Heart of the Deep: An Alien Romance Short Read
Adrian Blue
Shannon Cooper has spent three years falling in love with a world she's never seen — a planet of endless ocean, bioluminescent cities, and a king who has turned away every human diplomat who dared to meet his gaze.
She will be the eighth.
As a xenolinguist, Shannon knows the Thalassian negotiation protocols better than anyone. She knows the sacred pools are designed to make lies impossible. She knows that trust must be earned through touch — skin against tentacle, mind pressed open to mind. She knows exactly what she's agreeing to.
What she doesn't know is Kael'thar.
Scarred by centuries of betrayal, the king of Thalassia has learned to read humans one way: with cold efficiency, searching for the disgust or greed hiding beneath every polished smile. But when he reaches into Shannon's mind and finds neither, something long-fortified begins, for the first time, to crack.
The negotiations demand they go deeper — into the water, into vulnerability, into a closeness that has no name in either of their languages. But the greatest depths between them have nothing to do with the ocean floor.
They have everything to do with daring to be known.
