Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
And thus lies another problem. How can Vali be the mate to a sea-ogre when my world does not welcome her? She does not swim. The endless sun blisters her fishbelly-colored skin. The people on shore hunt her, and she bleeds heavily at least once a month. How can she live upon Akara’s back at my side as I rob the human ships that sail up and down the shipping lanes here? It’s not safe.
My uncle has a human mate, but his is male. There is no monthly bleeding there. My mother sheds an egg once a month so that must be similar.
The smartest thing would be to take Vali to the innkeeper with the daughter and ask them to help her find a home. To accept that I cannot have a human wife and leave her with people I trust.
Yet…I find I cannot bring myself to entertain the idea. Every time I consider it, I think of Vali’s smile of pleasure as she tongues one of my cocks…
…and I am a selfish, rotten bastard, because I am going to keep her.
I swim along the sea floor, distracted by thoughts of Vali and her warm, enticing, eager mouth. The corals grow thick here, with colorful fish darting around me as I move. I prefer the more open waters, as a rogue wave can slam me up against the sharp corals and scrape a layer off my skin, but I don’t want to go out so far that it’s impossible for me to return to Vali at the end of the day. I glide past the thick wall of corals and dive deeper, to the shelf of deep blue waters behind it. If Vali wants a large fish to please Vor, I’m going to have to lure them closer to the surface. She can’t dive this far.
But if I’m going to lure, I need to be familiar with the waters. I breathe out, letting the remainder of the air in my lungs escape to the surface, and dive deeper. The light from the surface grows distant, and the protective membrane that slides over my eyes when I swim flattens everything I see. I rely on my underwater senses instead, where I can “feel” the positions and sizes of other things in the waters around me by how they affect the waters we swim in. I can feel the fluttering movements of a school of fish off to one side, and the slower, more thoughtful movements of a large predator across from them.
I skim through the waters, seeking just the right movements that will tell me that what I’m looking for is nearby.
The sea floor stirs, and something impossibly large rises from below.
Immediately, I dart for the surface, alarm flaring through me as the entire bottom of the sea seems to rise up. A sea dragon, I realize, and I’ve wandered into its hunting grounds. Around me, the fish scatter in a panic, and I dart in the opposite direction of the large school of skipjack I’ve been following in the hopes that the sea dragon will go after the fish and not me.
I am not so lucky, though. I can feel it rising in the waters behind me, the sea shivering with the force of its movements and confusing my senses. I need to get away at all costs. Sea dragons are similar to the eels that hide in corals, but ten times the size, and as fiercely possessive of their territory as their smaller cousins.
Something sharp closes in around my leg, sending white-hot pain lancing up my calf. I cry out, the sound escaping away in a bubble. I’m dragged downward, my lower leg trapped in the creature’s jaws. If he takes me into his cave, I won’t make it out alive. I have to break free. I pull one of my short knives from my chest harness and stab at the creature’s face, but the beak of it is tough like Akara’s shell. I stab again and again, desperate to hit something that will make a difference, even as the waters around me fill with blood.
Blood is bad—if the sea dragon doesn’t finish me off, the sharks will. In a panic, I continue to stab—and finally hit something soft. A nostril, perhaps.
The creature thrashes, the head flinging back and forth, and then I’m flung away into the inky waters. Panicked, I claw at the sea, desperate to get away, but all is dark and I don’t know the way up. I’m blinded in the darkness, and I could swim right back into the creature’s yawning mouth if I’m not careful.
I need to go soon, too, or it might change its mind about releasing me and come to finish me off.
Ignoring the fluttering panic in my gut, I cup my hands around my mouth and let out an air bubble, noting the direction it heads, and I follow after it, doing the same over and over again until the light begins to seep through the blue waters, and this time I can see the bubbles heading to the surface.