by Amanda Milo
THE MERMAID AND THE DRAGON
Amanda Milo
Copyright © 2020 Amanda Milo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Edited by LY Services
DEDICATION
Yours If You Want It
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
EPILOGUE
NOTE FROM AMANDA
Books & Audiobooks by Amanda…
About the Author
DEDICATION
To R with all my love and half my bug spray. And to Destiny, who loves mermaids. You can’t read this story until you’re thirty, but if you grab it, I hope you remember summers spent dodging mosquitoes with us. May you always enjoy hiking with happy memories. ♥
Yours If You Want It
Do you ever click on a book and go, “What the heck did I download again?” Here be a book Summary for your convenience, cause I love ya:
Our coastline is craggy stone cliffs in the distance, warm beach sand when we want to really sunbathe, and the most vivid turquoise water you’ve ever laid your eyes upon.
Welcome to Titan’s Tears Cove, near the Titan volcano, and centered equidistant from the closest dragon-danger zones of Flame Pass and Ember Pass.
But they aren’t too close. Unlike the Gulf of Mermaids colony on the other side of Venys, our tribe is made up of only my sisters, and we are so quietly tucked away that we aren’t often hunted by anything here.
At least, that was the case until a lone dragon got too curious. And hungry.
Little do I know that I’m about to be snatched up for a dragon’s lunch. Another thing I’m clueless about? One touch of the wrong female to the wrong place on a dragon can strike a matebond for life.
Even if a bonding should be impossible. After all, how can a creature that soars through the sky—a dragon, for the high seas’ sake!—be forever-mated to a mermaid?
CHAPTER 1
ADELLA
Sunlight flashes off my scales as I soak in the rays. There’s nothing like feeling the cool refreshing water on my fins while the rest of me enjoys the unparalleled view of a cheery, cloudless sky. Tendrils of my hair trail off the rock I’m reclining on, floating across the water’s surface like rainbow-colored seaweed.
My sisters are sunning themselves on rocks nearby, everyone with full bellies thanks to the school of fish we came upon, and now the cry of sea birds lulls us into a gentle drowse. We’ve got a sweet breeze tickling our ears, and not one of us has a single care in the world.
A large shadow passes over me.
It’s so swift that it’s gone when my eyes pop open, but a chill cuts through my sunshine-induced haze.
Dragon.
Instinctively, I know it. “Did anyone else see—” I start to ask.
A ball of fire hurtles down from the sky.
Panicked, I slap my tail down with enough force to roll me off my rock, diving for safety, the shrieks and splashes from my sisters filling my ears—and then I can’t hear anything over the furious hiss of fire meeting water as flames blast across the waves and the rock tops we were resting on a breath before.
Recoiling from the water’s surface, we watch the fire dance over us like we’re under a glass ceiling. A quick glance around shows everyone is accounted for; the dragon did not claim one of us today. The gills on either side of my throat gape open as I gasp the biggest sigh of relief.
Massive clawed fingers close around me, and I’m snatched right out of the water.
A curdled scream bubbles up from my throat—and the dragon fumbles me, almost dropping me right back into the water. Because a mermaid’s song can be so beautiful it beguiles a sailor into a shipwreck, but a mermaid’s scream can burst a man’s eardrums.
I scream again and thrash like a caught fish, but rather than drop me, the dragon claps his other scaly hand around me, bringing me against the wall of his chest to keep me securely in his grasp. I push against him, shoving at the scales right over his heart no doubt, and—
A blinding spark of multi-colored light flares between us, heating my fingers, my hand, and traveling down my whole body.
What magic is this?
The dragon’s hands spasm.
“Ouch!” I yelp, because now my tail is caught—it’s being crushed and squeezed between his fingers.
I try to tug myself free, hating the pinch, terrified of what’s to come, and to my shock, the dragon loosens his fists enough to poke my flowing gossamer tail fins from between his fingers so that none of me is dangling on this flight.
I gulp and choke because I’m too panicked to close my gills so I can process the pure air. All I can think is dragons always burn their food to death. Why did this one take me alive?
For as long as any mermaid can remember, there’s been enmity between merfolk and dragon kind. At least the dragons in our corner of the world. Our cove is a peaceful place, nowhere near to the nest of dragons who live in the craggy clefts of Ember Pass, or Flame Pass, for that matter.
Yet we’ve lost countless sisters of the sea tribes to the marauding dragons.
Not expecting him to answer, I collapse into his cupped palm, his other palm forming a cage over me, and I cry, “Dragon! I am begging you—please let me go!”
His deep voice makes me shiver when he utters two words that nearly stop my heart. “I can’t.”
CHAPTER 2
THE DRAGON
I have made a terrible mistake. Never play with your food, the nestmasters warned us. And I never have. Find prey, coat it in flames, snatch it up, eat. The process is very simple, and I’ve never deviated.
But today, I ventured to the waters called Titan’s Tears, situated under an ancient volcano, where the meats are said to be the choicest of delicacies. I’ve never hunted mermaids before and I fumbled my chance when I flew over them, casting my shadow down. Like startled fish, they scattered. I blew flames but was too late.
But I saw one—this one, the one I’m so tenderly holding now—I saw her shimmer of hair just under the water. Her mane is a prism of colors, the whole spectrum, just like a sky’s bow after a rain.
Dragons love shimmery eye-catching things. How could I resist? I knew I could capture her if I reached under the water. It wasn’t dinner that drove me then; it was curiosity. I was compelled to catch her and have a see.
I had a moment where I wondered why none of my brethren go diving under the surface to catch mermaid delights. But that’s when my talons closed around her, that’s when I knew I wanted to keep her. Then she touched over my heart and the pair bond arced between us, and that’s when our fates became
one.
The Elders teach us not to touch our food—but what they didn’t spell out for us when we were soft-scaled fledglings is the concern that if we touch our food, there’s a rare chance we could bond with it. Of course I learned the reason behind the rule when I got older, but I’ve played fast and loose before and never been caught in the bond yet.
In a perfect world, food would be very firmly separated from the category option of ‘mate.’ Nature wouldn’t pair me with a sheep, for example. Yet there are lots of edible items who could also activate a mate bond, and because of this, they’re avoided at all costs. Take a human for example. My dragonkin try to stay as far away as we can from the creatures to prevent accidental bonding. If you come upon one and you’re very hungry—cook it first, then pick it up. Never attempt to reverse the order because to be accidentally paired to a human is to limit your lifespan to that of your addlepated mate’s.
And all humans are addlepated. No dragon in his right mind wants to be latched to the two-legged food.
Yet here I am, in my right mind, and rather than cursing myself with a mere human, I’ve outdone myself by leagues. I’ve linked my soul to a half-human, half-fish.
This creature I’m holding is the stuff of fable and legend. I initially hunted her with the intention of consuming her body.
My mate was to be my dinner.
My stomach pitches, the heinousness of that momentary possibility literally revolting me now that she is my mate.
The mating bond is a strong thing between dragons.
But if a dragon ends up bonded to a creature other than a dragon, then the mate bond can be lopsided. The dragon will still adore their mate...
While the mate may feel nothing for her dragon at all.
The only crumb of comfort I have at the moment is that my mate is displaying plenty of feelings for me. Unfortunately, they are all expressions rooted in fear.
Fear of me.
I tell myself that it’s a start. Surely, a patient, devoted male can turn fear into love.
Carefully caught between my hands, my mate begins to weep. The sound of her sobs makes my heart squeeze painfully.
“Shhh,” I soothe. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I vow.
“Then take me back! Please, please, take me back to my sisters,” she pleads.
I hate to hear anything cry. I’ve returned fauns to their herds and a toddler troll to its home bridge, because I didn’t know it was so young, and the guilt wouldn’t let me eat it once I found out that I’d snatched a mere toddler from where it had been foraging beside its mother. This is why I try to never give my meals a chance to talk. My heart is sometimes too tender to listen to them cry only to fill my belly with them after. This is why I should always cook my food straightaway. But oi! In a good bit of news, now that I’m bonded I won’t activate with anything else. This is especially uplifting because sometimes I like a little kick to my food.
I’ve reached the rockface that is home to my home, and I beat my wings to give me lift as I extend my rear legs to catch the jut of rock that forms a landing perch. I try not to jostle my new mate, but she gasps and sobs harder, likely expecting her end to come soon now that we’ve landed.
The sound of my mate’s terrified tears heaps worlds of self-reproach on my head.
When a Crested Merlin dragon—that’s me—takes a natural mate, she’s our own kind, or near to it. When a dragon takes a human by accident—which doesn’t happen often, not in recent memory—well, for those pairings, a dragon can take on the form of a man to match his wingless, short-lived mate. The bond could (in theory, I suppose) be a happy one, with both the dragon in-man’s-form and it’s pitiable mate (human as it is) coexisting well enough. At least nature changes the dragon’s form to ensure that they match.
On that thought, dread slams me like a lodged casting.
...You don’t know what a casting is? You, dear reader, must not be a dragon. Or at least not dragonkin.
Crested Merlins like myself regurgitate the indigestible bits of our meals, called ‘castings.’ Basically, we hack up compacted balls of bones and feathers and fur bits that won’t pass through our systems. Crested Merlins also collect our pellets and store them. It’s a habit that’s filled nearly half of my cave, a collection I hoped to share proudly one day with my mate.
If nature turned my mate into a dragon, she would be awed at my saved castings.
But mermaids don’t change into dragons. And dragons...
My mate and I are doomed.
I cannot take on the form of half a fish.
I cannot live in the sea.
She can’t fly or even walk.
What have I done?
Carefully, I spread my hands until the beautiful half-woman, half-sea creature is revealed. I expect her eyes to be clenched tightly in terror, or for her to be glaring up at me with unadulterated hate.
Instead, her luminous eyes (also the glory of prisms, just like her riotously jewel-colored mane) meet mine. Her gaze is wet with heartbreak, her pretty countenance plaintive and sad. Perhaps she feels the bond between us as I do and knows what’s been done. What’s irrevocably been done.
Her third eyelids sweep over the surfaces of her eyes, forcing the tears forming there to spill down her cheeks, the saltwater trails hydrating her already sea-starved skin, but only where the liquid borne from her heart burns its paths.
I exhale a weighted breath, and she flinches. I swallow hard and ask, “What is your name?”
“Adella,” she replies uncertainly.
Adella. It’s a beautiful name. And the very meaning of her name is nobility of the seas.
“My name,” I tell my mate and not my dinner, “is Kalos.” It means great lover to his beloved, not that I’ve ever had a mate before to prove my name true.
I stare down at her fins.
Not that I can prove it to the lifemate I have now, either.
What. Have. I. DONE.
“Please—” she starts.
I cut her off, bringing my spread hands with her draped over my claw-tipped fingers, closer to my face. “Shh. Do not ask me to return you. I can’t let you go.”
She looks ready to burst into endless tears. “But why?”
“Because,” I confess, “we are mates.”
Her expression doesn’t change; no recognition crosses her face. “Why can’t you let me go if we’re friends?” she asks in a very faint voice.
“No, no.” Frustration leaves my gut feeling hot and sick. Even my mate’s word-meanings are not mine, not the ones of my people. We are so different in every way. But… it is done. We are mated. “Not ‘mate’ as in friend,” I clarify. “You are my mate as in my other bonded half. My drhema.” My cherished one, is what the endearment means. And I can already feel that I will cherish her. Deeply. Thoroughly. Forevermore.
She still stares up at me, and perhaps this expression on her face is disbelief, not a lack of comprehension. “How…” She chokes, sounding as absolutely horrified as I’m struggling not to feel.
Ruefully, I admit, “Because we touched, and apparently, your kind is alike enough to mine in this way that we’re mate-compatible.”
She sputters. “I am to you what a dragonfly is to a shark!”
“That’s harsh.”
Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you—”
“Shark,” I muse. “Shark of the skies, I suppose. I like it.” I look down at her. “I meant that you were doing yourself a disservice. You are more ravishing than any dragonfly.”
This stops her words. She closes her mouth.
I sigh. “I am sorry too. I had no idea you’d put me at risk. There’s a reason dragons turn our food to charcoal before we handle it.”
She flinches, and I could kick myself.
“Krevk’d—I mean… you aren’t food to me now. You aren’t what I would have wanted for myself, to take as a mate, I mean—I was dancing around a caverock female dragon—” I bite my tongue to stop the explan
ation. Adella may be a woman-fish, but she is my woman-fish, and I won’t have her thinking I would pine for another now.
I won’t. The bond prevents it. I’ll never want another female for as long as I live.
...Not that this declaration will sound particularly meaningful if mermaids don’t share a dragon’s significant lifespan. I don’t even know. I don’t know much about mermaids at all; I’ve only heard of how exquisite they taste. I drum my claws in the air, which makes Adella’s body undulate prettily over my fingers. All her scales flash as her curves bounce and parts of her jiggle. I try not to get distracted. “It’s important to me that you know our bonding is as sacred as it was instantaneous. From the moment I made contact with you, I’m inclined to only you forevermore.”
Other dragons could be different, but this is the way of it for Crested Merlins like myself. We’re all more or less the same, jet black males and sloe-berry colored females, with flexible horn-frilled crests that fold against our necks. Our neck frills extend when we fight for territory—to make us look bigger, more threatening to other dragons—and also when we display for a potential mate.
Males of my dragonkind especially use our frills during our mating dances. Since we’re so attracted to color, it’s a mystery why our scales are so plain. Shiny, but plain. Our frills though lend us at least some ornamentation.
Mine puffs up around my neck without conscious thought, either hopeful that Adella will be wowed by its impressive size or she’ll find me more interesting to look upon and perhaps never ever look at another dragon because she found me and my significant crest so stunning.
Many creatures think dragons are monstrous, but I hope my mate doesn’t think me so. Towards her, I will strive to only show her love and cherishing and how much I’ll wish we could share lusty, lusty mating.
Instead of being wowed or enamored, I can’t tell if she even notices my attempt to woo her attention.
Her face has puckered like someone has spritzed her tail with lime wedges and smoked salts. “Is this supposed to make me feel better? You’d never have wanted me. You intended to have somebody else.”