I Married A Merman (Prime Mating Agency) by Regine Abel

Author:Regine Abel [Abel, Regine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-29T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Echo

The next forty-eight hours proved the most excruciating of my entire life. Witnessing my mate’s transformation in real time was both exhilarating and unnerving. Despite being born a Thalan and undergoing the different stages of growth of our species, Neera’s mutation was still traumatic to me.

With her burning fever that came and went on a whim, Neera’s skin had felt clammy to the touch. But it wasn’t long before it started taking on a shiny color that I realized its very texture was changing. Where human skin was thin and soft, ours was thicker and slightly rubbery. Neera had compared mine to that of a dolphin. And hers was transitioning to ours. The shininess of her skin, making it almost look like gold, corresponded to the pre-scale state. Had I not gone through it myself growing up and seen it regularly on our young, I’d be freaking out.

Right now though, her skin looked raw and painful. Having Adva confirm it was indeed the case did nothing to make me feel better. At least, my strumming kept the pain at bay. It wasn’t the scaleless state that made the skin overly tender but the fact that it was mutating to allow her to thrive at greater depths and in much colder waters. I would miss her delicate human skin, but the benefits of this new one outweighed my selfish sense of loss.

The few times Neera woke up, I barely had time to make her drink a few sips of water before I had to use my sonic pulses to put her under.

The round edges of her ears looked inflamed as they began to stretch into our long, fan-shaped ears. Her fingers and toes, too, appeared swollen as a fine webbing began forming between them.

By the end of the first twenty-four hours, Mother had threatened to have Raen, Ouren, and Opire drag me out of the room and shackle me to the dining table if I didn’t pause for a moment to eat. I only caved when she agreed to let me eat, sitting near Neera in the bedroom. The fiendish female had prepared seymiak, making it impossible for me to resist.

On the second day, in the early afternoon, Neera’s scales began forming. They were still dull and somewhat translucent. But I could already tell they would be a stunning burnished gold or light bronze color. To my dismay, as the sun began setting, my mate was clearly nowhere near being done with this phase of her mutation. When her bracer beeped, I picked up another hypospray and brushed aside her long hair—whose texture had also changed to match our more impermeable locks. But I froze upon seeing the delicate slits of her gills beginning to form on her neck.

“Oh, my mate,” I said, my heart soaring.

The image of her drowning while Braga and I tried to assist her had replayed in a loop in my head. I never wanted Neera that vulnerable again. These would finally give me the peace of mind—or at least some of it—I desperately needed where she was concerned.

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