Crashing Tides (Half-Fae University #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

My mother is on her deathbed when she finally speaks the words that will hang between us like a cloud of poison during her last few hours on Earth: “I should’ve told you sooner.”

Tubes and wires wind around her arms and torso like snakes, diving beneath the sheets, jabbing into skin so pale it’s practically see-through. There’s a map of veins up and down her arms.

It hurts to look at. A machine beeps, loud, intrusive.

Careful not to bump the IV catheter, I grip her hand. In mine, it’s comparatively tiny, cold, pale. “It’s OK.”

Once, she was all fire, but now her voice is raspy, weak as a puff of smoke. Is this what happens when dragons die? “I’m sorry.”

“Mom,” I tell her, stern to mask the tears burning in my eyes. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“No,” she says, fingers curling around mine, her grip still strong even though the rest of her is unrecognizable, all blue veins and bruised eyelids and sunken cheeks. “I…” But her voice catches in her throat. A cough rattles in its place. She tries to say my name, but no sound comes out.

I grab the bottle of water from the bedside table, offer her the crinkled, plastic straw, but she only shakes her head, points to her throat.

I press the call button and never learn why she’s sorry.

The funeral passes in a whirlwind of frozen casseroles and sympathy cards.

I spend two days in a rumpled suit with my tie loose around my neck, dripping eye drops into my eyes and then immediately crying them out.

I talk to lawyers and priests and hospital staff and old friends and family members, then find myself standing in front of an open casket, staring down at the shriveled husk that used to be my mom.

I tear myself away so that I don’t vomit on her nice sweater, graciously provided by my Aunt Gretchen, who is probably the only reason I am still alive at this point, and certainly the only reason the funeral goes off without a hitch.

In the past, I’ve handled trauma better. Gone into shock and just powered through. But this is different. This is a hole in my soul that I’m completely unprepared for.

I’m Mom’s only child. I’m supposed to be strong and supportive, and instead I’m red-faced and miserable, propped up by Aunt Gretchen’s skinny arm, with half a strawberry Pop-Tart and a swig of tequila in my stomach threatening to make a reappearance all over the church’s shiny floors.

People come and go, but their words wash over me like acid rain.

I smile and nod and tell them it’s nice to see them, that I’m glad they came.

But I’m relieved when it’s over, after the handles of Mom’s pink casket have imprinted into my palm, after she’s safely in the back of a hearse and I’m in Aunt Gretchen’s SUV with Aunt Sarah and her husband, Robbie, chattering away in the background.

Talk radio blares. A smooth-voiced announcer rattles on about bear shifter attacks in the Montana mountains, claims the only way to stop them is to institutionalize shifters entirely—blatant propaganda, the kind of thing my mom would’ve switched off.

It’s March, and snowing outside, but I roll down the window, gulp air like I’m starving for it even though the chill burns my eyes.

I don’t think my eyes are ever going to be the same again. They’re always stinging, always tearing up.

Sometimes I cry for a long time. Sometimes I go for a run out in the cold with Mom’s geriatric Chihuahua, Bruce, valiantly chugging along beside me in his puffy orange sweater.

And sometimes, I go fight the punching bag in the garage.

More than once, I get drunk and wake up at the kitchen table with Bruce at my feet and the cat in my lap, and feel unbearably guilty.

“Dominic,” says Aunt Sarah sternly. The wind has mussed her hair, drawn goosebumps on her skin. “Roll up the window.”

I am twenty-two, too old to be getting into arguments with my aunt. Regardless, I find myself battling the urge to say something snarky, and roll the window down further.

But I can’t embarrass my mom on the day of her funeral, so I roll up the window and text my ex.

Sorry, I tell him for the fifteenth time this week. I don’t know why. He’s the one who cheated on me.

But he has been supportive since I moved back home to help my mom after her diagnosis.

Almost always texts back even though we’ve been broken up for nearly four months, and he’s got no real reason to talk to me anymore now that he’s got Marc, who’s hot and easygoing and social in all the ways that I’m not.

In fact, Marc is everything I’m not. Slight where I’m broad, short where I’m tall, a brunette where I’m blond, well-dressed where I’m… not. When I first realized who Jeremy cheated with, it was like a punch to the gut. Like everything about me was exactly the opposite of what he wanted.

It was probably lucky that Mom got sick when she did. I had an excuse to break things off, to leave our life together behind without creating any real drama.

Except that maybe Jeremy deserved drama, the cheating bastard.

We arrive at the cemetery with talk radio blaring, SUV tires crunching over gravel and ice.

I stare blankly into the distance as Mom’s casket is lowered into the ground, blink at her headstone, barely registering her name: Nancy May Morgenstern, beloved daughter, sister, and mother. June 2, 1979-March 6, 2026.

I do not leap into the grave, although as I stand at its edge, it occurs to me that I could. Roses pelt the lid of her casket, already wilting in the cold.

Mom won’t rot, I think, somewhat hysterical, because she’s going to freeze.

When I throw up, it’s a pink and reeking puddle right next to the headstone.