The Mer Prince

Chapter 51

XY's POV

"I'm back!" I puff my chest and swirl into the king's cave, past two guards that stiffen but do not fail to let me through. I grin at the fear, holding my trident and eager to clean off and give Charley the prize.

"Charley!" I call about, checking the room we were given, coming out to find Alpha perched back with tired eyes. The biting runt, John is not at his side. The cave is quiet, but for the breathing of himself and I.

"Where is Charley? I am the one bringing him back his shell." My confidence is trickling away as Alpha's gaze only leaves mine.

"Hey... where is Charley?" I lower my trident towards him. "Tell me... where is he?"

Alpha says nothing, putting his head to his hand. He raises a stump of a tentacle, and another. His silence and wounds state the obvious that words could not leave his mouth.

At once I am filled with rage, "Don't just sit there! Tell me! Where are they?!" I move in and grab him by the shoulders. He snaps at me and pushes me back, but I'm back in his face, grabbing his hair.

"Why aren't they here?! Where is Ursula, or John, where are they?!" I yell at him, raging, wanting desperately to run him through or beat his face into the wall.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Alpha booms, his voice as potent as a pirate's cannon. He pushes himself up and slaps me down with one of his almighty tentacles. He cranes over me, "I DON'T KNOW! ARE YOU PLEASED YET TO HEAR IT?! THEY ARE GONE AND THEY TOOK THEM, MY OWN PEOPLE TOOK THEM!"

Alpha was shaking visibly with rage, only for that rage to sour and turn to despair. "Fuck's sake." He shook, likely weeping, settling back and groaning in royal pain. He hisses and reaches a hand over his shoulder, but clearly cannot reach what he needs to, whatever is killing him.

"Let me take a look." I grunt as I get back up, looking to him. He looks at me doubtfully. "Arts and crafts. Not murder. Come on, we can't help by moping."

"Uhgh...." Alpha is not thrilled with me, but we are on the same team here. He turns himself about, and I get treated with the gnarliest knife sticking at an angle under his shoulder blade. His back tentacles are missing, three solid stumps of flesh. This was plain mutilation, the sort that other octi do to one another to mock them in the trench.

"Cod, you could have lead with a 'I have a knife in my back and I'm losing blood,' but you went with dramatic?" I make sure to give him sass where sass is due, prying the knife out. He grunts and growls, but he will live. The octi blood moves slower from their veins than mers does anyways.

"It is hard enough to see you returning with pride... when I could not even protect my own." Alpha rolls his shoulders and the wound looks nasty.

"What exactly happened?" I asked, looking around for that stupid chest, before snagging out and ripping apart the ruffle shirt Charley wore once. It looked nicer as bandages around the big guy.

"Charley was above the trench when it started." Alpha started his story- and I immediately cut him off.

"You let him go up there?! When there are men looking to hunt him down and make him a slave?!" I had to butt in, just, what the fuck?

"He was with a group, he has been turning a few of the smarter ones away, and providing distraction for the dumber ones. He has been very helpful, and armed." Alpha assures me, fixing himself and looking at my face. "He never took on any groups alone."

"But?" I snap at him, "But one day was different, wasn't it? You slipped up, with the PRINCE that liked you, enough to HELP YOU?"

"I did not know! I did not know that the group with him were trenchers, those damnable creatures who live here and reject my rule!" Alpha bares his sharp teeth at me and his hair whips about in his angry shaking. He looks down at his own silt bed and then to me, clearly wishing to be violent. He wants John back, as I want Charley.