Page 18 of Poseidon's Island Flower

Zeus followed, sitting in front of me and the humans. “S-she’s alright. S-she’s breathing,” I shuddered. And Fates thank them. Because if she wasn’t breathing the guilt would have swallowed me whole.

I shut my eyes, willing her to open her own, but still the overwhelming heaviness of the crowd—the whispers, the stares—were making me lose my concentration.

“Concentrate on her.” Athena knelt down beside me, still giving me a wide enough berth.“Just think of her, not of the humans surrounding you. Your brother and I will keep them away.”

I nodded softly, my thoughts returning to Lani’s heterochromic eyes.

One blue, one green.

The sea, the land.

Lani didn’t hide away from me, didn’t scream or shout when she first saw me in the depths. Her breath was shallow when she reached out. The panic of putting her to sleep was necessary, I could have stared into her eyes all day, but now I got my chance to open them, see them once more.

I held onto that moment of clarity when I willed her to open her eyes again.

As she scrambled from the darkness, I laid her on the sand. A human laid down a towel to support her head, and I kept one of her hands in mine.

“Just watch her, Poseidon. There is only her.”

The only thing I could see was her; the only thing I could feel was the sand surrounding her and the warmth of her body.

There weren’t any outside noises. The heavy, looming burden of outside stimuli faded, and when she opened her eyes, it was like the raging seas had ceased in an instant. The light house calling me home was shining before me in those eyes. She beckoned me closer with each blink she made.

“Fates,” I whispered.

She’s my mate.

Chapter Six

Lani

Iletoutapainful groan as I rolled my head from side to side. I raised an arm to keep the sun’s rays away from my face, while the other one was wrapped into someone else’s hand.***

And it was tingly.

How did I get here?

The day’s events were fuzzy, but once I heard Candice’s squeal of excitement, “She’s awake!” My mind jumped back into reality.

Candice was lying on the beach after work. She waved at us before we entered the water. The seas were much calmer on this beach as opposed to around the bend near my home.

The less experienced waited it out; they wanted to see how smooth the waters would be. And unfortunately, that was when all things went to hell when the water receded.

The undertow was vicious, and the once waist high water was down at my ankles. The gigantic wave was being created far off shore.

A tsunami? Was there an earthquake somewhere off the island we didn’t know about?

I could hear the screams, telling me to get out of the way, but I was too awe struck at the sheer massiveness of the wave. I didn’t get away in time. The wave pulled the Velcro from my ankle and my board was carried away. I could feel my body being bashed along the shoreline, but I didn’t get far inland because I was immediately sucked back out to sea.

That’s when I thought it was all over as I rolled with the undertow and then shot out into the nothingness of the ocean.

It was quiet as I sat there in the nothingness. My body was sore, ragged, and I was losing oxygen so fast I knew I wouldn’t have enough to climb the twenty or more feet to the surface.

“Stay calm,” I remember my father telling me. “It is hard when you can get sucked out to sea in an unexpected current, but staying calm will help keep your oxygen. If you panic, you lose it quicker; your body shuts down.”

I nodded fervently as he told me this. His smile faltered, and he put his large hand over my big mess of curls. “Once the undertow lets you go, you fight to the surface, Lani. You look for me, you look to mama, alright?”

But when I sat there in the ocean, the cold depths of the sea enveloped me. The current was mute and so was any sound.

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