Page 50 of The Hunted

His voice was so much rougher.

Like rocks against her skin.

And still, she liked it.

“Prince Eryx!”

“Fuck,” he snarled behind her.

She looked back again, but he had looked off at the approaching ship.

Arelle took her chance to run, darting over sharp rocks and an uneven ground beneath the water until it was deep enough for her to dive. Under the water, she breathed, feeling the change that took her from legs to tail again.

She couldn’t hear him call for her.

Not under the sea.

But in her mind?

Her heart?

She heard him loud and clear.

I’ll find you, little mermaid.

• • •

Eryx

Despite how his legs threatened to fall out from beneath him, Eryx managed to get up from the ground. Even through the pain and the wounds that reopened to seep blood—his throat, and the cut on his leg—he still rushed to the edge of the water. The sharp rocks that scraped the soles of his feet barely registered to him at all.

“Wait!”

She didn’t.

The last thing he saw from the red-headed mermaid was the tips of her tail fin that peeked out from the water before disappearing beneath the surface again. Those bluish-green scales with the black markings seemed to wink at him—taunt him—before she was gone.

Rage filled him.

Disbelief, too.

The confusion was the worst, though. His mind raced from one memory to the next. He tried to put all the pieces together, but it felt like none of it made sense. Oh, he knew what had happened. Remembered it perfectly well.

But why?

His gaze scanned the water, entirely ignoring the ship that was now skimming along the edge of the shoreline of the island where he currently stood. He looked for any sign of the mermaid—bubbles in the water, shimmering scales … anything at all.

Eryx found nothing.

Why did that ache in his chest? Why did it hurt that she hadn’t stayed?

He still wanted to kill her. The memory of his hand wrapped around her throat the night before had him inhaling so sharply that it hurt like nothing else in his lungs, if only because every time he’d tried to squeeze hard enough to take away her air entirely … he hadn’t been able to.

But he wanted to.

Now, more than ever, he wanted to catch that mermaid. Kill that mermaid.

“I’ll find you, little mermaid,” he told the sea.