by Zoe Chant
Chapter 3
Jane had no idea where she was, and even less where she was going.
She could still feel the mate-bond like an undertow sucking at her fins, trying to haul her back. Jane clenched her teeth against that siren lure, increasing her pace until she was running flat out down the strange black, hard-packed human road. She ran until her breath raked like claws in her throat; until her muscles shook and the soles of her feet burned.
When she finally stopped, grief no longer able to drive her rebellious body further, she had left the cove far behind. She was not even sure in which direction it lay.
Jane sucked down air in great, heaving gasps until her breath came more easily. Then she looked around, trying to get her bearings.
Whichever way she turned, squat, square human buildings blocked her gaze. They were dark and lifeless, though too well kept to be abandoned. The blank eyes of windows stared back at her impassively, unimpressed by this foreign interloper.
She flinched as a strange wheeled machine snarled past, almost within touching distance. She caught a brief glimpse of a pale human face inside—and then the hulking metal contraption was gone, buffeting her with a wave of hot, reeking air.
A transport, she realized. Like a boat, but built to run over land.
More land-boats flashed by, all hurrying as though they were knights responding to a call to war. Apart from herself, she had yet to see anyone on foot. If she had not known that this was a human city, she would have thought it some fantastical place inhabited only by fleet metal contraptions. Their dull, all-pervasive grumble shook the air.
Despite that chest-rattling sound, the world seemed oddly silent. It took her a moment to realize what was missing.
She couldn’t hear the sea.
Even in the air-filled parts of Atlantis, one was always surrounded by the soft music of current and tide. She’d grown up with that sound; lived her whole life swaddled in the ocean.
Now it was gone.
She felt like an urchin ripped from its rock and left stranded high above the tide-line. It was more than the absence of the sea. Everything that she had known, everything that she was… it was all gone.
Ever since she’d come of age, she’d clung to the hope that one day she would find her mate. That was what had let her endure all these years. She’d been able to let all the exasperated sighs and veiled disdain wash past; bending to it, but never breaking.
One day, she’d told herself, it wouldn’t matter that she was the disappointment of her bloodline, far overshadowed by her perfect brother. One day, she would meet her mate. He would see value in her, even if no one else did. He would give her purpose.
For one shining moment, when Reiner had first looked at her, she’d been turned to pure gold…
No. She blinked, refusing to let the tears fall. She had to forget how he’d made her feel. He had a child, and that must come before anything else. She would not destroy an innocent boy’s world.
Jane couldn’t help wondering what Danny’s mother was like. Her traitorous mind’s eye conjured a picture of a poised, confident lady. A warrior, perhaps, rich in gold and glory. Someone who could easily command the attention of any male she desired. Someone respected and honored.
Someone completely unlike herself.
No. Jane shook her head, trying to dismiss such thoughts. It didn’t matter whether Danny’s mother was a paragon of virtue or a timid minnow (though given Danny’s delightful boldness, Jane seriously doubted the latter). Whoever she was, Jane couldn’t compete with her.
Reiner had a child. A family. He would not leave them. Not even for his mate.
She knew he’d felt the temptation. She’d seen the agony in his eyes; how he was torn between duty and desire. But he was an honorable man. He’d made the only choice that he could.
She hoped he would be able to forget her. She’d blundered into his perfect world, bringing with her nothing but pain. Third Dancer, as foolish and out-of-place as always.
It would have been better if she’d never left Atlantis.
She palmed tears from her eyes and straightened. What was done was done. There was no point in dwelling on the past. She would never be able to forget Reiner, but she would have to learn to live with that regret. She would…
What would she do?
All her life, she had only ever had one plan, one goal. Now, she had nothing. Not even hope.
She knew what her brother would advise, were he here to ask. He too had once thought that he could never be with his fated mate—though in his case, that had turned out to be incorrect.
Still, in his darkest moments, he’d found comfort in duty. Since he could not embrace his mate, he’d embraced his role as a Knight of Atlantis. If he had truly never been able to unite with Neridia, Jane had no doubt that he would have managed to hide his heartbreak behind layers of armor.
He would tell her to do the same. Just like her elders and peers had done, when no male had answered her lonely song.
Don’t pine for what can never be.
Let go of foolish, impossible dreams.
Accept your allotted place.
But she was not a warrior like her brother. She’d never felt that certainty of purpose, that devotion to a calling. Duty had only ever been a too-tight collar around her neck. Her soft, foolish heart longed for more than the cold comfort of honor.
The future stretched before her, bleak and barren, and her soul shrank at the prospect.
Maybe… maybe there was a way to make it bearable. She had always looked forward, holding to hope for the future. Perhaps now she could learn to do the opposite. Take comfort from the past, rather than dreams.
Yes. She would make a bright memory to treasure, one that she could look back on with pride for the rest of her life. She would… she would…
You have to try it. Danny’s bright, clear voice echoed in her mind. It’s the best thing ever!
She would eat an ice cream.
Her brother had mentioned such a thing too, as an aside amidst his endless (and endlessly tedious) accounts of fires fought and people rescued. In the process of winning his mate’s heart, he’d shared ice cream with her. He’d obtained it from a… restroom?
No, that wasn’t quite right. A rest-raunt, that had been the word.
What a raunt was, and how one rested on it, she hadn’t the slightest idea. To be honest, she wasn’t entirely clear what ice cream was either, but John—his usual poet’s verbosity failing him for once—had described it as delicious beyond words.
Reiner had wanted to offer her ice cream. She’d seen the longing in his face, just for an instant, when Danny had innocently asked if they could all go to get some.
But she’d never been good at hiding her feelings behind the mask of etiquette. She could not paste a polite smile onto her face and share food with her mate, pretending that she was not hollow with hunger for more. Let alone actually meet the woman who shared Reiner’s life and bed.
So she’d fled. Like a coward.
Jane squared her shoulders. She would not creep away to some hole to feel sorry for herself. With no mate, it was more important than ever to seize and savor any small joy that she could. She would hunt down ice cream if it was the last thing she did.
This would, admittedly, have been easier if she had any clue how one went about asking for directions on land.
In the ocean, she would simply have sung out her query, and the water would have carried her words for miles. An answer would have come back from another sea dragon within moments.
“Hello?” she called out, uncertain. “Can anyone hear me?”
Her voice fell flat in the thin air, not reaching any distance at all. Not the slightest hint of reply came back.
She had never been so alone.
But that was a silly thought. She shook it off with a determined twitch of her shoulders and set off down the road again. No one could be alone in the human world. By all accounts, every inch of it was positively stuffed
with people. She was sure to bump into someone eventually.
Sure enough, she’d only been walking for a few moments when she spied a man striding toward her. Or at least, she thought it was a man. It was hard to tell, with the bizarre, all-enveloping clothes that humans seemed to favor. He—or possibly she—had one hand raised to their ear, and seemed to be talking to themselves.
This seemed moderately peculiar, but perhaps the person was a poet, and was working on their latest composition as they walked. Heart lifting, Jane hastened to intercept them.
“Excuse me, er…” She hesitated, at a loss as to how to address them. The person wore no honor tokens in their bizarrely short hair to indicate their rank and status. “Honored human, might I beg a moment of your time?”
Evidently she could not. The person sailed straight past Jane without so much as a sideways glance, never ceasing their one-sided conversation. Jane was left staring forlornly after their retreating back.
Well, she supposed it had been too much to expect a person in the grip of artistic inspiration to pay attention to anything else. Shaking off her momentary disappointment, she carried on. Surely there had to be someone on land able to help her.
Chapter 4
Daddy didn’t come back.
Danny didn’t notice for a long time. This was the best party ever, better even than his birthday. Fire Commander Ash cooked hot dogs and burgers, and there were crunchy cheese puffs and lemonade and four different kinds of cake.
Even better, all his shifter friends were here. Even bestest, for once they didn’t have to be careful about showing off their animal forms. There weren’t any regular people around. Da had explained that Sir John and his mate had bought the whole beach, along with the great big house next to it, so that the sea dragons would have a safe place to learn how to live on land.
Danny liked the sea dragons a whole lot. They were all so big and strong and dressed up in fancy clothes like it was Halloween, but they didn’t know anything. One of the tall, armored knights had tried to eat an orange like an apple, taking a great big bite right through the skin, and Danny had nearly exploded trying to hold in his giggles. He knew it wasn’t kind to laugh at people.
The sea dragons couldn’t help being so funny. Sir John had told him that Atlantis was real different from anywhere on land. A whole underwater city full of shifters! A magic city, filled with knights in shining armor and people who could do stuff like make ice and summon storms and see far-away places in pools of water.
It sounded amazing. Danny couldn’t understand why anyone would want to leave such an awesome place to come to boring old here. He’d asked Da, who’d explained that lots of sea dragons couldn’t find their true mates under the sea, which made them sad.
That sounded ridiculous to Danny. How could you be sad when you had swords? Da had just laughed and ruffled Danny’s hair, and told him he’d understand when he was older.
(Grown-ups were always doing that, much to Danny’s annoyance. Like he was going to turn into an entirely different person when he was big.)
Anyway, no matter what the reason, Danny was glad that the sea dragons had come to the land. There were so many questions he wanted to ask them. Like whether they had schools down there at the bottom of the ocean, and did they learn how to fight with swords at school, and how old did you have to be before you could learn to fight with swords, and could they teach him to fight with swords?
But even though he was just about bursting with curiosity, the sea dragons weren’t exactly easy to approach. They were all so big, they made Danny feel kinda small. And they didn’t seem to understand that this was a party. All of them looked stiff and serious, like they thought there might be a surprise spelling test at any moment.
Only one of them had been different. The nice sea dragon lady, the one who’d been talking to Daddy. She hadn’t made Danny’s tongue stick in his mouth. There had been a kind of sparkle to her, like there was around Mommy and Daddy and Da. She’d made him feel safe.
Yes, Danny decided. Jane was the one he needed to find. He was sure she wouldn’t mind answering all his questions. And maybe he could cheer her up in return. Her blue eyes had been so sad.
Clutching two chocolate-chip cookies—one for him and one for Jane, though Danny hoped she’d be too full to want hers—he searched through the crowd. It was getting late now, and people were starting to drift off the beach. But no matter how carefully he looked, he couldn’t see her anywhere.
That was weird. It shouldn’t be hard to spot a beautiful, gigantic lady with waist-length blue hair. Where could she have gone?
Maybe Daddy would know. Danny tried looking for him, but he was missing too. He was getting a worried, tight feeling in his stomach. He ate the cookies, but that didn’t help. If anything, the not-nice feeling got worse.
It wasn’t one of the weekends when Danny stayed over at Daddy’s place, rather than with Mommy and Da. But still, Daddy wouldn’t have just left. Not without even saying goodbye.
No, Simba whispered inside his head. Something is wrong.
Simba was Danny’s lion. Even when Danny wasn’t shifted, Simba was always there, as much a part of him as his toes or tongue or butt. Danny had learned to pay attention when Simba spoke up.
“Danny!” he heard Mommy call. “Come on, it’s time to go!”
Relief filled him. Of course. Mommy would know what to do. She always did.
Shoving the last bite of cookie into his mouth, he trotted back to where Mommy and Da were packing up the beach things. Well, Da was putting things away. Mommy just sat in a beach chair, chatting to her friends Virginia and Dai. Her belly was too big these days for her to do much.
Too late, Danny realized that Virginia and Dai’s little daughter Morwenna was there too, playing at their feet. The instant Danny appeared, her green eyes locked onto him like laser targeting beams.
Abandoning the upturned bucket she’d been banging, Morwenna grabbed at Danny’s ankle. “Dan-dan!”
“Ah, Morwenna’s favorite person,” Dai said, smiling down at Danny. “She doesn’t get half so excited about anyone else, you know.”
“Yeah,” Danny said gloomily, trying to prize himself free. “I know.”
He really, really hoped Morwenna didn’t turn out to be an early shifter. It was hard enough to escape from her when she couldn’t walk properly. Even his lion wasn’t going to be able to outrun a red dragon.
He managed to wriggle his leg out of Morwenna’s chubby fists, only to have her attach herself to his hand instead. Using him as a human climbing frame, she hauled herself up to a wobbly stand. Letting out a deep sigh, Danny caught her before she could topple over. Morwenna gurgled happily and bounced up and down, nearly yanking his arm out of its socket.
“All right, dragonet, put Danny down. He’s not a treasure to add to your hoard.” Virginia scooped Morwenna up, imprisoning her on her lap as the toddler squawked and struggled. “You’re so patient with her, Danny. You’re going to make a wonderful big brother.”
(No one had consulted with Danny whether he wanted to be a big brother, which he felt was very unfair. But apparently it was too late to send the twins in Mommy’s belly back and get a puppy instead. Danny could only hope Mommy and Da found a way to make sure they didn’t have any more unnecessary babies. When he’d informed them of this, Da had doubled over laughing, while Mommy had gone a funny red color and announced that it was bedtime.)
“He certainly is,” Mommy agreed, smiling. “Danny, it’s time for us to head home. Have you said goodbye to all your friends?”
Normally, Danny would have seized this opportunity to run off and play for another ten minutes. But not now. Simba was pacing back and forth in his mind, tail twitching in worry.
“Mommy, have you seen Daddy or Jane?” Danny asked. “I can’t find them anywhere.”
“Jane?” Dai said. “Who’s Jane?”
“John’s sister,” Da replied, before Danny could answer. He glanced up at the other adults, on
e gold eyebrow quirking. “And from what John told me, she and Reiner seemed to share a significant moment, earlier.”
“Ohhh,” Virginia said, in that drawn-out way that grown-ups did when they knew something that you didn’t.
“Exactly,” Mommy agreed, her lips twitching as though she was holding back a smile. “Don’t worry, Danny. I think Daddy and Jane just, ah, want to have some grown-up time right now.”
“Very grown-up time,” Dai murmured. Virginia elbowed him.
“But Daddy always says that he’s never too busy for me,” Danny said, puzzled. “And Jane likes me too, or at least, she will once she gets to know me. Why would they go off and leave me behind?”
“Oh boy.” Mommy cast a look at Da. “You’re meant to be the alpha. You can field this one.”
Da chuckled as he tucked a towel into the beach basket. He sat back on his heels, his big body loose and relaxed. That made some of the not-nice tight feeling in Danny’s stomach untwist a bit. Nothing could be badly wrong, if his pride’s alpha wasn’t worried.
“Danny, you know about true mates, right?” Da said.
“Of course I do,” Danny said indignantly. He wasn’t a baby. “You’ve told me this a million times, Da. Every shifter has a true mate, even they haven’t met them yet. It’s your one special person, who makes you feel happy all over, even between your toes. And you want to make them feel happy too, and take care of them, forever and ever.”
“That’s right. And you know most shifters can recognize their true mate on sight?”
Danny nodded. “Because your animal tells you.”
“Exactly.” Da’s griffin-gold eyes went warm and soft, the way they always did when he was thinking about Mommy. “The moment that I first saw your ma, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“I know.” Danny had been there, after all. “But what does that have to do with Daddy?”
Da blew out a little huff of air. “Well, I can’t say this for certain, because I haven’t talked to him yet. But I think that he and Jane might be true mates.”