a HIDDEN short story

OLIVIA Forster, Queen of Oceana’s wereseals, eyed the blue velvet gown like a mortal enemy.

It wasn’t her enemy, of course. It was simply a dress: a very nice, very expensive dress draped on a fancy padded hanger. Thanks to the royal tailors, it fit her like a dream. Even if she hadn’t lost her baby weight from the triplets, those geniuses with the needle would have made sure it flattered her. The spacious walk-in closet in which she stood in her underwear also held no dangers—unless you were terrified of silk-wool carpet and custom-fitted drawers. Because she shared the space with her three husbands, the closet was bigger than her bedroom back when she lived in Long Island. The size wasn’t an indulgence. Her husbands had as many formal outfits as she did.

They also liked wearing them better.

As if to prove it, her most royal husband, aka His Majesty King Anso the First, stepped into the room with her.

“That gown isn’t going to put itself on,” he teased.

Minus the jacket, he was already in his tuxedo: a tall, broad-shouldered, glorious hunk of a shapeshifter. Because he knew how she was about dressing up, his beautiful sapphire eyes twinkled.

“It’s floor length,” she said. “And the bodice is corset style.”

“That explains why you don’t like it, not why I should disapprove.”

“Ha ha,” she said, unable to keep a hint of glumness from her tone.

“It goes with your eyes,” he cajoled, which was a joke among the four of them.

A year and a half ago, Olivia and her first husband James had become Anso and his fellow wereseal Ty’s bloodmates. What had started out as a heat-driven abduction on a deserted beach had become an extraordinarily deep relationship. Consummating a blood bond was the highest form of marriage for Oceanans, combining the concept of soulmates with genetic compatibility. Though the four-way mating hadn’t turned Olivia or James into wereseals, they had experienced changes. They could breathe underwater and were stronger and healthier. Their life expectancy was as long as any shapeshifter’s. Their libidos were heightened, so it was handy that there were four of them. Olivia and James gained a smidge more intuition than they’d had as humans, making them feel more at home among Oceana’s semi-to-very magical citizens. Olivia’s triplets each had a different father, which would have been a trick to pull off if she’d still been a mundane.

The primary sign that these things might happen had been a change in their eye color. Her and James’s irises were now the same drowning blue as Anso’s, with a touch of Ty’s bright yellow ringing their pupils. Olivia loved this evidence that they all were linked. The four of them finding each other had been the luckiest day of their lives.

The only drawback—to Olivia’s mind anyway—was that Anso was royalty.

Don’t be a grump, she ordered her reflection. Your life is amazing, and it’s only a damn dinner. The third damn state dinner in a week. Her babies were going to forget her name.

Her babies would have set up a wail at the way she frowned in the full-length mirror.

“Let me help,” Anso said soothingly. He slipped the gorgeous gown off its fancy hanger and shook it out for her to step into.

Stifling a sigh, Olivia braced on his shoulder and did as he invited. If this had been the old days, when it was just her and James, she’d have warned her husband that if he “helped,” they’d never get where they were going. Sadly—though not for Oceana— Anso was an actual ruling king, with actual ruling duties. He shared responsibility for their city-nation with a council and legislature, but he rarely blew off anything. Olivia admired that. She simply wished he’d take two seconds to ogle her in her lacy push-up bra and thong.

We’re not in heat, she reminded herself. You can’t expect him to always be flattering you.

“Suck in,” he said, beginning to do up the laces at the back of the Victorian-style corset bodice. Zippers were considered outre for aristocrats, but Olivia sure missed them. To be fair, having three men to do her up was a pretty good compensation. One of them was bound to notice how nice she looked.

“There,” Anso said, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. He smiled at their joined reflections in the long mirror: a tall honey-haired Viking hugging a petite redhead.
“You might be miserable, sweetheart, but you’ll outshine every woman in the room.”

Olivia pulled a little face, which of course he spotted.

“Not your ambition?” he joshed.

She turned in his hold, her arms naturally twining behind his strong warm neck. “First,” she said like the accountant she’d always be. “I’m only interested in three people’s opinions. Second, I couldn’t be miserable if even one of my mates was there.”

“Uncomfortable then,” he said sympathetically.

“I’ll put my heart into it,” she promised. “I know tonight is important to Ty.”

Important was an understatement. Tonight’s guest of honor was the King of Tantallon, a sister underwater city hidden off the coast of Scotland. Ty’s social-climbing mother was considering moving there. Since she and her alcoholic husband had brought a great deal of real misery into Ty’s life, good relations were to be encouraged.

None of them liked seeing the dark cloud ten minutes with his parents could cast over Ty. When he was with them, part of him forgot he was Anso’s respected co-ruler, beloved by his mates and their citizens. When he was with the people who’d brought him up, the unhappy, unloved boy he’d been tried to rise up again.

The blackness always passed. Ty had too much self respect to allow it to linger long. Still, to have spared him it for good, Olivia would have made polite chitchat with any number of foreign VIPs.

“You’ll be fine,” Anso said, hugging her hips closer. “You always worry beforehand, but you’ve never let us down.”

He was nice to say so. She knew there’d been a time or two when his job would have been easier if she’d had more social skills.

“I mean it, Liv,” he said, having learned to read her face. “People love you just as you are. No one—least of all me—needs you to be a social genius. You being real is what people respond to.”

She looked into his eyes and her own teared up. How was it that three men could become this dear to her? “I love you,” she whispered.

He kissed her and held her close. “Love you too,” he said in return.

"Date Night" is a companion story to HIDDEN DEPTHS.