by Holly Gunn
Silver Bells
Mountain Mermaids: Sapphire Lake
Holly Gunn
SILVER BELLS
Copyright © 2019 by Holly Gunn
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Hell Bent Press & Holly Gunn (Publisher)
Editor: Mostert-Seed Editing
Cover Design: Agent X Graphics
Formatting: Hell Bent Press
www.hollygunn.com
Contents
Introduction
About me, Holly
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1. CHARLOTTA
2. AARON
3. CHARLOTTA
4. AARON
5. CHARLOTTA
6. AARON
7. CHARLOTTA
8. CHARLOTTA
9. AARON
10. CHARLOTTA
11. AARON
12. CHARLOTTA
13. AARON
14. CHARLOTTA
15. AARON
Epilogue
Up next
Shifter Kings Nashville
About me, Holly
Introduction
Heya!
Three notes.
First, you can find the prologue/original story for this series here. It’s a short read, so dive in to your heart’s desire.
Second, a quick note for my research-y readers (you know who you are). This book has “Viking” words that I’ve done my best to research and get right. I’m not perfect, but I tried my best, so if you find something not quite correct, take it with a grain of salt—and also message me because I love to learn new things. Thanks, nerds!
Lastly, if you want to expand on your “Viking” vocabulary/history, head on over to a couple of my major resources:
http://www.viking.no/
https://www.vikingsofbjornstad.com/
About me, Holly
I'm the proud momma to a golden retriever named Charlie, two tortoises named Jake and John, a frog named Toad, and a gopher snake. The latter is my girl, Holly Jr. There's also the fact that I'm a thunderstorm-loving, front porch-sitting, hot cocoa-drinking, beauty product-hoarding, self-proclaimed environmentalist who just happens to write erotic romance. Saddle up sweetheart. I've got a slew of shifters, bad boys, down and dirty men, and smart, sexy babes to get you started!
Sign up for my newsletter (here) to get up to date news, enter giveaways, and find out about freebies!
Acknowledgments
This was an undertaking I was blessed to be a part of, and I couldn’t be more excited to join my book with the others in this multi-author series. Thank you, P, Desiree, Victoria, MK, Darlene, Kristen, Moxie, PA, A.R./Steph, Grace, and others for being available to answer my questions and help me navigate this world as a latecomer. It was a great collab experience.
And of course, a huge thank you to the lovely Margot of Mostert-Seed Editing and Design. It has been a pleasure working with you this year, and I’m SUPER DUPER thrilled to hop into 2020 with a full dang schedule. You ready?
Thanks to the family and friends who have always been my biggest fans. Much love.
Last but certainly not least, thank you readers. Thank you for taking a chance on this girl and my writing. I love doing it, so it means the world that you enjoy my kings, my queens, my sassy ladies, and now, my mermaids and sheriffs!
Stay weird,
Holly
To my readers, don’t let fear stop you. You are meant to chase your dreams. You are meant to choose your path. You are meant for whatever treasure you seek—already.
You just need to believe.
“Choose to chance the rapids. Dare to dance the tide.”
-Garth Brooks, The River
Prologue
CHARLOTTA’S SISTER, MARANESSIE
Twenty-five years ago …
There’s so much to experience here in this new world.
So much glitter.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Lotta, do you …?”
I lose my question in distraction—because I see something I’ve never seen before.
I mean, there are, of course, a great many things I’ve never seen.
It’s just that this sight is one that’s more glorious than any before it.
It’s so shiny—it’s blinding. But it’s not gold or gems.
It’s the look on my sister’s face when she meets the new deputy.
She shines.
My sister and I have been asleep for a thousand years—but today, we woke.
I didn’t know why we came out of our deep slumber.
Not until this moment.
Thinking back, I know this was the moment I started to collect shiny things and build my treasure trove.
But it would be decades before I would see that same shine on my sister’s face again.
CHARLOTTA
All a good story needs is the lure of buried treasure, an overly adventurous mermaid, and a little romance.
Perhaps some laughter. Definitely quirky friends and a meddling family.
But the treasure, the mermaid, and the romance …
Well, that’s where my tale begins.
Tale. Ha. I laugh because I, in fact, do have a tail, but only when I’m underwater.
To clarify, I am not the adventurous mermaid. That would be my sister, Maranessie. A more innocent, kind, uniquely giving spirit I have never met. She’s different in the best of ways; no matter what Essie goes through, anyone who knows her knows the truth—she will always be young at heart.
And I will continue to age—if not past the physical age of five and thirty when I was cursed, at least in my soul.
Tonight, I feel that age to a greater degree.
The lake water laps against my skin and the familiar scent of freshwater creatures and flowing plant life soothes me, but the moon does not. It is almost full, and for three days I will venture forth onto land once more.
I could choose not to. There is always a choice for those of us who have been cursed. But it isn’t right that my sister, who has no mark by some strange stroke of luck, stays only because of me.
Essie would be happy forever in these waters, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve more.
I must find a way to give her more.
Only, there are times when I don’t know if I can do it any longer. This constant to and fro, giving of my body to find the other half of my soul, is draining.
I take a deep breath at the dire thoughts, and as I do, the soft sound of footsteps on the beach alert me.
I know who will be there, not just because he comes here often but because I’ve always known when he was near. Since the moment I first met him twenty-five years ago.
That was, of course, the same year he met his future wife, Diane, as well.
And one thing Aaron Simeon Holmes has always been is a loyal, one-woman kind of man, even if I knew from the start that Diane was not good enough for that devotion.
She proved this seven years later when she left her one-year-old daughter and Aaron behind—she hasn’t been back since.
His light brown hair with flecks of silver is the only thing about him that shows his age, but even at fifty-five, he’s as much the young man I met back when he was thirty.
Strong, fierce, honest, and true to the last drop.
While my sister was called leican, simple-minded, I was called ylgr, a she-wolf. Ylgr is a term that in some of our family groups would be considered a compliment. For the oldest child and the daughter of a chieftain, the term is not meant kindly. I was too much of an adventurer, too much of a Viking for my people’s uses, too much full
stop.
Now, I am called she-wolf, and it is meant as something else entirely.
I am a fallen woman. I am what some would call, and many do, the town harlot.
What they don’t know about me could fill a book.
Aaron, however, would have been called a tarb, a bull, for his tenacity. He would have been called brea, good and fine, by all the ladies. Some ladies might even use the word ullac in the complementary form, meaning outlaw, because for all his good-ol’-boy appeal, he has a glint in his deep blue eyes that tells the truth. He’s got an edge to him.
When I think of Aaron, though, I think of him only as skjoldr.
My shield.
He’s looked out for me, I think maybe so he can protect Essie because of her association with me.
I’m not all bad. And I try to ignore the negative thoughts I have about myself in favor of focusing on finding my mate, and setting my sister and myself free.
I know that the only way I’ll find my mate is to lie naked beside him, and the only way to lie beside him is to have sex. Not make love. Have sex.
You see, when the witch cursed us because of her lover’s affair with another, my own particular mark, the one only my destined mate can see, showed in the most unlikely of places.
A rather intimate place.
This meant that when I met Aaron twenty-five years ago, he became my skjoldr, but in his eyes I know I will always be an ylgr.
When he comes to the beach, he’ll often stop for conversation. Tonight, I am brooding on the three days to come, and I’m not in the mood for conversing. I want only to look upon him and dream.
His profile under the waxing moon is striking in a way that would grab almost any woman’s attention, his jaw taut but not overly chiseled. His shoulders are wide but lean, his arms fit, his frame long and trim. And although I have not had the pleasure to lie with this man, I can tell. I’ve been with enough men myself to know what I would find if I peeled that button-up shirt from his body.
He’d be just as fit as his jaw and the outline of his arms, underneath his shirts, suggests.
Soon, after the November chill settles in, he’ll start wearing his leather jacket with the lambskin interior, the dark brown one that brings out his tanned skin, and still, I know what I would find beneath those layers.
His eyes fasten on some far point on the lake, and I turn to where he’s gazing, only to see a swarm of mermaids and mermen gathering. I spare one more glance for my skjoldr and dive back underwater, into the depths of the vast Sapphire Lake.
As I reach the darkest area of the lake, this is where I find our cave, my sister’s and mine.
Essie is singing, and I hear her crystal-clear voice like bells chiming.
How people in the past thought her simple-minded, I will never know. She is not only everything good, she is also talented in a great many ways. She has the voice of a sea siren, the smile of an enchanted princess, the look of a fairy from the tales of old but the spirit of a much more temperate and kind being.
“Lotta, you’re home!” she cries in our native tongue, and I laugh at her joy.
There can be nothing wrong in the world when Essie smiles.
I look beyond her to the collection of treasure she has stashed for so many years, and I smile. Once a Viking, adventurer, and pillager, always so.
My sister does like her shiny things. Her favorite is a silver bell, the size of three of Aaron’s fists. I don’t measure everything by Aaron’s fists; it’s just that he was the one who found the object twelve years prior, and knowing Essie’s quest to build her treasure trove, he gave it to her. At the time, I was so touched, I had to close my eyes against crying in front of him.
He’d taken a step forward and whispered my name. Never had I heard him say Lotta in such a way. He didn’t treat me as the town harlot. He didn’t treat me like a leper. But he’d never said my name like that, ever.
I’d looked up, my eyes wet. I couldn’t help myself.
And that was when his own deep blue eyes, that in the sun were a crystalline blue like winter hoarfrost, met mine for what was—in all our years of being acquainted—the very first time I ever saw them up close.
Time stopped.
The world tilted.
And I saw that his hands, one of which he’d taken to my jaw, were strong. They were sure. They were muscled and lovely, and everything that the man himself was.
And that was when I knew I loved him.
Not ten or so years before then, when he saved Essie from the attentions of a twenty-something tourist who thought he could force himself on her.
Not for the times when I heard his not often, but still occasional, defenses of my behavior every full moon.
Not at the sight of his devastating and open smile that he gave freely to me when he stopped in The Saucy Wench or some other bar each time I was a fish out of water looking for my soul’s other half.
I guess I’d always been falling in love with him, but the silver bell was the moment I accepted it.
At the time, I ducked my head and took a step back, clearing my throat and saying, “Thank you, Aaron,” as softly as he’d said mine.
I saw his body jolt and stiffen at the use of his name and kept my head ducked as I apologized. “Sorry, Sheriff Holmes, I—”
He had stepped closer, and I was forced to look up again.
His face kind, he said, “You can call me Aaron, Lotta.”
Lotta. He’d called me Lotta.
I nodded. What else could I have done?
He had been Aaron since.
And I had been Lotta to him.
I’m pulled back to the present by Essie’s chatter.
“... I found a cave today. It took some maneuvering but me and a few others got the stone unstuck and water rushed in, filling it up. The tide of it so great, we had to duck for cover. I thought I’d find some sunken treasure, but it was just more seaweed.” She shrugs, then asks, “Do you think Aaron or Rickard will have more treasures for me? I want a gold spoon. I have a gold fork and a gold knife, but I need a golden spoon.” She dances around, picking up pieces of her collection, including a golden plate that isn’t real gold but once resembled it. In the brine of the lake’s water, the plate has become brassy. And I think, not for the first time, that Essie should have a place on land to store her treasures.
I have my own treasure; it’s not vast, but there is gold and other valuables stashed away from years of being a Viking.
I need to be mated in order to live on land again, though, and Essie has refused to take some of that treasure for herself. She wants to build her own fortune, she’s told me.
“I think …” I say, drawing my sister forward by her hands, and it takes her a minute to focus on me instead of the treasure pile, “that we have never gone ashore, not in nearly twenty-five years, and come back below the water without a treasure Aaron or Rickard have acquired.” I lean forward, conspiratorially, adding, “And I might have put a bug in both gentlemen’s ears that you needed a gold spoon and a gold lobster fork.” I wink and Essie’s eyes go wide.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”
She says this a lot when she’s excited. It’s endearing, and I smile and shake my head, move to my bed of freshwater seaweed, and settle in.
I lie awake, long after Essie hits her own bed of seaweed, and I worry.
Tomorrow night is another full moon period. Three days.
Although I often remind myself, my sister’s excitement reminds me of my goal.
I must find my destined mate.
For her.
Essie is who I do this for. She is why I will brave the new world, that still does not feel like my own. She is why I will take the whispers and the looks. She is why I will be the harlot, the she-wolf, the woman who will never have her skjoldr for herself.
But Essie is worth it all, just so she might be free.
AARON
There are always newcomers. It’s the nature of a transient tourist town.
These three make me wary.
Others might not glance twice at a blonde-haired, blind woman with a guitar strapped to her back, another woman of about the same height with bright pink hair and strips of green at the bottom. Nor would others think anything of the young man of most likely nineteen also with the two women, who ducks his head every time you look his way, not in guilt but awkwardly, as though he fears what you might say about him.
Then again, I’m not most men.
I’m Aaron Holmes, a third-generation sheriff in Aurora Falls, a town full of the general malaise of small towns: boredom only occasionally overshadowed by excitement in the form of gossip and festivals.
At least, that is what most will see when they visit.
The locals love this town for what it is though, a bed of magic—a lake full in fact.
Mermaids, like those in the legends, live in the depths of our very own Sapphire Lake.
I watch the three visitors, knowing that what I saw the day before was not in my imagination. The blonde girl’s eyes, a foggy blue that I think must be due to her blindness, lit up a bright gold.
There have been rumors and news stories the last few months. I’m not so entrenched in my town that I don’t know what’s going on outside of its limits, but I will admit that I chalked the news up to sensationalism.