Page 35 of Chasing Tail
Chapter 20
We talked for hours. I was pretty sure I was drunk. Beck’s whiskey was just as potent as seaweed cordial. Since I challenged him with it, Callum was insisting on trying it now. Beck and Forrest wanted to try it too. Taron thought they were insane, but sharks never could handle their liquor.
Taron was certainly enjoying that whiskey. I took it away from him because he appeared to be an affectionate drunk when he had legs. Then, Forrest left us to prepare dinner. He promised this time, he was going to prepare the best things land had to offer. I actually couldn’t wait, and Beck said the food would make us a little less drunk. Frankly, I think he liked Taron was getting a little too friendly with him.
We still didn’t have a plan, but we were having a lot of fun. I learned a lot about the druid king. They lived a long time on land, but he was still a relatively young king. He wasn’t the one who made the arrangement with the mermaid council. He arranged a coup and seized the throne from that king.
Beck, Forrest, and Callum didn’t know what happened to him, but their mother had been his queen. She was well loved among the people, and their father knew the best way to keep the throne was to force her to be his wife and give him many sons to secure his line.
Callum, Forrest, and Beck were close in age. Even Taron gasped when he heard how close. Mermaids, sirens, and sea witches reproduced when the family was ready to accept and raise a new hatchling. It was by choice. It was different for most other creatures in the ocean. Taron mated on instinct and would fight off other sharks, but it would never have happened as often as it did with their mother with the same female shark.
The druid king didn’t stop with three sons either. I didn’t know this about them, but they had sisters too. His madness didn’t start with his second wife. He thought he needed an entire army of sons to secure his throne.
“Do females on land not fight?” I asked. “I’d like to fight whoever decided females needed to wear clothes like this.”
Callum snorted.
“Women on landdofight. Druid women make fierce warriors. In some other kingdoms, they have queens running the show. My father claims she needs to be replaced because she is ineffective, but across the mountains lives a bear shifter queen he’s actually terrified of. She’s universally loved, but if you give her cause, she’ll shift and rip you to shreds.”
“Our father thinks women are only good for fucking and bearing children,” Beck said. “Daughters to him would be worthless. Our mother was a powerful druid in her own right, but if she had killed him, our entire family would have been slaughtered. In the end, she died in childbirth because three sons and four daughters weren’t enough for him. He won’t even look at my sisters, which is fine by them because they loathe him. It gives us ample time to train them.”
Forrest came strolling in carrying a tray of food that smelled amazing.
“Topaz is going to beat the shit out of all three of us if he goes down and she’s not involved. When she sleeps, she dreams up subplots that involve murdering both of them. She probably already has a working idea on how we could do it if she had support and manpower.”
“Absolutely not!” Callum said. “If we tell Topaz we’re going to take him out, she’ll walk up to him in front of everyone and slit his throat.”
“I’ve never met her, but I like your sister,” I said.
“Sit and eat. Whether we kill him or expose him and have him thrown in jail, we’re doing it in a way that none of us takes the fall for it. He’s the criminal here. None of us are dying for stopping him from murdering more people and possibly starting wars,” Forrest said.
I wanted the druid king dead, not in jail. It was the only thing I would accept after what happened in my home. We didn’t do jails in the oceans, but they explained the concept to me. I’d been listening to everything they said from the start.
Their father put on one face at home and another in public. Many of his subjects loved him because of the farce he put out about cracking down on crime to hide his sacrifices. Dead meant this was over, and my druid princes were safe. No one would be coming back to my home with nets, killing my people for magic that didn’t work.
Jail meant the possibility of escape. I thought the druid king was a total idiot if he thought women weren’t perfectly capable of beating his ass, but he had supporters. They could break him out and come for my princes. I needed him dead, but they still needed time to come to that conclusion. I put it aside and focused on dinner. It smelled amazing.
“What did you cook this time?”
Taron touched this massive brown thing and licked his finger. I swatted at his arm. I wanted to do that too, but I was coming to realize they didn’t do that on land.
“It’s okay, Kishi,” Forrest said. “Let him. This is mutton from one of the wolf packs. They shift and go hunting, then bring it back to sell. They have the best meat in the entire kingdom. This is also the alpha’s mate’s famous recipe. She only gave it to us after Callum brewed her a fertility potion, and she had a whole litter of pups. It’s a top-secret recipe.”
“What is a litter of pups?” I asked.
“Werewolf babies,” Beck said. “They consider it a blessed birth when there is more than one.”
“Same with mermaids and sharks. Taron keeps complaining that land-dwellers only get one cock.”
Beck and Forrest fell out laughing.
“Is that why he got upset about the werewolf joke?” Forrest wheezed.
Callum just scowled.
“That joke is obscene. No one needed to hear it.”
“They were both laughing at everything else. How the fuck were we supposed to know?” Forrest said.
