Chapter 414 Let me out

Ivy grabbed her cousin’s hand desperately. “Don’t second-guess yourself now, Yasmin. We’ve been planning this for a while and have already made the necessary calculations. I’ll just see her and assure her that she doesn’t need to keep looking for me, so she can live her life happier. You gave me the stone to easily change my tail into legs. I just need you to guide me out of the water. I’ll take it from there.”

“Finn isn’t going to like this,” Yasmin grumbled.

“Your mate never liked me to begin with, nor anything I do. Don’t worry. I’ll explain to Finn myself if he finds out I dragged you to the surface,” Ivy said, referring to her cousin’s mate, who despised anything that came from land, werewolves most of all, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if it weren’t for her mother’s family protecting her.

Yasmin finally took her hand, and they swam out of their cave home together. “I hope Pearl keeps hiding there until we’re gone. We still have the festival coming, and preparations to start, Ivy, you really need to try and find a mate to protect you from the sea witch. You could get lucky, mate with a prince from another part of the ocean. I’m so excited for the day. Let’s hurry back so we can polish your tail and fins.”

Ivy barely cared about mating or finding “the one.” All she wanted was to reach her sister and assure her that she was doing all right, that she had a family here underwater, and that Serena could keep living her own life on land, since it seemed the dreams alone hadn’t been enough to convey her meaning. For as long as Ivy was alive, she would protect her from the sea witch.

However, things went completely wrong when they surfaced in the wrong waters entirely, not the werewolf territory at all, but human land.

“Yasmin! I thought you calculated the distance?” Ivy said with a sigh.

“I did,” Yasmin replied with pursed lips.

“Look around you. This isn’t the werewolf waters. These are human waters.”

“Oops. Well, I thought I had. We can still make it around. We have the speed of royals, cousin. We can use that, remember?” Yasmin winked.

Ivy laughed, splashing water at her cousin with her tail, just as they began to dive back down. But before they could get very far, something shot at them, straight toward each of their necks. When they looked up, they saw a ship ahead of them, with several men aboard holding guns.

“Werewolves!” Yasmin gritted out.

“What are werewolves doing here?!” Ivy exclaimed, suddenly feeling strange.

“Dive!”

But it was too late. A net shot out from the ship and covered them both, their bodies weakening instantly from whatever had struck them in the neck the first time. The net tightened around them, trapping their bodies and leaving them no time to escape.

Yasmin yanked at it, using her fins to try to tear it apart, but the net wasn’t ordinary rope, and as they fought against it, the ship closed in on them fast.

“Yasmin…” Ivy cried weakly, lacking her cousin’s strength, being half-breed, her tail unstable and unable to break the net.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of here.”

Yasmin used the fin of her tail to tear a gap in the net and shoved her weakened cousin through it. Ivy began sinking toward the bottom of the ocean, but just as Yasmin started to follow after her, she was shot again, and another net dropped over her. That was when she lost consciousness.

Viola gasped out of the memory, stepping back from the glass. “You saved Ivy’s life…”

•••

Viola lay in bed, unable to sleep, the mermaid’s words, she had a name now, Yasmin, circling her mind like a broken record. Viola hadn’t wanted to believe any of it, but the memories she’d been shown, and the terror of whatever had been used to shoot at them on their necks, were undeniable. She had no real reason left to doubt, not unless she wanted to delude herself for the sake of her husband, who had captured the mermaid with the intention to kill her.

Viola stared at the ceiling, uncertainty pressing on her mind and chest. Yasmin, as Viola had begun calling the mermaid, ever since discovering she had saved her twin’s life, had told her that if anything happened to her, her mate wouldn’t let Ivy go free either. He would blame her and hand her over to the sea witch or worst, kill her.

“He doesn’t like her much,” she’d been told. But despite learning everything about her sister and the life she lived beneath the sea, Viola still couldn’t do what the mermaid expected of her, not without first confronting her husband and understanding his reasons.

“Let me out, please. I don’t need you to do much, just take me to the nearest river, any open body of water, and I’ll find my way home. I can’t die here. My daughter needs me. My mother, my mate… please, Serena…” Yasmin had pleaded, crying pearls, and Viola had felt torn, conflicted.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you out yet. I’ll talk to my husband and see what I can do, but until then, bear with me. I’ll see you again.” Viola had said, hoping the mermaid understood, before leaving quickly, afraid she’d be swayed even further into opening the tank and freeing her, the way her heart suddenly longed to do.

Viola had assumed her twin sister must be living in cruelty somewhere, even if she was alive, but glimpsing her relationship with Yasmin had shown her that Ivy was living safely, surrounded by their mother’s family. Mother. The word felt strange on her tongue, since Viola had never had someone who made her feel a mother’s love, nor any blood relative at all.

She had longed for family so badly that she had once betrayed her own sister for it. And though the Lindens had given her some love, it had come wrapped in enormous conditions and expectations she’d had to meet. But now she’d suddenly discovered she had relatives after all, only they came from a world entirely apart from the one she’d wanted.

Still, she was glad Ivy had found a home there, and the least she could do for her sister now was try to return her cousin to her, to mend what was breaking apart there before it was too late. As for herself, Viola thought, turning onto her side, she wanted to be here, and nowhere else.

She had a wolf now, and she would awaken it, and find her father’s family, because no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise, she couldn’t accept her mermaid heritage with open arms. Accepting it would mean turning away from her family here, and forgiving a mother who had failed her so completely that Viola couldn’t feel even an ounce of grief over her death.

She must have done something truly wicked to be killed by the werewolves, after all, heartless enough toward her own children that she’d wanted them dead. What Viola didn’t understand was whether she and Ivy had been conceived out of love, or out of some other circumstance entirely, because if you loved the father of your children, loved the relationship you shared with him, your children would feel like a treasure, something to be cherished, not discarded to be killed.

Viola pressed a hand against her stomach and let out a sigh, closing her eyes in an attempt to sleep for a little while, not for her own sake, but for the sake of the baby she wasn’t even certain she wouldn’t fail, even though she knew she was in a much better place than she had been in the past. It was still a life-changing discovery to find out she was pregnant at the moment she least expected it, all while carrying a powerful suppressant in her body that could potentially affect the child’s future.

How Ivy had managed to grow a tail, while she, despite having such a massive dosage of suppressant in her body, had a wolf instead, was still a mystery to her…

She needed to tell her husband as soon as possible, and she needed him back just as urgently, because things kept happening while he was away.

Viola had just closed her eyes and was beginning to drift off, despite everything, she still had pack responsibilities to carry the next day in her husband’s absence, when she thought she heard a cracking noise. Her eyes snapped open to the moon-glow of the room.

The lights were off, as usual, since the full moon was approaching, and to honor it, werewolves needed its glow. She sat up carefully, listening for the sound again, but heard only silence.

Viola was just beginning to think she’d imagined the cracking sound and was about to lie back down for more sleep when her bedroom door suddenly slammed open with tremendous force.

She jumped off the bed, instinctively reaching for the gun she kept tucked inside her nightstand drawer, where it had always been kept for moments exactly like this.

Intruder! The thought flashed through her mind as adrenaline surged through her body.