More than a Mermaid (Shifty Book 4)

by Sara Summers

  Sitting on my lookout rock, I took a deep breath of the salty air. The ocean was beautiful, and sad, and full of hope and magic.

  It was a good exchange, I decided. I had reached that conclusion before, but this time… this time, I knew exactly what I was giving up. A life with my soulmate.

  “It’s worth it.” I whispered. The words danced through the air, happy despite the sad truth they carried. “This life is worth trading the one I dreamed of.”

  The salt-wind pulled my words away from me, sending them flying down toward the ocean or some other rocky place.

  A smile broke out on my face, and I closed my eyes to the wind. I could feel the ocean below me, I could feel the energy and life that seemed to race through it. It was powerful, so strong and so peaceful.

  The life I had was beautiful, and in that moment, I knew without a shadow of doubt that it was exactly what had been written into my cotie.

  “Watch.” The ocean whispered. The wind tugged my head toward the beach, the same beach that Sam had been changed at.

  My eyes widened when I saw the masculine figure in a hoodie and jeans. I didn’t have to see his face or the markings on his side to know exactly who it was. The man on the beach was my soulmate.

  Chapter 26

  I watched Sam throw a rock at the ocean. He threw it hard, and I it soared above the water before slipping under.

  “Listen.” The ocean whispered.

  The wind carried his words up to me as he launched another rock as far as he could throw it.

  “You were right!” Sam shouted. He couldn’t have noticed me, sitting up so high, so I knew he wasn’t yelling at me. “If you’re so great, bring her back to me! I’ve felt her since she left me on the beach, but no matter how hard I search, I can’t find her. I don’t understand the ocean!” he yelled.

  I wasn’t sure if his words were aimed for the ocean, or the Creator, or what, but I knew who he was talking about. The only girl he would be able to feel when she left him was his soulmate.

  Me.

  “Wait.” The ocean breeze tickled my neck with my hair, and I had to smile.

  “What do you want from me?” Sam spread out his arms. “She was my answer, and now she’s gone!” he shouted.

  The ocean finally gave me permission.

  “Go.” It tickled my ear.

  I slipped off the cliff, letting the ocean catch me as I fell. It carried me until I could touch the ground, then let me go.

  Sam’s eyes were wide as I walked up the beach, moving closer to him with every step.

  “Ava…” he trailed off, not knowing what to say now that he finally had the answer he had so desperately wanted.

  “Hi.” I gave him a small smile and a little wave.

  “How did you…?”

  “I’m friends with the ocean.” I shrugged.

  “I remember.” He nodded once, stepping closer to me. “Look, I’m sorry about everything.” He sighed. “I should’ve realized sooner that becoming a mermaid wasn’t all bad. I’m sorry that I left you, and I’m sorry that I made you think I didn’t want you.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve accepted everything that happened between us, and I don’t want you to be stuck in a life that you don’t want to live.” I replied.

  “That’s just it,” he hurried to say, “I do want to live this life. Under the ocean, with you and Alena. I didn’t realize it until I was gone, but those five or six days we spent together, I felt like a different person. With you, I was someone who could make a difference. I want that life.” He urged.

  “You want to be the king?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “No, I don’t want that any more than you wanted to be the queen.” He shook his head.

  “Touché.” I nodded.

  “But if that’s what it takes to be with you, then I’ll be the best effing king that mermaid kind has ever known.” He took my hands in his, pulling our bodies flush against each other. “I’m falling in love with you, Ava, and while I don’t know everything about you yet, I know that a life with you would make me into the man I want to be.

  “You were the answer to my question of what I should do with my life, and I swear, if you’ll have me, I’ll do everything it takes to be the soulmate you used to hope and dream about. I want to be your husband, eventually, and Alena’s brother.”

  “Technically, we’re already married.” I told him, biting back a smile.

  “Great. Saves us some time and money.” He whispered, making me smile. His words tickled my face, and he reached his hand up to cup my cheek. “Will you be my soulmate, Ava?”

  “I always was.” I tilted my head up toward his. “And I always will be.”

  Our lips met for our first real kiss. The first of many, I should say.

  With salt water sliding over my toes and Sam’s arms wrapped around my body, I knew without a shadow of doubt that I was where I belonged.

  Between Sam and the ocean, I had everything I would ever need.

  Epilogue

  Our kiss was interrupted by Sam’s phone ringing.

  “Answer it.” I whispered.

  “No.” he pulled my lips back to his.

  “Answer it.” I smiled, pulling away.

  “Ava.” He groaned, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “Hello?” he answered, then put the phone on speaker so I could hear too.

  “Dude, what the eff were you doing at the shifter peace summit?” a deep voice asked.

  “I’m the new king of the mermaids.” Sam told his friend.

  The man dropped a chain of choice curse words, not including hotdog.

  “You’re kidding. Humans can’t become shifters.” His friend protested.

  “We both know that’s a lie.” Sam shook his head. “I called you last week, Grant. What’s going on?”

  “Way too much bull—“

  “Watch your language, man. Apparently, mermaids aren’t allowed to swear.” Sam stopped his friend. I raised my eyebrow at my soulmate, who shrugged at me.

  “Serious. Eff.” Grant shut up for a second.

  “I called you because I met your soulmate.” Sam just went and threw it out there.

  “You what?” He demanded.

  “I met your soulmate.” Sam repeated. “She’s perfect for you. If you’d just go after her, you’d like her.”

  “Yeah, no thanks. What’s her name?” Grant asked. He couldn’t keep the curiosity out of his voice.

  I took the phone from Sam. He narrowed his eyes at me, but nodded that it was okay.

  “Her name is Kennedy.” I replied.

  “I assume you’re Sam’s mermaid queen.” Grant grumbled.

  “Yes, my name is Ava. Kennedy is your mate, and Sam already told her about you. She thinks you don’t want anything to do with her, and Kennedy doesn’t want to live a life without love. Since you don’t want her, she’s decided that she’s going to start dating like any human would.” I told him.

  “She’s what?” Grant sounded surprised. “Eff. You weren’t supposed to tell anyone, Sam.”

  “She’s your soulmate.” Sam took his phone back. “She deserved to know, and you know that’s true.”

  “Sometimes I hate you.” He sounded tired. “Does she realize that it’s illegal for shifters to date someone who isn’t their soulmate?”

  “She doesn’t care about laws, she cares about love.” I told him.

  “I’d better go find her, at least to explain myself.” Grant sighed. “Thanks for the heads up, Ava.”

  “No problem.” I said.

  “Have fun playing mermaid, Sam.” He added.

  “Thanks man. Good luck with Kennedy.”

  “I’ll need it.” Grant muttered. He hung up the phone, and Sam turned to me.

  “Should we let Kennedy know that he’s coming?” Sam’s grin was devious.

  “Of course, in a few hours.” I smiled. “He deserves to have to chase her for a while.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.” Sam took my hand, lac
ing our fingers together. “Are you ready?” He asked me. The smile on his face was worth more to me than any amount of human money.

  “For anything.” I nodded.

  We ran into the ocean together, running toward the future that our coties promised us, the future that I thought I had given up.

  Like I swore to my friends back in high school, I would be more than just a mermaid. I would make a difference in the mermaid world, whether the council agreed with it or not.

  If they tried to tell me I couldn’t do something, I’d look them straight in the eye and tell them,

  “Go to hotdogs.”

  No one could argue with that.

  ***

  Keep reading for a peek at book 5, More than an Otter

  ***

  Author’s Note

  Thanks for reading! I hope you love these characters and their stories as much as I do. If so (or if not), please, leave a review! Reviews can help other readers find and fall in love with these characters and stories like you and I have.

  Thanks again for reading!

  Sincerely,

  Sara Summers

  P.S. Keep up with me and the rest of my characters on my website, iamsarasummers.blogspot.com. Hope to see you there!

  ***

  More than an Otter

  By Sara Summers

  Chapter 1

  I didn’t want to meet my soulmate. I didn’t want to see his face or talk to him or admit that for some ridiculous reason I was supposed to be his.

  Okay, I used to want to want to meet him. I wanted that more than just about anything else. But that was before I found out that he had known where I was for two years but decided not to come find me.

  What kind of person would hide from the person who was literally the other half of their soul? The horrible kind, if you’d asked me.

  “What do you mean, he’s coming to find me?” I demanded. Ava had called to let me know that my soulmate was on his way.

  “That’s exactly what I mean. He’s coming to find you, Sam says he’ll probably get there tomorrow morning.”

  “I have to go.” I hung up on her.

  I started racing around my parents’ house. Throwing clothes into a duffle bag, grabbing shampoo and towels and makeup and shoes…. I had to get out of there.

  “Alright, Kennedy, just stop and think.” I ordered myself.

  I sat down on the edge of my bed and closed my eyes. Because I lived close to the ocean, my mate could easily swim to me. Otter shifters are fast swimmers, so if he decided to swim through the night, he could get there at what… maybe two or three AM?

  I picked up my phone to check the time.

  11:30 PM.

  “Eff.” I muttered, taking a big, deep breath.

  If Ava had waited a few hours before calling me, which I was pretty sure she would’ve done, he could be getting to my house at any minute.

  And if I was going to avoid him, I needed to get the heck out of there.

  “Think, think, think.” I started pacing the room. “Where can I go? Somewhere hot? That would be good; what otter likes the heat? Umm… I don’t have much money, but I should have enough to get there and talk someone into letting me room with them until I get a job. Right, that’s a plan.” I nodded.

  I stood up and yanked my duffle bag over my shoulder, grabbing the extra garbage bag I had filled with blankets and towels and pillows and whatever else I thought I might need.

  “This is going to have to do.” I muttered, racing down the stairs as if my life depended on it.

  And, well, it did.

  I had no intentions of marrying a man who didn’t want to be with me, regardless of whether he was “the other half of my soul”.

  I didn’t need any man to complete me. I was a strong, independent woman, and there was no way on earth that I would let any person—man, woman, or shifter—tell me that I wasn’t good enough on my own.

  Eff my “half of a soul”; I was plenty complete.

  I threw my bags in the back seat, racing around like a cockroach without a head. Or maybe a cockroach about to lose its head, because seriously, if I met my mate I just knew I would become a headless cockroach.

  Jumping into the driver’s seat, I turned the key and prayed that my rusty old car would work.

  “Please, please, please.” I begged Bessie. “Just work one more time.” I plead.

  I didn’t know what was going on under her hood, but it looked like my car was smoking.

  “Come on!” I looked in my rearview mirror at the garage door that was opening behind me, and my eye caught on the top of the painted-masterpiece I was only half-finished with.

  “Go, go, go!” I felt tears threatening to make an appearance. The cotie on my collarbone—his mark—started tingling, and I knew I was about to be very, very burnt toast.

  Turning the key one last time, I sent up a prayer to the Creator that I could just get away from the soulmate who hadn’t effing come after me in two effing years.

  I didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but the feelings were the same.

  Finally, the car jumped to life.

  “Thank you!” I yelled up at the sky, shoving my car into reverse and shooting backward faster than I had ever taken off out of any parking lot, garage, or driveway. This was my last chance at freedom.

  My tires screamed and squealed louder than any human being I had ever met, but I didn’t dare slow down. I rocketed into the road, my foot still on the gas.

  I was fine, safe, and on my way to freedom.

  That is, until I heard a loud “THUMP” and my car stopped moving.

  I screamed bloody-murder—For all I knew, I had literally just murdered someone—and slammed my foot on the brakes, launching myself out of Bessie and running around the back of my car.

  “Are you okay?!” I shrieked, dropping to my hands and knees next to the person I had just near-killed.

  The mark on my collarbone tingled worse and worse, the closer I got to him.

  At least, I assumed it was a him.

  It dang well better be a him, or someone was going to die.

  The thought of death brings me back to the man on the ground, the one I had almost just killed.

  My soulmate.

  I had literally almost killed my soulmate. Not in a threatening way or a flirty “I’m gonna kill you, babe!” way. None of that.

  Like, I had hit him with my effing car.

  “Please don’t let him die.” I begged, closing my eyes as I put my hands on the man’s shoulders.

  I was expecting the pain that came with the first time we touched; our coties had to change, of course. But the man was unconscious, and even though he was the worst soulmate on the planet (come on, the guy hadn’t even bothered to find me before assuming I wasn’t good enough for him), I still couldn’t let another living person die.

  Especially not after hitting him with Bessie.

  “Hey, wake up.” I shook his shoulders when my vision cleared. “Wake up.” I repeated, hoping and praying he would get up.

  He didn’t.

  So that’s the story of how I almost killed my soulmate by smashing him with a car and ended up dragging a semi-large and very heavy man (who I had been trying to run from, I might add) into my parents’ house.

  The end.

  Just kidding. That was only the beginning of much, much more.

  So, go on. Keep reading if you want to learn how the worst soulmate on the planet became the best soulmate in the universe.

  My name is Kennedy, I’m an otter shifter, and this is my story.

  ***

  About Me

  I'm married to the koolest kid in town, and we basically spend our time adventuring and nerding out over things we won't admit to being into. We live in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which is... a place. And it's windy-- really windy.

  I'm usually either writing up a storm on my handy dandy writing chair, reading inspiring quotes on Pinterest, or out some place with my man. I also dabble in the art
of singing (though I never do it well) and do hair occasionally, but those are more of hobbies. I'm obsessed with leggings, muddy buddies, and garlic salt, and I'll never turn down a good back massage.

  Finally, as you've maybe discerned, I'm a writer. Completely, totally, and unapologetically. I'm a writer because I love to write, and I love to write because it makes me a better me. Writing reminds me of the good in the world and helps me understand myself more.

  So yeah. I write.

  I write a lot. :D