The Lycan Princess & the Mercommander

PROLOGUE

The night was still, cloaking the underwater realm of Oceanea as merfolk prepared for deep slumber. Corals chattered in garrulous murmurs as fish returned home. The life of day withdrew, eager for rest.

At his bedroom balcony in the castle of Shuigang—one of the two dominions in Oceanea, Sovereign Hong held a Pearl that warmed under his hand as he wielded its power, took a breath, and melted his sirenic song into the waters:

It was tragic

What happened

Twenty-five years ago

Our people’s lives were taken, but the event was never foretold.

Never have we thought our enemies would come from one of our own

Worse when she was once a friend who has died a foe.

That battle has taught us we will never be ready

And I, as Sovereign, must protect my people as necessary.

He paused, visualized the cadence of his song seeping into every part of Shuigang, trickling to its far edges, imagining the notes and words melting into soils and gliding into homes before his thoughts traveled to the dominion’s borders, borders that his song strengthened every night for the past twenty-five years, and he sang:

A shield of safety let there be

One that’s strong, sturdy

So that we need not flee

Those who seek to harm us shall not pass

With these words sung, the spell is cast

An impenetrable wall now erects from the Pearl I am bestowed

One that rises just as the legends foretold.

***

CHAPTER 1

“I’m starting to think Mom and Dad really abducted Uncle Greg this time.” Princess Enora turned to the doorway for the third time in the past two minutes and went back to fixing the code on the hologram screen. “What’s taking them so long?”

“I’m sure His Grace will be back soon, Your Highness,” Ivory said, knowing she dreaded her uncle’s before-lunch chats with her parents about updates on diplomatic relations that affected the Secret Service.

“It’ll be lunch hour soon,” she noted. The chat only delayed their lunch once, but the princess never forgot it. “He, Lewis, and I have that weekly lunch thing with Aunt Sush today. Has she arrived yet?”

Ivory scrolled through his phone and checked the entrance records that only he and a few others have access to. “Her Grace arrived a minute ago. She should be here shortly.” Peering over Enora’s shoulder, he adjusted his eyepatch and, in genuine concern, asked, “How close is that code to being more…functional than yesterday?”

“I have no idea.” Enora almost groaned. This was why she should’ve gone for a job to build stuff instead. Right now, she didn’t care what she had to build—weapons, consoles, safety suits… She’d even help build another underwater headquarters if need be. She’d been stuck coding this thing for the past week.

To be fair, she asked for this job because she’d figure helping build the security system was somewhat like building. Why did she gaslight herself to think that this was going to be fun? With the complexities her uncle Greg was insisting on, this could take forever.

“Do you think she’ll disown me if I make another stupid mistake that I won’t see until she points it out?” Enora asked, knowing that her favorite aunt would never do such a thing but is set on making small talk to past the final minutes before their midday break.

Ivory stifle a laugh. “Given her other nieces don’t share many of the same interests and sense of…adventure as Her and His Grace, I’d say your standing with her is quite secure, Your Highness.”

“Second only to me, of course.” Lewis strode over with a proud grin when he was supposed to be across the room. At his cubicle. Doing his work.

“Of course.” Ivory nodded in concurrence.

Enora’s eyes narrowed at her cousin. “Do you always have to make it all about you? I’m dying here. Can’t I have a pity party of my own for once?”

“When I had a pity party of my own two weeks ago after scraping my arm against a reef in swim training, you made it about you when Uncle Greg came to check on me.”

Enora scrunched her nose and made a face. “It was weird. It felt like he was gonna to claw someone’s face until you said the offender was a random coral.”

“It was not a random coral,” Lewis protested. “It was red. It was sharp. It was hard. It’d be a weapon if it didn’t look beautiful. Took me longer than usual to heal that even I was starting to freak out.”

Underwater pressure and the overall composition of the depths slowed the lycans’ and werewolves’ healing abilities to a certain extent, one that archaic books warned about and a phenomenon that Lewis Blackfur and many others experienced first-hand.

A smile tugged Lewis’s lips. “I’ve always known he secretly cares about me.”

“No, you didn’t,” Enora refuted.

“Okay, fine. I didn’t. But I suspected it,” he said, his smile turning smug when he added, “though it must have been quite a shock to you.”

Her eyes narrowed like a measly fly just issued a challenge. “Oh, don’t get ahead of yourself, cousin. You’re still second to me with Uncle Greg.”

“That’s true,” Ivory declared. “Now, how about we all…”

“Aunt Sush,” Lewis called out and sauntered to his aunt walking through the door, wrapping her in a hug as she grinned in pride at the little boy she watched grow into a man. The fuchsia pink headband he got her ten birthdays ago sat on her head, pushing back the curly strands while the rest of her hair is tied into a short, bushy ponytail.

Ivory offered Enora a curt nod and left her side to greet the duchess.

As Enora watched her cousin’s and aunt’s usual exchange, a large pair of hands landed on her shoulders. His scent of wet sand and salty air permeated her nostrils when her chair was slowly swiveled around. He was lowered on one knee, looking up at her like she was the only treasure in the sea. Rough hands skimmed down her arms in one swift motion, leaving a blazing trail that heated the rest of her.

He brought her hands to his lips, planting a slow kiss without breaking their gaze, his midnight black eyes stared back at her, shining so clearly that she could see her own reflection in them. “Are you all right, my starfish?” he asked, his voice deep and smooth.

With an amused tip of her lips, she replied, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Yao Bocheng’s (杨博成) thumbs drew circles on the back of her hands. “I heard you said you were dying. In fact, many of us heard it.”

“It’s a figure-of-speech, Bocheng.”

The concern contorting his features ebbed away, and a low sound came from the base of his throat when he placed a hungrier kiss on her hand. “I love hearing you say my name.”

“That makes one of us,” Greg’s voice drifted from behind. His onyx eyes zoned in on the couple’s joined hands. Bocheng wisely let go and stood to his full height. Before the young commander got a word out, the duke turned to his niece and offered her a hand the same way he did since she was little. “Sorry to keep you waiting, sweetheart. Ready for lunch?”

“May I join you, Your Grace?” Bocheng asked. When the duke’s eyes leveled with his while Enora sent an expectant look in her uncle’s direction, her suitor continued, “Enora and I have been courting for a while now, and I’d be honored for an opportunity to get to know her family better.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Commander. It’s only been three weeks,” Greg said, putting the youngster in his place. The audacity of him to even think he was in any position to ask for an invitation to eat with them was appalling. Bocheng was opening his mouth when the duke raised his forefinger in a warning. “And don’t think of using her parents’ speedy courtship as a reason for your request because unlike them, you’re both not bound by the mate bond.”

“Reida and Theo didn’t have the mate bond either,” Enora argued.

Her uncle’s features softened when he replied, “Your sister only sealed her fate with the high lord after four months, which was when he was invited to sit with us. It wasn’t three weeks, sweetheart.”

“What about you and Aunt Sush?” she persisted in an unrelenting hush, brows dipping lower.

“I was a hundred and ninety years old when I met your aunt. I’m more than happy to wait for our twenty-three-year-old commander here to reach that age if we go with that argument.”

“Aunt Sush wasn’t a hundred and ninety.”

“You’re right. She was thirty-one. We can wait for you to reach that age too. It’s only nine years away after all.” Then, sensing that the commander was still standing there like he was awaiting an invitation, Greg remained civil for his niece’s sake and said, “You’re dismissed, Commander.”

Bocheng brows shot to his hair as incredulity painted his face at being dismissed when he’d been commanding his own platoon for over a year, which meant that, more often than not, he didn’t leave a conversation until he wanted to, and he was one who dismissed anyone.

But he wasn’t speaking to just anyone, and given that the Secret Service was an institution independent of the governance and influence of any monarch and jurisdiction, Greg Claw was technically the one with the most power here, a fact that had Bocheng dipping his head in a conceding nod and leaving, but not before giving his new love a soft smile.

Once her suitor was out of earshot, Enora pivoted to her uncle. “Why are you being so hard on him? You’ve been nice to Theo before he and Ri were mated and marked.”

“Hardly,” her uncle replied. “Your mother was nice to him. I didn’t give a d*mn who the boy was as long as he didn’t put your sister and cousins in danger.” A thin sheen coasted Enora’s lilac eyes while her face crumpled with shades of anger and hurt, and it sent a crack into the duke’s heart. He kept a regretful sigh to himself, leaned forward like an animal about to coax its pup when he said, “If it’s real, it’ll withstand the test of time. There’s no need to rush it, sweetheart.” With a brief kiss on her head, he offered her his hand again. “Now, lunch?”

She forced a smile and let her uncle help her out of her chair. He wrapped her in a brief but tight embrace before they headed to the lunchroom where Lewis and Sush already got their meals. The two sat side by side at an irregularly-shaped ta