I turned my head to whisper an endearment into his neck, but to my surprise he was nonresponsive. I pulled back from his neck to see him looking back over my shoulder all of his attention seemingly elsewhere.
Slowly he spoke, "Kim you need to see this!"
"Yeah right! I'm only falling for that one once!" I said sardonically.
He kept up with the staring fixatedly over my shoulder so I decided to up the bet and say something into his ear that I didn't think he would be able to resist from doing with me. My lips opened……
"I knew that I left you in good hands."
My head whipped back forward as I stared in shock at the man who was approaching out of the waves of the ocean.
"Koke!!!" I screamed out as my feet landed on the sand as Colt released me.
I was running and then I was holding my brother and he was holding me back just as tightly. After a long moment I pulled back blinking away tears of joy, "Oh Koke your alive!"
Then I added, as I noticed something different about him, "You're different Koke. What's changed?"
His face was still wreathed in a friendly open smile that had his former way about it, "Call it responsibility. I'm a prince and I'm married."
In shock I followed his hand gesture where further out to sea a blonde who could only be termed as gorgeous, briefly stood up out of the waves followed by a score of others. The blonde smiled and waved and somehow I felt her words of welcome within my head. Just like that the Sea People re-submerged and the surface of the sea was once again flat with only the ripple of the waves to be seen.
I blinked. This couldn't all be truly happening could it? My brother lived underwater and was a Prince?
My eyes came back to Koke's only to see him regarding me with a knowing smile.
"You've changed a lot yourself dear sister."
I blushed red as I took the obvious drift of his meaning even as he added, "And you're a lot better for it!"
He took my hand then and started leading me toward Colt with a sense of command that I had never seen him manifest before.
I gasped, "Koke! You're back!"
"Ahh, never mind that, all healed now anyway. Come, we have important things to discuss."
Koke pulled me along until we came to a stop before Colt who was smiling. Koke leaned forward and slapped Colt on the back in a manly gesture that I'd never seen him manifest so overtly before.