Page 145 of The Hunted

Find me. Find me. Find me.

So many, in fact, that it had some of the mermaids in the carriage chaotic until they found their way out onto the ground. The guards shouted, their demands lost to the sudden calls from at least four of the women in her carriage answering back.

“Get in the carriage! What are you doing?”

Arelle heard the hiss of the whip outside at the same time all those calls echoed around her that one stood out.

Find me, my little mermaid.

Eryx.

A scream echoed from the woman who had taken the first crack of a whip. Hisses answered it before grunts followed. Arelle watched out the window for a brief second as the women attacked the guards.

She listened for Eryx again.

He was still there.

Her attention drifted to the front of the carriage where the guards had left the small door open between the inside and the tented bench where they sat to steer the horses. Horses that were now standing just a few feet away tucked close together, untied, to brace for the weather.

“You heard them,” one of the mermaids said, “hold the land.”

They could make their own choices.

She would make hers.

Arelle headed for the door as the last mermaid followed behind her but exited from the side to help her sisters finish the men outside. She slipped on the wet wood of the bench when she climbed out the door and stumbled from the carriage into the mud below.

The shouting and struggle behind her had her heart aching. She wanted to help, but this might be her only chance.

And faced with the decision of staying to help her kind or going to follow the call of her mate … well, there was only one right choice.

She mounted the closest horse. Her thin, loose white gown was already soaked through and plastered to her skin.

Arelle grabbed tight to the reins of the horse, struggling to stay atop it when her heels dug in hard. How she stayed on when the horse took off, she would never know.

Luck, maybe.

Or just a bit of magic.

It took a bit before she felt comfortable on the horse, but it was easier hearing Eryx when all she really had to do was just pull one way or the other on the reins to make the horse follow.

Her heart pounded as the beast rounded a corner and the sight of an overturned carriage a little way down the road had her slowing. She recognized the gold detailing on it and the high, curved top because she’d watched it carrying the king away from the court earlier when they had been shuffling the mermaids into the ones waiting for them.

But it wasn’t the carriage that stunned her the most. In the travel of the royal caravan over the last day, many fell behind or moved farther ahead. Sometimes they caught up and other times, they went hours without seeing anyone. It wasn’t a shock there had been one close to where they lost theirs in the mud.

It was the man straddled over another man on the outside of the carriage that had her swallowing hard. They rested a few feet away from where horses lay with broken legs, and the four guards remained motionless with bloody, beaten heads and dead eyes watching the sky on the rocky, muddy road.

The only man moving was the one using the man on the ground as a chair. For a second, the cloak over his head kept him hidden, but a hard gust of wind sent it flying back as he looked up at the sound of an approaching horse.

“The king is dead!” she heard him call out. Another gallop forward, and he shouted again, relief clear in his voice, “The king is dead!”

Arelle thought time slowed for a moment as the living man’s eyes widened when he finally realized who was coming closer.

Mattue turned to watch Arelle pass. She cared not for the lives lost, or the odd scene of men with beaten in heads, and Mattue sitting on a dead king with his hands clenched into bruised fists. A day would come for him—the advisor—but it wouldn’t be on this one.

Not when her mate called her home.

THIRTY-FIVE