Oatmeal n’ Raisin

He positioned himself a little farther back from the spring, far enough that even you could not accuse him of crowding. He sat, legs stretched out, hands resting loosely on his knees, shoulders relaxed in a way that made your temper flare hotter. He looked as if he had all the time in the world. As if he had chosen this spot deliberately. As if there was nowhere else he would rather be. He didn’t even lean forward as if peer into the water like a child staring into a tide pool.

You glared up at him through the water, hair floating around your face in a halo, tail coiled tight beneath you like a spring wound too far.

You were irate. Furious that you had followed the buckets, angry that the water had felt so good you had stopped thinking. Enraged that you had listened to the music box. The music box he put back in his bag, so you couldn’t even break it.

You were hysterical that he had outwitted you so thoroughly. That he had avoided your attack without even reaching for that weapon of his, as if he had never doubted he could handle you without it. Humans had no natural defenses, but whatever trickery he had was akin to the old magic.

But most of all, you were mad at yourself, because you had let yourself believe that the surface might offer you anything but danger.

You crossed your arms over your kelp-clad chest and sank lower, settling into the stone like you intended to fuse with it out of spite. Your tail flicked once, sharp and annoyed, before going still. The water was cold enough to bite, but you welcomed it. You fixed your glare on the far wall of the spring, refusing to give him even the satisfaction of thinking you were watching.

If you stayed still enough, quiet enough, perhaps he would grow bored. Humans were prone to growing restless. They fidgeted, demanded reaction, proof they were being acknowledged. Silence made them uncomfortable.

The first hour passed in silence.

Then another.

Time stretched oddly in the cave, measured not by tides or currents but by the slow shift of light across stone. The cave filled with the unfamiliar sounds of land rather than the rhythm of the sea. The faint scrape of fabric as he adjusted his position. The slow, steady rhythm of human breathing, maddening in its consistency. Somewhere beyond the cave mouth, birds cried. Wind threaded through leaves, whispering through branches in a language that did not belong to you.

The spring stayed cold and clear around you, tight and cruel in equal measure. You sank lower still, pressing your back into the stone, as if you could make yourself smaller through sheer spite. Your arms remained folded tight, claws digging lightly into your own skin where a chill brushed your sides.

There was nothing for your anger to strike. No threats to snarl at. No grasping hands to tear away. No raised voice to bite back at. Your fury circled uselessly inside you, sharp and restless, with nowhere clean to land, like a blade swung in fog.

You cursed the nothing most of all.

So finally—finally—when you caught him standing up again, attention angled toward the cave mouth, you moved.

Carefully, you rose to the furthest edge of the spring, slow enough that the water barely disturbed itself. Your head broke the surface first, then your shoulders, slick and shining, hair sliding down your neck in wet, clinging strands. 

You kept low, posture tight and defensive, ready to sink again the moment he turned to attack.

But he didn’t turn back. There wasn’t even the slightest flicker of him using the cursed mental bond you shared, though his awareness was at the edges of your mind.

That gave you just enough time to really look at him, and really see him for the first time.

Your initial thought was that the human was… odd.

Fishmen carried their strength openly, their desirability flare for maximum coverage by splaying wide fins, flexing thick muscle wrapped over their sharp bones. Everything about them was built to withstand pressure and violence, and the most attractive ones looked dangerous in obvious ways. This human didn’t have any of the usual spines or colorful patches on his body to indicate his threat level.

You sensed more danger in the way he moved rather than the way he looked. There was an ease to him that did not come from bulk or brute force. He moved like someone entirely comfortable in his own body, and even looking away, he did not look helpless.

He was… sort of refined.

His hair was soft-looking, for one thing. The strands fell loosely around his face, dark and slightly mussed, catching the light in a way that made it look silky.  His skin lacked any hard resilience you were used to seeing. No thick plating, no visible defenses. Just scars here and there, earned rather than grown, mapped across him like quiet history. You frowned faintly, irritation deepening when another, far more inconvenient realization followed.

He was pleasant to gaze at, alluring in a way that made no sense. 

Humans were prey, or enemies, or nuisances. Not something your eyes lingered on, tracing the line of his jaw, the way his mouth rested when he wasn’t using that thunder gun, the breadth of his shoulders beneath worn fabric. This one could even be called handsome.

The thought hit you sideways, unwelcome and sharp, making you scowl.

You disliked you noticed that, because you were absolutely not enticed by him. You were absolutely not intrigued by the fact that he had outwitted you without brute force, or that he had chosen patience instead of dominance, or that he was, objectively, unfairly good-looking for something that should have been your dinner.

This is ridiculous, you told yourself. He is a human. A trickster. A land thing with soft hair and bad ideas.

And yet your gaze lingered anyway, cataloging details without permission. The thickness in his chest, the way his waist narrowed sharply. The corded muscle in his arms and legs, the built neck. Doubtless, under the covering humans wore, you’d find more of the same, honed muscles.

Then, as if summoned by the weight of your thoughts, the human shifted. Just enough that his eyes flicked toward the spring.

You sank instantly, dropping back beneath the surface with a quiet splash, heart kicking hard against your ribs. You pressed yourself back into the stone, arms crossed tight again, tail coiling with renewed irritation.

You were furious all over again.

Yet—

You lifted just the top of your head above the surface again. Barely. Enough that water slid from your hair in slow rivulets, enough that your eyes cleared the rippling line of the spring. You told yourself this look was a tactical confirmation. A predator’s assessment, nothing more.

But the human had returned to sitting, closer. And with a clearer view, your problems only worsened.

Because the human was even more attractive up close.

The lines of his face were relaxed, unguarded, his pink mouth curved naturally at one corner, as if there was a joke awaiting to be told. His eyes, half-lidded as he stared at the cave entrance, were sharp. He looked like someone who noticed everything and chose, deliberately, what to react to.

When the light shifted, it caught in his hair again. Dark, thick, and undeniably soft-looking, falling across his forehead in a way that made your fingers itch with a curiosity you immediately resented. Most fishmen hair was coarse, functionally resilient to ocean water.

Though he seemed to have hair on more than just his head, where you did. There was a fine dusting of it on his chin, forearms, and even on his chest. You wondered if he had more, even lower.

The man’s mouth twitched.

You sank half an inch, but your gaze dropped lower before you could stop it.

His hands were resting loosely against his flat stomach, long-fingered and scarred in a practical way. They were the hands of a working man who kept busy.

You scowled, sinking a fraction lower in the water, cheeks warm with irritation.

This was wrong. Entirely wrong. Humans were not supposed to look like this. You were not supposed to think anything about them beyond danger, disgust, or indifference. Yet here you were, cataloging him like prey you did not intend to hunt, but… but you didn’t know what, but you wanted something.

“To be clear,” The human said mildly, causing you to start, “this is not how I usually introduce myself to women.”

You froze.

“I prefer taverns,” he continued. “Much lower chance of getting drowned. But all yer starin’ is making me feel a little shy.”

What in the Poseidon was a tavern? A mating ground?

Your claws flexed against the stone despite yourself, scraping softly as irritation surged hot and immediate. Your tail flicked once beneath the water, sending a sharp ripple across the spring. You were not, under any circumstances, speaking to a human who trapped you with water buckets. Especially one determined to wait you out for conversation, and dare to be irritatingly, unfairly good-looking while doing it. 

Instead, you growled.

The human glanced at the water, briefly. The kind of glance that pretended not to be aimed, but landed unerringly all the same. The corner of his mouth twitched, a half-formed grin that looked far too pleased with itself.

“You are making an excellent point, by the way,” he added lightly. “Very intimidating. If looks could drown, I would already be dead.”

Silence followed for exactly three heartbeats.

Then, with a sharp, well-timed flick of your tail, you sent a rush of water snapping up and over the edge of the spring. It arced cleanly through the air and splashed across his chest and shoulder, darkening fabric instantly and dripping down onto the stone at his feet.

It was petty, but also satisfying, and made you feel a little better. With a spin, you mocked him, chin lifting in mute triumph as ripples spread across the surface. Maybe he’d make a mistake, get angry or cocky, and come close.

But the human only looked down at his soaked shirt, water darkening the fabric and dripping steadily onto the stone, then he tipped his head back and sighed. The sound was exaggerated and almost theatrical, like a man resigned to mild discomfort rather than the fact that a very dangerous creature had just taken a deliberate shot at him.

“Well,” he said mildly, brushing water from his sleeve with two fingers, “that answers that. Guess I have my work cut out for me.”

He tugged the wet shirt loose from his skin, peeling it off without hurry.

You stiffened instantly, recognizing that he was shedding it to dive into the water and have his revenge… probably. Your muscles coiled, readying themselves, your claws biting into stone. Every instinct screamed movement, screamed sink, screamed do not let him get closer. Your body was prepared to fight.

Except the human didn’t dive in.

Instead, he shook the shirt once to get rid of the worst of the water and held it out at arm’s length, careful to remain well back from the spring.

“For you,” he said easily. “Before you freeze yourself into hypothermia.”

Your brows drew together. What the hell was he doing?

“Without salt in the water, you’ll get colder,” he added, as if to clarify himself. “You’ve been sulking down there long enough that even a pretty thing like you will get cold. Can’t exactly be fun swimming in circles to stay warm.”

You bristled.

Not only did you not appreciate being called pretty like it was a fact instead of a belittling insult, but you were also greatly offended that any human would assume they could offer you anything useful.

But even as you fumed, your eyes betrayed you.

They slid, traitorous and curious, over the place where his covering had been removed. The human's bare skin shone softly in the cave, the droplets of water catching the light along his chest and shoulders. You confirmed he did have a tidy spread of hair that followed his well-defined chest, right down into the covering over his legs. Did the hair go even that far?

Your gaze traced the rise and fall of his breathing, the slow expansion of his chest, the way droplets slid down and vanished into the waistband of his trousers. The sight stirred something deeply inconvenient, a quiet pull you did not have a name for, only a physical awareness that made your body feel suddenly too still, too aware of itself.

A thirst.

Not for blood, or food. 

For warmth, perhaps? 

The human’s flesh looked pleasantly warm.

You scowled harder, mortified at yourself, and sank a fraction lower in the water to hide the way your shoulders had lifted closer to the surface. You folded your arms tighter across your chest, as if that could contain the reaction you had not asked for. One he probably couldn’t even see.

You rose just enough for your teeth to flash above the waterline, lip curling as you glared properly this time. You said nothing, but the look you gave him promised violence, curses, and possibly dismemberment if he kept talking. 

The human responded to none of this. Perhaps he had thoughts, but chose not to acknowledge them. He merely set the black cloth on a dry patch of stone near the spring, far enough that you would have to jump up to reach for it. 

“You don’t have to take it.” He waited a beat, then continued, unbothered. “I’m not comin’ closer. I just figured I’d offer, seeing as you look determined to freeze yourself out of spite.”

You glared, heart beating just a little too fast.

His mouth curved into a small, satisfied smile, like someone who had just confirmed a theory they’d been sitting on for a while.

Your tail snapped again, sending another sharp spray of water his way. It splashed against his bare shoulder and chest, droplets scattering across stone. He laughed, a low, warm sound that echoed irritatingly off the cave walls and settled somewhere it had no right to.

“All right,” he said again, setting the shirt carefully on a dry patch of stone where you could reach it if you chose. “Take your time. Promise ya, darlin’, it’s okay.”

He lowered himself back down, damp and entirely unbothered, leaning against the rock with his hands loosely laced together. His gaze drifted back toward the cave entrance, posture relaxed like a man who had just committed to waiting out bad weather.

You sank back to the bottom of the spring, furious all over again. 

-X-Part of Your World-X-

Over the next day, you soon came to the realization that the human wasn’t like anyone you’d ever known.

He didn’t pace like an impatient predator, nor did he loom at the edge of the spring the way the bullshark had. Didn’t endlessly chatter like the coven sisters. He made himself a problem the way land-people did best, by simply continuing to exist in your space with the quiet, infuriating confidence of someone who believed time would eventually do the work for him.

And it might. He was correct, the freshwater affected you differently than saltwater. It let you cool, bringing you up to the surface so you could catch a sliver of sunlight, though you ignored his ‘shirt’ as he called it.

But the human’s casual attitude didn’t make him motionless. He left for various purposes unknown, but he wasn’t gone long. And he also seemed to have a plan that began with getting you to speak.

At noon of the second day, he settled himself cross-legged near the water. Close enough that he could see you clearly if you surfaced, far enough that he was not pressing the edge of the spring like a challenge. He deliberately chose a spot that made hiding pointless. You noted that immediately, irritation flaring hot and familiar.

Too bad he was quick. Else you would have flitted at him again, if only to remind him that you could.

Instead, out of boredom rather than intent, you rose. Just enough. Just the top half of your face breaking the surface, hair drifting around you like pale tentacles, eyes flat and unwelcoming as you stared up through the clear water.

“Morning,” he said mildly, like you were neighbors sharing a dock instead of enemy races.

The audacity of it nearly made you bare your teeth.

You stared up at him through the spring, hair drifting around your face like tentacles, eyes kept flat and unwelcoming.

You did not answer.

You stared.

He waited.

Minutes passed.

The spring remained perfectly still except for the slow, steady rise of bubbles from your gills. Light shifted through the cave opening and slid across his shirt in pale, moving bands, dust motes drifting lazily through the air. Somewhere outside, something chirped. A bird, perhaps. He did not look toward it. His attention never left the water.

Your arms crossed tighter over your chest. Your tail curled, then curled again, stirring a faint ripple you did not bother to hide. The water cooled your skin, grounding you, sharpening the edge of your temper into something clean and precise.

Finally, he sighed, like you were the one committing a small discourtesy.

“All right,” he said calmly. “We can do silent mornings. I’ve had worse company.”

You sank a little deeper in response, chin slipping beneath the surface, eyes never leaving his. If you were going to be ignored, you would at least do it on your terms.

He did not react.

Instead, he reached into his pack and produced a small tin, opening it with a quiet click. The sound echoed softly in the cave. The smell followed a moment later, warm and irritatingly unfamiliar. Oil, salt, and something cooked. Not fish. Not anything you recognized.

Your gills flared despite yourself.

Annoying human.

Then he produced another object, bright and unmistakably metal, catching the light as he gave it a small, idle spin between his fingers.

Your eyes widened before you could stop them. He noticed and paused, holding it up a little higher so you could see it clearly through the water.

“It’s a spoon,” he said, helpfully. “Holds food. Made of iron.”

You tilted your head, watching as he put it to the disgusting mush, pulling up a heaping ball to his mouth. So humans even needed help to put food in their mouths. How pathetic, and what a waste of a good shiny.

He ate slowly, unhurried.

He never turned his back on you, but he never stared either. His posture stayed loose, relaxed in a way that felt practiced rather than careless, like someone who knew exactly how far to lean without falling. Each bite was deliberate. Each movement measured. The spoon scraped softly against the tin, a quiet, domestic sound that felt wrong in a place like this.

“You know,” he said conversationally, swallowing, “yer hissin’ is growin’ on me.”

Your tail flicked once beneath the surface, and the ripple carried across the spring in a lazy ring.

A corner of his mouth curved, faint and unmistakably pleased. He laughed under his breath, soft and brief, as if the sound had slipped out before he could stop it.

“What?” he went on lightly. “Shark got yer tongue?”

You huffed, sharp and offended, and turned away from him, angling your body so your shoulder and tail faced the rock wall. If you were going to endure this indignity, you would not do it while watching him eat with that stupid little iron spoon.

Behind you, the tin closed with a soft click.

From the corner of your eye, you watched him wipe his hands on his trousers. Then he leaned back on his palms, boots planted, gaze tipping upward toward the cave ceiling like he had suddenly remembered the world above your heads.

“Didn’t like the shirt then?” he asked, tone casual. “Was it ’cause I wore it? Or do ya like brighter colors?”

Your attention snapped back despite yourself.

He reached into his bag again, slower this time, movements deliberately unthreatening. When his hand emerged, it was not holding metal.

It was cloth. Bright, colorful, human cloth

He set it near the edge of the spring, close enough that the water lapped at its hem but did not touch it. The fabric caught the light and seemed to glow against the stone, utterly out of place.

A length of cloth, replacing the black shirt you had ignored the day before.

Not rough sailcloth. Not stiff canvas. The material looked smooth, delicate, something meant to move with a body rather than restrain it. Flowers bloomed across it in soft colors, stitched with care rather than stamped or dyed in haste.

Your eyes tracked it despite your best efforts.

“It’s a kaftan,” he said, glancing at you sidelong. “A dress. Made for women to put on.”

Your stare sharpened.

“They make ’em special at the next island,” he continued, voice easy. “Sew all the stitches by hand. No machines. Figured if I was gonna offend you with clothes, I might as well try not to insult your taste while I was at it.”

He did not push the dress closer.

He did not angle it toward you, did not slide it along the stone with coaxing fingers, or hold it up for inspection. He left it where it was, where the rock stayed dry, and the water never reached, like an offering set down for a creature that might accept it only if he pretended not to care.

A bright, impossible spot among the grey-green moss.

Then, almost abruptly, he stood.

The movement carried the faintest edge of embarrassment, like he had lingered too long or said too much. He cleaned up his meal quickly, practiced and efficient, the tin back into his pack, the spoon wrapped away and gone. No mess left behind. No excuse to hover.

“I’ll be back later,” he said, as if this were a simple fact rather than a provocation.

You lifted one hand from the water and waved him off, a sharp, dismissive flick, as if to say, ‘please go, and don’t come back’. 

He paused, just long enough to see it.

A small, sad chuckle slipped from him as he waved back, fingers loose and unthreatening.

“For what it’s worth,” he added, tone dry but not unkind, “I don’t mind the quiet. But I’d prefer ya not freeze yerself outta spite.”

Then he turned and walked away from the spring.

His footsteps were unhurried, steady, fading gradually into the cave’s echoes until there was nothing left of him but the faint scent of salt and smoke and the deeply irritating certainty that he would, in fact, return.

Water smoothed over where you had moved, the surface sealing itself closed. Bubbles rose slowly from your gills, each one breaking free with a quiet insistence. Light shifted again, sliding across stone, across moss, across the place where the cloth lay waiting.

You did not touch the fabric.

Instead, you drifted down.

Down to the bottom of the spring, where the water was clearest and coldest, where the stone pressed firm against your back and the world narrowed to breath and sound. You stayed there long after the echo of his footsteps had fully faded, listening to the small, endless noises of bubbling water and distant drip.

Time passed.

And like he had guessed, the freshwater began to leech the salt and warmth from you, slow and patient. The cold crept past even tough skin, past muscle, settling deep into bone.

It was very cold.

Without meaning to, your eyes drifted upward.

The cloth sat in the sunlight, folded neatly where he had left it. The light caught on it and warmed it, made it glow brightly against the stone like a fishing lure. Left like bait. Left like an invitation. Left like a test you absolutely refused to acknowledge as such.

You scowled at it.

You did not take it.

You absolutely did not reach for it.

You may, however, have extended one finger.

Just one.

It broke the surface, water sliding from your skin as you stretched upward, slow and cautious. You poked the fabric once, lightly, as if expecting it to vanish or snap back at you.

It was warm and irritatingly soft.

You withdrew immediately, finger snapping back beneath the water as if it had burned you. 

That didn’t count.

You sank back down into the spring, arms crossed tight, chin lifted in defiance, and pretended very hard that your bones were not aching and that the warmth lingering on your fingertip meant nothing at all.

After all, you told yourself, it was just a human covering. It was beneath you. You were not losing a battle of wills to a human armed with patience, sunlight, and a very unfair understanding of cold.

You swam, not elegantly but in tight, irritated circles around the spring, tail slicing the water in sharp, inefficient strokes, stirring the cold back out your muscles just to spite him. When that did nothing but make you ache faster, you shifted tactics and sought out the sunniest patches of rock beneath the water's surface, draping yourself against them with deliberate care. You pressed your side to the stone, taking the warmth provided by the daylight filtering through the cave mouth, pretending this was strategic rather than desperate.

You lay there.

You moved when the sun did, drifting just enough to keep the light from burning your eyes. When the glare shifted, you settled again, letting the water cradle you in stillness. Time lost its edges. Hours passed, marked only by the slow creep of shadow across stone and the growing, undeniable awareness of how cold you were becoming.

This was the longest the human had left. The spring felt emptier for it, the silence deeper, heavier.

Eventually, you pushed yourself up from the bottom.

Slowly. Carefully. As if the cloth might vanish the moment you acknowledged it properly.

You crept over to the edge where the garment rested. It had not moved. The colors were dimmer now, no longer catching full sunlight, but still bright against the rock. You stared at it, brows furrowed, lips pressed thin.

Human fabric did not do well underwater. You knew that. It would cling. Weigh you down. Soak and drag. And no matter how pretty it was, it would not stave off much of the cold.

Still.

With a single finger, you hooked the edge of the cloth and pulled it down into the water.

It darkened immediately as it soaked, colors deepening rather than fading. You half expected it to stiffen or sink like a dead thing. Instead, it moved easily, drifting around your hand, light and pliant.

You hesitated only a moment longer before slipping it over your shoulders.

The fabric settled around you.

And it did warm you. It was made with a water-resistant thread. 

Not only that, it's soft, too. Smoother than you had expected, the fabric wrapped around your skin without scraping or resisting, holding heat instead of entirely stealing it. It settled against you like it belonged there, moving with you rather than against you, easing the ache that had crept into your bones.

He’d been useful.

The realization soured instantly.

You scowled, irritation flaring hot enough to send a sharp puff of bubbles spilling from your gills. A low grumble escaped you, warped and distorted by the water, a curse that came out broken and furious. The bubbles rose and popped above you, one after another, betraying your mood to the empty spring.

You tugged at the fabric once, as if daring it to fail you now that you had acknowledged its usefulness. It did not. The warmth held, stubborn and unyielding, refusing to give you the satisfaction of rejecting it.

You sank back slightly, arms crossing over your chest again, tail flicking in a short, irritated sweep.

Fine.

You would keep it.

.

.

.

Strangely, you smelled the fish before you heard the human’s footsteps.

The scent drifted into the cave on warm air, sharp and unmistakable. Salt. Oil. Blood. The clean, vivid smell of the open sea carried into stone and shadow where it did not belong.

Had he gone fishing?

Your stomach betrayed you immediately, twisting hard enough that you had to grit your teeth. You had not hunted since the chaos of the cove. Stress had burned through what little appetite you had left, hollowing you out in ways even cold water could not numb. Now your body reminded you of that failure with cruel, impeccable timing.

The human entered the cave without announcing himself.

You tracked him by sound and scent alone, eyes half lidded as you listened. The faint clink of something set down on stone. The whisper scrape of a blade being sheathed. The careful way he moved, like someone very aware that sudden noise might provoke you.

He had returned with fish.

He sat again at a respectful distance from the spring, settling cross-legged with the same deliberate calm as before. He did not look at you right away. He set his things down first, unwrapped the cloth, and adjusted the placement of what he carried so it did not slide or scrape.

The scent filled the cave anyway.

Fresh enough that you could almost taste the sea still clinging to it, the faint metallic tang of blood braided with salt. Your gills fluttered once before you could stop them, opening slightly as if the water itself might carry the smell closer.

He glanced up then, just briefly, eyes flicking to where you hovered in the spring. His gaze paused.

“You’re wearin’ it,” he said, not triumphantly. Just… noting. “Ya look nice.”

You scowled at him, baring nothing but irritation, and sank a fraction deeper so the water kissed the fabric clinging to your shoulders. The cloth darkened but held its warmth.

“Didn’t figure you’d freeze yerself to make a point,” he added mildly. “But I wasn’t sure.”

He reached for a chunk of fish. It was one of your favorites— A Deep-Silver tuna fish, you realized.

It was already cleaned. Head removed. Scales gone. The flesh gleamed faintly in the cave light, pale and firm. He worked with practiced efficiency, fingers steady as he separated portions with care rather than greed.

The man spoke, voice easy and conversational, as if narrating his own afternoon rather than attempting psychological warfare. One glance showed he had taken the time to debone and descale the fish.

“Ran into this fellow not an hour ago,” he said lightly. “Was very confident about his chances. Turned out to be misplaced optimism.”

He shifted, and you heard the unmistakable sound of something being wrapped. Leaf or cloth, neat and deliberate. He was not tossing it down like scraps. He was packaging it, careful and precise, like a gift he expected might be appreciated eventually.

“I ain’t eatin’ all of it,” he said easily, as if answering a question you had not asked. “Caught more than I need.”

Your body leaned forward despite you, mouth watering.

If he cooked it, you would kill him. 

He picked up a separate piece and moved away from his firepit.

He set it down where the sun touched the rock, close enough that the scent drifted easily over the spring, far enough that you would have to reach for it. He placed it on a flat stone where it would not slip into the water, where it could sit untouched without insult.

You could see it, still smelling of salt rather than smoke. He had cleaned with care, then wrapped neatly in a broad leaf, not tossed or dropped, but handled the way one presented a meal to an honored friend. 

Then he settled himself with his back against the cave wall and opened a tin of his own food.

He ate slowly, unhurried, without exaggerating enjoyment. Just eating like this was an ordinary afternoon and not a standoff with a furious creature who could tear him apart if she chose.

You scowled at the rock in front of you, claws digging into stone hard enough to scrape.

When he finished, he set the tin aside and leaned back, hands braced behind him, gaze tipping toward the cave ceiling with exaggerated leisure, as if he were sunning himself on a dock instead of sitting under threat of teeth.

“For the record,” he added lightly, “the alternative was me cookin’ you oatmeal. And ya don’t want that.”

You shot him a venomous look sharp enough to peel barnacles.

That was when your stomach betrayed you.

It growled, loud and obscene in the clear water, the sound reverberating through the spring and ricocheting off stone like an accusation. It cut straight through your dignity and sank its teeth first into your pride.

Your arms locked, every thought vanished except the desperate, useless hope that maybe he had not heard it.

Above the spring, the human paused. Just long enough to register the sound.

Then, rudely, he snorted and shook his head, lips quirking like a man who had just won a private argument he had not even bothered to voice.

“Gonna pretend that was the cave,” he said pleasantly. “Impressive acoustics.”

Heat flooded your face as you sank lower at once, water closing over your shoulders. Mortified fury burned hot under your skin, sharp enough to sting. Your tail flicked in short, irritated snaps, sending restless ripples across the spring as you fixed your glare on absolutely nothing.

Eventually, the man spoke again, his voice gentler now, though no less maddening.

“If ya don’t like this one,” he said, “I can look fer another. Just say the word.”

Your posture stayed locked. Arms crossed tight. Chin lifted. If you became a statue long enough, perhaps he would forget you were capable of movement at all.

He exhaled softly. Thoughtfully.

“If you’re thinkin’ of outwaitin’ me,” he continued mildly, “you might wanna know I’m infamously stubborn.”

You held yourself perfectly still, arms locked, chin high, tail coiled beneath you like a held breath. If obstinacy were the measure, you could outlast him.

He shifted slightly.

Not closer. Not away. Just enough that you felt his attention move, subtle as a change in current. Not directly toward you, but toward the surface of the spring itself, as if he could somehow see the words you were refusing to give him hovering just beneath the water.

“All right,” he said at last.

The tone changed. Not louder. Not sharper. Just settled, like a decision clicking quietly into place.

“Here’s my play,” he said, clicking his tongue. “If yer freakin’ out and don’t wanna eat cause yer scared, let me tell ya what I want.”

Your tail whipped, sharp and sudden, sending a hard ripple through the spring that slapped against the stone.

“One conversation a day,” he continued, calm and maddeningly reasonable, as if explaining a perfectly fair compromise rather than negotiating with a furious siren who had very nearly taken his throat.

He glanced toward the spring again, this time openly amused, like he already knew exactly how close he was to getting a reaction.

“You can glare or sulk. Hell, you can pretend I ain’t here most the time. You do need to eat, and occasionally talk.”

You bristled despite yourself, shoulders drawing tight as heat flared under your skin. The absolute nerve of him. As if sulking were not a time-honored, deeply intentional strategy. As if you were not making a point.

He paused deliberately. Let the idea settle into the space between you, into the water, into the quiet you had been wielding like fangs. 

“But,” he added lightly, almost kindly, “you do have to listen. And once ya do start talkin’, a countdown begins.”

Your tail slowed.

“A month of us chitchattin’,” he went on, like he was offering a mild inconvenience rather than dangling freedom in front of you, “then I set ya free.”

You rose just enough for your eyes to break the surface, cold water streaming from your lashes. Your expression was pure offense. You did not speak, but the look you gave him was blistering, a promise of violence delayed only by curiosity.

His gaze snapped to you, quick and sure, and the corner of his mouth lifted. Simply pleased, like a man who had finally found the right thread to pull.

“Ah,” he murmured, voice soft and entirely too confident. “That’s my pretty darlin’.”

Heat rushed from your chest to your face, sharp and unwelcome.

You snarled and sank again, water sloshing violently as you dropped back beneath the surface. Furious. Flustered. Your claws scraped stone as your heart hammered, every instinct screaming at the audacity of him.

You settled at the bottom of the pool, dragging your claws slowly through the rock as if you could carve your anger into something solid. The sound grated faintly through the water, a useless, private act of spite that did nothing to calm the storm in your chest.

This man-creature brought you food and served it fresh, not burned and ruined the way he prepared his own. He sat and waited without fidgeting, without pacing, without demanding proof that you were listening. And for what? 

Your attention?

Ridiculous.

You knew better than to trust a human. Every story your sisters told ended the same way, with blood in the water and lessons learned too late. Humans took. Humans lied. Humans promised safety and delivered cages.

You needed to get out of here.

Damn this spring. Damn the coven. Damn the fishman and his shadow and the bargain they would have carved out of your body. None of that felt as dangerous as this slow, quiet unraveling inside you for your soulmate human who made you feel so anomalous. 

Yet, you still had one option. 

The ancient answer to most human problems needing to be resolved—You would sing to him. Sing in the way your sisters of old sang to sailors when they wanted something simple and final.

Your throat tightened as the idea settled, the echo of old instincts stirring awake like something stretching after a long sleep. The song was still there. Waiting. Sharp and beautiful and terrible.

The thought made your gut curdle. To do that, you'd have to pull on those same powers that had brought his conscience to you, to share that intimate part of you. He didn’t deserve to hear your song. You curled in on yourself at the bottom of the spring, spine bowed, teeth clenched so hard your jaw ached. Your claws bit into the stone until they found purchase, little white lines scoring the rock like a record of your thoughts.

But…

A single, well-shaped melody would have him glassy-eyed and unsteady, breath hitching as the sound worked its way under his skin. Some sailors resisted for a few heartbeats. Some rushed the shore, some the water. A few went straight in without thinking at all, lungs filling as happily as if they were embracing a lover.

If you timed it right, you could strike and escape. Use his daze, get your claws into him, and haul yourself up with his weight and momentum working for you instead of against you. Hell, if the song landed cleanly, he might help you by grabbing that bridge. Then you could take the board, and he could tread water.

It was tempting in the clean, final way vicious solutions often were. 

But a siren song was not always guaranteed.

You were not one of the elders, trained from childhood to shape notes like weapons and bait all at once. You had the voice, yes. The old blood sang in your throat, rich and dangerous and deep. But the technique? The discipline? Much of that had been lost with the shrinking of the coven. Songs passed mouth to mouth, half-remembered, warnings and fragments instead of full instruction.

And humans were not all the same.  Some were terrifyingly resilient. Some shook off songs like water sliding off an oilskin, eyes clearing with a snarl instead of surrender. 

This human, especially, had already proven himself difficult. He was controlled and observant, and like the seas, couldn't be rushed. 

Either way, now that you’d thought it, you’d have to decide quickly. 

The moment you surfaced, the moment you opened yourself to air and sound, that strange, unwanted thread between your minds might stir again. One only he seemed to be able to scry. 

He’d know your plan. 

You still did not understand it, but you knew it had answered your song once already, slipping a human voice into your head like a trespasser who knew exactly where to sit.

But as you gazed at him through the clear water, the desire to sing swelled in your chest until it hurt. It flooded your throat, heavy and insistent, a pressure that had nothing to do with hunger or fear. It didn’t hold the sharp, predatory urge to dominate or destroy, one meant to bend him and drown him. Let the sound exist between you, to see what he would do with it. To see if he would still sit there still calmly when faced with something ancient and beautiful and terrible.

Yes, you would do it.

Your gills fluttered, quick and shallow. The water around your mouth trembled as your lips parted a fraction, just enough to feel the promise of sound waiting behind your teeth. If you failed, you would accept whatever currents followed. You would take the path laid before you, whether it led back into the sea, into violence, or into something worse.

You opened your mouth.

Angling your head back slightly, you let the first note slip free beneath the surface, pushing water from your gills as your lungs emptied, then refilled. The sound bloomed low and deep, muffled by the spring, more vibration than melody. Small ripples bubbled around you, skittering outward in delicate rings as the song gathered itself.

Then you pulled upward. Your head broke the surface, hair slicked back, lips parting as you drew in air and let the melody rise with it.

And the moment your lips hit air, the human’s casual demeanor shattered. 

The easy sprawl vanished. His spine straightened. One hand flexed against the stone, fingers curling as if he had to physically stop himself from moving. His body seized, then went still, then taut again in an instant; head snapping toward you, and eyes locking on with sudden, razor-sharp focus. 

So he wasn’t immune. 

Good.

You kept the melody sweet at first. Wordless and simple, a sound shaped like moonlight on water, like the memory of something gentle and just out of reach. It slid across the cave softly, testing the air, feeling for resistance. 

The human’s breathing changed. You could hear it now, the careful restraint giving way to something shallower, more deliberate. He leaned forward, shoulders angling toward the spring as if his gravity itself had shifted.

Encouraged, you surfaced a little more.

Your melody deepened, warming as it stretched, turning from sweet into beckoning. Ache threaded through it now, subtle but unmistakable, a promise shaped like longing rather than command. You let it linger between notes, letting the silence do as much work as the sound itself. Your body drifted closer through the water, as if the same tide was pulling you forward, and you were weaving.

The human twitched, a twist of that eldritch power he had peeking out and flaring. You pulled back, and for a heartbeat, your chest tightened. Had he the ability to snap himself free?

You sang words, weaving intent into the music.

Then, to your sharp, vicious satisfaction, his abilities, whatever they were, scattered and dispersed like a school of fish.

He stood up and began walking towards you.

Not easily, like the sailors of old who lurched toward the water with glassy eyes and empty smiles. He moved haltingly, one careful step closer, then another, like every inch was earned through sheer force of will. His muscles were rigid, his shoulders drawn tight, his jaw clenched so hard you could see the strain in it.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

The word was rough, barely louder than the water lapping against the stone. It didn’t sound like a warning meant to stop you, but rather a plea meant to steady himself. Too bad.

You let the song soften, brushing against him rather than digging in. You could feel the tension in him like a taut line, the way he leaned forward without fully committing, the way his hands flexed uselessly at his sides as if he did not trust them to behave.

His grey eyes never left you, and they turned even darker the closer he came. The pupils blown wide in a way that had nothing to do with the cave’s dim light. His lips parted as if to speak, then pressed together again, teeth scraping softly as he swallowed hard.

It was working.

Your pulse raced as you held the melody, watching him balance on that knife’s edge, knowing that with one more turn of the song, you could tip him forward.

Then, the bond between your minds flared.

A heady, crackling static spread between you, thick and intimate, like charged air just before lightning breaks. It brushed along your nerves and sank deep, making your scales prickle one by one, and your breath hitch without permission. Awareness bloomed all at once, sharp and intoxicating, as if some hidden sense had snapped fully awake.

Your song peeled him open, and you felt his intentions as clearly as if his thoughts had been placed in your palms, warm and unguarded. 

Oh.

Oh.

So that really was why he had followed you. He had come to woo you, to court you like a human woman, as, due to the soulbond, he saw you as his mate. You had thought it was a clever ruse, but the truth was evident in his own head, even if it was confusing and ridiculous. That a human would track you across seas for an insane notion of love was insanity. 

He had come to you as the fishman had. But in a human way, without that instinct of hunger sharpened into ownership. He didn’t feel the urge to cage or claim by force, and felt sorry for tricking you. 

The entire ordeal was so absurd, the notion of a human daring to approach a siren not as prey or conqueror, but as a lover?

He had said as much, but of course, who would believe a human? Fishpeople and humans didn’t mate. 

Sirens didn’t love.

Stupid, foolish, arrogant human. 

And yet.

His mind was a temperate place. The way he thought of you was… good-natured. Not merely lustful or possessive. He did find you beautiful, luminous, and lovely, but cared for you in a way that did not beg to be seized. His desire carried awe in it, a careful worship that alarmed you more than any threat could have. For a man to be so intelligent, yet unwilling to chain you to him with that same mind, was unexpected. 

A traitorously, a warm swirl of appreciation curled through you at the dedication. 

It coaxed at your gentler side, the one your sisters rarely spoke of. The one that remembered songs meant for moonlight rather than drowning. 

Your melody deepened reflexively, instinct answering instinct as you lost your careful edge and the end goal blurred, the sea taking over where intention faltered. The song grew richer, fuller, less shaped like a lure and more like a confession you had never meant to give voice to.

As you sang, you tugged gently at his love. 

Not yanking, but pulling with sensuous luster. His body responded inch by inch, step by halting step, like he was negotiating with himself rather than surrendering outright. You could feel it in him, the way restraint braided tightly with want, the way every muscle seemed caught between advancing and holding fast. The bond between you thrummed brighter, richer, almost decadent in its pull, like something indulged rather than endured. 

He was strong, no doubt about it—but his love made him move.

And his love for you made you feel. 

Made you sing a song that was more beautiful than any you had ever sung. A song that pulled the stars, sun, and moon to the tides. A dance where they combined, spinning into celestial creation anew. 

Made a deeper tucked into your soul stir. 

For the first time, you felt what must be that thing known as desire.

Heat unfurled low in your stomach, slow and insistent, spreading with a dangerous idea. To accept his hands on you and close the distance yourself. To bridge the space with intent rather than force and draw close. 

Close enough that your teeth could press into his shoulder, not to kill, not to feed, but to mark. To leave a sign of possession that went both ways, binding instead of breaking.

Your song wavered for half a heartbeat, trembling under the sudden, crushing weight of that instinct. The note frayed at the edges, not enough to break the melody, but enough that you felt it shudder through you. The desire to pull him closer tangled with something dangerously tender, something soft and aching that had no place in the brutal stories of sirens and sailors. 

Because whatever this was, what had awakened inside you, it was far more dangerous than hunger.

You desired the human.

The truth landed with terrifying clarity, sharp and brilliant as sunlight cutting through deep water. There was no romance to it, no soft illusion to hide behind. You saw it all at once, not as a wish, but as a consequence, an instinct written into bone and blood. 

You desired to couple with the human, to mark him as yours.

And the moment you marked him, the moment your teeth broke his skin, and you tasted his blood, a process would begin that could not be halted or undone.

You would become bound.

Bound in the old way. The forbidden way. The way your elders spoke of love only in warnings and half-buried songs meant to frighten the young into caution. 

For sirens, soulmates were not a blessing. They were a calamity. A reckless weaving of life and soul, stitching two beings together so tightly that one could not suffer without the other feeling the pull. Your well-being would be knotted to his choices. Your survival was braided to his devotion, and if he faltered, you would fall.

That was why it had been disregarded, buried, and hated. Why sirens were taught to fear love more than starvation.

Your song trembled again, thinner now, laced with doubt. It wanted to stop. You wanted it to stop. But the pull had already taken hold, like a whirlpool you had drifted too close to without realizing how strong it was.

And when you looked up again, the human was there.

Right in front of you.

So close you could see the fine, dark fringe of his lashes, the faint imperfections in his fragile human skin. Close enough to feel the heat of him, to sense the way his breath hitched as he fought against something he did not fully understand. In his eyes was that same infuriating, unwavering devotion, bright and earnest and utterly ruinous. The look of a man who would cross oceans again and again just to hear your voice one more time.

He was so close you could hear the rush of his blood, see how pale he’d gone beneath the cave light. Watch his uneven breath, notice how his strange eyes widened, leaving only a sliver of gray, like the last light caught on a swell. 

He had no idea. No understanding of what your desire truly meant. Of the price it demanded. Of the life it would end, and the other it would force you into.

But you did.

And still, you wanted it.

And to your horror, you realized your plan had worked far too well. The human was at the edge of the pool with you, holding you in his arms securely. His hands were on you, gripping with the same desperate certainty you felt in yourself, fingers curling faces close, hearts beating in rhythm.

Your melody screeched, broke, and died mid-breath, not because you chose to end it, but because the man had surged forward and taken your neck in his hands and kissed you.

And it stole everything you had previously known.

His mouth was hot, firm, unmistakably human, and the contrast sent a violent shiver through you, and he needily deepened the kiss.

That cursed bond between you flared white-hot, no longer a hum but a crack of lightning, sensation slamming through you faster than thought.

Your claws curled instinctively, not to strike, but to anchor. They curled into the black of his warm shirt, pulling you to seek heat. His grip tightened in response, gripping your wet dress, like he was hurling himself towards the same pull tearing through you.

For a heartbeat, there was no song, no plan, no fury. Just that burden of new desire that was uncontrollable as a rogue wave.

You would mark him if this continued.

The thought hit with brutal clarity, snapping you out of your self-spun hypnotism all at once. The spell shattered. Your breath hitched hard, focus snapping painfully sharp as heat and pressure flooded in. Air vanished from your lungs in a startled gasp, the world narrowing to sensation alone.

You tore your mouth away.

The cave rang cold with the sudden absence of it, like something vital had been ripped free. You jerked sideways and landed hard on the rocks, a cry tearing from your throat as pain flared up your side, but you did not look away from him.

Neither of you spoke.

The silence pressed in too fast, too heavy, as if the world itself had realized something sacred had been crossed and did not know how to proceed. Your chest heaved as you stared at him, eyes wide and unfocused, the echo of your song still vibrating painfully through your bones, an aftershock that refused to fade.

He looked just as stunned.

His breathing was uneven, pupils blown wide, the careful control you had observed fractured clean through. His hands hovered where they had been holding you, now lost, uncertain. His fingers flexed once, hesitant, as if unsure whether they were allowed to help, or even understand what had just happened.

You almost surged forward again.

Almost pinned him. Almost took the smooth skin at the hollow of his shoulder between your teeth. Almost bit down and began the process and—

“Not yet, darlin’,” he said.

His voice was deep and steady, oddly calm against your ragged breathing. Grounded in a way that stopped you cold. “Yer not ready yet.”

It was enough to break the spell.

The realization hit like cold water.

With no further thought, no plan, no dignity left to salvage, you threw yourself backward.

Water closed over you in a violent splash as you plunged into the pool, the shock stealing what little air you had managed to draw into your lungs. The spring swallowed you whole, merciful and cold, familiar pressure wrapping around your body like a shield. Sound dulled at once. The world softened. The human dissolved into distortion and shadow.

You dove deep and curled in on yourself at the bottom, tail wrapping tight, arms locked around your middle as if you could physically hold yourself together. Your body shook uncontrollably. Your gills fluttered too fast, then too slow, the rhythm breaking as your breath hitched and stuttered.

You heaved, a dry, painful motion that went nowhere, chest spasming as the truth finally crashed down on you.

Your song had betrayed you.

You were supposed to be powerful. Deadly. A sovereign in your own right, feared, admired, untouchable.

But up there, for those few terrible seconds, you had been something else entirely.

The realization crushed the breath from you far more effectively than any hunter’s grip ever could.

You pressed your forehead to the stone and trembled, claws scraping weakly as you tried to ground yourself in the cold, in the pressure, in anything that was not the memory of his mouth or the way your song had answered him too eagerly.

And worse still, you did not know whether the more fearsome cage had been built by the human or by your own heart.

For now, you only knew one thing.

You could not hurt him.

Not any more than you could hurt your own sisters.

-X-Shinies-X-

You didn’t surface.

Not for several days.

After you tore the kaftan to pieces, you folded yourself tight against the bottom of the spring and clung to the rock with numbing determination. Your claws dug into familiar grooves you had carved yourself, as if you could anchor there long enough to be forgotten. You pressed your body flat, belly to stone, tail tucked close, making yourself small in a way you never had before.

As if you could sink into the rock. Become another cold shape at the bottom of the pool. 

The water was clear and merciless. Cold seeped into you slowly, not the sharp bite of the deep but the steady, draining chill of freshwater that never quite warmed. It leeched heat from your muscles and left them heavy and sluggish. Your scales dulled, their usual glow muted to a tired sheen.

Every breath through your gills felt thinner, less satisfying, as if the spring itself had grown weary of sustaining you.

You stayed anyway.

Your stomach cramped in slow, aching pulses, each one a reminder of the fish you had refused, the warmth you had rejected. The scent lingered in memory long after it was gone. Salt. Blood. Sun warmed flesh. It haunted you, tightening your throat until swallowing felt like an effort.

Your body knew what it needed.

It argued relentlessly, sending sharp, insistent signals you ignored out of spite and fear.

Above you, the spring remained quiet. Sound carried strangely, shifting depending on where you turned your head. The faint drip of water from the cave ceiling echoed too loudly. Subtle currents stirred with meaningless motions that mimicked the sea, close enough to hurt, never enough to comfort.

And still, you did not rise.

You flattened yourself harder against the stone, fingers slipping as weakness crept in. Your grip trembled. Your arms ached from holding yourself still for so long, muscles stiff and sore. And every so often, a shudder rippled through you that had nothing to do with the cold.

Your body remembered.

Warmth where there should have been none. Not the ambient heat of the sun on water, but something concentrated and intimate, the press of it against your mouth, against your skin. The way his hands had steadied you, large and certain, not rough, not careless. Too sure. Too precise. Fingers fitting at your waist and shoulder like they had always known where to go.

You remembered the moment your lips met.

The shock of heat, startling and deep, as if the warmth had gone straight through you instead of stopping at the surface. His mouth had been firm, controlled, but not unyielding. There had been hesitation there, a restraint that made it worse, made your body lean forward without permission, chasing what he had not yet given.

Your song had surged in answer.

You clenched your jaw until it hurt and forced the memory down, dragging your attention back to the physical now. The scrape of stone beneath your claws. The dull throb in your tail. The steady, uncaring pressure of water against your skin.

But the heat lingered.

It curled low in your chest and spread outward, warming places the freshwater could not touch. Your breath hitched through your gills, uneven, betraying you again. The contrast was unbearable. Cold water. Warm memory. Control slipping through your fingers, no matter how tightly you held on.

Time lost meaning.

Light shifted above the surface in slow cycles you barely noticed. Hunger and exhaustion dulled your thoughts, softened their edges. Even your anger faded, smoothed into something heavy and aching.

You were no longer furious.

You were hiding.

Hiding from the human. Hiding from the way your body had answered him so easily. Hiding from the change settling into you like a crack in stone, small but irreversible.

The sea had always been your refuge. Pressure, cold, and silence were familiar things. Loneliness had always been enough.

But curled at the bottom of the spring, shaking and weak, you realized with a sick twist in your chest that you were not hiding from the world above.

Not even from him.

You were hiding from the part of yourself that still burned where he had touched you. Hiding from the part that wanted more, traitorous and bright, a heat that refused to be drowned, no matter how deep you sank.

The human had changed, too.

He no longer sat so far back. No longer perched himself at a careful distance like something skittish, like an eel avoiding a strike. He began sitting right at the edge of the pool, boots close enough that the water lapped against the stone near his toes. His shadow now fell directly over the spring instead of stopping short, darkening the surface in a way that made your gills flutter even when you refused to look up.

He was watching you now.

Not with the sharp curiosity from before, and not with that maddening calm confidence that had once felt like a challenge.

This was different.

It was quieter, more focused, intent in a way that made your skin prickle even when you kept your eyes closed, and your body pressed flat to stone.

He had noticed that things had changed.

He noticed how long you stayed submerged, how you no longer surfaced out of spite or boredom, how the sharp, restless energy that once defined your movements had leeched away. You no longer circled the spring or rose just to hiss at him. You stayed low instead, lingering near the bottom.

He no longer ate in front of you. He did not tease or make jokes at your expense. He simply watched the water, his hands resting loosely on his knees, his jaw tight, his eyes tracking the faint distortions that marked where you moved beneath the surface.

Occasionally, his hand dipped into the spring.

Only his fingers, brushing the surface with maddening care.

The contact sent soft ripples downward, breaking gently against your skin and carrying with them the quiet reminder that he was close. Even the water could not fully smother your awareness of him then, nor the faint pull of his concern bleeding through the strange bond you refused to acknowledge.

“You ain’t comin’ up,” he said once, quietly.

There was no accusation in his voice. He was simply stating a fact.

You did not respond.

The next time he came, he brought food again. The fish was fresher than before, laid out carefully where the stone remained dry. He waited. When you did not take it, his mouth pressed into a thin, thoughtful line.

“That’s… not stubborn anymore,” he murmured, more to himself than to you. “That’s somethin’ else.”

He shifted closer, his knees nearly touching the edge of the pool. His shadow stretched farther across the water, swallowing more of the spring. You felt the change even with your eyes closed, the subtle shift in pressure, the instinctive tightening in your body as if bracing for danger.

But he did not reach for you, and he did not command you to rise.

Instead, he exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand over his face like a man who had realized he had misunderstood something important.

You kept your eyes averted, forehead pressed to the rock, but you felt him all the same. His presence pressed faintly through the water, muted but persistent, like a distant current that could not be escaped no matter how deep you sank.

Even the water did little to dull your awareness of him, especially during his brief absences. When he left, the cave grew emptier and quieter, the sudden lack of him a relief at first, a loosening of something tight in your chest. That relief never lasted. It curdled quickly into something worse, heavier than his presence had ever been.

He always returned smelling of salt and effort.

Sometimes he carried fish that were still alive and writhing. He slipped them gently into the spring, one by one, letting them dart and scatter through the water. Silver bodies flashed and vanished as they found the cracks in the stone with ease, disappearing into channels too narrow for your body. They left behind only faint disturbances, ripples that faded almost as soon as they formed.

You watched them go with dull eyes, hunger gnawing at you so sharply that your vision blurred at the edges.

Your body felt heavy now. Wrong.

Your grip on the stone weakened. Your claws slipped more often than they held, scraping uselessly instead of biting deep. The cold had settled into your joints and refused to leave, a damp ache that crept inward until even small movements felt costly. Every breath through your gills took effort, each one shallower than the last, as if the spring itself were slowly asking you to justify staying.

Even your anger had thinned. What remained was brittle and exhausted, no longer sharp enough to keep you upright.

Over time, the human grew more apprehensive.

You felt it in the restless shifts above, the uneven pacing of his weight against stone. His hand brushed the water again, closer this time, fingers lingering just long enough to make your scales twitch before he pulled back as if burned. The ripples drifted down to you, gentle and invasive, breaking against your side.

Concern bled through the bond despite your efforts to drown it.

Maybe he should be worried.

The thought drifted through you with surprising calm.

You could die like this. Curled against cold stone. Letting the spring take what the sea had not. You were tired enough that the idea no longer frightened you. At least here you would never be touched by the fishman. Never have to face the coven’s quiet calculations. Never have to see the worry in the human’s eyes again, or feel the pull of his warmth, or endure the temptation of his presence.

You could simply stay.

Fade.

The water pressed in around you, steady and indifferent, and you let yourself sink deeper into it, loosening your grip on the stone.

You did not think you would ever move again.

Plop.

The sound was small but sharp in the water, wrong enough to cut cleanly through the fog clouding your thoughts. Something light brushed past your fin, then bumped gently into your tail.

You flinched hard, your body twisting on instinct as your claws scraped uselessly against stone while you struggled to orient yourself.

A small shape bobbed in front of you.

You stared at it, vision lagging as you tried to focus. Instinct surged first. Your fangs bared. Fingers splayed. Muscles coiled to strike, to tear apart whatever intrusion had dared drift this close while you were weak.

But the thing did not flee.

Instead, it turned slowly in the water, rocking as the current nudged it, catching the light in soft, muted flashes. Confused, you hesitated just long enough to truly see it.

A small, round object.

It was smooth and cold, its edges worn as if by many hands or many years. A square hole pierced its center, clean and deliberate, nothing like the irregular gaps in shells or coral. A thin length of chain threaded through the opening, metal links glinting faintly like the pale bellies of tiny fish. Its surface was etched with a delicate pattern you did not recognize.

You turned it with two cautious fingers, claws clicking softly against its surface.

It did not bite. It did not pulse with magic. It did not smell of blood or threat. It was foreign in a way that made your head tilt rather than your hackles rise.

Shiny.

You rolled it between your fingers again, watching the way light slid across its face. Tiny marks had been pressed into the metal, shallow lines forming shapes that meant nothing to you. Symbols from a language you had never learned. They felt important, though you could not have said why. The metal itself was warm in a way stone never was, holding heat as if it remembered the hand that had carried it.

Your grip tightened slightly, then loosened.

You felt him watching.

Even through water and stone and the haze of exhaustion, you sensed it, the quiet focus of his attention sharpening the instant you touched the object. The awareness irritated you at once. You bared your teeth in a silent snarl and curled your body tighter, annoyed to realize you had reacted at all. Annoyed that he now knew you were still capable of it.

Whatever this thing was, he had known you would not be able to resist it.

The greedy thing you were. Greedy for shine, for texture, for the unfamiliar weight of something that did not belong to the sea. He would know what it was, just as he knew the purpose of all the other strange items he had offered you. You had no doubt of that. No doubt that if you surfaced and asked, he would answer without hesitation.

You sensed that instinctively, the way sirens sensed intention even when they could not yet name it.

That was likely why he had done it.

To remind you, with infuriating gentleness, that you were allowed to want things. That you could be a little greedy with your own life instead of letting it slip quietly away in the cold.

Without thinking, you curled the object closer, fingers folding protectively around it as if someone might take it from you. The metal pressed against your sternum, solid and undeniable, its cool weight grounding in a way the stone beneath you no longer was.

The realization struck hard enough to freeze you in place.

Your claws halted mid-scratch. Your tail stilled. Your breath caught half-formed in your gills.

You stared at your own hands.

Shame flared hot and sharp, anger turning inward in a vicious spike. Your chest tightened as you twisted upward in a sudden, reckless motion, intent on flinging the object back at him. To strike it against his chest. To make a point. To sink back to the bottom of the spring and let the cold finish what pride had started.

You surged upward and broke the surface—And your breath caught painfully.

Along the edge of the spring, laid out with quiet deliberation, were more objects.

They rested on dry stone in a loose, careful arc, each spaced just far enough apart that your eyes had to move from one to the next. Bits of shell that caught the light. A polished stone smoothed by hands rather than tides. A carved bead, the color of deep waters. 

You froze halfway out of the water, fingers still clenched around the first object, droplets sliding down your arms and back into the spring. Your gills fluttered in sharp, startled bursts as you took in the sight, the careful arc of offerings stealing the air from your lungs more effectively than the cold ever had.

Curiosity surged, fast and treacherous. Greed followed it like a shadow, overwhelming good sense with ruthless efficiency.

“It’s a wedding ring. I put the ring on a cord, as yer fingers are a bit different. That way the cord can go around yer neck.”

You twisted sharply, heart stuttering, and found him leaning against the wall near the entrance, deliberately distant. One boot braced against the stone, posture loose in a way that was anything but careless. The white stick rested between his fingers and then his lips, the ember flaring faintly before he exhaled. A slow gust of white smoke curled upward, ghosting the cave ceiling before thinning away.

He wasn’t looking at you directly.

“It was my mum’s,” he said calmly, nodding toward your clenched hand. “The rest are items I’ve been collectin’.” His gaze drifted across the laid-out objects with an odd softness, like he was inventorying memories rather than metal. “Got a coupla’ more back on my ship. Figured these’ll do fine fer now.”

Your fingers tightened around the ring without permission.

It was an object… from his mother?

The concept snagged painfully in your thoughts. A human keeping something from the woman who birthed him, carrying it across seas, guarding it long enough to decide who deserved it. You did not have a clean place in your mind to put that. Mothers in the siren coven only acknowledged their daughters. They did not leave pieces of themselves behind to be passed forward to their sons. Sons were almost immediately given away, cast away, or forgotten by the sea.

Your chest felt strange as you stared at the simple circle, at the way the metal had warmed in your grip. He had known her long enough to receive something like this. 

How… perplexing.

His mouth twitched around the stick, not quite a smile, like he could sense your confusion even without meeting your eyes. “Didn’t think you’d appreciate flowers,” he added lightly. “I dunno if sirens do weddin’s, but if ya do, I figure it’s probably coral. Shells. Shiny things.”

Your tail flicked beneath the surface, sending a small, agitated wave against the stone.

Wedding?

“It’s when a man and a woman choose to be together,” he said, voice steady, almost cautious. “For the rest of their lives.” He waved his hand a little as he spoke, a vague, encompassing motion that ended, unmistakably, in your direction.

Humans…mated for life?

You looked down at the pretty object. It was very pretty, but felt laughably inadequate for such a lofty statement.

You lifted it slightly and turned it in the light. The metal caught the sun and held it, warming quickly against your skin. You felt it immediately, heat blooming through your fingers, subtle but insistent, as if the ring remembered fire even here in the water. You blinked, breath catching as the meaning slid into place.

Was he—

You raised the ring and looked at him fully now, eyes narrowing, sharp and demanding. Not curious. Not confused. You needed confirmation. Needed him to say it plainly so you could not twist it into something safer.

“Yeah,” he said evenly.

“It’s a matin’ gift.”

His gaze held yours, steady and unflinching, stripped bare of humor or distance. There was nothing left in it but honesty. “I told you the first time we spoke,” he added quietly. “I was gonna make you my wife.”

You looked down again at the ring.

A mating gift. From a human.

Your coven would never believe it. And if they did, they would already be sharpening teeth and schemes in equal measure, outraged at the audacity of a soft, surface-born creature daring to speak your name in the same breath as bond and permanence. A human claiming a siren was not merely foolish.

It was blasphemous.

And yet.

Instead of anger, curiosity stirred.

You floated a little closer.

The movement was small and deliberate, measured in inches rather than strides. Water slid over your shoulders as you rose, cool against skin still sensitive, light catching faintly along your scales. The glow there pulsed softly as your body broke the surface. You stopped well short of the stone’s edge, leaving the spring between you like a boundary neither of you crossed.

Your voice had not been used in days.

When it finally emerged, it was rough and low, stripped of song, stripped of command. No magic. No pull. Just sound. Just you.

“You—” The word scraped out unused, raw enough to make you flinch. You swallowed, throat tight, the taste of salt sharp on your tongue. “You,” you tried again, steadier now. “A human… wants to mate a siren?”

He finally turned fully toward you, and instinct tugged you lower in the water. Wetness slid up over your mouth and nose as you dipped beneath the surface just enough to feel safer, cooler, steadier. You watched him through the shimmer of the spring, every sense sharpened, wary and alert.

He studied you for a long moment.

His gaze was steady, thoughtful, layered with something that made your scales prickle despite the distance between you. When he spoke, it was slower than before, careful, as if he knew the wrong phrasing could splinter something fragile.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not really about what you are.”

His eyes did not waver.

“It’s just that it’s you.”

The words landed harder than you expected.

Anger flared on instinct, sharp and hot, a familiar defense snapping up to shield something softer beneath it. Your claws flexed, scraping against the stone as you surged upward, water spilling from your shoulders.

“You think,” you hissed, voice edged and raw, “that I would bind myself to a human for a little metal and sweet words?”

He did not bristle or argue.

“I think,” He said evenly, his voice calm and unyielding, “that we deserve a chance to see if we could be happy together. Find love and happiness.”

The phrase landed oddly.

So small. So human.

Happiness. He said it like it was a tangible thing, something that could be chosen and held, weighed against bloodlines and curses and the slow erosion of what you were. As if it could stand on equal footing with duty, with legacy, with the quiet, inevitable cost of existing as you did.

You tasted the word and found it thin.

What even was happiness, to a creature who measured time in tides and loss in generations? To someone who knew that wanting was dangerous, and permanence was a lie, the sea punished without mercy?

You clicked your tongue, sharp and dismissive, the sound cutting cleanly through the space between you.

“Soulmates ain’t nothin’ to ignore,” he continued, his voice steady.

He pushed off the wall half a step, then stopped himself deliberately, as if crossing that distance without invitation would ruin everything. He stayed where he was, palms open, posture restrained, the choice visible in the way he held himself.

“And I ain’t askin’ you to agree now,” he went on. “But give me two weeks. Two weeks of your time and your words. Then I’ll take you back to the sea.”

Your gaze flicked to the ring.

“It’s yours,” he said at once. “Whether you choose to leave or not. I ain’t gonna force you to be with me if you don’t want me, but it’s yours. I don’t want it back.”

He exhaled slowly, a controlled release of breath.

“But I am gonna make sure we get a chance,” he finished. “To figure out why we’re connected. What it means. And whether it’s somethin’ worth fightin’ for.”

Your tail flicked beneath the surface, sending a sharp ripple through the spring. The water between you felt suddenly thinner, charged, as he watched you with quiet intensity.

“Aren’t you curious too?” he asked. “Why a human and a siren would be bound?”

You wanted to throw the ring back at him. To snap it in half between your fingers and prove how fragile and laughable such promises were. Everyone broke vows the way storms broke masts, without apology and without regret.

Instead, you closed your fist around it, the metal biting into your palm.

Your gaze drifted to the objects laid out between you.

If the human was telling the truth, and that was a large and dangerous if, then all you had to do was wait him out. Two weeks was nothing. A blink against the span of a siren’s life. You could return to the coven, sing with your sisters, and pretend this strange interlude had never happened. The fishman would likely be gone by then, probably assuming you were dead.

You could not truly lose.

Smoke drifted between you, thin and fleeting, curling and vanishing like something that had never intended to stay.

“How…” you said quietly, then steadied yourself. “How can I trust you?” Your eyes lifted to meet his. “Or you, me?”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then, instead of answering, the human bent and picked up the wooden board. The one for you to exit the spring.

Your muscles tensed on instinct, coils of readiness tightening through your body. You braced for another trick. Another test. Another careful maneuver meant to corner you.

He did not look at you as he moved.

With a steady, deliberate thunk, he set the board back into the water. One end sank until it rested securely against the spring’s edge, angled just right, the surface slick and unmistakable.

A way out.

He straightened.

And then, deliberately, he turned his back to you.

No glance over his shoulder. No sideways look to see what you would do. Just the broad line of his shoulders beneath his shirt, fabric pulled taut across his back as he lifted one hand and waved lazily toward the cave mouth.

“You can leave now,” he said calmly, settling off to the side of the board, close enough that his boot rested against it. “I won’t stop ya. Hell, I’ll even help ya back to the sea.”

Your breath caught despite yourself.

“But,” he added, glancing toward the objects laid out by the spring without fully turning around, his voice still maddeningly even, “that bullshark fishman is still prowlin’ out there. Just so ya know.”

Your body reacted before your pride could stop it.

You stiffened, nearly submerging again, fins flaring wide in alarm, eyes flashing pale with instinctive fear.

How—how had the human known?

The answer came too quickly to deny. Of course, he knew. He had not found you by accident. He had tracked you across seas and islands; of course, he would have seen the signs. The desperate way you had hauled yourself onto land—the circling shadows in the shallows. The predator testing the edge of your refuge while you were trapped and exposed.

“He is?” you asked, far more softly than you meant to.

The human nodded, as if confirming the tide. “Stubborn bastard,” he said mildly. “Not that I’m one to talk.” A faint huff of dry humor escaped him. “But I’m guessin’ you didn’t drag yourself onto the beach for the scenery.”

You flinched and pulled inward, shoulders tightening, tail curling reflexively beneath you.

“He cornered you,” The man continued, his voice steady but edged now with something harder. Protective. “Must’ve seen me around. Figured I took you.” His jaw set. “Ain’t hard to imagine what he wants.”

Something dangerous flickered behind his eyes.

“Makes my blood boil.”

Your lips pressed together before a sharp huff escaped you. Anger surged fast and hot, snapping up because fear always arrived wrapped in it.

“I don’t need your pity,” you snapped, claws digging into the stone hard enough to gouge pale lines through it. “Or your protection. What could a weak human possibly do?”

The words rang in the cave, brittle and sharp.

The human didn’t rise to them. Instead, he looked at you fully then, serious. His expression had gone sober in a way that was not sharp or threatening, but grounded, as if something in him had settled rather than risen.

“I ain’t pityin’ you,” he said evenly. “And I ain’t protectin’ you because you’re weak.” He shifted just enough to face you squarely, his posture firm without being aggressive, unmovable without being confrontational. “I’m helpin’ because no man has a right to a body, doesn’t matter the race.”

His eyes stayed on yours.

“Not even me.” 

He let the words hang there, unadorned and uncompromising. They were simple words. Ordinary ones. And somehow they struck harder than any threat you had expected.

You looked away, blinking slowly, jaw tightening as you tried to reassemble the armor you had been wearing so carefully. Then you glanced back at him, sharp and suspicious, as if to remind him—and yourself—that you were still the one cornered here. That he had engineered this place, this pause, this forced safety.

He caught the look immediately.

“I ain’t sayin’ this to scare you, or make myself look better,” he said calmly. “I’m just layin’ out the truth.”

This human was a crafty one.

You could feel it in the way he spoke, in the things he chose to say plainly and the things he left untouched. He did not smell of deceit. The bond did not prickle or recoil. Nothing in him rang false.

And yet the truth had been arranged carefully, like stones placed across a rushing current. Close enough together that you could cross if you wished, but only in the direction he had chosen.

“The truth,” you repeated.

Your tail shifted beneath the surface, sending faint ripples across the spring. “That you’re somehow… concerned for me?”

“Of course,” He said simply.

He gave a small, honest shrug. “I can’t go into the ocean to save ya. That ain’t my world.” His gaze stayed steady, unflinching. “But I can get you outta this situation if you stop tryin’ to eat me long enough for us to communicate.”

Damn him, that was pretty funny.

The realization slipped in sideways, unwanted and irritating, like warmth where you had braced for pain. You hated that it loosened something in your chest. Hated that your anger faltered for half a breath, just long enough for something dangerously close to laughter to threaten the edges of it.

You rose slowly, using the board to lift yourself, muscles taut but controlled. 

Water slid down your cheekbones, along the sharp line of your jaw, dripping back into the spring in a steady, betraying rhythm. Your gills flared once, instinctively, then stilled as you forced them closed. You lifted higher, inch by inch, until your entire face was above the surface. The air felt thin and wrong in your lungs, but you held it.

Your eyes locked onto his.

“You speak as if you know what saving me looks like,” you said, voice still rough, still unused. Each word felt carved out of stone. “As if I haven’t survived the sea longer than you’ve drawn breath.”

His mouth twitched, but he didn’t smile. “I ain’t questionin’ your strength,” he replied. “I’m questionin’ the corner you’re in.”

Your fingers curled against the spring’s edge, claws just barely touching stone. “And you think you are the better option? The human who trapped me?”

He met your gaze evenly. “I think I’m the option that doesn’t end with you bein’ bled dry by someone who sees you as a breeder.”

Ouch. 

You had been that, hadn’t you? To the bullshark. To desperate elders weighing survival like currency. Even to the old songs, which had never asked whether you wanted to sing them.

“And what do you see of me?” you asked quietly.

The man exhaled slowly, smoke curling faintly from his lungs before fading. When he spoke, his voice was lower, stripped of humor entirely.

“I see someone who is tired of runnin’,” he said. “Someone who kept bein’ cornered by creatures bigger than her and still refused to break.” His eyes flicked briefly to your clenched hand, to the ring you still hadn’t let go of. “And I see her interest in things she shouldn’t, her curiosity for something bigger.”

Your chest tightened.

“You don’t get to decide what I want,” you said, but the heat wasn’t there anymore. 

“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I’m not decidin’.”

He gestured again to the board. To the open path. To the cave mouth beyond it.

“I’m givin’ you a place to breathe. Protection and a way off this island in my boat,” he said. “Two weeks. Stay, and maybe say nothin’. But figure out what you want without somethin’ tryin’ to take it from you.”

You were level with him now, close enough now that you could see the tilt in his mouth. The way his pink lips breathed in air. Close enough that you could see the faint crease between his brows, the way his pupils didn’t dilate in fear or emotion. He wasn’t scared at all. 

And he didn’t step back and reach for you. Didn’t lean in to reclaim the space you’d taken. The spring lapped softly against your tail. Your heart beat hard enough that you felt it in your throat.

Your claws curled against the wood, biting in just enough to steady yourself. Your tail shifted beneath the water, restless, unsure whether to coil for flight or strike. The ring was still clenched in your fist, its edge biting into your palm like it was trying to remind you it existed.

“If I agree,” you said slowly, each word weighed and tested before release, “you don’t touch me without permission. You don’t ask me to sing.”

“Agreed.” His answer came immediately.

“If I want to leave,” you continued, eyes never leaving his, “you let me go.”

“Agreed.”

“And if you lie to me,” you finished, something old and dangerous sharpening behind your gaze, “I will kill you, and chew on your bones.”

That earned the faintest curve of his mouth. 

“I’d expect nothin’ less,” he said. The human's gaze held steady. He did not flinch. He did not lean away. He only looked back as if he had been waiting for exactly this.

You stared at him for a long moment longer, memorizing the way he stood there without trying to fill it, without trying to rush you toward yes or no.

Then, finally, you drew a breath that scraped all the way down your throat and said the first true word you had offered him since you’d met.

“Who,” you asked, each syllable deliberate, “are you?”

His mouth curved slightly, not triumphant, but pleased in a way that made your skin prickle.

“I told ya. Names Benn Beckman,” he said honestly. Then he softened, just a fraction. “And your sweetheart, if you’ll let me.”

You bared your teeth. 

“Be careful, Benn Beckman. My kind come with curses.”

-X-Part of Your World-X-

Conversation between you and the human called Benn Beckman came very slowly.

It advanced in increments so small they barely qualified as progress unless you were watching for them, measuring trust the way one measured tides rather than time.

He clarified early, and quietly, that you could simply call him Benn. No title. No ceremony.

You did not oblige him out of kindness or courtesy. In truth, you rarely used his name at all. Names carried weight among your kind, and you were not ready to give him that much leverage.

Still, you were curious.

Curiosity crept up on you the way a current does. Gentle at first. Easy to dismiss. Then suddenly impossible to ignore. It pulled at you sideways, not enough to alarm, just enough that you realized too late you had drifted closer than intended.

Mostly because humans were strange.

You watched Benn whenever he was in the cave. Not because he was pleasing to look at, with lush hair and a well-carved body. Of course not. You watched him for vigilance, for caution, and for the entirely practical hope that he might take his shirt off again.

All right. You couldn’t claim total innocence, but you also had very little else to do.

Benn was, at his core, a simple man who kept to a simple routine. He remained inside the cavern whenever he could, moving with an ease that suggested comfort rather than confinement. There was no restless pacing, no constant need to assert himself or fill the silence with noise. He occupied space the way stone did, solid and unassuming, present without demanding attention.

It was… unsettling.

And, against your better judgment, it is oddly reassuring.

Each morning, without fail, he took a small blade, a bowl of water, and a scrap of cloth and scraped away the hair from his jaw. When you once asked why he bothered, he had shrugged and called it maintenance, like tending a ship’s hull or checking a line before a storm. The comparison made sense to you in a way you had not expected. A human body needed extra care if it was meant to last. 

After that, he left the cavern for a time. He called it bathing, though from what you gathered, it involved plunging himself into a nearby spring and scrubbing himself raw with soap that smelled sharp and foreign. He used that time to check on his vessel, inspect ropes and boards, and wash his clothes. He owned fewer garments than you would have guessed, favoring the same worn shirts and trousers, which he cleaned by hand every few days and hung to dry where the sun and wind could reach them.

His other supplies, however, seemed endless. He produced tools, cloth, food, and strange little objects from packs and compartments he carried into the cavern, each item returned to its exact place once he was finished with it. You never saw him rummage or search. He always knew where everything was. Over time, you began to recognize the pattern of his approach. Everything had a purpose. Everything had an order. Even the things that seemed incidental were placed where he could reach them without thought.

His weapons were cleaned every evening, even on days they were not used. He laid them out carefully on a strip of cloth, disassembled them piece by piece, wiped each part clean, checked edges and mechanisms, then put them back together with practiced ease.

After some prompting, he even began cooking his food just outside the cave, though the smell made your nose wrinkle. He actually burned fish in the fire before eating it. He claimed it was safer, though you suspected humans simply enjoyed ruining perfectly good meals. He skewered them over flame, turning them slowly, watching the flesh change color as if that transformation mattered.

You noticed how he hummed sometimes while cooking, always the same off-key tune, low and absentminded. The way he stopped the instant he realized you were listening, as if caught doing something private. The way he checked the entrance before sitting down, even when nothing had moved for days.

And every day, without fail, he drank a black liquid he called coffee.

The smell alone was offensive. Burnt. Sharp. Acrid in a way that scraped the inside of your nose. You watched him sip it slowly, eyes half-lidded. Once, perhaps out of distraction or interest, he left the cup on the edge of the spring.

You stared at it for a long time.

Eventually, curiosity won as it always did.

You rose just enough to reach it, fingers careful, suspicious, tilting the cup like it might bite you. The liquid inside was dark as trench water, steaming faintly. 

You poked your tongue out, licking it once. 

The bitterness hit you. 

You recoiled with a sharp hiss, jerking back so fast that water sloshed over the edge of the spring and splattered across the stone. You sputtered, gills flaring wide in protest as your throat burned, face twisting in pure, undeniable betrayal.

That had been a mistake.

Benn stared at you for half a second, lips pressed together as if he were trying very hard not to react.

Then he failed.

He gave a short, barking laugh that echoed off the cavern walls, warm and startled, the sound bouncing back at him before he could rein it in. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, still grinning.

“That bad, huh?” he asked, voice rough with amusement.

“Poisoned!” you snapped hoarsely, gasping as if you had just narrowly escaped death.

He merely retrieved his cup from where it had nearly been knocked over, unfazed, and took another long drink of the offending liquid, as if it had not just tried to end you.

You stared at him in disbelief.

This human had a strange sense of humor. He did not trick you. He did not set traps meant to humiliate or frighten you. But he also did not stop you from making your own mistakes, even when he knew exactly how they would end. He seemed content to let you test the world on your own terms, to let experience teach where warning might have failed.

He lived for these small moments, these shared absurdities, and there was no cruelty in it. No edge meant to make you small or foolish. Only a quiet delight in the exchange itself, as if the interaction was the point rather than any outcome it produced.

His nature confounded you.

Humans, as you had been taught, were meant to be small and selfish. Loud. Demanding. Creatures who filled silence with noise until something gave, until someone yielded. They took and took and called it necessity. Benn did none of that.

He answered your questions, then went back to what he was doing. He did not hover afterward, waiting for approval or gratitude. He did not press you for more. He behaved as though your attention was a gift he was willing to accept if offered, but never something he believed he was owed.

So you began to test him.

“How do you walk without falling?” you finally asked, watching him cross the uneven stone floor of the cavern without so much as a wobble. “It seems unstable.”

He blinked, genuinely caught off guard. Thus far, he had relied on shinies and patience to draw you into conversation, and this—this direct, curious question—clearly surprised him.

“One foot in front of the other,” he answered plainly, then cleared his throat as if realizing that answer might not satisfy you.

You narrowed your eyes, unimpressed.

He glanced down at his boots, then back up at you, and shrugged. “Practice. How’d ya learn to swim?”

You sniffed. “Most things swim. Walking is unnatural.”

“It works surprisingly well on land, but I see your point. Yer fins are made for water.” He gestured vaguely in your direction. “Gives you a speed advantage.” Then he motioned toward himself, just as vaguely. “Two legs on land give an advantage. More stability, too.”

You studied him for a long moment, gaze slow and deliberate, taking in the shape of him as though he were some peculiar, half-finished creature. Then you gestured toward his lower half.

“Is it not difficult to move with so many flopping pieces,” you asked seriously, “with the air pressing on you like that?”

He huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Sometimes. Balance is a constant negotiation.” He rolled his shoulders, relaxed, as if demonstrating the ease he claimed. “But once you master it, you stop thinkin’ about it.”

His answer was simple, but just teasing enough that you suspected he knew exactly what he was doing. 

You tilted your head, eyes cool, and asked, “Does it scare you to know you’re at the bottom of the food chain?”

It was not a polite question.

He didn’t bristle, but paused, giving the question more thought than it probably deserved.

“Not me,” he said at last. “But I suppose some folk probably are.” A beat, then a faint huff of amusement. “Guess we mostly coped by inventin’ guns.”

As if on cue, he reached down to his side and picked the weapon up, turning it in his hands with casual familiarity.

Your reaction was instant. You bared your teeth in a sharp hiss, sound resounding off the stone, fins flaring wide in unmistakable displeasure.

He froze.

Then, very deliberately, he set the gun back down, easing it onto the stone as if even the sound of it touching the ground might matter. His palms lifted in an open, unmistakable gesture of surrender.

“Easy,” he said calmly. “Told ya, sweetheart. It’s only for bad-intentioned fellows.”

His gaze met yours, steady and unflinching, not defensive but firm.

“Much like the sea,” he continued, “a man’s gotta use what he can to survive. I ain’t gonna use it on you or your own.”

You did not dignify that with a response.

Instead, you dipped beneath the water, letting the cool blue close over your head and put distance between the two of you. Down there, sound softened. Down there, the world behaved the way it was supposed to. Guns, like humans, didn’t do well in water.

You heard, faintly, the sound of him muttering a curse under his breath. Then the soft click of his lighter. A pause.

And then—light.

Something sparkled through the water, catching even the muted glow of the spring. You turned despite yourself, eyes tracking it as it moved.

A trinket.

Or shinies, as you had once accidentally called them.

You had fumbled the word badly, water leaving your gills too fast while your lungs scrambled to remember what they were meant to do. The sound had come out wrong, soft and sibilant, and the moment it left your mouth, you knew you’d made a mistake.

He had latched onto it immediately.

“Brought you another shiny,” he had said then, smugness curling into his tone as he set the object down with exaggerated care. Even through the water, his voice had carried the satisfaction of a man who knew he had found leverage.

That jerk.

You hovered just below the surface now, glaring up at him through the rippling light, torn between indignation and the traitorous pull of curiosity as the new shiny glimmered patiently, waiting to be noticed.

He was baiting you…And it was working. 

After a few impatient minutes, you crept up again, lured by the strangely shaped object lying on the rock beside the spring. Your slender fingers slowly grabbed its surface.

He didn’t pause. Didn’t apologize. Just tilted his head, pleased.

You couldn’t resist, Poseidon help you.

The shines were your greatest weakness. They were a weakness for most sirens. Any objects that glimmered, that clicked and chimed and caught the light made your eyes grow round and dilate into orbs. Pretty things that made noise and demanded attention and sirens had always loved beauty. Objects, after all, could not bite you, poison you, or maim you when you slept. They did not betray you. They gave status, beauty, and leverage.

Fish flocked to sirens who wore the brightest objects. Sirens who carried the most ornamentation were followed more readily, their presence magnified by the glitter of shells, metal, and bone. You weren’t even the most covetous of your kind, though that was partly thanks to your own unfortunate advantage of having such a unique color and pattern.

Where other sirens could fade into reef and shadow, you shimmered. Even in the dark you carried a faint, ghostly luminescence, like moonlight caught beneath your skin. Beautiful, yes. Also conspicuous. Dangerous. Additional items were unneeded. Your mother had warned you often to let other sirens take the finest objects. You had listened. Mostly. You had learned restraint early, learned how to let greed pass you by so you could pass unseen, and not make enemies of the coven.

But that aching, greedy part of you still existed, and it latched onto this new shiny with startling possession.

You lifted the object from the stone, turning it over in your hands. Slim. Cold. Balanced. Sharp little edges lined one end.

“It’s a fork,” Benn supplied casually, watching you with open interest.

You gazed at the fork, studying it as if it might leap up and start dancing.

“Is it a tool?” you asked. “A brush for hair? A weapon?”

You startled as he laughed, the sound sudden and warm, cracking through your focus. He motioned for you to hand it over. After a moment’s hesitation, you did, eyes never leaving the object as it passed from your fingers into his hands.

From his pack, he pulled a mango.

You had smelled the human food in his supplies before. Sweet. Almost aggressively so. Too much sun trapped in one place. He raised the fork and jabbed it neatly into the skin, piercing the flesh with a practiced twist that made juice bead instantly at the wound.

“Not quite,” he said, then handed both back to you. “You have your teeth. Us weak humans need a little more help. You remember the spoon?”

You stared at the mango, now obediently skewered, with wide eyes.

“Fork helps grip food,” he continued, entirely unbothered. “Tear it into smaller pieces.”

You tested it experimentally, poking the fruit again. The skin split further, juice running down your fingers and dripping back into the spring. You watched it with intent focus.

“…Humans invented weapons for fruit,” you concluded solemnly.

He snorted. “Guess that’s ’bout right.” Then, casually, as if offering a shell or scrap of rope, “All yours, sweetheart. Gotta few more on my ship.”

Your fingers curled around the fork, slow and possessive, thumb brushing the smooth metal like you were reassuring yourself it hadn’t vanished. Beneath the surface, your tail flicked once with quiet, unmistakable satisfaction. 

Yours. 

Benn pretended not to notice. He simply sat back and stretched his legs, posture loose, letting you examine your prize in peace. He had long since learned that curiosity accomplished far more than pressure ever could, especially with a creature who reacted to force by fleeing or biting.

You found yourself lingering longer at the edge of the spring instead of retreating the moment the novelty should have worn off. You drifted closer while very carefully pretending you were not doing that. Your tail curled lazily against the stone rather than coiling for escape. At some point, without fully realizing it, you rested your elbows on the edge, chin propped in your hands, intensely focused as you maneuvered the fork like a weapon you had not yet mastered.

You stabbed the mango again. And again. And then sideways, just to see what would happen.

Benn didn’t comment. Didn’t tease. He merely adjusted where he sat, shifting his weight and angling his body a little closer, as if this proximity had always been perfectly acceptable.

“What’s yer name, darlin’?” he asked casually, eyes on the horizon. “Feels disrespectful to just call ya siren.”

You hummed noncommittally, refusing to look at him. The fork scraped softly against the stone as you tested its balance.

He wasn’t discouraged.

Instead, he reached into his pack again and pulled out another object. Larger, round, smooth. Its surface caught the light and scattered it, colors embedded inside like trapped fragments of sunset.

You stopped dead.

Everything in you went still. Tail. Hands. Breath.

You needed it.

“Called a bracelet. To wear on your wrist,” he supplied helpfully, holding it up between two fingers so it caught the light and scattered it, all treacherous shimmer and promise. Then, like the man had learned absolutely nothing from your reaction, he tried again, mild as ever, “You gotta a name too?”

Damn.

You slid back into the water in one smooth, offended motion, sinking just deep enough that your face vanished beneath the surface. A flurry of bubbles rushed upward in your wake, carrying every sharp, vicious thing you wanted to say and refused to waste breath on.

You stayed there for a moment. Two. Then, very reluctantly, you drifted back up.

Your eyes snapped immediately to the bracelet, still gleaming in his hand, smug and beautiful and entirely aware of its own power. You considered, briefly, whether you could kill him and take it. But the memory of the last time you had tried that rose unhelpfully to the front of your mind.

Best not to repeat that.

You lifted yourself just enough for your mouth to clear the surface, water sliding off your lips as you spoke.

“Moon-Voice.”

The name landed softly in the cave, fragile as breath.

Benn froze.

Then his face broke into a wide, unguarded smile, the kind that came from the chest rather than the mouth, bright enough that for one blinding moment it eclipsed even the bracelet’s shine.

“Well,” he said, voice warm with something that felt dangerously like reverence, “that’s a hell of a name. Real fitting.”

You sank back an inch as shame flared, crawling up your spine. You had done something careless. Something foolish. You had given him something important far too easily. Names carried weight. Names traveled. Now he could say it aloud, shape it in the air, invite attention, invite disaster.l

Benn’s smile softened, not fading, but adjusting. His gaze swept over you, quick and assessing, catching the tension, the retreat, the instinctive recoil.

“Hey,” he said gently. “How ’bout we don’t use that. It’s a mouthful.”

You glanced back despite yourself.

“How ’bout we use a nickname,” he continued, tone easy, deliberately light, “somethin’ us folks up here can say real easy. Keep yours yours.”

You hesitated, then slowly, you nodded.

Relief loosened something in his posture. He tipped his head slightly. “Got a preference?”

You shook your head.

He studied you for a long moment, not with the sharp calculation he used when assessing danger, but with something quieter and more deliberate. Then he smiled again. Smaller this time. Private.

“Well,” he said, tossing the bracelet toward you and watching closely as you caught it, “I’ll figure somethin’ out. Somethin’ worthy of the prettiest gal on the seas.”

You rolled your eyes, unimpressed by the compliment, but your attention never left the bracelet. You slid it onto your wrist slowly, adjusting it until it settled comfortably against your scales. The metal caught the light immediately, scattering it in soft flashes across your arm and onto the cavern walls. Iridescent reflections rippled over stone and water alike.

You lifted your wrist, turning it slightly, watching the colors shift.

Benn leaned back a little, arms resting loosely at his sides, observing without comment. After a moment, he spoke again, his tone thoughtful rather than teasing.

“Melody’s too obvious,” he said.

You flicked water in his direction without bothering to look at him, a neat splash meant to convey both dismissal and mild irritation.

“All right,” he replied calmly, unbothered. “Point taken.” He watched you for another moment, head tilted slightly as if genuinely considering the problem. “Glimmer?”

You paused and gave him a flat, unimpressed look.

He grimaced. “Okay. That does sound like a pet,” he admitted, adjusting without fuss.

You turned your attention back to the bracelet, rotating your wrist slowly as the light scattered across your scales, clearly satisfied with this outcome.

Benn exhaled softly through his nose, a sound halfway between a laugh and resignation, eyes following the shifting colors. “I’ll keep thinkin’,” he said evenly. “No rush.”

Tim understood the feeling of not being able to breathe for fear of abandonment. Of proving at all costs that he was worthy.

Had he really done the same thing to you?

Had indifference and rejection truly reduced you to a sad girl, anxious for approval, just like him?

Tim knew he was not his parents’ favorite child, even as an only child, but he believed he had slowly healed those wounds with his family. He couldn’t be his parents’ favorite, but he didn’t need to become someone’s favorite within his family to receive the same love and care as everyone else. He didn’t need to be exceptional to deserve love, because love is not conditional…

But as he was learning that, he never realized he was inflicting the same torture on you. Not even in his final moments with you, when you sought him out for a bit of guidance and approval, could he behave like a decent human being.

And now, what did he have left?

You were gone. The constant sound of your shoes chasing him through the mansion so you could play was gone. Your sad eyes in the face of his rejection had dimmed. Your mind, once focused on playing tea party and taking his mini-me along on all your adventures, had scattered, split apart to protect you from the attacks at home, at school, and from yourself.

How had you managed to be so strong all that time? With the enemy under the same roof, in the same classroom, and beneath your own skin.

He couldn’t hold back his tears, and in a conscious act of self-destruction, he played one of the most painful videos he had ever seen.

The video began with you crying, removing your uniform top piece by piece, revealing an improvised bandage already soaked through with blood.

Your trembling hands unwound the bandage between sobs, trying not to fold in on yourself from the pain. Beneath the fabric, your abdomen was dominated by layers of dried and fresh blood. The wounds made with needles were beginning to bruise around the edges.

“W-Why… are they always so-o cruel to me?” You took a damp cloth and began to wipe away the crimson liquid, but with the slightest touch or a bit of pressure, the tears returned.

You squeezed your eyes shut and turned your head to the side, trying to summon a mix of anger and detachment just to endure the pain.

Once you were sure you had cleaned most of the blood, you proceeded to disinfect the wounds and then bandage them. The fact that you knew the proper procedure to treat and wrap a serious injury made him paranoid.

Had Alfred taught you these medical procedures, just as a precaution? Or had you learned them through experience…?

If so, how had you gotten those wounds? Accidentally? Intentionally? It was Ivy, wasn’t it?

Those were conjectures he would deal with later, personally.

You were supposed to appear grieving, and that was the most important aspect of the entire charade. And you were, in some ways. The estate wore black bands, and when required, you wore black to the gatherings you were expected to attend. The servants moved more softly. The world politely narrowed itself to mourning clothes and lowered voices, as though sorrow were something that could be contained by etiquette alone.

Your husband was dead. The first one, anyhow.

The doctors said it had been an accident. A hunting mishap. A misplaced step, a startled horse, a fall that broke his neck so cleanly the physician spoke in reverent tones about mercy.

You, being a refined lady, did not scream when they told you. You nodded. You even thanked them. You went numb in the proper, ladylike way.

There was time for tears later, but for a husband who had become more like a manager than a companion, they did not last long. No man in Mary Geoise was particularly faithful, including yours. Not that it had bothered you. When you had mutually discovered there was little passion in the bedroom, the marriage had settled quickly into the shape most of them did. A formal tie between houses meant to sire a few children and continue the divinity of the Holy City.

One daughter had been sufficient for this purpose, despite the Marcus family’s disappointment. Privately, you felt the women they brought from the lesser world would do more to improve their visages than another noble. But pure Celestial Dragon blood was precious, and the Bavette Family bred children for such purposes.

Your sisters had nearly six children apiece. You, by contrast, seemed to be the defective draw. You certainly had no desire for six children, especially not with a husband who barely acknowledged you or your beloved Lisette.

You had never been a fighter, but you would fight for your daughter.

Life had not changed much, despite everything being different. As a widow, you were afforded certain courtesies. Mary Geoise made provisions for women like you. But without attachment to a man of any kind, there was less privilege. Less upward security. Fewer vested interests in your comfort.

Living alone with Lisette in the small brick townhome that had sharpened your attention in ways marriage never had. The Marcus family had graciously invited you to stay with them for a short while, but every widow knew that was the fastest way to find oneself married off to a distant cousin and quietly shepherded to some obscure estate.

Something that would only perpetuate the same fate for your daughter when she grew up.

You did not know exactly what you wanted for her, only what you refused to accept. You would not allow some cousin of your husband to barter her future away to a man twenty years her senior, all under the guise of tradition.

You had learned enough from one marriage to recognize a trap when it was dressed as kindness.

So you accepted the small townhome. You wore your mourning correctly. You accepted condolences with the proper expression when required. You raised your daughter quietly and carefully, aware now of how narrow the path had become.

Because a widow in Mary Geoise was not meant to remain a widow for long. The place itself was a carefully designed trap, meant to ensure each person continued the cycle of propagation and continuance.

Eventually, for Lisette’s sake, you would be required to remarry.

Likely some older man, whose household you would manage in exchange for his obligation to elevate your daughter and acknowledge any additional children he might demand from you. At thirty-seven, you would be less a bride than a caretaker. More housekeeper than bedfellow. The expectation would be fulfilled at least once to seal legitimacy and silence gossip.

After that, mercy would depend entirely on the man’s temperament.

Some men had peculiar tastes, and you hadn’t aged poorly, so you still may find a reasonable suitor. But you weren’t counting on that. Women often worked relentlessly until their bodies failed them, no matter their years, no matter how politely they endured it. You were under no illusion that maturity granted immunity.

The truth is that there wouldn't be many choices. You could hope only not to be handed to someone especially cruel. Certainly not anyone especially prestigious.

Thankfully, the Five Elders didn’t wed, and most family heads were too well married. Those who worked in the administration of Pangaea preferred younger brides without children.

The Holy Knights were rarely inclined toward marriage, though there were exceptions. Men like Sommers Shepherd came to mind, possessed of a strange sense of humor and a reputation that made you cringe despite yourself. You doubted he had an interest in anyone over twenty-five, though his family had been pressuring him to marry for years. Desperation did strange things to powerful houses.

Thankfully, you had managed to remain largely beneath the notice of most highly esteemed figures in Mary Geoise.

You were hardly the only single older woman. Many women chose to live alone as long as they were permitted to do so, quietly delaying the inevitable until circumstances made refusal impossible. Some deliberately married the oldest, most infirm men available, serving as temporary nurses rather than wives, trading comfort and attention for inheritance.

You had considered it.

But such men often left little behind, and instability was its own kind of cruelty. You preferred continuity. Safety. A household that would remain intact for as long as possible, provided the man was tolerable.

And you were, at least, competent.

You managed a household efficiently. You were pleasant enough to be noticed, but never enough to be resented. Even your husband’s associates had complimented you rather than dismissed you. His funds stretched further. His investments remained steady. He attended functions more regularly, brushed shoulders with important men, and seemed quietly improved by your presence.

Ballrooms bored you. You had little appetite for display, and even less illusion about what you had to offer in such spaces.

But you understood your value. And you understood that someone in Mary Geoise would eventually recognize it as well. It was only a matter of time before someone decided to claim it.

But had you known that morning, when you took Lisette to her classrooms as you always did, that you would end the day splashed across the front page of every respectable paper in Mary Geoise, you would have barricaded yourself inside your home and refused to answer the door.

You didn’t leave your house with any intention beyond what was necessary.

First, you took your very happy daughter to school. Even at five, Lisette was an unusually cheerful child. And while she did not qualify for a private tutor, the general school in Mary Geoise did a perfectly adequate job of satisfying her hunger for knowledge and her earnest desire to make friends.

You missed her the moment you left her there. You also cherished the brief solitude that followed, when you could finally let your smile fall away.

Because the next block of your schedule was time you would normally spend at home. Instead, like most women during the day, you made your way to the central plaza.

It was where widows and wives alike gathered. To gossip, exchange rumors, shop, watch films, or attend plays. To preen beneath the guise of leisure. Networking, after all, was the most efficient way to find a husband.

You moved among them easily, used to the endless sea of white-clad women.

Several other familiar faces had arrived the same way you had, leaving their children and nursemaids in the care of instructors and attendants. Conversations had already begun flowing with practiced ease, names were dropping, weighed and quietly catalogued.

The plaza was already humming by the time you settled in, shaded beneath pale awnings and ringed with cafés that catered almost exclusively to women like you. Wives with leisure. Widows with time. Mothers with schedules carefully arranged around the hours their children were supervised elsewhere.

Conversation drifted in practiced loops, circling back on itself like a familiar dance.

“Topman’s looking for another wife,” Jenelle Manmeyer announced, stirring her drink with delicate emphasis. “Apparently, his mother has finally put her foot down. Wants more kids.”

That earned a ripple of interest.

“Another?” someone asked. “At his age? Doesn’t he already have four mistresses?”

“Men are allowed,” another woman said lightly. “It builds character.”

“And resentment,” a third woman added lightly, lifting her teacup as though it were an afterthought.

That earned a ripple of laughter, though not unkind. 

More names followed in easy succession, passed around like cards at a polite table. A Donquixote second son. A minor Killingham cousin. A Roseword with three children and, mercifully, a temperament described as tolerable. Each prospect was examined with the practiced efficiency of women who understood marriage as management. How much money. How much land. How much supervision would a man would require to keep his household orderly and his expectations modest.

One voice dipped lower, conspiratorial, and someone leaned in as though the thought itself carried weight.

“You know what bigger news? My nephew, who is a trainee knight, said Commander Shamrock has recently returned from a mission.”

It was big news. The table almost melted, most of the younger women sighing in tandem.

“And isn’t he handsome,” someone said, almost wistful, as though indulging a private daydream. More laughter came, soft, but very knowing, and entirely dismissive.

“Oh, please.”

“As if.”

“That is a fantasy best left unspoken. Don’t embarrass yourself like that Ethanbaron girl!” 

Indeed, best not to daydream, for all the women knew better. The Figarland family had long been whispered to be cursed when it came to their wives. Not for lack of opportunity, of course. Quite the opposite. Women vying for Shamrock Figarland’s hand had never been scarce.

The trouble had always been the heir himself.

Commander Saint Shamrock Figarland had never shown the slightest interest in obtaining a wife. He had refused every arrangement placed before him, declined every suitable match. Politely ignored every introduction engineered with care and optimism. He had done so openly, stubbornly, even when it strained the patience of his own father, the menacing Supreme Commander himself.

A refusal, once or twice, could be dismissed as taste. A refusal repeated often enough became a statement. And clearly, he didn’t wish to marry.

Conversation drifted on.

Another important man was mentioned, this one recently widowed and already eager to remarry. A wealthy archivist with excellent connections and an unfortunate tendency toward pedantry. A man rumored to be kind but dull, spoken of with the resigned fondness reserved for reliable furniture. Someone else came up, praised for his generosity, with a delicate pause before the speaker added that fidelity was, perhaps, not his strongest virtue.

The names blurred together. Each arrived carrying its own careful list of calculations and quiet compromises. What one lacked in charm, he made up for in land. What another lacked in fortune, he compensated for with obedience. No one spoke of love. No one needed to.

You listened. You nodded when it seemed expected of you. You smiled at the right moments, soft and agreeable, the sort of expression that suggested attentiveness without commitment.

Then someone turned to you.

“Well?” she asked pleasantly. “You have been very quiet, Lettie.”

You perked up.

Lettie was the childhood nickname nearly everyone insisted on using for you. When you were small, you preferred writing letters instead of speaking. Sending careful little notes passed across tables or tucked into waiting hands to just about anyone. Letter had become Lettie, and the affectionate moniker had followed you far longer than the habit had. 

Several faces angled your way. Their eyes were bright with interest that had little to do with concern. Dread settled over your shoulders like a shawl, light enough to seem polite, heavy enough that you felt its weight immediately.

“It’s almost time for your mourning to be over,” one woman said, tilting her head in a way meant to resemble sympathy. “Are you looking to remarry?”

You hesitated. Only a fraction of a second. Just long enough to choose your footing. This was precisely the moment you needed to act.

“Yes,” you said at last, softly. “Tentatively.”

It seemed to satisfy them.

Someone reached out and squeezed your hand, warm and possessive. Another murmured approval, remarking on how sensible you were. How wise it was not to wait too long. How important stability was for your sweet Lisette.

Their voices blended together, approval layering over approval, and you smiled gently through it all, letting them believe you had given them permission to add you to their quiet docket of potential pairings.

By evening, your words would have spread. You could already imagine it, the way news traveled through rooms like this. A remark here, a knowing look there. Soon enough, invitations would arrive. Luncheons. Small gatherings. Evenings arranged with just enough coincidence to appear accidental.

You, seated beside men you had never chosen, spoken of lightly over wine and laughter. Your future weighed, adjusted, and passed between acquaintances as though it were a topic of mild interest rather than the rest of your life.

You kept your smile in place. It was easier than explaining that the thought made you feel unbearably tired.

The remainder of the visit stretched thin. You found yourself watching the light shift rather than listening, counting small cues of time passing. When your maid finally approached and murmured that it was nearly the hour, you rose at once, perhaps a touch too quickly, relief loosening something tight in your chest.

The walk back to the school was ordinarily uneventful. Familiar streets, familiar sounds, and the steady comfort of routine. But as the building came into view, you slowed.

The usual cluster of mothers had gathered near the gates, though today they stood closer together than normal, voices pitched higher, laughter sharper, practically tittering. You frowned slightly, concern stirring.

Then you saw them.

A handful of Holy Knights stood just inside the grounds, polished and immaculate, their colorful cloaks catching the afternoon light.

It was astonishing. Absurd, almost to the point of disbelief.

The Knights of God didn’t loiter at schools. They were far too busy for that, ensuring the safety of the Holy Land. 

But here they were, regardless of your suppositions.

The children, of course, recognized them immediately. Attention clustered around the knights without effort, little bodies drifting closer, faces tilted upward in wide-eyed reverence. It was the sort of awe born from half-understood stories and fully recognized uniforms, from tales of valor stripped of consequence.

You stood there for a moment longer than necessary, watching the scene settle into place, unease tightening in your chest.

The first knight you noticed was a youngish woman with blue hair. Saint Manmeyer, you realized after a beat. She stood quietly while a cluster of children pestered her with earnest questions about her hair, her eyes, whether they were real or some trick of the light. She answered them with patience that looked practiced rather than natural.

Next to her was the unmistakable Saint Killingham, and he was impossible to miss. Like always, he had chosen to remain in his ever-present Devil Fruit form; meaning he appeared as a dragon, neck coiled, comfortably standing within the school grounds as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world. He basked openly in the children’s attention, preening beneath his resin helmet. His grin was broad and unapologetic as young girls dared one another to touch his scales, shrieking with laughter when they did.

Those two alone would have raised brows, but the third figure was what made your breath catch.

The bright red of his long hair blazed like a wildfire, unmistakable no matter the setting. It was tied back neatly and entirely out of fashion, the length of it falling over broad shoulders carried by a tall, fit frame. One that had caused most of the wives in the Holy Land to swoon upon seeing him. 

There was no mistaking him.

Saint Shamrock Figarland stood apart from the spectacle, quieter than his colleagues and yet somehow more observed than both of them combined.

He was speaking with the headmistress, head inclined just enough to suggest courtesy, his posture relaxed in the way of a man entirely at ease with his own authority. The lines of his face were sharp without being severe, handsome in a way that made the nearby mothers giggle like teenagers. Even the old, stern headmistress wasn’t immune to his charm.

Even at a distance, there was something arresting about him. The set of his mouth. The calm weight of his presence. The kind of beauty that did not invite admiration so much as assume it.

From where you stood, his expression was unreadable, composed but distant, as if this, too, were merely another obligation to be handled and set aside, no more disruptive to his day than a report or a summons.

But why on earth would the Commander of the Holy Knights be at a children’s school? 

Was there a problem? 

You couldn't see one. No alarms or raised voices or hurried movements. Everything looked, on the surface, entirely ordinary, and yet your pulse quickened all the same, a dull, insistent thrum in your ears.

More importantly, you just needed to see Lisette. 

Thankfully, she was easy to find. She was near the edge of the yard, hair slightly mussed from play, hands clasped behind her back as she listened with solemn attention to something another child was saying. She looked perfectly unharmed. 

Relief loosened your chest for half a breath before it caught again.

Because then the headmistress turned.

Her gaze swept the yard with practiced efficiency and landed, unmistakably, on your daughter. A small smile appeared, warm and inviting, and she lifted her hand in a gentle beckoning gesture.

Your daughter hesitated, glanced once toward the cluster of children, then obediently made her way forward.

Alarm spiked sharply and immediate. You started forward at once, pace measured only because you forced it to be, every instinct screaming at you to close the distance faster. The stone clacked beneath your shoes, each step suddenly too loud in your ears.

The headmistress bent slightly as your daughter approached, speaking to her with kindness, one hand resting lightly at the child’s shoulder. Shamrock straightened beside her, attention shifting at last, his gaze dropping to meet your daughter’s height.

To your shock, he crouched down, saying something you could not hear. Your daughter answered, small and earnest, hands twisting together.

The strangeness of a man like him standing in a schoolyard, attention fixed on a child who had nothing to do with his world, made your next rudeness necessary.

“Excuse me,” you said, breath steady despite the hammering of your heart, arriving just as the headmistress looked up.

Her smile widened, pleased. “Ah. Saintess Lettie! What perfect timing.”

Your daughter turned at the sound of your voice, relief brightening her face. She stepped instinctively toward you, and you placed a hand at her back without thinking, grounding yourself as much as her.

“I was just telling Commander Figarland,” the headmistress continued smoothly, “about how well Lisette is doing!”

Your gaze flicked, briefly and unwillingly, toward him.

He had risen to his full height, and the difference was impossible to ignore. He seemed to loom without effort, broad shoulders and straight posture lending him a presence that pressed in rather than reached out. For a moment, you had almost forgotten he was there, too focused on the impropriety of an administrator discussing your child so casually with a man who had no reason to know her name at all.

He looked down at the two of you with an attention that was unreadable, his expression composed, though his attention was sharper now. 

It was a little surreal to see him up close, to register details you had not noticed from a distance. The faint scruff along his jaw. The way the shade of his eyes echoed the red of his hair was vivid and unrelenting. He really was good-looking, in a way that felt almost inconvenient to acknowledge.

And yet, if he were one of those men, then none of it mattered. The thought came sharp and uncomfortable—If it came to that, you and Lisette would be gone. Mary Geoise would be left behind without explanation or permission, because there would be no world in which you could deny the intent of a Figarland once it was set.

Thankfully, his attention did not linger on Lisette. He acknowledged her presence, yes, but without the weight you feared, his gaze moving past her almost at once. That alone felt like a reprieve. But the way his focus settled on you instead was unnerving in a different way.

Had you done something wrong?

Your mind raced through every possibility you could grasp. Every rule. Every quiet expectation. Or worse, was this about Lisette? Had she misbehaved so thoroughly that her teacher had seen fit to summon the Holy Knights themselves?

The idea made your stomach twist.

Your distress was likely written across your face. You could feel it there, tension pulling at your jaw, sharpness gathering in your eyes. Still, you forced it down, smoothing your expression into something polite and contained. Your hand remained firm at your daughter’s back, protective and grounding, even as you lifted your chin to meet whatever explanation was coming next.

The headmistress gave a small, knowing laugh, the sort meant to soften rather than reassure. “Oh, no need to be coy, Lettie,” she said lightly, as though you were all in on the same understanding. Then she turned back to him with an easy confidence that made your confusion spike. “Of course, Commander, I will keep things quiet.”

Quiet. Quiet about what?

Before you could ask, before you could even shape the question properly, the Commander spoke.

“Have your maid take your daughter,” he said to you, tone as though he were suggesting nothing more disruptive than an early supper. His gaze did not leave yours. “I would like a word with you. A walk, if you are willing.”

Your breath caught, every instinct you had bristled at the suggestion, at the implication folded neatly into it. Lisette shifted slightly at your side, sensing the disquiet in you even if she did not understand it.

“I—” you began, then stopped, painfully aware of where you were. Of who were listening. Of how many eyes were already trained in your direction.

The headmistress was smiling again, encouraging in a way that felt entirely unearned. “It will only be a few minutes,” she said. “Your daughter will be quite safe.”

Safe? As though that were something that needed to be said.

You looked down at Lisette. She was watching you now, brows drawn together, small fingers curling into the fabric of your sleeve. You forced yourself to smile at her, brushing a hand through her hair, murmuring something soothing you barely heard yourself say. When you signaled your maid, the woman appeared at once, obedient and silent, taking Lisette’s hand with practiced care.

Your daughter looked back at you over her shoulder, uncertain, until you nodded. Only then did she allow herself to be led away.

When you straightened, the space beside you felt abruptly too unsteady.

Saint Shamrock stepped back just enough to indicate direction rather than command, turning toward the path that led away from the school grounds. You were surprised when he offered an arm, though, as politely as you could, you declined it.

You followed, heart beating far too fast, acutely aware that whatever this was, it had already moved beyond your control.

The path away from the school was quiet, lined with trimmed hedges and stonework so familiar it usually faded into the background. 

He did not speak at first, waiting till you were long out of earshot from the gathered mothers, desperately curious. When he finally spoke, his tone was stiff, formal in a way that immediately set your nerves on edge.

“I have heard,” he began, “that you are seeking a new husband. Is this correct?”

What a way to begin.

His words landed awkwardly, like a report delivered to the wrong audience at precisely the wrong time. You glanced at him, only to find his gaze fixed straight ahead, jaw set so tightly it looked as though he were bracing for impact rather than conversation.

You blinked. Once. Then again.

You had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, because what exactly was the expected reaction here? Gratitude? Horror? Applause for efficiency?

And how the hell did he even know? It had not been three hours since lunch when you’d casually mentioned it. How had it wormed its way to him?

And why would he care?

Surely the marital deliberations of bored women over tea did not rank high enough to penetrate the awareness of the Commander of the Holy Knights. And yet here he was, reciting them back to you like a filed memorandum.

While you were still reeling internally, he continued, undeterred by your silence.

“I have… overheard discussions,” he said, the pause before overheard doing a great deal of work. Each word was chosen with careful precision, as though he feared one wrong syllable might cause the entire sentence to collapse. “Regarding your suitability.”

You resisted the urge to stop walking entirely, if only to ask whether he had also overheard commentary on the quality of the tea and the cut of the pastries.

“It seems prudent,” he went on, tone rigidly neutral, “that a union with the Figarland family be offered.”

Your steps slowed despite yourself.

Be what?

You glanced sideways at him, taking in the immaculate uniform, the imposing frame, the sheer absurdity of the situation. Of all the words that could be used to justify whatever this was, stability felt wildly optimistic.

A union with the Figarland family?

A woman of your age and station would only have one conceivable option within his family, and it was not the man currently walking beside you. It was his much older father, the head of House Figarland, the Supreme Commander.

Stern, towering, and terrifying, Garling Figarland’s name alone was enough to make you regret every careless word you had spoken that day. From everything you had heard, he ate women alive and found them about as useful as a misplaced screw. You were a competent housekeeper, certainly, but a husband like that would make you regret every word that had ever left your mouth this day. 

You swallowed, already exhausted, and could not help wondering how a perfectly polite conversation over tea had escalated into being verbally engaged by one of the most powerful families in Mary Geoise before sunset.

Still, you managed to keep your voice polite, measured down to the last syllable.

“With respect, Commander,” you said delicately, horror carefully folded beneath courtesy, “your father is… a great man. Too great, in fact.” You offered a small, apologetic smile, as though the fault were entirely your own. “The honor alone is overwhelming, and I am deeply flattered. Truly.”

Shamrock paused, slowly tilting his head.

“My what?”

You hesitated just long enough for the weight of it to register. An offer to join House Figarland was not extended lightly. Garling Figarland had taken only one wife in his lifetime and, by most accounts, barely seemed to notice women at all. To be considered, even in passing, was no small thing.

Which only made the question worse.

Why you? Had you once crossed his path without realizing it? Had your reputation simply been tidy enough, quiet enough, respectable enough to recommend you on paper? The thought made your stomach turn.

“That said,” you continued prettily, careful to keep your voice soft and deferential, “I must decline out of respect for my daughter.”

Your tone remained reasonable, gentle, even thoughtful. The sort of refusal designed to preserve everyone’s heads, including your own.

For a heartbeat, the man simply stared at you. Then something entirely unexpected happened.

Shamrock laughed.

It was abrupt and unguarded, a short bark of genuine amusement that clearly surprised even him. He brought a hand up to his mouth as if it were too late to stop it, shoulders loosening as the sound escaped.

“My father?” he said, incredulous, still half-smiling. “God, no.”

He shook his head once, red hair shifting with the motion, eyes bright now in a way they had not been before. There was something almost startled in his expression, as though he had just discovered a joke in his own delivery.

“I am not asking you to marry my father,” he said quickly. “He’s never— not after—” He stopped himself, exhaled through his nose, then added firmly, “Just no.”

Relief hit you first, sharp and dizzying, followed almost immediately by confusion so profound it left you reeling.

Oh.

Oh no.

The realization arrived all at once, mortifying in its clarity. You had not declined a terrifying honor with grace. You had politely rejected the wrong man entirely. 

You stared at him, brain scrambling to recover. If not his father, then who? A cousin, perhaps. Some distant Figarland relative quietly waiting in the wings. Someone reasonable. Someone appropriate.

“I am not offering you to a family member,” he said again, slower this time, as though correcting a misfiled report. His tone lost some of its stiffness, something more earnest slipping through. “I am asking for myself.”

You blinked.

“Pardon?”

He cleared his throat.

“I am asking you to marry me.”

The world tilted.

You opened your mouth, closed it, then opened it again, producing nothing at all, your mind stubbornly clinging to the hope that you had misheard him for a second time.

The words hung between you, heavy and awkward, as though they had never quite been meant to exist outside his head. He seemed faintly dissatisfied with them, his brow tightening just slightly, as if the phrasing itself had failed him by lacking the precision he would have preferred.

“You?” you managed finally. “Marriage?”

The words that came out registered as more of a squeak than words.

Him? The handsome, young Commander of the Holy Knights? Asking you, an aged widow, standing beside a children’s school, to marry him? As though this were a logical, reasonable extension of the afternoon’s errands?

He nodded.

You drew in a deep breath, spots of black already blooming at the edges of your vision as your body struggled to keep pace with your thoughts.

Shock prickled along your spine, sharp and immediate, disbelief tangling with something dangerously close to hyperventilation. Of all the conclusions you had drawn in the last several minutes, this had not been one of them. Not even remotely close.

It defied expectation. It defied reason.

“Why?” you asked, the word leaving you before you could dress it up or make it polite, all of your disbelief and fraying composure packed into that single syllable.

He hesitated, just briefly, as though searching for the correct phrasing.

“I am… not practiced at this,” he said at last, stiff and earnest, as if admitting to a small professional shortcoming rather than explaining a marriage proposal. “But the arrangement would be suitable for both sides. Your daughter would have backing. You would retain autonomy. And I would—”

He paused, recalculating, then finished more quietly, “be married.”

You stared ahead, careful not to look at him, as though meeting his eyes might make the situation tip fully into the unreal.

“With all due respect,” you said, choosing each word with deliberate care, “aren’t I a little old for you, Commander?”

The question lingered, edged with disbelief more than insult. You could not make the logic align, no matter how hard you tried. Why you, when he could have anyone? The most beautiful women in Mary Geoise, women raised for charm and spectacle. The funniest, the cleverest, the wealthiest. Women without children, without history, without the quiet weight of widowhood trailing behind them.

You were practical. Sensible. Made for an average man and an ordinary life, not for whatever lofty, merciless standards House Figarland surely aspired to.

“Old?” He replied, amused, “I am older than you.”

None of this made sense.

You swallowed, still not looking at him, as though the stone path ahead might offer answers his presence did not.

“Surely there are… better options,” you added softly. The words were not self-pitying, merely honest. “Women without complications. Without obligations.”

He didn’t look surprised.

In fact, he seemed to have expected it, as though this particular objection had already been accounted for somewhere in his mind and filed neatly away.

“Your circumstances are not disqualifying,” he said after a moment. “They are known variables.”

You blinked at that. Known variables. As though you and your life could be reduced to figures on a page.

“Oh.”

“I am asking for simplicity,” he continued, tone steady, almost careful. “I am asking for suitability. You are discreet. You manage a household competently. Your reputation is stable. Your daughter’s existence does not present a problem.”

None of it was unkind. None of it was wrong. And yet none of it was reassuring either.

You hesitated, the refusal catching uncomfortably in your chest, because turning him down was not easy. He was handsome in that effortless, maddening way. The sort of man women built fantasies around from a safe distance. And there he was, offering stability and protection with a calm that made it all feel dangerously convenient.

“I don’t know you,” you said at last, quietly. “I have a daughter who needs safety, and you are the Commander of the Holy Knights. How can I be sure this is a good idea?”

That finally stopped him.

For the first time, he looked as though he had reached the edge of his prepared reasoning and found nothing written there. It was only a flicker, a brief hesitation, but it was real.

“That can be remedied,” he said after a beat.

You shook your head, just slightly. “Respectfully, I must decline.”

The words hurt to say. Not because you doubted his intent, but because some small, traitorous part of you wondered what it would be like to accept. To step into something so clean and decisive.

He absorbed your answer in silence.

When he finally nodded, it was slow and deliberate, acceptance settling into place with the same precision he applied to everything else.

“I understand,” he said simply.

There was no offense in his voice, nor any wounded pride, only quiet acknowledgment.

God help you, he really was the dream everyone thought he was. Polite and extraordinarily gracious in the face of refusal, which made walking away from him feel even harder.

He turned back toward the school with you, falling into step at your side without comment. The conversation did not resume, because what else was there to say?

The gates came into view, and with them the familiar noise of the afternoon. Children laughing, calling out names, the scrape of shoes on stone. Parents exchanged pleasantries and polite smiles, but their glances lingered far too long, curiosity sharpening as they took in the Holy Knights still stationed inside the grounds and, more importantly, you and Shamrock returning together.

You both slowed just short of the entrance, as that was when Lisette slipped free of her maid’s hand.

She ran straight toward you both, small shoes slapping against the stone with reckless determination, her expression bright with a peculiar mix of excitement and seriousness that made your stomach drop. It was not the look of a child racing on impulse. It was the look of a child who had had an eager question.

She stopped directly in front of Commander Shamrock, squared her shoulders the way you had taught her to do when addressing adults, and tipped her chin up.

“Are you going to be my new dad?” she asked.

Loudly. Very loudly. Enunciated with the careful precision of a child who had practiced the sentence at least once.

And, in front of everyone.

Your jaw dropped as pure horror flooded through you, hot and dizzying.  

Your heart slammed painfully against your ribs as every mother, every teacher, every Holy Knight turned as one. The courtyard fell into an unnatural stillness, the kind that swallowed sound whole. Even the children sensed it, their chatter thinning into silence as dozens of eyes fixed on the small figure standing before the Commander of the Holy Knights.

You barely had time to inhale.

Shamrock knelt.

He didn’t glance at you, correct her phrasing, or soften the moment. He lowered himself to her level with calm deliberation, as though this were exactly what he had been prepared for all along.

He nodded once.

“Yes,” he said, clearly and evenly.

The sound that followed was not a scream, but it came close.

Gasps erupted in a wave, sharp and overlapping. A mother clutched at her chest. Someone whispered your name. You saw the headmistress go pale, then visibly brighten, already recalculating at terrifying speed.

Your vision tunneled.

Because that was it, there would be no undoing it now. By the end of the hour, the story would have reached every corridor of Mary Geoise. By nightfall, it would have hardened into truth.

He positioned himself a little farther back from the spring, far enough that even you could not accuse him of crowding. He sat, legs stretched out, hands resting loosely on his knees, shoulders relaxed in a way that made your temper flare hotter. He looked as if he had all the time in the world. As if he had chosen this spot deliberately. As if there was nowhere else he would rather be. He didn’t even lean forward as if peer into the water like a child staring into a tide pool.

You glared up at him through the water, hair floating around your face in a halo, tail coiled tight beneath you like a spring wound too far.

You were irate. Furious that you had followed the buckets, angry that the water had felt so good you had stopped thinking. Enraged that you had listened to the music box. The music box he put back in his bag, so you couldn’t even break it.

You were hysterical that he had outwitted you so thoroughly. That he had avoided your attack without even reaching for that weapon of his, as if he had never doubted he could handle you without it. Humans had no natural defenses, but whatever trickery he had was akin to the old magic.

But most of all, you were mad at yourself, because you had let yourself believe that the surface might offer you anything but danger.

You crossed your arms over your kelp-clad chest and sank lower, settling into the stone like you intended to fuse with it out of spite. Your tail flicked once, sharp and annoyed, before going still. The water was cold enough to bite, but you welcomed it. You fixed your glare on the far wall of the spring, refusing to give him even the satisfaction of thinking you were watching.

If you stayed still enough, quiet enough, perhaps he would grow bored. Humans were prone to growing restless. They fidgeted, demanded reaction, proof they were being acknowledged. Silence made them uncomfortable.

The first hour passed in silence.

Then another.

Time stretched oddly in the cave, measured not by tides or currents but by the slow shift of light across stone. The cave filled with the unfamiliar sounds of land rather than the rhythm of the sea. The faint scrape of fabric as he adjusted his position. The slow, steady rhythm of human breathing, maddening in its consistency. Somewhere beyond the cave mouth, birds cried. Wind threaded through leaves, whispering through branches in a language that did not belong to you.

The spring stayed cold and clear around you, tight and cruel in equal measure. You sank lower still, pressing your back into the stone, as if you could make yourself smaller through sheer spite. Your arms remained folded tight, claws digging lightly into your own skin where a chill brushed your sides.

There was nothing for your anger to strike. No threats to snarl at. No grasping hands to tear away. No raised voice to bite back at. Your fury circled uselessly inside you, sharp and restless, with nowhere clean to land, like a blade swung in fog.

You cursed the nothing most of all.

So finally—finally—when you caught him standing up again, attention angled toward the cave mouth, you moved.

Carefully, you rose to the furthest edge of the spring, slow enough that the water barely disturbed itself. Your head broke the surface first, then your shoulders, slick and shining, hair sliding down your neck in wet, clinging strands. 

You kept low, posture tight and defensive, ready to sink again the moment he turned to attack.

But he didn’t turn back. There wasn’t even the slightest flicker of him using the cursed mental bond you shared, though his awareness was at the edges of your mind.

That gave you just enough time to really look at him, and really see him for the first time.

Your initial thought was that the human was… odd.

Fishmen carried their strength openly, their desirability flare for maximum coverage by splaying wide fins, flexing thick muscle wrapped over their sharp bones. Everything about them was built to withstand pressure and violence, and the most attractive ones looked dangerous in obvious ways. This human didn’t have any of the usual spines or colorful patches on his body to indicate his threat level.

You sensed more danger in the way he moved rather than the way he looked. There was an ease to him that did not come from bulk or brute force. He moved like someone entirely comfortable in his own body, and even looking away, he did not look helpless.

He was… sort of refined.

His hair was soft-looking, for one thing. The strands fell loosely around his face, dark and slightly mussed, catching the light in a way that made it look silky.  His skin lacked any hard resilience you were used to seeing. No thick plating, no visible defenses. Just scars here and there, earned rather than grown, mapped across him like quiet history. You frowned faintly, irritation deepening when another, far more inconvenient realization followed.

He was pleasant to gaze at, alluring in a way that made no sense. 

Humans were prey, or enemies, or nuisances. Not something your eyes lingered on, tracing the line of his jaw, the way his mouth rested when he wasn’t using that thunder gun, the breadth of his shoulders beneath worn fabric. This one could even be called handsome.

The thought hit you sideways, unwelcome and sharp, making you scowl.

You disliked you noticed that, because you were absolutely not enticed by him. You were absolutely not intrigued by the fact that he had outwitted you without brute force, or that he had chosen patience instead of dominance, or that he was, objectively, unfairly good-looking for something that should have been your dinner.

This is ridiculous, you told yourself. He is a human. A trickster. A land thing with soft hair and bad ideas.

And yet your gaze lingered anyway, cataloging details without permission. The thickness in his chest, the way his waist narrowed sharply. The corded muscle in his arms and legs, the built neck. Doubtless, under the covering humans wore, you’d find more of the same, honed muscles.

Then, as if summoned by the weight of your thoughts, the human shifted. Just enough that his eyes flicked toward the spring.

You sank instantly, dropping back beneath the surface with a quiet splash, heart kicking hard against your ribs. You pressed yourself back into the stone, arms crossed tight again, tail coiling with renewed irritation.

You were furious all over again.

Yet—

You lifted just the top of your head above the surface again. Barely. Enough that water slid from your hair in slow rivulets, enough that your eyes cleared the rippling line of the spring. You told yourself this look was a tactical confirmation. A predator’s assessment, nothing more.

But the human had returned to sitting, closer. And with a clearer view, your problems only worsened.

Because the human was even more attractive up close.

The lines of his face were relaxed, unguarded, his pink mouth curved naturally at one corner, as if there was a joke awaiting to be told. His eyes, half-lidded as he stared at the cave entrance, were sharp. He looked like someone who noticed everything and chose, deliberately, what to react to.

When the light shifted, it caught in his hair again. Dark, thick, and undeniably soft-looking, falling across his forehead in a way that made your fingers itch with a curiosity you immediately resented. Most fishmen hair was coarse, functionally resilient to ocean water.

Though he seemed to have hair on more than just his head, where you did. There was a fine dusting of it on his chin, forearms, and even on his chest. You wondered if he had more, even lower.

The man’s mouth twitched.

You sank half an inch, but your gaze dropped lower before you could stop it.

His hands were resting loosely against his flat stomach, long-fingered and scarred in a practical way. They were the hands of a working man who kept busy.

You scowled, sinking a fraction lower in the water, cheeks warm with irritation.

This was wrong. Entirely wrong. Humans were not supposed to look like this. You were not supposed to think anything about them beyond danger, disgust, or indifference. Yet here you were, cataloging him like prey you did not intend to hunt, but… but you didn’t know what, but you wanted something.

“To be clear,” The human said mildly, causing you to start, “this is not how I usually introduce myself to women.”

You froze.

“I prefer taverns,” he continued. “Much lower chance of getting drowned. But all yer starin’ is making me feel a little shy.”

What in the Poseidon was a tavern? A mating ground?

Your claws flexed against the stone despite yourself, scraping softly as irritation surged hot and immediate. Your tail flicked once beneath the water, sending a sharp ripple across the spring. You were not, under any circumstances, speaking to a human who trapped you with water buckets. Especially one determined to wait you out for conversation, and dare to be irritatingly, unfairly good-looking while doing it. 

Instead, you growled.

The human glanced at the water, briefly. The kind of glance that pretended not to be aimed, but landed unerringly all the same. The corner of his mouth twitched, a half-formed grin that looked far too pleased with itself.

“You are making an excellent point, by the way,” he added lightly. “Very intimidating. If looks could drown, I would already be dead.”

Silence followed for exactly three heartbeats.

Then, with a sharp, well-timed flick of your tail, you sent a rush of water snapping up and over the edge of the spring. It arced cleanly through the air and splashed across his chest and shoulder, darkening fabric instantly and dripping down onto the stone at his feet.

It was petty, but also satisfying, and made you feel a little better. With a spin, you mocked him, chin lifting in mute triumph as ripples spread across the surface. Maybe he’d make a mistake, get angry or cocky, and come close.

But the human only looked down at his soaked shirt, water darkening the fabric and dripping steadily onto the stone, then he tipped his head back and sighed. The sound was exaggerated and almost theatrical, like a man resigned to mild discomfort rather than the fact that a very dangerous creature had just taken a deliberate shot at him.

“Well,” he said mildly, brushing water from his sleeve with two fingers, “that answers that. Guess I have my work cut out for me.”

He tugged the wet shirt loose from his skin, peeling it off without hurry.

You stiffened instantly, recognizing that he was shedding it to dive into the water and have his revenge… probably. Your muscles coiled, readying themselves, your claws biting into stone. Every instinct screamed movement, screamed sink, screamed do not let him get closer. Your body was prepared to fight.

Except the human didn’t dive in.

Instead, he shook the shirt once to get rid of the worst of the water and held it out at arm’s length, careful to remain well back from the spring.

“For you,” he said easily. “Before you freeze yourself into hypothermia.”

Your brows drew together. What the hell was he doing?

“Without salt in the water, you’ll get colder,” he added, as if to clarify himself. “You’ve been sulking down there long enough that even a pretty thing like you will get cold. Can’t exactly be fun swimming in circles to stay warm.”

You bristled.

Not only did you not appreciate being called pretty like it was a fact instead of a belittling insult, but you were also greatly offended that any human would assume they could offer you anything useful.

But even as you fumed, your eyes betrayed you.

They slid, traitorous and curious, over the place where his covering had been removed. The human's bare skin shone softly in the cave, the droplets of water catching the light along his chest and shoulders. You confirmed he did have a tidy spread of hair that followed his well-defined chest, right down into the covering over his legs. Did the hair go even that far?

Your gaze traced the rise and fall of his breathing, the slow expansion of his chest, the way droplets slid down and vanished into the waistband of his trousers. The sight stirred something deeply inconvenient, a quiet pull you did not have a name for, only a physical awareness that made your body feel suddenly too still, too aware of itself.

A thirst.

Not for blood, or food. 

For warmth, perhaps? 

The human’s flesh looked pleasantly warm.

You scowled harder, mortified at yourself, and sank a fraction lower in the water to hide the way your shoulders had lifted closer to the surface. You folded your arms tighter across your chest, as if that could contain the reaction you had not asked for. One he probably couldn’t even see.

You rose just enough for your teeth to flash above the waterline, lip curling as you glared properly this time. You said nothing, but the look you gave him promised violence, curses, and possibly dismemberment if he kept talking. 

The human responded to none of this. Perhaps he had thoughts, but chose not to acknowledge them. He merely set the black cloth on a dry patch of stone near the spring, far enough that you would have to jump up to reach for it. 

“You don’t have to take it.” He waited a beat, then continued, unbothered. “I’m not comin’ closer. I just figured I’d offer, seeing as you look determined to freeze yourself out of spite.”

You glared, heart beating just a little too fast.

His mouth curved into a small, satisfied smile, like someone who had just confirmed a theory they’d been sitting on for a while.

Your tail snapped again, sending another sharp spray of water his way. It splashed against his bare shoulder and chest, droplets scattering across stone. He laughed, a low, warm sound that echoed irritatingly off the cave walls and settled somewhere it had no right to.

“All right,” he said again, setting the shirt carefully on a dry patch of stone where you could reach it if you chose. “Take your time. Promise ya, darlin’, it’s okay.”

He lowered himself back down, damp and entirely unbothered, leaning against the rock with his hands loosely laced together. His gaze drifted back toward the cave entrance, posture relaxed like a man who had just committed to waiting out bad weather.

You sank back to the bottom of the spring, furious all over again. 

-X-Part of Your World-X-

Over the next day, you soon came to the realization that the human wasn’t like anyone you’d ever known.

He didn’t pace like an impatient predator, nor did he loom at the edge of the spring the way the bullshark had. Didn’t endlessly chatter like the coven sisters. He made himself a problem the way land-people did best, by simply continuing to exist in your space with the quiet, infuriating confidence of someone who believed time would eventually do the work for him.

And it might. He was correct, the freshwater affected you differently than saltwater. It let you cool, bringing you up to the surface so you could catch a sliver of sunlight, though you ignored his ‘shirt’ as he called it.

But the human’s casual attitude didn’t make him motionless. He left for various purposes unknown, but he wasn’t gone long. And he also seemed to have a plan that began with getting you to speak.

At noon of the second day, he settled himself cross-legged near the water. Close enough that he could see you clearly if you surfaced, far enough that he was not pressing the edge of the spring like a challenge. He deliberately chose a spot that made hiding pointless. You noted that immediately, irritation flaring hot and familiar.

Too bad he was quick. Else you would have flitted at him again, if only to remind him that you could.

Instead, out of boredom rather than intent, you rose. Just enough. Just the top half of your face breaking the surface, hair drifting around you like pale tentacles, eyes flat and unwelcoming as you stared up through the clear water.

“Morning,” he said mildly, like you were neighbors sharing a dock instead of enemy races.

The audacity of it nearly made you bare your teeth.

You stared up at him through the spring, hair drifting around your face like tentacles, eyes kept flat and unwelcoming.

You did not answer.

You stared.

He waited.

Minutes passed.

The spring remained perfectly still except for the slow, steady rise of bubbles from your gills. Light shifted through the cave opening and slid across his shirt in pale, moving bands, dust motes drifting lazily through the air. Somewhere outside, something chirped. A bird, perhaps. He did not look toward it. His attention never left the water.

Your arms crossed tighter over your chest. Your tail curled, then curled again, stirring a faint ripple you did not bother to hide. The water cooled your skin, grounding you, sharpening the edge of your temper into something clean and precise.

Finally, he sighed, like you were the one committing a small discourtesy.

“All right,” he said calmly. “We can do silent mornings. I’ve had worse company.”

You sank a little deeper in response, chin slipping beneath the surface, eyes never leaving his. If you were going to be ignored, you would at least do it on your terms.

He did not react.

Instead, he reached into his pack and produced a small tin, opening it with a quiet click. The sound echoed softly in the cave. The smell followed a moment later, warm and irritatingly unfamiliar. Oil, salt, and something cooked. Not fish. Not anything you recognized.

Your gills flared despite yourself.

Annoying human.

Then he produced another object, bright and unmistakably metal, catching the light as he gave it a small, idle spin between his fingers.

Your eyes widened before you could stop them. He noticed and paused, holding it up a little higher so you could see it clearly through the water.

“It’s a spoon,” he said, helpfully. “Holds food. Made of iron.”

You tilted your head, watching as he put it to the disgusting mush, pulling up a heaping ball to his mouth. So humans even needed help to put food in their mouths. How pathetic, and what a waste of a good shiny.

He ate slowly, unhurried.

He never turned his back on you, but he never stared either. His posture stayed loose, relaxed in a way that felt practiced rather than careless, like someone who knew exactly how far to lean without falling. Each bite was deliberate. Each movement measured. The spoon scraped softly against the tin, a quiet, domestic sound that felt wrong in a place like this.

“You know,” he said conversationally, swallowing, “yer hissin’ is growin’ on me.”

Your tail flicked once beneath the surface, and the ripple carried across the spring in a lazy ring.

A corner of his mouth curved, faint and unmistakably pleased. He laughed under his breath, soft and brief, as if the sound had slipped out before he could stop it.

“What?” he went on lightly. “Shark got yer tongue?”

You huffed, sharp and offended, and turned away from him, angling your body so your shoulder and tail faced the rock wall. If you were going to endure this indignity, you would not do it while watching him eat with that stupid little iron spoon.

Behind you, the tin closed with a soft click.

From the corner of your eye, you watched him wipe his hands on his trousers. Then he leaned back on his palms, boots planted, gaze tipping upward toward the cave ceiling like he had suddenly remembered the world above your heads.

“Didn’t like the shirt then?” he asked, tone casual. “Was it ’cause I wore it? Or do ya like brighter colors?”

Your attention snapped back despite yourself.

He reached into his bag again, slower this time, movements deliberately unthreatening. When his hand emerged, it was not holding metal.

It was cloth. Bright, colorful, human cloth

He set it near the edge of the spring, close enough that the water lapped at its hem but did not touch it. The fabric caught the light and seemed to glow against the stone, utterly out of place.

A length of cloth, replacing the black shirt you had ignored the day before.

Not rough sailcloth. Not stiff canvas. The material looked smooth, delicate, something meant to move with a body rather than restrain it. Flowers bloomed across it in soft colors, stitched with care rather than stamped or dyed in haste.

Your eyes tracked it despite your best efforts.

“It’s a kaftan,” he said, glancing at you sidelong. “A dress. Made for women to put on.”

Your stare sharpened.

“They make ’em special at the next island,” he continued, voice easy. “Sew all the stitches by hand. No machines. Figured if I was gonna offend you with clothes, I might as well try not to insult your taste while I was at it.”

He did not push the dress closer.

He did not angle it toward you, did not slide it along the stone with coaxing fingers, or hold it up for inspection. He left it where it was, where the rock stayed dry, and the water never reached, like an offering set down for a creature that might accept it only if he pretended not to care.

A bright, impossible spot among the grey-green moss.

Then, almost abruptly, he stood.

The movement carried the faintest edge of embarrassment, like he had lingered too long or said too much. He cleaned up his meal quickly, practiced and efficient, the tin back into his pack, the spoon wrapped away and gone. No mess left behind. No excuse to hover.

“I’ll be back later,” he said, as if this were a simple fact rather than a provocation.

You lifted one hand from the water and waved him off, a sharp, dismissive flick, as if to say, ‘please go, and don’t come back’. 

He paused, just long enough to see it.

A small, sad chuckle slipped from him as he waved back, fingers loose and unthreatening.

“For what it’s worth,” he added, tone dry but not unkind, “I don’t mind the quiet. But I’d prefer ya not freeze yerself outta spite.”

Then he turned and walked away from the spring.

His footsteps were unhurried, steady, fading gradually into the cave’s echoes until there was nothing left of him but the faint scent of salt and smoke and the deeply irritating certainty that he would, in fact, return.

Water smoothed over where you had moved, the surface sealing itself closed. Bubbles rose slowly from your gills, each one breaking free with a quiet insistence. Light shifted again, sliding across stone, across moss, across the place where the cloth lay waiting.

You did not touch the fabric.

Instead, you drifted down.

Down to the bottom of the spring, where the water was clearest and coldest, where the stone pressed firm against your back and the world narrowed to breath and sound. You stayed there long after the echo of his footsteps had fully faded, listening to the small, endless noises of bubbling water and distant drip.

Time passed.

And like he had guessed, the freshwater began to leech the salt and warmth from you, slow and patient. The cold crept past even tough skin, past muscle, settling deep into bone.

It was very cold.

Without meaning to, your eyes drifted upward.

The cloth sat in the sunlight, folded neatly where he had left it. The light caught on it and warmed it, made it glow brightly against the stone like a fishing lure. Left like bait. Left like an invitation. Left like a test you absolutely refused to acknowledge as such.

You scowled at it.

You did not take it.

You absolutely did not reach for it.

You may, however, have extended one finger.

Just one.

It broke the surface, water sliding from your skin as you stretched upward, slow and cautious. You poked the fabric once, lightly, as if expecting it to vanish or snap back at you.

It was warm and irritatingly soft.

You withdrew immediately, finger snapping back beneath the water as if it had burned you. 

That didn’t count.

You sank back down into the spring, arms crossed tight, chin lifted in defiance, and pretended very hard that your bones were not aching and that the warmth lingering on your fingertip meant nothing at all.

After all, you told yourself, it was just a human covering. It was beneath you. You were not losing a battle of wills to a human armed with patience, sunlight, and a very unfair understanding of cold.

You swam, not elegantly but in tight, irritated circles around the spring, tail slicing the water in sharp, inefficient strokes, stirring the cold back out your muscles just to spite him. When that did nothing but make you ache faster, you shifted tactics and sought out the sunniest patches of rock beneath the water's surface, draping yourself against them with deliberate care. You pressed your side to the stone, taking the warmth provided by the daylight filtering through the cave mouth, pretending this was strategic rather than desperate.

You lay there.

You moved when the sun did, drifting just enough to keep the light from burning your eyes. When the glare shifted, you settled again, letting the water cradle you in stillness. Time lost its edges. Hours passed, marked only by the slow creep of shadow across stone and the growing, undeniable awareness of how cold you were becoming.

This was the longest the human had left. The spring felt emptier for it, the silence deeper, heavier.

Eventually, you pushed yourself up from the bottom.

Slowly. Carefully. As if the cloth might vanish the moment you acknowledged it properly.

You crept over to the edge where the garment rested. It had not moved. The colors were dimmer now, no longer catching full sunlight, but still bright against the rock. You stared at it, brows furrowed, lips pressed thin.

Human fabric did not do well underwater. You knew that. It would cling. Weigh you down. Soak and drag. And no matter how pretty it was, it would not stave off much of the cold.

Still.

With a single finger, you hooked the edge of the cloth and pulled it down into the water.

It darkened immediately as it soaked, colors deepening rather than fading. You half expected it to stiffen or sink like a dead thing. Instead, it moved easily, drifting around your hand, light and pliant.

You hesitated only a moment longer before slipping it over your shoulders.

The fabric settled around you.

And it did warm you. It was made with a water-resistant thread. 

Not only that, it's soft, too. Smoother than you had expected, the fabric wrapped around your skin without scraping or resisting, holding heat instead of entirely stealing it. It settled against you like it belonged there, moving with you rather than against you, easing the ache that had crept into your bones.

He’d been useful.

The realization soured instantly.

You scowled, irritation flaring hot enough to send a sharp puff of bubbles spilling from your gills. A low grumble escaped you, warped and distorted by the water, a curse that came out broken and furious. The bubbles rose and popped above you, one after another, betraying your mood to the empty spring.

You tugged at the fabric once, as if daring it to fail you now that you had acknowledged its usefulness. It did not. The warmth held, stubborn and unyielding, refusing to give you the satisfaction of rejecting it.

You sank back slightly, arms crossing over your chest again, tail flicking in a short, irritated sweep.

Fine.

You would keep it.

.

.

.

Strangely, you smelled the fish before you heard the human’s footsteps.

The scent drifted into the cave on warm air, sharp and unmistakable. Salt. Oil. Blood. The clean, vivid smell of the open sea carried into stone and shadow where it did not belong.

Had he gone fishing?

Your stomach betrayed you immediately, twisting hard enough that you had to grit your teeth. You had not hunted since the chaos of the cove. Stress had burned through what little appetite you had left, hollowing you out in ways even cold water could not numb. Now your body reminded you of that failure with cruel, impeccable timing.

The human entered the cave without announcing himself.

You tracked him by sound and scent alone, eyes half lidded as you listened. The faint clink of something set down on stone. The whisper scrape of a blade being sheathed. The careful way he moved, like someone very aware that sudden noise might provoke you.

He had returned with fish.

He sat again at a respectful distance from the spring, settling cross-legged with the same deliberate calm as before. He did not look at you right away. He set his things down first, unwrapped the cloth, and adjusted the placement of what he carried so it did not slide or scrape.

The scent filled the cave anyway.

Fresh enough that you could almost taste the sea still clinging to it, the faint metallic tang of blood braided with salt. Your gills fluttered once before you could stop them, opening slightly as if the water itself might carry the smell closer.

He glanced up then, just briefly, eyes flicking to where you hovered in the spring. His gaze paused.

“You’re wearin’ it,” he said, not triumphantly. Just… noting. “Ya look nice.”

You scowled at him, baring nothing but irritation, and sank a fraction deeper so the water kissed the fabric clinging to your shoulders. The cloth darkened but held its warmth.

“Didn’t figure you’d freeze yerself to make a point,” he added mildly. “But I wasn’t sure.”

He reached for a chunk of fish. It was one of your favorites— A Deep-Silver tuna fish, you realized.

It was already cleaned. Head removed. Scales gone. The flesh gleamed faintly in the cave light, pale and firm. He worked with practiced efficiency, fingers steady as he separated portions with care rather than greed.

The man spoke, voice easy and conversational, as if narrating his own afternoon rather than attempting psychological warfare. One glance showed he had taken the time to debone and descale the fish.

“Ran into this fellow not an hour ago,” he said lightly. “Was very confident about his chances. Turned out to be misplaced optimism.”

He shifted, and you heard the unmistakable sound of something being wrapped. Leaf or cloth, neat and deliberate. He was not tossing it down like scraps. He was packaging it, careful and precise, like a gift he expected might be appreciated eventually.

“I ain’t eatin’ all of it,” he said easily, as if answering a question you had not asked. “Caught more than I need.”

Your body leaned forward despite you, mouth watering.

If he cooked it, you would kill him. 

He picked up a separate piece and moved away from his firepit.

He set it down where the sun touched the rock, close enough that the scent drifted easily over the spring, far enough that you would have to reach for it. He placed it on a flat stone where it would not slip into the water, where it could sit untouched without insult.

You could see it, still smelling of salt rather than smoke. He had cleaned with care, then wrapped neatly in a broad leaf, not tossed or dropped, but handled the way one presented a meal to an honored friend. 

Then he settled himself with his back against the cave wall and opened a tin of his own food.

He ate slowly, unhurried, without exaggerating enjoyment. Just eating like this was an ordinary afternoon and not a standoff with a furious creature who could tear him apart if she chose.

You scowled at the rock in front of you, claws digging into stone hard enough to scrape.

When he finished, he set the tin aside and leaned back, hands braced behind him, gaze tipping toward the cave ceiling with exaggerated leisure, as if he were sunning himself on a dock instead of sitting under threat of teeth.

“For the record,” he added lightly, “the alternative was me cookin’ you oatmeal. And ya don’t want that.”

You shot him a venomous look sharp enough to peel barnacles.

That was when your stomach betrayed you.

It growled, loud and obscene in the clear water, the sound reverberating through the spring and ricocheting off stone like an accusation. It cut straight through your dignity and sank its teeth first into your pride.

Your arms locked, every thought vanished except the desperate, useless hope that maybe he had not heard it.

Above the spring, the human paused. Just long enough to register the sound.

Then, rudely, he snorted and shook his head, lips quirking like a man who had just won a private argument he had not even bothered to voice.

“Gonna pretend that was the cave,” he said pleasantly. “Impressive acoustics.”

Heat flooded your face as you sank lower at once, water closing over your shoulders. Mortified fury burned hot under your skin, sharp enough to sting. Your tail flicked in short, irritated snaps, sending restless ripples across the spring as you fixed your glare on absolutely nothing.

Eventually, the man spoke again, his voice gentler now, though no less maddening.

“If ya don’t like this one,” he said, “I can look fer another. Just say the word.”

Your posture stayed locked. Arms crossed tight. Chin lifted. If you became a statue long enough, perhaps he would forget you were capable of movement at all.

He exhaled softly. Thoughtfully.

“If you’re thinkin’ of outwaitin’ me,” he continued mildly, “you might wanna know I’m infamously stubborn.”

You held yourself perfectly still, arms locked, chin high, tail coiled beneath you like a held breath. If obstinacy were the measure, you could outlast him.

He shifted slightly.

Not closer. Not away. Just enough that you felt his attention move, subtle as a change in current. Not directly toward you, but toward the surface of the spring itself, as if he could somehow see the words you were refusing to give him hovering just beneath the water.

“All right,” he said at last.

The tone changed. Not louder. Not sharper. Just settled, like a decision clicking quietly into place.

“Here’s my play,” he said, clicking his tongue. “If yer freakin’ out and don’t wanna eat cause yer scared, let me tell ya what I want.”

Your tail whipped, sharp and sudden, sending a hard ripple through the spring that slapped against the stone.

“One conversation a day,” he continued, calm and maddeningly reasonable, as if explaining a perfectly fair compromise rather than negotiating with a furious siren who had very nearly taken his throat.

He glanced toward the spring again, this time openly amused, like he already knew exactly how close he was to getting a reaction.

“You can glare or sulk. Hell, you can pretend I ain’t here most the time. You do need to eat, and occasionally talk.”

You bristled despite yourself, shoulders drawing tight as heat flared under your skin. The absolute nerve of him. As if sulking were not a time-honored, deeply intentional strategy. As if you were not making a point.

He paused deliberately. Let the idea settle into the space between you, into the water, into the quiet you had been wielding like fangs. 

“But,” he added lightly, almost kindly, “you do have to listen. And once ya do start talkin’, a countdown begins.”

Your tail slowed.

“A month of us chitchattin’,” he went on, like he was offering a mild inconvenience rather than dangling freedom in front of you, “then I set ya free.”

You rose just enough for your eyes to break the surface, cold water streaming from your lashes. Your expression was pure offense. You did not speak, but the look you gave him was blistering, a promise of violence delayed only by curiosity.

His gaze snapped to you, quick and sure, and the corner of his mouth lifted. Simply pleased, like a man who had finally found the right thread to pull.

“Ah,” he murmured, voice soft and entirely too confident. “That’s my pretty darlin’.”

Heat rushed from your chest to your face, sharp and unwelcome.

You snarled and sank again, water sloshing violently as you dropped back beneath the surface. Furious. Flustered. Your claws scraped stone as your heart hammered, every instinct screaming at the audacity of him.

You settled at the bottom of the pool, dragging your claws slowly through the rock as if you could carve your anger into something solid. The sound grated faintly through the water, a useless, private act of spite that did nothing to calm the storm in your chest.

This man-creature brought you food and served it fresh, not burned and ruined the way he prepared his own. He sat and waited without fidgeting, without pacing, without demanding proof that you were listening. And for what? 

Your attention?

Ridiculous.

You knew better than to trust a human. Every story your sisters told ended the same way, with blood in the water and lessons learned too late. Humans took. Humans lied. Humans promised safety and delivered cages.

You needed to get out of here.

Damn this spring. Damn the coven. Damn the fishman and his shadow and the bargain they would have carved out of your body. None of that felt as dangerous as this slow, quiet unraveling inside you for your soulmate human who made you feel so anomalous. 

Yet, you still had one option. 

The ancient answer to most human problems needing to be resolved—You would sing to him. Sing in the way your sisters of old sang to sailors when they wanted something simple and final.

Your throat tightened as the idea settled, the echo of old instincts stirring awake like something stretching after a long sleep. The song was still there. Waiting. Sharp and beautiful and terrible.

The thought made your gut curdle. To do that, you'd have to pull on those same powers that had brought his conscience to you, to share that intimate part of you. He didn’t deserve to hear your song. You curled in on yourself at the bottom of the spring, spine bowed, teeth clenched so hard your jaw ached. Your claws bit into the stone until they found purchase, little white lines scoring the rock like a record of your thoughts.

But…

A single, well-shaped melody would have him glassy-eyed and unsteady, breath hitching as the sound worked its way under his skin. Some sailors resisted for a few heartbeats. Some rushed the shore, some the water. A few went straight in without thinking at all, lungs filling as happily as if they were embracing a lover.

If you timed it right, you could strike and escape. Use his daze, get your claws into him, and haul yourself up with his weight and momentum working for you instead of against you. Hell, if the song landed cleanly, he might help you by grabbing that bridge. Then you could take the board, and he could tread water.

It was tempting in the clean, final way vicious solutions often were. 

But a siren song was not always guaranteed.

You were not one of the elders, trained from childhood to shape notes like weapons and bait all at once. You had the voice, yes. The old blood sang in your throat, rich and dangerous and deep. But the technique? The discipline? Much of that had been lost with the shrinking of the coven. Songs passed mouth to mouth, half-remembered, warnings and fragments instead of full instruction.

And humans were not all the same.  Some were terrifyingly resilient. Some shook off songs like water sliding off an oilskin, eyes clearing with a snarl instead of surrender. 

This human, especially, had already proven himself difficult. He was controlled and observant, and like the seas, couldn't be rushed. 

Either way, now that you’d thought it, you’d have to decide quickly. 

The moment you surfaced, the moment you opened yourself to air and sound, that strange, unwanted thread between your minds might stir again. One only he seemed to be able to scry. 

He’d know your plan. 

You still did not understand it, but you knew it had answered your song once already, slipping a human voice into your head like a trespasser who knew exactly where to sit.

But as you gazed at him through the clear water, the desire to sing swelled in your chest until it hurt. It flooded your throat, heavy and insistent, a pressure that had nothing to do with hunger or fear. It didn’t hold the sharp, predatory urge to dominate or destroy, one meant to bend him and drown him. Let the sound exist between you, to see what he would do with it. To see if he would still sit there still calmly when faced with something ancient and beautiful and terrible.

Yes, you would do it.

Your gills fluttered, quick and shallow. The water around your mouth trembled as your lips parted a fraction, just enough to feel the promise of sound waiting behind your teeth. If you failed, you would accept whatever currents followed. You would take the path laid before you, whether it led back into the sea, into violence, or into something worse.

You opened your mouth.

Angling your head back slightly, you let the first note slip free beneath the surface, pushing water from your gills as your lungs emptied, then refilled. The sound bloomed low and deep, muffled by the spring, more vibration than melody. Small ripples bubbled around you, skittering outward in delicate rings as the song gathered itself.

Then you pulled upward. Your head broke the surface, hair slicked back, lips parting as you drew in air and let the melody rise with it.

And the moment your lips hit air, the human’s casual demeanor shattered. 

The easy sprawl vanished. His spine straightened. One hand flexed against the stone, fingers curling as if he had to physically stop himself from moving. His body seized, then went still, then taut again in an instant; head snapping toward you, and eyes locking on with sudden, razor-sharp focus. 

So he wasn’t immune. 

Good.

You kept the melody sweet at first. Wordless and simple, a sound shaped like moonlight on water, like the memory of something gentle and just out of reach. It slid across the cave softly, testing the air, feeling for resistance. 

The human’s breathing changed. You could hear it now, the careful restraint giving way to something shallower, more deliberate. He leaned forward, shoulders angling toward the spring as if his gravity itself had shifted.

Encouraged, you surfaced a little more.

Your melody deepened, warming as it stretched, turning from sweet into beckoning. Ache threaded through it now, subtle but unmistakable, a promise shaped like longing rather than command. You let it linger between notes, letting the silence do as much work as the sound itself. Your body drifted closer through the water, as if the same tide was pulling you forward, and you were weaving.

The human twitched, a twist of that eldritch power he had peeking out and flaring. You pulled back, and for a heartbeat, your chest tightened. Had he the ability to snap himself free?

You sang words, weaving intent into the music.

Then, to your sharp, vicious satisfaction, his abilities, whatever they were, scattered and dispersed like a school of fish.

He stood up and began walking towards you.

Not easily, like the sailors of old who lurched toward the water with glassy eyes and empty smiles. He moved haltingly, one careful step closer, then another, like every inch was earned through sheer force of will. His muscles were rigid, his shoulders drawn tight, his jaw clenched so hard you could see the strain in it.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

The word was rough, barely louder than the water lapping against the stone. It didn’t sound like a warning meant to stop you, but rather a plea meant to steady himself. Too bad.

You let the song soften, brushing against him rather than digging in. You could feel the tension in him like a taut line, the way he leaned forward without fully committing, the way his hands flexed uselessly at his sides as if he did not trust them to behave.

His grey eyes never left you, and they turned even darker the closer he came. The pupils blown wide in a way that had nothing to do with the cave’s dim light. His lips parted as if to speak, then pressed together again, teeth scraping softly as he swallowed hard.

It was working.

Your pulse raced as you held the melody, watching him balance on that knife’s edge, knowing that with one more turn of the song, you could tip him forward.

Then, the bond between your minds flared.

A heady, crackling static spread between you, thick and intimate, like charged air just before lightning breaks. It brushed along your nerves and sank deep, making your scales prickle one by one, and your breath hitch without permission. Awareness bloomed all at once, sharp and intoxicating, as if some hidden sense had snapped fully awake.

Your song peeled him open, and you felt his intentions as clearly as if his thoughts had been placed in your palms, warm and unguarded. 

Oh.

Oh.

So that really was why he had followed you. He had come to woo you, to court you like a human woman, as, due to the soulbond, he saw you as his mate. You had thought it was a clever ruse, but the truth was evident in his own head, even if it was confusing and ridiculous. That a human would track you across seas for an insane notion of love was insanity. 

He had come to you as the fishman had. But in a human way, without that instinct of hunger sharpened into ownership. He didn’t feel the urge to cage or claim by force, and felt sorry for tricking you. 

The entire ordeal was so absurd, the notion of a human daring to approach a siren not as prey or conqueror, but as a lover?

He had said as much, but of course, who would believe a human? Fishpeople and humans didn’t mate. 

Sirens didn’t love.

Stupid, foolish, arrogant human. 

And yet.

His mind was a temperate place. The way he thought of you was… good-natured. Not merely lustful or possessive. He did find you beautiful, luminous, and lovely, but cared for you in a way that did not beg to be seized. His desire carried awe in it, a careful worship that alarmed you more than any threat could have. For a man to be so intelligent, yet unwilling to chain you to him with that same mind, was unexpected. 

A traitorously, a warm swirl of appreciation curled through you at the dedication. 

It coaxed at your gentler side, the one your sisters rarely spoke of. The one that remembered songs meant for moonlight rather than drowning. 

Your melody deepened reflexively, instinct answering instinct as you lost your careful edge and the end goal blurred, the sea taking over where intention faltered. The song grew richer, fuller, less shaped like a lure and more like a confession you had never meant to give voice to.

As you sang, you tugged gently at his love. 

Not yanking, but pulling with sensuous luster. His body responded inch by inch, step by halting step, like he was negotiating with himself rather than surrendering outright. You could feel it in him, the way restraint braided tightly with want, the way every muscle seemed caught between advancing and holding fast. The bond between you thrummed brighter, richer, almost decadent in its pull, like something indulged rather than endured. 

He was strong, no doubt about it—but his love made him move.

And his love for you made you feel. 

Made you sing a song that was more beautiful than any you had ever sung. A song that pulled the stars, sun, and moon to the tides. A dance where they combined, spinning into celestial creation anew. 

Made a deeper tucked into your soul stir. 

For the first time, you felt what must be that thing known as desire.

Heat unfurled low in your stomach, slow and insistent, spreading with a dangerous idea. To accept his hands on you and close the distance yourself. To bridge the space with intent rather than force and draw close. 

Close enough that your teeth could press into his shoulder, not to kill, not to feed, but to mark. To leave a sign of possession that went both ways, binding instead of breaking.

Your song wavered for half a heartbeat, trembling under the sudden, crushing weight of that instinct. The note frayed at the edges, not enough to break the melody, but enough that you felt it shudder through you. The desire to pull him closer tangled with something dangerously tender, something soft and aching that had no place in the brutal stories of sirens and sailors. 

Because whatever this was, what had awakened inside you, it was far more dangerous than hunger.

You desired the human.

The truth landed with terrifying clarity, sharp and brilliant as sunlight cutting through deep water. There was no romance to it, no soft illusion to hide behind. You saw it all at once, not as a wish, but as a consequence, an instinct written into bone and blood. 

You desired to couple with the human, to mark him as yours.

And the moment you marked him, the moment your teeth broke his skin, and you tasted his blood, a process would begin that could not be halted or undone.

You would become bound.

Bound in the old way. The forbidden way. The way your elders spoke of love only in warnings and half-buried songs meant to frighten the young into caution. 

For sirens, soulmates were not a blessing. They were a calamity. A reckless weaving of life and soul, stitching two beings together so tightly that one could not suffer without the other feeling the pull. Your well-being would be knotted to his choices. Your survival was braided to his devotion, and if he faltered, you would fall.

That was why it had been disregarded, buried, and hated. Why sirens were taught to fear love more than starvation.

Your song trembled again, thinner now, laced with doubt. It wanted to stop. You wanted it to stop. But the pull had already taken hold, like a whirlpool you had drifted too close to without realizing how strong it was.

And when you looked up again, the human was there.

Right in front of you.

So close you could see the fine, dark fringe of his lashes, the faint imperfections in his fragile human skin. Close enough to feel the heat of him, to sense the way his breath hitched as he fought against something he did not fully understand. In his eyes was that same infuriating, unwavering devotion, bright and earnest and utterly ruinous. The look of a man who would cross oceans again and again just to hear your voice one more time.

He was so close you could hear the rush of his blood, see how pale he’d gone beneath the cave light. Watch his uneven breath, notice how his strange eyes widened, leaving only a sliver of gray, like the last light caught on a swell. 

He had no idea. No understanding of what your desire truly meant. Of the price it demanded. Of the life it would end, and the other it would force you into.

But you did.

And still, you wanted it.

And to your horror, you realized your plan had worked far too well. The human was at the edge of the pool with you, holding you in his arms securely. His hands were on you, gripping with the same desperate certainty you felt in yourself, fingers curling faces close, hearts beating in rhythm.

Your melody screeched, broke, and died mid-breath, not because you chose to end it, but because the man had surged forward and taken your neck in his hands and kissed you.

And it stole everything you had previously known.

His mouth was hot, firm, unmistakably human, and the contrast sent a violent shiver through you, and he needily deepened the kiss.

That cursed bond between you flared white-hot, no longer a hum but a crack of lightning, sensation slamming through you faster than thought.

Your claws curled instinctively, not to strike, but to anchor. They curled into the black of his warm shirt, pulling you to seek heat. His grip tightened in response, gripping your wet dress, like he was hurling himself towards the same pull tearing through you.

For a heartbeat, there was no song, no plan, no fury. Just that burden of new desire that was uncontrollable as a rogue wave.

You would mark him if this continued.

The thought hit with brutal clarity, snapping you out of your self-spun hypnotism all at once. The spell shattered. Your breath hitched hard, focus snapping painfully sharp as heat and pressure flooded in. Air vanished from your lungs in a startled gasp, the world narrowing to sensation alone.

You tore your mouth away.

The cave rang cold with the sudden absence of it, like something vital had been ripped free. You jerked sideways and landed hard on the rocks, a cry tearing from your throat as pain flared up your side, but you did not look away from him.

Neither of you spoke.

The silence pressed in too fast, too heavy, as if the world itself had realized something sacred had been crossed and did not know how to proceed. Your chest heaved as you stared at him, eyes wide and unfocused, the echo of your song still vibrating painfully through your bones, an aftershock that refused to fade.

He looked just as stunned.

His breathing was uneven, pupils blown wide, the careful control you had observed fractured clean through. His hands hovered where they had been holding you, now lost, uncertain. His fingers flexed once, hesitant, as if unsure whether they were allowed to help, or even understand what had just happened.

You almost surged forward again.

Almost pinned him. Almost took the smooth skin at the hollow of his shoulder between your teeth. Almost bit down and began the process and—

“Not yet, darlin’,” he said.

His voice was deep and steady, oddly calm against your ragged breathing. Grounded in a way that stopped you cold. “Yer not ready yet.”

It was enough to break the spell.

The realization hit like cold water.

With no further thought, no plan, no dignity left to salvage, you threw yourself backward.

Water closed over you in a violent splash as you plunged into the pool, the shock stealing what little air you had managed to draw into your lungs. The spring swallowed you whole, merciful and cold, familiar pressure wrapping around your body like a shield. Sound dulled at once. The world softened. The human dissolved into distortion and shadow.

You dove deep and curled in on yourself at the bottom, tail wrapping tight, arms locked around your middle as if you could physically hold yourself together. Your body shook uncontrollably. Your gills fluttered too fast, then too slow, the rhythm breaking as your breath hitched and stuttered.

You heaved, a dry, painful motion that went nowhere, chest spasming as the truth finally crashed down on you.

Your song had betrayed you.

You were supposed to be powerful. Deadly. A sovereign in your own right, feared, admired, untouchable.

But up there, for those few terrible seconds, you had been something else entirely.

The realization crushed the breath from you far more effectively than any hunter’s grip ever could.

You pressed your forehead to the stone and trembled, claws scraping weakly as you tried to ground yourself in the cold, in the pressure, in anything that was not the memory of his mouth or the way your song had answered him too eagerly.

And worse still, you did not know whether the more fearsome cage had been built by the human or by your own heart.

For now, you only knew one thing.

You could not hurt him.

Not any more than you could hurt your own sisters.

-X-Shinies-X-

You didn’t surface.

Not for several days.

After you tore the kaftan to pieces, you folded yourself tight against the bottom of the spring and clung to the rock with numbing determination. Your claws dug into familiar grooves you had carved yourself, as if you could anchor there long enough to be forgotten. You pressed your body flat, belly to stone, tail tucked close, making yourself small in a way you never had before.

As if you could sink into the rock. Become another cold shape at the bottom of the pool. 

The water was clear and merciless. Cold seeped into you slowly, not the sharp bite of the deep but the steady, draining chill of freshwater that never quite warmed. It leeched heat from your muscles and left them heavy and sluggish. Your scales dulled, their usual glow muted to a tired sheen.

Every breath through your gills felt thinner, less satisfying, as if the spring itself had grown weary of sustaining you.

You stayed anyway.

Your stomach cramped in slow, aching pulses, each one a reminder of the fish you had refused, the warmth you had rejected. The scent lingered in memory long after it was gone. Salt. Blood. Sun warmed flesh. It haunted you, tightening your throat until swallowing felt like an effort.

Your body knew what it needed.

It argued relentlessly, sending sharp, insistent signals you ignored out of spite and fear.

Above you, the spring remained quiet. Sound carried strangely, shifting depending on where you turned your head. The faint drip of water from the cave ceiling echoed too loudly. Subtle currents stirred with meaningless motions that mimicked the sea, close enough to hurt, never enough to comfort.

And still, you did not rise.

You flattened yourself harder against the stone, fingers slipping as weakness crept in. Your grip trembled. Your arms ached from holding yourself still for so long, muscles stiff and sore. And every so often, a shudder rippled through you that had nothing to do with the cold.

Your body remembered.

Warmth where there should have been none. Not the ambient heat of the sun on water, but something concentrated and intimate, the press of it against your mouth, against your skin. The way his hands had steadied you, large and certain, not rough, not careless. Too sure. Too precise. Fingers fitting at your waist and shoulder like they had always known where to go.

You remembered the moment your lips met.

The shock of heat, startling and deep, as if the warmth had gone straight through you instead of stopping at the surface. His mouth had been firm, controlled, but not unyielding. There had been hesitation there, a restraint that made it worse, made your body lean forward without permission, chasing what he had not yet given.

Your song had surged in answer.

You clenched your jaw until it hurt and forced the memory down, dragging your attention back to the physical now. The scrape of stone beneath your claws. The dull throb in your tail. The steady, uncaring pressure of water against your skin.

But the heat lingered.

It curled low in your chest and spread outward, warming places the freshwater could not touch. Your breath hitched through your gills, uneven, betraying you again. The contrast was unbearable. Cold water. Warm memory. Control slipping through your fingers, no matter how tightly you held on.

Time lost meaning.

Light shifted above the surface in slow cycles you barely noticed. Hunger and exhaustion dulled your thoughts, softened their edges. Even your anger faded, smoothed into something heavy and aching.

You were no longer furious.

You were hiding.

Hiding from the human. Hiding from the way your body had answered him so easily. Hiding from the change settling into you like a crack in stone, small but irreversible.

The sea had always been your refuge. Pressure, cold, and silence were familiar things. Loneliness had always been enough.

But curled at the bottom of the spring, shaking and weak, you realized with a sick twist in your chest that you were not hiding from the world above.

Not even from him.

You were hiding from the part of yourself that still burned where he had touched you. Hiding from the part that wanted more, traitorous and bright, a heat that refused to be drowned, no matter how deep you sank.

The human had changed, too.

He no longer sat so far back. No longer perched himself at a careful distance like something skittish, like an eel avoiding a strike. He began sitting right at the edge of the pool, boots close enough that the water lapped against the stone near his toes. His shadow now fell directly over the spring instead of stopping short, darkening the surface in a way that made your gills flutter even when you refused to look up.

He was watching you now.

Not with the sharp curiosity from before, and not with that maddening calm confidence that had once felt like a challenge.

This was different.

It was quieter, more focused, intent in a way that made your skin prickle even when you kept your eyes closed, and your body pressed flat to stone.

He had noticed that things had changed.

He noticed how long you stayed submerged, how you no longer surfaced out of spite or boredom, how the sharp, restless energy that once defined your movements had leeched away. You no longer circled the spring or rose just to hiss at him. You stayed low instead, lingering near the bottom.

He no longer ate in front of you. He did not tease or make jokes at your expense. He simply watched the water, his hands resting loosely on his knees, his jaw tight, his eyes tracking the faint distortions that marked where you moved beneath the surface.

Occasionally, his hand dipped into the spring.

Only his fingers, brushing the surface with maddening care.

The contact sent soft ripples downward, breaking gently against your skin and carrying with them the quiet reminder that he was close. Even the water could not fully smother your awareness of him then, nor the faint pull of his concern bleeding through the strange bond you refused to acknowledge.

“You ain’t comin’ up,” he said once, quietly.

There was no accusation in his voice. He was simply stating a fact.

You did not respond.

The next time he came, he brought food again. The fish was fresher than before, laid out carefully where the stone remained dry. He waited. When you did not take it, his mouth pressed into a thin, thoughtful line.

“That’s… not stubborn anymore,” he murmured, more to himself than to you. “That’s somethin’ else.”

He shifted closer, his knees nearly touching the edge of the pool. His shadow stretched farther across the water, swallowing more of the spring. You felt the change even with your eyes closed, the subtle shift in pressure, the instinctive tightening in your body as if bracing for danger.

But he did not reach for you, and he did not command you to rise.

Instead, he exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand over his face like a man who had realized he had misunderstood something important.

You kept your eyes averted, forehead pressed to the rock, but you felt him all the same. His presence pressed faintly through the water, muted but persistent, like a distant current that could not be escaped no matter how deep you sank.

Even the water did little to dull your awareness of him, especially during his brief absences. When he left, the cave grew emptier and quieter, the sudden lack of him a relief at first, a loosening of something tight in your chest. That relief never lasted. It curdled quickly into something worse, heavier than his presence had ever been.

He always returned smelling of salt and effort.

Sometimes he carried fish that were still alive and writhing. He slipped them gently into the spring, one by one, letting them dart and scatter through the water. Silver bodies flashed and vanished as they found the cracks in the stone with ease, disappearing into channels too narrow for your body. They left behind only faint disturbances, ripples that faded almost as soon as they formed.

You watched them go with dull eyes, hunger gnawing at you so sharply that your vision blurred at the edges.

Your body felt heavy now. Wrong.

Your grip on the stone weakened. Your claws slipped more often than they held, scraping uselessly instead of biting deep. The cold had settled into your joints and refused to leave, a damp ache that crept inward until even small movements felt costly. Every breath through your gills took effort, each one shallower than the last, as if the spring itself were slowly asking you to justify staying.

Even your anger had thinned. What remained was brittle and exhausted, no longer sharp enough to keep you upright.

Over time, the human grew more apprehensive.

You felt it in the restless shifts above, the uneven pacing of his weight against stone. His hand brushed the water again, closer this time, fingers lingering just long enough to make your scales twitch before he pulled back as if burned. The ripples drifted down to you, gentle and invasive, breaking against your side.

Concern bled through the bond despite your efforts to drown it.

Maybe he should be worried.

The thought drifted through you with surprising calm.

You could die like this. Curled against cold stone. Letting the spring take what the sea had not. You were tired enough that the idea no longer frightened you. At least here you would never be touched by the fishman. Never have to face the coven’s quiet calculations. Never have to see the worry in the human’s eyes again, or feel the pull of his warmth, or endure the temptation of his presence.

You could simply stay.

Fade.

The water pressed in around you, steady and indifferent, and you let yourself sink deeper into it, loosening your grip on the stone.

You did not think you would ever move again.

Plop.

The sound was small but sharp in the water, wrong enough to cut cleanly through the fog clouding your thoughts. Something light brushed past your fin, then bumped gently into your tail.

You flinched hard, your body twisting on instinct as your claws scraped uselessly against stone while you struggled to orient yourself.

A small shape bobbed in front of you.

You stared at it, vision lagging as you tried to focus. Instinct surged first. Your fangs bared. Fingers splayed. Muscles coiled to strike, to tear apart whatever intrusion had dared drift this close while you were weak.

But the thing did not flee.

Instead, it turned slowly in the water, rocking as the current nudged it, catching the light in soft, muted flashes. Confused, you hesitated just long enough to truly see it.

A small, round object.

It was smooth and cold, its edges worn as if by many hands or many years. A square hole pierced its center, clean and deliberate, nothing like the irregular gaps in shells or coral. A thin length of chain threaded through the opening, metal links glinting faintly like the pale bellies of tiny fish. Its surface was etched with a delicate pattern you did not recognize.

You turned it with two cautious fingers, claws clicking softly against its surface.

It did not bite. It did not pulse with magic. It did not smell of blood or threat. It was foreign in a way that made your head tilt rather than your hackles rise.

Shiny.

You rolled it between your fingers again, watching the way light slid across its face. Tiny marks had been pressed into the metal, shallow lines forming shapes that meant nothing to you. Symbols from a language you had never learned. They felt important, though you could not have said why. The metal itself was warm in a way stone never was, holding heat as if it remembered the hand that had carried it.

Your grip tightened slightly, then loosened.

You felt him watching.

Even through water and stone and the haze of exhaustion, you sensed it, the quiet focus of his attention sharpening the instant you touched the object. The awareness irritated you at once. You bared your teeth in a silent snarl and curled your body tighter, annoyed to realize you had reacted at all. Annoyed that he now knew you were still capable of it.

Whatever this thing was, he had known you would not be able to resist it.

The greedy thing you were. Greedy for shine, for texture, for the unfamiliar weight of something that did not belong to the sea. He would know what it was, just as he knew the purpose of all the other strange items he had offered you. You had no doubt of that. No doubt that if you surfaced and asked, he would answer without hesitation.

You sensed that instinctively, the way sirens sensed intention even when they could not yet name it.

That was likely why he had done it.

To remind you, with infuriating gentleness, that you were allowed to want things. That you could be a little greedy with your own life instead of letting it slip quietly away in the cold.

Without thinking, you curled the object closer, fingers folding protectively around it as if someone might take it from you. The metal pressed against your sternum, solid and undeniable, its cool weight grounding in a way the stone beneath you no longer was.

The realization struck hard enough to freeze you in place.

Your claws halted mid-scratch. Your tail stilled. Your breath caught half-formed in your gills.

You stared at your own hands.

Shame flared hot and sharp, anger turning inward in a vicious spike. Your chest tightened as you twisted upward in a sudden, reckless motion, intent on flinging the object back at him. To strike it against his chest. To make a point. To sink back to the bottom of the spring and let the cold finish what pride had started.

You surged upward and broke the surface—And your breath caught painfully.

Along the edge of the spring, laid out with quiet deliberation, were more objects.

They rested on dry stone in a loose, careful arc, each spaced just far enough apart that your eyes had to move from one to the next. Bits of shell that caught the light. A polished stone smoothed by hands rather than tides. A carved bead, the color of deep waters. 

You froze halfway out of the water, fingers still clenched around the first object, droplets sliding down your arms and back into the spring. Your gills fluttered in sharp, startled bursts as you took in the sight, the careful arc of offerings stealing the air from your lungs more effectively than the cold ever had.

Curiosity surged, fast and treacherous. Greed followed it like a shadow, overwhelming good sense with ruthless efficiency.

“It’s a wedding ring. I put the ring on a cord, as yer fingers are a bit different. That way the cord can go around yer neck.”

You twisted sharply, heart stuttering, and found him leaning against the wall near the entrance, deliberately distant. One boot braced against the stone, posture loose in a way that was anything but careless. The white stick rested between his fingers and then his lips, the ember flaring faintly before he exhaled. A slow gust of white smoke curled upward, ghosting the cave ceiling before thinning away.

He wasn’t looking at you directly.

“It was my mum’s,” he said calmly, nodding toward your clenched hand. “The rest are items I’ve been collectin’.” His gaze drifted across the laid-out objects with an odd softness, like he was inventorying memories rather than metal. “Got a coupla’ more back on my ship. Figured these’ll do fine fer now.”

Your fingers tightened around the ring without permission.

It was an object… from his mother?

The concept snagged painfully in your thoughts. A human keeping something from the woman who birthed him, carrying it across seas, guarding it long enough to decide who deserved it. You did not have a clean place in your mind to put that. Mothers in the siren coven only acknowledged their daughters. They did not leave pieces of themselves behind to be passed forward to their sons. Sons were almost immediately given away, cast away, or forgotten by the sea.

Your chest felt strange as you stared at the simple circle, at the way the metal had warmed in your grip. He had known her long enough to receive something like this. 

How… perplexing.

His mouth twitched around the stick, not quite a smile, like he could sense your confusion even without meeting your eyes. “Didn’t think you’d appreciate flowers,” he added lightly. “I dunno if sirens do weddin’s, but if ya do, I figure it’s probably coral. Shells. Shiny things.”

Your tail flicked beneath the surface, sending a small, agitated wave against the stone.

Wedding?

“It’s when a man and a woman choose to be together,” he said, voice steady, almost cautious. “For the rest of their lives.” He waved his hand a little as he spoke, a vague, encompassing motion that ended, unmistakably, in your direction.

Humans…mated for life?

You looked down at the pretty object. It was very pretty, but felt laughably inadequate for such a lofty statement.

You lifted it slightly and turned it in the light. The metal caught the sun and held it, warming quickly against your skin. You felt it immediately, heat blooming through your fingers, subtle but insistent, as if the ring remembered fire even here in the water. You blinked, breath catching as the meaning slid into place.

Was he—

You raised the ring and looked at him fully now, eyes narrowing, sharp and demanding. Not curious. Not confused. You needed confirmation. Needed him to say it plainly so you could not twist it into something safer.

“Yeah,” he said evenly.

“It’s a matin’ gift.”

His gaze held yours, steady and unflinching, stripped bare of humor or distance. There was nothing left in it but honesty. “I told you the first time we spoke,” he added quietly. “I was gonna make you my wife.”

You looked down again at the ring.

A mating gift. From a human.

Your coven would never believe it. And if they did, they would already be sharpening teeth and schemes in equal measure, outraged at the audacity of a soft, surface-born creature daring to speak your name in the same breath as bond and permanence. A human claiming a siren was not merely foolish.

It was blasphemous.

And yet.

Instead of anger, curiosity stirred.

You floated a little closer.

The movement was small and deliberate, measured in inches rather than strides. Water slid over your shoulders as you rose, cool against skin still sensitive, light catching faintly along your scales. The glow there pulsed softly as your body broke the surface. You stopped well short of the stone’s edge, leaving the spring between you like a boundary neither of you crossed.

Your voice had not been used in days.

When it finally emerged, it was rough and low, stripped of song, stripped of command. No magic. No pull. Just sound. Just you.

“You—” The word scraped out unused, raw enough to make you flinch. You swallowed, throat tight, the taste of salt sharp on your tongue. “You,” you tried again, steadier now. “A human… wants to mate a siren?”

He finally turned fully toward you, and instinct tugged you lower in the water. Wetness slid up over your mouth and nose as you dipped beneath the surface just enough to feel safer, cooler, steadier. You watched him through the shimmer of the spring, every sense sharpened, wary and alert.

He studied you for a long moment.

His gaze was steady, thoughtful, layered with something that made your scales prickle despite the distance between you. When he spoke, it was slower than before, careful, as if he knew the wrong phrasing could splinter something fragile.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not really about what you are.”

His eyes did not waver.

“It’s just that it’s you.”

The words landed harder than you expected.

Anger flared on instinct, sharp and hot, a familiar defense snapping up to shield something softer beneath it. Your claws flexed, scraping against the stone as you surged upward, water spilling from your shoulders.

“You think,” you hissed, voice edged and raw, “that I would bind myself to a human for a little metal and sweet words?”

He did not bristle or argue.

“I think,” He said evenly, his voice calm and unyielding, “that we deserve a chance to see if we could be happy together. Find love and happiness.”

The phrase landed oddly.

So small. So human.

Happiness. He said it like it was a tangible thing, something that could be chosen and held, weighed against bloodlines and curses and the slow erosion of what you were. As if it could stand on equal footing with duty, with legacy, with the quiet, inevitable cost of existing as you did.

You tasted the word and found it thin.

What even was happiness, to a creature who measured time in tides and loss in generations? To someone who knew that wanting was dangerous, and permanence was a lie, the sea punished without mercy?

You clicked your tongue, sharp and dismissive, the sound cutting cleanly through the space between you.

“Soulmates ain’t nothin’ to ignore,” he continued, his voice steady.

He pushed off the wall half a step, then stopped himself deliberately, as if crossing that distance without invitation would ruin everything. He stayed where he was, palms open, posture restrained, the choice visible in the way he held himself.

“And I ain’t askin’ you to agree now,” he went on. “But give me two weeks. Two weeks of your time and your words. Then I’ll take you back to the sea.”

Your gaze flicked to the ring.

“It’s yours,” he said at once. “Whether you choose to leave or not. I ain’t gonna force you to be with me if you don’t want me, but it’s yours. I don’t want it back.”

He exhaled slowly, a controlled release of breath.

“But I am gonna make sure we get a chance,” he finished. “To figure out why we’re connected. What it means. And whether it’s somethin’ worth fightin’ for.”

Your tail flicked beneath the surface, sending a sharp ripple through the spring. The water between you felt suddenly thinner, charged, as he watched you with quiet intensity.

“Aren’t you curious too?” he asked. “Why a human and a siren would be bound?”

You wanted to throw the ring back at him. To snap it in half between your fingers and prove how fragile and laughable such promises were. Everyone broke vows the way storms broke masts, without apology and without regret.

Instead, you closed your fist around it, the metal biting into your palm.

Your gaze drifted to the objects laid out between you.

If the human was telling the truth, and that was a large and dangerous if, then all you had to do was wait him out. Two weeks was nothing. A blink against the span of a siren’s life. You could return to the coven, sing with your sisters, and pretend this strange interlude had never happened. The fishman would likely be gone by then, probably assuming you were dead.

You could not truly lose.

Smoke drifted between you, thin and fleeting, curling and vanishing like something that had never intended to stay.

“How…” you said quietly, then steadied yourself. “How can I trust you?” Your eyes lifted to meet his. “Or you, me?”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then, instead of answering, the human bent and picked up the wooden board. The one for you to exit the spring.

Your muscles tensed on instinct, coils of readiness tightening through your body. You braced for another trick. Another test. Another careful maneuver meant to corner you.

He did not look at you as he moved.

With a steady, deliberate thunk, he set the board back into the water. One end sank until it rested securely against the spring’s edge, angled just right, the surface slick and unmistakable.

A way out.

He straightened.

And then, deliberately, he turned his back to you.

No glance over his shoulder. No sideways look to see what you would do. Just the broad line of his shoulders beneath his shirt, fabric pulled taut across his back as he lifted one hand and waved lazily toward the cave mouth.

“You can leave now,” he said calmly, settling off to the side of the board, close enough that his boot rested against it. “I won’t stop ya. Hell, I’ll even help ya back to the sea.”

Your breath caught despite yourself.

“But,” he added, glancing toward the objects laid out by the spring without fully turning around, his voice still maddeningly even, “that bullshark fishman is still prowlin’ out there. Just so ya know.”

Your body reacted before your pride could stop it.

You stiffened, nearly submerging again, fins flaring wide in alarm, eyes flashing pale with instinctive fear.

How—how had the human known?

The answer came too quickly to deny. Of course, he knew. He had not found you by accident. He had tracked you across seas and islands; of course, he would have seen the signs. The desperate way you had hauled yourself onto land—the circling shadows in the shallows. The predator testing the edge of your refuge while you were trapped and exposed.

“He is?” you asked, far more softly than you meant to.

The human nodded, as if confirming the tide. “Stubborn bastard,” he said mildly. “Not that I’m one to talk.” A faint huff of dry humor escaped him. “But I’m guessin’ you didn’t drag yourself onto the beach for the scenery.”

You flinched and pulled inward, shoulders tightening, tail curling reflexively beneath you.

“He cornered you,” The man continued, his voice steady but edged now with something harder. Protective. “Must’ve seen me around. Figured I took you.” His jaw set. “Ain’t hard to imagine what he wants.”

Something dangerous flickered behind his eyes.

“Makes my blood boil.”

Your lips pressed together before a sharp huff escaped you. Anger surged fast and hot, snapping up because fear always arrived wrapped in it.

“I don’t need your pity,” you snapped, claws digging into the stone hard enough to gouge pale lines through it. “Or your protection. What could a weak human possibly do?”

The words rang in the cave, brittle and sharp.

The human didn’t rise to them. Instead, he looked at you fully then, serious. His expression had gone sober in a way that was not sharp or threatening, but grounded, as if something in him had settled rather than risen.

“I ain’t pityin’ you,” he said evenly. “And I ain’t protectin’ you because you’re weak.” He shifted just enough to face you squarely, his posture firm without being aggressive, unmovable without being confrontational. “I’m helpin’ because no man has a right to a body, doesn’t matter the race.”

His eyes stayed on yours.

“Not even me.” 

He let the words hang there, unadorned and uncompromising. They were simple words. Ordinary ones. And somehow they struck harder than any threat you had expected.

You looked away, blinking slowly, jaw tightening as you tried to reassemble the armor you had been wearing so carefully. Then you glanced back at him, sharp and suspicious, as if to remind him—and yourself—that you were still the one cornered here. That he had engineered this place, this pause, this forced safety.

He caught the look immediately.

“I ain’t sayin’ this to scare you, or make myself look better,” he said calmly. “I’m just layin’ out the truth.”

This human was a crafty one.

You could feel it in the way he spoke, in the things he chose to say plainly and the things he left untouched. He did not smell of deceit. The bond did not prickle or recoil. Nothing in him rang false.

And yet the truth had been arranged carefully, like stones placed across a rushing current. Close enough together that you could cross if you wished, but only in the direction he had chosen.

“The truth,” you repeated.

Your tail shifted beneath the surface, sending faint ripples across the spring. “That you’re somehow… concerned for me?”

“Of course,” He said simply.

He gave a small, honest shrug. “I can’t go into the ocean to save ya. That ain’t my world.” His gaze stayed steady, unflinching. “But I can get you outta this situation if you stop tryin’ to eat me long enough for us to communicate.”

Damn him, that was pretty funny.

The realization slipped in sideways, unwanted and irritating, like warmth where you had braced for pain. You hated that it loosened something in your chest. Hated that your anger faltered for half a breath, just long enough for something dangerously close to laughter to threaten the edges of it.

You rose slowly, using the board to lift yourself, muscles taut but controlled. 

Water slid down your cheekbones, along the sharp line of your jaw, dripping back into the spring in a steady, betraying rhythm. Your gills flared once, instinctively, then stilled as you forced them closed. You lifted higher, inch by inch, until your entire face was above the surface. The air felt thin and wrong in your lungs, but you held it.

Your eyes locked onto his.

“You speak as if you know what saving me looks like,” you said, voice still rough, still unused. Each word felt carved out of stone. “As if I haven’t survived the sea longer than you’ve drawn breath.”

His mouth twitched, but he didn’t smile. “I ain’t questionin’ your strength,” he replied. “I’m questionin’ the corner you’re in.”

Your fingers curled against the spring’s edge, claws just barely touching stone. “And you think you are the better option? The human who trapped me?”

He met your gaze evenly. “I think I’m the option that doesn’t end with you bein’ bled dry by someone who sees you as a breeder.”

Ouch. 

You had been that, hadn’t you? To the bullshark. To desperate elders weighing survival like currency. Even to the old songs, which had never asked whether you wanted to sing them.

“And what do you see of me?” you asked quietly.

The man exhaled slowly, smoke curling faintly from his lungs before fading. When he spoke, his voice was lower, stripped of humor entirely.

“I see someone who is tired of runnin’,” he said. “Someone who kept bein’ cornered by creatures bigger than her and still refused to break.” His eyes flicked briefly to your clenched hand, to the ring you still hadn’t let go of. “And I see her interest in things she shouldn’t, her curiosity for something bigger.”

Your chest tightened.

“You don’t get to decide what I want,” you said, but the heat wasn’t there anymore. 

“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I’m not decidin’.”

He gestured again to the board. To the open path. To the cave mouth beyond it.

“I’m givin’ you a place to breathe. Protection and a way off this island in my boat,” he said. “Two weeks. Stay, and maybe say nothin’. But figure out what you want without somethin’ tryin’ to take it from you.”

You were level with him now, close enough now that you could see the tilt in his mouth. The way his pink lips breathed in air. Close enough that you could see the faint crease between his brows, the way his pupils didn’t dilate in fear or emotion. He wasn’t scared at all. 

And he didn’t step back and reach for you. Didn’t lean in to reclaim the space you’d taken. The spring lapped softly against your tail. Your heart beat hard enough that you felt it in your throat.

Your claws curled against the wood, biting in just enough to steady yourself. Your tail shifted beneath the water, restless, unsure whether to coil for flight or strike. The ring was still clenched in your fist, its edge biting into your palm like it was trying to remind you it existed.

“If I agree,” you said slowly, each word weighed and tested before release, “you don’t touch me without permission. You don’t ask me to sing.”

“Agreed.” His answer came immediately.

“If I want to leave,” you continued, eyes never leaving his, “you let me go.”

“Agreed.”

“And if you lie to me,” you finished, something old and dangerous sharpening behind your gaze, “I will kill you, and chew on your bones.”

That earned the faintest curve of his mouth. 

“I’d expect nothin’ less,” he said. The human's gaze held steady. He did not flinch. He did not lean away. He only looked back as if he had been waiting for exactly this.

You stared at him for a long moment longer, memorizing the way he stood there without trying to fill it, without trying to rush you toward yes or no.

Then, finally, you drew a breath that scraped all the way down your throat and said the first true word you had offered him since you’d met.

“Who,” you asked, each syllable deliberate, “are you?”

His mouth curved slightly, not triumphant, but pleased in a way that made your skin prickle.

“I told ya. Names Benn Beckman,” he said honestly. Then he softened, just a fraction. “And your sweetheart, if you’ll let me.”

You bared your teeth. 

“Be careful, Benn Beckman. My kind come with curses.”

-X-Part of Your World-X-

Conversation between you and the human called Benn Beckman came very slowly.

It advanced in increments so small they barely qualified as progress unless you were watching for them, measuring trust the way one measured tides rather than time.

He clarified early, and quietly, that you could simply call him Benn. No title. No ceremony.

You did not oblige him out of kindness or courtesy. In truth, you rarely used his name at all. Names carried weight among your kind, and you were not ready to give him that much leverage.

Still, you were curious.

Curiosity crept up on you the way a current does. Gentle at first. Easy to dismiss. Then suddenly impossible to ignore. It pulled at you sideways, not enough to alarm, just enough that you realized too late you had drifted closer than intended.

Mostly because humans were strange.

You watched Benn whenever he was in the cave. Not because he was pleasing to look at, with lush hair and a well-carved body. Of course not. You watched him for vigilance, for caution, and for the entirely practical hope that he might take his shirt off again.

All right. You couldn’t claim total innocence, but you also had very little else to do.

Benn was, at his core, a simple man who kept to a simple routine. He remained inside the cavern whenever he could, moving with an ease that suggested comfort rather than confinement. There was no restless pacing, no constant need to assert himself or fill the silence with noise. He occupied space the way stone did, solid and unassuming, present without demanding attention.

It was… unsettling.

And, against your better judgment, it is oddly reassuring.

Each morning, without fail, he took a small blade, a bowl of water, and a scrap of cloth and scraped away the hair from his jaw. When you once asked why he bothered, he had shrugged and called it maintenance, like tending a ship’s hull or checking a line before a storm. The comparison made sense to you in a way you had not expected. A human body needed extra care if it was meant to last. 

After that, he left the cavern for a time. He called it bathing, though from what you gathered, it involved plunging himself into a nearby spring and scrubbing himself raw with soap that smelled sharp and foreign. He used that time to check on his vessel, inspect ropes and boards, and wash his clothes. He owned fewer garments than you would have guessed, favoring the same worn shirts and trousers, which he cleaned by hand every few days and hung to dry where the sun and wind could reach them.

His other supplies, however, seemed endless. He produced tools, cloth, food, and strange little objects from packs and compartments he carried into the cavern, each item returned to its exact place once he was finished with it. You never saw him rummage or search. He always knew where everything was. Over time, you began to recognize the pattern of his approach. Everything had a purpose. Everything had an order. Even the things that seemed incidental were placed where he could reach them without thought.

His weapons were cleaned every evening, even on days they were not used. He laid them out carefully on a strip of cloth, disassembled them piece by piece, wiped each part clean, checked edges and mechanisms, then put them back together with practiced ease.

After some prompting, he even began cooking his food just outside the cave, though the smell made your nose wrinkle. He actually burned fish in the fire before eating it. He claimed it was safer, though you suspected humans simply enjoyed ruining perfectly good meals. He skewered them over flame, turning them slowly, watching the flesh change color as if that transformation mattered.

You noticed how he hummed sometimes while cooking, always the same off-key tune, low and absentminded. The way he stopped the instant he realized you were listening, as if caught doing something private. The way he checked the entrance before sitting down, even when nothing had moved for days.

And every day, without fail, he drank a black liquid he called coffee.

The smell alone was offensive. Burnt. Sharp. Acrid in a way that scraped the inside of your nose. You watched him sip it slowly, eyes half-lidded. Once, perhaps out of distraction or interest, he left the cup on the edge of the spring.

You stared at it for a long time.

Eventually, curiosity won as it always did.

You rose just enough to reach it, fingers careful, suspicious, tilting the cup like it might bite you. The liquid inside was dark as trench water, steaming faintly. 

You poked your tongue out, licking it once. 

The bitterness hit you. 

You recoiled with a sharp hiss, jerking back so fast that water sloshed over the edge of the spring and splattered across the stone. You sputtered, gills flaring wide in protest as your throat burned, face twisting in pure, undeniable betrayal.

That had been a mistake.

Benn stared at you for half a second, lips pressed together as if he were trying very hard not to react.

Then he failed.

He gave a short, barking laugh that echoed off the cavern walls, warm and startled, the sound bouncing back at him before he could rein it in. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, still grinning.

“That bad, huh?” he asked, voice rough with amusement.

“Poisoned!” you snapped hoarsely, gasping as if you had just narrowly escaped death.

He merely retrieved his cup from where it had nearly been knocked over, unfazed, and took another long drink of the offending liquid, as if it had not just tried to end you.

You stared at him in disbelief.

This human had a strange sense of humor. He did not trick you. He did not set traps meant to humiliate or frighten you. But he also did not stop you from making your own mistakes, even when he knew exactly how they would end. He seemed content to let you test the world on your own terms, to let experience teach where warning might have failed.

He lived for these small moments, these shared absurdities, and there was no cruelty in it. No edge meant to make you small or foolish. Only a quiet delight in the exchange itself, as if the interaction was the point rather than any outcome it produced.

His nature confounded you.

Humans, as you had been taught, were meant to be small and selfish. Loud. Demanding. Creatures who filled silence with noise until something gave, until someone yielded. They took and took and called it necessity. Benn did none of that.

He answered your questions, then went back to what he was doing. He did not hover afterward, waiting for approval or gratitude. He did not press you for more. He behaved as though your attention was a gift he was willing to accept if offered, but never something he believed he was owed.

So you began to test him.

“How do you walk without falling?” you finally asked, watching him cross the uneven stone floor of the cavern without so much as a wobble. “It seems unstable.”

He blinked, genuinely caught off guard. Thus far, he had relied on shinies and patience to draw you into conversation, and this—this direct, curious question—clearly surprised him.

“One foot in front of the other,” he answered plainly, then cleared his throat as if realizing that answer might not satisfy you.

You narrowed your eyes, unimpressed.

He glanced down at his boots, then back up at you, and shrugged. “Practice. How’d ya learn to swim?”

You sniffed. “Most things swim. Walking is unnatural.”

“It works surprisingly well on land, but I see your point. Yer fins are made for water.” He gestured vaguely in your direction. “Gives you a speed advantage.” Then he motioned toward himself, just as vaguely. “Two legs on land give an advantage. More stability, too.”

You studied him for a long moment, gaze slow and deliberate, taking in the shape of him as though he were some peculiar, half-finished creature. Then you gestured toward his lower half.

“Is it not difficult to move with so many flopping pieces,” you asked seriously, “with the air pressing on you like that?”

He huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Sometimes. Balance is a constant negotiation.” He rolled his shoulders, relaxed, as if demonstrating the ease he claimed. “But once you master it, you stop thinkin’ about it.”

His answer was simple, but just teasing enough that you suspected he knew exactly what he was doing. 

You tilted your head, eyes cool, and asked, “Does it scare you to know you’re at the bottom of the food chain?”

It was not a polite question.

He didn’t bristle, but paused, giving the question more thought than it probably deserved.

“Not me,” he said at last. “But I suppose some folk probably are.” A beat, then a faint huff of amusement. “Guess we mostly coped by inventin’ guns.”

As if on cue, he reached down to his side and picked the weapon up, turning it in his hands with casual familiarity.

Your reaction was instant. You bared your teeth in a sharp hiss, sound resounding off the stone, fins flaring wide in unmistakable displeasure.

He froze.

Then, very deliberately, he set the gun back down, easing it onto the stone as if even the sound of it touching the ground might matter. His palms lifted in an open, unmistakable gesture of surrender.

“Easy,” he said calmly. “Told ya, sweetheart. It’s only for bad-intentioned fellows.”

His gaze met yours, steady and unflinching, not defensive but firm.

“Much like the sea,” he continued, “a man’s gotta use what he can to survive. I ain’t gonna use it on you or your own.”

You did not dignify that with a response.

Instead, you dipped beneath the water, letting the cool blue close over your head and put distance between the two of you. Down there, sound softened. Down there, the world behaved the way it was supposed to. Guns, like humans, didn’t do well in water.

You heard, faintly, the sound of him muttering a curse under his breath. Then the soft click of his lighter. A pause.

And then—light.

Something sparkled through the water, catching even the muted glow of the spring. You turned despite yourself, eyes tracking it as it moved.

A trinket.

Or shinies, as you had once accidentally called them.

You had fumbled the word badly, water leaving your gills too fast while your lungs scrambled to remember what they were meant to do. The sound had come out wrong, soft and sibilant, and the moment it left your mouth, you knew you’d made a mistake.

He had latched onto it immediately.

“Brought you another shiny,” he had said then, smugness curling into his tone as he set the object down with exaggerated care. Even through the water, his voice had carried the satisfaction of a man who knew he had found leverage.

That jerk.

You hovered just below the surface now, glaring up at him through the rippling light, torn between indignation and the traitorous pull of curiosity as the new shiny glimmered patiently, waiting to be noticed.

He was baiting you…And it was working. 

After a few impatient minutes, you crept up again, lured by the strangely shaped object lying on the rock beside the spring. Your slender fingers slowly grabbed its surface.

He didn’t pause. Didn’t apologize. Just tilted his head, pleased.

You couldn’t resist, Poseidon help you.

The shines were your greatest weakness. They were a weakness for most sirens. Any objects that glimmered, that clicked and chimed and caught the light made your eyes grow round and dilate into orbs. Pretty things that made noise and demanded attention and sirens had always loved beauty. Objects, after all, could not bite you, poison you, or maim you when you slept. They did not betray you. They gave status, beauty, and leverage.

Fish flocked to sirens who wore the brightest objects. Sirens who carried the most ornamentation were followed more readily, their presence magnified by the glitter of shells, metal, and bone. You weren’t even the most covetous of your kind, though that was partly thanks to your own unfortunate advantage of having such a unique color and pattern.

Where other sirens could fade into reef and shadow, you shimmered. Even in the dark you carried a faint, ghostly luminescence, like moonlight caught beneath your skin. Beautiful, yes. Also conspicuous. Dangerous. Additional items were unneeded. Your mother had warned you often to let other sirens take the finest objects. You had listened. Mostly. You had learned restraint early, learned how to let greed pass you by so you could pass unseen, and not make enemies of the coven.

But that aching, greedy part of you still existed, and it latched onto this new shiny with startling possession.

You lifted the object from the stone, turning it over in your hands. Slim. Cold. Balanced. Sharp little edges lined one end.

“It’s a fork,” Benn supplied casually, watching you with open interest.

You gazed at the fork, studying it as if it might leap up and start dancing.

“Is it a tool?” you asked. “A brush for hair? A weapon?”

You startled as he laughed, the sound sudden and warm, cracking through your focus. He motioned for you to hand it over. After a moment’s hesitation, you did, eyes never leaving the object as it passed from your fingers into his hands.

From his pack, he pulled a mango.

You had smelled the human food in his supplies before. Sweet. Almost aggressively so. Too much sun trapped in one place. He raised the fork and jabbed it neatly into the skin, piercing the flesh with a practiced twist that made juice bead instantly at the wound.

“Not quite,” he said, then handed both back to you. “You have your teeth. Us weak humans need a little more help. You remember the spoon?”

You stared at the mango, now obediently skewered, with wide eyes.

“Fork helps grip food,” he continued, entirely unbothered. “Tear it into smaller pieces.”

You tested it experimentally, poking the fruit again. The skin split further, juice running down your fingers and dripping back into the spring. You watched it with intent focus.

“…Humans invented weapons for fruit,” you concluded solemnly.

He snorted. “Guess that’s ’bout right.” Then, casually, as if offering a shell or scrap of rope, “All yours, sweetheart. Gotta few more on my ship.”

Your fingers curled around the fork, slow and possessive, thumb brushing the smooth metal like you were reassuring yourself it hadn’t vanished. Beneath the surface, your tail flicked once with quiet, unmistakable satisfaction. 

Yours. 

Benn pretended not to notice. He simply sat back and stretched his legs, posture loose, letting you examine your prize in peace. He had long since learned that curiosity accomplished far more than pressure ever could, especially with a creature who reacted to force by fleeing or biting.

You found yourself lingering longer at the edge of the spring instead of retreating the moment the novelty should have worn off. You drifted closer while very carefully pretending you were not doing that. Your tail curled lazily against the stone rather than coiling for escape. At some point, without fully realizing it, you rested your elbows on the edge, chin propped in your hands, intensely focused as you maneuvered the fork like a weapon you had not yet mastered.

You stabbed the mango again. And again. And then sideways, just to see what would happen.

Benn didn’t comment. Didn’t tease. He merely adjusted where he sat, shifting his weight and angling his body a little closer, as if this proximity had always been perfectly acceptable.

“What’s yer name, darlin’?” he asked casually, eyes on the horizon. “Feels disrespectful to just call ya siren.”

You hummed noncommittally, refusing to look at him. The fork scraped softly against the stone as you tested its balance.

He wasn’t discouraged.

Instead, he reached into his pack again and pulled out another object. Larger, round, smooth. Its surface caught the light and scattered it, colors embedded inside like trapped fragments of sunset.

You stopped dead.

Everything in you went still. Tail. Hands. Breath.

You needed it.

“Called a bracelet. To wear on your wrist,” he supplied helpfully, holding it up between two fingers so it caught the light and scattered it, all treacherous shimmer and promise. Then, like the man had learned absolutely nothing from your reaction, he tried again, mild as ever, “You gotta a name too?”

Damn.

You slid back into the water in one smooth, offended motion, sinking just deep enough that your face vanished beneath the surface. A flurry of bubbles rushed upward in your wake, carrying every sharp, vicious thing you wanted to say and refused to waste breath on.

You stayed there for a moment. Two. Then, very reluctantly, you drifted back up.

Your eyes snapped immediately to the bracelet, still gleaming in his hand, smug and beautiful and entirely aware of its own power. You considered, briefly, whether you could kill him and take it. But the memory of the last time you had tried that rose unhelpfully to the front of your mind.

Best not to repeat that.

You lifted yourself just enough for your mouth to clear the surface, water sliding off your lips as you spoke.

“Moon-Voice.”

The name landed softly in the cave, fragile as breath.

Benn froze.

Then his face broke into a wide, unguarded smile, the kind that came from the chest rather than the mouth, bright enough that for one blinding moment it eclipsed even the bracelet’s shine.

“Well,” he said, voice warm with something that felt dangerously like reverence, “that’s a hell of a name. Real fitting.”

You sank back an inch as shame flared, crawling up your spine. You had done something careless. Something foolish. You had given him something important far too easily. Names carried weight. Names traveled. Now he could say it aloud, shape it in the air, invite attention, invite disaster.

Your eyes flicked away, shoulders tightening.

He watched the change of expression on your face, eyes sweeping and assessing.

“How bout we use a nickname? Somethin’ us folks here above can use.”

You slowly nodded.

He agreed, asking if you had a preference, and you shook your head.

Benn’s smile softened, not fading, but adjusting. His gaze swept over you, quick and assessing, catching the tension, the retreat, the instinctive recoil.

“Hey,” he said gently. “How ’bout we don’t use that. It’s a mouthful.”

You glanced back despite yourself.

“How ’bout we use a nickname,” he continued, tone easy, deliberately light, “somethin’ us folks up here can say real easy. Keep yours yours.”

You hesitated, then slowly, you nodded.

Relief loosened something in his posture. He tipped his head slightly. “Got a preference?”

You shook your head.

He studied you for a long moment, not with the sharp calculation he used when assessing danger, but with something quieter and more deliberate. Then he smiled again. Smaller this time. Private.

“Well,” he said, tossing the bracelet toward you and watching closely as you caught it, “I’ll figure somethin’ out. Somethin’ worthy of the prettiest gal on the seas.”

You rolled your eyes, unimpressed by the compliment, but your attention never left the bracelet. You slid it onto your wrist slowly, adjusting it until it settled comfortably against your scales. The metal caught the light immediately, scattering it in soft flashes across your arm and onto the cavern walls. Iridescent reflections rippled over stone and water alike.

You lifted your wrist, turning it slightly, watching the colors shift.

Benn leaned back a little, arms resting loosely at his sides, observing without comment. After a moment, he spoke again, his tone thoughtful rather than teasing.

“Melody’s too obvious,” he said.

You flicked water in his direction without bothering to look at him, a neat splash meant to convey both dismissal and mild irritation.

“All right,” he replied calmly, unbothered. “Point taken.” He watched you for another moment, head tilted slightly as if genuinely considering the problem. “Glimmer?”

You paused and gave him a flat, unimpressed look.

He grimaced. “Okay. That does sound like a pet,” he admitted, adjusting without fuss.

You turned your attention back to the bracelet, rotating your wrist slowly as the light scattered across your scales, clearly satisfied with this outcome.

Benn exhaled softly through his nose, a sound halfway between a laugh and resignation, eyes following the shifting colors. “I’ll keep thinkin’,” he said evenly. “No rush.”

“You know this could be like, an actual danger?”

You try and reason your way out of your situation, like reason has ever worked on Geralt before. He ignores you, mostly, concentrating on tying the knot around your wrist in a manner that you cannot undo the knot but it also didn’t cut off your circulation. He slips a finger under the cord, testing the knot and the cords strength, and you hear him make a satisfied rumble. You were still getting used to that, to the various sounds the Witcher made to express emotion.

“No it’s not. The cord’s thin, and if I have to fight I can snap it easily. Plus this area doesn’t normally have monsters, not this time of year.”

He stands, towering over you from you spot on the ground, near the fire, and you tilt your face up. The yellow light throws his features into a harsh countenance, makes his face all angles and scars, golden eyes reflecting the light the way a predators would as he glared down at you, scowling. You tighten your fingers in the wool cloak he had given you, so long ago, the fibers catching in your nails.

He must see something in your gaze, or maybe it’s the way you know you probably reek of anxiety right now, but his stance softens, the scowl melting away into something softer, not a smile because you knew he was still very, very upset with you, but not a harsh frown that made you feel small and stupid and like all the things he thought about you were true.

He crouches, making himself smaller next to you, and you feel your shoulders start to unwind. It was strange, being around someone who was so perceptive to your emotions, but seemingly had no clue how to address or handle them, beyond his own instincts as a Witcher and his limited interpersonal skills. His very limited interpersonal skills.

Seriously. You were pretty sure the guy only had two friends.

“You’re going to try and run again. Maybe not tonight, but I clearly can’t trust you to behave without me keeping my eye on you at all times. Since I can’t do that while I’m asleep, this is the solution.”

He motions to the thin leather cord, and you scowl, face twisting into something you know is ugly but doing it anyways. He wouldn’t be intimidated, you knew, he seemed to view you as some helpless kid, even though you were a fully grown adult who had been attending college.

“You wouldn’t have to watch me if you just let me go, Geralt. You can’t… you can’t just not let someone go home, that’s not right.”

You snap, fingers burying further into the cloak to stave off the chill that was only getting colder, creeping up your arms and legs to your torso and making you shiver. It had just gotten dark, the little fire Geralt built crackling away and too small to provide much warmth but rapidly gaining strength, and you shiver, leaning toward the fire and away from the Witcher.

“We’re not having this conversation again. You can’t survive out there on your own.”

Your face flushes, angry, and you bury your face further into the cloak. He had a point, to some extent. You weren’t used to the world of the Witcher, with its monsters and it’s hardships, weren’t used to the roughness of medieval life and all of its struggles. You were used to the modern world, where distances could be travelled by car, not horse, and you didn’t have to endure biting cold in the winter and blazing heat in the summer.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t at least try, Geralt. What kinda person would I be if I didn’t at least try to get home?” You protest, and there’s the sound of rustling, a muttered curse. Looks like Jaskier was back with wood.

“Ah. Seems I walked into a horribly tense situation.”

Jaskier remarks, but his voice is light, not taking your predicament seriously, even as his eyes land on the tether around your wrist and Geralt’s as he feeds wood into the fire, which licks up the logs and sticks eagerly, hungry for fuel. You scowl, face buried in the cloak to hide your sour mood as much as possible. Geralt didn’t care if you were pisses off or not, he cared when you were afraid not when you were mad, but Jaskier would do everything in his power to pull you out of your bad mood. From telling stories to playing little tavern songs, he would be relentless in making sure you cracked a smile at least once, and you didn’t feel like having to endure the bards attempts to cheer you up right now.

“Is tying them to you really necessary though, Geralt? They look like a kicked pup, can’t you be a bit more lenient?”

Jaskier wheedles, and wow, he might actually be your favorite person right now. You peek up from the fold of the cloak, and he’s got a hand on a hip, shifting his weight with a concerned frown. He looks entirely disapproving of the whole thing, which makes your heart soar. Maybe he would actually be able to get Geralt to listen to him.

“They’re lucky I don’t tie them on Roach all day.” Geralt grumbles, setting up the bed rolls. You could feel every small movement he made, the motion tugging gently on the thin tether.

“Oh you grump. Stop being so rude.” Jaskier huffs, sitting next to you, and you quietly despair how easily he gave in, how quickly he yielded to what Geralt wanted to do. You tuck your face back into the cloak, dejected.

“Hey now, it isn’t all bad. There are worse places to sleep. I can recall a few of them myself.”

Jaskier’s hand lands on your shoulder, and you glare, annoyed. You didn’t want company, or comfort, or any of it. You wanted one thing, and it was something that the both of them were denying you.

Jaskier, because he was Jaskier, seemingly didn’t notice. Which wasn’t the greatest.

“Yeah, sure, I guess. Never slept tied to somebody, though.” You say pointedly, and the annoyed rumble Geralt gives is almost worth it. Sharp gold eyes narrow at you slightly, before Geralt huffs, turning back to his task.

“I have! Well, it was more I had been knocked unconscious, but it still applies, I think! And those ropes were rather coarse, my wrists were aching for days!” Jaskier recalls. “Geralt had to rescue me, it was quite the adventure. I wrote a song about it, at some point, although I never published it. I really should rework that song, actually, come to think of it.”

He rambles, his voice filling the tense silence between you and Geralt, and you feel your shoulders start to relax. He was good at that, chattering to fill the silence that would drag on for hours between the two of you if it wasn’t for him. You sigh quietly, leaning into the warm hand clasped on your shoulders as the fire grows in strength, the bedrolls almost fully prepared.

“Alright. Jaskier, you take first watch, and I’ll take over in an hour or so.” There must not be many monsters around, you think, for Geralt to be so comfortable letting Jaskier take watch. Jaskier nods, slipping away your side as Geralt approaches.

“Not a problem! I was feeling wired tonight anyways, a few more hours though and I should be able to sleep well enough.” Jaskier agrees amicably. “Although I am a bit surprised, you normally insist on first watch.”

“Wanna get (Y/N) down.” Geralt huffs, and Jaskier nods.

“Fair enough, I suppose. They are criminally lacking in the sleep department, they’re beginning to get bags, poor thing.”

You scowl at Jaskier, annoyed.

“I’ve had these since middle school, first of all, not my fault I have insomnia.” You scowl, and jerk when Geralt all but drags you to the bed roll, barely waiting for you to finish talking.

“Hey!” You protests, annoyed, but he’s too busy ‘getting you settled’ as he liked to call it. Fussing over the blankets and the best roll, making sure your body was protected from the harsh winds that even the fire couldn’t stave off.

“Jaskier, stop keeping them up.” Geralt grumbles, sounding more tired than annoyed. He drags you closer, and it must be a Witcher thing to radiate heat like a furnace, because he was chasing off the cold without even trying, the same arm that you were tied to securing you against his chest.

“Pretty sure I can sleep on my own.”

You snark, and Geralt rolls his eyes.

“Not for the next week you aren’t, if that. Now go to bed.”

You scowl, glaring up at him. With the blanket over you, the fire, and the heat radiating off his body, you were tired, sure. But not tired enough not to say something, not when you were being treated like an idiot who couldn’t do anything for themselves.

“You can’t just- Geralt this isn’t right, and you know it. You can’t just- keep me here!”

You protest. Arguing with Geralt was much like arguing with a wall, honestly. Stubborn and just as likely to listen to you as the bricks that made up the walls of your old college.

But walls could come down. You just had to get through to him, make him realize that what was doing wasn’t going to work. You weren’t strong enough or fast enough to escape him, not without some clever plan or tricks up your sleeve, and you were pretty sure that an Olympic level athlete would still have issues trying to outpace him. So your only hope was getting him to listen.

It was a fragile hope, but it was the only hope you had.

“We’re not talking about this right now. Go to sleep.”

Geralt grumbles, and you open your mouth again. The warning rumble in his chest cuts you off, and you swallow.

The sound was exactly that. A warning. Geralt had never hurt you before, not really, but whenever he got mad things were miserable. Jaskier would be irritated with you for ‘putting Geralt in a mood’ as he put it, and you would be without the bard’s chattering to fill the heavy silent between you and Geralt. Not to mention the awkwardness of being forced to ride atop Roach with Geralt, the silence thick with tension between the two of you, or the way you would hope desperately for the day to end so you could go to sleep.

No, it was better to keep the Witcher happy. For all parties.

“Alright. Good night.” You finally mutter, and he sighs, the tension leaving his body. You feel his torso loosen, relaxing behind you, and you feel your hand shaking, just slightly. Or a little more than slightly. Your stomach twists, and Geralt sighs.

“I know you don’t understand. But you’ll realize this is what’s best for you.” He says it like it’s supposed to be an assurance, smoothing a hand over your hair like you’re a particularly fussy child, and you consider, for a second, twisting and biting that hand. Driving your teeth deep enough to draw blood and make him listen to you, for once.

You don’t, mainly because you know he would just move it fast enough your teeth would just snap at empty air.

You were one of the new interns at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and somehow, against all odds, you had captured the attention of Gregory House.

House couldn’t compare you to the three other fellows, and that made you stand out. You weren’t overly attentive like Cameron, or defensive like Foreman, or quick to crumble under pressure like Chase. You were different. A puzzle. And House was always drawn to puzzles.

You were also the only one who ever bothered to write down his words and ask for genuine feedback. His so-called “lessons” were wrapped in sarcasm and cruelty, but you looked past it. Buried inside the venom were real insights, pieces of brilliance that you admired. You didn’t just laugh him off or roll your eyes like the others. You listened. You learned.

And worse, you looked past him. Past the mocking façade, past the sharp tongue and cynicism. You tried to glimpse the man behind the wall. And when your eyes met his, bright and disarming, he knew you saw him. That was what captured him. Maybe a little too much.

You weren’t like him at all, and yet you kept up with him.

Sometimes you caught him watching you through the glass as you spoke to patients, his blue eyes unreadable, his cane tapping a steady rhythm against the floor. You told yourself he was supervising. That was his job, wasn’t it? He had to make sure you didn’t screw up.

But then came the signals, the way he lingered by your side longer than necessary, the teasing comments that made you fluster just so he could drink in your reactions, the sharp observations of details no one else would ever notice about you.

And then he asked you to shadow him. Just you. He had never asked anyone before. House hated people. House avoided company. So why you?

You ignored the obvious answer.

“Cute,” he’d say whenever you smiled at someone else. “But don’t waste that grin on idiots. I’m the only one who appreciates the irony.”

You brushed it off as more House sarcasm. But the way his eyes lingered after he said it, the way he made sure you heard it, should’ve told you otherwise.

The red flags were everywhere, but you were blind to them.

Until Foreman pulled you aside one evening after a long shift. He was blunt, his expression tense, his dark brows drawn.

“House isn’t himself anymore,” Foreman said. “Whenever he talks about you, it doesn’t feel right. He’s not mentoring you, he’s… fixating.”

His voice carried a weight you had never heard before. Foreman wasn’t the type to exaggerate. He wasn’t one to involve himself in gossip. But his concern shook you. It made you realize what you had been ignoring, the danger of having House’s attention.

You decided to leave.

It wasn’t easy, but you couldn’t stay under his watchful gaze any longer. You packed a small bag, left your phone behind, and slipped away under the cover of night.

Your chest felt lighter the farther you got from Princeton-Plainsboro. You imagined yourself starting over somewhere else, far from the relentless tapping of his cane, far from those piercing blue eyes that seemed to strip you bare.

Freedom was within reach.

Until headlights flooded the road.

Tires screeched. A deafening impact. Pain ripped through you, hot and sharp, before the world went black.

When you woke, you were drowning in antiseptic and white light. The monitors beeped steadily at your side, your body wrapped in bandages and stitches. You tried to move, but every nerve screamed.

And then you heard it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Your blood ran cold.

Gregory House stood at your bedside, leaning casually on his cane, his mouth curved into a smug half-smile.

“Well,” he drawled, his voice dripping with mock sympathy, “aren’t you full of surprises? Instead of me chasing you across Jersey, you decided to throw yourself in front of a car and deliver yourself right back to me. With bonus internal bleeding. Efficient.”

You tried to sit up, tried to speak, but your body refused. His hand pressed gently, but firmly, against your shoulder, pinning you down.

“Don’t move,” he warned. “Unless you want to rip open hours of my work. And yes, before you ask, it was me. I didn’t let anyone else touch you. Not Foreman, not Chase. Just me.”

Your mouth went dry. “L-let me go..” The words came out weakly.

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. The sarcasm slipped, replaced by something quieter, more dangerous.

“Let you go?” he repeated. “You already tried that. And look how well it turned out.”

His fingers brushed a strand of hair from your face with a strange, possessive tenderness.

“You don’t get it yet, do you? You’re mine. You don’t just walk away from me. You can’t. Even your body knows it, it broke itself just to come back to me.”

You tried to turn your face away, but his hand caught yours, his grip firm and unyielding.

“Relax,” he murmured. “You’re safe now. No more running. No more pretending. I’m your doctor. And doctors don’t let their patients go.”

The monitors beeped steadily beside you, mocking your racing heart.

And in that moment, you realized the truth, you hadn’t escaped at all. You’d only fallen deeper into his grasp.

Gregory House was your doctor.

You were one of the new interns at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and somehow, against all odds, you had captured the attention of Gregory House.

House couldn’t compare you to the three other fellows, and that made you stand out. You weren’t overly attentive like Cameron, or defensive like Foreman, or quick to crumble under pressure like Chase. You were different. A puzzle. And House was always drawn to puzzles.

You were also the only one who ever bothered to write down his words and ask for genuine feedback. His so-called “lessons” were wrapped in sarcasm and cruelty, but you looked past it. Buried inside the venom were real insights, pieces of brilliance that you admired. You didn’t just laugh him off or roll your eyes like the others. You listened. You learned.

And worse, you looked past him. Past the mocking façade, past the sharp tongue and cynicism. You tried to glimpse the man behind the wall. And when your eyes met his, bright and disarming, he knew you saw him. That was what captured him. Maybe a little too much.

You weren’t like him at all, and yet you kept up with him.

Sometimes you caught him watching you through the glass as you spoke to patients, his blue eyes unreadable, his cane tapping a steady rhythm against the floor. You told yourself he was supervising. That was his job, wasn’t it? He had to make sure you didn’t screw up.

But then came the signals, the way he lingered by your side longer than necessary, the teasing comments that made you fluster just so he could drink in your reactions, the sharp observations of details no one else would ever notice about you.

And then he asked you to shadow him. Just you. He had never asked anyone before. House hated people. House avoided company. So why you?

You ignored the obvious answer.

“Cute,” he’d say whenever you smiled at someone else. “But don’t waste that grin on idiots. I’m the only one who appreciates the irony.”

You brushed it off as more House sarcasm. But the way his eyes lingered after he said it, the way he made sure you heard it, should’ve told you otherwise.

The red flags were everywhere, but you were blind to them.

Until Foreman pulled you aside one evening after a long shift. He was blunt, his expression tense, his dark brows drawn.

“House isn’t himself anymore,” Foreman said. “Whenever he talks about you, it doesn’t feel right. He’s not mentoring you, he’s… fixating.”

His voice carried a weight you had never heard before. Foreman wasn’t the type to exaggerate. He wasn’t one to involve himself in gossip. But his concern shook you. It made you realize what you had been ignoring, the danger of having House’s attention.

You decided to leave.

It wasn’t easy, but you couldn’t stay under his watchful gaze any longer. You packed a small bag, left your phone behind, and slipped away under the cover of night.

Your chest felt lighter the farther you got from Princeton-Plainsboro. You imagined yourself starting over somewhere else, far from the relentless tapping of his cane, far from those piercing blue eyes that seemed to strip you bare.

Freedom was within reach.

Until headlights flooded the road.

Tires screeched. A deafening impact. Pain ripped through you, hot and sharp, before the world went black.

When you woke, you were drowning in antiseptic and white light. The monitors beeped steadily at your side, your body wrapped in bandages and stitches. You tried to move, but every nerve screamed.

And then you heard it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Your blood ran cold.

Gregory House stood at your bedside, leaning casually on his cane, his mouth curved into a smug half-smile.

“Well,” he drawled, his voice dripping with mock sympathy, “aren’t you full of surprises? Instead of me chasing you across Jersey, you decided to throw yourself in front of a car and deliver yourself right back to me. With bonus internal bleeding. Efficient.”

You tried to sit up, tried to speak, but your body refused. His hand pressed gently, but firmly, against your shoulder, pinning you down.

“Don’t move,” he warned. “Unless you want to rip open hours of my work. And yes, before you ask, it was me. I didn’t let anyone else touch you. Not Foreman, not Chase. Just me.”

Your mouth went dry. “L-let me go..” The words came out weakly.

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. The sarcasm slipped, replaced by something quieter, more dangerous.

“Let you go?” he repeated. “You already tried that. And look how well it turned out.”

His fingers brushed a strand of hair from your face with a strange, possessive tenderness.

“You don’t get it yet, do you? You’re mine. You don’t just walk away from me. You can’t. Even your body knows it, it broke itself just to come back to me.”

You tried to turn your face away, but his hand caught yours, his grip firm and unyielding.

“Relax,” he murmured. “You’re safe now. No more running. No more pretending. I’m your doctor. And doctors don’t let their patients go.”

The monitors beeped steadily beside you, mocking your racing heart.

And in that moment, you realized the truth, you hadn’t escaped at all. You’d only fallen deeper into his grasp.

Gregory House was your doctor.

There was no way Tyler was the one responsible, they had it wrong. Y/n was certain of it but minutes turned into hours turned into days and a week later, there was still no one who was willing to hear what they had to say about the situation.

Today was the day that Tyler was being moved. The sheriff had been kind enough to tell Y/n that, especially after having seen their display of affection the night he'd been taken into custody.

Y/n had begged and begged to be able to see Tyler, just one last time. They knew that no one believed his innocence, they knew that because of that fact, they would probably never see Tyler again. It wasn't like he could stay out in the open, working at the Weathervane and finishing school with them, not when everyone believed he was an outcast. He couldn't even go to Nevermore because the type of outcast everyone had decided Tyler was, a Hyde, hadn't been allowed to attend the school in almost thirty years because of past issues. On top of everything, everyone thought Tyler to be a murderer.

It was a mess.

At last, the sheriff had agreed that Y/n could see Tyler one last time before he was sent away. The plan was this: Tyler would be chained as he was walked to an armored truck. As soon as he was taken out of his cell, the sheriff would realize that he had forgotten something or something else wasn't ready yet and leave his son in the main office of the station where Y/n would just happen to be.

There they sat, swinging their legs as the waited. There was a bang as a door was pushed open and they turned to see Tyler. His hands and his feet were cuffed and attached to a chain around his neck. There were big, dark circles under his eyes from evident lack of sleep and the clothes they had placed him in almost looked like hospital scrubs. Y/n could see the faint outline of a bandage through his shirt over the place he’d been shot as he shuffled across the floor. Officers seemed to hold on to every part of him. Y/n stood, their chair scraping across the floor as the group came to a stop.

Tyler looked over and his eyes widened with shock as they fell upon Y/n who waved slightly.

The sheriff said something they couldn’t hear and Tyler was heavily chained to a bar on the wall before the group dispersed. Y/n approached him slowly and he smiled softly at them as they did.

When they reached Tyler, they simply stared up at him for a moment before neatening up his hair with their hands.

“Hi.” he said softly as tears made their way to the corners of Y/n’s eyes.

“Hi.” they responded, caressing his face, “I am so sorry.”

“it’s not your fault.” he shrugged.

“But you’re being falsely convicted.” Y/n exclaimed, “and if I hadn’t gotten so worried about you and made you get dressed and stuff, we could have been out of this god forsaken town.”

“hug me.” Tyler said quickly and Y/n looked up at him, confusion evident on their face.

“what?”

“Hug me.” he repeated, “please.”

Y/n complied and wrapped their arms around the chained boy as best they could.

“I am going to get us out of here.” he whispered into their ear.

Y/n stepped back.

“what do you mean Tyler?”

He sushed them quickly and Y/n lowered their voice.

“what do you mean?” they asked again.

“that I love you.” he said simply, “and I wont let any of this stop me.”

Y/n’s cheeks turned pink but before they could respond, the door opened and they returned to their seat quickly as the sheriff walked over.

“Alright son.” he said, unchaining Tyler from the wall, “time to get going.”

Y/n couldn’t stop the tears from falling as they watched the group leave. 

I will never get to see him again. They thought to themselves.

Then a smaller voice came unbidden into the back of their head, a voice full of hope they thought they weren’t allowed to have. It said:

what did he mean when he said that he’d get us out of here?

Y/n shook their head. There was no way this situation could be any different than it was now. This was the path their life was taking and they just had to come to terms with that. There was no point in hoping for things that would never happen.

-----

As soon as the armored truck had reached the edge of town, Tyler had begun his plan. He transformed, ripping through the chains that held him and tearing through the guards who tried to keep him at bay before ripping through the steel of the vehicle itself.

There had been no survivors. If all went to plan, no one would even know he was missing until tomorrow morning when he was supposed to have arrived at the containment facility. That should give him more than enough time to get Y/n and disappear the way he’d originally planned.

For now, all he had to do was wait. Wait until the sun set for then, he could begin.

-----

Y/n awoke with a start to find that they were not in fact in their bed where they had fallen asleep the night before but resting on what appeared to be wooden planks.

“Morning lovely.” came a voice and they sat up, rubbing their eyes.

“Tyler?” they said softly, yawning as their eyes adjusted to the light, “is that you?”

“The one and only.”

“How did you get here? did you get exonerated? where are we?” the questions fell from their mouth in a frenzy, “is that blood?”

Tyler looked down at himself before meeting Y/n’s eyes once more.

“We’re on a train. I promised I’d get us out of Jericho, didn’t I?”

He took a step forward and Y/n scooted back slightly.

“Tyler, why are you covered in blood again. Is it yours?”

He said nothing in response, simply smiling back at Y/n who was growing more and more uncomfortable by the second.

“Dont worry about that.” he said at last.

“I am definitely worried about that.” Y/n responded, laughing nervously, “how did I even get here Tyler? The last thing I remember is going to sleep in my room last night.”

“I told you, don’t worry. I am taking care of everything.” Tyler moved a step closer to Y/n who now had their back pressed against the wall of the train car, “you’re never gonna have to worry about anything again.”

“Tyler, you’re really scaring me. What is going on.” Y/n whimpered as Tyler kneeled down before them.

He sniffed the air near their head.

what the actual fuck. Y/n thought, what the fuck. 

“You know,” he began, smiling brightly as he pulled back, pressing a hand to the wall beside Y/n’s head, “I’ve never had the privilege of smelling your fear before. It’s so.... enticing. Like nothing else I’ve experienced.”

He took another deep breath through his nose.

“T-Tyler, w-what do you mean?” Y/n stuttered, “I really don’t understand whats going on. Are you okay? you don’t seem like yourself.”

Tyler laughed.

“I think for the first time ever, I am actually being myself.”

He grabbed Y/n’s chin and forced them to face him. Their eyes were filled with such fear, he almost couldn’t contain himself.

“don’t tell me you actually believed the things I told you.” he teased, “don’t tell me you really thought I was innocent! god, you’re more foolish than I could have dreamed, aren't you.”

He tapped their nose and Y/n flinched.

“I trusted you.” they said, ripping their head from his hand and looking up at Tyler.

Anger had slowly begun to replace the fear in their eyes, much to Tylers displeasure.

“I fucking trusted you!” they yelled now, “I loved you!”

Tyler laughed, leaning back on his heels.

“I’ll leave.” they said suddenly, “the minute this train stops, I’ll run so far you’ll never hear from me again.”

It was Tyler’s turn to grow mad now.

“After everything I’ve done for you?”

“you’ve done nothing for me.” Y/n spat out coldly and Tyler slapped them.

They yelped in surprise and held their hands to their cheek, looking at Tyler a little more fearfully once again.

“I was afraid this might happen.” he hummed, standing up and walking over to a small duffle bag he had in the corner, “I really hoped you would understand, that you already understood maybe but...”

He trailed off, rummaging in the bag as Y/n backed into themselves, looking like they wanted nothing more than to become one with the wall.

“Here we are.” said Tyler after a moment, standing up with something in his hands and walking back over to Y/n.

It was a rope. They struggled as much as they could against Tyler but at the end of the day, he was stronger than Y/n was and it didn’t take him long to have them practically immobile.

“Why are you doing this.” they asked, clearly trying to keep themselves from crying.

Tyler sat down next to them and place their head in his lap. He stroked their hair gently as Y/n began to sob.

“If you’re good, I’ll untie you.” he said after a moment, “you just have to be good for me okay?”

Y/n just continued to cry, the reality of their situation sinking further into their mind.

“Anyways, I know you love me so it’ll all be okay, right?”

Master List Link

Part One

AUTHORS NOTE

Fifteen minutes ago he’d decided it wasn’t working. No amount of kissing, or touching or pounding the pussy beneath him was working. It did nothing for him. It was a wonder Tyler had even gotten hard in the first place.

Yet here he was, desperately chasing his release from the girl below him. She’d been a last resort. Some girl that used to be in his class at highschool.

Her every moan was over the top and hurt his ears. Every time she came it only pissed him off further. Every squeeze of his cock had the opposite effect. While she was having the time of her life experiencing orgasm after orgasm, Tyler was close to putting his head through a wall.

Finally he called it quits. Pulling out rather swiftly and tearing off his condom, disposing of it in the nearby bin.

The girl, who’s name Tyler couldn’t remember, lay panting on the bed. Her eyes dazed and head in the clouds, feeling completely euphoric.

“Oh Tyler, that was, well…incredible. Most guys stop when they’ve cum. You - you, you’ve got the stamina of a racehorse.” She laughed in disbelief.

He hid his sneer. Pissed of that she thought he came, but also at the irony that his best performance had made him feel the worst.

Hurriedly, he got dressed. Leaving quickly after. The girl was shocked, but he didn’t care.

He was certain now. You’d ruined him. The bond between the two of you existed for one and made it impossible for him to get a release anywhere else.

After your night together he’d felt better than he’d every felt before. It was such a high it was indescribable. He fell asleep with you in his arms.

When he woke up you were gone. No note, no text, nothing. He was angry. That was his first thought. You were his now. You couldn’t just go running off. Not when he felt so desperate to fuck you again.

Now a week after your night together, he’d still heard nothing. It wasn’t through a lack of trying. He’d text you, phones you a few times, even tried to face time.

To say it upset him would be an understatement. It enraged him. He wanted you, needed you. For sex that was true, but also just to hold you. To be near you and smell your scent. It calmed his Hyde.

In fact his Hyde had been more under control than ever. It was even tolerable. He could change at will now and had no raging bloodlust or desire to kill. It was a fact he was keeping to himself for the time being. Knowing that if Thornhill was aware of his change in savagery, she’d deft have something to say about it.

So he waited. Bided his time until he could see you again. But he was growing incredibly impatient.

Your phone pinged.

You ignored it.

Instead you lay in bed. Trying to sleep. Trying to find some comfort in your baby blue sheets.

You’d cried countless times after your night with Tyler. Part of you couldn’t make sense of the influx of emotion. The other part could.

You felt as if you’d given yourself a taste of freedom, a taste of what could be. Only to rip it away when your mind finally reached a rational state.

Tyler was great. But you couldn’t stay with him. You wouldn’t be able to have a life with him. Instead you’d be subjected to what you could only imagine to be brutal sex every night with the monstrous Hyde.

Your phone pinged again. And again. Then this time it vibrated.

With a groan you picked it up. Half expecting the caller ID to be Tyler. Which had been a common occurrence over the last week. Instead you saw that it was Enid. You pressed accept and put the phone to your ear.

“Hey (Y/N), thought we might have to send a teacher in to check on you. I mean - we just haven’t really heard from you in a while and it’s kinda worrying -“ Enid started to ramble. Someone in the background said something that cut her off, putting her back on track.

“Oh yeah, me, Wednesday, Ajax and Xavier are going to talk about The Hyde at the weathervane -“

Another shuffle could be heard on the end of the line.

“Oh and hand most likely. I thought it’d be good for you to come along, maybe bring your book.”

It was true that you hadn’t heard from the group in a while. After you revealed your own connection to The Hyde you’d almost been blacklisted. Wednesday had definitely been distancing herself, which wasn’t necessarily out of the norm, but still hurt your feelings.

Seeing your friends did sound like fun. However the idea of bumping into Tyler. That did not.

“Thanks Enid. But I’ll have to pass. I’ve been sick since the middle of the week. I think I’m just gonna rest.”

“Oh okay, no problem. See you soo-“ you didn’t let her finish as you ended the call. Needing to submerge yourself back into silence.

You couldn’t decide how to deal with the situation. It felt like the days dragged on but also felt extremely finite. How much longer before you had another call from your parents? How much longer before you bumped into Tyler? Before you have to face The Hyde?

The thoughts had consumed you for the majority of the week. Poisoning every though like a parasite.

You decided a long bath in the adjoining en-suite would lift your spirits. As you went you took the fancy salts you’d been gifted for Christmas and a bath bomb you were sure would be exciting.

Tyler’s eyebrows lifted and his lips spread into a smile as his eyes searched the group of teens entering the weathervane. It had been slow all day. His thoughts more often than not drifting to you. He hadn’t text you today. Finally getting the picture that you were trying to ignore him. Which had really pissed him off.

Now he stood making drinks and serving cakes in the hardly populated coffee shop. Hoping the hours would tick by faster so that he could go home and relief the throbbing in his pants.

“Hey Tyler!” Enid greeted, bouncing up to the counter. Ajax in tow behind her, while Wednesday and Xavier stayed back. Quietly conversing with each other about the case.

“Hey Enid,” The barista tried to be as enthusiastic as the brightly coloured girl, but his heart was elsewhere. “The usual?”

She nodded, then added on the rest of the groups coffee orders. The group moved to a slightly larger booth than usual, chatting about the upcoming school events while waiting for their drinks.

When drinks arrived their conversation quickly shifted to The Hyde. Updating Tyler on some of their new findings.

Without seeming too interested he decided to bring up your absence.

“Oh, (Y/N)? I asked her to come but she said she was sick. Has been for most of the week apparently. Maybe I should bring some soup back to Nevermore.” She said more to herself than the table.

Tyler could feel his heart falls. He had a hunch you weren’t sick. Instead just avoiding him. He had no idea what he’d done. The night you shared had been one of the best of his life. Surely he couldn’t have been the only one enjoying it?

He didn’t let his face betray him as he continued the conversation before going back to work. He wasn’t going to put up with your behaviour anymore. You couldn’t avoid him forever. Not if he came to you.

With a black towel wrapped tightly around your figure you emerged from the en-suite. Steam streamed out from the bathroom. Dissipating into the warmer air around you.

You walked towards your bed, ready to dress in your pre-laid pyjamas, until someone cleared their throat behind you.

Startled, you felt as if you’d jumped from your skin, but you recovered quickly to look for the intruder. What you saw was Tyler, dressed in jeans and a plain T-shirt, sitting idly on the chair in the corner of your room. Almost hidden out of sight, he sat quietly in the shadows of your room.

You spluttered, lost for words, “Tyler? What are you doing in my room? You shouldn’t be up here.”

His eyes gave nothing away. No worry, no anger, no sad puppy dog eyes that you’d seen occasionally. No guilt for sneaking into your room, waiting for you to come out from your bath.

“Come here.” His words were soft. Softer than you’d expect for someone who’d been ignored for the last week.

You could feel your stomach flip as you looked into his eyes. Desperately trying to see if this was some sort of joke.

“I won’t ask again.” He simply patted his left thigh. Both thighs were spread wide, filling the entire seat of the chair.

Gingerly, you walked over to him. Holding your towel tightly in an attempt to calm your anxiety. Reaching a stop between his Jean clad thighs.

His hand reached for your own. Pulling you forward so you were forced to perch on his knee. Sitting sideways to the chair and to him.

One of his arms wraps around your waist. The other lays over your lap. He uses his fingers to draw lazy circles on the top of your thigh, just below the towel.

“Enid says you’re unwell,” his eyes search for yours, despite you trying to avoid them. “I came to see if you were okay.”

You swallow, “I’ll be okay. Thanks anyway Tyler, you should go.” You try to get up, pushing him away. But he doesn’t let you. Instead pushing his hand down firm on your thigh and using his other to wrap tighter around your waist.

His eyes flash, a hidden storm beneath them, “Let me take care of you (Y/N), it’s the least I can do.”

His words sound kind on paper yet the way they fall from his lips are full of malice. He reaches a surprisingly gentle hand up to your forehead. Fingers pressing to your skin, trying to feel for a higher than normal temperature.

“Hmm, you don’t feel warm here.” His lips come to your ear, speaking softly to you.

You can’t control how your thighs clench and a need grows in your belly. A fire almost, begging to be sedated, to be put out. It made you feel hot. More specifically it made your core hot, made it burn.

He hummed once more, leaning away from your ear and back in the chair. His hand slid from your forehead to the side of your face, fingertips tracing down your neck, to the cotton of your towel, then finally to your thighs.

“Tyler, no.” You mutter weakly. The protest is an effort to preserve the little will power you have left. While you do desperately want to be touched by Tyler, fucked by Tyler, you know it’s not a one time deal. Every time you do this with him, the more you put on the line. The more you’ll have to deny when you finally fall in the clutches of The Hyde.

He shushes you, prying your thighs apart with little resistance. Trailing his hand down to cup your pussy.

“It feels warm here. I think your little pussy is trying to tell me something hmm?” He questions. Causing your cheeks to heat and your gaze to fall elsewhere.

“You feeling funny baby? Feeling all hot?” The pad of his thumb trails to your clit. He starts to rub it softly, in slow circles. He enjoys how it makes you moan quietly, how you start to whine in need.

His thumb on your clit does little to calm the burning in your belly or the heat at your core. Instead it ignites it, making you feel needy, desperate.

Then it stops.

Your eyes flick to Tyler’s, a frown apparent on your face.

He scoffs, a smirk falling on his face, “Oh no baby. You don’t get to ignore my calls all week, avoid me and still get me to play with your pretty pussy.”

You whine out a complaint. Rubbing your thighs together from the loss of contact.

“Please Tyler,” the words fall from your lips before you can stop them. “I need you.”

It takes an extreme amount of self control on his part to not fuck you right there and then. But he resists. He needs to set ground rules with you, show you that you aren’t in charge. You can’t ignore him all week and still have him chase you. You need to work for it.

“You don’t deserve it baby.” His lips come to your forehead, pressing a gentle kiss there.

“But you can work for it.”

You look at him, puzzled. Only last week you’d had your first sexual experience. Your lack of knowledge lead to you coming up blank.

Tyler sees your expression, “I want you to straddle my thigh.”

You obey almost immediately. Arranging yourself so you’re sat with a thigh either side of his left one.

“Now sit down.” You lower your weight so your core is pressed directly to his denim.

Your eyes watch his, waiting for his next instruction.

“Now ride my thigh.” Your mind goes blank, cheeks now feeling increasingly hot and your legs feel weak.

“I don’t - I mean…” you start to stutter. Unsure about what he means.

His hands find your hips. Gripping the cotton clad skin. He used his grip on you to guide your hips. Pulling you forward, then down, then grinding back on his thigh, then back up.

The friction going directly to your clit. Feeling good and aiding the want in your belly. Soon his guiding lets up and he leaves you to ride on your own. After a few strokes you build up speed. The friction feels good and brings you closer to your orgasm. Quiet moans spill from your lips. Tyler on the other hand is quiet. Content in watching you get yourself off on his thigh.

His cock was hard well before he got you to grind on his thigh. Now however, it feels like the buttons on his trousers will pop. He wants to help you reach your orgasm sooner, but he knows you need to do this on your own. This is your punishment for ignoring him.

Soon enough you’re shaking as you cum on his thigh. Thighs quivering and pussy contracting. A final moan bubbles from your lips as you sigh.