Chapter 5
The net refused to cooperate, and Valrek fumbled with the braided cord for the fourth time. The repair should have been simple, a straightforward splice where the storm had torn through the weave. He’d done this a thousand times before, in the dark, in the rain, half-asleep and fully exhausted.
Tonight, his hands couldn’t complete the task.
Three nights. Three nights of pacing the cave entrance like a caged animal, scenting the wind for something that wasn’t there. His beast hadn’t stopped prowling since Ariella left—restless, hungry, demanding in a way it had never been before.
She’s not coming back. Why would she come back?
He’d been cold to her, growling at her like she was a threat instead of the female who’d saved his daughter’s life. He’d warned her away from his territory with all the warmth of a predator defending his kill.
Because that’s what you are, his beast rumbled. A predator. A broken exile playing at domesticity. She was right to leave.
But she’d looked back. Just once, before the darkness of the cave entrance had swallowed her. Those luminous specks on her skin had pulsed with something that might have been curiosity, might have been fear, might have been—
Stop.
He pressed his palms against his eyes until stars burst behind them.
This was madness. She was human—or close enough.
Modified, perhaps, but still one of them.
The people who’d hunted his kind, who’d called them beasts and monsters, who’d driven him from the city for daring to have a relationship with a human female.
And yet.
And yet she smelled like cold sea and warm honey, his beast supplied helpfully. And yet her voice made the air vibrate in ways that you felt deep inside. And yet when your hands touched—
He groaned and tried to concentrate on the net as Lilani chattered at his side.
“—and then she glowed, Papa, she glowed like the little fish that come to the edge of the water when it’s really dark, but bigger, and prettier, and her glow was blue at first but then it went purple and I think that means she was feeling things because you know how when I’m sad my eyes get all—”
“Lilani.”
“—watery and red? Well I think her skin does that but with colors and isn’t that amazing? Do you think she can glow other colors too? I bet she can glow green. Or pink. Oh! What if she can glow rainbow—”
“Lilani.”
His daughter paused mid-breath, her small body practically vibrating where she sat on the pile of furs. The cut on her forehead hadn’t dampened her enthusiasm in the slightest. If anything, nearly drowning had only increased her energy, like the ocean had poured its chaos directly into her veins.
“Yes, Papa?”
“It is late. You should be sleeping.”
“But I’m not tired.”
“You had a difficult time. Your body needs to rest.”
“My body feels fine.” She bounced on the furs to demonstrate, making the firelight dance. “And I want to talk about the Star Lady. Did you see her stars, Papa? The ones on her neck and the rest of her body. They were so pretty. Like she swallowed moonlight and it got stuck inside her.”
His grip tightened on the net, and the cord snapped in his hands.
Moonlight. Yes. That was one way to describe it.
He could still see it when he closed his eyes—the small specks glowing against her pale skin, pulsing with colors that shifted and changed like a living aurora, betraying her emotions. He had touched that skin.
Just for a moment. Just steadying her before she fell. Just the brush of fingers when she’d handed Lilani over. It should have been nothing. A simple transfer of his daughter from stranger to father. Instead, it had felt like grabbing lightning.
Her skin had been cool—cooler than a human’s should be, closer to the temperature of the sea itself—but silk-smooth beneath his rough palms, sliding against his calluses in a way that made his nerve endings sit up and pay attention. And her scent…
He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, trying to push the memory away. It didn’t work. It never worked. His Vultor senses were too acute, too persistent, too damned loyal to the information they’d gathered.
Cold sea and warm honey. Salt and sweetness. Clean and wild and utterly, impossibly female.
“Papa? Papa, are you listening?”
He forced his eyes open. Lilani had crawled closer while he was lost in his thoughts, her small face tilted up at him with concern.
“I’m listening.”
“You were making the face.”
“What face?”
“The sad face. The one you make when you think about Before.”
Before. His daughter’s word for everything that had happened before she came into his life.
Before an impulsive night with a human female had turned into a nightmare.
Before he’d been rejected by humans and Vultor alike.
Before he’d been cast out of his pack and been forced to flee to the edge of civilization with a three-month-old child and nothing else.
“I was not thinking about Before.”
“Then you were thinking about the Star Lady.”
“Her name is Ariella.”
The correction came out before he could stop it,, and Lilani’s face split into a grin so wide it must have hurt.
“You do remember her! I knew it! Is she going to come back? Can she come back? I want to show her my shell collection. And my drawings. Oh! And the place where the crabs live, she would love the crab place, they have the big claws that go—” She made pinching motions with her fingers, complete with clicking sounds.
“She is not coming back.”
“Why not?”
“Because I told her not to.”
Her small face fell. “Why did you do that?”
“Because—” He stopped. How did you explain exile to a child? How did you make a six-year-old understand that the world was divided into categories—Vultor and human, pack and outsider, safe and dangerous—and that crossing those lines had consequences?
Because I am a Vultor and she is human. Because my kind does not trust her kind, and with good reason. Because my beast wants her with a hunger that terrifies me.
“Because she does not belong here,” he said finally. “This is Vultor territory. Humans are not welcome.”
“But she’s not like other humans.” Lilani had that stubborn set to her jaw that she’d inherited from him. “She can glow. She’s special.”
Special. Yes. That was one word for it. But dangerous was another.
“Humans are dangerous.” He heard the bitterness in his own voice and didn’t bother to hide it. “They take. They use. They destroy everything they touch and—”
He stopped. His daughter was staring at him with those big golden eyes—his eyes, the only thing about her that was purely Vultor—and he realized he was frightening her.
Excellent work, his beast sneered. Terrify your own child with your hatred. That will surely help your case.
“I’m sorry.” He set the ruined net aside and opened his arms. “Come here.”
She came readily, climbing into his lap and pressing her small body against his chest. She was warm.
She was always warm, burning with the fire that came from his blood.
He wrapped his arms around her and breathed in the familiar scent of his daughter, trying to let it wash away the lingering traces of cold sea and warm honey.
It didn’t work.
“The Star Lady saved me,” she said into his chest. “She didn’t have to. She could have swam away and let me drown. But she came when I was scared and she held me and she sang to me and—”
“She sang to you?”
“In the water. When everything was dark and loud and I couldn’t breathe. I heard her voice. Not like normal hearing. Like… like hearing inside my bones. And she found me and she held me and then we were going up, up, up, and then there was air.”
His arms tightened around his daughter. Ariella had saved his child. She’d heard his daughter’s scream and come without hesitation, without bargaining, without asking what she would get in return.
That’s what people do, she’d said. Like it was simple. Like there was no calculation involved, no weighing of costs and benefits, no consideration of the danger. Just a child in trouble and a woman who dove into the chaos to pull her out.
When was the last time anyone had done something for him without expecting payment? When was the last time kindness hadn’t come with strings attached?
Never, his beast whispered. But she is different. You felt it. You smelled it on her. She is—
Shut up.
The beast snarled but retreated, and he turned his attention to his daughter.
“Time for bed, little one.”
“But I want to wait with you.”
“Lilani.”
His daughter gave him the look—the one that said she knew exactly what he was doing and found it deeply unfair—but she slid off the furs and padded back towards her sleeping alcove. At the entrance, she paused.
“I hope she comes back, Papa. I want to show her my shell collection.”
Then she was gone, swallowed by the shadows of the curtains. He bowed his head, his beast clawing at the inside of his chest.
She’s not coming back, he told himself again.
And yet as soon as Lilani’s breathing deepened into slumber, he found himself at the entrance of the cave once more, watching the water and waiting for a shimmer of bioluminescence that might never appear.