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unexpected at all.
    He had been trapped.

Chapter Four
    Sarina floated to the surface and gasped in
air. The dragon had held her too tightly, too long. The air she’d
held in her lungs had been squeezed out. She’d been close to
passing out when the beast had dropped her and left her floating
like debris in the deep water.
    Mermaids didn’t die easily, though, and she’d
managed, despite a shooting pain in her chest, to make her way back
to the surface.
    She had also, however, lost sight of both the
dragon and Nolan.
    An image of the human flying toward the
dragon shot through her mind. She’d been weak then, desperate, and
the human had seemed to notice… had seemed to care.
    An impossible thought, of course. Humans
didn’t care, not about mermaids as beings like themselves. They
cared about what they thought mermaids could bring them.
    But the light in Nolan’s eyes; the way his
face had twisted…
    It had reminded Sarina of her mother,
fighting the pirate who, three hundred years earlier, had thought
to steal Sarina and her sister away. Rage so pure and intense, no
creature could face it and think they would win against it.
    Her mother had won, at least what she fought
for. Sarina and Allera had slipped out of the pirates’ net.
    But Sarina and her sister had lost.
    Allera had lost her soul, and their mother
hadn’t survived. She’d died in that net, speared by a sailor when
she tried to follow her daughters through the opening she’d created
with the slashing of her tail.
    Her mother’s tears and blood had coated them.
Sarina could still feel and smell both. She’d stared at her sister
and known Allera, younger and more vulnerable, was her
responsibility now, and she’d sworn she would find a way to get her
sister’s soul back.
    Sarina’s hand wrapped around the vial that
hung from her neck.
    Which brought her back to Nolan. Whether he’d
attacked the dragon out of rage for Sarina as a being or Sarina as
the mermaid who could get him to the sea hag didn’t matter.
    Sarina needed him.
    In the distance, she could see their yacht,
still afloat. She spun in place, scanning for the human and the
dragon. There was no sign of either.
    If the dragon had left, his assignment must
have been completed. The boat seemed stable, and Sarina, though
hurt, was alive.
    Which only left Nolan. Sarina couldn’t
imagine the sea hag would have ordered a possible mate killed, but
tested? Yes.
    And how would Melusine test a mate?
    She’d do the same thing Sarina had done.
She’d see if he could last underwater.
    Ribs aching, Sarina dove deep into the
sea.
    o0o
    Sarina searched the ocean for hours, long
past time any human could possibly still be alive, but despite the
growing pain in her chest and all logic, she couldn’t stop. She
couldn’t believe Nolan was truly gone, and she wouldn’t until she
saw his body.
    She had worked in a spiral out from the boat,
moving deeper into the ocean as she moved outward. She was at the
bottom now and farther from the boat than she had been at any other
point. Once back to the yacht, she would have to stop. The pain had
moved past something she could describe as an ache or throb and now
edged toward agonizing.
    She wouldn’t be able to stay under water much
longer.
    Her mermaid body, legendary for its ability
to survive any storm and hundreds of years, was about to give
out.
    Her fingers trailed over the ocean’s floor,
touching sand and debris. She was pulling herself along now, her
body too tired to even swim. She coughed and tasted metal. Her hand
moved to her mouth and came back red.
    Blood. She was coughing out blood.
    In a sea filled with predators, that couldn’t
be good.
    The thought was fleeting.
    Her eyes closed, and she let her body
drift.
    o0o
    Nolan’s head snapped up, and his nostrils
flared. He smelled blood, or maybe he tasted it. He wasn’t sure how
he knew blood was in the water somewhere close, but he did.
    Realizing he most likely was not the only
predator in