“So, you do think it’s real?”
He nodded.
I sighed inwardly and turned onto my side, stretching out on the hard floor of the saucer room. Wrell’s eyes followed the movement of my body, even pausing to observe the movement of my cock as I shifted. I looked carefully for some spark of desire. Something more than his ever-reserved curiosity.“Well, that’s good, I guess. If she’s going to be mated to him or is already mated to him, it’s good that everyone is certain this mate-at-first-sight thing is real.”
He didn’t reply, just leaned against the wall, his massive arms folded over his thick chest. My eyes lingered on the mottled purple tattoo-scar mass over his left shoulder and upper chest. He’d been through so much in his life. I’d thought my life was confusing. True, he’d always known he was a merman and didn’t have to discover that he was a mix of two different mythical creatures he hadn’t believed existed. And even if my mom was half demon, at least I hadn’t seen her ripped apart in front of my eyes as a child. I’d been raised by my family, even if only one of them was actual blood kin. Wrell had been raised by an enemy tribe, then found out that his birth tribe was the one responsible for his mother’s exile and death.
“Wrell, I’m curious about something. Do you mind if I ask you about when you went searching for your family, the Volitan tribe, back when you met Queen Akamaii?”
He shook his head and sent me a wave of assurance.
I repositioned again, this time rising to a seated position to be on eye level with him. His eyes followed me once more.“You seemed unsure if she was the same mermaid you’d met all those years ago. Did you not know that the Scarus mers aged?”
He shook his head again, this time accompanied by a sense of confusion and a hint of worry.
“That’s what I don’t understand. If you met them all those years ago, how did you not know they aged?”
He sent me a picture of him in front of Akamaii, once again young and beautiful. The only similarity was the crown with ropes of pearls and jewels streaming down over her long, dark hair. Behind her were six other Scarus mers. Four men, two women—all young and healthy.
“Yeah, I know. You’ve shown me that before, but still—”I thought back to the image he’d just shared and then realized what I’d missed the other times he’d shown me, and what he must not have realized before either. They were outside in the open water, out in the sunlight. They were deep in the coral reef, but not inside the island like we were now.“You never actually came into their dwelling, did you? Are those the only members of the Scarus you met?”
He nodded.
That made sense. If he hadn’t been inside, and the only mers he’d met had been young, then he would have assumed they were the same as the Chromis and Volitan tribes.“You didn’t even know there were so many of them, did you? That they were able to have children so much more easily than the Chromis?”
He shook his head. His eyes didn’t follow the school of bluefish that swam between us. I watched them as they swooped through Nalu’s room, then darted up through the hole in the ceiling toward the light. They might have been the same school that had been with Lelas and me the night before, but they were a brilliant blue in the daylight.
“Why do you think they are able to have offspring so easily? Why aren’t they immortal?”
The feeling of confusion washed over me yet again, this time the accompanying sense of worry stronger than before.
“Did you know there were mers that weren’t immortal?”
He shook his head. An image of a mer I’d never seen before entered my mind. He was fair-skinned with long blond hair, and his tail was the most beautiful I’d ever seen. It seemed more of a skin texture, as I couldn’t make out any scales covering its surface. The entire tail was a mass of brilliant blue, orange, green, and yellow swirls and spots. The fins were rounded. The dorsal fin that started between the merman’s shoulders was also rounded, except for a long orange spike at its apex.
The vision threw me. It seemed completely random. I gave Wrell a quizzical look, but he just waited.
What did the merman have to do with Queen Akamaii and the Scarus tribe? It hit me out of the blue, and I knew I’d made the right connection.“That’s one of the Synchi tribe, isn’t it? The other tribe that keeps its own territory?”
Wrell smiled, giving me a small nod of approval.
“Is that the only Synchi you met on your journey?”
He nodded yet again.
I took it one step further. “Are you thinking they might be mortal like the Scarus?”
It wasn’tlong before the five of us were heading back to the Queen’s chamber. In the bright light of morning, I was even more in awe of the Scarus’s dwelling. When I ducked into the chambers and passageways we passed, I could see endless offshoots leading to other rooms and hallways. It truly seemed never-ending.
I came to a dead halt outside the sixth or seventh room I peered into. I paused, thinking I was seeing things. Then it moved, and I was certain. I craned my neck to look back at the others continuing on without me.“Lelas!”
The others stopped and turned to look at me.
“Lelas. Everybody, come back. You’ve got to see this.”Without waiting, I turned and swam into the room.
The space was a massive cylinder-shaped room, going up probably hundreds of feet. At the very top, a pinprick of light flooded the entire space, reflecting over the mirrored surfaces of the walls. It was so high up that I wondered if it opened to the air, above the surface of the ocean.
In the center of the room, stood a huge glass ball, roughly five feet in diameter. A long golden chain connected the bottom of the sphere to the stone floor of the room.
