Page 103 of Echoes of the Tide

His mate was a woman who could be with quite literally anyone. She fit in with every crowd. Those who were rougher around the edges, and those who were kind and quiet.

He was never not impressed with Ace. But right now, he knew his job. And that was to distract her.

The others left a cloud of sand dust in their wake as they disappeared back to the rest of the pod. Maketes squeezed Ace a little tighter. “Are you ready to go?”

She nodded a few times, staring at the small pile of stones one last time. With a darting movement of his tail, he launched them away from that sad place. The stones would remain. She would mourn for as long as the sea saw fit, but for now, he wanted to make sure that she saw life the way she deserved.

He had just the perfect idea for it.

Zipping through the water, he took hours just swimming with her. Letting her mind wander and her heart settle. It had been nearly two weeks since they’d first say goodbye to Tera, but he knew how it plagued her.

That droid was part of her soul. Now, he needed to fill her soul with more than just that memory.

Maketes had spent these past two weeks trying to find the perfect spot for this moment. After searching, he’d spent hours each day praying to the sea goddess for a clear day when they built the stones for the droid. The gods had heard him, and already he’d checked to make sure that this place would remain full of sun and bright sky. There were no storms even close tothem today, which meant he could thoroughly indulge her in all the things that he’d prepared.

Circling back to the area, which was much closer to their pod than she would likely realize, he drew her up to the surface.

“What are we doing?” she asked, her voice a little warped by the rebreather.

He helped her keep her head above water and slowly pulled her rebreather off himself. “Look behind you, kefi. I thought, if anyone deserved a day for yourself, it was you.”

She turned and he could see the shock in her gaze. He’d been shocked to see it, too.

Even the People of Water had thought the sea had taken back all the sand it had once deposited on the land to soften its crashing waves. But this tiny cove had weathered every storm and still had much of the white sand that sparkled in the sunlight. He wasn’t sure if it had merely been shoved here by the last storm, but they were safe for now. It was surrounded by impressive white cliffs, sheared and softened by the crashing hurricanes that had occurred for centuries now.

It was beautiful. It was ragged and raw. There were no trees at the tops of those cliffs, nothing green in the slightest. But this white sand cove sparkled like the prettiest of gems he could have gifted her.

He now knew that gifts for his kefi did not come in the form of physical objects. She preferred memories. Time spent with him that she would never forget. Those were the greatest gifts he could give her.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, swimming toward the shore and then pausing when her feet hit the ground.

He’d brought her to an island before. She’d been on the dock as well. But he knew that this was the first time his achromo was stepping foot on land. Real land that was solid and firm beneath her feet so she could exist where her people had once conquered.

She walked out of the waves and for a moment, he saw her as the goddess he’d always compared her to. White wave caps lapped at her thighs, breaking and cresting and crashing against her sides. Then she was walking straight out of the sea and onto the sand.

A small bubble of laughter escaped her as she fell onto her knees, knocked by a particularly large wave that then picked her up and carried her all the way onto the beach. He joined her, allowing the sea to toss him out of the water as well. Even if it would be difficult to get back in, he wanted to see this joy on her face.

Her hands dug into the sand, taking fistfuls of it and tossing it back down with wet plops. She kept murmuring little sounds of shock.

“Sand,” she whispered. “Just like in the books they gave us.”

“You have seen this before?”

“Only in pictures. We were told there weren’t any beaches left. That the storms had taken those until there was only rough rock. But to see this now...” Her hands sank into it again, and then she looked up at him in that way that always made him feel like a god himself. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me for bringing you here.”

“I do.”

She crawled toward him, and all he could focus on was the seductive sway of her hips. The way she crawled made all those curves stand out even more, so pretty, so tempting, so much that he could not have right now, because she was supposed to be in mourning.

Yet, he was a weak man. He allowed her to push him onto his back, and remained right where he was, without complaint, as she straddled him. Those tiny hands braced her up on his chest.

Her dark eyes were filled with something he hadn’t hoped to see, though. A softness. A relaxation. She had let go of theguilt and the mourning for a few moments to look at him lying beneath her on a rare beach.

“You look so pretty in the sunlight,” she murmured, tracing her fingers over the peaks of his cheekbones. “Your scales are always yellow, but in the sunlight they’re almost blinding.”

“I don’t want to blind you.”

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