“Ambrose?”
He glanced at her fleetingly, still keeping his pace. The whole time they had been swimming, he had been unusually quiet. Well, not in the sense that him being talkative was normal, but his silence was unsettling. It made her want to say something, to get a conversation going, to learn.
After all, if her angel-form was a mermaid, she had to know the basics. Like what she could eat, if she could eat, where her legs went, and what the hell was going to happen with them now.
“Yes?”
She frowned at his answer. He said that word so much it seemed like it took up his vocabulary.
“What’s that thing you have? Akri—“ He held up a hand before she could butcher the name and she was grateful. Maybe she could get a conversation going with him and it wouldn’t be so awkward.
“Akrina,” he began, his informative voice somehow managing to make a shiver of something slide down her back. The orb of light in question jumped in front of them, bouncing around excitedly. She backed away from it as the memory of the slimy hand gripping her came to her. “It’s a companion that every Atlantean is graced with. It’s a gift from the gods, so that we are never truly alone, like the gods themselves are. They take the form of light so that even in the darkest reaches of the ocean, we have a light to guide us. Normally they come around when their master is just barely mature enough to handle one. I was lucky enough to get mine early.”
“You aren’t mature?” she asked, voice mild. The guy was too mature, if anything.
Ocean blue eyes landed on her squarely. “I wasn’t when I got sent to that cave. If it hadn’t been for my akrina, I would probably be insane right now.”
“Well, I already think you are insane so we must have different views,” she teased. “Why isn’t this one all grabby like the other one?”
Ambrose went back to looking straight ahead. “I sent akrina up to the surface to get something. This is her counterpart. It’s slowly growing and almost ready to be sent off to its master.” There was a sadness in his voice that had her smiling. The fact that he was going to miss the little thing was…heart-warming.
“How do they find their master? If you’re all the way out here, I don’t see how they can like, find anything.”
“They know. It’s instinctual. There’s never been an akrina to not find their master. Sooner or later, once the child reaches to a mature state of mind, the akrinos will leave us and become an akrina.”
Us. He’d said “us.” So he planned on keeping her? For some reason that she didn’t want to think too hard on, the relief had her weak in the knees—tail. Knee-tail? Mid-tail? She frowned, then shrugged.
Whatever. As long as she wasn’t left to the ocean where there were sharks and big ugly things that would gladly eat a fish like her, she was happy. It’s not like she had anywhere else to go—she was still sticking with the fact that she was dead.
A fish. She was a fish in the ocean—and she didn’t even know how it had happened.
“Ambrose?” she asked, sliding up next to him.
He looked at her with a raised eye brow.
“How did you do this to me?”
“Do what?” His brow lowered.
Mari waved a hand down her body, gesturing to her proudly waving tail. Her eyes caught on the shimmering length and it again managed to freak her out. How could anything so beautiful yet terrifying be attached to her body?
Realization dawned in his eyes. “Oh. That.”
“Yeah,” she said, pressing her lips. “Tell me how you did it and if it can be undone.”
Ambrose looked away from her, giving her all the answers she needed. “I gave you a part of myself. There isn’t a way to undo what has already been done. Every once in a while, you’ll have a period of…” he paused, cheeks darkening. “Need. We call it a females needing. It only comes every couple of months, but it’s a dangerous time for them. Your tail will turn into legs once again, and you’ll be forced to go onto land to stay safe.
“There’s a small reserved island that Atlantis protects just for that. It’s where we send our females when it happens. They normally bring a male with them for…companionship. Only when you’re experiencing your needing will you be required to stay on land.”
Mari glared at him. “So you’re saying I have to get shit-faced horny and that’s the only time I’ll get my legs back?”
He swallowed, rubbing a hand over his reddening jaw. “It’s more…more complicated than that, Mari. Ah, I think it would be best if we let a female explain this all to you, because I can’t—“
“I can go on land for a couple of hours before my legs come back, but they’ll only stay for days straight, without changing, when I’m horny,” she broke in, needing clarification.
“Please don’t say that word,” he said. His face had turned even redder, to the point of being a tanned tomato. “But…yes. That’s the gist of it. There are some other instances where they could potentially stay longer, but…I am not certain. Atlanteans never wanted to venture onto land.”
“Will it hurt to change back?” she asked, barely believing anything that was being said. On some level, it made sense, but she told herself it was her fishy side making her think that. It felt like someone had dropped her in the Twilight Zone and left her there.
“Nothing except a light tingle. The first transformation will be the only time it hurts to change.”
She nodded, then frowned. “In the cave, though. You looked like you were in a lot of pain…”
“It’s been two thousand years since I’ve been in water,” he reminded her, looking away as if the realization was too painful for him.
She stopped talking for a moment, thinking. That…was a long time. A very long time. More than any
Two thousand years with an abusive, sadistic bitch who needed to do something with her hair, and he was finally free of her. Mari, though? She was trapped in the ocean with an exiled merman.
And the sad thing was, the more time that went by, the more she started to believe that this was all real. As real as she was, as real as her tail felt and looked. Mari wasn’t dead, she wasn’t in any sort of TV show with a messed up sense of humor, and she wasn’t going insane.
This, she realized as she gazed at Ambrose, was all real.
Panic seized her, right before she jerked away from him. She couldn’t stand being near him. This was his fault. He’d changed her, he’d ruined her, and now he was going to drag her around the ocean with him until she died—
Oh god. What if she didn’t die? He was more than two thousand years old—did that mean she was sentenced to an eternity in the ocean with him? This giant, obviously powerful merman who had a demented bitch after him? This…compassionate, silent man who had been alone for so many years?
The anxiety left her in a rush, leaving her deflated. Ambrose was compassionate and kind and gentle. He couldn’t help what had been done to him, and he’d only changed her to save her life. But he had given her some useful information…
Like her legs.
What if she lived in a beach house, near the ocean? She could still see her family, still teach. Maybe only tutoring for short hours, but she could still do what she loved the most.
Mari couldn’t quit teaching. It was her job, her life. She couldn’t throw it all away just because a cruise had sunk and her life had changed forever. As the thought came to her, she knew that her rationality had left her— any sane person would have crashed and burned by now.
But the aspect of having a life…
Her family had money, she had more than enough funds in the bank, and now that her and Ray were done, he wouldn’t be mooching off of her. And her brothers would be more than fine with visiting her at a beach house; they’d been wanting to learn to surf for years.
Finally feeling a small spark of hope, she gazed at Ambrose as he swam ahead of her, about to tell him of her plan.
And then saw the state of his back.
Blood was trailing behind him, oozing from his back in thin, whispery strings. Her stomach heaved and she rushed forward, ignoring how much muscle she could see from underneath the skin that was torn away from his back.
“Ambrose! Your back! Oh my god, you’re bleeding so much. We need to stop, get this taken care of….shit, there’s so much,” she whispered, grabbing his arm.
He barely cast a glance at her, leading them over a small rift in the ground, and then swimming lower through the drop.“It’s fine, Mari. It’ll stop on its own and close. We need to keep moving.”
“No,” she said forcefully, putting a hand on his chest and making him still. She suspected he did it for her own sake; a man as big as Ambrose was could have easily forced his way past her. “This has to be cleaned up or it could get infected.”
He flashed a grin at her. Mari froze. A light entered his eyes and he looked almost…charming. She swallowed, pushing the thought out of her head. After Ray and what he had done, Mari wasn’t going to get involved with guys anymore…if she even could.
She stopped smiling.
Did fish have sex?
“The salt water is cleaning it out and we heal at very fast rates. Don’t worry about my back.” His deep, rumbling voice pulled her head out of the gutters.
A thought occurred to her. “Won’t the blood attract…sharks?” She shuddered, moving closer to him.
His head shook, and those amazingly blue eyes scanned the area. “No, it won’t. If anything, it’ll tell them to back off. Creatures of the ocean know who and what to eat, and I’m not on the menu.” Ambrose frowned. “However, I don’t know what they’ll think about you…”
She blinked. “What do you mean? I’m not shark bait, Ambrose,” she said sternly, poking a finger at his chest. “Don’t play any tricks on me!”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, a light entering his eyes. Something told her that Ambrose had just lied to her—then she realized that he was trying to tease her. In a really mean, cruel way, but nonetheless, he was trying.
She smiled to herself. He still had the same sense of desolation surrounding him that he’d had in the cave, but he was making an effort to lighten things up. If anyone had told her that she’d be joking around with a mermaid at the bottom of the ocean a couple days ago, she would have snorted and called them insane.
But this was actually happening, and it didn’t feel fake at all.
Yeah.
Definitely real.
Shoving the thoughts that arose out of her head, Mari raised a brow at him. “Oh, yeah? I’m pretty sure the only reason you changed me was so you could have a running chance when the big sharkies attacked us.”
He held a hand to his chest—a large, thick hand against a really, sexy pectoral. Her mouth watered. “I’m offended, Mari. Maybe I wanted to throw you at the Octopian instead, since they are much more of a threat than sharks? They would relish sucking the life out of you.” Ambrose laughed shortly.
Mari hid her appalled shock. Okay, so he was really rusty on the funny aspect and awkward in an adorably gruesome way. Nice going on getting stuck with a deranged merman, Mari. Next thing you know he’s going to be shoving you into whirlpools as a prank.
“Octopian?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of them before.”
He shrugged. “Basically, they’re large Atlanteans with eight tentacles and their only source of food is us. Except they don’t really like the tail… Although they use it as a seasoning.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Ambrose shook his dark head. “I’m not. I hear they’ll leave the tail of an Atlantean out in the sun to dry off, shred it, and sprinkle it over their meals. I don’t know why they would do that because our tails are really high in fat, but,” he said nonchalantly, shrugging, “my mother always said, ‘Don’t flap it till you try it.’”
“That has got to be the most disgusting thing I have ever heard in my life.”
“How about you try going up shore and finding a cut off fishtail in the process of being ground?” he asked, giving her a look. “Now that is the most disgusting thing.”
Mari felt like vomiting while Ambrose only chuckled at her. “I’m kidding, Mari.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, though her stomach still rolled. Okay, that was good—
“They don’t bother to dry it out before they shave it.”
“Oh my god!” she burst out, rounding on him. Frustration through her hands in the air. “No more talking about shaving things that I now possess.”
He held up his hands in defense. “I’m just trying to tell…”
“No! I’m done!” Then she flapped away from him with short thumps against the water, huffing.
Ambrose followed behind her, and she could easily hear the laughing that he was trying to hide. She ignored it. If Ambrose was going to scare her like that and get away with it, he had another thing coming.
“They are real, you know,” he said from behind her. His voice was closer than she’d thought it was.
“I don’t care if they are or not,” she grumbled, casting him a dark look over her shoulder. Oh, yeah. He was really close. So close that she could now feel the tip of her fin brushing against the lower part of his tail. She quickly swam forward, putting distance between them.
“But you should. If one were to come after us right now, I don’t know if I would be strong enough to fight it off. At least not yet,” he said, his voice showing his…self-loathing? Mari bit her lip, but didn’t turn around.
“They’re like octopi?”
“No. They are much more dangerous and cunning. One of them...” He trailed off.
Mari looked behind her and was taken back. The pain on his face was so intense that her heart nearly broke in half.
“One of them what?” she asked softly.
“Nothing. They’re just one of the worst predators in the sea and if you ever stumbled into one of their lairs… You’d never make it out. Not in one piece, at least.”
She shivered. His face closed up completely, guarding her against any emotions he was feeling. Something had happened between him and an Octopian, and it hadn’t been pleasant. Did it have something to do with how he’d been exiled?
Because his guard was up, she could only guess.
“So…” she started, feeling like the queen of awkwardness. “How do we eat now? My stomach doesn’t take large amounts of sushi well.”
“Sushi?” Ambrose frowned. “I have akrina getting something for you now. It will take some time for you to adjust to everything, but we will help you.”
“I take it it’s not going to be Subway?” she asked herself lightly, sighing. That akrina thing freaked her out like no other thing had before, so the fact that it was getting her food was reason enough to worry. She’d probably take a bite out of it and come away with that slimy hand sticking out of her mouth.
Gross.
“I don’t know what Subway is, but I can tell you she is retrieving fruit. She’s partial to it,” he said with a tender smile. The way he talked about the akrina reminded her of how her own father spoke of her.
“Mathematician genius,” he would boast. “She knew how to speak Spanish and French by the time she was five.” That was probably one of the things he bragged about most. While it was true that she was trilingual, having learned ASL specifically for her teaching career, there had been a lot of other things he’d been ecstatic about. Every good paper had gone on the fridge, and every lost tooth had a special picture in the picture book.
Listening to Ambrose talk about his akrina like it was his daughter caused an ache to settle in her chest. She hadn’t seen her parents in weeks, even though they’d planned on visiting before the cruise. They’d gotten caught up with a hurricane recovery team in Hawaii and hadn’t been able to make it.
Right then, she felt a slimy sensation tickle its way up her arm. She gasped, barely holding in her scream as she realized the akrina had come back.
“You need to teach this thing manners,” she growled, trying to force her heart to slow down. The thing was racing like a horse—or would the better term be sea horse?
“She knows plenty of them,” he said defensively as the smaller orb of light came out from somewhere behind him. She watched with her mouth pressed as the two things merged. “Akrina can’t help that she’s a little too friendly.”
“You mean creepy?” she asked. Ambrose held his hand out to the akrina and she gladly went to him. The second they touched, a pile of fruit tumbled from it.
Mari’s mouth dropped open. Peaches, mangos, and oranges were all beginning to float to the surface, deposited from the bottom of the circle of light.
She quickly grabbed a peach and a mango, looking at Ambrose. “How did she do that?”
“Do you have all that you need right now?” he asked, ignoring her question.
She nodded.
“Alright. Go ahead, akrina. Save them for later.”
All of the fruit stopped floating upward, instead being centered to the akrina. One by one, she absorbed each piece of fruit.
“I had no idea she could do that,” she said, taking a healthy bite out of the peach. Expecting to be flooded with salty water, all she tasted was sweetness. It slid down her throat effortlessly, probably the best tasting peach she had ever had in her life.
“She can do a lot of things,” he said, the pride entering his voice again.
Mari took another bite, relishing every single juicy drop that she got. “I’m not going to get one, am I? I mean, since I’m not really a mermaid or whatever you guys are called.”
“Truthfully, I don’t know if you will or not.”
God damn, she hoped she didn’t. Or at least, if she did, the thing didn’t have slimy arms that made her feel like someone was rubbing crushed worms over her skin.
Ambrose continued, his voice deep, lilting. “We are called Atlanteans, but the myths of us are more partial to calling us ‘mermaids’.” She heard the disgust and raised a brow.
“But I’m guessing you don’t like that?”
“Not at all. It’s so...weak. Girly. Atlanteans,” he said, chest buffing with pride, “are strong and dominating. People used to shake with fear whenever someone said our name; Octopians were weary of attacking us, and kings of other species would tread with care.”
She stared at him, silent. His thick black hair was flowing around his face, strong jaw set, and eyes gleaming with the remanence of the past. Things were so much more different now, she thought, not knowing if she should tell him. Atlantis was a myth in her world, and very few people believed in mermaids or anything other than humans and animals.
Mari could only imagine what would happen if people knew that mermaids were real. What would her parents do? Accept her, reject her? If her own grown-up daughter came home one day and suddenly told Mari that she was infected with fish juice and had a tail every couple of hours, how would she react?
Her parents’ love was unconditional, always had been. But Mari wasn’t...Mari. She didn’t have a boyfriend, she didn’t have feet—so what did she have now?
“What is wrong?”
Mari snapped back to reality, looking at Ambrose to find him staring at her with concern.
“Uh...nothing is wrong. Just thinking.”
“Of?”
“A fish of few words,” she muttered, before sighing. “What would I do if I wanted to go back to the surface? To teach still. I can’t just disappear,” she said. As they glided above the floor of the ocean, she swore she had seen that exact same bunch of coral before, with the exact same group of clown-fish...but then, everything looked the same.
It was beautiful, entrancing, but it all looked the same. Her eyes weren’t blurry like they had been when she’d been a “mortal,” as Ambrose called it. She could see with even better clarity than before, and every single inch of reef they’d covered had looked so much alike that every other yards she saw a repeat of what she had seen only minutes before.
She and Ambrose didn’t stop their pace just to talk. No, every time she wanted to take a second to breathe—suck down water, whatever—her hunk of merman would force her to keep going. They were in the open and he wanted them out of it.
“Mari,” he said slowly, making a turn like he had some sort of internal navigation. “You can’t go to the surface again...”
“Why, because of my tail?” she asked.
“What do you think would happen to you if your tail grew in front of the humans?” His eyes were hard and his jaw was clenched. Obviously this was not something he wanted to discuss.
“See, there’s the thing. I wouldn’t have to worry about turning into a fish because I would live right by the ocean. There are plenty of beach houses that are only yards away from the ocean. It wouldn’t be a problem,” she said hopefully, her tail starting to vibrate like it had earlier before she shot forward.
She grasped Ambrose’s arm to keep herself attached. His muscle jumped under her palm but she ignored it, holding tighter to him.
“It’s perfect. I can tutor right from the beach and still be safe there. Plus, you could stay with me!”
For the first time in what seemed like hours, Ambrose stopped them. Abruptly. Hard.
“Don’t talk like that, Mari,” he growled. His eyes flashed with a dangerous emotion that she couldn’t explain—didn’t want to explain.
Her head shook. “No, you don’t talk like that! There isn’t any reason why I can’t go back to the surface and carry on with my life. And it would be even better for you, because you’ll be by the water and you’ll have a start at something!”
This could be an amazing start for him—them. She could forget about the fish problem when she was teaching, and he could do whatever he wanted. He could start a life, meet people, get friends. She grinned at him, barely noticing her tail as it vibrated enough to shake her.
“Ambrose, this is perfect for you—”
“Mari. I said don’t. I can’t live on the surface and neither can you, so drop the subject. I’ll find somewhere for us to stay, away from Ceto. When you get used to your tail and know the rules of the sea, I’ll let you go on your own. Until then, keep this impossible thought of living on the land out of your mind.” His snarl was so violent, so loud, that the force had her flinching.
“I...”
He slashed a hand through the water, silencing her. “No. I won’t have it. Keep yourself quiet until we reach F-Inn.”
Ambrose turned around sharply, leaving her to tread there in silence. Ambrose had yelled at her? For wanting to give him a chance at a future? Her lips pressed tightly. Oh yeah. They were going to have to do something about that. Mari wasn’t going to be taking shit from any man—and that included men with tails.
But no matter how angry she was with him, or how much she wanted to rip his spine out through his tail and watch him float like a limp piece of seaweed to the ocean floor, Mari couldn’t get the image of how ungodly beautiful he had been when he’d rounded on her. She hadn’t felt fear, or thought for even a second he would hurt her. Ambrose was not that kind of man, no matter how little she knew him. He had risked his ass to save them, and that was all there was to it—he wouldn’t go back on that by physically hurting her.
The image of his eyes, ocean blue with streaks that looked like lightning flashing through them, was imprinted in her mind. Thick lashes, as black as night, surrounding the depths that burned into her... Damn, but the image made the water around her feel like it was heating up.
She pushed her hair behind her ear, swallowing. Her mother had once said, "If you get tingly when he's mad, tie him to your bed and don't let him go. I did the same to your father, and he's the man of my dreams..."
And staring at Ambrose as he stalked away from her, the akrina buzzing after him, a little voice in the back of her mind told her that her mama was definitely a wise woman.