Striding down marbled corridors, his boots being the only sound was disconcerting to say the least, but Jason had to leave the library. Seeing his sister’s face after all this time…it was surreal, slightly magical, and yet it also caused a wealth of feelings to bubble up from his heart that’d remained dormant for most of his life. Grief, love, resentment, anger, and unbelievable loneliness.
The memories came flooding back and he was helpless to stop them…The sunbaked hut they’d stayed in, the relentless heat of the desert sun, his sister’s face etched with sorrow, but determination blazing in her eyes.
“I can’t do this any more, Ja. Please understand. My animal half cries all day, ever day. She will never sing again. I can’t sleep at night for the pain in my heart. Even the act of breathing hurts with every inhale. I need it to stop.”
Jason remembered how helpless he felt. He’d tried everything to raise his sister’s spirits. The hut they were in he’d built with his own hands, just so his sweet sister would have somewhere to lay her head out of the sun. “Zosime, please. You are all I have left in this world….”
“You are not so harsh as to condemn me to an eternity in pain, just so you won’t walk this earth alone.” His sister’s eyes shimmered with sadness, but Jason felt the rebuke in the core of his being. “My precious brother, you’ve moved heaven and earth to try and change this situation, but my heart died the day my mate passed into the afterlife. You still have a chance at finding yours. There will come a time when you will be happy. But the gods have already written my fate. I will not have another love and it was my own foolishness that brings me to this point. Please.” Jason rubbed his arm where he remembered Zosime clutching at him. “My animal half can no longer function, and neither can I. We need to find peace in the stone.”
The valley where Zosime rested was naturally formed at the time. Turning to face the sun, her huge stone form never twitched in the four years it took Jason to bury her as she requested; working in the blazing sun every day with nothing but a make-shift shovel. At night he lay in the hut, dreaming of his sister, his animal singing the songs of the dead. Whether it was fate or good fortune, Jason never questioned it, traders came by regularly enough for him to trade for food, averting their eyes from his mammoth task. When the last strand of his sister’s hair was buried in five feet of sand, Jason broke the shovel over his knee, picked up his pack with the last of his worldly goods and walked away.
“Oh Zosime, you had no idea how much it killed me to leave you there,” Jason blinked away his tears, but they persisted. “You were so young, so beautiful, and yet you let your fear of rejection ruin the long and happy mated life the Fates planned for you. How could you leave me?”
Blinded by tears, Jason raised his fists, thumping on the solid rock walls of Poseidon’s palace. “I would have stood by you,” he yelled to the vaulted ceiling. “I would never have left your side. But you shut me out. You left me! How could you do that to me?”
Of course, there was no answer. Zosime stopped talking to him well before the time of the Romans. Leaving Jason to walk the world alone, the chip on his shoulder bigger than his knapsack. Falling to his knees, holding his bleeding knuckles to his chest, giant sobs spewed from Jason’s chest and he had no way of stopping them.
It was as though his grief was like a giant boil, developing over centuries and squashing the life out of him – all the joy and passion for anything except fighting. Seeing Zosime’s likeness in that photo was the scalpel that lanced it. By the time he felt Lasse’s presence and relaxed against his mate’s chest, Jason was too weak to hide the state he was in. He was simply glad of Lasse’s solid and silent support.
/~/~/~/~/
“I promise you can breathe under water now,” Lasse laughed as he held out his hand. They were at the giant doors that provided an entrance to the delightful underwater world Lasse had grown up in. The doors were spelled so no water would slosh in once they were opened, and while Jason had been keen after he’d cleaned up and they’d shared a light lunch, he hesitated about a foot inside the doors. “You’re wearing my mark, you’ve been marked by my father. No one will dare touch you or harm you in my father’s realm.”
“There’s more light than I thought there’d be,” Jason said, edging closer to the door and peering around the frame. “This palace has never been found by humans, so it must be miles underwater. I thought it’d be pitch black down here.”
“The palace is part of this world and yet it isn’t,” Lasse explained, hoping he was making sense. “Call it an illusion, if you like. Go five miles in any direction from here and if you stayed at this depth you’d be hit with the wall of darkness, lightened only by the creatures that live in the depths. But this – sometimes the location changes, sometimes the whole palace floats to the surface, although not as often as it used to. Too many shipping lanes and airplanes flying overhead, but that’s why we all translocate to the palace when we want to visit. It’s not as though you can take a boat out and drop a line down at some point in the ocean and find this place. My dad’s palace is only here for Poseidon’s people.”
“But that is real water and there are real sharks, fish, and things like that swimming around.” Jason pointed out of the door.
“Yep,” Lasse smiled. “And you are perfectly safe. The only thing to remember is when you step past the threshold your mind is going to think, ‘oh shit, water’ and try and stop you from breathing. Don’t stop breathing. Just breathe as you always do. You’ll be fine. And when we step back past this door back in again, you’ll be dry. Poseidon hates water marks on his marble floors and after being slapped around the head more times than I can count for leaving them there, I added a little spell to this door which will cover you too.”
“My gods, is that an octopus? He’s fucking bigger than a bus.” Jason’s eyes widened as he pointed past Lasse’s shoulder.
“Oh yeah, he must have heard the door open. Poseidon clearly hasn’t been down to play with him for a while.” Lasse waved and a giant tentacle waved back. “I’ll go out first, so you can see my shifted form without worrying about breathing, and then you come out when you’re ready.”
Slipping off his shirt and leaving it on a peg by the door, Lasse stepped out into the water. Even after all this time, it was a strange feeling – water was heavier than air, and yet for Lasse, he always got a sense of coming home. Holding out his arms, his feet came off the floor as his shift flowed over him. While not as big as Poseidon in his shifted form, Lasse was damn proud of his tail.
Jason’s jaw dropped open. “You look amazing,” he called out. “Do you know you’re the first Mer I’ve seen? Look at that tail, it must be six feet wide across the bottom of it.”
Lasse preened, rising higher in the water so the full effect of his tail could be seen. Or at least that was his intention, but that damn octopus had other ideas. “For fuck’s sake, Ollie, let me go,” he yelled as a giant tentacle wrapped around his waist and lifted him up. “You’re not helping things here.”
“Don’t worry Lasse, I’m coming.” Sword in hand, Jason raced from the palace, probably not even aware of the differences between air and water.
“You’d better drop me quick, or you’ll lose a tentacle,” Lasse warned his friend. “Jason doesn’t know you’re playing.”
Curling his tentacles around, the octopus pushed and let go, and suddenly Lasse was falling, right in Jason’s path. “You idiot,” Lasse yelled as his tail made a massive sweep to one side to stop him from falling on Jason’s sword. “Watch where you’re throwing me, next time.”
“This is common in your world? Giant octopi just throw you around?” Lasse noticed Jason had gotten rid of his sword.
“Not all the time, but this one does get bored. I think Poseidon raised him from a wee thing, although dad denies it. He’d swear none of the creatures here are his pets, but we all know different.” Lasse took Jason’s hand. “Come, there’s so many more things I want to show you.”
“And there’s so many more things I want to see.” Lasse felt Jason’s hand caress down his back, running over the spot where skin and scale met.
“We’ll do that too,” Lasse wiggled his eyebrows. “I did promise, but come on, let me introduce you to my world first.”
/~/~/~/~/
For a creature born from the heat of the desert, Lasse’s world was an eye-opening experience. Jason could swim well enough to save his life, but he’d never gone diving and so hadn’t appreciated the sheer volume of life under the water. Everything from tiny crustaceans that looked like jewels to giant crabs that snapped at them as they swum past. His first sight of a blue whale had Jason gaping and he laughed along with Lasse as they played with a pod of dolphins on the surface.
Another huge surprise was his ability to laugh and talk and even breathe despite being in the water. It was as though there was a thin membrane or something protecting him no matter how much he moved and while Jason struggled to learn how to move through the water as effortlessly as Lasse, he never felt as though he was short of air. He soon learned the easiest way was to hold onto Lasse’s hand and let his mate’s giant tail propel them along.
The expression ‘being in his element’ was certainly true for Lasse. Jason wasn’t the type of man to go gaga over anyone, but the play of Lasse’s muscles under streaks of sunlight beaming through the water, the shagginess of his hair buffeted by the currents and damn, the way Lasse’s broad back tapered down towards his scale clad butt was the stuff of fantasies. Under the water, Lasse was the archetypical version of Poseidon right down to his beard. His eyes glowed with happiness and his mouth widened in a grin that covered half his face. All he needed was a trident and Jason could well imagine Lasse ruling the waves and plucking errant boats from the sea.
But there was one thing Jason still hadn’t worked out – Lasse’s anatomy, or more specifically, where the hell had his dick gone? Jason was well aware of his own cock – it’d been throbbing hard the moment Lasse took his hand. There was a cleft indicating Lasse’s two butt cheeks, but it was shallow as though Lasse was wearing underpants…and yet he wasn’t. No matter how much Jason brushed against him or rubbed over him as they teased each other, rolling around in the water, he still couldn’t work it out.
Finally, Jason dragged Lasse towards a large outcrop of rocks; something he could only do because Lasse was willing to follow him, and the two men perched themselves on a flat shelf, still holding hands.
“You still haven’t worked it out, have you?” Lasse shook his hair away from his face, grinning broadly.
“Nope, I confess it has me baffled. This world is beautiful, and I can understand only too well why you enjoy coming here. I could visit a million times and never be bored. There’s so much to see, but, I have a one-tracked mind when it comes to you.” Jason leaned closer. “Are you going to show me?”
“It’s all got to do with the scales,” Lasse’s hands landed on his shoulders. “I mean, if fish swum around with their bits dangling then they could get bitten off, or grabbed in a fight, not to mention, it creates a drag when moving through the water with speed.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen your dick. I could see how much of a drag it could be,” Jason grinned, but then he stiffened as his animal sounded the alarm. The sphinx wasn’t as keen being under water as he was, but he still remained as protective as ever. “We’ve got company.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Lasse scowled. “Mer guards. They’re not meant to be this close to the house especially when they know I’m out here. They are only meant to patrol this close if my dad orders them too.”
“I thought you were friendly with the Mer guards,” Jason muttered as they got closer.
“Not all of them, but they are all under my father’s rule. It’s just sometimes they get uppity, especially the young ones. Silly bastards don’t understand if it wasn’t for Poseidon they wouldn’t exist at all.”
Jason didn’t have a chance to comment on that, as the five Mers were now within hearing distance. None of them were as big as Lasse; in fact, they were remarkably slender. Pale skinned with large eyes, their tails were no wider than their shoulders, yet it was clear they all meant business, carrying tridents as long as their swimming forms.
“Lord Lasse, it’s fortuitous we came across you today.” The Mer in the middle looked as though he couldn’t be more than twenty one although Jason had no idea how Merfolk aged. His hair was a mass of black curls and the boy would’ve been pretty if it wasn’t for the twisted snarl of his lips.
“Why is that, boyo?” Lasse leaned back on the rock, looking for all the world as though he was sunbathing. “As you can see, I have company and really don’t need any more.”
“It’s your company that’s the issue, Lord Lasse.” The Mer looked pointedly at Jason’s pants and bare feet. “He is an earth walker, is he not?”
“So, what if he is? He has my father’s permission to be here otherwise he would’ve drowned within minutes.”
The young Mer looked at his companions, who all looked ready to charge. Jason’s fingers itched for his sword. “Earth dwellers have no place in our realm,” the leader said strongly. “If we can’t walk on earth, then they have no right to swim among us. This was what the Gods decreed and that has never changed.”
Lasse leaned forward, resting one of his huge arms on Jason’s shoulders. “What’s your name, boy?”
“I’m Captain Angelus of the house of Carin, sir.” The young Mer pulled himself upright and drove the end of his trident into the ground.
“House of Carin, aye?” Lasse stroked down his beard. “Any relation to Commander Baltic?”
“My father, sir.”
“Hmm, interesting,” Lasse chuckled. “And tell me, young Angelus, does your father share your views on earth walkers?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir. It’s not something I discuss with my father. I’ve been in training the last four years and rarely visit home. I know he’s proud of my accomplishments.” Angelus stood even straighter if that was possible. “The laws of the sea are very clear though.”
Lasse nodded. “I see.” With one flick of his tail, Lasse pulled Jason upright, so they soared above the young Mers. “What is the first law of the sea?” Jason shivered. This was more than Lasse being in his element. In that instant, he was his father’s son and it showed in his ringing tones. Predictably, Jason’s cock got harder.
“The God Poseidon rules over all who come within his domain and his rule is absolute.” Five shaky voices rang out in unison, none of them sounding very cocky including Angelus.
“And rule number six?”
The five all looked at each other, with wide eyes. Finally, Angelus said, “in accordance with the God Poseidon’s rule…er…all those…all those…all beings….”
“And the God Poseidon decreed all those who breathe the water like air shall be deemed within his domain regardless of species, origin or culture.” Lasse recited perfectly. “So, tell me little bottom feeders, what does that tell you about my companion?” He leaned forward and showed his teeth.
“But sir, that’s just not right,” Angelus pointed at Jason and Jason snarled. “I can’t go up on land and walk among men, so what gives him the right to swim down here?”
“You are aware that Poseidon found his fated mate recently, and his mate is a wolf shifter. I understand Claude has joined my father on many occasions on this realm. My brother, Lord Nereus is the same with his mates. Are you honestly going to stand there with your puny trident and tell me, my brother, or my father, that our gifts from the Fates have no right to come here?” Lasse’s voice took on an angry tone.
“Air breathers don’t belong here. Your companion needs to be returned to the surface immediately.” Angelus’s face was set in a stubborn pout.
“Kids,” Lasse muttered. “Think they know everything.”
“I don’t want to cause trouble for you, my precious poopsie” Jason said loudly. Ignoring the mers, Jason turned and draped his arm around Lasse’s neck. “They can try and take me to the surface if they want.”
Lasse’s chuckle rumbled deep from his chest and his eyes danced. “Oh yes, I can see it in your eyes. Your revered animal half is feeling slighted. Go on, then my precious, get a work out but save some of your energy for me. No deaths. Poopsie indeed. We’ll address pet names later.”
In a louder voice he said, “Very well, you may take my companion to the surface. Should any harm come to him, heads will roll.”
Swimming out of Lasse’s arms, Jason floated down to the rock fall and planted his feet firmly. “Come and get me,” he said with a grin as he called for his sword.
“My Lord?” Angelus didn’t look so confident now Jason was armed.
“You heard the man. If you’re so insistent on taking my fated mate to the surface, then take him.”
“Your mate?” Angelus gulped, and his face went white. “It is forbidden to touch a mate from the god line.”
“You wanted to take him to the surface. I’m now ordering you to take him to the surface. Don’t you dare defy me!” Lasse’s voice made the rocks under Jason’s feet tremble.
Jason swung his sword as the young men attacked, the magic infused flames making a graceful arc in the water. It wasn’t easy fighting in the water; they had tails and he didn’t, but these were young pups, their lack of experience showing with every stab of their tridents. Jason was fighting others before these young men were born; not one of them could even get near him and their tridents were no match for his sword.
“You will surrender,” Angelus yelled, his pretty face twisted in fury. “The Lord has given us an order and you will obey.”
“You need to pay attention to your semantics, boyo,” Jason said as he easily side swept the youngster’s charge and slapped the guy on the back for good measure as he went past. “Lasse gave you an order. He didn’t say anything to me about me following it.”
“You…you…you’ll never be good enough to mate with the son of Poseidon,” Angelus flipped on his tail and came back. Jason gave him ten points for tenacity, but the boy’s comments about his mating stung. Letting his sword go with a thought, Jason lunged for Angelus’s tail, while snatching the boy’s trident out of his hands at the same time. One ringing thud and Angelus was caught. Quick as a flash, the other four mers were caught the same way. They didn’t put up much of a fight. Jason had just finished pinning the last mer, taking care not to actually drive the prongs of the trident through the tail flesh when he heard the sound of clapping – many hands clapping. Shit, this is a crowded realm. What now?