by Starla Night
“Who’re you?” he demanded, his voice steady and his question ending on a snarl.
For the first time since arriving in the country, a cold shudder of suppressed memories rolled over Zara. Ugly fear burned the back of her throat like acid bile.
She froze.
Her mother spoke in an ordinary tone. “That’s our plain daughter, Zara.”
He stared at her without a flicker of recognition. But his manner changed from a hulking bear to a charismatic businessman. “Zara! I didn’t recognize you. Are you coming to join our family holiday? What a nice surprise.”
Milly clung to her.
Zara shook herself free of the spell. She backed away.
“Where are you going?” he asked, the picture of cheer.
“She’s taking Milly away, and she says the police are coming.”
He blinked. “The police aren’t coming.”
Hot anger forced itself out of Zara’s mouth. “Yes, they are!”
That’s how she missed the sign.
Milly whimpered.
Her father threw his half-full gin bottle. It punched her shoulder, knocking her sideways. She landed on her butt.
And then her father was on her.
He shoved Milly out of the way. She shrieked. His fist gripped Zara by the hair and he wrenched her head back. The shock of it made her whole body jerk. Her skin stretched tight. His face loomed, shadowed by the blinding skylight. His gin-laced breath stank.
“I don’t like people who sneak in to hurt me.”
Her heart rate escalated to black.
She tried to swallow. He was pulling her hair so taut it made her face clench. She could barely suck in a breath. Her gaze tunneled.
He shook her. His smile remained intact. “Understand me?”
Behind him, her mother was standing over Milly. Watching. No one was doing anything. She was all alone.
She couldn’t speak no matter how hard she tried. Was her father going to snap her neck?
And then, over his shoulder, a man emerged from the pool.
She only had a sense of movement. Lithe muscle, severe grace. The amber glint of a sharply bladed staff, a trident. Aquamarine tattoos.
The male crossed the cavern and gripped her father around the back of the neck the same way he gripped her. Her father let her go in shock and struggled to turn and face his attacker. “Who—”
The male flung her father across the cavern.
Her father landed in a heap, rolled, and groaned.
Zara dropped to her palms and gasped for breath. Apparently while her father had been gripping her, he’d also been strangling her, and she hadn’t noticed from the all-consuming panic. The black tunnel receded as oxygen returned to her lungs.
She looked up to see the male — nude, tattoos swirling over his torso and fine buttocks — pointing his blade at her mother. Her mother froze. Saying words in an unfamiliar language, he nudged the tip on the back of her hand. She released Milly, and both women stepped back. He waved his trident in a subtle but unmistakable order to move away. Their mother moved into the middle of the cavern until she was closer to their father.
The male spoke to them harshly in an unfamiliar language. Although it wasn’t clear what he said, everyone flinched at the appropriate moments.
Milly crawled to Zara and clung to her as if she were the only real thing. They were treated to a view of his fine backside as he lectured their parents.
“The legend is true,” she whispered to Zara. “It’s the Sea Lord.”
It was hard to argue with her. He’d emerged like a ninja from a pool. In partial profile, he had a dark head of hair, bluish, tanned skin swirled with aquamarine tribal tattoos, and implacable muscle that spoke of a life of hard physical exertion. The salty droplets on his skin could be sweat. He had the build of a warrior. Broad shoulders, tapered waist, firm buttocks, huge thighs and calves, and arms that rippled from his neck down to his wrists in perfect muscle groups. He was like a bodybuilder who existed on fish and seaweed; high protein, zero fat.
And he had daggers strapped to him with what appeared to be seaweed. Tied to both biceps and both thighs, with the trident, he was a regular commando.
His eyes, when he finally turned away from her parents as not a threat, were an otherworldly blue with flecks of aquamarine. His eyes matched his tattoos. No, that didn’t make any sense. Someone must have matched his ink to his eyes.
From here, he might be a warrior. But the feeling, when he turned to them with gentle protectiveness, was of a knight.
Zara jolted back to the present. The dark beach, the nearby crab, the clouds rolling across the starlit sky. She was safe. It was over. She had survived.
Her heart still thundered, all out of rhythm, and sweat beaded up on her body, chilled by the night breeze.
Zara rolled over and hugged her elbows, relishing the grit of sand.
That day in the sacred island cave had stuck in Zara’s chest as a starkly violent, bloody trauma she had survived because Elan had saved her.
She had not saved herself. She had not channeled some mysterious power.
She had been completely at her father’s mercy. Terrified and terrorized. Her noble intentions to save Milly had been smashed by his brutal force.
She should have waited for the police. She should have run the instant her father roared awake. She could not have defeated him. To this day, she could not defeat her father.
He was more powerful. More ruthless. More violent.
So were the undersea warriors. Their assault a year ago had amplified the first trauma tenfold. It had shattered her belief only her father was capable of violence. Assaults could come from anyone. At any time. And Elan could not save her.
How could she save herself?
Could she afford not to try?
Zara sat up, removed her tennis shoes and socks, and walked barefoot across the moonlit shore. The ocean waves caressed her all-too-human toes.
It was the first time she’d touched the ocean since she’d climbed out a year ago. She wiggled her toes and walked deeper. Clear water and silky sand fluttered as she walked into the waves, bracing for wave after wave endlessly assaulting the shore.
This was dumb. She wasn’t capable. If she’d had special powers, they already would have revealed themselves.
She took another step deeper. A sneaker wave shoved her back, tossing her off balance. She retreated to the shallows.
This was impossible.
On dry land, she knew her enemies. Police enforced the laws. Her family — whether her aunt who had saved her and Milly as children, or Vaw Vaw’s family, or the extended Azores community — cared.
Under the water, lawless warriors followed an ancient honor code. She didn’t know who to trust. Everyone was a potential enemy.
Zara strode for the shore, flopped down next to her abandoned shoes, and buried her feet in the warm, dry sand. Piling it high, she anchored herself.
Having fighting powers was a dream. A fantasy. She wanted it to be possible, but she couldn’t un-live the horrors of that long-ago night. She couldn’t stand up to her parents if they appeared in front of her right now. She couldn’t save Zain or Elan. She couldn’t rewrite history to save herself.
She hugged her knees.
Elan’s powerful figure emerged from the sea, Zain boosted gently in his arms. Her heart eased. They were alive.
Zara stood and grabbed her tennis shoes and socks.
Milly picked them up at the appointed time. The ride home was wet and quiet and they made her car smell like sea water.
At home, Zara intended to follow Milly up the stairs to her bed, but hesitated on the bottom step.
Elan moved.
“Do not run.” He put one hand on the railing, blocking the stairs. “You are stronger than this.”
His hot breath made shivers travel up the back of her neck and a flowering sensation blossom between her legs. His masculine scent of salt and male hooked her libido and squeezed.
But it was dangerous.
“Sometimes the only choice is to run,” she whispered.
“You have another choice.”
“How can I defeat your warriors if you failed?”
The dark shadows deepened around his eyes.
Reality wasn’t what he needed right now, clearly. She was still confused in her heart and he was beyond exhausted. He needed kindness, and anyway, his faith in her was like a sweet wish that made her chest ache even as she denied its possibility.
She linked her arm in his and led him to the couch. “Come and sleep.”
Even though they had already had sex once here, the living room couch felt more exposed and therefore less likely to end in a repeat. As much as she craved sex, at this point, it would only confuse her tangled feelings more.
She tugged him down. He obediently stretched his imposing form, and then he tugged her. She tumbled into his arms. He held her tightly, resting his chin on her head.
Curving into his warm, protective arms felt too good.
She protested. “Let me go.”
“Please. A short time.” His muscles tensed and relaxed. “I dreamed of this every night for a year.”
Her, too.
Her defenses eased. His large palms squeezed her biceps and shoulders and thighs, raising delicious anticipation that tossed over her earlier intention to only sleep.
And then his limbs weighted down and his breathing slowed, collapsing in as though he were drugged.
Staying in his arms tested her self-control. The temptation to run her fingers over his hard abs and down to the thick length of his cock pressed against her softness was almost unbearable. She wiggled to get free.
He sucked in a breath and squeezed her tighter.
She stopped. Maybe it was okay to stay for a few minutes…
Zara awoke to stark morning light.
Elan’s breath sighed gently against her neck in the slow, long rhythm of deep sleep. In the night, his wide hand had reached down to cup her mons and the other gently kneaded her breast.
Her body flooded with hot desire.
Waking him would be cruel. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. And time already moved differently under the water, with a single hour lasting nearly a day and a week lasting almost a month.
Zain whimpered in the bathroom.
Her baby needed her!
Zara eased out of Elan’s unconscious embrace, tugged her disheveled, day-old clothes into place, and checked on her son.
He was sitting upright in the tub, his fins splayed, and the seaweed floating in a pool of liquid that hadn’t existed the night before. But she hadn’t heard the water flowing into the tub.
“You drank a lot of sea water, didn’t you?” She teased her serious little boy, who stared at her with a miniature version of her own dark brown eyes flecked with Elan’s aquamarine. “You know what? This seaweed has gotten stinky. Let’s get rid of it and give you a bath.”
He made no protest as she drained the tub, dragged the seaweed outside, and then filled the bath with fresh water and scrubbed Zain with no-tears baby soap.
She’d worried this impulse purchase would never come in handy. And now, she was using it.
This was her dream.
Zain splashed in the water, not seeming to mind the bubbles at all, and came out smelling like orange sherbet and clean baby. She dried him in a fluffy towel and carried him outside.
Twenty minutes later, when she was serving applesauce and leftover mashed stew from Vaw Vaw, it suddenly struck her that she’d carried Zain outside. He hadn’t made a peep.
Progress! What had changed?
She’d given him the bath, absentminded, and had been thinking that everything would work out. She’d felt satisfied. Content.
Not afraid.
Elan was right.
When she defeated her fears, she would become a whole person.
And then she would once more embrace love.
The key was Zain. In only three days Zain had gone from frantic rejection to calm acceptance. Babies really were very resilient.
He was fighting his hardest to become a family. Elan, too. Why couldn’t she?
A tickle in her throat warned her that she was about to get very emotional. Like magic, his little mouth turned upside down and his eyes filled with baby tears.
Uh oh.
“Don’t you cry,” she choked, as much to herself as to him. “These are happy tears. Don’t cry!”
Elan wandered out from the house scratching the back of his head and yawning. New denim shorts hung low on his taut hips. He saw them and sobered. “What is this disaster?”
“It’s just like you said.” She sniffed hard, but tears sprang to the backs of her eyes and spilled right over her cheeks. “We really are connected. Me and Zain.”
Zain opened his mouth and wailed.
She hugged her baby and rocked him. He didn’t protest, just sobbed on her shoulder.
Elan stared at the two of them, the shadows dark under his eyes.
But this was how it felt to heal a broken heart. Sometimes, it set incorrectly and had to be re-broken. The agony of these past days? She’d had to relive her darkest fears.
Now, for the first time, she knew hope.
Milly burst in from her morning classes and stopped abruptly. “Oh, wow. You already heard.”
Zara sniffed, wiping tears from her face, and looked over her shoulder at her sister. “Heard what?”
“Our parents.” Milly made her hands into fists. “They’re back.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I will need my trident,” Elan announced to the Border and Immigration later that week. “Release it. Now.”
Zara stiffened beside him in the hard chair. Zain wiggled in her arms.
Since the moment she’d heard her parents were near, she had kept Zain closer, and this change had calmed her heart. Sad or happy, through all his moods, she steadfastly held him. Their cathartic cry together had healed her surface fears. Now she fought primal dangers.
Elan would protect her. Against her parents, he would not fail.
The agents hemmed awkwardly. “We still have questions about it, Mr. Elan.”
“Such as?”
“Its construction and lethality.”
“My trident has been passed down through three generations, since my great grandfather’s was broken in the Seven City’s war. It was grown in the sub-Arctic coral fields and finished in volcanic vents.”
“Grown?” the agent repeated.
“Its lethality depends on the skill of the warrior. When going to war, it is tipped in poison from what you call ‘blue dragons.’ These are nudibranchs that float on the surface of the ocean amassing barbs from other poisonous creatures such as jellyfish and your man o’ wars.”
The agent winced. “We’d avoid poison barbs in our general populace.”
“I do not intend to prepare it for war. Only for defense.” He darkened. “Unless Zara’s parents declare first.”
The agent didn’t look convinced.
Zara cleared her throat. “It’s his property. You don’t have any laws about tridents.”
“We don’t allow exotic weapons without the proper permit. Especially if you intend to use it.”
“He won’t,” Zara said, at the same time Elan assured them, “If it is necessary, I will use it.”
She clenched her teeth.
The agency was unwilling to compromise or release his trident. They were unwilling to grant emergency passports. They were unwilling to offer police patrols.
“Inform us right away if you are contacted by your parents,” the agents told her firmly.
“By then it will be too late!” She flared with her former glory. “You need to act now. Where are Elan and Zain’s passports?”
“Please be calm, Ms. Robertson.”
“I will calm down once we’re all on an airplane bound for California!”
The agent smiled dryly; the
expression did not reach his tired eyes. “I, too, look forward to that day.”
In the end, they did not return Elan’s trident or produce passports.
Zara fumed as they exited the historic colonial building that afternoon. “These people have no idea what we’re up against. They’re going to jerk us around until we’re hurt or dead.”
He lengthened his stride to keep up with her quick steps. “I will protect us.”
“You don’t know what my parents are capable of.” She scowled back at the shuttered brick offices. “They’re not the kind of people who talk things out.”
“I have daggers hidden in the reef.”
She looked at him. A measure of respect entered her gaze, and his chest puffed in response. “Thank you for not confessing that in the offices.”
“I would not.”
She raised a brow. “Law-abiding Elan wouldn’t lie to authority.”
“They asked about weapons I had brought onto the land. My daggers are under the water.”
Her lips quirked. “Never change.”
“That is something I cannot promise.”
They traveled directly to the shoreline.
“Make it fast,” she told Elan.
He stepped out of his slacks and button-up shirt and strode naked down the shore. The humans at this hour still formed noticeable crowds. He moved quickly to avoid prolonging their offense.
Zain wiggled to go too, but Zara held him tight, immune to his cries.
“Shhh.” She bounced him on her hip and walked along the sand. He strained for the crashing waves. “Maybe later. Okay? Your father will be back right away. He’s not abandoning us on the shore. Shhh.”
Elan leaped into the surf and dove, shifting as the water closed over his head. The shore-churned sand dusted up from his powerful kicks. He flew across the volcanic rock and entered the vibrant, lava-formed reef.
Zara would love it here.
After she’d drunk the elixir and transformed, her wide eyes had been mesmerized by colorful parrot fish swirling, fan and brain coral spiraling, and the pulse of life and the soul-song of the water creatures.
He kicked hard, plunging through the thermoclines to deeper water. There, he located the small cave guardian’s hole where he had stashed his daggers. The cave guardian’s harsh song buzzed in a terrible cacophony. Cave guardians were easily identifiable by their ear-offending noise.
