He paused less than three feet from her, an unreadable expression crossing his face. I couldn’t be sure if he stopped because he’d arrived as close as he wanted to be or due to the twitching muscles that bulged in Wrell’s arms. If he noticed them, he didn’t let on, never losing focus on Lelas.
The merman raised his hand from his waist but paused in midair.“May I?”
I had no idea what he wanted, but Lelas only nodded.
The Scarus lifted his hand the rest of the way to cup Lelas’s honeyed hair and let it fall from his fingers.
As his gaze drifted down her neck, over her breasts, and along her tail, I realized the water was beginning to bubble around me. The man finally tore his lust-filled gaze away from Lelas and looked over at the scene I was making.
Following his example, Lelas turned toward me.“I am fine, Brett.”She smiled encouragingly.“Truly. You must remain in control of yourself.”
I’d never had a sister, but this had to be what it felt like watching a guy undress her with his eyes. It was taking all my power not to rush over and wring the guy’s neck, if I didn’t set him on fire first.
Therin interrupted my line of vision, his icy-blue eyes locking with mine, his words only meant for me, although I wasn’t sure how I knew that.“This is not the time for a display, my son. Lelas is fine. We are here. If a situation arises with the Scarus in which your ability is needed, it would serve us more effectively if such a skill were to be kept a surprise.”
Although I couldn’t see him, I could hear the merman, his tone awestricken.“You are beautiful.”
The boiling thickened around me once more. Therin looked down at my hands, then back into my eyes.“Are you certain you only experience feelings for other males?”
His words caught me so off guard that I felt the anger slip from me. I didn’t answer him, but for the briefest of moments, I wondered at myself. Was I falling in love with Lelas? I’d considered it before, briefly, or partially wished for it. To finally not have a part of me that shamed both my human and my mer family. To not have to face a celibate eternity alone.
I looked around Therin and found the merman stroking Lelas’s cheek. My anger resurfaced, but not in jealousy, as much as my father might wish. As much as I might wish at very rare times. It was brotherly love and a loyal protection, and nothing more. The revulsion I felt at seeing her cheek caressed was that of a brother, not a lover.
“Does he have to touch her like that? He saw her two minutes ago for the first time, for crying out loud.”
Therin glanced over his shoulder.“I have never seen the meeting of a mated pair. I have only seen unions within our own tribe, with couples who have known each other their entire lives. There are tales of mates discovering each other outside of the tribe, but it is rare, and I have not heard of it in my lifetime.”
I felt my jaw drop at Therin’s words, then craned my neck further around to see Lelas better.“Mated pair?”
Ten
BRETT WRIGHT
We weredeep in the heart of the coral reef before my mind began accepting incoming information once more. I was reminded of the countless drives between my grandparents’ home and the University of San Diego campus. Half of the time I would end up at the desired location and have no memory of the trip, having simply traveled on autopilot. This time, however, there was nothing autopilot about the journey. My brain was blowing fuse after fuse as I watched Lelas and the merman travel in front and lead us back to the Scarus tribe. Lelas, always quiet and serene, seemed even more unusually shy and had a completely ridiculous grin on her face. The merman never let his fingers quit touching her. One minute they were stroking her hair, the next, drifting down her arm, then hovering over the small of her back, just above the beginning of her scales.
Mated pair? I’d thought Finn and I had moved fast from meeting and falling in love within a week. But this? Mated pair at first sight? They didn’t even know each other’s names, unless they were speaking privately. Which, of course, they were. But still! Even if they did know each other’s names—mated pair? There’d been many things that had been fucked up about the mer customs over the months, but I’d done a fairly good job of staying open-minded and not judging another culture by human standards, but this? How was I not supposed to judge this?
Thirteen or fourteen mers appeared as if from thin air, some shooting up from holes in the ground, others emerging from what seemed impossibly dense coral reef, some rushing in from behind us. Then they were upon us before I could even raise my hands. I had no way to be sure if they’d been that stealthy or if I’d been too caught up in my thoughts of Lelas. Judging from Therin and Wrell not having even raised their weapons, they’d been caught as unprepared as I’d been.
They were nearly impossible to count, their skin and hair color identical from one to the next, a mass of darkly tanned skin and tangles of long black hair. The only differences were the tails, but even those were nearly uniform. The males had the same aquamarine green with blue markings and the females the reddish-brown hue I’d seen in Wrell’s vision of the Scarus queen. Other than that, they were indistinguishable. Just a mass of bodies surrounding us, long silver blades pointed in our direction.
I felt my body temperature rise. I forced it back down. The last thing we needed was me exploding into a ball of flames. I hadn’t had to regain control of my fire so much in one day for months.
Therin and Wrell didn’t do so much as flare their fins as the Scarus tribe surrounded us. They must have expected such a welcome.
As my shot of fear ebbed, a wave of disappointment wafted over me. The Scarus tribe had even fewer members than the Chromis. Something felt so tragic about finally finding my family, the source of half my bloodline, only to find a dying species. Obviously, there wouldn’t be thousands of mers in the ocean, there’d be no way to keep that big a secret from humans, but at this point, I would’ve been surprised if more than two or three hundred mers were in existence at all.
We stayed encircled by the tribe for nearly a minute, no one moving, not even Lelas’s new hubby-to-be—the coward. At the end of an extremely long, tense minute, the Scarus mers closest to Lelas and her mate parted, and a merman entered the circle, his dark face heavily wrinkled, his long hair white and thinning. From the corner of my eye, I saw Therin jerk back in surprise.
The merman’s voice was soft, and it trembled, as if the act of speaking was wearisome, which seemed strange since he spoke in the same telepathic way as the rest of the mers. “What misguided exploit have you brought upon us on this occasion, Nalu?”He looked over his shoulder at someone or something I couldn’t see. I guessed there were more Scarus than I had at first thought.“Have I not said that the protection of our tribe should not be left to the young? They are distracted so easily.”His gaze returned to us, then settled on Lelas.“And trust too readily.”
The merman beside Lelas, his hand now grasped in hers, bowed his head in front of the old merman, the motion causing his long black hair to cloud up, obscuring both he and Lelas from my view. A movement by my feet caused me to glance down. A dark-red brittle starfish scurried across the sand and disappeared between two crevices of coral. One long, thin arm remained visible, waving back and forth in the water, the tiny tube feet moving in a constant, jittery motion.
The white-haired merman made an impatient movement with his hand, bringing my attention back to him.“Well, out with it, little fish. Answer my inquiry.”
“She is my other half, Laban.”His hair had floated down enough that I could see him look over at Lelas and then back at the old man.“I have found her.”
The white-haired merman’s eyes narrowed. At last, someone who found this as off-putting as me. He swam toward the two of them with a couple of jerky flicks of his tail. I glanced down at the unusually awkward motion. His tail was the same aquamarine color as the other males in the group, but it seemed faded, some scales missing, others thick and yellowed, reminding me of diseased toenails. There seemed to be a thin coat of slimy mucus over most of its length. Even the crescent fin was tattered and frayed. He paused inches from Lelas and Nalu, inspecting them with murky eyes.
