Chapter 3
She was soiled.
Desecrated.
Broken and remade by the obsession of a beast.
Kore drifted through the quagmire of sludge muddying her memories. Caught between the haze of dreams and the heavy, inexorable pull of the Deep.
Heat.
It crawled through her veins. Fluttered behind the corners of her jaw in frantic bursts. Built between her thighs until it burst from her center in a liquid pulse, and that warmth floated between her thighs.
The water had grown… thick. Honeyed and sluggish. Her every heartbeat echoed between her legs.
Another pulse of heat rolled through her muscles, forcing her fingers to curl into claws. Digging into the coral caging her in, she tried to find an anchor. Something to ground her against the storm.
Eyes fluttering open on an agonized whine that was little more than a cloud of bubbles, Kore fought to wake.
A voice thrummed through her skin, and her eyes snapped open.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Only the dark gleaming back at her.
Until her eyes adjusted and shapes emerged from the gloom. Silent, suspended in the endless dark, she noticed the flicker of colorful light tracing their bodies.
Dozens, at first.
Then hundreds.
Eyes shimmering, unblinking in every shade she could imagine—and several she couldn’t.
All of them fixed…
… to her.
A tremor seized her. “No,” she tried to hiss. But the sound was swallowed by the Deep.
“She’s… she’s real,” a voice murmured from behind, and she spun to find another like Nyxarion. Younger. His gills flaring wide as he pulled great, heaving breaths of water through his lips.
He was…
Tasting her.
Breathing in the flavor gushing from between her legs. Arousal forced his cock to burst from his slit, exactly the way she’d seen Nyxarion’s do.
Horrified, Kore tried to spin away and found herself surrounded.
On her right, another male circled closer until his fingers brushed at the bars of her cage—and sent Kore cringing back as far as she might. Eyes flicking around in search of the monster who’d done this to her.
Nyxarion.
And then Kore’s eyes caught on something she couldn’t quite believe.
Drifting closer, shrouded in a veil of luminescent filaments and ethereal, fluttering fins.
A creature not even the priests in the sun temple might have envisioned.
A female.
Breasts naked, proudly displayed for any who might look, she was elegance and beauty. Adorned in ghostly scales and gleaming, intricate jewelry, she was a vision.
Her scales glittered with a soft glow that made Kore’s breath trip at the back of her throat.
Awe.
It slipped down Kore’s nape and puddled in her heart. Slackening her jaws. Slowing her blinks.
The creature before her smiled, and Kore felt that flush of heat bloom in her cheeks.
Inhaling a breath of Kore’s scent, the female bared sharp teeth, while the glow along her edges pulsed.
“Estrus,” the female sang, a musical sigh.
The sort of tone human choirs would burn a thousand virgins to reproduce, just once.
“She floats on the edge of bloom. Oh, Nyx,” she sighed without looking away from Kore’s wide, shocked eyes. “You’ve done well, my Liege.”
At the sound of his name, another warm gush spilled between Kore’s thighs—and the current carried it. Spreading it out, through the ranks of those gathered all around them.
Shaking her head, Kore cringed through the cloud of hair floating all around her. Trying to plead for them to look away. To grant her an instant of modesty. Wrists crossed, she lifted her hands to cover her face, shielding herself from view as best she could.
The movement offered another sort of distraction.
An unconscious flick of something rooted deep in her muscle. A part of her and yet… utterly foreign.
Fins.
She felt them unfurl. Knew it when they caught the faint current stirred by the crowd, moving her back where she was suspended in her cage.
Twisting to look, Kore saw what she already knew was there.
A tiny mockery of the magnificent creatures crowding in around her, her fins had erupted from her flesh in strategic placement.
New ridges lined her forearms and hips. Her outer calves.
Sensitive filaments that seemed to flick and twitch without her awareness—they were tied to the currents.
A balance that kept her stable and upright.
But it was the glow of a sunset blazing with divine warmth that held her horrified gaze.
Scales.
Pools of purple kissing red, bleeding into orange that sighed in the softest yellow. Shot through with veins of gold.
Her scales shimmered with rich color, even at the bottom of this forgotten sea.
Licking her curves, delicate patterns spiraled over her hips, traced her ribs, and grew lighter around her breasts.
Edging her nipples just enough to make those tender peaks grow pointed and sensitive.
Collarbones etched in that same golden sunset, she could feel where scales wrapped about her throat.
Fingers curling, she reached to touch—and felt the webbing stretch between her digits.
Fascinated and horrified from one blink to the next, Kore couldn’t look away.
She was changed.
Utterly remade.
Muddled bubbles masked her horrified question.
The gloom shifted as her captor made himself known, at last.
“See how she breathes,” Nyxarion crooned. Arrogance and satisfaction rolling off his skin as he slipped through their audience. “Here, in the black waters. Thriving. Already on the edge of estrus, for my bride begs to be bred, even without her sweet voice.”
Jaw clenching around a protest that wouldn’t come, Kore stilled as Nyxarion settled before her. Unable to retreat.
The beast planted his three-pronged staff into the seabed with a plume of sediment…
… and with a flick of his wrist, coaxed the bars of her cage open.
“Come,” Nyx crooned, shocking her. “You are the jewel of the Deep, sweet Kore. My most prized possession.”
For a moment, she could only stare. Mute. Shocked by his voice. By the rich timber that hummed in her marrow, for she’d only known him as a beast. A primal thing that came from the sea to fuck her full of sperm and venom.
She’d thought him little more than an animal.
A monster.
An animal was easy.
An animal wanted simple things—her pussy. To fill her womb and empty his balls.
But this…
She didn’t know what to do with this.
“You will bloom,” he murmured, and settled into the silt around her cage.
“Celebrated by my people. Show them,” he said, and took her hand in his.
Lifting her from her prison. Effortlessly.
Gentle. Letting her float, he spun her in a careful circle and wrapped one arm around her middle. “Let them witness what a Siren can do.”
Humiliated, Kore tried to shield herself from their ravenous gaze.
But Nyx took her wrists in one hand. Spreading the fingers of the other across her belly to keep her pinned against his chest. Claws teasing the top of her mound.
“Behold my bride,” Nyx said, and flicked his tail.
Launching them up. “From her, I shall breed a new generation of Abyssari that will champion us away from extinction.”
“Don’t,” she tried to hiss as the sound was muddled by bubbles.
Nyx ignored her, spinning, his fins flared to catch the current—she felt the sea cradle them in a slow caress.
And then she heard them.
His people. These… Abyssari.
They’d begun to sing.
Ribbons of harmonics bled through the water, wrapping her in a silken glove she couldn’t escape.
The females drifted forward first. Their movements slow, delicate fins fluttering as they sang and touched. Fingertips trailing over her body, at once invasive and reverent. Respectful, despite the violation. As if they were awed.
By her.
Whining, Kore squirmed when fingertips tickled her toes. Marvelling, she assumed, at what they did not have.
In an instant, they peeled away. Fanning out in a vortex around them, Kore watched as they circled and sang.
Confused.
Enthralled.
Filled with so many endless questions she couldn’t ask.
Could only watch as the males surged forward next. Heavily built, carrying pouches carved from shell and bone. Drifting close enough to touch her with their Resonance, before they drifted over the reef, tipping offerings over the fledgling coral.
Streams of glistening eggs, schools of prey fish that darted in frantic spirals as they scattered.
Gifts.
Just as Nyxarion had said.
They’d brought gifts to lavish upon the reef.
In tribute.
To her.
As she watched, the reef brightened. Feeding on the offering. Blue light pulsed through the branches, starting in the cradle where she’d been caged before spilling out. Racing through its branches, illuminating what sprawled through the dark.
Nyxarion’s kingdom.
It was rough, but enormous. Carpeting everything she could see, and far more she couldn’t.
Trying to force a sound through her throat, Kore’s lips moved around a plea. Chest tight, heat singing in her veins, panic bled through her gills and warred with her lungs. A battle that had been fought and won while she’d slept.
Still, her lips moved.
“She tries to speak,” one of the young ones whispered, awed. Drifting close enough that she could see where he’d already burst from his slit. Bloated cock trialing through the water.
Vibrating at her back, Nyxarion issued a warning that sent the younger male away, his tail whipping through the current.
“The Accord would have us yield,” Nyxarion said in a tone that sent heat flaring through Kore’s veins. “To accept a slow demise that rejects our history. Our tradition.”
Arousal gushed between her legs, and Kore kicked—her fins catching the current hard enough to see her press back against the male who’d remade her into… this.
A Siren.
His Siren.
“The Thalassari call us abhorrent,” he murmured, and released her wrists to cup her breasts. Putting her on display. “They mock what we are and sanction our heritage when they cannot so much as tolerate the Deep.”