After half a day of babysitting three rambunctious nymph children – triplets who seemed to think it was great fun to make the kelp try to catch me as I swam after them – I arrived at Jett and Sidney’s house feeling tired and ready to just relax.

So naturally, Zoey turned into a kraken when she spotted me and did her best to scramble towards me and ideally practice her strangulation – err, hugging – techniques.

Sidney kidnapped her before she reached me.  “Nuh-uh, young lady, you’re supposed to be playing with your toys.”  He looked over at the toys and paused.  “Oh, you…killed them.”  Zoey’s toys were now all broken in pieces and scattered around on the floor.

In human form, Zoey was more of a typical 3-month old, but in kraken form, she was more mobile and definitely more destructive than most babies.

“We, uh, have to work on learning our own strength.”  Jett looked a little embarrassed, as if his daughter’s swath of destruction was somehow his fault.

“It’s fine,” I immediately chirped up, “we can make more toys!  We just need some driftwood and coral and shells.”

“Sage, love, relax.”  Sidney gently shoved me in the direction of Jett, who was sitting down on a sort of corner bench.  Rounded corner bench.  “You look tired, what did you do today, anyway?  You also look kind of…male.  Not that I’m complaining, I like it!  Just wondering if there was a reason for it”

I glance down, realizing I hadn’t switched back from male form yet.  “Oh, yeah.  Well, this morning I was helping drag some wreckage out of the way for some of the kelp farmers – a car, weirdly enough, and parts of some bicycles.  They want to make a new field and I helped them clear it out.  Mostly.  There’s a few patches of reef we just left, but all the wreckage we moved.  That went longer than I planned, so I was a little late getting over to watch the nymph triplets so I forgot to switch back.”  Thankfully, unlike the situation with Charlotte, I knew neither of them particularly cared if I was in male or female form, and I felt too tired at the moment to deal with the transformation, so I just stayed where I was, slowly slouching down more on the bench.

“Which reminds me, Sidney, you should look in the basket I brought.”

Sidney had finished cleaning up the remnants of Zoey’s toys and swam over to the basket curiously.  He was instantly delighted to discover some rarer kelp that was much harder to grow than most kelp was.

“The nymphs gave it to me as thanks,” I explained.  These particular water nymphs specialized in kelp, so they were able to grow some of the rarer stuff that was a delicacy for most merfolk.  It was probably something along the lines of lobster or caviar for humans – while those were more your average hamburger and fries for us.

Sidney practically swam in circles around the house in his excitement, making both me and Jett eat a piece of the kelp to prove how good it was while he started to make plans on what else to do with it.

I watched him, amused but happy.  It was nice to be able to bring them something that made them happy, which in turn made me happy.

I was leaning against the wall and turned my head to look at Jett without moving the rest of me.  “What did you do today?  Anything fun in the deep ocean?”

He considered that.  “Not really, no.  I came across a leviathan and we sort of just looked at each other and then continued on our ways.”

I was somewhat intrigued.  I hadn’t seen any leviathans – they were deep sea supernaturals and never really came up to the surface at all that I was aware of.  I assumed that they, like kraken, had human forms, but I wasn’t sure.

“They’re basically like…sea dragons, right?”

“Kind of?  You saw Anthony’s dragon form – they’re more serpent like than that, and they have elemental magic like the rest of merfolk, but they’re not as large as legends.  They’re probably half of Anthony’s length – still not something most people really want to encounter, though.”  Jett shrugged.  “Unless you’re a kraken.  A lone one like that is no big deal, but I’ve seen them swim around in schools on occasion.  That’s more to be concerned about.  A school could pick a whale clean in minutes.”

I knew they wouldn’t go after Jett for food purposes any more than he would them – supernaturals didn’t eat each other, that was gross – but I hoped they wouldn’t bother him just for territory purposes or something like that.

“Do all the deep sea creatures usually leave each other alone?  Would a school of leviathans feel like they could take you on?”

Jett scooted over a couple inches on the bench so he was basically leaning against me, or I was leaning against him, I wasn’t sure.  “Mostly we leave each other alone unless it becomes a territorial issue.  All of us deep sea supernaturals, there’s not a ton of us around.  Killing each other is kind of taboo, unless there’s a reason for it.  Territory can become a reason.  Say a school of leviathans moved into where I normally feed, or another kraken – I might tolerate them briefly, assuming they were just there temporarily, but if it was clear they wanted to stay?  That would create a problem for me.  But honestly, it’s usually not too much of an issue because we don’t really want to fight each other.  We’d rather just adjust our hunting grounds a bit and try to make allowances for each other, it’s only when there’s too many of us in an area that that becomes impossible and someone has to move – either by choice or by force.”

I hope that never became an issue here, because I didn’t want Jett to have to fight someone for his territory, but I also didn’t necessarily want them – and me – to have to move to avoid a fight.

“If anyone ever tries to take your territory,” I slid my hands lightly around his bicep, “tell us.  The entire community likes having you here.  We may not go out into deep ocean much, but I think we’d all want to help convince them to move on.”

“You’re actually volunteering to try to scare people off?”  Jett sounded amused, but touched.

“Me and the community,” I corrected.  “I’m volunteering all of them, too.”

Jett chuckled, his laugh sending pleasant vibrations through me.  Yeah, I really liked his voice.

It suddenly dawned on me that I’d never told him that.  “I like your voice,” I piped up as the thought hit me.  “It gives me tinglies.  Is that a kraken thing?  Will Zoey do that, too?”

“Oh, um, thanks.”

I looked up to see Jett’s face a little pink and smiled at him, a smile he caught when he looked over at me.

His embarrassment shifted to something else.  “Sage…were you serious when you said you were interested in kissing?”

I nodded, a tad puzzled that they kept questioning my desires on that point, but at least they were being thoughtful and I couldn’t fault that.

Then I realized why he was asking when he slowly – but allowing me time to decide how to react – moved in my direction.

I caught the back of his neck and his hands went to my waist just as his lips connected with mine, and for a second I couldn’t even breathe, and then I breathed kraken and ocean and love and my head got all fuzzy and I was pretty sure there might have been fireworks but maybe that was just my brain cells knocking into each other in excitement.

“Jett,” I breathed as he broke the kiss, for a moment just searching his deep blue eyes with my own as a smile started to spread on his face.

“No fair, me too!”  Sidney whined.

I reluctantly released Jett to let him kiss Sidney, when I realized Sidney wasn’t talking about Jett, he was talking about ­me.  He grabbed my face in his hands and eagerly offered me a kiss, too.

Jett’s kiss had been deep and intense while Sidney’s was hot and passionate.  A little too much, almost, like he didn’t want to stop at all, but somehow their kisses fit their personalities – and reminded me very distinctly that we were not simply friends anymore.

And, as evidenced by the silly grin on my face, I couldn’t be happier about it.

~~~~

I was surprised to hear a knock at my door early one morning, several weeks later.  Then the door opened and Sidney invited himself in, Jett trailing after him with Zoey in his arms.  Zoey promptly poofed into kraken form at the sight of me and happily waved her tiny tentacles around.

“Morning, love.”  Sidney leaned down to give me a kiss.  “We brought you breakfast!”

I was a little surprised at the randomness of it, but willingly accepted the food offered.

“So,” Jett glanced at Sidney, then back to me, “we actually have a favor to ask of you.”

“Sure!”  I said around a mouthful of food.  “What is it, do you want me to babysit Zoey?”

“Nope!”  Sidney announced cheerfully.  “We want your help building another room to our house.”

I paused, a little confused.  Merfolk houses didn’t tend to have a ton of rooms – we didn’t really need kitchens since we usually got our food very fresh and we didn’t exactly have a way to cook underwater, so our houses tended to consist of a bedroom and living room combined for a single person; a bedroom and separate living room for a married couple; or a living room and as many bedrooms as required based on number of children for a family with children.  It wasn’t like it was forbidden to have extra rooms or anything, we just tended not to need them.  I wasn’t sure why they would want an extra room.  They clearly weren’t announcing a pregnancy to me because Sidney was still in his male form, so that was out.

“Are you planning to try to get pregnant again?”  I asked curiously.

Sidney made a face.  “No, not yet, too soon – maybe later though.”

Well, I was thoroughly confused then, but also not about to refuse them.  I’d help anyone in the merfolk community if I could, but especially my own little family.

“Sure, I’ll help.”  But my curiosity couldn’t be totally silenced.  “What is it for, though?  Do you want to have a separate room for your jewelry work?”

Sidney exchanged a glance with Jett, his face clearly telling me that he was excited about something and having trouble keeping it back.

But it was Jett who answered.  “Actually…the room is for you.”

I stopped eating so I could stare at them with wide eyes.  “For…me?”

“We want you to move in with us!”  Sidney crowed excitedly.  “I mean, eventually, when you’re ready, but we thought if we had a room for you now, you could feel more comfortable staying over and, you know, feeling more like that’s your home, too.  We’re not going to make you give up your house or anything if you don’t want to, but we want you to know there’s always a place for you with us.”

I took a moment to consider this, but a smile slowly started to bloom that I couldn’t keep back.  “Really?  It’s for me?”

“Yes!”  Sidney crushed me in a hug, pulling Jett along with him – and Zoey by default – so I ended up being semi-squished by the two of them while Zoey tried to figure out if she could be my hat.

“So you’ll help us?  And consider it?”  Jett asked, a little tentatively, his eyes searching my face as a hopeful smile started to appear on his.

I nodded immediately.  “Of course I will!  To both!”

Honestly, it made sense.  They were my family now, why wouldn’t I want to live with them instead of by myself?  I probably wouldn’t have suggested it if I thought about it – I didn’t want to push them to let me in if they hadn’t given me permission – but now they were asking and I did want to move in with them.  Maybe not all at once, but I wanted to start.  I wanted to start actually living with my family.

Jett and Sidney made me feel safe and loved, and Zoey was our baby.  Where else would I ever want to be?