Free The Marked Ones by S. K. Munt Page A

Pintang making out in the pool, her insides cramped with envy. They were just friends, but had added benefits for the duration of his stay. Tame benefits of course-sex was out of the question for Pintang as well, being that she was a Marked child.
    Unless I marry Ardhi if course ..’ Ivyanne mused. Pintang would become ineligible for the crown then and win her freedom. Or lose her chance at the crown in the future, depending on how she looked at it. That thought made Ivyanne squirm. The last thing she needed was to feel obligated to marry Ardhi for one more reason!
    Either way, Ivyanne couldn’t just hook-up. Human or mer, if it got out of hand, and resulted in pregnancy, she’d be single-handedly responsible for undoing one thousand years of careful cultivation.
    Plus, her folks would kill her.
    Still, Ivyanne hadn’t always been so responsible, and her parents hadn’t always been able to keep an eye on her. She’d come dangerously close to screwing up the family tree as a teenager, while in Lincoln’s equally hormonal arms. She recalled those memories as she bobbed on the water and blushed with a thrilling shame.
    Lincoln. Once such a simple, happy boy-now a complex and confusing adult who looked and acted ten years older at times-but became tongue-tied and flustered in her company. He was jogging every day, twice a day, and favored Ivyanne’s usual haunts, so she often had to hide to avoid having to actually interact with him on a personal level. But she felt his gaze on her often, and it still had an effect on her.
    Seeing him with Adele was harder. Twice now, Ivyanne had been home when he walked Adele to their door, and it had been a grueling experience. When he was a disembodied voice, it was harder for Ivyanne to remind herself that he wasn’t the same old Link. His sexy, Aussie accent-which differed slightly from the others due to his Tasmanian upbringing, still made her warm all over.
    The kissing thing cut her too. Ivyanne felt like she was in a desert with another woman drinking from her canteen during the moments where she spied the couple in a lip-lock, she would try to drift off to sleep afterwards, feeling all hot and twitchy as she remembered what kissing Lincoln had been like. Those were the nights she cheated with a midnight swim, simply to take the edge off.
    Oh, and the nights when Adele didn’t come back to the room at all….! Ivyanne’s heart broke and healed just to break again when she imagined what they were doing in his own bungalow.
    Yes it had definitely been a trying few days. She felt like she was with a group of people trying to quit smoking-except they all had the patch and the gum and she was going it alone with willpower.
    The water began to swell beneath her, so Ivyanne began to turn her board around. However, as she spun, she caught the sight of something she hadn’t encountered yet this trip-a dorsal fin cutting a path through the water ten feet away-towards her. 
    Uh-oh! Ivyanne flinched. In human form, she was a lot more vulnerable to the predator than she was accustomed to, and she couldn’t just turn when she was in a bikini or with witnesses so close by. Ivyanne’s heart thudded as she assessed it’s size and shape quickly, then plummeted. It was a tiger shark- aggressive and not deterred by shallow water. Even if it bypassed her, it would most certainly notice the vibrations of the father and daughter near the shore and make a beeline in their direction.
    Luckily, her natural instincts and years of experience took over before the panic could. She had no time to waste in warning the father and daughter-if she acted fast enough, they never had to know.
    Ivyanne gripped the board and capsized herself right in its’ path, taking a deep breath before plunging under. Her eyes didn’t have time to adjust, but she could still make out the sharks’ shadow as it plowed through the water towards her.
      Ivyanne’s lungs were full, making her buoyant, and she had to struggle