Beached (book 3)

Chapter 18

Pale's POV

I could feel the small seashell vibrate along my thigh. I pulled it out of my pocket and placed it to my ear. I didn't worry about who was watching, whatever caused this shellphone call must have been an emergency.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Hey Pale, it's Matthew."

"Matthew? Why are you calling me?"

"Did you seriously forget?"

"What?"

"You seriously forgot-"

"You're scaring me."

And it was true. Waves churned in my stomach. I could feel it rise up my throat and spread through my chest rapidly.

"The leaders are back, you need to get down to the ocean, they're deciding on whether to kill the fishermen."

Kill the fishermen.

"This probably looks skeptical."

"No shit Sherlock, just get down here they're coming in 10 minutes, one kingdom is already waiting in the conference room."

"Okay, I'll be right there."

My eyes burned. It's not the end of the world.

I tried to flag Pearl down, but she was nowhere in sight. I shot her a text and took my flip flop off. I tossed it into a bush and placed my phone on top of it. No one would steal a flip flop and an old flip phone...right? I kicked off my other flip flop and ran around to the docs.

****

"I'm here! I'm here!" I yelled as I bursted through the bronze doors of the castle.

"Finally!" Matthew yelled as he rushed over to me. "Everyone's almost here."

We scurried into the large conference room, the gold drapes that hung from the ceiling now had an odd chill to them.

Matthew and I swam to our seats, ignoring the glares from the other royalty. The Arctic kingdom sat directly across from us again, the king eyeing us coldly.

"Well, now that we have everyone here," Matthew said standing up. "I guess we can start."

"Last week, Queen Paleren," the tropical pacific king began. "You were sticking up for the humans."

I shook my head, knowing that if I didn't it would look suspicious. "I was not sticking up for them, I was just adding a point of view."

"Well, then state your point of view, if you really think not killing the fishermen is important."

I stood up, heart pounding in my chest. "Fishermen catch and eat sharks, our mortal enemy. If we kill the fishermen, the shark population is going to increase."

"But our fish population is decreasing," the Arctic King interrupted.

"But if we kill the fishermen, then the shark population will increase. Sharks also eat fish which means the fish population will decrease anyway. It's called a food web"

"If you think that the people are worth saving," the tropical merman said. "Then why don't you show us them?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," the Arctic Ocean King said.