Page 12

twelve

ARIA

Back in the grotto, Triton basically forced me to climb into bed with a book.

He wanted me to rest so my muscles could heal and recover.

Now that I’d eaten and ventured out into the castle, I was definitely on board with that plan.

My body hurt.

Badly.

I read and dozed for the rest of the day, which wasn’t long, because I’d slept so much the night before.

Triton was settled in a chair near the bed, his massive body sprawled out in a way that made him look both comfortable and ridiculously attractive.

Then again, he was always ridiculously attractive.

I was studying him on the sly, from behind the pages of my book, when I noticed his eyelids getting heavy.

Guilt hit me hard.

He was a good guy.

Or at least, it seemed like he was.

A few days with him wasn’t long enough to really make that determination, but he’d been good to me and to everyone else I had seen him with.

I wasn’t sure how much he had even slept during the last night, considering he’d been gone when I woke up.

Yet I had been making him sleep in a chair.

The first night, it was understandable.

There was an argument to be made for the second night, too.

But the third?

I didn’t have an excuse that wouldn’t make me feel like shit.

Or that he really deserved.

It wasn’t like sharing a bed was more intimate than screwing, right?

And I could always put pillows between us or something.

Triton’s eyes closed completely for a moment before he jerked awake and rubbed them, muttering a curse under his breath.

He looked at me, and our gazes collided.

Guess I’d been caught snooping.

His lips tilted upward just a tiny bit before his smile faded.

“There’s an issue in the castle. Rayna needs me to deal with it.”

“What’s the issue?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m pretty smart.”

He dipped his head slightly.

“There’s a merrae couple who mated right after the Dragons’ War ended. Greta and Platt. They were friends, and they both led separate branches of our warriors. They were the only fighters in their families, and they had both lost everyone they loved to the plague.”

“There was a lot of talk about the possibility of our kind going extinct. They were mourning, but they both wanted to help repopulate. So they mated. And they have been a nightmare ever since,” he admitted.

My forehead creased.

“I thought they were friends. What was the problem?”

“They became friends when they worked together in the war, but they were both leaders. They never made decisions together. They reported to me. The day after they sealed their bond, they had a disagreement about their living situation. It grew loud, and the warriors from their teams got involved. It was a distraction from the mourning, and it escalated quickly. Everyone had something to say. I ended up having to mediate, and we came to an agreement that they both settled for. The peace lasted about twelve hours.”

My eyebrows shot upward.

“Only twelve hours?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

He nodded.

“It’s been like that ever since. When their first child was born nine months later, the arguments grew more intense. When the second came a year after that, it was worse. By the time the sixth joined us, they were straight-up enemies, each of them raising three of the children separately from the others. It didn’t get better when the fading merrae who never had kids started adopting their children a dozen years in, either.”

My eyes were massively round.

“They took the breeding thing that seriously?”

“They did. And still do. They’ve had nearly eighty children since they mated a century ago.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. Most of their children are mated to humans or other merrae, now. The couple have been using birth control, which has made things more peaceful. But apparently, she’s decided she wants another baby. It’s reignited every problem they have once again.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Before we could mate with humans, I had no choice but to mediate constantly for them for the sake of repopulation. It’s time to put an end to my role in it, now that they’ve begun fighting again.”

“Can I come see what they’re like?”

Triton’s eyebrows raised.

“I don’t think that would help you feel more settled here.”

“Come on, humans have drama too. Seeing yours would just make you all more real to me.”

He didn’t look convinced.

Not even a little.

He rubbed his temple, and I got the feeling someone was speaking into his mind.

“Let’s make a deal,” I said.

“What deal?”

“You don’t want to sleep in that chair.” I gestured to the chair.

“No one would. Especially when they’re as gigantic as you are. So, let me see the drama, and I’ll let you share the bed with me. Or I’ll take the chair, if you want it all to yourself.”

His eyes sharpened.

“My mate will never sleep in a fucking chair.”

“Then it’s just the shared mattress on the line.”

He studied me.

Then rubbed his temple again.

Someone was definitely bugging him.

The way all the merrae could speak mentally was kind of insane, but I was getting used to it.

Or at least, the idea of it.

I was pretty sure it would piss me off if I constantly had random people in my head.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he finally said.

“I’ve never had a problem sleeping comfortably. Having you sleep a couple inches away isn’t going to change that. It’s not like things are innocent between us. You were literally inside me yesterday.”

His eyes darkened.

“Alright, I accept your deal. With one caveat.”

“I’m listening.”

“Two caveats,” he amended.

I gave him a dirty look.

“Just come out with it.”

“The first is that if we go up there, we go as a pair. You don’t just watch the drama unfold. You give your opinions and participate.”

“I probably won’t have much to offer considering I don’t know the situation, but I’ll try,” I agreed.

The fact that he wanted us to work together seemed like a good sign.

Like the way he’d wanted me to be myself in the throne room.

“What’s the second?” I checked.

He hesitated, slightly.

“Spit it out, Triton.”

“It sounds ridiculous,” he finally said.

Grudgingly, too.

“I’ll keep an open mind.”

“I’ve been itching to touch you. It’s driving me mad. I’d like to kiss you before we go, if I’m going to share you with others in my castle again for a while.”

Wow.

I didn’t know if his desire was a good sign or a bad one.

Maybe it wasn’t either.

Maybe it was just a sign.

Maybe it wasn’t even that.

I had no idea.

I’d never done the relationship thing before.

The closest I’d ever gotten to dating someone was sleeping with a guy I worked with twice before I decided that was a bad call.

I’d only even had sex a few times in my life.

Regardless, I wasn’t going to turn him down.

I liked kissing him, and I really did want to see what Greta and Platt were like.

It might help me get to know Triton better if I saw how he interacted with them after he’d spent so much time dealing with their drama.

“You don’t want to share me?” I asked as I stood.

Every part of me still ached, but I could ignore it a bit longer.

“Not even a little.” His eyes tracked me as I closed the distance between us, and as I lowered myself onto his lap.

Our gazes were level when I settled into place over his obvious erection.

“You’re hard again, Triton.” My voice lowered slightly.

“Every time I’m around you.” The backs of his fingers brushed a few strands of hair out of my eyes, his touch light and gentle.

“Why don’t you want to share me?”

One of his hands found my bare hip, and gripped me.

“Nothing in my life has been my own since I took the throne, until you. The thought of letting my people have even a sliver of the one thing that’s mine makes me feel unfathomable rage.”

“I’m not a book you can hide in your library, though. If I’m going to be here, I have to make friends. I need to understand the dynamics, and figure out where I fit.”

“I know.” He brushed more hair out of my eyes and slowly buried his fingers in the tangled strands behind my head.

“I didn’t say it was rational. It’s just… instinct. I’ll try to control it.”

“Does kissing make it easier?”

His eyes darkened again.

“Claiming you for myself in any way makes it easier.”

“So you do want to share a bed with me.”

“More than I want to wake up tomorrow.”

I made a face.

“That’s dark.”

He chuckled humorlessly.

“That’s immortality, Sweetheart.”

When he flinched and reached for his temple again, I grabbed his face.

And kissed him.

He was caught off guard for a moment, but recovered quickly.

His grip on my hair and hip tightened, and he dragged me closer as his tongue devastated my mouth.

The man was hot.

Salty.

Fucking delicious.

I wanted more…

but he pulled away with a growl a moment later.

“Greta and Platt are breaking things now. Rayna and Wesson aren’t taking no for an answer.”

“That’s fine. Let’s go.” I tried to move off his lap.

His fingers dug in deeper before he finally forced a breath out and released me.

“Alright.”

As he lifted my sore body into his arms and carried me back to the lake, I wondered if any of his people had ever gotten out of bed or left their mates late at night to help him with his problems, whatever they were.

It seemed unlikely.

And told me a little more about the kind of man Triton was.

I heard the fighting long before we reached the couple.

And the crashing.

The heavy thud of something large hitting a wall made me wince.

Triton’s body tensed, and he started to jog.

“What are they breaking?” I asked.

“Furniture. And each other.”

My eyebrows shot upward.

“They’re abusive?”

“No. They’re warriors, and this is the only way they know to deal with their personal conflict. It’s not healthy in any way, but they’re equally strong. What she lacks in mass, she makes up for in power.” He gritted out the words.

The man was pissed.

“We’re not having another fucking baby,” a man snarled.

“We did more than our part in repopulating. We did all the fucking repopulation. We’re fucking done. I don’t give a damn what you—” There was another loud crash.

“Stop throwing me into the fucking wall, Greta!”

“Wow. They sound like great friends,” I drawled into Triton’s mind.

“The best.” He bit out the words, but his sarcasm was still clear.

“Please, just sit down so we can talk.” Rayna sounded tired.

She’d been bugging Triton for a while, so she’d probably been dealing with the pair for even longer.

Greta snapped, “I’m not sitting anywhere. This bastard mated with me for the sake of impregnating me, and he’s refusing to do his part. It’s not like it’s difficult . It takes him all of three seconds to get his rocks off, so I don’t see the problem. I would be raising the child, so?—”

“I’d rather fuck a shark’s mouth than spend another three seconds in your bed,” the man growled.

There was another, much louder crash as Triton stepped around a corner and through a set of open double doors.

We finally came face-to-face with a normal-looking alt couple.

The man was on the floor next to a shattered mess of sand, wood, and glass.

It looked like it had been a nice coffee table at one point.

There were thick shards of glass embedded in his abdomen, and my stomach turned at the sight of blood running down his skin.

The woman was right next to him, and there was blood on her hands.

“What the fuck is going on?” Triton demanded.

The man on the ground gaped at him.

The woman gawked.

I’d seen the way Triton interacted with the selkies, who were threatening the merrae with war.

He’d stayed even-tempered the entire time, only getting slightly angry when they insulted me.

So his obvious fury was clearly catching the couple off guard.

He set me down and stepped in front of me, blocking my view of them entirely.

Triton clenched his jaw.

A sideways glance at Rayna and the stunning dark-haired, dark-skinned man standing next to her—he must’ve been Wesson— showed they were even more shocked than the fighting couple, Greta and Platt.

When Triton didn’t speak again right away, still trying to calm himself, I figured it was time to hold up my side of the bargain.

The bargain that didn’t exactly favor me, but I was the one who offered it.

I stepped around Triton, and he immediately dragged me to his chest, roughly.

Maybe he hadn’t been just trying to block my view.

Maybe he’d been trying to shield me from them.

“I think what the king means to say is this relationship is very clearly fucked up,” I said, forcing my voice to come out upbeat.

I wasn’t angry like the king was, but one of us needed to stay calm and pleasant if that was usually how he did things.

“You’re shouting curses and insults at her,” I gestured from the man to the woman.

“You’re literally breaking furniture with his body in response.” I gestured from the woman back to the man.

“If this was Earth, the cops would be involved, and you’d probably be going to prison or…therapy.”

I couldn’t come up with the word for therapy in their language, so I just threw it out there in English after a moment of trying to come up with it.

Greta and Platt both gaped at me.

Maybe they didn’t know what therapy was.

“Do you have therapy here?” I asked Triton aloud.

“What is it?” His voice was low.

He was clearly still trying to gain control of his anger.

“When you talk to someone about your issues so they can help you work through your problems and give you tools to do better.”

“Then no, we don’t have therapy.”

“Maybe humans have something over merrae, then.” I tried to step away from Triton, but his grip was iron.

“Look at yourselves.” I gestured between the couple.

“Do you let your children fight like this?”

Greta’s face flushed bright red.

That was an obvious no.

Platt snarled out, “This is who we are. You are nothing but a womb—a tiny human female who cannot understand the workings of merrae warriors.”

Triton’s magic slammed through the room like a bolt of lightning.

Everyone sucked in a breath as their hair raised and the air in the room thickened—including me.

Though the way my back arched made it obvious that it affected me much differently than it did them, because the blood drained from all of their faces.

Even his sister’s and brother-in-law’s.

“Go ahead and repeat what you just said about my queen.” There was no missing the pure, undiluted fury in Triton’s voice.

Platt eyed the man behind me, and said nothing, though he did rise to his feet.

“He only means that we voted in favor of you taking a mate for the sake of repopulation,” Greta said quietly but evenly as she stepped up in front of her mate.

She was only a few inches shorter than him, but he could see over her just fine.

“We never planned on seeing her as a queen. No one did.”

Apparently, she could stand up for her mate when she wasn’t trying to murder him with a coffee table.

“Then perhaps you should’ve asked my opinion.” Triton’s growl was back, his magic still surrounding us all in a way that made it difficult for me not to grind against him or moan.

I needed to get my shit together, but his power made that pretty much impossible.

“I have spent the last century solving your problems and dealing with your temper tantrums almost entirely alone.” Triton finally released me, placing me behind him again as he slowly stalked toward the couple.

Staying where he put me, I just watched him.

And fought like hell not to give into the urge to touch myself.

His magic may as well have been a drug to me.

“You act like spoiled children for a century, then repay me by interrupting my time with my mate moments after I bring her home. Now you’ve insulted her, so I am done . Solve your own fucking problems, because if this happens again, I will kill you myself.” He stopped just a few inches away from them, gesturing to the broken furniture.

The room was still flooded with his magic, to the point where I was about to stumble backward so I could lean on the wall for support.

It was insanely hot watching him threaten them.

I didn’t even want to know what that said about how twisted my mind was.

A foreign mind brushed mine.

“Can you distract him for a moment? I don’t think he’s in his right mind,” Rayna said.

I didn’t think he was insane.

I thought he was tired of dealing with them.

And he had every right to be.

But I was pretty sure he’d gotten his point across, so I nodded.

“Clear the room fast, and lock the door behind you,” I told her.

After she agreed, I reached for my magic.

Though I found it easier than I had before, my access still wasn’t natural or instant.

I ran it over my arms for a moment to make sure I had control, then sent a bolt of it through the room.

Right to Triton.

It hit him square in the back, and I bit back a sound of victory.

I was totally going to figure the mermonster thing out.

The king spun to face me, his eyes blazing.