Chapter 31 Alaric
Alaric
The Black Marrow
One perfect, impossible night with her—and the sea, the gods, the whole damned universe rushes in to remind me what I am.
I can hold her, feel her heart steady against mine, taste a future I was never meant to touch…
and still know, with every shard of this curse grinding through my bones, that she deserves a man of light, not a creature forged in blood and shadows.
Wanting her isn’t just longing—it’s a sentence. It’s the ocean whispering that the greatest torment for a monster is to finally find something pure … and know he will never be worthy of it.
She lay curled against me, silver hair threaded with whispers of violet and blue, spilling across my chest like liquid starlight.
The curve of her hip and the sweep of her waist were bare to the cool air, lit faintly by slivers of sunlight filtering through the porthole.
My shirt still lay on the floor where she’d torn it from me.
The cabin smelled like us—salt and sweat, skin and something wild I’d never find anywhere else.
One of her hands rested over the ink she’d traced again and again in the dark, memorizing me by touch.
I’d memorized her too—the sounds she made when I kissed her throat, the way her breath caught when I said her name.
I’d learned the difference between hope and illusion the hard way.
This didn’t feel like either. This felt like a door I’d never seen before.
And that was the problem.
Loving her hurt. Losing her would hurt worse. Either way, I bled. Every moment I kept her here was a coin tossed into a storm—sooner or later, the sea would take its due.
I eased away from her, though every instinct screamed to stay. The sheet slipped from her shoulder, golden light catching in the hollow of her collarbone. I could feel the monster rising. The hunger clawing its way out. I would rather starve than take her that way.
She stirred, eyes half-lidded, her voice rough with sleep.
“Running off already?” she teased, a lazy, knowing smile tugging at her lips.
The sound almost undid me. I turned toward the washbasin, gripping its edge to keep from going back to her. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Mm,” she said, stretching like a cat, the sheet shifting lower. “You seemed perfectly content a few hours ago.”
I kept my eyes on the rippling water, one look at her and I would change my mind. “Things change.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow, silver hair falling forward like a challenge. “So does the tide.”
I almost smiled. Almost. “This is different.”
“How?” she pressed, mock innocence lilting in her tone. “Because it's daylight and you’re the big, brooding vampire pirate captain again? Should I be afraid?”
She meant it as a jab, but it scraped something raw. “Yes. You should be,” I said, my voice harder now. “Because nothing good survives here. And if you stay, neither will you.”
Her smile faltered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” I said, finally turning toward her, “that every day you’re here, you get closer to ending up like everyone else I’ve ever loved—dead, gone, or ruined beyond recognition.”
Her brows drew together. “So you’re pushing me away?”
I gave a low, bitter laugh. “I will ruin you, Nerina.”
Her eyes widened, the faintest flinch betraying how deep it landed. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean every godsdamn word,” I said—but my eyes betrayed me.
For half a heartbeat, they dipped, drawn to the sunlight tracing the line of her bare hip beneath the sheet.
My fingers twitched with the urge to touch her, to pull her back into my arms and keep her there until the world forgot we existed.
I forced my gaze back to her face, hardened my voice to steel. “You think this ship is a home? It’s a curse. And I’m its anchor. You can't stay here, Nerina.”
She shook her head, anger cutting through the hurt. “That is not your choice to make.”
“There is no place on a pirate ship for a mermaid,” I bit out.
I’d rather her hate me for the rest of her life than love me for the last few days of it.
She wrapped the bedsheet around herself like a shield, gathering what little distance she could in a room suddenly too small. She stared at me for a long, unblinking moment, searching for truth beneath my silence. When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter—but colder than I ever heard it.
“I wish you would have left me in the ocean.”
The words hit harder than steel as she crossed the room and the door slammed closed.
For a moment, I swore I felt the pull of the tide in my veins, dragging me under.
Couldn’t.
I sat there, gripping the basin until my knuckles blanched, salt-stained air burning my lungs. My reflection in the water looked like a stranger—hollow-eyed, teeth bared in something too bitter to be a smile.
This was the right choice, I told myself. I’d made selfish choices in my life, but this couldn’t be one of them. She deserved more than the shadow of a man bound to a cursed ship. She deserved sunlight, freedom, days unmeasured by tides.
Night had fallen.
The sea was a sheet of black glass, moonlight fractured across its surface.
The Black Marrow cut through it like a shadow with teeth, sails full but silent in the wind.
I stood at the rail, the salt air biting in my lungs.
The crew kept their distance; they could sense the mood on me.
I hadn’t spoken to Nerina since this morning.
And the ache had twisted into something else.
A restless, gnawing hunger. I needed to bleed it out.
“Wreckage off the port bow!” the lookout called from the foremast. The air on deck shifted—sudden focus, all quiet chatter cut short.
I strode forward, boots heavy on the planks. “How far?”
“Half a league, maybe less,” the lookout shouted down.
Lantern light caught on the debris ahead—broken timbers, a splintered hull, something pale drifting in the water like a corpse face-down. No sails. No flag.
Boots approached from behind. Garen. “Want the boarders roused, Cap’n?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice low but cutting. “And tell them to be ready for a fight.”
His mouth twitched. “Aye. Think it’s trouble?”
“I’m counting on it.”
He didn’t ask why. He didn’t need to. The crew was already in motion, blades and pistols being checked, boots thudding on the planks.
If there was danger waiting in that darkness, I’d welcome it. If there was blood to spill, I’d take it.
The wreckage groaned under our weight as we spread across her deck. The boards were slick beneath my boots—not just from seawater, but from blood that had dried in dark, sticky pools.
Lantern light swayed, revealing the bodies. Dozens of them. Sailors sprawled where they’d fallen, some slumped against the rails, others collapsed mid-step.
Every throat had been opened, every chest torn. The wounds were clean in their precision—surgical in some places, savagely ripped in others. Whoever had done this hadn’t simply killed. They’d harvested.
Garen crouched beside a corpse, his jaw tightening. “Covenant.”
I didn’t need him to say it. I knew the signs.
The air reeked of copper and decay, of magic burned down to nothing but ash.
It clung to the wreckage like a curse, thick enough to taste.
Planks shifted beneath our boots as Nerina climbed aboard, her movements stiff, distant—still carrying the weight of the words we’d thrown at each other this morning.
Crates lay scattered between the bodies, lids torn off or split wide, iron clasps bent with brutal force. Inside—
The first was packed with straw.
At first glance, I thought the contents were weapons. Bone-white curves. Blackened points.
Then the shape came into focus.
A horn.
Talons.
A wing, shredded and scorched at the edges.
A fae beast, bound in iron before its throat was cut. The restraints still bit into flesh long after death, rusted with old blood. Someone had taken their time.
Nerina stopped short behind me. The next crate was worse.
A siren lay crumpled inside, her body folded at angles no living thing should bend. Her tail had been split open from gill to fin, the delicate webbing torn apart. Once-shimmering scales were dulled to gray, scraped raw and broken. Her mouth hung open in a soundless scream.
Nerina didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil. She just stared.
Crate after crate told the same story.
None of them spared. None of them pitied. Whatever strength or magic they’d once possessed had meant nothing.
I felt her anger gather beside me—still hot from the morning, still aimed at me, but now… expanding. Turning outward. Taking in everything.
“Nerina,” I said quietly, stepping closer. “Maybe you should go back to the Marrow.”
I reached for her arm. She tore away from me. Not fear. Not surprise. Anger.
Her eyes flashed, bright and furious, before she shut me out entirely. She didn’t say a word. Not one. Just turned back to the wreckage, to the bodies, to the crates stacked like cargo instead of corpses.
As though I were no longer there.
Whatever fight we’d had that morning suddenly felt small—irrelevant—against the truth unfolding in front of her.
Something in her hardened—not fear, not horror, but certainty.
This was the world beyond the Veil. This was what humans did.. When no gods listened. When creatures like her were reduced to parts and profit.
She stood there, shoulders squared, taking it all in—not as a visitor, not as a bystander, but as someone finally seeing the cost of freedom.
The sea rocked the wreck gently, making the bodies sway, mocking life. One sailor’s hand tapped against the planks with each shift, a slow, hollow knock that crawled under the skin.
A low growl started in my throat before I even realized it. The Covenant hadn’t just taken lives—they’d made a statement.
I stared at the ruin, my grip tightening on the cutlass until my knuckles blanched. My blood was singing for violence, every muscle in me coiled for the chance to sink steel into something warm.