by Starla Night
But their relationship felt unfinished. Their souls weren’t totally united. She had come here to heal him primarily but also to be with him. He was her soul mate. Joining with a warrior to bear his child was the whole purpose of her signing up for MerMatch.
She voiced that frustration. “Why?”
“Why?” He stared at her like she was crazy but he was still fighting his own unfinished frustration. He needed to unite with her just as much as she needed him; not doing so frustrated them both. “How can I?”
“Your race is dying. Having kids is sort of the point.”
“I already had mine.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It is my lie.” He gestured at the army outside. “How do you imagine this continues? I cannot keep you in my camp surrounded by the elite warriors of the All-Council. A modern female carrying my young fry? I would be unmanned and executed. And you—”
“So leave.”
“And go where? We cannot return to Djullanar. The king would kill us both. And the shame to my father—he would die of hearing it before our family line was ended for treason. My son would be destroyed and he does not know the truth. My own second lieutenant—he would kill us both to protect my son before acknowledging our deception.”
“That would be ironic, considering how guilty you feel for pulling a knife on him.”
His brows drew together thunderously. “You laugh at my pain.”
“Well, how do you think I feel?” She tapped her fist on her chest. “I’ve had to fight you this whole time to acknowledge we’re soul mates. Now you acknowledge it but refuse to do anything. How do you expect me to react?”
He clasped his hand over her fist and uncurled her fingers. “This is a deep insult. An invitation to fight.”
She curled her fingers again, trying to form the fist. “So? Fight me.”
He entwined their fingers and kissed hers. “I hear your pain. You have fought me a long time. I cannot abandon my warriors, dishonor my city, or destroy my ideals in one move.”
“Then how are you going to feel when your army surrounds Atlantis and I’m the one looking back at you from the other side?”
Deep trouble filled his uncertain gaze. “You are human. Go to the surface.”
“You can be just as human. Surface with me.”
He shook his head.
“Then prepare yourself.” She pushed forward, pressing her breasts to his chest. “Put your affairs in order, because when we meet on that battlefield, I’m coming for you. No one will turn me aside. You’re mine.”
His gaze heated as the hard arousal simmering beneath the skin burned hot. His cock pressed authoritatively against her belly. “Do not endanger yourself, Nora.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“I will take you to the surface myself.”
“Good. I look forward to it.”
“Nora.” His gravelly vibration teased her senses.
She gripped his cock, surprisingly him, and he unconsciously thrust into her hand. She dropped to waist-level and sucked his length into her mouth, teasing and arousing him with her hands.
He groaned and tried to hold her back. “Nora. No. You must not…”
Ordering her not to do something meant she only wanted to do it more.
She tongued his shaft, enjoying herself and the power of her healing, lights flickering, as he lost himself to her completely. He gripped her hair and released his male salt into her mouth, orgasming against his will as she fulfilled both of their fantasies.
Satisfaction filled her.
She let go of his still-hard, twitching shaft and rose to meet him eye-to-eye. His severe black hair floated askew and his body shuddered with the aftermath.
He locked gazes on her. “Nora. You…” He shuddered again and clenched his cock with his hands. “What did you do?”
She grinned. “I gave you a preview.”
“That is … this sensation, it feels irresistible.”
“So don’t resist.”
His gaze darkened. He closed his eyes, fighting for his ideals, while his body, mind, and soul oriented toward her. “I must.”
“Well, okay then. You know where to find me when you change your mind.”
“I will never fight Atlantis.”
“Then I’ll come for you.” She grinned and floated back, finally satisfied. “Be ready.”
His hard gaze followed her as she practically skipped on her mer fins as she saw herself out.
She had ensnared the soul of the second most-powerful man in charge of the All-Council armies. Whether he abdicated or whether he faced her on the battlefield, that much was certain.
He was a thinker. So he had to think his way to how they could be together. And if it didn’t happen fast enough? Then she would go after him. With a giant octopus, unstoppable queen powers, and a rebellious spirit that had finally found in rules-upholding him the ultimate challenge.
Nora practically whistled through the water as she flew across the army and rejoined her giant octopus companion for the journey home to Atlantis.
Yes, General Giru would come to her whether he wanted it or not.
She couldn’t wait to claim him.
Afterword
I am so thrilled to continue this undersea adventure with you!
As you can see, this boxed set is packed with romances, including numerous side characters, because I just can’t stop giving these worthy warriors their happy endings.
Fun trivia:
Surrendering to the Sea Lord was supposed to be a novella! Now with its triple romance and bonuses, it’s my longest book in the series.
Secrets of the Sea Lord wasn’t supposed to exist because Faier was originally with Bella. I wrote half of Bella’s book with him going on dates. She was amazed by his scars but charmed by his honest heart. Then the book stalled out. I ended up scrapping it all and starting over. Harmony came out of nowhere and Faier was swept away into a whole new book. Wow, right?
Some readers don’t like Balim’s ending in Spellbound by the Sea Lord. I can understand this. He was supposed to be a funny, sarcastic character but the book went a little dark. It’s also crazy that I randomly came up with a pandemic story in 2018. In 2020, it’s also not funny!
But their absence is acutely felt in the tenth book starring a very important character you’ve already met…
Start book eight with clear-eyed Ciran and his second-chance-at-loved bride, MerMatch head matchmaker Dannika, in Shattered by the Sea Lord.
They land on an island full of brides and their warriors, each with their own romance. You can read the prequel novella Sea Lord’s Castaway free by joining my newsletter:
Subscribe here: http://smarturl.it/StarlaNewsletter
The ninth book in the series, Shattered by the Sea Lord, is coming in January 2021. It stars dangerous shark-whisperer, Lotar, and his super amazing can’t-go-a-day-without-a-latte city-girl Hazel.
And the final book, Sheltered by the Sea Lord, is coming in the first part of 2021. The warriors of Atlantis will finally open their sea platform to unite human and mer just like before the Great Catastrophe of the ancient times. But with new enemies above and below the water, history is perilously in danger of repeating itself…
I’ve had so much fun writing this series! And matching all the warriors to women who will entice, challenge, and complete them.
With your continued support I will write all the stories of the warriors, and bring you satisfying nights curled up with a fun, sweet, amazing escape.
Let me know what you love and want more of by email [email protected], at my website, or on Facebook. I am so energized to hear from fans!
Love,
Starla
Shattered by the Sea Lord
The series continues with Dannika’s story ~
I’ve devoted my life to helping lonely men and women find their perfect match. I know what true love looks like. I know because I experienced it—in all its tingling, pure, imp
erfect bliss.
And then it was ripped away.
Now mer shifters have emerged from the oceans. Critically endangered, they seek human brides to save their race.
This is my calling.
The job ought to be easier than it is. The mer can see souls, and they know when a woman is their mate. The catch? Convincing the women that there isn’t one. It’s okay to embrace their heart’s desire and chase their wildest dreams.
Until a warrior says I’m his.
But I can’t be.
Tingling awareness doesn’t course through my body. I don’t hang on every word that drops from his sensual lips. The steady strength in his bulging biceps doesn’t entice me to swoon into his arms. I definitely don’t see patience, kindness, and empathy in his iridescent green-and-coffee-brown irises.
I’ve already met my soul mate.
Met, married, and mourned him.
If I trusted this warrior with my heart and something happened to him…
No. I can’t go through that again.
My dreams were forgotten for a reason.
There is no second chance for one true love.
This is a fun, adventurous, standalone shifter romance in the bestselling Lords of Atlantis series. It contains steamy love scenes, vivid undersea battles, a forbidden island with plucky castaways, and the kraken!
Dive in to the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle with these warriors of the sea.
Read this excerpt from Shattered by the Sea Lord:
The day of the plane crash started out completely ordinary.
Sunlight kissed the palm trees outside Dannika’s guest cottage, the owner’s peacocks began squawking for their breakfast in the back garden, and four nude warriors broke down Dannika’s bedroom door.
Dannika jolted up in bed and flung off her lavender-scented sleep mask. “Wha—? Is it?”
The warriors raced around her suite, peeking in the bathroom, closet, and the attached kitchen. Intricate, iridescent tattoos covered their bulging muscles, and their hands clenched their bare biceps for missing dagger and tridents.
One warrior with bright orange tattoos swirling across his lightly bluish-tinted skin—his name was Gailen—leaned out her open kitchen window. “There! She cries for help in the grass!”
The warriors raced out the way they had come. Dannika’s front door hung open, swinging on its hinges.
The peacocks squawked louder with surprise. Heeeemeee. Heeemeee.
Gailen called, “Where are you? We hear your cry for help. We are coming!”
Heeeemeee. Heeemeee.
Oh, goodness.
They’d misheard the peacocks.
“Again?” Dannika collapsed, noodle-spined, against the carved hardwood, and yawned. If she closed her eyes or squinted… No, she’d never mistake the call of a peacock for a human. They sounded like birds with a throaty squeal.
She yawned, then pushed the sheets off her long satin nightgown, tugged on a fluffy bathrobe, and belted it as she wandered to the front door. “Gentlemen? You can relax. It’s just the peacocks. Again.”
The morning sunlight warmed her front step. A pleasant breeze carried in the scent of ocean salt, sweet grasses, and fresh banana bread made with some of the ripe dwarf Cavendish bananas hanging in the garden.
Gailen strode around the side of her white cottage. An all-seafood diet with plenty of exercise grew the marine warriors into big, hard, gorgeous males intent on claiming and fiercely protecting their soul mates. And performing the occasional peacock rescue, fully nude.
Dannika forced her gaze on his muscular pectorals and face. Above the waist. Definitely above the waist to ignore the bounty that nature had endowed. “Please call the other warriors to come out of my back garden.”
Worry wrinkled Gailen’s brow. “Someone cries for help. A woman, or a child.”
“And I applaud your responsiveness.” She rested a comforting hand on his beefy shoulder. “You must have run all the way from the beach. But it’s a bird, I promise you.”
He peered around the far side of the waist-high hibiscus hedge. “Are you sure?”
“I grew up with peacocks. And they made the same sound yesterday morning, when Tial broke into my cottage, and the day before, when Zoan did.”
The other warriors rejoined them, and Dannika greeted them individually, focusing on their serious, tattooed faces and not on their hard, toned, endowed lower bodies.
Gailen’s frown deepened. “Land creatures are so strange. Do you not think so? Why would a bird make such a cry or carry such a tail? It is too strange.”
“The world is a strange place.” She patted his bulging bicep. “Just think of how shocked we humans were when mermen appeared on our shores.”
On the land, they looked like any other muscular, warlike, totally nude tribe. But under the water, gills would sprout in their lower backs and their toes would elongate into fins. Dannika had seen it a few times. It was fascinating to watch.
And five years ago, it had been unthinkable. Mermen were the stuff of legends.
Who would have believed they were living beneath the ocean all along?
For centuries, the warriors had arisen only to unite with brides on isolated, sacred islands. Modernization had emptied those islands and caused a population crash. Five years ago, one warrior had defied his rulers and sought his bride on the mainland. His quest had revealed the mer to the shocked modern world—and launched Dannika’s mission.
That first modern bride had envisioned a dating site for warriors to find their soul mates. With the help of good friends, she’d made her vision a reality, and for the past year, Dannika had been running it.
The mer had a long way to go before they recovered. They were still a critically endangered species. Dannika’s work had never been so necessary, and she woke up every day excited to do it.
She just usually woke up a little bit later, and little more, well, peacefully.
“Why don’t you go back down to the beach?” Dannika suppressed a yawn. “I’ll join you as soon as I’ve dressed.”
“We disturbed you. I apologize.”
“Oh, no. I wanted to get up early today.” She guided him to the white stone path and released him next to the still-open front door. “As always, I’m honored that the warriors of Atlantis care so much about my well-being that you feel the need to break down my door.”
“Yes, that was also strange. During your welcome speech, you said that you have an open-door policy, and yet, when we came to investigate the cries for help, we had to break open your door.”
Ah.
She looked into their innocent, sweet, but also very capable faces. “I should have said, ‘Please ask any questions.’ Let’s not break any more doors.”
“What if you are behind a door when we have a question?” warrior Nilun demanded.
“You can wait.” Dannika stood at her door. “Knock, at the very least. Or you could ask another warrior, or—”
“Your leader.” Their leader sauntered up the cottage path. “Me.”
Her heart stumbled. He was back. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Ciran?”
Unlike the nude warriors, Ciran wore dark blue Bermuda shorts and an unbuttoned shirt that showed off his well-defined six-pack and belly button. He had a relentless rhythm to his stride, an obdurate resistance that could withstand a hurricane.
He fixed his unusual two-tone eyes on her. His irises were coffee brown mixed with leaf green, like his tattoos. The marks curled across his skin but their colors never quite touched. “Dannika.”
Her heart picked itself up and started beating faster and faster.
I turned you down, but I never stopped thinking of you, and now you came back.
She took a half step off the porch to run to him, throw her arms around his broad shoulders, and do something really crazy like sob with relief.
The bright, interested stares of the other warriors brought her up sharply.
She forced herself up onto the porch
again, smoothed her sleep-wrinkled robe, and brushed down her wild black hair. “We-well…uh…when did you arrive?”
“Last night.” He returned the salutes of the other warriors—pressing their pinched fingers together at chest level—and surveyed the gathering. “Where is your guard?”
“Oh, Zoan?” She tried to lean casually against the doorframe, almost slid off, and straightened abruptly. “I, um, let him go.”
His gaze bored into her. “Let him go?”
“Yes, I…” She waved in the direction of the hibiscus hedge. “Zoan met his soul mate. She came by last night to take him to meet her family. They’ll be back after breakfast.”
“He left his post?”
“I told him to.”
“That is—”
“Ordered. I ordered him to.”
His eyes narrowed.
You should have told me you were coming. Someone should have told me. Why don’t mermen have personal assistants? If you’d been put on my calendar, then I wouldn’t be a mess right now.
Gailen spoke up. “Then, we did cause a problem, Dannika?”
“Yes,” Ciran said.
“No, no.” She peered over Ciran’s looming shoulder. “You didn’t know. It’s fine.”
Ciran turned to the warriors. “Go to Lotar.”
They saluted uneasily and hurried down the path to the beach.
“They didn’t mean it,” she told Ciran. “I hope you’re not mad.”
“Mad? No.” He swung back to Dannika. “You live on the surface. You are the expert in human affairs.”
“Yes, thank you. I am.”
“And therefore you know whether or not you need a guard.”
“Yes, well…I don’t think it hurts to have a guard. But my mission is to match warriors with their soul mates, and I won’t stop, even if it does put me in danger.”
He stepped closer. “Then you are in danger?”
She held her ground. “No more than anyone else at MerMatch.com.”
“You are its leader.”
“And that’s why I want so badly for us to get along. If you have a problem with me—” She made a sweeping gesture at herself—“tell me now.”