The Runaway Mermaid - Chapter 1

In the middle of the night, Lu Jingran dragged me out of a sound sleep.

His cheeks were flushed, his shirt rumpled, and a drunken haze clouded his dark eyes. The reek of alcohol rolled off him, making me wrinkle my nose.

“My head hurts. Sing.”

He dropped onto the bed beside me. I flinched away.

“Hurry up,” he snapped.

I let out a breath, and a soft, clear melody slipped from my lips.

The deep furrow between Lu Jingran’s brows gradually eased. Before long, he had fallen asleep right there in my bed.

I stopped singing and carefully tried to climb out, only to discover that at some point he had caught hold of my nightgown.

I tugged, trying to free the fabric. That tiny movement was enough to wake him.

His eyes flew open, black anger pooling in their depths. “What are you doing? Do you hate sharing a bed with me that much?”

My gaze darted away. “No. I was going to… pull the blanket over you.”

The next instant, Lu Jingran hooked an arm around my waist and hauled me down beside him.

“Keep singing. I never told you to stop.”

The unfamiliar weight of his hand at my waist made my skin crawl, but I did not dare disobey him.

The lives of all the merfolk were in his hands. One wrong move from me could bring disaster down on every one of them.

I had the strongest healing gift in my clan. Lu Jingran, meanwhile, had been sickly since childhood, plagued by a stubborn illness no doctor could cure. To preserve our family and our people, my father had offered me to him.

At first, the Lu family had not believed what I could do. Then I cured the headaches that had tormented Lu Jingran for years.

From that day on, I became an ornament permanently attached to his side. For his sake, other people treated me with a measure of courtesy.

Everyone except him.

Singing through the entire night left my throat raw. By morning, my voice had gone hoarse.

When Lu Jingran woke and saw the shadows under my eyes, he sneered. “You look awful.”

I pressed my lips together and lowered my head.

“Get ready. You’re coming with me to pick someone up.”

“Who?”

His mouth curled. “And here I thought you’d gone mute.”

I hesitated, then said, “I don’t like those people.”

Sometimes Lu Jingran met up with that pack of friends of his, as he had the night before. I hated being around them. Their jokes always left me humiliated.

That was why I had defied him and refused to go with him last night. At least he had not become angry over it.

“Relax. It isn’t them.”

Apparently, the person he was meeting mattered a great deal to him. He changed his clothes again and again before finally holding up two ties.

“Which one works better?”

I pointed to the royal-blue tie in his right hand.

He immediately tossed it aside and knotted the navy one from his left instead.

I watched in silence.

When he accepted an exquisitely arranged bouquet from a servant, I knew the person we were picking up was a woman.

We waited at the airport for a while before a pretty, innocent-looking woman waved at him.

The instant Lu Jingran saw her, his taut face broke into a smile. “So you finally decided to come back?”

His tone was intimate, threaded with a longing so faint it was almost hidden.

The woman accepted the flowers easily and hugged him. “Listen to you. Anyone would think you were jealous.”

When she released him, she slipped her arm through his as though it belonged there. Then she looked at me.

“And who is this?”

Unlike every other time, Lu Jingran made no move to introduce me. He simply waited, almost amused, for me to speak for myself.

I forced a smile. “My name is Meng Tan.”

She held out her hand. “Qin Yan.”

“Get in. We’re giving you a proper welcome home,” Lu Jingran said.

He took Qin Yan’s luggage with perfect gallantry and even shielded her head with one hand as she climbed into the car. Every gesture was attentive and considerate.

I had never seen this side of him.

Qin Yan and Lu Jingran sat together in the back, reminiscing about old times. From their conversation, I pieced together that they had gone to high school together. Lu Jingran had been in love with her then, but his health forced him to withdraw from school, and Qin Yan later went abroad.

They had been apart for six years.

So this was his precious first love.

I had heard his friends mention her. They often compared me to her, too.

Which meant this welcome-home dinner of his could only be—

“We’re here.”

The car stopped in front of an exclusive club. The last of my hope died on the spot.

In a place like this, his friends were bound to be waiting.