Chapter 3
Chapter Three
LILY
Three days.
Three days since I'd seen him, and I was starting to think I'd imagined the whole thing.
It wouldn't be the first time my mind had played tricks on me.
Isolation did strange things to a person.
So did fear, and exhaustion, and the constant low-grade terror of being discovered.
Maybe I'd been oxygen-deprived. Maybe I'd dreamed the whole encounter in that hazy space between diving too deep and surfacing too fast.
Maybe there was no creature with ink-black hair and dark eyes and a tail like carved obsidian.
Maybe I'd given my pearl to nothing but the sea.
I threw myself into work with a desperation that made even Brennan raise an eyebrow.
Scrubbed decks until my hands cracked. Mended nets until my fingers bled.
Hauled rope and sorted catches and did every miserable task I could find, anything to keep my mind from wandering back to that moment in the blue.
It didn't work.
Every time I looked at the water, I thought of him. Every time I caught a flash of movement below the surface, a fish, a shadow, the play of light, my heart stuttered with ridiculous hope. I found myself inventing excuses to be near the railing, staring at the waves like they held answers.
Stop it, I told myself. You're being foolish. Even if he was real, why would he come back? You're nothing to him. Just a strange human who invaded his territory and offered him a rock.
The pearl had been beautiful. He'd taken it, and the way he'd looked at me.
..I shook my head and went to find more rope to coil.
The ship life continued its grinding rhythm.
Days blurred together in a haze of labor and vigilance.
The betas continued their casual cruelty, shoving past me in narrow corridors, making snide comments about my size and my silence, assigning me the worst tasks whenever they could.
Decker seemed to have made tormenting me into a personal hobby.
He dumped a bucket of fish guts near my hammock one night, so I woke to the stench of rotting innards.
He "forgot" to tell me when meal times changed, so I missed dinner twice in a row.
He told the other betas I was bad luck—cursed, maybe, or touched in the head, and I could feel their sidelong glances growing more frequent, more suspicious.
"Strange one, isn't she?" I heard him say to another beta, not bothering to lower his voice as I walked past. "Never talks. Never smiles. Just stares at the water like she's waiting for something."
"Maybe she's thinking about jumping," the other one laughed.
"Wouldn't be a loss if she did."
I kept walking. Kept my face blank. Kept the hurt locked down deep where no one could see it.
The alphas were worse. Cort had apparently decided I was worth pursuing.
He found excuses to be near me constantly, appearing around corners, blocking doorways, always watching with those small mean eyes.
He hadn't touched me again, not since that day with my hair, but I could feel him circling.
Getting closer. Testing boundaries. The other alphas had started noticing me too.
Small things, a head turning when I passed, nostrils flaring, brows furrowing in confusion.
My scent blockers were holding, mostly, but something was leaking through.
Something that made them look twice where they'd once looked past.
One of them, a broad-shouldered man named Harris, stopped me in the corridor one evening. He didn't say anything, just blocked my path and breathed deep, his eyes going slightly unfocused.
"You smell different," he said finally.
"I've been working with the fish guts." The lie came easily. "Decker's orders." He frowned but moved aside. I felt his eyes on my back all the way down the corridor, and I didn't breathe properly until I'd turned the corner.
Three more weeks. That's what I kept telling myself.
Three more weeks until we reached port, and I could disappear again, find another ship, another hiding place, another temporary sanctuary.
Three weeks felt like a lifetime when every day brought new dangers.
When every night I lay awake listening for footsteps outside my hammock.
When every moment I spent on this ship felt like a countdown to disaster.
I needed the water.
I'd been too afraid to dive since that day. Too afraid of what I might see, or what I might not see. If I went back and the water was empty, I'd have to accept that I'd imagined him. That I was losing my mind, cracking under the pressure, seeing mermaids that weren't there.
And if he was there—I didn't know what I'd do if he was there.
By the third evening, the need had grown too strong to ignore.
The deck was crowded with the dinner shift, everyone focused on their meals and their complaints.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon, painting the water gold and crimson, and the pull of it was like a physical ache in my chest.
I slipped away to my hidden spot at the stern.
Not to swim, I wasn't ready for that, not yet, but just to be near the water.
Just to breathe the salt air and watch the waves and pretend, for a moment, that I was free.
I found my usual perch on a coil of rope, hidden from view by the stacked supplies.
The evening was warm, the breeze gentle, the sound of the waves a steady rhythm against the hull.
I pulled off my cap and let my hair fall loose, sighing at the relief of it.
The weight of the braid piled on my head always gave me a headache by evening, and it felt good to let it tumble down my back, to feel the wind move through it.
I sat there for a long time, just watching the water. Watching the colors change as the sun sank lower. Watching for movement beneath the surface, even though I told myself I wasn't.
Then, without quite meaning to, I started to sing.
It was an old song. Something my mother used to sing before everything changed, before I became valuable, before the light went out of her eyes and she started looking at me like a problem to be solved instead of a daughter to be loved.
A lullaby, maybe. Or a love song. The words were about longing, longing for something you couldn't name, searching for a place where you belonged.
I'd always loved this song. It made me feel less alone, somehow.
Like someone out there might be listening.
Like my voice could carry across the water and find another lonely soul who understood.
I sang quietly at first, barely above a whisper.
The evening was still, and my voice carried further than I intended, drifting out over the water like smoke.
I closed my eyes and let the melody take me somewhere else.
Somewhere safe. Somewhere I wasn't prey being hunted by everyone around me.
The song had six verses. I sang all of them, letting each one build on the last, letting the emotion swell and fade and swell again.
By the end, my voice was breaking, and there were tears on my cheeks that I hadn't noticed falling.
I let the last note fade into silence. Kept my eyes closed for one more moment, holding onto the peace of it, the brief escape from everything.
Then I opened my eye. Someone was there.
Four shapes in the water, just below the surface. Watching me.
My breath caught. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt.
Four.
The one I'd seen before, I recognized him instantly, even in the dim light. Dark hair drifting like smoke, pale skin luminous in the fading sunset, that particular stillness that seemed carved from stone. He was there, watching me with those dark, dark eyes.
He wasn't alone.
One was huge. Broader than any man I'd ever seen, with wild auburn hair and a tail the color of dried blood—deep crimson that caught the dying light like rubies. His skin was bronze, marked with pale scars that stood out even from this distance, and his eyes glowed gold like a predator's.
One was beautiful. Impossibly, devastatingly beautiful, in a way that made my chest ache just looking at him.
Silver-white hair floated around him like moonlight made tangible, and his features were so perfect they seemed almost unreal, high cheekbones, full lips, eyes that shifted between blue and green like the sea itself.
His tail shimmered with colors I couldn't name—pearl and lavender and seafoam, iridescent and ever-changing.
One was warm. That was the only word that fit.
His skin was sun-touched gold, his hair honey-brown, his features gentle in a way that made me think of safe harbors and soft blankets and the feeling of coming home.
His tail was green and gold, like sunlight filtering through kelp, and his amber-brown eyes watched me with something that looked almost like wonder.
Four of them. Four impossible creatures, floating in the water below my ship, looking up at me like I was something worth looking at. I should have run. Should have screamed, or hidden, or done literally anything other than what I did.
I waved.
That same silly, ridiculous wave I'd given before. Like they were friends. Like this was normal. Like my life hadn't just gotten exponentially more complicated and dangerous.
The beautiful one—the silver-haired one—smiled.
It was a sharp expression, too knowing, showing teeth that were definitely not human.
But something in it made warmth bloom in my chest instead of fear.
The big one, the scarred one, bared his teeth.
Not quite a smile, more like a display, a show of what he was capable of.
But his golden eyes were bright with something other than hunger. Curiosity, maybe. Or amusement.
The warm one lifted his hand from the water and waved back. I laughed before I could stop myself, a startled, delighted sound that escaped without permission.
He'd waved back.
The creature with the kelp-colored tail had waved back at me like we were children playing a game.
The dark one, my dark one, the one I'd given the pearl to—he just watched me with those bottomless black eyes, and I could have sworn I saw something shift in his expression. Recognition. Acknowledgment. Something that said: You came back. I wasn't sure you would.
I wasn't sure you were real, I wanted to say. I wasn't sure any of this was real. I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. I just sat there on my coil of rope, hair loose and tangled from the wind, staring at four impossible creatures who had apparently come to find me.
We stayed like that for a long moment, me on the ship, them in the water, the last light of sunset painting everything gold. No one moved. No one spoke. The only sound was the waves against the hull and the distant noise of the crew on the other side of the ship.
Then, as one, they sank beneath the surface and disappeared.
I stared at the empty water until my eyes burned.
Until the last light faded and the stars began to emerge.
Until my body reminded me that I was cold and cramped and had duties to attend to.
They were real. All of them. Four beautiful, impossible creatures who had heard me sing and come to find me.
My dark one wasn't alone. He had others—a pack, maybe, or a family. And they'd all come to see me.
Why? The question echoed through my mind as I pulled my hair back up, stuffed it under my cap, and crept back toward my duties. Why would they come? Why would they watch me sing? Why would one of them wave back like we were friends?
I didn't have answers. But for the first time in three days— maybe for the first time in months, —I felt something other than fear and exhaustion.
I felt hope.
That night, I lay in my hammock and stared at the darkness and let myself imagine impossible things. Four creatures in the water, waiting for me. Four pairs of eyes watching me with something other than hunger or cruelty or cold assessment.
Wonder. That's what I'd seen in their faces. The same wonder I'd felt when I first saw the dark one in the blue depths.
They thought I was wonderful. Me. The runaway omega, the prey animal, the property that had escaped its cage. They looked at me like I was something special, something worth watching, something worth coming back for.
I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling my heart beat too fast, and I made myself a promise.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I would go back to the railing at sunset. Tomorrow I would sing again.
Maybe, if I was very lucky, they would come back, too.