Chapter 14
The lab was dark when Ariella finally returned.
She’d stayed in the water until sunset, letting the current carry her where it willed, using her song to map the underwater terrain in a futile attempt to quiet her racing thoughts.
But eventually even the sea had lost its comfort, and she’d dragged herself back to shore with a heaviness in her chest that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
Her father was asleep in his study, slumped over his desk surrounded by scattered notes and blinking diagnostic screens.
He looked older in sleep—the lines around his eyes deeper, the grey in his hair more pronounced.
She might have felt sorry for him, once.
Before she’d learned the true cost of his genius.
She moved through the lab on silent feet, heading for her room. She was almost to her door when she heard it.
A howl.
Long and mournful and utterly unmistakable, carrying across the miles of ocean and stone like a living thing. It rose and fell with an ache that made her heart clench, a sound of loss and longing that she felt in her very bones.
Valrek.
He was calling to her. His beast was crying out across the darkness, and every cell in her body burned with the need to answer. She pressed her hand to the cool metal of the door, steadying herself against the wave of emotion that threatened to pull her under.
I can’t go through with this.
The realization crystallized with sudden, terrifying clarity. The wedding. The contract. The life that Merrick Bane had planned for her with all the care of a collector arranging his displays. She couldn’t do it.
Not when her heart belonged to a scarred Vultor warrior who looked at her like she was the moon. Not when her soul sang in harmony with a little half-human girl who called her the “Star Lady.” Not when every fiber of her being knew that she belonged in that rough-hewn cave by the sea.
Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow she would tell Merrick that the wedding was off.
She would find a way to pay the debt, or negotiate new terms, or simply run if it came to that.
She wasn’t a child anymore. She wasn’t a powerless experiment with no say in her own fate.
She was a grown woman with capabilities that most humans could only dream of, and it was time she started acting like it.
The howl came again, softer now, fading into the night like a dying prayer.
I hear you, she thought, pressing her forehead to the cold metal. I hear you, and I’m coming back. I promise.
She fell asleep to the sound of distant waves and dreamed of golden eyes.
Merrick Bane arrived at precisely eight o’clock the next morning.
She had been waiting for him, dressed in a neat, tailored gown with her hair pulled back and her chin raised defiantly. She’d rehearsed what she wanted to say a hundred times, had practiced keeping her voice steady and her skin calm.
It all evaporated the moment he walked through the door.
He was immaculate, as always—tailored suit, polished shoes, not a single hair out of place. His sharp features were arranged in an expression of pleasant interest, like a man surveying a property he was about to purchase.
Which is exactly what I am.
“Ariella.” His voice was smooth, cultured, never rising above that calm whisper that somehow managed to be more threatening than any shout. “You look… refreshed. I trust the diving went well yesterday?”
“Yes. I—”
“Why don’t you show me your data? Specifically, the readings from the storm surge.”
She froze. He knew. Somehow, he knew she hadn’t been at the deep sensor array. He knew she’d been somewhere else. Somewhere she shouldn’t have been.
“I was checking the equipment. The storm must have interfered with the readings.”
“Don’t lie to me, Ariella. My techs confirmed that the sensor array was offline. So where were you?”
“Just… exploring.” The words felt like a betrayal, but the last thing she wanted was to draw Merrick’s attention to Valrek and Lilani.
“In view of our upcoming nuptials, I am willing to allow a limited amount of… flexibility in your tasks. A very limited amount.”
“About that.” She forced herself to meet his flint-grey eyes. “We need to talk.”
“Indeed we do.” He moved past her, settling into one of the lab’s few comfortable chairs with the ease of a man who owned everything he touched.
“I’ve finalized the guest list for the wedding.
Two hundred and forty-seven attendees from every prominent family in Port Cantor. It will be the event of the season.”
“That’s what I want to talk about.”
Something shifted in his expression—a flicker of awareness that made her skin crawl.
“Go on.”
“I can’t marry you.”
The words hung in the air between them. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes—those cold, calculating eyes—went flat and dangerous.
“I see.”
“It’s not… I’m not trying to break the contract without consequence.
” She was babbling, she realized, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“I know my father owes you. I know there’s a debt.
But there has to be another way to settle it.
I’ll work for you, dive for you, find whatever you want from the depths of the ocean. Just… not marriage. Please. Not that.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
Then he smiled.
It was worse than if he’d erupted in anger. That small, controlled curve of his lips promised horrors that yelling never could.
“You’ve met someone.” It wasn’t a question.
“That’s not—”
“Don’t.” He held up a manicured hand, cutting her off. “Don’t insult my intelligence by denying it. I saw the indications of elevated emotional states in your reports. Levels you’ve never experienced before. Specifically, arousal.”
Revulsion coiled in her stomach. He had studied her responses, reducing her to a set of data. A biological machine.
“So what if I have?” She lifted her chin, defiance warring with fear. “I am not a possession, Merrick.”
“Oh, but you are.” He rose to his feet. “A very valuable possession. One that has had its value significantly increased by your father’s modifications. A unique specimen.” He circled her slowly, like a predator assessing its prey. “And unique assets cannot be allowed to… wander off.”
“I’m not an asset. I’m a person.”
“Are you?” He stopped in front of her, so close she could smell the faint, sterile scent of his expensive cologne.
“A person doesn’t have gills, Ariella. A person’s skin doesn’t light up like a Christmas tree when she’s excited.
A person can’t spend hours submerged in freezing water without ill effect.
You are a creation. A piece of living technology.
And I own the patent on that technology. ”
Each statement eroded a little more of the confidence she’d built over the past few days. A piece of living technology. Was that all she was? A collection of modifications, a walking patent?
“You don’t own me,” she whispered, but the protest sounded weak even to her own ears.
“Don’t I?” He smiled again, that chillingly polite smile. “Your father’s research, the modifications, the very DNA that makes you possible—all of it was funded by my corporation. All of it is legally mine. Including you.”
“That’s not legal.”
“Laws can be… flexible. Especially when you have the resources to bend them to your will.” He gestured around the sterile lab.
“You think your father works here out of the goodness of his heart? This facility, this equipment, the permits to conduct research on a protected world—I provide all of it. And I can take it all away. Including your father’s freedom. ”
Her breath caught. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” He took a step back, giving her space that felt more like a trap.
“Default on our arrangement, and I’ll have your father charged with corporate espionage, illegal genetic experimentation, and misappropriation of funds.
The penalties for those crimes are severe.
He’d spend the rest of his life in a penal camp, although I doubt he’d last long. ”
He was threatening her father’s life. Not her own—her life, apparently, was a foregone conclusion—but her father’s. And the worst part was, she believed him. Merrick Bane was a man who collected people for his games, and he wouldn’t hesitate to toss a defective piece back into the gutter.
“I hate you.”
The words slipped out, raw and unbidden, but he simply looked amused.
“Irrelevant,” he said coolly. “What is relevant is your compliance. The wedding is in less than three weeks. I expect you to be present, cooperative, and appropriately… grateful for the opportunity I’m providing you.”
He closed the distance between them in one long stride. His hand came up to cup her cheek, and she flinched at the touch of his cold dead skin. His thumb stroked across her jaw, mimicking the gesture she had cherished from Valrek, but with none of the warmth, none of the life.
It was clinical. Disgusting. A collector assessing his prize.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word catching in her throat.
“Don’t what?” His other hand moved to trace the shimmering skin on her throat, and she fought the instinctive urge to recoil.
“Don’t touch my property? That is what you are, aren’t you?
A stunning piece of biological engineering.
The modifications to your dermal layers alone are worth a fortune.
Did your father ever tell you that? That your skin, your very ability to glow, is what funded this operation for the last five years? ”
Every word was a carefully chosen blade, sliding into the spaces where she was most vulnerable.
She wanted to scream, to fight, to summon the strength she’d felt when she’d faced down the storm surge.
But Merrick’s presence seemed to leech the color from the world, leaving everything grey and sterile.
The faint, lingering echo of Valrek’s howl in her memory was the only thing keeping her upright.
“Your father always said you were sensitive,” he continued, his gaze dropping to her throat. “Let’s see if that’s still true.”
Before she could react, he pressed a thumb into the soft flesh of her neck, right over one of her gill slits. Not hard enough to cause real damage, but with enough pressure to make her panic, to make her lungs seize in a desperate, instinctual gasp for air that wouldn’t come.
“Don’t.” This time the word was a choked gasp.
He watched her struggle, a flicker of something like scientific curiosity in his dead eyes. “Intriguing. An immediate stress response and respiratory distress even though your lungs are working. You’re far more complex than the initial reports suggested.”
He released her as abruptly as he’d grabbed her, stepping back as he wiped his thumb on a pristine white handkerchief. She sucked in a ragged breath, her throat burning. Her skin, which had flared with angry color, now faded to a pale, washed-out silver.
“I find myself anticipating how you will respond to some of my other experiments,” he said, his voice once again perfectly calm, as if he hadn’t just been demonstrating that he owned her ability to breathe.
“Experiments that your father couldn’t perform but that I, as your husband, will have every right to conduct.
Now that I know you have the capacity for arousal, they will be even more… interesting.”
The threat hung in the sterile air between them. He wasn’t just talking about marriage. He was talking about making her a test subject for the rest of her life.
“I won’t do it.”
“You will. You have too much to lose.” He looked over at her father, still slumped over his desk, and she knew with a sinking certainty that he was right.
She wouldn’t risk her father’s life. She was trapped.
Utterly and completely trapped. “Until then, I will expect you to complete the deep dive I asked of you. And this time, have the data.”
With a final proprietary glance, he turned and walked away. The door slid shut behind him with a soft click that echoed in the silence, leaving her alone with the bitter taste of her own powerlessness.
She stood frozen in the sterile silence long after he left. The pressure on her throat was gone, but the ghost of it lingered, a phantom constriction that made each breath feel like a conscious effort.
The rage she’d felt before, the defiance that had sent her running back to the lab ready to fight—it was gone, extinguished by the cold, hard reality of her situation. Merrick wasn’t just a wealthy businessman. He was a monster who collected souls, and he already owned hers.
And somewhere in the distance, so faint she might have imagined it, she heard a howl fade into silence.