Sharon Hamilton Author: SEAL Of Time (Paranormal SEAL, Trident Legacy) or the Water of Love

I'm having a good time with a little novella, taking a break to finish my project due in March, SEAL Of Time, about the son of Poseidon. I'm doing this as a collaborative venture with Kathryn LeVeque. Our boys are from different earthly mothers, as Poseidon is known for loving mortal females. Their mothers have long passed, but the boys are also immortal, and may be able to father immortal children.

You know, if you've read any of my books, I like orphans, half-breeds and heroes who don't fit into the scheme of things, yet can come together to form a bond with others and in that capacity, become part of the glue of a powerful team. In romance, we want the hero to have major conflicts, especially when it comes to love, or the power of love in their lives. Try as they might, love is just too powerful for them and they all fall, one by one.

So we like opposites in our heroes and heroines. In my SEAL Of Time story in the Trident Legacy duet, my son of Poseidon has qualities he inherited from his father and his birthplace, the fierce ocean, as well as those of his mother, the grounding influences of a mortal woman on earth. He doesn't fit into either world, except to exist as a warrior defender of mankind. And yet, the conflict comes when he falls in love. Will this affect his mission to protect mankind? And is this a selfish move on his part, or the calling to which he was destined, now realized?

Here's a little excerpt of the character (unedited):

He knew dolphins to be some of the happiest of mammals, and he fully understood their drive to follow the large vessels that frequented the open waterways, exercising to capacity, and becoming one with the iron behemoths that traveled there. It wasn’t that they enjoyed playing with the big shipping traffic, they couldn’t help themselves. They were engineered so that they had no choice in the matter.

-->

His directive alerted him to a possible foreign object some mile or two away, so he sped up to search for its origin and meaning, not wanting to put the pod of friendlies in danger. Though the dolphins were not human, they possessed enough human traits that they remained a species, like humans, he was honor bound to protect.

The object was beneath the surface, propelled by some enclosed motor without external blades or bubbles, except for one curious detail. Attached to the rear of the object was a human male form, as if they formed some symbiotic relationship. The speed of the combined object and man made him consider perhaps this was a new life form: half man, half machine. The man’s torso was encased in a rubbery sharkskin type fabric. His face and head was covered in a mask with glass portholes.

Poseidon’s son hung back so those portholes wouldn’t turn and focus on him. He swirled around the man, searching him from all sides.

As if realizing some big mammal had tacked him, the man sped up. Tay heard the muted whir of an incredibly advanced motor. He saw the displacement of water coming from a tube the size of his finger, still without bubbles. As he crossed paths with the rivulet, his gills sensed the chemical of some sort of rebreathing apparatus.

Ingenious! He’d heard of such things, but never seen one. Man’s inventions were an enigma to him, as they allowed their human species to defy their birthright and do the impossible, live in waters they wouldn’t be able to on their own, soar through the sky and drill through the earth.

As the device continued to speed up, Tay joined him, like the dolphins, unable to resist satisfying his curiosity. He cloaked his body just in case the human’s vision was enhanced, so he could be undetected. The cloaking was warm, as his body heat was not allowed to dissipate into the cold ocean, much like the man’s sharkskin suit. It would continue to heat up the faster he went, sometimes even causing a small chafing burn he’d have to heal when he got back on land.

The man’s body was well developed and efficient in muscle, with thighs much larger than most human males he’d seen. Unlike Tay, the man had flexible rubber blades attached to his feet, which helped steer and propel him further.