Daddy's Little Mermaid

Xia Ya drank too much one night and spent it in the water with a stranger. In the morning she remembered almost nothing about him beyond the strength of his tail. She decided to file it away as something that happened once and went home, where her parents told her they had arranged her engagement to a young man from the deep sea nobility. The wedding preparations were under way when her future father-in-law finally appeared. She knew the face and the bearing, and she knew the way he looked at her. He is no ordinary noble; he is the tyrant who rules the deep, the one sharks give way to. After that he keeps her close under the excuse of protection, summons her at night, and will not let her near her fiance. She corners the problem in her own head for weeks until a full moon night when he blocks her in against the coral and says quietly that it does not matter if she has forgotten, because he remembers, and that she should not assume the marriage to his son is going to happen.