Mermaid Dreams

by Rinelle Grey

  Rowan had none of that. He was just a human. A slow, normal, unable to breathe under water human.

  But that wouldn’t stop him trying.

  They reached the edge of the reef, swam over it to where the ocean floor dipped sharply down, but the mermaid didn’t stop. She didn’t even look back as she disappeared over the edge.

  Rowan didn’t either. This was the closest he’d come to catching her, and he wasn’t going to give up now. Somehow, he couldn’t help feeling that if he let her get away this time, it would be the last time he’d ever see her.

  So he followed her past the reef, and he swam down the edge of the shelf into deep water. She was further away now, and the water haze obscured his vision a little. The deeper she dove, the more certain he was he was about to lose her forever.

  His lungs were on fire, and the water was beginning to grow darker around him when he realised his mistake. He’d swum too deep. Her tail gave one last flick, and she was out of sight.

  Rowan was alone and deep under the water.

  He turned and frantically swam towards the surface, the pale light from the sun barely visible at this depth. His lungs burned, and every cell in his body cried out for him to breathe. It took all his willpower, and many years of swimming with his water breathing dragon siblings, for him to resist the urge and keep swimming.

  The sun grew brighter, but not fast enough. Before he could breech the surface, Rowan’s vision began to blur and darken around the edges.

  He swam with more desperation, knowing if he passed out, his body would take the breath it was so desperate for, and that would be the end of him. There was no one around to rescue him, no one to even know what had happened or where he had gone.

  His obsession might just have cost him his life.

  The light above him was abruptly blocked out by a swirl of pink, and there she was in front of him, her face worried, her green eyes seeming to shine in the darkness, piercing his soul. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear a sound over the rushing in his ears.

  Then she kissed him.

  Rowan’s whole body jerked in shock as a current passed between them and his lungs filled with air.

  Her arms went around him, pulling him up towards the light, but all Rowan could do was stare at her face. He hadn’t imagined seeing her this close, touching her. The world seemed to stand still, and he couldn’t resist reaching out his hand to brush a strand of hair that was caught across her nose.

  Her eyes, which had been focused above, snapped down to his face, wide and startled.

  They broke the surface like that, staring into each other’s eyes, vivid sunshine showering them with bright light, glinting off the swell of the water and the curls of her hair. Rowan gulped in lungful’s of air, not game to take his eyes off her face, sure that if he did, she’d disappear again.

  “Thanks,” he said softly.

  She didn’t reply. She was staring around them, and the dismay on her face prompted him to look too.

  He’d swum far further than he’d realised. The boat and Dragon Island were small on the horizon. They were alone in a vast, empty ocean.

  Somehow though, Rowan couldn’t convince himself to be overly concerned.

  He was floating in the middle of the ocean with a mermaid’s arms around him. Despite the precarious position he was in, Rowan felt on top of the world. After hoping to see her for years, and the last few intense weeks of chasing her…

  It seemed like she’d been the one to catch him.

  Chapter 2

  Cari’s father was going to be so mad at her. By rescuing the human and letting him get a good look at her, she’d broken every rule in Laquaria.

  And she didn’t care one bit.

  The human was every bit as scrummy up close as he had been at a distance. His body, still in her arms, was warm and firm, and his blue eyes, filled with admiration as he stared at her, were like nothing she’d ever seen before. And his lips…

  It was everything Cari could do not to heave a dreamy sigh. Kissing him, even if it had been just to save him from drowning, had curled her fins.

  And anyway, what was she supposed to do, just let him drown?

  That was probably what her father would think, but there was no way Cari would have done that. That wasn’t who she was.

  She couldn’t believe he’d followed her so deep. Most humans would have given up at half that depth. But then he wasn’t like most humans was he? If he was, he would never have caught her attention and held it the way he had. She would have been able to swim away, knowing the price was too high. But she hadn’t been able to do that. She’d always come back to watch him.

  Something about him tugged at her, tugged at her heart, and she couldn’t ignore it, no matter how risky it was being with him.

  He stared into her eyes, speaking in a strange tongue every now and then, and looking at her quizzically, as though he thought she could understand him.

  Which she didn’t. Not one word.

  It didn’t matter how hard she listened or how much she wanted to know what he was saying. His words just sounded like gibberish.

  That fact was the only part of seeing him up close that didn’t live up to her expectations. She’d imagined, more than once, what she might say to him if she had the chance. It had never even occurred to her he might not be able to understand.

  Cari’s heart sank. Maybe her father was right. Maybe coming here had been a mistake.

  There was no future in this. It didn’t matter that the human made her heart leap and her scales rise. It didn’t matter that the moment she’d kissed him, even though it was only to prevent him from drowning, it was as if the touch had sent a jolt all the way to her tail fins.

  They couldn’t talk. They couldn’t even live in the same environment. She could no more walk on land than he could breathe underwater in Laquaria.

  This was impossible.

  And being close to him, touching him, only made her more aware of the fact, even as it made her ache for it not to be so.

  She’d always known it was a hopeless dream. But for some reason, when she’d been admiring him from a distance, it hadn’t seemed quite so crazy. She’d imagined they had something in common, that they could talk and connect. Maybe even share a real kiss.

  But the reality was far from that dream. Oh, not him personally, he didn’t fail to meet her expectations in any other way.

  But up close, she could feel the yawning chasm between them. She could see all the reasons this could never be.

  A school of whiting darted past her, swimming as fast as their little fins could go, as if their lives depended on it. Their frantic churning of the ocean screamed a warning. A glance around showed her a fin cutting through the water behind them.

  A shark.

  Cari’s heart skipped a beat.

  No. Two more fins appeared behind that one. Three sharks.

  Her heart sped up, thumping in her chest. This was bad. Very bad. She’d been so distracted by the man’s presence she’d forgotten they were beyond the safety of the reef and out in open water.

  She wasn’t afraid for herself, mermaids could swim faster than anything else in the ocean, but the human could not. And dragging him would slow her down to the point where she couldn’t either.

  But having already broken all the rules to save him once, she couldn’t leave him now, not even to save herself.

  She couldn’t face living in a world without him in it, even if they could never be together.

  She had to think of something. And quickly.

  He’d seen the sharks too. His eyes widened and he grasped her arm and began to swim in the opposite direction as though he was going to try to outrun them.

  And drag her with him. Even in her moment of panic, Cari couldn’t help her heart constricting in adoration at the fact that he was trying to save her from the shark. A human, trying to save a mermaid.

  Cari didn’t like his chances. He might have almost caught up to her, but she hadn’t
been swimming at her top speed. Unfortunately, now he was exhausted from chasing her, lowering his chances even further.

  Cari looked around desperately for somewhere they’d be safe. Somewhere he would be safe.

  His boat was very far away. There was no way she could get him there in time. Even the dubious safety of the reef was too far. There was only one option, a small sandbar close enough that she thought they might make it.

  “This way,” she told the man, who was still struggling to drag her in the wrong direction.

  Her words had no effect on him, probably because he couldn’t understand her any more than she could understand him. He kept fighting her, pulling her away from the sandbar, shouting something and splashing at the water. That kept the sharks at bay, uncertain as to whether he was worth the effort, but it wouldn’t last long.

  As the sharks circled around them, Cari’s mind worked overtime, panic rising in her chest. She needed to get him to that sandbar, now.

  She took the human’s chin in her hand, turned his head towards the sandbar, and then pointed with the other hand. “We need to go there.”

  Finally, he understood. He stopped flailing wildly and turned towards the sandbar.

  But the sharks turned too, determined now. It was going to be close.

  Swallowing down her rising fear and panic, Cari put her hands under the man’s armpits and hauled him towards the sandbar, swimming as fast as she could. Her arms ached, and she had no idea how she managed to move her tail so fast, but they were going to make it.

  There was only one problem—if she slowed down, there was a risk the sharks would reach them in the shallows, before the man managed to scramble onto the shore. Cari wondered if she could distract the sharks and give him time to make it to land. But they were too close.

  There was only one way.

  Cari swam extra hard and gave her tail a huge flick right at the end, propelling both her and the man out of the water and onto the sand.

  Relief swamped her. The sharks couldn’t reach them now. They were safe.

  The sharks stayed further out, and Cari was sure she could see them gnashing their teeth in irritation. Then the sight was blocked out by the man’s head in front of her. He talked loudly and excitedly.

  It was all hazy to Cari though. Now that the danger had passed, her heroic efforts successful, she remembered mermaids no more belonged on land than sharks did.

  Every part of her body felt like it weighed twice as much as it normally did. Even just holding up her head to look at the sharks had been an exertion. Cari lay back on the sand, listening to the man chatter on.

  She wished she knew what he was saying, and that he could understand her in return. How unfair, that she was this close to him and they couldn’t even communicate.

  Especially since she was going to need his help to get back into the water once the sharks were gone.

  But right now she didn’t even care about that. His body was warm in her arms, almost as warm as the dry sand, and the sunshine was bright and welcoming, the opposite to the deep, dark cave that was her home.

  No matter how much she tried to tell herself she needed to get back to the water, she couldn’t convince herself to move.

  The same attraction that had tugged at her from the first moment she’d seen him was only stronger up close. Touching him had only made her want him more despite the barriers it had revealed. She didn’t want to let him go.

  And as he stared into her eyes, she couldn’t help feeling a tingle up her spine.

  He was so different to everyone she’d ever known. She didn’t need to understand his words to know that. She could tell just by looking into his eyes. His smile, as he stared down at her, told her everything she needed to know.

  Her dreamy happiness was washed away by a sharp shooting pain, starting at the tip of her tail and spreading all the way up to her hips. It was so sudden and agonising that Cari couldn’t help crying out in pain.

  The man’s expression turned to concern, and he uttered yet more nonsense words, but this time Cari wasn’t even trying to understand him. She was far more worried about this pain. She’d never felt anything like it before. It was as if her tail was being ripped apart.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She struggled to lift her heavy body up onto her elbow and looked down only to find out that it was. A great gaping split had appeared in the middle of her tail. Cari opened her mouth to scream again, but panic constricted her throat, and nothing came out. Not a sound. She couldn’t believe it. She’d never heard of anything like this ever happening before.

  Then again, she was the only mermaid who had even come to the surface of the ocean, much less on land, for many generations.

  Her beautiful pink scales were fading into a peachy colour, and her fins were morphing into… were those feet? And toes?

  After the initial agony, the pain faded quickly, and Cari was too stunned and amazed to do anything but stare as the rest of her tail morphed into the sleekest looking pair of human legs she’d ever seen.

  What under the waves was going on? What had happened to her tail? Was it gone forever?

  Panic and fear filled Cari, the emotion almost as great as when she’d thought she might lose the human to the sharks. If her tail was gone, how would she swim home?

  Was this what happened to mermaids who went on land? Did they become humans? Was that why mermaids were forbidden to come to the surface?

  If she were human, everything had changed.

  For a few moments, despite her worries, her heart fluttered. If she were human, everything had changed. Maybe things between her and the human man weren’t quite so impossible after all?

  She stared into his eyes, and for a brief moment, everything seemed perfect.

  Then reality set in.

  Her father would never accept a human mate. Not that it would matter because if she was a human she’d never see her family again. Not only that, but she’d never dive beneath the waves and swim through the depths of the ocean.

  She’d never be queen of Laquaria.

  And it was all because she couldn’t follow the rules, because she’d been preoccupied by a silly, girlish dream of a man who might love her for who she was now, not because she was a princess or for who she would become.

  She’d been worried mating and becoming who she was meant to be would change her. This was a far bigger change than the mermaid mating magic could ever cause.

  If she remained a human, maybe even mated one, would she ever become who she was meant to be?

  Confusion and guilt swamped her.

  “…help you in any way? Do you want to go back to the water? Damn, I wish you could understand me…”

  The man’s babbling words made it through the fog of her uncertainty, suddenly making sense.

  Cari turned to stare at him. “Are you talking to me?”

  He stared back at her as stunned as she was that she could understand him.

  What in sea urchin’s name was going on?

  Chapter 3

  Rowan tried not to gape like a teenager. The mermaid… or rather, human woman now… had legs where her tail had been only a few moments ago. Legs that were completely naked from the waist down. And while he couldn’t help being insanely fascinated, especially by her definitely pink pubic hair, he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

  He forced his gaze up to her face and didn’t let it stray again. “You can understand me?” he asked. “I could have sworn you didn’t.”

  It had never occurred to him that mermaids could shift like his dragon siblings could. Apparently he’d never really given this much thought at all.

  She clearly hadn’t either, because she looked as surprised as he was. “I couldn’t a few moments ago. Something changed when…” She glanced down at where her tail had been only a few moments ago, and it took all Rowan’s willpower not to follow her gaze.

  This new development changed everything. Rowan had thought he was crazy for being fascinated with her
when they were clearly so different. Anything other than admiration had seemed impossible, but if she could shift…

  Did it make any difference? Did he stand any chance?

  At least they understood each other now and could actually communicate. That had to help, right?

  When she met his eyes again, she was looking confused and a little afraid. “I don’t know what happened,” she said anxiously.

  Rowan felt guilty for even thinking about attraction at a moment like this. Clearly she was worried and upset. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about anything other than how he could help her.

  Which he wanted to do anyway. Her uncertainty stirred every protective instinct in Rowan’s body, especially given that she’d been crying out in pain only a few moments ago. He wanted to gather her into his arms and soothe her, but that was too close to his earlier thoughts, so he resisted. Instead he asked, “So this hasn’t happened when you’ve been on land before?”

  Her eyes widened. “I’ve never been on land before. We’re not supposed to even come up to the surface. My father is going to be furious. He might even really choose one of my sisters to be queen instead of me this time.”

  Queen? Rowan stared at her. Of course he hadn’t fallen for just any mermaid. She was a mermaid princess. A mermaid princess who was destined to be queen. Definitely above his pay grade, even if she didn’t have commitments to get back to.

  Before he could even think of how to respond to that comment, she added, “He’ll have no choice but to choose someone else if I’m stuck as a human forever.”

  “I’m sure he’ll realise you only did it to help me and forgive you,” Rowan said soothingly. “We can explain it to him.”

  His attempts at calming her failed. She looked even more alarmed at his suggestion. “No, that’s a really bad idea. You don’t understand. My father thinks I’m putting all of Laquaria at risk just by coming here to see…” she broke off then, turning away, her face reddening.

  Coming here to see who? She couldn’t possibly be talking about him, could she? Rowan’s heart gave a leap at the thought, even though he already knew he shouldn’t let it. Was it really possible she was disobeying her peoples’ rules and risking her position as queen just to see him?