Free Siren's Surrender by Devyn Quinn

didn’t look up from her work. “He didn’t make it.” Her tone was cold, clinical. She was speaking as a professional medic and not a personal friend of the deceased. Grief would come later, when she’d had time to decompress.
    Tessa gaped at her sister in horror. “Oh, no. That can’t be.” She stumbled toward a chair and sat down. A fine tremor shook her body. “Are you sure?”
    Addison nodded. “He took a dead-on hit. You don’t survive when something like that finds you.”
    Kenneth frowned darkly. “Oh, man. That’s bad. Just bad.” His voice held a tinge of sorrow. “We didn’t think it would come to this.”
    A raw, deep slice went straight through Gwen’s heart. She’d always liked Lucky. The old man knew they were Mer and had never said a word to another living soul. He’d worked for her family almost all his life, just like his father before him.
    A single tear streamed down her cheek. She hurriedly wiped it away. “He was a good man.”
    “Too good to die that way,” Addison added. “But I won’t forget what those bitches did. I’ll get even. Somehow, I will.”
    Conversation dwindled off into silence. Nobody seemed to know what to say.
    As the odd man out, Whittaker was the first to speak again. He glanced at his injured arm. “Damn thing was like a laser. Burned right through me.”
    Addison applied an antiseptic wash and a layer of salve. “It’s pretty clean. The injury is deep, but the heat cauterized the blood vessels, so you won’t bleed to death.” She wrapped his arm in a loose layer of gauze. “All in all, I’d say you’re going to live.”
    Grunting his approval, Whittaker lifted his arm. “Still hurts like hell.”
    Addison dug back into her kit, offering up a generic brand of ibuprofen. “This ought to help a little.”
    The agent gritted his teeth against the agony. “Thanks.” He popped the caplets into his mouth and swallowed. He glanced at his shirt, now missing almost an entire sleeve. “Guess I need to be grateful I still have an arm.”
    Tessa offered the agent a cup of hot coffee. “I’m sorry.” She shot a glance toward Kenneth. “If we’d have had any idea something like this was going to happen, we would have contacted the authorities sooner.”
    Shoulders slumping, Kenneth stared into his coffee, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. “We weren’t sure if we should say anything,” he added.
    Gwen hated to see the two backed into a corner. Even though Tessa and Kenneth had both wanted to go to the government with their discovery, she’d been the one to kibosh the idea. It was better to lay low, she’d said, than to lay their story out and possibly come off looking like fools. The sea-gate had been destroyed. As far as Gwen was concerned, that was the end of it.
    But it isn’t over, she realized. Some of the Mer who had crossed into earth’s waters had obviously survived.
    And now there’d be hell to pay.
    Gwen turned to the agent. “It wasn’t their fault.” Inside, her nerves were crackling and sparking as she spoke. “I’m the one who decided we should say nothing about the incident in the Mediterranean.”
    Whittaker blew out a breath. “Excuse me, can somebody please explain to me what is going on?”
    Tessa’s hands dropped. “It’s about Ishaldi.” Her reply was low, almost inaudible to all ears. “We found it,” she told Whittaker. Her bottom lip trembled as she spoke. “We found a lost world.”
    Gwen’s heart slammed against her ribs, threatening to pound its way through her chest. She’d always prayed this moment would never come. Now it had. And people were going to know all about the Mer.
    Goddess help us, she prayed silently.
     
     
    Blake wasn’t sure what was going on, but he did know one thing: These people were hiding something huge. What he’d personally witnessed outside was enough to boggle the mind. The arsenal those women had—like the one nearly blasting him into kingdom come—was unlike