NOTE: This prequel novella was written before Book 8, Shattered by the Sea Lord, so it introduces characters that you will not see again for quite a long time! Chronologically, it takes place 10 years before the rest of the series. I usually put it right before Book 8, though.

Red skies at morning, sailors take warning

10 years before the rest of the series, April

Bex was cracking up.

“Turn back,” the warrior with iridescent tattoos called to her as the ocean spray splashed his bulging thighs. “You are in danger.”

She was in danger.

Because until a few moments ago, she’d thought she was alone on the North Atlantic, loosely clasping the wheel of her restored forty-foot sloop, daydreaming about her bright future.

Strong wind filled her new sails and whipped through her wild dirty-blonde hair. Her shining bow plunged through rolling swells that sprayed her bare legs with sticky salt.

It was a great day to be alive. A great day to flee her abusive ex-husband. A great day to chart a course into beautiful solitude, staying in port only long enough to repair and resupply, as she embraced the freedom of the infinite blue sea.

“Get off the water,” the warrior demanded, in what was starting to sound like a very reasonable request.

He stood about, oh, two yards to her left, knee deep in the swells.

If her eyes could be believed – and that was now a big if – he was surging along faster than the average dolphin keeping pace with the sloop.

Which was impossible.

She was clearly going crackers.

Forget pinching herself. Bex walked to the starboard side, gripped the rail, and leaned down.

A nice, big wave of cold water slapped her in the face.

She wiped the liquid away on her sleeve and opened her eyes.

The day still looked amazing.

The tattooed man still looked spicy.

Well, when marine investigators boarded to write her obituary, today’s captain log would mark the beginning of her tragic descent into madness.

Okay. Might as well get some details for future investigators.

Deep red tattoos slashed the warrior’s broad, muscular body, from the medium-length dark hair atop his head down to where his knees disappeared in the waves.

He was nude except for sharp daggers sheathed in woven seaweed on his curling biceps and flared quads. He carried a metal trident. The long length rested easily in the crook of an elbow. He was a tribal warrior, master of water, inked in flames.

He shouted at her in a strange language.

Great. Auditory hallucinations.

“Huh?” she replied.

The warrior fixed her with a fierce aqua-blue glare. His intensity pinned her to the deck. Dream or not, he stared straight into her soul. A jolt of sensual awareness shot tingles through her body.

Crazy.

“I said, do you speak the sacred language, or English? Leave this place, or you will die.”

So, he was multilingual. A real polyglot. And with an odd, tantalizing accent. His powerful voice was rough and uncompromising, just like his gaze.

“Seek safe harbor. That is my command.” He jackknifed into the breaking waves.

His ankles terminated in two fins, wide and flat, like a scuba diver. They smacked the surface with the clap of a whale’s tail.

A merman?

She raced to the port side.

His shadow passed under her hull.

He was gone.

Bex backed to the center of the deck. At least the single mast felt solid. She leaned against it as she rolled with the familiar waves. On the ocean, there was no solid ground.

Her heart raced like she’d almost scraped a million-dollar yacht. Her body throbbed with awareness.

Leave this place, or you will die.

So. She and her way-too-real merman agreed. Bex’s brain had cracked like a cheap ceramic mug. The sooner she got to port, the better.

But what was up with her imagination?

Had she ever throbbed? For anyone?

Steven had worked hard to get his midfifties body into shape for squash, racquetball, and polo. He’d invested in hair plugs, brow implants, and jaw augmentation. His career had depended on looking young and vital, and she’d admired his dedication.

But…

Her dream warrior had more virility in one pinky finger than Steven had had in his entire life.

Bex scrubbed her face.

This was neither here nor there. She’d married Steven during a period of numbness. She hadn’t expected him to light her soul on fire. She’d thought she could never feel fire again.

Now, though…

Now, she heated with awareness for a merman who didn’t exist.

Huh.

When she’d planned to become a solo sailor who loved the sea, she hadn’t meant to love the sea.

And there was no crew to shake her out of her insanity.

Bex fell back on routine. She toured her sloop, checked every system, looked for trouble in the taut ropes and familiar polish. Forty feet was a lot of boat for one sailor. She was like the big rig ice trucker of the Atlantic.

Nothing was amiss.

Nothing but her mind…

She returned to the pilothouse.

Every sailor hallucinated. Too much rum, too little sleep. Solo racers went the craziest. Bad beef during a race from New Zealand to Australia had almost turned one racer toward the wrong continent. He’d hallucinated that the long-dead captain of La Niña had commandeered his wheel. A few hours later, he’d chucked the beef and the dead captain over the side and resumed course.

It made a funny story in the pub closest to the marina, surrounded by ten wide-eyed new friends who would reward the best stories with another round, a plate of shared fries, and an even crazier story about a friend of a friend of a friend of a salty old sea dog.

It was not a funny story midjourney all alone.

There had to be a logical explanation.

Bex hadn’t touched any rum, didn’t feel sick, and ran on six reasonable hours of sleep. She swigged from a freshwater bottle slung to her waist.

Her cheeks still felt so, so hot.

Maybe not enough sunscreen?

She slathered herself in SPF 30 and tied on a brimmed fishing hat.

Then, since there was nothing more she could do but meditate on imaginary tattooed abs, she tried to forget about it. At dinner, she double-checked the expiration dates on the peanut butter and jelly. That night, she dropped sails and turned in early, just in case.

The next day, right after she finished her lunch of shredded tuna straight from the can topped with a dollop of mayonnaise—gourmet chef she was not—her warrior returned off her port bow.

“I told you to leave this place or die!”

Heat surged into her body.

She bolted to her feet and dropped her empty can. The tin clattered to the deck, rolled off the side, and disappeared into the ocean.

Krill on a Cracker Jack.

“Do you understand?” he demanded.

Bex tucked her fork into her cargo shorts and faced the warrior.

Ripples of muscle tightened his abdomen, rivulets of water poured over his broad pectorals, and the fist he raised could smash through solid stone.

He was powerfully sexy.

And he’d demanded an answer. Well, she had a few questions of her own.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I cannot protect you.”

“Protect me? From what?”

“My father has sentenced you to death. I should not speak to you. But I—” He broke off, and his gaze darted to something hidden beneath her boat. He frowned. Lowering the trident with intense focus, he leveled the sharp blades on a submerged enemy. “Get off the water.”

The warrior dove and disappeared.

The aftershocks of his visit crackled in her veins.

Because, of course, he matched all her fantasies. He was sexy, protective, and imaginary. Three of Bex’s favorite traits in a lover.

She slathered on the sunscreen.

I cannot protect you.

Who was the father of a merman? Poseidon?

Great. Now her subconscious thought the god of the ocean was out to get her. Would he show up in muscles and tats off her port bow too?

Or was her mind trying to warn her of something more sinister?

Bex hadn’t weathered storms by ignoring her gut, even though her gut was usually more of a shapeless dread or hair-lifting-on-the-back-of-her-neck feeling than a visual and auditory hallucination.

She studied her weather reports, tuned in her marine radio to get the latest updates, and plotted, then replotted, then re-replotted her course.

Too bad she hadn’t been able to collect Hunter S. Thomcat before she’d left. His soothing fluffy orange-and-white presence would have kept her mind more focused.

Or would it?

If she was already this far gone—having recurring conversations with a mythical creature—then it was just as well he’d been on a kitty walkabout the day she’d had to flee. If her fantasy warrior managed to convince her to do something terminally stupid, like dive headfirst into the drink or navigate into the infinite blue forever, then at least she couldn’t take her innocent kitty with her.

That night, Bex stared at the ceiling of her small but comfortable bunk while her boat drifted.

What was wrong with her?

Why now, of all times, did she snap?

Normally, Bex liked solitude. Even when their marriage had seemed good and Steven had come home every night, she’d enjoyed the long solitary days at the dry docks scraping barnacles off her keel, patching every other inch of deck, sanding and staining and oiling. She’d spent a thousand hours on the hull and another thousand rewiring, replumbing, and rebuilding the engine.

This sloop had been a project of love and of grief, a way to honor her father and say goodbye to the quiet, unemotional man who’d never even told her he was sick.

Her earliest memory was being left at her grandparents’ house, clinging to her dad’s leg and sobbing. Her dad had squatted down, touched her tearstained cheek, and said in his gruff way, “Stop the crying. Next time I’m in port, I’ll take you out on the bay.” Her tears had dried up, and he’d kept his promise.

Learning about his death in a distant marina decades later, she’d kept her tears in check, but it didn’t matter. He’d never be able to take her out on the bay again.

That was probably why, when she’d discovered her ex-husband’s infidelity, she hadn’t cried. She’d calmly arranged her life and then asked for a divorce.

Steven had torn up the papers in front of her.

“If you breathe one word of this, I will destroy your precious boat,” he’d seethed. “I will tie you to the mast and light it on fire. You can join your father in a Viking funeral. And that’s fitting, isn’t it? Because your heart is a tundra.”

He could be poetic when he got mad.

“Look at you. You’re an emotionless robot. A walking dead person. There’s no passion in that flat chest. Nothing! Admit it. You never loved me.”

“Well, I thought—”

“You’re not capable of love. All you care about is your absent cat, your dead dad, and that soon-to-be-matchsticks sailboat.”

He’d stormed to his gold Corvette and screeched out of their gated community, ending their marriage with the scent of burned rubber.

She’d climbed into her sensible silver Camry and driven faster.

From the Norfolk marina, she’d called her lawyer, arranged rescue for her absent cat, and sailed away in the sloop that very night.

And she’d felt good about her decision too.

Good until a figment of her imagination had popped up and threatened her.

She’d spent too many years away from the sea grieving her dad’s death. And that had been a mistake. Rather than seek a cure for her depression on land, she should have sought it on the water. So what if she didn’t express herself well? The ocean didn’t care. It rewarded action, not feelings.

So why, now that she was finally doing the right thing, did she have to question everything?

The night of pondering brought no answers. The following day, just after she finished slathering herself with yet another thick coating of SPF 30, she was treated to a third visit by her fantasy warrior.

“This is your final warning!” he shouted.

Her body flushed with tingling awareness.

Bex dropped the sunscreen. It slid across the rolling deck and hurtled toward the warrior.

Uh-oh.

He leaped forward and caught it in one hand.

Whew.

“Sorry.” She padded to the port side and reached out a hand.

He fell back under a larger wave, then kicked and, in a massive show of athletics, flew out of the water. With the trident balanced casually in the crook of his elbow again, he thumped the hull, his free hand gripping the railing beside hers. He hung off the outside of her ship, his fins shifted to normal-sized human toes where they pressed against the smooth fiberglass, and dropped the sunscreen into her outstretched palm.

She shoved it in her pocket. “Thanks.”

“Yes.” The warrior glared at her. “I retrieve your treasure even though you defy my order.”

“I’m not trying to.” She sat on the deck, lowered her legs on either side of a stanchion, and rested her elbows on the rail. “I’m going to land as fast as I can.”

“You remain on the water.”

“I can’t fly.”

“Humans do. Metal birds carry them.”

“But I don’t have one.” She pointed at her empty deck.

His gaze followed her gesture and returned to her. This close, his eyes were mesmerizing. Bright Caribbean-blue irises threaded with the same dark, iridescent red as his tattoos. They curled like flaming vines across his imperious jaw.

Her tender bits throbbed.

This desire was unnatural, but it felt perfectly normal.

Just like him.

“I should land in Bermuda tomorrow,” she said, trying to focus on anything but the sensation of want tightening her nipples. “So long as the wind holds.”

“That may not be soon enough to avoid the wrath of my father.”

“Your father Poseidon?”

“No, my father is the king of Lusca. You trespass over our city.”

“Over your city…” She tore her gaze away from him and down into the impenetrable blue water. “I didn’t mean to.”

“He does not care about intention. Only action.” The warrior prince frowned. “That is why, if he catches me speaking with you, the consequences will be grave.”

“But here you are.”

“Yes.”

The silence stretched tautly. A thousand messages passed from his body to hers using an age-old language that needed no words. His lips parted, and his jaw lowered. His fierce gaze focused on her mouth.

She swallowed on a dry throat and tightened her thighs around the stanchion. “I’m Bex.”

“Ankena.”

“Hm?”

“I am Ankena, prince of Lusca.”

“Right. Prince…”

In this quiet, he felt so familiar. They’d known each other all their lives, swimming in and out of each other’s dreams.

But they were strangers.

He wasn’t even human.

Heat pulsed in a steady beat through her cold, cold veins.

“Thank you for the warning.” She cleared her throat again. “Even though you’re going against your father and all. Sorry I’m not better at expressing myself. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“There is no need to apologize. I understand.”

“Most people don’t. I’m a little coldhearted.”

“No.”

“Uh, no?”

He pressed his palm against her chest. “You, Bex, have a warm and bright heart.”

Warmth radiated from his touch.

Huh.

She swallowed. “Most people don’t think so.”

“I felt its warmth leagues beneath the surface. It burns even brighter now. Your tongue may be quiet, but your heart is powerful.”

No one had ever said that before.

Her chest squeezed, and a lump formed in her throat.

“Now you glow like the sun.” He lifted his hand to cup her cheek. Despite the strength in him, he was so gentle. “You are a woman of deep feelings.”

How?

He saw her. He really saw her.

“Of course I see you.” His gaze dropped to her lips. “You are my sacred bride.”

She was? Bex?

He drew her forward.

She knew him, hungered for him, wanted him.

And he wanted her.

Shock melted into taut anticipation, and she fell into his kiss.

His hand cupped the back of her head and seated their lips firmly, demanding entrance. She opened to him, just as compelled, needing the sweet, addictive taste. Salt and musk, male and unyielding. That was her prince, Ankena. Their tongues collided like waves breaking against the shore, lingering and lapping, exploring and surging.

Need squeezed her nipples, and a deep, pounding ache awoke between her thighs.

He broke off and glared over his shoulder with a growl.

Her damp lips throbbed. “What?”

“We have been compromised. I will draw my father’s warriors away. No one will harm you.” He returned to her, fierce with possession. “You are mine!”

Her mouth opened and closed. She was helpless in front of him. No sound came out.

He grinned fiercely, as if she’d agreed. “I will find you, Bex, and I will finish claiming you. Wait for me, my passionate bride!”

He released the rail and dove backward, trident out. With a tiny splash, he disappeared into the ocean.

She rested her hot forehead on the cool railing wire. Her heart pounded, and her pussy ached.

He understood her. Even the words she hadn’t said aloud. He’d understood everything.

Without him, her heart felt unmoored.

But he was gone.

Sure he was gone. In fact, he’d never existed. No wonder she felt like she was falling head over heels in love. Steven was spot-on about her loving an absent cat and a dead father. Now, she pledged her soul to a mythic prince from her imagination.

She only loved ghosts who could never love her back.

Bex eventually stood, shook off the last of her tremors, and returned to the pilothouse.

Regardless of whether or not this was all a dream, she would take a good, long rest in Bermuda and plan out the next voyage in her falling-apart life.

* * *

Bermuda didn’t work out.

On the open ocean again less than a month after her kiss, Bex ran a palm across the smooth golden teak charting counter. Its sturdy familiarity gave her comfort.

Because the view outside her pilothouse gave her nightmares.

An hour ago, she’d eaten her breakfast on the deck, enjoying crunchy granola with sweet coconut milk, a creamy banana, and the last chunk of dense johnnycake. Her thick marine sweater was supposed to give way to sunscreen and a turquoise bikini. The weather forecast told her to expect clear skies and vigorous winds all the way to the Bahamas.

Now?

A strange red fog wafted across the calm, opaque ocean.

She’d always respected storms with their awesome violent power, but this mist was the opposite. A red malaise that didn’t move. Warm and humid, it felt like the sea was exhaling onto her neck, slowly suffocating her.

She padded barefoot onto the deck and leaned her elbow on the polished silver rails.

In Bermuda, her newly made sailing friends had laughed at the idea of a merman prince.

“Sure, it feels real!” they’d said. “Your brain controls all five senses. It pulls the wrong lever, and boom, you’re toasting marshmallows with a ghost pirate. Don’t look into the void, Bex! The void looks back.”

She’d also researched Lusca. It wasn’t a city, but a legendary monster in the Caribbean similar to the Loch Ness monster in Scotland, only with fewer sightings. Half octopus and half beautiful woman, she supposedly strangled victims with her hair.

Prince Ankena’s hair was way too short to strangle anyone.

She missed him, though. Hard as it was to miss a figment of her imagination, she felt a solid ache in the center of her chest and searched the horizon.

Now, on day six of her voyage to Nassau, there was no horizon to search.

The hair on the back of her neck tingled. Something was out here, hidden in the fog, and it was not a sexy warrior prince…

Thwap-thwap-thwap-THUNK!

A very large, very awkward albatross tumbled out of the red sky and landed on her deck.

Bex jumped a mile. “Holy— What in the world are you doing here, buddy?”

The all-white bird clambered to its big webbed feet and shook itself. Its wingspan was massive, at least twice the size of her reach.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you real?”

He clacked his beak as if to say, Don’t ask me. I’m just a bird.

“Sure, sure. Sorry. It’s been a weird few weeks.”

He ruffled his feathers in a shrug.

Wandering albatrosses lived in the southern hemisphere, not the north. The last voyage, she’d hallucinated about a big, sexy merman. This voyage, maybe she’d hallucinate about a big, awkward bird. At least wandering albatrosses actually existed.

Birds sometimes overshot their migrations, went the wrong direction, or got blown by storms. This guy’s presence on her boat was unusual, but not impossible. A vagrant’s worst problem was usually starvation.

The albatross bumbled across her deck and poked at a plastic streamer, then tried to tear it off and swallow it.

“Don’t eat that.” She wrapped the streamer more securely. “I have something for you. Just a minute.”

Bex descended to the galley and found a tin of Meow Chow, emptied it onto a plate, and set it on the placid deck. “There you go. ‘Seafood Dream.’ I hope it tastes better than it smells.”

He studied the pâté with his beady black eyes, then ruffled his feathers in another birdy shrug and consumed the small mound in one gulp. He pushed the empty plate and clacked his beak at Bex.

Well, he was hungry.

She brought him a second tin. “You’re lucky the owner isn’t here. I don’t know how Hunter S. Thomcat would feel about sharing.”

He settled in on his second course, scooping up chunks with his beak.

Albatrosses were good luck. They loved fish, squid especially, and Samuel—after the author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—Samuel’s presence made the red fog a little less menacing.

Her radio, which hadn’t been working all morning, suddenly crackled to life. “…crsshhh…anyone? We’re stuck in…going down…crsssh…”

Uh-oh.

Bex raced to the pilothouse, grabbed the mic, and pressed the button to respond. “This is the Daylight Sailor sloop out of Virginia. I hear you. Come again?”

“…crsss …again, anyone? Crsssh…”

She repeated herself, but the other speaker didn’t hear her.

“…crsssh…No wind for hours, we have…crssshh…fog, but can’t see position…crsssh…heart of the Bermuda Triangle…”

The control panel went dark. Her radio died.

She released the mic and stepped back.

Something was very, very wrong.

She’d already checked her systems. All of them. It wasn’t just an electrical short or, worse, a leak flooding her new wires. She almost wished it were, because then things would make sense. The engine compartments were bone dry, and her battery-operated Maglite in her equally dry toolbox wouldn’t turn on. All electronics were dead.

And that just wasn’t possible.

She rubbed her cheeks. They weren’t hot at all. She’d been religious with the sunscreen on this journey.

So why…?

Samuel squawked.

She walked to the middle of her deck, beneath the furled sails, and followed his gaze over the still, red water.

It bubbled like a shaken can of soda.

Samuel flapped his wings, fanning her with an impressive wind. He waddled to the port side and hopped down to the surface of the water. Fish flopped and small squids churned at the surface as if they were trying to escape something rising from beneath. Samuel scooped the trapped fish and squid eagerly.

Bex leaned over the railing.

What was surfacing? A whale?

Twenty feet out, a massive squid tentacle shot from the water. It loomed above her mast over sixty feet in the air. Each sucker was as large as a steering wheel. The trunk was as big as a rubbery pink sequoia.

Its wake rippled across the still ocean and rocked her boat.

She gripped the railing.

It was not real. There was no giant squid. This was revenge for the plates of fried calamari she’d eaten at the pub in Bermuda.

Droplets misted her face.

The tentacle descended.

It struck her mast.

Wood and fiberglass shattered.

Bex scrambled back.

The deck shuddered. Plywood collapsed beneath her bare feet. Chunks of the mast smashed into her pilothouse.

She raced for the dinghy at the stern. Life vest, bowie knife, flares—

A tentacle curled around the dinghy and tore it off.

Metal cleats bent and fittings popped, zinging by her ear.

She ducked.

Other tentacles curled around the port and starboard. The deck tilted, stern lifting into the air.

She grabbed for the wire railing.

It slipped through the bent stanchions.

She slid toward the bow.

Her heart stumbled. Her throat closed. The world narrowed on the monster.

The monster emerged like a red island, its triangular body a sloping volcano. Waves splashed its side-positioned eyeballs. Its beak crunched through the hull.

Water poured into her forward cabins.

Bex slipped across the deck, clawing for anything to hold on to. Everything she’d once bolted down came loose beneath her fingers.

She was going to fall into the squid’s gaping maw.

Prince Ankena launched out of the ocean.

He landed on her deck, barefoot, and slammed the trident into the deck. It pierced the fiberglass core and anchored him. He hooked an arm around her waist and pushed off, yanking his trident free. They landed in the red ocean with a splash. Seawater closed over her head.

She blubbed.

Prince Ankena’s arm cinched around her waist as he lifted her to the surface.

She gasped.

Relief filled her. He’d rescued her. He was real…

A tentacle coiled around them with crushing force. She pushed at the rubbery skin, but it was like pushing a boulder.

Prince Ankena slashed it with his trident. The sharp blade sliced deep.

The tentacle squeezed them harder.

Her ribs groaned as she was crushed against him.

Prince Ankena rocked his trident back and forth, cutting deeper.

The squid loosened its grip and pulled back.

She took a huge breath, holding the air to bob at the surface.

Other tentacles snaked toward them.

He swam after the receding tentacle and severed the last sinews, hacking off the end of the arm.

The squid recoiled. Its other arms retreated, and the monster turned away.

He’d done it. One small warrior had defeated a multi-ton beast.

It turned its deadly destructive power on her boat.

A ripple of water washed over and covered her face. She choked and struck out.

Prince Ankena lifted her to the surface, then cinched an arm around her chest and swam her away from the attack.

The crack of wood and the raucous cries of seabirds were the only sounds.

“I told you to stay on land.” Prince Ankena’s voice broke with anger. “I told you my father would kill you. He tried before, and I stopped him. Was my sacrifice for nothing? I fought his warriors, endured his wrath, and only today—today!—was I allowed to the surface. If I had been delayed even a moment longer, you, Bex…” He broke off, the rough fear in his voice strangled by his rage. “And look! Look at what happened. Because you defied me!”

The giant squid dragged her broken sloop beneath the eerie, mist-filled waves.

She clung to his implacable bicep. “You saved me.”

“But I have not! His spies are here. He will know you survived. So long as you travel on this ocean, you are in danger!”

Waves splashed her face, waking Bex from her numb stupor.

She was floating on the North Atlantic again. The red mist had faded, and the ocean had begun to heave with ordinary swells.

But her sloop was at the bottom of the sea.

And she was being saved, one stroke at a time, by a single-minded rebel prince.

Tears pricked the back of her parched throat.

“Do not grieve,” her warrior demanded, his voice rough as though he were unused to speaking aloud. “I should not have spoken so harshly. My father will never touch you. I will defend you with my life.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, dry. There. He couldn’t complain now.

“Please, Bex. Your grief dims your light. It slows our journey.”

“I’m not crying.”

“I feel your agony. It lances my chest.”

“How?”

“Because we are connected in our souls.”

Right. He heard the words she didn’t say and saw the emotions she refused to show. There was no hiding from him. He saw her, all of her, the good things and the things she tried to hide.

“Your strength gives me strength,” he continued. “Your sadness saps my energy, and we are at risk on the open ocean. I cannot fight with you in my arms. We must go to land quickly where you will be safe.”

“That boat meant a lot to me.”

“We will find you another.”

She snorted. “Sure.”

“Your word does not match your feelings. Why such intense sadness?”

She swallowed the hard knot in her throat. “That boat was my father’s.”

“He will be happy you have your life.”

“Yeah, but he can’t be. That was the last thing I had to remember him by.”

“I understand.” His tone softened.

She sniffed.

But his apology helped a little, and he continued swimming in more comforting silence.

Since her dad’s death, an ice block had formed in her very center. All the feelings she should have experienced—grief, denial, and anger—froze deep inside.

Why had her dad kept his illness a secret?

His old buddies had said he hadn’t wanted to interrupt her free, sailing lifestyle. Yes, they hadn’t seen each other much, but he’d always been her light in the window, her home port, the place she knew she could shelter from any storm. Having that light extinguished had been devastating.

And that was why, while waiting for his estate to get through probate so she could rescue his sloop, she’d settled into a boring desk job and landed in a toxic marriage. She’d been so desperate for something, anything, to give her that missing security.

For most of her marriage, she’d liked that Steven hadn’t asked her how she felt. He never complained that she kept too much inside.

In the end, she’d realized it was because he didn’t care about her feelings, or her, at all.

And now there was Prince Ankena, who didn’t need to ask because he felt everything she felt.

The dangerous sensation deep inside warned that if she let him in, if she tasted the fierce red tattoos or allowed him into her heart, he would melt that ice block, and they would both be flooded with an uncontrollable tempest.

She spread her pruney fingers across the seaweed sheath of the dagger tied flush with his bulging bicep. The pommel felt smooth. He held the trident in the crook of his other arm, triple blades pointed down.

Just like her boat…

She sucked in a breath and struggled to focus on something other than sadness. “Where are you taking me?”

“The Forbidden Island.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It was the last sanctuary of the sacred brides. None of my people would dare step foot onto that holy place. Not even my father.”

“Won’t he be upset if I’m desecrating it?”

“You are my bride. Therefore, you are fit to dwell there.” His incisive gaze pulled to her and away again. “You are mine.”

Sensual awareness stirred in her belly.

“That is why no one will harm you.” His tone turned thunderous as he returned to circling his own problems just as her mind continually circled hers. “Even though, at every turn, you disobeyed!”

“I didn’t want to.”

“But here you were, on the ocean, nearly eaten by my father’s monster! After I told you—”

“I got chased.”

“Chased? By who?”

“My ex-husband.”

Prince Ankena fell silent for several taut minutes. Unlike before, the silence was uneasy. Fraught with churning discomfort.

He hadn’t realized she’d already been married.

Well, she couldn’t help it. Mistakes had been made.

Bex rubbed the silky wet seaweed sheath. “He tore up the papers, but I’ll just get new ones. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

“You already have a soul mate?”

“No!” She laughed, caught a wave wrong, and spluttered, coughing until she cried. She gasped for breath to continue. “No, he’s…I got swept away by a one-sided infatuation. And I was only his lawfully wedded sidepiece. My lawyer said I’ve got grounds for an annulment.”

“He dims your light.”

“Huh?”

“Your light.” Prince Ankena rolled onto his back like an otter and pulled her on top of him. His long legs kicked unfailingly beneath hers. He placed his wide palm on her saturated tank top. “When you speak of him, your soul dims. He was not your true husband.”

“Yeah.” She rested on his broad chest. Torso hard as rock, muscles contracting and releasing in concert. “You understand.”

“When it comes to you, Bex, I always will.”

“Steven only cares about his image. He contacted me in Bermuda and said if I didn’t drop the divorce and come home, I’d regret it. Well, I didn’t come home. The next morning, two men boarded my boat. They knew I wouldn’t scream.”

“Scream?”

“When I get startled, I freeze. Crewmates used to jump out at me just for fun. It gets old by week three into a ninety-day journey.”

“And your ex-husband sent two males to startle you?”

“Worse. I don’t know how much worse, though, because I got lucky. My neighbor was up. He saw something suspicious and called the marina guards.”

“Why did your ex-husband do this?”

“Maybe he thought being a widower was better than an ugly divorce. Better I die a silent victim of a tragic crime.”

“Victim?” Prince Ankena’s expression blackened. “He sent those males to kill you?”

She shrugged.

It had been scary, and she’d fled before her ex could try a second time.

Steven had never raised his hand to her. He’d barely raised his voice. But the instant someone—a competitor at work, a rival in sports, or, at the end, she—threatened his image, he stopped at nothing to get rid of them. She’d never thought he’d go so far as to hire out a hit on someone’s life, but she didn’t doubt he was behind the threat.

Prince Ankena’s arms tightened around her lower back. “No male will ever threaten you. I will tear their throats out. Destroy them!”

She took comfort in his fierce words and in his skill with sharp weapons. “I was only half hoping you were a hallucination.”

“Hallucination! I am very real.”

“Yeah, but I’d never heard of a giant squid attacking a boat. And I read the local legends. There’s no mer city named Lusca.”

“Because we leave no survivors.”

Until her.

The unspoken words lay silent between them.

He rolled over and began kicking more firmly again. “Your light is stronger now, Bex. Concentrate on your feelings of survival. We will reach safety before we are caught by my father.”

With his help, she obeyed.

A small island appeared on the horizon and grew steadily. They reached it just as the sun set on the long day. A barely submerged coral reef warded off approach by boat. He circled the island and entered a secluded sea cave sculpted with wavy lines. Darkness enveloped them. And then the cave opened into a beautiful lagoon. The twilight sun filtered through vine-filled holes in the ceiling.

He lifted her onto a smooth, damp rock. “Rest.”

She crawled to a lush water bowl carved in the wall, pushed aside the brushy plants, and dipped her face straight in. The water was cool and tasted rainwater fresh. She drank her fill.

Then, she pulled off her dripping shorts and tank top, wrung them out, and laid them in the sunniest patch of the dwindling light.

A chill breeze made her damp underwear and sports bra even colder.

She collapsed on her back. Even though he had done all the swimming, she felt exhausted. Her muscles pinged.

Her stomach growled.

She turned to the edge of the rock. “Prince Ankena, do you…?”

He had slipped away. A small splash rippled out. The wind whistled across the holes in the ceiling. And silence.

She sat up with an effort. “Prince Ankena?”

No answer.

Eerie stillness filled the cave.

She was alone.

Alone.

Shaking terror pooled in her belly like a dark shadow.

Alone—

Prince Ankena burst out of the lagoon and thumped a white hunk of tentacle onto the rock ledge.

She shuddered with relief.

“I—Bex, why are you so frightened?” He clambered from the pool and looked genuinely remorseful. “I was beneath the water, there. Do you not sense me as I sense you?”

She shook her head.

He frowned. “That is…but we are mates. You are my bride. Oh.” His imperious brow smoothed. “You have not accepted my mating gem or drunk the elixir. Of course.”

“Gem? Elixir?”

“Yes. You cannot know. I will explain, but first, eat this for your hunger. And…ah, there is another…” He climbed up invisible finger holds in the rock wall, stretched out, and pulled down a mass of grapes dangling through a sunny hole. He laid them out and took a seat next to her, his legs angled in such a direction that his large, relaxed cock was mostly obscured. He cut off a slice of the squid and offered it to her.

She accepted with shaking hands.

The meat was chewy and raw, and the grapes were mostly seed with a tiny skin of sweetness. Her stomach accepted both greedily and demanded seconds.

He ate beside her in tranquil silence.

But even though she couldn’t sense him with merman magic, she could still feel little hints. Impressions. Hidden meanings in the sideways glance he gave her and then the fierce glare he bestowed on the distant cave entrance.

He would have to return to the sea to face down his father.

Their peace in this cave was temporary.

She took the dagger he had left out and sawed at the squid. The blade was wicked sharp, and she placed it respectfully on the seaweed sheath.

He finished eating and studied her. “You appreciate my food offering?”

“Needs a little lemon. Maybe garlic.”

“What is lemon and garlic?”

“A bad joke.” She took a steadying breath. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me. Thank you.”

“Your sadness returns.”

She rubbed her chest. He knew. “I just…I’m thinking about the future. How can I help?”

“You can help by channeling your strength. Do not dim your light in my presence.”

“Dim my light?”

“I am your mate. Your one. Shine your light with brilliant happiness. That will give me the power I need.”

“I am happy…”

“Your tongue lies.” He scooted forward and pressed his palm against her chest. “Your soul does not.”

His hand warmed her chilled skin.

If Bex let him in, the ice block would melt.

She’d craved heat for years. She’d thought she’d never feel warm again.

Prince Ankena was the only one who could break her free.

She set aside the squid meat, even though she was still hungry, and leaned into his touch.

He pulled loose his daggers and set them within arm’s reach by his trident, disarming so that he was totally nude. Then he pulled her into his arms. Cradling her with tender gentleness, he rested her head against his iron shoulder and made a shelter for her with his arms.

Droplets of salt had dried on his curling tattoos. She traced the artful flames across his deltoids and over his pectorals. His steady breaths lifted and lowered her, regular and gentle, and his constant heartbeat thudded against her ear.

She could snuggle in his embrace forever.

But nothing lasted forever. “What happens now?”

“Now, I go to my father and ask his permission to make you my bride.”

Oh…kay. “Your father who’s trying to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“The one who punished you for saving me? That guy?”

“He is king.” Prince Ankena tucked a lock of her dirty-blonde hair behind her ear. “I must obtain his permission to take a blossom from our sacred Life Tree. You will drink its nectar and gain the ability to transform.”

“Transform,” she repeated.

He flexed his ankle. His foot elongated into a fin, stretching out the toes, and then snapped back to normal. “Transform.”

Well, that would be cool.

But…

“You’re just going to ask him?” she pressed. “Just go up and say, ‘Hey, remember that woman you tried to turn into squid food? About that…’”

“No, I will say, ‘Father. I honor you above all warriors. You are my king. This modern human woman, Bex, is my sacred bride. Her soul burns as bright as the sun. She is not our enemy and will strengthen our city with her light.’”

“You never mentioned I was your bride?”

“I intended to find you later, so there was no need.”

“No need to risk making him angry,” she said. “Because he’s not just going to accept me for his future daughter-in-law.”

“It is not you he objects to, Bex. My father hates all on the surface. He will feel differently once he understands.”

“And you’re going to make him.”

Prince Ankena curled one hand into a fist. “I vow it.”

She couldn’t see his soul or anything, but she could again feel the strength of his conviction. He truly believed he could go up to his dad and change a sentence ending in a watery grave to nuptials.

Well, she didn’t know. Maybe it was that easy.

“And, after he approves, I will bring you the blossom and my mating gemstone. Humans value them. Perhaps you could buy a new boat on the mainland.”

“You’ll take me to the mainland?”

“After you have tasted the nectar, no shoreline will be beyond your reach. But yes, after we have joined and you have performed your duties in my city, I will return you to wherever you wish to go.”

“Even though I know about you? I survived the squid and all.”

“You will not betray us, Bex.”

No one would believe her anyway. “Have you always been down there? Just beneath the waves? Have I seen you before?”

“Perhaps your soul sensed mine, but I did not become aware of you until your last crossing.”

“But you have been there all along…”

“The mer once shared the land and sea with humans in an ancient city known as Atlantis.”

“Atlantis!”

“Yes, Atlantis. Then our friendship broke. Our city sank, our queens died out, and humans hunted us. To survive, we forged a secret covenant with sacred island brides to give us young fry sons.”

“And the giant squid?”

“They are native to Lusca. We cannot allow any human to survive and jeopardize our secret.”

And she had survived.

His arms tightened around her. “You are not a human survivor. You are my mate. No male will ever touch you again, mer or human. Any who dares will die.”

The sunlight fully faded, covering them both in darkness.

“I must go to my father.” He laid her down on the cool rock and withdrew. “You will be safe on this island.”

She shivered. “Don’t leave.”

Prince Ankena hesitated. One broad hand blanketed her hip while the other cushioned her head. “I must.”

She needed another person to prove she wasn’t crazy.

And she needed him to melt the ice block deep in her heart.

Because if he didn’t, she would freeze again, as she had after her father’s funeral. Dead on the water, numbed by grief, unable to see. The thick red fog had blinded and strangled her for years before today. It was only once she’d gotten on the sea and met Prince Ankena that she’d begun to feel the sun on her skin for the first time.

And she craved his sun. His soul light, his touch, his warmth. His kiss.

The hard, trident-thick rod of his cock pressing with arousal against her inner thigh.

He stroked her hair again. “Bex.”

She pulled back and gazed into his eyes. In the darkness, all she could see was him. Their souls connected, and, deep within, her heart squeezed in a fist.

The longing in his fierce yet kind eyes intensified. “I will claim you as my bride, not as a furtive secret. You must be honored, treasured, celebrated. We will share our vows before the Life Tree, and all the warriors of the city will cheer your name.”

A lump formed in her throat. “Prince—”

“Ankena.” He nuzzled her. “To you, always Ankena.”

“Ankena.” She licked her lips.

He tracked that small movement. His hard cock brushed her bare thigh. “I must not join with you. Do not tempt me.”

She needed his warmth, his vitality, his certainty. He was bolted down. She wanted to grab on with both hands. “Ankena…”

Her need must have pierced his control. With a groan, his mouth descended. His lips covered hers.

The floodgates opened.

She clung to him with a heart sharp with grieving, and he met her with what he was: a fierce warrior, with passion as hot as red chili peppers, stimulating all her senses.

She opened her mouth to his.

He devoured her, tenderizing her lips with his teeth. She accepted him. He plunged his tongue deep and retreated, inviting her to chase him. She did, thrusting and sparring, returning his intensity with even greater focus.

He grunted with surprise and flattened his palms on either side of her head, controlling their union. Their bellies rubbed, and he lifted, flexing to hold his trim waist over hers, taut.

So hot.

She explored his knotted back and learned the curves of his tight butt.

He kissed down her jaw, attacking the sensitive column of her neck, plundering her collarbone.

He took all she had, and she wanted to give him so much more.

Pleasure throbbed.

His bulging quads forced her thighs wide enough to take him. His cock rubbed against her wet underwear.

She wanted him in her slick pussy.

Bex traced the unbending definition of his firm abdomen, his multipack. A treasure trail led her lower to his hard cock head, full shaft, unbending arousal. She curled her fingers around the impressive strength of his male erection.

He groaned and ripped his cock out of her hand, then forced her sports bra down, unleashing her aching breasts, and rolled her chilled flesh in his palms. Her nipples contracted with sweet need. He closed his mouth over the puckered nubs. His tongue dipped and swirled in a full-frontal attack.

Her core throbbed. Desire lanced her, and then the ache intensified.

She wriggled out of her water-stretched cotton underwear.

He stormed kisses down over her belly, scored every inch of skin with his lips, marked her with love bites.

Her breath came in short, hard gasps. He made her come alive. She arched on the rock.

His tongue charged her feminine interior, shaping and possessing her soft folds. He laved her sensitive nub.

Pleasure rolled over her like soft, hot waves, a rising tide of unstoppable rapture.

The nightmares of the past faded as Prince Ankena melted her from the outside in, stoking a fire that would never be extinguished. His tongue dominated and uplifted her, crowned her a princess of the sea. She released her grief and terror in one long, desperate explosion.

She collapsed onto the hard rock.

Prince Ankena tucked her against him. His cock twitched, hard and ready.

She curled her hand around his shaft.

He pulled free and tangled her fingers in his instead. “Rest now.”

Yes.

She hugged him like a full-body heater, lulled by the steady thub-thub, thub-thub of his heart into a dreamless sleep.

But it was over far too soon.

Bex awoke with a lurch.

Morning light cracked open her eyelids. Her body kinked, muscles cramped and sore.

Prince Ankena had disentangled himself. He was sliding toward his trident, which, during the pleasures of the night, had moved out of arm’s reach.

A splash echoed through the lagoon.

He darted the last few feet, lofted his trident, and shouted, “Show yourself!”

The shout reverberated.

Bex quickly donned her clothes. They were drier, but uncomfortable wet patches remained.

Another wave slapped the inner rock of the still lagoon.

“Surface,” Prince Ankena growled. “Or I will make you.”

A warrior emerged in the center of the lagoon. His body was covered with vivid orange tattoos. Short dark hair covered his head. A braid dangled by his right ear.

He glared at Bex.

She stared right back. Another merman! She’d gotten used to Prince Ankena. Sure, there was a whole city, sure, they commanded giant squid to drag boats to the bottom of the sea, sure, Atlantis was a floating city one time.

But this guy was a merman.

Her brain click-click-clicked. All crank, no spark.

“Lieutenant Konomelu.” Prince Ankena straightened and thumped the base of his trident against the rock. “I told you not to disturb me. What’s the meaning of your insubordination?”

He answered in a strange language.

“English,” Prince Ankena snapped. “There are no secrets from my bride.”

Konomelu’s eyes narrowed. “Your warriors expected you to return long ago.”

“You should have waited with the monster.”

“You ordered them off so they wouldn’t observe your treason! Once they realized you’d taken something onto the Forbidden Island, I had to lie and say you found a stolen treasure on the human’s boat.”

“That was no lie. Bex is my bride.”

“And they also sought the steak of squid meat we carried.” Konomelu glared meaningfully at the chunk sitting on the rock where they’d left it the night before. “They will not wait much longer.”

“I will come.” Prince Ankena armed himself, tying the daggers on his biceps and one on his thigh. He left the other with its sheath on the rock before Bex. “For you.”

She curled her fingers around the solid pommel. “How long will you be gone?”

“To reach the city and return, fourteen surface days.”

“Two weeks!”

“It is far. I will swim hard.”

“Two weeks…” She clutched the knife. What was the mantra? A human could survive three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food? And then there was exposure…

“Lieutenant Konomelu will remain nearby while I am gone.”

“My prince!” The orange-tattooed warrior sputtered with fury. “Do not exile me from your presence. I am a loyal servant, no matter my disagreement with your reckless—”

“Guarding my sacred bride is the highest honor, Lieutenant.”

“She is no sacred bride! She is a modern female, unfamiliar with our—”

“She is mine.” Prince Ankena sliced the air in front of Konomelu. “And you will guard her.”

“But your father—”

“Lieutenant.”

Konomelu stiffened. “I will guard her, my prince.”

Prince Ankena nodded and then went to Bex. Extending his hand to hers, he pulled her to her feet, lifting her effortlessly. On land, he stood a full head taller than her, and she’d never considered herself to be a small woman.

“You will thrive here on this sacred island.” Belief shone in his aqua-blue eyes, and the red threads buried within gleamed, iridescent, like his tattoos. “It was made to shelter you. I will return as soon as I have my father’s consent. Then we will join properly, and you will be my one and only mate.”

Her chest lifted as if a new, strong breeze filled her sails.

His confidence, like his warmth and male scent, was addictive. It melted her defenses and shored up her strength. She would tackle whatever challenges lay ahead on this deserted island, and she would be perfectly happy to see him when he returned in two weeks.

His lips curved. “Your light is very bright.”

She tilted her mouth.

He rewarded her with an affirmative kiss. One brief hit of maleness, strength, and him. He broke it off too soon. “I will return.” Prince Ankena dove into the lagoon.

Barely a splash marked his passage. His shadow darted beneath the water toward the entrance to the cave.

His lieutenant sank soundlessly into the water.

She was left all alone.

Bex ate raw squid and thin grapes for breakfast.

In the daylight, the cave looked more interesting. Ancient statues worn by weather and age were carved into columns, and the freshwater pool rested in a pedestal carved into the shape of cupped hands.

Humans had lived here once. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Worn stairs were tucked into a back corner of the cavern. She followed them up, cautiously, onto a headland that showed the whole island. A wide swath of white sandy beach was fringed by coconut palms.

Bex clambered down an ancient path through the grassy hills to the beach. Only iguana tail tracks, giant pink conch shells, and bird feet marked the powdery sand.

Another old path wound through the broadleaf-filled interior to a lush, hidden glen. Colorful birds flocked a fragrant papaya tree. Some dangling mottled fruits smelled overripe to the point of fermenting. The birds chirped and stumbled like they were drunk.

Bex traced the lush undergrowth to a pretty freshwater pool. She picked up a hollowed coconut and scooped a mouthful of precious, cool liquid. Mm, not bad. Bex sat back on her heels. Yes, she knew how to desalinate water, but it was nice that she didn’t have to.

Like most professionals, she’d done her fair share of jury-rigging on a voyage. In the middle of the blue, if she ran out of food or water, there was no store to stock up, and if her engine flipped a bolt, she figured it out or she limped along on sails. Every smart sailor prepared for the worst case: getting storm wrecked without supplies in the middle of the ocean. While an EPIRB—emergency radio beacon—and survival kit would be great right now, a survivor’s number one resource was grit.

So, going back to her mantra, she needed to secure shelter and food.

The raw squid wouldn’t preserve itself.

Bex returned to the cavern, sliced the squid into strips, and dried it on interlaced palm leaves she spread out on the beach.

The sun beat down on her, drying her out just like the squid.

Right, shelter.

She fashioned a lean-to with rough-woven palms and sticks embedded in the sand. When the sun moved, it spilled over and baked her again. She wove more palms and buried the poles deeper.

Oh, dried papayas would be nice…

She headed back into the interior.

When she returned with papayas and more fresh water, salty wind had knocked her shelter over, and a wily crab was making off with one of her half-dried squid strips. She chased the runaway jerky down, reassembled her shelter using more posts, and braided some leaves into thick cordage.

The cordage wasn’t beautiful. Time would tell if it was functional. But all that mattered was she kept moving forward.

Out where the rough waves broke against the distant, barely submerged coral reef, the orange Lieutenant Konomelu surfaced.

She waved.

He glared at her and disappeared.

So long as she didn’t break a leg or slice off a finger with Prince Ankena’s dangerously sharp dagger, two weeks should be fine.

Longer than two weeks, though…

Well, even she needed a little bit of company.

A large bird shadow passed overhead.

She looked up.

Samuel, the wandering albatross, banked and flew down the beach toward her like a big awkward jet. His paddle feet touched down on the sand and he waddle-waddle-waddled furiously, flapping his wings.

She greeted him. “I hope you’re bringing me better luck today.”

He clacked his beak at her squid strips.

“Hey. I saw how much you ate yesterday. You cannot possibly be hungry.”

He clacked his beak.

“Oh, my goodness. Fine. You can have one strip.”

Samuel gobbled up the strip, choking it down his neck, and then went for a second one.

“Come on! That’s my squid jerky.” She sat down next to him and poked his cheek.

He leaned in.

Oh, did he like that? She gave him a little scratch. Like a cat who enjoyed neck rubs, he stretched out for her scratches.

She stroked his feathers. “Maybe you’re lonely too.”

He ruffled in a shrug, then scooped up another drying squid chunk.

“Or maybe you’re just hungry.”

She collected the jerky, wove a really ugly bag out of long grass stems, and tucked them in.

The lowering sun seared an orange warning into the distant clouded horizon.

Bex fashioned her best fire plow to take her mind off the loneliness. Some years ago, she’d worked on a ninety-foot superyacht with a deckhand who hand-started all the beach bonfires to impress their tourists. He’d rubbed a stick into a groove for less than twenty seconds and blown a few sparks into tinder, but not being a three-hundred-pound Samoan, she’d never mastered it. There was no time like the next two weeks to learn.

Would it be longer?

Would she ever get home to Hunter S. Thomcat? She’d confirmed that her teenage stepson, Stevie Junior, had passed him along to her lawyer friend for safekeeping. Stevie was still at his father’s house on a break. The last time they’d spoken, he’d sounded worried for her. Unlike his parents, he was a good kid.

Knowing her cat was safe helped a lot.

Not knowing about Prince Ankena, though…

What if his father imprisoned him? Two weeks would turn into three weeks, then a month, and then more.

Bex could survive—would survive—but how could she help him?

How could she, on the surface, ever see Prince Ankena again?

Down the beach in the turquoise shallows, her prince emerged, the sun at his tattooed back.

What!

Bex jumped up.

He dragged a six-foot grouper behind him in a seaweed net, its side pierced by the three prongs of his trident. A grin split his tired face. He was a gorgeous warrior with honed intensity, a proud male who conquered her as he ruled the sea.

She raced down to meet him. “I thought you had to leave.”

“And I must.” He dropped the grouper to open his arms.

She stopped a few feet from him. “But you’re here.”

“I must request permission to descend to the city. And while I await the answer, I will feed you.”

Aw. “I’m happy to be fed. I’m about to attempt a fire.”

“First, greet me.” He dragged her into his bulging arms. “I already feel your heat.”

She melted into his hard kiss.

Splinters of daylight illuminated his rippling muscles, his compact strength, his magnificent cock swirled in the same fiery red tattoos as the rest of his body.

He had come back because he wanted to spend more time with her. He didn’t chastise her for not looking happy enough to see him, for not squealing or grabbing his arms or weeping with emotion. He knew.

Her heart glowed.

He released her with a sizzling smirk, lifted the grouper again, and followed her up the beach.

She did make a fire eventually, wild and smoky, yet confidence building. The prince cut the fish into manageable chunks for her to roast over the flames. He consumed his section raw.

She stuffed herself with roasted grouper, crisp sea purslane, and sweet fire-roasted papaya. Truly a castaway’s feast.

The sun went down, and the stars glowed. She packed the fire in, and they lay companionably beside each other. She gazed into the fire and he fit the curve of her back to his front. The night didn’t feel so dark or cool.

“The echo point to communicate with the city is a quarter-day swim away,” he told her. “I charged my other lieutenant, Itime, to come as soon as he heard a response. I could receive permission to descend to the city this very night.”

“What happens if your father refuses?”

“It will not happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I found you twice. Saved you twice. Our joining is predestined by the Life Tree.”

“Why doesn’t he know that?”

Prince Ankena dropped silent.

Worry crept into her belly.

His arm tightened around her shoulders. “Do not dim your light.”

She rubbed her chest. “It’s dark out.”

“I sense your soul no matter the position of the sun. But I can also see in the dark. It is more difficult in the open air. Much easier in an enclosed area like the cave.”

Magic.

He sucked in a deep breath. “As I said before, the attack was not personal.”

She rolled to face him and rested her hand on his cheek. “Because your father kills sailors randomly.”

“Not random. We avenge our sacred brides.”

“What happened?”

“Your ancestors attacked without warning. We surfaced to empty villages and islands razed by fire. Our brides were peaceful. They did not rush to anger or violence. And yet they were taken, tortured, murdered.”

The raw pain of his historic anger washed over her like the red mist obscuring all but the past.

“I’m so sorry.”

He patted her arm, knowing the sincerity of her feelings even though her words were inadequate. “When conditions are right, when our warriors should have surfaced to join with their brides, we rise instead with the red mirror stones. They control the animal you call the giant squid. And we take our vengeance.”

Okay. But…

“You have a doubt,” he said.

“I understand wanting a little payback, but it still sounds like you’re attacking boats randomly.”

“We target only the same routes and seasons taken by your ancestors.”

“Which ancestors?”

“Vespuc.”

“I don’t know any Vespuc.”

“There was another: Colum Bus.”

She repeated the names. “Wait, do you mean Columbus? Christopher Columbus? And Amerigo Vespucci?”

“Are they known for their evil actions to destroy and enslave?”

“Yes. That’s them.” She sat up. “Hundreds of years ago. Half a millennium.”

“Yet our city still feels the loss. Our brides were stolen. Our friends killed. Our land siblings murdered. We suffer, and yet we are more noble, for unlike your ancestors, we give a fair warning.”

“What warning? You said you don’t leap out and talk to everybody you’re going to sink the way you sort of talked to me, and I don’t remember any other warning.”

“Red skies.”

“That’s not a warning.”

“It is ancient.”

“But nobody associates it with a giant squid attack. You can’t send a message if no one knows you exist.”

“The ancient covenant—”

“And if you attack any boat on the water, you’re taking vengeance against innocent vessels like my father’s sloop.”

“You are descended from—”

“Actually, I’m Norwegian.”

“But you are still considered a descendant.”

“How? Because I breathe air and walk on the land? That’s what I have in common with the conquistadors. They weren’t eating lutefisk or wearing bunads, I promise you.”

He fell silent.

“You’re angry at ghosts who’ve been dead for centuries. And while that’s understandable, blindly attacking every ship that passes over the same waters means you’ve probably hurt your own descendants. In every possible way, it’s wrong.”

He rested his hand on her knee. “I have never questioned this tradition. But I have no answer for your questions. My father has exiled warriors who disobeyed him in the past. Those who saved shipwrecked humans. Even the best warriors who found their brides.”

“What makes you so certain he’s not going to do the same to you?”

“I am his son.”

Her heart ached.

Would a king who exiled his best warriors forgive his son? She wanted it more than anything, but her skepticism meter was going off, and that thing was hard to silence.

She asked, as gently but as honestly as she could, “Didn’t he already punish you?”

Prince Ankena averted his gaze. “No more than was fitting for my disobedience.”

Okay.

Okay, well…okay.

“My father can be reasonable,” he added. “I will present your arguments. He will explain why they have already been answered, and then you will understand that our vengeance is properly executed.”

Sure. Maybe that was possible.

Prince Ankena’s father had personally been sinking ships for the better part of a century—or however long mermen lived—so maybe Bex had been caught by a glitch.

Or maybe his son would make him face the truth and he would stop. Sure. Maybe he just needed to hear the truth from someone close to him.

Well, Prince Ankena had listened to her. Really listened.

And she had expressed herself to him. Honestly, fully, and emotionally. She’d told him her true feelings instead of crushing them down with silence. Because he heard her anyway, so she might as well say what she wanted.

Thinking that made her take a deep breath and let it out in a hopeful sigh.

“That is better.” He nuzzled her. “Brighten your light, my bride.”

Heat flashed through her body like fire.

His masculine spice tickled and teased and awakened her.

She sought his mouth for a kiss.

He met her halfway. Their lips meshed and tongues tangled, hot and hungry. Her pussy pulsed with need, and her skin felt hot.

He pulled off her tank top and captured her freed breasts. Aching desire tightened her nipples. He teased the pearls between tender teeth.

Desire lanced her. She arched.

He rolled onto his back and pulled her up onto his torso. His rigid cock stroked her through the shorts. She curled her fingers around his length. Unlike before, when he’d pulled away, this time, he thrust hard and heavy into her palm.

She wriggled free of her clothes and rested her slick heat against his erection.

He slid along her wet seam, groaning. “We must wait.”

“Why?”

“I will join with you properly within the heart chamber of my castle.” He kissed her palm, then abruptly rolled upright and stood, lifting her in a smooth motion and swinging her onto his back. “You are my bride!”

He dashed into the ocean.

She bounced on his muscled back, laughing and gasping.

Warm, shallow water splashed up her body, and bright blue bioluminescence coated his steps in starlight.

This was fun. Last night had been incredible, and she craved another melting release, but how could she be mad that he wanted to wait until their wedding night?

He released her and plunged under the surface. She floated in the starlit darkness. Beneath the gentle waves, he parted her thighs and latched onto her nub.

Oh. Ohhhh.

Starlight washed over her.

Yes, her prince would not take her until they were married in his castle properly, but he also wouldn’t withhold her pleasure. No, he gave generously, holding his own boundary and also making sure that his needs never deprived hers. He suckled and lapped and tongued and thrust. Heat crackled in her veins. She shuddered and orgasmed alone, yet surrounded by his invisible presence, besieged by pleasure until she yielded.

He carried her back onto shore and they collapsed together, she again sleeping comfortably against his heated mountain until the slim crack of morning.

His furious orange lieutenant, Konomelu, collected him from the shore. Permission to descend to Lusca had been granted. Prince Ankena left Bex alone once more.

One survival challenge after another stumped Bex, each one interesting because it was new, and irritating because she didn’t fully know what she was doing.

She tried building a hut on the beach.

That evening, the wind died, and sand flies chased her back to the cave with a million stings.

She tried again with the hut on a windier night…which turned into a storm that waterlogged the hut and ruined her food.

She came up with a great water-collection system out of coconut hulls.

The local birds decided those were the perfect birdbath, and then drunk-pooped all over everything.

By the end of the first week, carefully notched into a designated calendar stick, she’d made a list of all the tools she wanted off her boat, all the hardware she’d grab at the marina, and all the types of food she’d stockpile on her next grocery run—Peanut butter! Marshmallow cream! Carrot cake!—when a miracle interrupted.

A white yacht appeared on the horizon.

The island had shown no signs of visitation, so rescue was out of the question. Nevertheless, the prepared castaway was the one who survived. Bex hurried to the beach and stoked up the fire so that smoke erupted for the sky.

A fifty-foot cruiser barreled toward the submerged coral on full throttle. A woman in a white sun hat slumped over the wheel.

Bex waved her hands. “The coral! Watch the coral!”

The woman lifted her fingers in a friendly wave. “Helloooo!”

“Watch out!”

A second woman appeared on deck and shrieked. She grabbed the wheel.

Engines whined.

The boat slowed and scraped the reef before coming to a stop. Then slowly, slowly, the yacht inched backward. The second pilot timed her exit with the waves, so she wasn’t a total idiot like the first driver. With one last squeak, the yacht slid off the coral. They backed up and set anchor.

The first woman slapped her knees and cackled.

All righty, then.

The two women dropped a bright-yellow dinghy over the side. The second, more competent pilot rowed while the other peered over the bow. Their voices traveled over the water.

The competent rower asked, “Where’s the coral?”

The watcher remained silent.

The dinghy scraped over the coral.

“There’s the coral!” the watcher cried.

“Gee, thanks, Mom.”

Incompetent Mom laughed heartily.

Hmm. Luck favored drunks and idiots, but eventually, luck ran out. Bex had no tolerance for the foolish.

She strode into thigh-high shallows to meet them. “Hello, there.”

“Hello!” they replied in unison. The two women both had East Asian features with straight, dark hair and brown eyes, and their accents said East Coast or upstate New York. The rower was a college-age woman with friendly competence. She pulled in her paddles so that Bex could tow them more easily.

“My mom saw you there on the shore, and we thought we’d come to say hi. I’m Meg.”

Her mother stood. “And I’m Angie.”

“Mom, sit down!”

“Oh, it’s fine. I told you, I’m not that drunk.” Angie promptly tipped over backward, heels over butt, into the shallows.

Meg shrieked.

Angie stood up with a gasp and floundered, grabbed the stern, and laughed hysterically. “Or maybe… Maybe I am…”

Her sun hat floated away.

“Mom! Your hat…”

Bex swam after the hat, grabbed it before the wind could blow it out, and helped the two women the rest of the way onto the shore. They beached the dinghy.

Meg carried a big wicker basket. “We brought a picnic.”

They spread out a red checked blanket and then a feast: fruit salsa, pasta salad, potato salad, leftover grilled toasties, and pulled pork.

Bex forgave everything. She stuffed herself on tart vinegar, spicy mustard, potatoes, bread, and pasta.

“So, we’re both divorced,” Meg said conversationally, munching on carrot sticks dipped in hummus. “Mine was finalized last month, and my parents’ was three years ago last December.”

“This was the worst Christmas.” Angie swigged rum from a mason jar tinted with cola. “Every year I say I’m not going to go, but I mean it this time. We can have two Christmases. He can host.”

“Dad brought his new boyfriend.”

“It was the worst.”

“It was awkward.” When her mom wasn’t looking, Meg poured cola into her jar to water down the rum. “Everyone was so polite, I thought we were going to suffocate before NaiNai served the egg rolls.”

“And then, he apologized with a yacht.” Angie gestured vaguely in the direction of the nice cruiser. “I said I wanted a ‘land yacht.’ One of his Cadillacs. That way, I could drive up to stay with my sister, and I could visit Meg at NYU. But he thought that wasn’t enough. Twenty years of pretending everything was fine, that we were a normal family, and then Ellen comes out on TV and he decides it’s time. That’s guilt money you’re looking at.” She frowned into her rum-cola jar. “I would have been happy with a Cadillac.”

Rough silence settled over the sunny group, broken only by birdsong and Bex eating.

“We took a boating class.” Meg’s smile was strained around the edges as she tried to justify their awkward landing. “We don’t run over every sandbar. At least, not while I’m at the wheel.”

“We came from very conservative people.” Angie flopped onto her back, overturning her drink in the sand. “Very conservative. No white after Labor Day, no public scenes, and never, ever say what you mean. You young people have it easy. Everyone expects you to say shocking things.”

“Right. So, we’ve been bonding.” Meg sipped a plain cola while Bex heaped more pasta salad onto her paper plate. “What about you? How did you end up on this gorgeous sandy beach?”

“Divorce.” Had pasta salad ever tasted this good before? Bex licked the plastic fork. “Not finalized. He cheated.”

“You too? God, aren’t we a trio? Do you want me to doctor your cola?”

Bex shook her head. “Thanks.”

“Just once!” Angie bolted upright and smacked her fists in the sand. “Just once, I wish I’d screamed at him. Plan your own after-work socials! The lawn doesn’t need to be manicured every day! I don’t care what we buy for the donor gala! Just once. But I was always a good wife. Never told anyone how I felt.”

She collapsed back onto the sand, then rested the sun hat over her face like a sombrero and folded her arms to take a nap.

Meg lowered her voice. “Before this trip, she was drunk once, maybe twice. Once after my grandfather died, and then maybe after my brother got dishonorably discharged from the Marines. This…” She rolled her lips with worry. “It’s like she’s finally giving herself permission to unwind, and, well, she’s unwinding, all right.”

Angie snored.

“I just hope we can wind her up again before she hits something that causes real damage.” Meg scooped up a heaping pile of fruit salsa with a crisp corn chip. “How about with you? Was your ex always a player, or did the cheating happen overnight?”

“He was married before me, but had the same mistress the whole time.”

“What! Why marry you if he already had her?”

Bex shrugged. “I’m younger. Our marriage secured a promotion. The sales team thought he looked more vigorous.”

“He put you on like a new suit.”

“More like a new toupee.”

Meg laughed, and a sparkle lit her eyes. “That bad, huh?”

“I was looking for stability. He was old enough to be my dad. So…”

“That’s awful. It makes you question everything, doesn’t it? Like, did he really love you? Was it all in your head? How can you ever trust someone enough to fall in love again?”

Prince Ankena’s fierce gaze filled Bex’s mind. You are mine. Heat flushed through her pores and made her switch positions on the sandy blanket. “When you meet the right person, you know.”

“Do you?”

Bex nodded.

“That’s romantic…and so hard to imagine.” Meg scooped another chip. “You didn’t ask, but I hope you don’t mind me talking.”

Bex didn’t mind.

“It’s been a long voyage, and I need to run this past someone new.” Meg tossed her a smile. “My ex-husband was so eager to get married. So eager. Grad school meant we’d have to split up for a year, and marrying meant I put it off. Fine. We married the day after college graduation. Then, not three months later, right after the final application deadlines passed, he tells me he wants to ‘open’ the relationship.”

“Cheat?”

“Right!” Meg rolled her eyes. “Could he not have told me, oh, two years earlier? ‘College is the time for experimentation,’ he says. ‘I never got to go out and party.’ So now we’re married, I promised to love him until death do us part, and he wants to be single. What? The ‘hall pass’ is supposed to come out after the honeymoon period! I wish he would have jilted me at the altar. At least then I’d already be in graduate school!”

“That sucks.”

“Yes! And then he wants to tell me about all the women he’s meeting. Like, what they do for a living, how many degrees they have, how they didn’t put their lives on hold for a stupid husband. And I’m like, ‘Oh, you want to share stories?’ So then I went out, and I was a lot better at ‘opening the relationship’ than he was, because guess what he cited in the divorce? That I was the one who cheated!”

Bex shook her head.

“I know, I know. Mom thinks he had a girl picked, and when it didn’t work out with her, he discovered the dating scene actually sucks. Which it does. An average woman can score so many more meaningless hookups than an average guy. But you know what?”

Bex shook her head again.

“When the divorce papers finally came, I was filled with this weird sense of relief. My whole life was about him, him, him. Him wanting to get married, him wanting to be single, him wanting me to stay home while he went out. And any time he was upset, it wasn’t a little shock, but a whole lightning storm. At first, I must have been excited to date a guy who didn’t repress everything like my parents, but the hundredth time I brought him takeout and received, ‘What were you thinking?’ or ‘I will never forgive you’ because I forgot the extra packet of hot sauce… Let’s just say I am over drama. Forever.”

Bex nodded.

Meg let out a huge sigh, crunched another chip, and eyed her. “Has anyone ever said you’re a good listener? You probably hear that all the time.”

“Not recently.”

She laughed. “Oh, right. Are you out here all alone? I could never be out here all alone. Unless the alternative was putting up with a hundred drama whores. Then…well…” She stretched and leaned back on her palms. “So, where’s your boat anchored?”

“Oh, um…” Huh, Bex had not considered how to answer the most obvious question. “My boat’s, uh, not anchored.”

Meg’s eyes bugged. “Oh my God, it floated away? Mom forgot to drop the anchor once, and that was before I knew to check, but luckily, we just drifted into a mud bank. You’re stranded here? Like a castaway?”

“Not exactly.”

Meg’s eyebrows jutted at confused angles. “Or you’re not alone?”

“Well…”

Prince Ankena’s race was a secret, and so Bex wasn’t supposed to talk about it. Not him, not Lieutenant Konomelu, not the squid… You will not betray us, Bex.

But what if Meg and Angie motored over Lusca at the wrong time and got caught up in an attack?

She had to warn them.

But how? It was a crazy story.

And what if warning them caused them to get attacked?

Being stuck on an island without pasta salad or vinegar was an adventure she looked forward to ending, but Prince Ankena had promised her magical powers. Theoretically, she could go anywhere.

And, if she couldn’t…

Well, Bex didn’t want to endanger anyone.

“I lost my boat, and I got rescued,” she finally said. “In another week, they’re going to come back for me.”

“Oh my God, are you sure?” Meg reached out and touched her leg. “You’re really sure? Did you want us to wait here with you? You can’t stay all alone.”

“Did you want to see my hammock? It’s half done. I got tired of waking up to a moody tarantula.”

“Tarantula!” Meg shuddered and smacked herself as though brushing off invisible bugs. “Not in a million years. I could never live on a desert island.”

“They’re lazy and well-fed. The only real irritation is sand flies. And, if you’ve left out a half-dried grouper, you might attract wasps.”

“Ugh, no, thank you.” Meg frowned. “Well, did you want this blanket? It’s sandy, but it might keep the tarantulas off—or, I don’t know, it might invite them to snuggle in. We’ll leave you the food. Mom’s got an extra cooler. Anything else?”

Meg’s generosity and concern pricked Bex’s heart.

She swallowed over the lump. “That’s really nice.”

“It’s nothing. Hey, Mom! Hey, the tide is changing, and guess what? Bex is a spiritual successor of the Swiss Family Robinson. Also, there are tarantulas.”

Angie blinked at them and yawned. “Tarantulas? As long as there’re no rats, I can do tarantulas.”

“You’re both crazy.” Meg packed the basket for Bex, then helped her mom stumble to the dinghy. “Get in, Bex. We’ll see if there’s anything useful on the yacht. Mom, I already promised your extra cooler.”

“Mm.” Angie’s sun-warmed cheeks turned green. She flopped over the side of the dinghy to stare in the clear, shallow water. “Huh. That was a strange fish. All orange and…ugh, I do not feel well.”

Meg rowed them back to the yacht.

Angie did not throw up, but she looked like she wanted to.

Bex climbed onto the smooth white deck and helped Angie up, then secured the dinghy. The yacht’s rudders looked okay from what she could see. “I’ll check the engines.”

“Oh, it’s kind of a tight fit,” Meg said.

“That’s okay. I’m used to twin diesels.”

Meg watched her from the top of the stairs. Bex checked their whole yacht from top to bottom, as much as she could see through the clear water without getting under the hull. They’d been lucky, and the scrape looked cosmetic. Their engines did need some basic maintenance, and she replaced a blown fuse and some other minor cosmetics.

The women invited her to retire on their fancy bow salon. Bex sat comfortably on their plush white deck seats.

“You know your way around boats.” Meg served her and Angie a blended-ice drink of pure, sweet watermelon juice. “And yet you forgot to drop your anchor?”

Bex grimaced.

“Stop right there.” Meg lifted her manicured hand. “We’re not doing drama, and your face has ‘it’s complicated’ written all over it.”

“If you start the engines, I’ll listen for anything else that might be wrong.”

“That’s kind, isn’t it, Mom?”

Angie massaged her temples. “Mm.”

“Sure, it’s really easy to start. Here.”

They climbed the stairs to the steering panel, and Meg powered the engines on.

The diesel hummed with good oil and cool water flow. On a forty-foot sailboat, Bex had to work hard to handle the big rig, but on a fifty-foot-plus powerboat, two inexperienced sailors could motor around in reasonable comfort.

“Go straight back to port and get the hull checked,” Bex said. “And stop running aground.”

“Yeah, I know. I—” Meg gasped, pointed down at her deck, and shrieked.

Konomelu had climbed up the ladder and faced off to Angie.

Angie regarded him with crossed arms and a wary expression.

Bex cut the power and skidded down the steps to the deck. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Disobeying Prince Ankena. He has gone to risk his kingdom for you! And you abandon him here, expose us to these females—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bex said evenly. “And I didn’t tell them anything.”

“How can I believe a—”

“She didn’t.” Meg lifted one hand in a tentative wave. “I can vouch for her. She didn’t say anything about a prince or a tribe or anything like you.”

Konomelu’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because my daughter’s telling the truth.” Angie uncrossed her arms and gestured at his nude body. “And why are you so worried about my new friend exposing you? You seem perfectly comfortable standing on my yacht and exposing yourself.”

And he did display his full-frontal nudity. Iridescent orange tattoos curled around biceps, calves, pectorals, abdomen, and even his relaxed but impressive cock.

His hard gaze centered on Angie. “Who are you?”

“A woman who’s too old and too tired for shenanigans.”

His gaze traveled from her bloodshot eyes down in a detailed once-over, shamelessly lingering on her small breasts covered by a white blouse and her knee-length skort, all the way down to her ankles and white-painted toes.

Angie raised one brow. “Like what you see?”

“No.”

Her second brow joined the first. “No?”

“No. There is something wrong with you.”

She jutted her chin. “Something wrong with me?”

“You have a bright, powerful light, but you hide it behind a dark film. Like oil on the water distorting the sun, this slimy sickness distorts the light of your soul.”

Angie lowered her arms. “Who are you?”

“Konomelu. A lieutenant warrior of Lusca.”

Meg lowered her voice and leaned toward Bex. “And you’re dating their prince? No wonder you don’t need a rescue.”

Bex rolled her lips.

Meg lifted her hand. “You got that ‘it’s complicated’ look again. Never mind.”

Angie smoothed her shirt, brushed the sand off her shorts, and fixed her hair. “This is what happens when you spend twenty-two years being the best wife and mother only to have it all come out as a lie. There are no gold stars for keeping the peace. There’s no award for closing your mouth and swallowing down every desire. ‘I want more kids, I want to get a job, I want to try doing something useful with my life.’ All you get at the end are empty hands full of empty dreams.”

“No.”

She jutted her chin. “Trust me. I’ve sunk years into—”

“You have hidden away your fragile soul. And now that you are free and your passion can be released, you are so terrified, you drown yourself in stinking liquid. What happens when you see your true self? Will you wield your power, or will fear make you break?”

“I’ve seen more ‘truth’ than you think,” she snapped.

“You have seen nothing of the passion you are capable of.”

Angie threw her glass jar at him.

He caught it in one hand.

They both stared at each other, nostrils flared, chests heaving.

“I will never entwine my soul with a female who hides herself as you do.” He set the glass on the table with a sharp click. “Passion is strength. I accept nothing less from the bride I claim for my mate.”

He stalked to the rail and leaped over, disappearing into the ocean with barely a splash.

Angie stared after him. She rested both palms on the table, then closed her eyes.

“Well, that was a drama sandwich.” Meg collected the empty glass. “Mom, did you want another margarita?”

“Plain water. Please.”

“Oh. Great! I mean, are you sure? Your cheeks are a little red.”

“The sun is intense. I haven’t been careful with my hat.” Angie touched the back of her hand to her forehead. “It’s nothing a rest won’t cure.”

In the end, Meg ferried Bex back to the shore with a collection of useful things and flotsam. “Are you sure you don’t want us to wait? We could anchor here for days, no problem.”

Bex was more worried about them. “Go get your hull checked before there’s a storm.”

“Okay.” Meg threw her arms around Bex in a quick hug. “And when we hit port, we’ll mail the letter you just wrote to your stepson.”

Bex pulled back. “Thanks. It means a lot.”

“No problem.” Meg pinched her lips together like she was worried this would be the last time she saw Bex alive, and she might have to report on their final meeting. “Take care with that prince of yours.”

“Same with your mom.”

“Oh, it’s fine. She’s stopped drinking for…” Meg checked her slim silver wristwatch. “Three hours? It’s a record. I’ll take it! Maybe she just needed a stranger to give her a few home truths. It helped that he was rocking an eight-pack and an elephant’s cock.”

Bex choked. “You noticed.”

“Sure, but let me tell you, I’ve done meaningless hookups, and it doesn’t matter how they’re hung. That guy’s tribe? It must be nothing but drama, drama, drama.”

The very next day—an entire week early!—Prince Ankena returned.

A niggle of suspicion had drawn Bex to the seaside. She knew, somehow. Soon after, her prince appeared inside the submerged coral reef floating on the waves.

Even across the expanse of sand, his sensual power struck her with an unstoppable force.

He, an apex predator, hunted her.

And she trembled with need for him.

She abandoned the nets she’d been weaving, dropped her clothes, and raced nude into the turquoise water. Warm salt caressed her skin, and the waves dragged her deeper toward him. She lifted off the sand and flew weightlessly into his arms.

Prince Ankena embraced her in the deep water. Rivulets coursed down his severe cheeks and flecked off his dark eyelashes. She rested against his solid torso. He was an unmoving rock, and his biceps caged her securely.

“We are soul mates.” His serious eyes flashed. All his hesitation from before had been swept aside with new commitment. “I will not turn aside. You are my bride.”

She sought his mouth.

He invaded her soft wetness, charging her with his tongue. She murmured her surrender. He wove his fingers into her hair and seated their lips more firmly, then filled her with his masculine command. Her body glowed like the bioluminescence, tingling and then aching. Yes, she was his, and he was hers. The prince melted her into a pool of need. She hungered only for him.

And this time, he did not stop.

His wide hands spanned her hips and lifted her above the surf for him to feast on her bare breasts. Pleasure tightened her nipples, and only his tongue, lapping hot, could satisfy and awaken a deeper ache. Her pussy liquefied, demanded his touch, his cock, his possession.

He lifted her higher, rested her thighs on his shoulders, and buried his face in her dense dirt- blonde curls. “My treasure.”

She throbbed for him.

He spread her lips to reveal her glistening pink center and thrust his tongue, storming and seizing her honey, glazing her soul in a fire that burned hotter every time they united.

She tangled her fingers in his hair for balance. Shuddering heat filled her.

No words were needed. He knew her desire.

Prince Ankena dropped her into the ocean with a splash and pounced on her, rolling her in the waves with the force of a tsunami. His cock fitted to her feminine vee. She wrapped her legs around him. He thrust and filled her to the brim, seating his shaft in an unstoppable union.

He was primal, an animal, so dangerous and wild. His hands clamped her waist, his cock thrust in and out, and she yielded entirely to his oceanic domination.

Before she needed a breath, he flew to the surface and rolled onto his back so she rode on top of him. Clinging to his powerful shoulders for balance, she wrapped her legs around his trim waist. He rocked and bucked her, chasing her pleasure as a barracuda chases its prey, diving and bobbing, until he snatched it and she climaxed.

He mirrored her and pulsed his wet heat deep within.

The orgasm broke her into a million glittering pieces, and then bliss settled in her silent body with total satisfaction. He held her, trembling with emotion, as their heartbeats calmed. Gentle waves lapped against their entwined bodies.

“You are mine.” His chest rumbled beneath her.

Yes.

He squeezed her.

Even when she said nothing, he heard her words.

They disentangled, chased after each other in the surf—a gentle, easy teasing broken up by long kisses and devoted caresses—and then Prince Ankena speared a delicious mutton snapper.

Under her new awning at the top of the beach, she fixed a tasty lunchtime barbecue. With practice, experience, and better tools thanks to Meg and Angie, the fire started quickly. She set up a master grill in the cool breeze and pleasant shade.

His gaze narrowed on the white-lidded blue cooler, the toolbox, and the picnic blanket. “Where did you get these?”

“A ship came by.”

“Here? No ship has traveled these waters in a century.”

“Your lieutenant talked to them.”

He looked stunned. “Konomelu? Spoke with humans?”

“He climbed right on board.”

“No!”

“Ask him.”

“Konomelu…I cannot believe it…” Prince Ankena rubbed his dark head. “He was adamant I not expose myself to you, and I was so certain he would turn against me. But if he exposed himself…to males or females?”

“A mother and daughter. Meg’s younger than me, but Angie’s a bit older. Forty-something.”

“Konomelu too is older.”

Huh. He didn’t look it.

Prince Ankena glanced over at her, amusement on his face as he heard the words she didn’t say aloud. “He is older than me. The Life Tree has great healing power. If Konomelu’s soul resonated with this Angie, then she is fit for her warrior.”

Hmm. How old was Prince Ankena?

“I do not know our ages in surface years.” He chewed on a slice of raw grouper. “If the Life Tree has carried Konomelu’s soul mate to the Forbidden Island, perhaps this changes everything…”

While the fish smoked, she roasted papaya and shared the last of the pasta salad. Prince Ankena ate it dutifully, but he didn’t treasure it the way that she did.

“I wish you could taste festival meat. Bream steeped in flavorful wood boxes. Steaks infused with spices.” His tone turned melancholy. “You should see our city. The Life Tree glows like a beacon, lighting the ocean and filling it with vitality. Mating gemstones the size of a male’s fist pile around its base. Our castles bob like green suns, and the interiors twist with private nooks and verdant gardens.”

Oh, she wished she could.

But if he was talking like this… “You didn’t get the blossom.”

“I did not reach the city.” He looked down at his daggers piled next to his trident in the white sands. “A trusted elder intercepted me. As a youth, my father rebelled against tradition and claimed a mainland bride, but after he was forced to return my mother to the surface, he became bitter and warlike. To this day, his loss makes him unreasonable. The council regrets forcing her to the surface.”

“Why not bring her back?”

“How?” Prince Ankena gestured to the abandoned island. “She is long gone, and anyway, it is in our covenant to return our sacred brides. They sacrifice their wombs for a short time, not their whole lives. It is a generous exchange, and we honor them.”

“But your mom wanted to stay?”

“Yes.” He sighed and rubbed his head again. “I did not know that history. If my father understood your importance and he still harmed you…” Prince Ankena made a fist. Rage and grief tightened his cheeks. “I would no longer be able to obey him.”

Huh.

So…

She stoked the fire. The grouper sizzled, but she was no longer hungry. “Where does that leave us?”

“You will not drink the nectar of the Life Tree or go to my city.”

“Ever?”

“I am sorry, Bex.”

Her too. “And your dad?”

“I will not approach my father. He will never learn of your existence. You will remain on the surface where it is safe.”

“Are you going to live here with me?”

“I must fulfill my duties. I have warriors to lead, orders to obey. I may not be able to come here for a very long time.”

A new, disagreeable sensation pooled in her belly. He couldn’t come to see her? “You said I was yours, but you’re breaking up with me?”

“No. We are soul mates. Nothing changes.”

“Except you’re going to stop seeing me?”

“I will see you as often as I can. My other lieutenant, Itime, is loyal. He will not betray my secret. And if Konomelu has met his bride, then he too can be turned to protect our secret.”

“So it’s a secret relationship.” The words pierced her chest like his dangerously sharp dagger. “But you can’t help yourself. And if your father ever finds you a sacred bride, you’ll just have to see me around your busy time of being with her.”

“That will never happen.”

“You say that now.”

“No, Bex, it is the way of the mer.” He held her gaze, fierce with the truth. “I cannot react to a female who is not my one. Our souls cannot resonate. Because my whole soul is already attuned to yours.”

Her heart squeezed. “Except for the part of your soul that can’t disobey your father.”

“That is different.”

“Is it?” She stabbed the fire, sending up satisfying sparks. “When humans take marriage vows, they honor their spouses over their parents.”

“He is not only my father. A warrior cannot disobey his king. The king is the city. I could be disfigured, my male seed removed, and tossed into a vent. Or worse, I could be dishonored.”

Dishonor was worse than castration and death, huh? He was from a warrior culture. Their values were different. Misunderstandings like this were natural.

Except for the part where she sounded like his side chick. Again.

“It is not my dream,” he said. “I will come to you as often as I can between attacks.”

Her heart stilled. “You’re still going to murder innocent sailors?”

“It’s the tradition of my—”

“Sailors like me.”

“Never you. I will—”

“Sailors like me.”

He frowned. “It is not what I want, Bex.”

“No, it’s just your job. It’s just how things are. It’s just what your boss and other people expect of you.”

“I have a plan.”

Her heart began thudding again.

Okay. Good. She’d misunderstood. He had a plan.

“I have never questioned our quest for revenge, but others have.” He took her hands in his, the sand gritty between their fingers. “With our future son, I will lead my city to a new age of peace. My father’s heart will be touched, and he will stop the attacks.”

She waited a long moment, then prodded, “And that’s it? You’re going to make him a grandfather? And until then, you’re sticking me on this island?”

“Where it is safe.” He tugged her to his side and pressed her head to his shoulder. “It is unsafe for a human on the ocean, Bex, especially if you have not drunk the nectar. You could fall into the water and drown.”

“But that was always true. I’m human.”

“And now you are my bride. Future mother of the heir to Lusca.”

“That just sounds like you’re going to use me.”

“I will use you to forge peace.” He hugged her. “You and our son.”

“But, okay, tell me I’m misunderstanding here.” She stayed stiff in his arms. “You plan to cage me on this island, get me pregnant, and then hope our child changes your father’s heart? Becoming a grandfather will get him to accept me and stop his warmongering ways?”

“You will not be caged. The entire island is open to you. You can walk around.”

“But I can’t leave.”

“Because of the danger. I will visit you as often as possible. When I cannot come, my lieutenants will hunt anything you need.”

“Right, because you have a busy schedule of unleashing giant squids on innocent passersby.”

“If I disobey my father, he could discover you, Bex.”

“So why do you think he’ll calm down by the time I meet him later?”

Prince Ankena recoiled. “You will never meet my father.”

“Except when we bring our son to the city.”

He shook his head. “After you provide me with a young fry son, your sacred duties are over. If you have not drunk the nectar before bearing my young fry, then there is no reason to do so afterward.”

Acid burned in her belly. This was unreal. “I’m your soul mate?”

“Yes.”

“And my ‘duties are over’ as soon as I pop out your heir?”

“The ancient covenant governs all mer. We cannot change the law.”

“Tradition isn’t destiny.”

“Bex.” He drew her back into his bulging arms. “You are upset.”

“You noticed.”

“I too am not happy. This is our sacred time. Our moment to experience the exquisite melding of souls, to join our bodies and bring forth new life. I should sequester us within my castle and devote every hour to your comfort. Instead…” He sighed and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We were never supposed to meet. Our time together is stolen. And yet every stolen hour is the greatest happiness of my life.”

Those honeyed words seeped in and left a bitter aftertaste.

Prince Ankena loved her, desired her, and bent the rules to be with her. He’d defied his father to save her life, and he wanted to have a son with her to bring peace.

Why couldn’t all that be enough?

Because it wasn’t.

“It will be enough,” he said, responding to her unspoken words. “You will accept our rules after you have thought about them.”

She remained silent for a long, charged time.

Her father had hidden his terminal illness out of a misguided desire to not hurt her. She too had been silent many times when she should have spoken. Or shouted. Or screamed.

Prince Ankena was her soul mate. She owed him the truth.

And she owed it to herself too.

“No, I won’t.”

“Bex.”

“It’s not enough.” The rightness of each word knelled in her soul like a bell. “I won’t be your mistress.”

“Mistress?”

She jumped to her feet. “I’ve already been a wife. I don’t want to be on the other side.”

He squinted up at her. “What is a mistress?”

“A secret relationship that makes your life a lie.”

“But we have no choice.” He remained sitting. “I must protect you.”

“I refuse.”

He blinked. “You refuse my protection? But I have already vowed it. Nothing will endanger my soul mate.”

“My body, you mean. But what you’re proposing endangers my mind, my heart, everything else.”

“No.”

“When I escaped my ex, I refused to be the second best.”

“You are my first best, Bex.”

“After your father.”

Prince Ankena frowned.

She shook her head. “I’m not going to sit here on an island while you’re out sinking ships. Those people have families. Loved ones. People are grieving.”

“My people are grieving.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right. I promised not to share your secret, but if you’re going to continue attacking boats, your future victims have a right to know. And I’m going to tell them.”

He stood. His eyes flashed. “You plan to betray me? To betray my secret?”

“These are my people, Ankena. What would you do?”

“I would honor and trust you. Be loyal and not endanger myself for vicious strangers.”

“How many kids have you killed?”

He blinked.

“How many women? How many grandfathers who were having a nice retirement? How many couples on their honeymoon?”

“They should have listened to the warning.”

“You don’t even know.”

“Bex.” He caught her hands and beseeched her. “You cannot risk yourself. If I must sink a ship—if you are on it and my father finds out—”

“Then I’ll die just like all the other innocents.”

“You are not my soul mate if you cannot understand that I have no choice.”

She pulled her hands free. He wasn’t hers if he didn’t understand why he asked the impossible. “Then I guess I’m not your soul mate.”

Shock, then fury filled Prince Ankena’s features.

He stormed to the water and disappeared with a loud splash. Like slamming a door, except there was no door to the ocean.

She stewed all night, cried herself to sleep, and woke in the morning with a headache. Still, she couldn’t roll over and drift. She had responsibilities.

Bex dried strips of grouper in the sun.

Samuel landed beside her with his usual awkwardness and clacked his beak.

“I’m beginning to think you’re bad luck,” she said. “But maybe you’re my guardian who comes at my hardest moments to give me courage.”

He extended his cheek.

She scratched it.

He leaned on her hand, and she choked on the lump in her throat while taking comfort from his soft, ruffled feathers.

Yeah, it sucked that the first guy who made her feel and fall in love and totally got her was also the son of an inhuman, murdering psychopath with an ancient grudge—and didn’t get how wrong it all was. But such was life. Some people were lucky in love, and others…well, some people got all the luck.

For the rest of the day, Bex delayed her projects around the island and instead hung out under the sun shelter on the sand. Maybe Prince Ankena would realize he was wrong and come back. Even after the sun set and the sand flies descended, she waited.

But day passed into night and into morning and into the next day. One week passed, then a second week. Konomelu’s orange-tattooed face never broke the surface. Prince Ankena hadn’t left a guard.

She was truly on her own.

Someday, Prince Ankena would leave her forever. He’d take away their child and disappear for a lifetime.

As hard as it felt to give up her soul mate, that would be infinitely worse.

In the third week after Prince Ankena left her, a familiar white yacht motored toward her island.

Relief fought with heartbreak.

She knew what she had to do.

But that didn’t make it any easier.

Bex stood and waved.

The women piloted straight for her, turned away from the coral reef at the last moment with barely a scrape, and dropped anchor. The yellow dinghy descended, and then Meg and Angie rowed to the shore.

Three weeks had made a real change.

Angie rowed the dinghy, her bare arms rippling with strength in her sleeveless blouse.

Meg watched for obstructions and waved cheerfully. “You’re here! We found you!”

Bex waded to meet them, and the other two jumped out to help her beach the dinghy.

Angie took Bex’s hand. Her eyes were clear and earnest. “I apologize for my behavior when we met. I wasn’t my best self, and I hope we can start over.”

“Uh, sure.”

Angie smiled and gazed past her up the beach. “Where’s that aggressive orange-tattooed warrior?”

“You don’t want a drama sandwich,” Meg called as she strolled up the beach toward Bex’s sun shelter.

“I want to have a look at him when my vision isn’t clouded.” Angie arched a brow. “Where is he?”

“Gone.”

She focused on Bex. “Gone? Where did he go?”

“Back to his city. I had a fight with Ankena.”

“Your prince.” Her face fell. She rubbed her chest and struggled with a smile. “That’s so funny. I had a driving need to return as fast as possible, and everything delayed us. The inspection, refueling, a squall. And he’s not even here. I should have expected that. My life seems to be one of missed connections.”

Meg looked inside Bex’s beach shelter and squealed. She started up the path to the island’s interior.

“Where’s she going?” Bex asked.

“Meg? Oh, she wanted to see your house.” Angie strolled in Meg’s footprints. “She missed the deadline for her second choice of graduate school and has decided to write her memoirs on a desert island.”

“I’m hoping for a ride back to the mainland, actually…”

“Oh, of course. I assumed so as soon as you mentioned your quarrel.”

Bex showed Angie her beach shelter, then climbed the headland and showed off a lookout she’d started on the upper cliff, along with her continuing efforts to collect and store water and food.

They oohed, ahhed, and shrieked at the odd tarantula or iguana.

Bex even showed them the cave lagoon and carved statues.

“This is amazing.” Meg scooped water out of the same depression where Bex had once drunk. “It feels like we’ve entered a holy place.”

“The warriors preserved this island as a sanctuary for their sacred brides.”

“It does feel like a sanctuary.”

The women returned to her beach shelter. Meg looked resigned about sharing a hammock with an eight-legged furry visitor, but Angie looked interested.

“I assumed it was all dirt and doom, but this is nice.” Angie stroked the unfinished wood. “Sanded a bit, I could see spending a romantic night under the stars.”

“Until a tropical hurricane comes through,” Meg said.

“Every romance has its challenges.”

“Please.” Meg turned to Bex. “Well, this was fun. Are you ready to go?”

“Yes. Um, there’s one other thing…”

The two women turned to her inquisitively.

There was no way to say what she had to say without sounding crazy. No way. But it was irresponsible to accept their generous offer without saying something.

“The warriors have a legend that when a red fog descends, there’s going to be a shipwreck. Because I already lived through one of those, and I know their secret, there’s a chance that they could come after me. It might put you in danger. And, in the worst case, cause another shipwreck.”

Meg put her hands on her hips. “Are they going to chase you at thirty knots? Because most canoes go, like, three.”

Bex had no idea. “The risk is really under the water.”

“You think we’re going to wreck on the rocks? But you can read navigational charts, right? You’re a real sailor.”

“As in your boat could get pulled under by…well, um, by a giant squid…”

Both women stared.

“It’s this whole revenge plot,” she babbled. “The king of the mermen got angry that the conquistadors invaded the islands when they discovered America. He unleashes a giant squid to rampage for revenge.”

“The king of the mermen…wants to fight the conquistadors…using giant squid,” Meg repeated. “Okay. Like Captain Nemo, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea giant squid?”

Bex nodded, wincing.

“Oh, okay, because I was thinking maybe it would be a different type. You know. Owned by the merman king. Um, Mom?”

Angie raised one eyebrow. “Have you been eating those extra-ripe papayas, by any chance?”

“I know what it sounds like, but if I came aboard and anything happened because of me…”

“It’s fine,” Meg told her. “We’re not worried about the legends of any tribe. We got here without sinking, twice, and we’re getting back the same way.”

“Sure, but—”

“If any warriors catch up to our yacht, I’ll tell them off myself,” Angie said. “They want passion? I’ll give them passion. A passionate talking-to about scaring young girls.”

“Oh, I’m not…I’m over thirty.”

“An infant.”

“Mom.” Meg eyed her. “You’re like forty-five. You have two gray hairs.”

Angie pulled them away from her scalp and studied them. “One for each kid.”

“Oh, my God. Drama sandwich.”

Angie rolled her eyes.

A moment later, even though she had her back turned and couldn’t have seen the gesture, Meg mirrored her.

They really were mother and daughter.

Sunset seared the water as they returned to the yacht. Bex helped them winch up the dinghy, then haul anchor and motor away.

Maybe her fears were for nothing.

Maybe she had eaten some off papayas and this would turn out to be a crazy fever dream.

But it wasn’t.

She knew.

Prince Ankena was out here. She sensed him in her soul. He led a team of loyal warriors blinded by an ancient grief and unable to see beyond it to a brighter future.

She’d been there.

But maybe he was also capable of change.

They had both already changed so much. She was more able to talk and make friends and express herself to strangers. He was more able to see her side.

Maybe someday, they would meet. She’d be at the marina in Norfolk, and he’d climb onto her deck. He was a mer. No shoreline was beyond his reach.

The sense of him grew fainter with every passing nautical mile. The link connecting their souls stretched tight.

Her heart broke, but she would survive.

Or so she thought.

By morning, the wind had died and a red mist enveloped the sea.

Bex stormed onto the deck, interrupting a breakfast snack of brie and crackers. Meg gulped instant coffee. Angie sipped water flavored with a lemon wedge.

“Do you have an emergency store of gas?”

“For the propane stove?” Angie’s gaze fixed on the strange red mist curling like blood. “Beneath the sink. What odd weather patterns. It reminds me of a forest fire, but we’re not in the forest.”

“We’ll motor through it.” Meg crunched a cracker. “We have the fuel.”

“I’m going to call in a Mayday.”

They both looked at her.

“A Mayday?” Angie repeated. “For fog?”

“I don’t know if I can outrun it. And after the engines seize, there’ll be nowhere for us to go.”

Angie and Meg exchanged glances.

“This is your giant squid weather?” Meg asked.

“Oh, honey.” Angie rose and hugged Bex. Bex remained stiff in her arms, even though Angie had a comforting mother’s touch. “I’m sure that was traumatizing. What can we do to help?”

Obviously, they both thought she was a few sardines short of a pizza, but they humored her by pulling on life vests, reviewing their emergency supplies, and arming themselves with flares and kitchen knives.

“All right.” Bex picked up the mic. “I’ll call in our last position and the Mayday. If we do it too early, we’ll endanger boats who answer our distress call, but if we do it too late, we won’t reach anyone. You can write letters to your loved ones and seal them in a watertight safe.”

“A message in a bottle?” Angie hauled out a large, heavy metal suitcase and opened it on the table. “I think we can do better than that.”

Bex blinked. “Is that…?”

“A satellite phone? Why, yes. The pinnacle of mobile phone technology.” Angie plugged it into the wall, lifted the massive receiver, and dialed.

“Does it work?”

“Through the fog? We’ll see.” Angie’s eyes unfocused. “Oh, George? I’m looking for Howard. No, we’re not hung up on another reef, we haven’t scraped a hole in the bottom, and we’re not lost at sea. We have an actual sailor on board, but she’s afraid we’re about to be attacked by a giant squid because some tribal warriors warned her about red fog. Yes, there’s a dear, thanks.”

Meg packed food into what would hopefully be floating plastic tubs and loaded them into their dinghy. She debated about a mostly full bottle of rum. “Mom’s on the wagon again. Should I bring this for me? Two weeks into our trip, I wanted to kill her, and I’m not sure how I’d do sober and lost at sea.”

“Hate week,” Bex said. “Perfectly natural on a long voyage. Just sleep as much as possible until you lose the urge to kill.”

Meg left the rum out of the box. “I hope I don’t regret it.”

“You won’t.” Bex divided the rum into a selection of empty bottles she’d pulled from their recycling. “If we add a little dish soap and a flaming rag, we get napalm Molotov cocktails.”

“You’re scary.”

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“Howard?” Angie’s voice sounded strained. “Hon, hi. We’ve hit odd weather and our captain thinks you should check my life insurance and will. Oh, our new captain? We picked her up on that deserted island. She tried to stop us from plowing into the reef. Yes, okay, it’s fine if you don’t ask, you don’t listen even when you do. Oh? Well, maybe I should have spoken my mind a few years ago. You would have bought me a Cadillac instead of a cruiser like I asked you.”

The signal seemed to grow clearer as they talked, and the fog dissipated.

Maybe Bex had been mistaken. The warriors hadn’t targeted her boat. Or Prince Ankena had sensed her aboard and kept his promise that she would never be harmed.

One engine sputtered.

Meg shouted from the stern. “I saw something, Bex! There’s something in the water.”

Dread descended.

And with it, the thickening fog…

“Bex?” Angie offered her the phone. “We mailed that letter as you asked, but you can always call to check on your cat or your stepson.”

She took the heavy receiver. “You don’t mind?”

“Of course not. Howard’s paying.” Angie tightened her life jacket. “Well, I’m going to go sharpen all the steak knives.”

“I’ll keep a lookout,” Meg called.

Bex called her lawyer.

“Of course, Hunter S. Thomcat will always have a scratching post here.” Her lawyer, who was also a good friend from school, laughed. “He’s sitting on my lap right now, shedding all over my case files.”

“Good.” Bex steered. “Um, about my stepson. If you could get him a message—”

“Stevie Junior? He’s here.”

“At your house?”

“You told him in your letter that we shared cat custody. He demanded visitation.”

“Oh. I didn’t think…”

“Don’t worry about it. Hey, Stevie. Bex is on the phone.”

The phone changed hands and her stepson’s voice sounded oddly mature. “Bex?”

“Hey, buddy. Sorry about stranding you at your dad’s over the break.”

“It’s okay. He was barely there. And Mom’s fighting him about sending me to summer film school. It’s the same old. He wants me to do anything practical, so she’s going to turn me into an artist or die.”

“Did you want to go to film school?”

“I’ll go anywhere if I can get out of the house. Both houses.”

“Hey, um, if I don’t come back, I just want you to know that you’re a cool kid. You welcomed me when I was standoffish, you never gave me a hard time, and you were always nice. Whatever happens next, you turned out way better than me or your mom or dad. I just wanted you to know that.”

He was silent for a long moment. “You’re back in the red fog you wrote me about, huh?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“You need an ax, a harpoon, and a bunch of extras.”

“I duct-taped a steak knife to our push pole, but we’re a little light on extras.”

He quieted.

“A screwdriver is like a miniature harpoon.” She hefted a screwdriver she’d salvaged from Angie’s toolbox. “If you don’t hear from me, I went down with a fight.”

“That’s a sucky ending.”

“Write me a better one, buddy. And if you do a film, I want to be played by Jodie Foster.”

“Oh, hey, Bex?” Her friend chimed in. “A little update. We got the police report from Bermuda. Deciding whether to launch an international criminal investigation isn’t up to me, but your husband’s cheating during both marriages was documented. Are you sure you don’t want to leverage that into a settlement?”

“I just want out.”

“You could buy a new boat. Just throwing it out there. You have options.”

“You don’t know Steven.”

“I know he isn’t bulletproof.”

“He hired hitmen to avoid giving me a divorce.”

“And if we can prove it, we’ll see him in court. But that’s not the only way to take him down. He cares about his image? Threaten to expose his old-man socks and Rogaine.”

Bex opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again.

She was acting the same as Prince Ankena, so set in the way it had always been that she couldn’t comprehend a new future. She was so certain of a tyrant’s power, she only ran. She didn’t dare fight back.

Oh.

“Yes.” She straightened. “Okay. Take him for all he’s worth. If I don’t come back, use it as a scholarship for Stevie’s film school.”

“Bex, you’re coming back,” Stevie said.

“You should come back to sign the papers,” her friend agreed. “We updated beneficiaries before you left, but dispersing Steven Senior’s assets will take longer if you have to be declared—”

Click.

Silence greeted her.

“Guys? Hello, guys?”

Nothing.

Bex pulled the receiver away from her ear. The electronics and the radio were dead.

The engines slowed and went silent.

Bex rested the receiver on its stand. Her stomach churned.

She hadn’t called in the Mayday…

But at least this time, she’d gotten to say goodbye. She didn’t just disappear like her dad. She gave closure to her loved ones. And with any luck, she’d see them again.

Someday…

Meg popped up behind her. “Bex?”

She jumped and brandished the screwdriver.

“Agh!” Meg stumbled back and grabbed the railing. “Oh my God. You scared me.”

“You scared us.” Angie looped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I came to tell you we’re out of gas.”

“Diesel,” Bex corrected. “And you have plenty. We can maybe rupture the tank, pour it out on the water. It’s going to be hard to get it hot enough to ignite. Our best bet is a flare. Or we could atomize it with a spray bottle, but that could backfire…”

“You’re serious?” Meg hugged her life jacket. “I mean, I can’t believe you, but on the other hand, this fog is so creepy.”

“And I gave up hairspray.” Angie set the flare gun on the counter next to the phone. “How does this work? Aim and pull the trigger?”

“Jeez, Mom. Calm down.”

“I won’t be calm. I don’t know how much time we have.”

Both women looked at Bex.

She shrugged.

“I’ve been calm my whole life.” Angie wiggled her fingers. “Now is distinctly the time not to be calm.”

Bex watched them prepare. Guilt seeped into her belly. “This is my fault.”

“How?” Angie asked.

“The king targeted me.”

“Then you’re a victim. Another man’s insane behavior is not your fault.”

Her heart squeezed. “But if I wasn’t here, you might not be in danger.”

“No buts.” Angie offered to link her elbow. “We make choices, we make mistakes. But we’re not responsible for anyone else, not even the anger of a vengeful merman king.”

Meg offered her elbow as well. “We’ll throw a few punches on your behalf.”

Oh. Wow. They really didn’t blame Bex, and they were ready to fight.

“And if we are destroyed by a giant squid, well, it’s the revenge of the calamari,” Meg said.

“I have eaten a lot of barbecued squids,” Angie said. “Hot off the grill, with or without breading. A little lemon, a little garlic.”

“Great, now I’m hungry, Mom.”

Angie wiggled her elbow at Bex. “Are you with me?”

Bex’s heart swelled. She linked arms. As a trio, they faced the oddly still ocean together.

“Why is it so quiet?” Meg whispered.

“I don’t know,” Bex said. “Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know. What do we do now?”

“Now?” Bex squinted at the shadow of a wandering albatross. “It won’t be long.”

Samuel crashed onto the deck.

Angie and Meg shrieked, dropped her elbows, and hugged each other, and then brandished their improvised weapons.

“Wait!” Bex held up her palms. “Samuel’s a friend.”

“Uh, Bex? Samuel’s a bird.”

“He’s an albatross. They love squid. He’s like my early giant-squid warning system.”

“If you say so…”

Samuel caught his balance, shook his feathery head, and approached Bex with a clack, clack of his beak.

“Sorry, buddy, my Meow Chow went down with the sloop.”

He eyed her with disappointment.

“Cross your feathers.” She strode to the dinghy and double-checked its readiness. “I’m not going down with the ship today.”

The yacht shuddered.

Meg and Angie hugged each other again.

“This is so unfair,” Meg said, her fear making her voice catch. “We’re not even descended from Columbus. My great-aunt still lives in Shanghai.”

Angie peered over the side. “We ran aground.”

“Again?”

“On a sandbar. A red sandbar.”

“Watch for tentacles.” Bex grabbed the knife-taped push pole, wedged herself against the railing, and braced. “Watch the sky.”

“Sky?”

Samuel scrambled over the side. He flapped his great wings and dropped to the bubbling water.

Bex searched the fizzy water.

The red color deepened, and she could almost see…yes, skin texture moving and unfurling. She walked along the railing to the stern.

The red intensified, and the squid broke the water. Its tentacles launched. Its beak hovered over the rotors.

Angie and Meg screamed.

Her heart constricted, and her vision narrowed on the monster.

Bex launched the stabby end of the push pole right for the squid’s vulnerable eye.

It soared across the water and bounced off the head.

Well.

Son of a scuttled butt.

Squid one, Bex zero.

“Plan B!” she shouted.

Angie and Meg leaped into action. Meg pelted the squid with the bottles of rum. “Take that! And that!”

Angie poured propane over the side and then dropped the whole container.

“Light them!”

Meg dropped matches over the side. They smoked and went out before touching the water.

“No, the rags!”

“I threw them all!”

The bottles floated like little deadly messengers.

Angie aimed the flare gun and fired.

The flare hissed out, hit the propane tank with a metallic ting, then bounced off. It floated on the water, smoking and hissing.

Angie frowned. “Hmph.”

Bex raced for the pilothouse. There had to be a dry paper towel or oil rag…

Whoosh.

She turned.

Behind her, the water had ignited. The flare had worked! Flames raced back toward the yacht and danced across the Molotov cocktails.

Uh-oh.

Pop. Pop-pop.

POW!

That was the propane tank.

The yacht shuddered. Water geysered into the air. Glass shattered and projectiles zinged.

Angie and Meg shrieked and ducked.

Bex dropped to the deck.

The squid pushed away. Their yacht rocked dangerously. The monster squirted black ink and dropped below the rippled waves. Its coiled tentacles smashed the water.

And the bow salon.

The yacht creaked. Metal strained.

Oh no.

Chunks of wood and cushions flew. Squid tentacles pummeled them. The hull cracked. Flaming black ink splashed onto the deck.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Bex pushed to her bare feet, ran down to the galley, and tore the fire extinguisher off the wall. She raced back onto the deck, pulled the pin, and sprayed down the deck.

The squid escaped beneath the partially flaming water.

Angie and Meg huddled by the cabin. Angie reloaded the flare gun with shaking hands.

They were driftwood. Their yacht listed, crippled. Burning debris sloshed into the damaged hull.

Bex rested her fire extinguisher by her feet.

The dinghy was at the stern, dangerously close to the remaining fire. They should wait and hope the yacht floated until the fire went out or they drifted farther away.

Meg pointed off the bow and shrieked. “Look!”

Around the relatively calm, not-flaming waters off the bow, warriors surfaced. One, two, five, twenty. Bristling with daggers and sharp tridents, myriad tattoos, all fierce and deadly.

They focused on the warrior in their center.

Bex’s stomach dropped.

Their king.

Prince Ankena’s father was an old, balding warrior with gray tattoos and one long scar down the left side of his face, stitching across his missing left eye.

Behind him, two warriors surfaced with Prince Ankena. One was the familiar orange lieutenant.

Angie stood taller and glared. “Konomelu.”

He flinched and acted as though he didn’t hear.

The king’s one eye narrowed.

The other warrior who restrained Prince Ankena was an implacably calm warrior with cornflower-blue tattoos. His eyes traveled over them like ice, lingered on Meg—who sucked in a breath—and moved on.

Prince Ankena’s fierce gaze locked on Bex.

He had decided to fight.

But how?

“Father!” He thrashed between the two warriors. “I swore to prove my loyalty. Let me prove it!”

The scarred king raised a hand. “Lieutenant Konomelu. Lieutenant Itime. If he fails, take his life.”

“My king,” the cornflower-blue warrior, Itime, said blandly.

“My king,” Konomelu repeated sharply.

They leaped onto the deck with Prince Ankena suspended between them, his hands and ankles bound with green seaweed. The athleticism to vault the rails while holding Prince Ankena by the biceps so he dangled between them was incredible. All that, and Konomelu casually balanced a trident in the crook of his arm. Lieutenant Itime balanced two.

Bex backed toward the other women.

Angie pointed her gun at the trio. Fear made her voice tough. “I’ve been waiting for a fight for twenty-two years. Bring it.”

Meg double-fisted steak knives. “My brother trained with throwing knives. I might remember how to throw these.”

Bex stood in front of them. “Wait.”

“Oh, we’re waiting.”

Lieutenant Itime sliced the seaweed shackles.

Prince Ankena shook out his arms and legs. He focused on Bex. His expression was fierce and wild. He was about to do something dangerous.

But what?

If he didn’t sacrifice her, then the king’s warriors would kill them all.

And she knew what those tridents could do.

Her heart beat hard in her throat.

She didn’t know how they would survive.

“Hear me, Father,” Prince Ankena shouted. “I will complete my vow.”

His two deadly lieutenants pointed their tridents at Prince Ankena’s throat.

He ignored them. “Father, you asked me what was more important: my honor as a warrior prince of Lusca, or pursuing an unnatural lust for the female descendant of our enemy. I give you that answer.”

The king crossed his arms.

Prince Ankena held out his hand.

Without any change in his bland expression, Lieutenant Itime gave him the extra trident. Lieutenant Konomelu glared at the prince with loathing, as though he were being forced to do something against his moral code and blamed the prince for it.

Prince Ankena connected his gaze with Bex again. Fierce determination, yes. Anxiety and sorrow, yes.

But also a sliver of cursed amusement.

She might not like his answer.

“I answer you, Father, that I am loyal to my city, Lusca. I honor our past. And most of all, I vow to protect our future.” He raised his trident. “That future starts with my soul mate!”

The floating warriors exclaimed in shock.

The king snarled. “Traitor! Kill him.”

Prince Ankena raced toward Bex.

His two lieutenants turned and flanked him, switching allegiances and backing toward the women to protect their prince.

The king screamed. “Kill them all! They side with our enemies! None will survive!”

His warriors threw daggers.

The two lieutenants expertly knocked the weapons aside.

Prince Ankena gathered Bex to his chest. He thumped her life vest. “What is this material?”

“It floats.” She grabbed his shoulders. “Prevents drowning.”

“Ah.” He glanced over the side. “Konomelu! Your warriors have turned against us.”

“His second is too loyal,” Itime said in an unnaturally calm voice. He defended Meg from a thrown trident, slamming it out of the air so it clattered to the deck. “As I warned you.”

“I had less time to prepare, Itime,” Konomelu snarled, fighting in front of Angie. “I did not stack my unit with traitors. Never did I plan to commit treason!”

A warrior vaulted onto the deck. He raised his trident with a war cry.

Prince Ankena slammed him in the gut with the hard base of his trident.

The warrior collapsed.

Itime fought bravely as he casually introduced himself to Meg. “I am Itime.” He kicked a boarding warrior and smacked a thrown knife out of the air with his trident. “You are my soul mate.”

Meg clung to him. “Good to know. Do you come here often?”

“Not often, no. This is my first time on a human boat, speaking to a human, and committing treason.”

“It’s my first time being rescued by a warrior.” Meg ducked under a flying dagger. “I like how you sound so calm.”

“Good.” He showed the barest flicker of emotion. “In truth, I have never raised my voice.”

“Seriously?”

“I have spent most of my life under the ocean.” He kicked another boarding male in the face. “It did not require shouting. Should I build my vocal stamina?”

“No, no. I like it. This is neat.”

His mouth flickered with the ghost of a smile.

Beside the pilothouse, Konomelu fought off a male to protect Angie and exposed his back. A dangerous warrior lifted his trident to strike.

Angie leveled her gun and pulled the trigger. The bang startled the attacker. The hissing flare thumped him in the chest.

He leaped backward into the spray.

Konomelu straightened. His gaze fixed on Angie with shocking heat. “You fight like a warrior.”

She reloaded the flare gun and shot another warrior over Konomelu’s shoulder. “You should see me challenge a school board.”

“That is the passion I crave.” He crossed the deck in a stride, yanked her into his arms, and, in the middle of the battle, he bowled her over with a kiss.

She hooked a leg around his knee, entwining him.

“Hurry! I have cleared a path to escape.” Prince Ankena carried Bex to the bow.

An older warrior leaped onto the railing and leveled his trident on Prince Ankena’s chest. “Halt.”

“Elder Daka.” Prince Ankena’s lips curled from his teeth. “You will not turn me aside. I will save my mate.”

“Claiming a modern female is against the law of the mer.”

“So is hurting a female. Do you know how many my father has doomed? Lusca only enforces the laws it likes.”

The elder pressed his lips together. “It is what we have always done.”

“Tradition is not destiny.” He held Bex proudly. “Today, I make a new choice.”

Konomelu arrived a moment later with Angie, both looking flushed and determined. Behind them came Itime and Meg.

“Father.” Itime’s calm voice still carried weight. “You have always voiced tolerance. Will you kill three of Lusca’s males today? Including your prince and your own son?”

Elder Daka’s brows drew down. “Lusca will not recover from this sorrow.”

“Convince your king to change. We are loyal warriors, but we cannot sacrifice our soul mates.”

“Loyal warriors know his rule is law.”

“Father.”

Elder Daka grimaced and stepped aside. The warriors behind him parted to create a safe passage to freedom.

Prince Ankena squeezed the elder’s shoulder. “You save Lusca this day.”

Elder Daka’s frown deepened. “I save nothing. Do not be foolish. Your father will not forgive this betrayal. He may never attack the Forbidden Island, but if you ever try to leave, he will hunt you to death.”

“I understand.”

They splashed into the ocean. Elder Daka’s warriors fought off the warriors loyal to the king, allowing the trio of couples to escape. Their last view of the smoking, sinking yacht was interrupted by the two halves of the city tearing each other apart.

They escaped.

Their warriors dove beneath the waves to move more quickly, and they dragged the women across the surface by their life jackets. It was wet, warm, but ultimately exhilarating. They had survived! Giant squid and a merman attack!

“We’re no ordinary castaways,” Meg said, resting on the lip of her puffy life jacket. “You never really know what you’re capable of until a giant squid is taking your number.”

Bex grinned.

The long hours passed more easily with camaraderie.

“It’s not proper for a woman of my age to start over.” Angie studied the rippled backside of the warrior skimming a few feet below the clear water, dragging her life jacket like a tattooed dolphin. “What would they say at the Ladies’ Park Society? I must be crazy.”

“It’s your chance to try out being passionate.” Meg tilted her head. “Itime just extricated us from a literal bloodbath, and I’m not sure it even raised his blood pressure. So…yeah, I’m sure I still have a lot to process, but knowing he’s not going to freak out at the slightest provocation feels good.”

“You’re soul mates,” Bex said.

“As much as I want to say you’re crazy, I can’t help feeling that you’re right.” Meg rubbed her chest. Or, at least, she rubbed her life vest. “I shouldn’t trust anyone, and yet, another voice says I’ve got every reason to trust. I forced myself to continue with my ex-husband when I knew it was wrong. Now I know things are right. I knew the truth both times, and so I just have to have the courage to trust myself.”

Yeah.

Everything would be okay. They would have challenges, but also thrive. This exile wouldn’t be forever. No one would keep them down.

Not as long as they had each other.

And not so long as they had their soul mates.

“We’ll have to build three houses,” Meg said. “Soundproofing makes for good neighbors.”

Bex snorted.

Angie laughed out loud. “Where is your head?”

“I’m thinking about practicalities, Mom. We can’t ignore the product of giving in to passion!”

They all laughed.

Bex wasn’t the only one who anticipated a good immediate future.

The island emerged from the horizon in the twilight. Their seemingly indefatigable warriors navigated the coral reef and carried their women to Bex’s shelter on the sloping shore. They seemed as energized from their journey, talking as they must have done beneath the waves, as their women had on the surface. The warriors hunted fish and gathered seaweed while Bex started the fire. Meg helped with cooking, and Angie arranged everything with the practiced skill of an executive hostess. They shared their first meal as a community.

Prince Ankena settled beside Bex, his choice clear, his hand never far from possessively touching her shoulder or knee. On the other side of the fire, shy glances led to stolen kisses and intimate murmurs.

Sure, there would be challenges ahead, but together, they could overcome anything. They didn’t have to reach the moon, after all. Just defeat a kingdom of mer warriors and liberate the surface from giant squid.

Just.

After dinner, Bex banked the fire. By mutual agreement, she left Konomelu and Angie to the beach shelter.

“We will guard the island from any attack,” Konomelu vowed. His expression clenched with a determination that Bex had once confused for anger. “My soul mate has the heart of a warrior.”

Angie purred. “Don’t you wish you had a quiet, obedient wife?”

“I wish for a wife whose soul shines.” He pulled her into his embrace. “But perhaps I will try to make you obey. I like a challenge.”

She raised a brow. “Bring it.”

He bowed her over with a fervent kiss.

Challenged accepted.

Leaving the beach, Bex led the other couple in moonlight up to her headland lookout.

Itime shooed out a tarantula. “Exit, furry creature.”

“Ooh.” Meg bounced and hugged Itime. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Many things, my Meg.”

“I mean are you afraid of anything? Snakes, or bees, or the fleeting mortality of man on the infinite sands of time?”

“Yes, perhaps. I do not wish to pass dishonored and unsung into the blacknight sea.”

“What, you mean you don’t want to die alone?” She squeezed his trim abdomen. “I’m not a great singer, but I can promise you an absolute rocking funeral party.”

He patted her arm. “I will rely on it.”

“Your emotions are like eternally dialed back to zero, aren’t they?”

“Is it a problem?”

“It’s what I never knew I always wanted.” She smiled at him shyly.

He glanced at Bex and Prince Ankena.

They took the hint and departed, retreating down the path. Bex gave them one last glance. Itime’s head bent over Meg’s. She lifted on her tiptoes to meet him in a sweet good-night kiss.

Good.

“My lieutenants are settled.” Prince Ankena stumbled over a root. “Where does that leave us?”

Bex linked hands, sliding their fingers together. “I saved the best for us.”

“Any place with you is the best.”

Mm, his voice sounded rough and hungry. Her feminine center tingled in anticipation.

She led him to the cavern lagoon. Moonlight filtered through the vine-strewn ceiling and lit the sea with an unearthly glow.

“The sanctuary. How appropriate.” He rested his trident in the same place he had previously disarmed, unwound his daggers, and removed a small woven seaweed pouch. “I could not acquire a Life Tree blossom for you, Bex, but I was able to collect this.”

He dropped a large pearl into her open palm. It filled her hands, heavy and smooth and warm.

She caressed the marble-like gem. “A Sea Opal? I’ve never seen one so large.”

“It is the resin of the Life Tree.” He moved plants aside in the water pedestal. “Sacred brides steeped them in their churches. The liqueur heals and, in the case of future brides, allows her to temporarily transform.”

She released the massive gem into the wide, plant-filled bowl. It rolled to the hidden, plant-obscured bottom and struck something with a clink.

Hm.

“The Life Tree’s healing sap pulses in my veins, but not yours. Hopefully, the liqueur will steep quickly.” Prince Ankena removed a white fava bean from his pouch. “This is my citizenship seed of the Lusca Life Tree. Perhaps someday, we will find the power to crack its impenetrable shell and grow our own blossoms. If our souls are truly strong, then we may found our city.”

She placed her hands over his. The seed was hard and warm, like the Sea Opal. “I wish I could see a mer city.”

“You will. I vow it. Someday.” He wrapped the seed reverently in his now-empty pouch and rested it beside his daggers, then stretched out on the smooth stone. “Come here. I wish to talk and hold you.”

She removed her sandy, fire-dried clothes and settled against him. The rock was cool, but he was wonderfully warm, glowing with inner heat.

He shoved a hand beneath his head.

She used his bicep as a pillow.

He maneuvered for comfort. “You have left the prince the hardest rock.”

“Aren’t you the kind of leader who sacrifices for his warriors?”

“What generosity you see within me.”

“I knew you had hidden depths.”

He rolled her on top of him. A smile curved his lips. “Do I? If you wish it, Bex, I have them for you.”

She straddled his taut torso and splayed her hands across his deliciously broad pectorals. “I want everything.”

“And you have it. Whatever you want.”

But there was more he wanted to say. She waited. The water in the lagoon quietly lapped their hidden shore.

“You were right.” He stroked a hot hand across her damp lower back. “About everything. I prized loyalty to my father over what was right. And when he reacted as I had predicted, I experienced a flash of selfish satisfaction. Why did I not approach him with more wisdom? An untrained youth would have approached him better.”

“Mistakes were made.”

“And mine nearly killed you. Twice.” He rubbed her back. “How can you still turn to me?”

“I also let the wrong person rule my life.” She placed a soft kiss on his mouth. “Let’s be on the same side.”

“Always.” He enveloped her mouth with his commanding kiss.

She opened to him.

He thrust in, scorching her mouth with his invasion, shooting heat to her tingling toes and fingertips. His long fingers clenched her hips. He ground her soft pussy against his iron-hard cock.

Her body tuned to his with a steady, throbbing ache.

He was her warrior, and she was his mate.

She needed him deep inside, now and forever.

Prince Ankena pushed her up and feasted on her breasts. He took her aching nipples in his hot, wet mouth, teasing and suckling. Twin points of need lanced her belly.

She rocked her wet vee against his taut, bunched abdomen.

He groaned. “Bex. My soul. My mate.”

She felt the same way.

His cock slid up her damp thighs and probed her channel.

Her feminine core clenched with need.

She lowered herself onto his shaft, plunging him deep. Seated against the hard base, she shuddered with completion. Pleasure radiated from his member all through her body. She wrapped her core around him tight, coating herself in his scent and flavor.

He gripped her thighs and speared her like a fish. She rode him, wave for wave, bucking and thrusting. Together, they chased her pleasure. She dove and writhed, and he endlessly reeled her into his rhythm of life.

She threw back her head, baring herself to him. An overpowering wave swell of pleasure broke over her, and she shuddered. The orgasm swept her away. And for the first time in her life, she didn’t experience it silently, frozen in the shock of their joining. She murmured the name of the warrior who completed her, uplifted her, showed her the true depths of her inner strength.

“Ankena…”

He shuddered as if her syllables had pulled his control away. His release pulsed into her with the life-giving heat of his seed.

Bex collapsed on his chest.

Their hearts echoed each other, a panicked tempo slowing to a sleepy beat. He warmed her bone-deep with his satisfying heat.

She sucked in a deep, contented breath and released it. “No matter what happens in the future, I’m glad for this moment right now.”

He stroked her back. “We will have a wonderful future. Our happiness will change Lusca.”

“The two of us?”

“Six. At first.” He reached up without dislodging her and tugged the seaweed pouch back to his hand. “Our thriving families will inspire other warriors. And if revolution does not happen within, someday we will gather enough strength to plant our city seed and found a new dynasty.”

He removed the seed and lifted it to the moonlight.

A large black mark fractured the center.

He frowned.

She traced her finger along the seam. “Isn’t this a crack?”

“It is!” He sat up, a firm hand cinching her tightly to his chest. “Praise the Life Tree. It led me to you, and my lieutenants to their mates. And now, we plant our city. This is destiny.”

Prince Ankena carried her to the edge of the lagoon. He rested her on the dry rock and slid into the cool water.

“This will be our secret strength. Our place of healing. The center of our power. We will endure any hardship, any challenge, any trial. Together, we begin our city. Your city, my bride Bex, and mine.” He tilted up his face. “If you accept?”

She rested her hands on his shoulders. “You had me at ‘leave this place or die.’”

He blinked. “My first words to you…they were not befitting a prince.”

“They were practical and honest. And, most importantly, heartfelt.” She nuzzled him. “We must be soul mates.”

“We are. Now, and for all time. Then, will you be my queen?”

“Of course.” She fixed his fierce mouth with a kiss. “Let’s establish our city.”

The Life Tree seed reflected the moonlight. It almost seemed to glow in his palm.

He pressed it against his chest, then against hers, and then he dove with a splash. Light coated his body and shone where he planted the seed in the floor. Bioluminescence or magic? That was a question for the scientists.

Whatever came next, she was ready. With Prince Ankena, Angie and Konomelu, Meg and Itime, and Samuel the wandering albatross, they would stop the mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. They would bring peace to Lusca. Even if it took their children’s generation or their children’s children, they would teach peace and love and practicality. They would heal the past, soothe the anger, assuage the grief.

And the future would move forward, bright with opportunity.

She’d be there to see it. Queen Bex and King Ankena.

Oh, yeah.

Her dad would be proud of her. She’d built a castaway kingdom.

Bex cracked her knuckles. She was a Swiss Family Robinson of one? How much would she accomplish as a Swiss Family Robinson of six?

Tonight was only the beginning.

She couldn’t wait for sunrise.