. Time itself began to race as I stepped back, watching from the coasts and from seabirds I sent inland, to guard her. I’d wanted to accompany her, but traveling so far into the great dry expanse between oceans might have weakened me too much to be of any use to her. The power she carried back then was more than enough to safeguard her, in any case.
I longed for her, though. At first, and more painfully after our year together.
I only had six moons to wait before our agreement was fulfilled and her journey was over, but something close to desperation filled me now as I gazed down at her.
A few short years apart shouldn’t fill my ancient heart with this kind of melancholy. A handful of moons shouldn’t seem likeeons. But she had changed everything for me. She’d made me impatient.
I’d jumped at the excuse to swim closer to her when she removed the protective pendant weeks ago, for those few hours. It had been enough time for the mate sickness to grab hold of me and force me to go in search of her, even though she was still on her journey, her work unfinished. And I’d known she was unprotected, which was never acceptable.
She had almost finished the bottle of wine I’d floated to her little boat when she called out, “Don’t get any ideas, fish boy. But if you want to send more wine, or a tin full of honeyed cakes, it’s a free ocean. I won’t stop ya.”
Honeyed cakes? I almost choked on a buried oyster shell, laughing. She still loved those? Good. She deserved as many courting gifts as she wanted.
I settled deeper into the silt far below her, moving slowly toward the continent, knowing I needed to put distance between us before I succumbed to the urge to reveal myself. Anyway, I wouldn’t find a sealed container of honeyed cakes in the waters. The seas of the world held many treasures, but not everything human could be found in them.
I pondered where to get them, which town by the shore had a baker. Purchasing them would mean shifting into the weakness of a human form, of course. The only use I had for that shape was the way I could lie alongside her in a hammock.
A surge of impatience, as unusual as it was brief, colored my thoughts. I longed to stare into her storm-gray gaze again, wonder at the softness of her skin, bury myself at last in her heat and bind our souls together for eternity.
She hadn’t called to me, though. She wore the pendant again, which meant she had no memory of me, as we’d planned. No, asshe’dplanned, her mission to save the world’s Omegas such a noble one, I could only follow her lead.
We would have our whole lives to spend with each other. “How long will that be, my kraken cutie?” she’d teased once, when we’d held each other late into the night, listening to the merfolk of the Southern oceans sing. “My whole life might not be more than a blink of an eye to you.”
“Forever is only just long enough for our love, my Empress.”
She’d laughed at my answer, calling me a poet. Someday she would understand what it meant to be my Empress. There was no rush, as we would have a kraken’s lifetime together.
“Fish boy, fish boy,” she sang now, her sweet voice rising up to the albatross. “Merman missing bits boy.”
I laughed at the insolent rhyme, and the albatross’s beak opened to squawk, though the sound that emerged was far too loud for one bird. I apologized and pulled away, moving into the mind of a flying fish that leaped off the stern of her small boat as she picked up her cloak and wrapped it around her.
