I nodded, already feeling the loss of the underwater world pressing against my chest like a physical weight. "I know the one."
"Come back tomorrow." Riven's voice was rough, almost pleading, and his massive hands gripped my shoulders with desperate strength. His golden eyes burned into mine, fierce and wanting. "Promise us. Promise you'll come back."
"I promise." The words came out without hesitation, without thought. "I'll come back. As soon as I can. I'll always come back."
Vale swam close, his silver hair dark with water, his sharp smile soft in the moonlight. He leaned in and pressed another kiss to my forehead, lingering longer this time. "We'll be waiting." His voice was a murmur against my skin, intimate and warm despite the cool water. "We'll always be waiting for you."
Kaelan caught my face in his pale hands and looked at me like I was the most important thing in his entire world. Like I was the sun and the moon and the stars and the sea all wrapped up in one inadequate human form.
"Ours." His voice was barely audible, a breath more than a word. "You're ours now, Lily. Whether you know it yet or not. You belong to us." Then he released me, and I swam to the rope ladder, and I climbed back onto the ship with water streaming from my clothes and hair and wonder burning in my chest.
When I looked back over the railing, they were still there—four shapes in the moonlit water, watching me, waiting until I was safely aboard before they sank beneath the surface and disappeared. stood there for a long time, dripping onto the deck, staring at the place where they'd been.
Tomorrow. I would go back tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. For as long as I could, for as long as they'd have me, I would keep returning to them. Because they were right. Whether I'd known it or not, whether I'd chosen it or not—I was theirs now.
Somehow, impossibly, that didn't feel like a cage.
It felt like freedom.
Chapter Eleven
THANE
I couldn't stop smiling. We swam through the dark water, the four of us moving in easy formation through depths we'd traveled a thousand times before. The moon was high above the surface, its light filtering down in silver shafts that barely reached us. We should have been hunting, or patrolling our territory, or doing any of the things we normally did after nightfall.
Instead, we were swimming in circles, too restless to settle, too full of something bright and overwhelming to focus on anything else.
Lily.
Her name was a song in my chest, a melody I couldn't stop humming. Lily, with her tangled hair and worn clothes and eyes that held so much wonder it made my heart ache. Lily, who had jumped from the ship without hesitation, who had trusted us to catch her, who had breathed underwater like she'd been born to it. Lily, who had let us touch her. Who had leaned into Riven'sarms like she belonged there. Who had held my hand like it was something precious.
"You're doing it again." Vale's voice cut through my thoughts, amused and teasing. He swam up beside me, his silver hair streaming behind him, his sharp smile soft in the darkness. His blue-green eyes caught the faint moonlight, glinting with humor. "That look on your face. Like someone hit you over the head with a very pleasant rock."
"I can't help it." I didn't even try to deny it. What would be the point? They all knew. They all felt it too. I could see it in the way Riven kept touching the pink ribbon at his chest, in the way Kaelan's hand drifted to the pouch at his hip, in the way Vale's sharp edges had softened into something almost gentle. "She was... she was everything, Vale. More than everything."
"She was." Vale's voice lost its teasing edge, going quiet and sincere in a way he rarely allowed himself to be. He tilted his head, silver hair swirling around him. "When she said my name for the first time, when she heard my voice and looked at me like that—" he broke off, pressing his hand to his chest like he could feel the echo of it still. "I've sung for centuries. Lured ships. Drowned sailors. Made creatures weep with the beauty of my voice." His blue-green eyes met mine, raw and wondering. "None of it ever felt like that. Like she was hearing me for the first time. Like my voice finally meant something."
Riven made a sound low in his throat, agreement, understanding, something that vibrated through the water between us. He swam closer, his massive body a warm presence in the cool depths, his golden eyes burning even in the darkness. The pink ribbon was still clutched against his chest, like he couldn't bear to let it go even for a moment.
"She didn't flinch." His rough voice was soft, almost wondering. His scarred face was twisted with an emotion I couldn't quite name. "When I touched her. When I held her. Shedidn't pull away, didn't tense up, didn't look at me like I was a monster." His claws extended slightly, digging into his own palm. "She leaned into me. Like she wanted to be there. Like she felt safe."
"She does feel safe with us." Kaelan's voice came from ahead, and we all turned to look at our pack leader. He had stopped swimming, hovering in the water with his obsidian tail moving in slow, contemplative arcs. His pale skin seemed to glow faintly in the darkness, and his dark eyes were distant, thoughtful. "I could feel it. When I held her in the water, when I caught her after she jumped—there was no fear in her. Not of us. Not of drowning. Not of any of it."
"She's afraid of something, though," I said quietly, hating the words even as they left my mouth. It was true. We'd all seen it. The way she looked over her shoulder before coming to the railing. The way she flinched at sudden movements on the ship. The way she'd mouthed apologies through three days of not being able to come to us, her eyes full of frustration and something that looked like trapped desperation. "Something on that ship. Something…or someone that she's hiding from."
Silence fell over us, heavy and uncomfortable. We'd been dancing around this for days—weeks, really, ever since we'd first realized what she was. An omega. A human omega, hiding on a fishing boat, wearing scent blockers, pretending to be something she wasn't.
Why? Among our kind, omegas were treasured. Protected. Worshipped. The thought of one hiding, running, disguising herself, it didn't make sense. It was like finding a pearl buried in mud, like discovering a songbird with clipped wings. Wrong. Fundamentally, deeply wrong.
And worse than wrong, obscene. We'd watched her work. Watched her haul ropes and scrub decks and carry loads that would strain a creature twice her size. We'd seen her callousedhands, her worn clothes, the dark circles under her eyes that spoke of too little sleep and too much labor. An omega. Working herself to exhaustion.
The memories made me sick. Made all of us sick. Riven had nearly lost control when he'd realized what those calluses meant, had snarled and raged and sworn to burn the ship to the waterline with every human on it. Kaelan had gone so still and cold that even the witch had noticed, had commented on the murder in his eyes. Vale hadn't spoken for hours, just wound her ribbon through his fingers and stared at the ship with an expression that promised violence.
I had felt something ancient and terrible stir in my chest. Something that wanted to rise up, take her and never let her work another day in her life. Omegas didn't work. Omegas were cherished. The very concept of our Lily laboring while we circled helplessly in the water below...
"We need to find out what's happening." Kaelan's voice was hard, decisive, the voice of a pack leader making a decision. His dark eyes had gone sharp, focused, all that contemplative softness burning away into something fierce and protective. "We need to understand why she's running. What she's running from. And then we need to fix it."
"How?" Riven's golden eyes were blazing, his massive body tense with barely contained energy. His tail lashed the water, sending currents swirling around us. "She hasn't told us anything. We don't even know where she came from, why she's on that ship, what?—"
