PART 2-27 - BREAKING THE BOND

-VALEN'S POV-

My resistance offended the mermaid. Her eyes went fully white and her palms braced on my air bubble. She struggled to dismantle the protective shield I had quarantined myself in. Her pointedly sharp claws could not pierce it. Whiteleg shrimps, in attraction to her gleaming snow-white hair, swam close to her and she angrily swatted them away.

Aggressively, she palmed my bubble once more, narrowing her white orbs to slits at me. “You are mine, pesky wolf. How dare you deny me?!”

"She's trying to break the sphere," Zuzu informed me. My bald eagle’s fire kept my body’s temperature normal as the cold currents of the deep ocean encompassed me.

"Can she?" I pondered. I would have to leave immediately.

Merfolks ruled the ocean and their underwater kingdoms were situated in the trenches and hollows of the deepest where submarines would risk implosion. Only supernatural beings with water elements could venture there.

"No," Nyx stated, as he kept the barrier globe solid and strongly resistant to her wiles. "Her efforts will be in vain. She is just a lowly warrior mermaid."

"Her name is Asyrena," Zuzu discovered.

"Asyrena." I voiced her distasteful name. I assumed she would go by a niche along the lines of Lilitu, the sleep-robbing succubus.

Her eyes fluttered, going back to their normal hue. Gaping, she stared at me wide-eyed. "How did you…?"

My narky voice cut her off. "I am capable of many things."

"My chief wishes to meet your father." She cast her eyes down at me. "Come with me to see him and tell him that you agree to a meeting."

"I can't. You were the one I came to see." It did not mean anything special. I wouldn’t even have cared, but since she made a damn habit of giving me sleepless nights, I wanted that trend broken.

Her face lighted up with white glittering dimples. "Our bond is strong. I want to be with you."

Was she delusional?

"Break the bond," I told her, because it would do more harm than good. Whatever connection was established between us was not a mate bond. It was something else. I considered it trifling.

She gasped in a way that air bubbles fizzed out of her pointed ears. "Never. I will not give you up."

This was one crazy mermaid. Indeed, she was clinging to a deluded notion that I had to end. “I’m not yours and you are not mine to claim. I will not forsake my true mate for you.”

The mermaid clutched her chest and her face contorted with pain. Her tail stiffened, pointed like a scorpion’s telson. I felt a tight ball in my gut snap.

“We broke the bond,” Zuzu told me.

“I have located the mer-kingdom and can engage in attack.” Nyx was ready for battle.

“Let’s wipe them out. This fishling wants to replace our mate.” Zeus growled. “Get rid of her.”

“Tell your King that he can come to our shores and my father will see him,” I enunciated. Killing her would instigate another war. Dad would kill me for bringing danger to our pack. As Alpha, my people’s protection came first.

White tufts of her hair swayed in the water as she adamantly shook her head. “No. Come with me.”

Realizing that I was leaving her, mulberry eyes flickered into wrathful blackness. Her once delicate face morphed into a harsh, strong one with angry veins popping under her lashes. Serrated teeth parted to emit an inimical growl that had the fishes swimming away and hiding among the corals.

Abruptly, a pod of blue whales with their long and slender body of various shades of greyish-blue dorsally ensnared me as their perfect morsel. Whirling around for a full view of what was taking place, they formed a cage of monstrosity.

My lips twitched and curled over my teeth. Adrenaline rushed through my veins and my heart fluttered. Her fiendish eyes clashed with the leaping fires of my alpha crimson irises. Claws burst out my nails.

“Another mermaid is hiding in the rocks.” Nyx huffed, showing me an image of the blue-black-haired one with sea-foam blue eyes and a sunset purple tail making hand signals.

“She has other powers that are coming at us.” Zuzu churned within me and sand from the ocean’s floor turned into spears that fired at me.

“Valen!” Zeus’ growl was a warning to not prolong this hostile situation. “That one has witch blood.”

The sand spears jabbed at my protective sphere. My air bubble rolled back and forth like a volleyball as the spears hit it, tumbling me over within its impenetrable circle.

An unknown wrath surfaced within me and I was on the verge of letting Zuzu deal with both of them. Suddenly, an out-of-the-blue force sucked me from the water. Salt sprays as I burst through the waterline and the environment blurred.

"You are in so much fucking trouble!" Roared the furious voice in my head like a nail jammed inside my brain. “Buckle up, now!”

A spike of fear kicked up my spine. Disoriented at first as to where the hell I was and how. I ended up in the back of a fighter aircraft and very much in the middle of a war.

My eyes widened at the thick clouds of black smoke from explosions percolating the surroundings, making the warships below barely visible. A shivering fright doused me.

“Devin…” I had to know that my best friend was safe too. Technically, we were in a danger zone at the moment, but there was no way I could be in the skies while he was still where I left him, in the boat, sitting and waiting for me. I searched for the safety belt and buckled it quickly.

“He’s with his father.” Dad soared through the air, targeting an enemy aircraft that was dropping bomb raids over the islands. “Hold tight.”

Warships roasted in embers on the ocean surface. Dad gunned the engine and I stiffened from the pressure. An aircraft snuck behind us, firing bullets that screamed across the sky.

“Fucking dipshits!” Dad muttered, throwing the jet into a series of turns that had me groaning. My jaws clenched tight.

Shit! I cursed inwardly as my heart thrummed wildly. Dad dilly-dallied, missing the oncoming bullets. Then he slammed the joystick upwards and elevated the nose to pitch a ninety-degree altitude so that we cut straight into the thick cumulonimbus clouds above.

I remained nervously quiet for two reasons. A lump of fear bubbled in my throat regarding the deep shit that I was in and I was allowing Dad the space to focus on air combat. At this point, I was trying hard to control my bowels.

We burst through the clouds and no other fighter jets were in sight. I glanced over my shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” Zeus laughed at my fright. He is rather enjoying the show and relishing our father’s military strike. He loved the catastrophic action. My guardians, who are more contrast to my wolf, were quiet.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

“What the hell’s that?” I gulped with rising panic. It was an alarm sound, but for what? I peeped over the pilot seat, shielding my eyes from the glaring sunlight, and saw two red blinking lights on the dash.

The radar warning receiver picked up emissions that an enemy had us on missile locked. Shit!

Here come the missiles.

-