Waves of Grey - The Harem and the Guard

Chapter 14

Lance

Lance dove beneath the waves once Keith had found a way to securely hold on. The prince opted to straddle Lance's upper spines and hold onto his hair rather than what they'd originally planned.

It was so strange to be under the water again. He'd started to get used to the stale water that he had in his pool in their shared bedroom. He'd thought that the spring had been different yesterday, but this was strange. The salt water was welcome as it passed through his gills though the bitter taste behind it was far from. After getting to live within such pure water from the land he'd started to forget about the way that parts of the ocean could choke fish to death from the chemicals and shards floating in the water. Siren's could avoid it as a norm but the reminder was saddening. A reason from him to remember the importance of the Alteans to the Sirens. To his home.

But those were thoughts for another time. He dove down deep into the water. Out here there was nothing but bleached, dead remnants of a once great reef. The skeletons of creatures of all kinds that dwelled in the sea were scattered. Some of the bones crumbling. Nothing was fresh but the scent of death still hung heavy in the water. It had lingered for decades if not a hundred years and it surely wouldn't fade away until life could start to fill the currents with the sweet smells of grasses and sea flowers. Someday. Someday they would expand the good that the Alteans had done to their frontal coasts out this way and extinguish the death that hunted the waters.

Keith's grip tightened in Lance's hair as his speed and sudden down turn sent the small hybrid flowing behind him. Lance didn't pay him much mind, sure that he'd right himself soon enough as he sailed over the decimate landscape. He'd head over the ridge and dive them down into the drop off where the darkness could hide them. Or . . . well it would at least make them less noticeable since in the darkness of the sea they both glowed just as beautifully there as they did under the trees of the jungle. No one ventured beyond the ridge for any reasons beyond their own personal ventures. There was nothing out there. Nothing but hazards and maybe a few starving whales trying to out run the even more raged predator desperately hopping that one would die od starvation so that it could finally extinguish it's hunger.

No one could survive beyond the revived reefs of Altea. The fact sent a chill down Lance's spine at the thought. His family had left. They'd fled because it was their only chance. Their only chance to escape . . . when in reality it should have been Lance who had fled. They should have stayed and tried to find favor with the alpha. They shouldn't have listened to what his grandmother had said. They should have though it through, should have considered what they were doing.

Tears mixed with the water as he even out their depth and started swimming back in the direction of the safe waters. His family could be dead. He and Petal might be the only in his family line still alive. And even then he wasn't completely sure. He didn't know if Petal was going to survive. He didn't know if he was going to survive tonight. He wasn't sure that Keith would make it through this. He just hoped that the Alpha wouldn't be stupid enough to kill the royal prince, successor to the Altean throne.

Lance swam for less than an hour, covering all the ground they had made in their day and a half trek and far more as he traveled miles across the front coast of Keith's home. He needed to check though to see exactly where he was. They were still far enough out to sea that he didn't feel there was any fault or worry to spotting, a combination of porpoising and spyhopping. At a speed somewhere around forty miles an hour he shot up towards the surface and shot up out of the water at an angle. It didn't quite occur to him as he arched through the air judging his placement in the water by landmarks on the coast that it wasn't exactly himself and other sirens had to worry about. No. No, it was when Keith appeared flailing through the air ahead of Lance while he was arching back down towards the water did it occur to him that physics might not agree with his passenger.