"They're warning us," she says softly, almost to herself. "Something's wrong. Something's disturbing the balance, and they know it."
She's right about that. The corporate surveyors, the mapped hidden sites, the threat of dredging equipment tearing through waters that have been protected for millennia. The whales feel it coming the same way I do, the same way every creature of the old blood can sense disaster gathering on the horizon.
But there's another warning in their song, one I don't think she's hearing yet. A warning about her, about what the sea recognizes in her blood, about the transformation that began the moment she set foot on this island. The awakening that every moment in these waters pushes closer to completion.
My bear demands that I protect her. From the corporation, from the dangers of the deep water, from the truth about herself that she's not ready to face. But more than anything, from what she's about to become, because once that transformation begins, nothing will ever be the same for either of us.
I watch her lean over the railing, one hand reaching toward the water as if she could touch the whales from here, and the sea reaches back. A swell rises higher than the others, stretching toward her outstretched fingers like a lover's caress before falling back into the waves.
She doesn't notice. She's too focused on the whales, on the mystery she came here to solve.
But I notice. And when she finally pulls her hand back, water dripping from fingers she didn't realize she'd dipped beneath the surface, my bear goes very still.
And beneath us, in the lightless trenches where the old powers sleep, something opens its eyes.
The sea knows her.
CHAPTER 4
ISLA
The humpbacks escort us until the sun climbs higher, then disappear into the depths as suddenly as they appeared.
One moment they're there, massive shapes breaching and diving in that strange synchronized pattern, their songs carrying across the water in harmonies that make my chest ache with longing I've never understood. The next moment, they're gone, slipping beneath the surface like dreams dissolving at dawn. The sea swallows them whole, leaving nothing but ripples to mark where they'd been.
My hand is still damp from where I'd reached toward them without thinking. The skin of my fingers tingles, though whether from cold or something else entirely, I can't be sure.
"They've said what they came to say." Grayson's voice breaks the silence, rough and low. He stands at the wheel, guidingDeepwatchthrough swells that would challenge a less experienced captain, and he hasn't looked at me since the whales vanished.
"What did they say?"
He doesn't answer. Just adjusts course toward the coordinates I gave him earlier, his massive frame moving withthe boat's rhythm like he and the vessel are parts of the same organism. There's no wasted motion in him, no uncertainty. Every adjustment of the wheel, every glance at the horizon, carries the confidence of someone who learned these waters before he learned to walk.
Pressing him for answers would get me nowhere, so I turn my attention to the equipment cases secured near the stern.
The work steadies me. Familiar motions, practiced routines, the comfort of science when everything else feels uncertain. The sonar buoys come out first. I check calibrations and battery levels before setting them aside. Then the temperature sensors, each one tested and logged. Finally, the water sample collectors, sterile containers that will capture evidence of whatever chemical or biological anomalies might explain the whale behavior.
Five years of research have led me here. Five years of chasing patterns that don't make sense, of presenting data to colleagues who smiled politely and suggested I was seeing connections that didn't exist. Five years of grasping at something just beyond reach, something that would finally make everything click into place if I could only get close enough to see it clearly.
Now I'm closer than I've ever been, and instead of excitement, I feel the weight of standing at the edge of something vast and unknowable. Like the moment before stepping off a cliff, when your body knows the fall is coming even if your mind hasn't caught up.
"Here." Grayson cuts the engine, andDeepwatchsettles into a gentle drift. "These are the coordinates you wanted."
The GPS confirms we're positioned directly over the deepest trench in the area, a geological formation that shouldn't exist according to standard models of the seafloor. The charts show it as a relatively shallow channel. My satellite data suggestssomething far deeper, a crack in the earth that plunges down into darkness no light has ever touched.
"Thank you." I move to the rail, preparing to deploy the first buoy. "This should take a few hours. I'll need readings from multiple points along the trench perimeter."
He nods but doesn't retreat to the wheelhouse. Instead, he leans against the gunwale and watches me work with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness. Academic presentations, conference talks, sure. But this is different. This feels like being studied, catalogued, filed away for future reference.
The first buoy hits the water with a splash, its sensors activating automatically as it sinks toward the designated depth. Data streams populate my laptop screen with numbers that immediately set my heart racing.
"That's not possible," I murmur, more to myself than to him.
"What isn't?"
I gesture at the screen without looking up. "The temperature gradient. It should decrease steadily with depth, following predictable patterns based on current flow and solar penetration. But look at this. The temperature drops normally for the first stretch, then suddenly spikes. Like there's a heat source at the bottom of the trench."
He moves closer, and his scent reaches me on the wind. Salt and clean air and something underneath, something wild that reminds me of storms rolling in over open water. My grandmother used to say the sea had its own smell, different from the beaches and the harbors where tourists gathered. She said you had to get far enough from land to find it, out where the water remembered what it was before people came.
