Loading promotion info...
My Husband Betrayed the Mermaid Who Protected Him
Novelix
Completed
When Nerissa catches her husband Adrian with another woman, he claims the betrayal is only meant to make her cry black pearls that can calm deadly storms. She believes him—until he lets Celeste’s doctors mutilate Nerissa’s bonded jellyfish, cuts flesh from Nerissa’s own mermaid tail, and even eats it. Realizing the man she once protected no longer trusts or loves her, Nerissa makes one final choice: she ends her people’s debt to his family and returns to the sea. Without her protection, Adrian must face what his cruelty has cost him.
Chapters (2)
第1章
The first time I catch Adrian and Celeste in our bed, I cry black pearls all over the floor.
Afterward, he holds me and says it was only an act.
He tells me only real heartbreak can turn my tears black, and black pearls can hold back the storms threatening the coast.
He says hurting me is for the ocean, for our home.
I believe him.
Later, Celeste suddenly falls critically ill.
The doctors say my bonded jellyfish might save her, so Adrian orders them to cut off her tentacles and take tissue from her while she is still alive.
I kneel in front of him, shielding my dying jellyfish with my arms.
“Adrian, please stop. She’s been with me since birth, and when she hurts, I hurt too.”
He only laughs.
“My father is the only one who still believes in that bond of yours. It’s just a jellyfish. Once Celeste gets better, I’ll buy you another one.”
That night, I carry my bonded jellyfish, her light almost completely gone, to Adrian’s father.
“Because of an old debt, my people and I have protected your family for generations. I have held back storms, guarded your shores, and protected your family again and again.”
I look down at the dying jellyfish in my arms.
“Tonight, that debt is paid in full. From now on, whatever the sea comes to collect from your family, I will no longer stand in its way.”
“Let me go home.”
-
“What shared pain? My father is the only one who still believes that ridiculous story.”
“It’s just a jellyfish. Once Celeste gets better, I’ll buy you another one.”
The blade comes down.
My knees give out, and I hit the floor hard.
Pain tears through me as if the same blade has sliced into my body.
“Stop!”
I wrench free from the people behind me and throw myself toward the treatment tank.
My bonded jellyfish convulses in the water.
Her tentacles used to be long and transparent, glowing a soft blue like moonlight as they drifted through the water.
Now one of them lies severed on a silver tray, still twitching.
“No…”
I grip the edge of the tank.
“Please.”
Tears blur my vision as I look up at Adrian.
“Adrian, please. She’s going to die.”
“So is Celeste.”
“Then at least prove this will actually work first!”
My voice nearly breaks.
“No one has ever used my bonded jellyfish to make medicine for humans. You don’t even know if this can save her!”
“The doctors say it might.”
“Might?”
I step in front of the tank, blocking the doctors.
“You’re willing to hurt me like this just because it might work?”
Adrian’s eyes fill with impatience.
“Enough.”
“Every time something doesn’t go your way, you start talking about merfolk rules and this so-called bond.”
“I know you’re a mermaid. That doesn’t mean I have to believe everything you say.”
I stare at him.
Of course he knows what I am.
He has seen my tail. He has watched me walk out of the sea.
He has also known for years that my bonded jellyfish and I share pain.
When the first blade came down, he watched her convulse and saw me collapse at the exact same moment.
It isn’t that he doesn’t know.
He simply chooses not to believe me anymore.
But I do not understand.
He used to care about this jellyfish more than anyone.
Once, when her blue glow dimmed slightly, Adrian woke me in the middle of the night and stood beside her tank, asking over and over if she was sick or if the water was too cold.
That night, he told me himself,
“She’s been with you since you were born. That makes her family too.”
I refuse to believe the tenderness in his eyes back then was fake.
But now he watches that same “family” have her tentacles cut away.
He watches me collapse with her.
The doctor reaches for the tank again.
I throw my arms around it.
“Don’t touch her!”
Two people grab me from behind.
I struggle until my shoulders ache.
“Let me go! Adrian, please!”
I call his name again and again because even now, I am still waiting for him to change his mind.
Instead, I hear his cold voice.
“Take what you need for the medicine.”
The blade comes down a second time.
Pain rips through me.
I cannot even scream. I curl up on the floor as a tear slips down my cheek.
Before it hits the ground, it hardens into black.
Click.
A black pearl lands beside my hand.
Then a second.
A third.
Black pearls roll across the white floor.
The room falls silent.
I force myself to look up.
Adrian is staring at the pearls.
Not at me lying on the floor.
At my tears.
I know his eyes too well, so I see the change almost immediately.
It isn’t pity or guilt. He has just realized something.
He motions for an assistant to pick up one of the pearls.
“Send it to the port.”
I freeze.
“What?”
No one answers.
The assistant leaves with the black pearl.
I remain on the floor, staring at the man I have loved for years.
He does not help me up.
He does not even look back at me.
That night, the waves threatening the port begin to weaken.
Everyone celebrates the black pearl that arrived just in time.
I stay beside my bonded jellyfish’s treatment tank until sunrise.
After treating her wounds, the marine specialist tells me that if we had waited any longer, she might have died.
Through the glass, I stare at her severed tentacles.
Even now, I can still feel the pain of her severed tentacles tearing through me.
Her blue light flickers weakly.
I suddenly remember Adrian sitting beside her tank all night years ago, simply because her glow had dimmed.
Now he watched her being cut open.
He watched me collapse in pain.
And in the end, he took my tears.
第2章
Adrian’s father goes pale when he sees my jellyfish in the treatment tank.
“Nerissa, I warned him again and again not to hurt you, and never to touch her.”
His gaze falls on her severed tentacles, and his voice turns grim.
“I never thought he would go this far for Celeste.”
He closes his eyes.
After a long silence, he says quietly,
“I’ll deal with Adrian, and I’ll make Celeste leave.”
“As long as you stay, I promise no one will ever touch either of you again.”
I look up.
“Stay?”
He finally hears something in my voice.
Long ago, Adrian’s ancestor risked his life to save a stranded mermaid and stopped others from destroying the waters where she lived.
To repay that debt, my people promised to protect his family’s coast.
I have stayed longer than any of my people.
At first, I stayed to honor that promise. Later, I stayed because I fell in love with Adrian, and for a long time, I could not separate the two.
I even believed that as long as I kept protecting his family, I would always have a place in his world.
Now I look down at my dying jellyfish.
“I’ve stopped enough storms for your family.”
“Your ancestor once saved one of my people, so I protected your coast and your family for years.”
“That debt is paid. Once she is strong enough to travel, I’m going home.”
The words bring me back to the first time I came ashore.
The ocean did not look like this back then.
Sunlight filtered through the clear water deep into the sea.
Schools of silver fish flashed between coral branches, while transparent jellyfish drifted above them, their long tentacles glowing blue.
After storms, I loved swimming to the surface.
The sky would be bright and clear, sometimes with a rainbow stretching across the horizon.
Later, the sea began to change.
Storms came more often.
I first left the deep to find out why.
But Adrian was the reason I stayed.
The first time I took human form and stepped onto land, I was barefoot. I did not even know how to put on shoes.
Seawater dripped from my hair while strangers stared at me.
Adrian was the only one who walked toward me.
He took off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“You must be freezing.”
That was the first thing he ever said to me.
Later, Adrian learned I was a mermaid.
I expected him to be afraid. Instead, he kept me awake half the night with questions. Did fish really glow in the deepest water? Could mermaids sing? Did every tear become a pearl?
I told him he was annoying.
He only smiled wider.
Among my people, pearls can carry more than grief. Some are said to hold memories that refuse to fade.
When I finally brought my bonded jellyfish onto land, Adrian had an entire wall turned into a saltwater tank for her.
There was white sand, seagrass, coral, and even shells and tiny pearls he had bought for her.
I laughed when I saw it.
“She doesn’t need all this.”
“She might like it.”
The first time my jellyfish glowed in front of him, Adrian stood by the glass for a long time.
“She’s been with you since you were born?”
“Yes.”
“Then she’s family too.”
I believed him.
Back then, I truly thought we would always be this happy.
We weren’t.
Everything changed when Adrian’s boat disappeared during a storm. He survived that night, but something between us seemed to die in that storm. It was also after that night that Celeste truly became part of our lives.
Adrian began to change little by little.
He stopped asking about the deep, stopped coming with me to watch the tides, and rarely entered the room he had built for my jellyfish.
Eventually, he even began questioning the things I told him about mermaids, our bond, and the sea.
I did not understand why.
I only told myself that maybe human love was like that.
Maybe it simply grew quieter with time.
Then, a few months ago, I caught Adrian and Celeste in our bed for the first time.
I cried until I could barely breathe, black pearls scattering across the floor.
Adrian chased after me.
“It was fake. All of it.”
“The storm is about to hit. There are still people near the port.”
He held my face and kissed away my tears.
“I only need the black pearls.”
“You’re the one I love.”
I believed him.
Because back then, I still wanted desperately to believe him.
The marine specialist’s voice pulls me out of the memory.
“She should survive.”
I immediately look down at the treatment tank.
“But she cannot be hurt like this again.”
I carefully lift the tank.
Before I can leave, an assistant runs after me carrying another small tank.
Inside is an ordinary pale jellyfish.
“Adrian sent this for you.”
A card is taped to the glass.
Since you care so much about jellyfish, here’s another one.
I stare at the words for a long time.
Once, Adrian told me my bonded jellyfish was family.
Now he thinks if one dies, he can simply buy me another.
I leave it behind.
I take only my bonded jellyfish with me.
Once this storm passes, I will return to the sea.
For the first time, the thought feels real.
I am going to leave Adrian.
But when I return home to collect my things, I hear a woman’s muffled moan behind the bedroom door before I even reach it.
I stop.
The door is not fully closed.
