"Who." Riven's voice was a snarl wrapped in broken glass. His claws had extended fully, digging into his own palms. Blood dispersed in the water like smoke, dark ribbons spiraling away from his hands. His whole body had gone rigid, every muscle coiled. "Who bought you?"
"His name was Marcus. A merchant. Twice my age." I couldn't look at them. Couldn't bear to see their faces. My nails bit into my palms. "He came to look at me before the deal was finalized. Toinspectme like cattle. He looked at my hips and asked my father if the women in our family were good breeders."
The sound that ripped from Riven's chest wasn't human. Wasn't anything close to human. It was pure rage given voice, a roar that made the water vibrate around us.
"Give me his name again." He was shaking. His whole massive body was trembling with barely leashed violence, his crimson tail lashing the water behind him. "The full name. And your father's name. And the names of every single human who looked at you and saw a price tag instead of a person."
"What would you do with them?" I asked quietly, finally meeting his eyes. They were molten gold, burning with something that should have terrified me.
"Kill them." Simple. Certain. Like he was stating a fact about the tides. His scarred face was utterly calm, which somehow made it worse. "Slowly. Painfully. I would make them understand exactly what they did, and then I would make them regret it for a very, very long time before I let them die."
"Riven—" I reached out, my fingers brushing his arm. He flinched like my touch burned him, then pressed into it desperately.
"I would start with the merchant." His golden eyes found mine, and there was nothing sane in them. Nothing human. Just pure, possessive, murderous want. "I would drag him into the deepest trench I could find. I would hold him under until his lungs filled with water, and then I would let him surface just long enough to gasp, just long enough to hope—and then I would drag him down again."
His claws flexed, blood still dripping into the water.
"I would do that for hours. Days, maybe. Until he begged. Until he screamed your name and apologized for ever thinking he had the right to touch you." His voice dropped lower, rougher. "And then I would start taking him apart. Slowly. One piece at a time. I'd start with his eyes—the eyes that dared to look atyou like you were something to be bought. Then his hands—the hands that wanted to touch you. Then?—"
"Your father," Vale's voice cut in, ice and silk and something sharp as a blade underneath. His silver eyes had gone cold. Empty. His beautiful face was a mask of perfect, terrifying stillness. "Tell us about your father."
"Vale—" I turned toward him, but his expression didn't change. Didn't soften.
"He sold his own daughter." The words were calm. Far too calm. His silver hair drifted around his face like a halo, making him look almost angelic, if angels were capable of murder. "He looked at his child, his own flesh and blood, and he put a price on her.."
"That's... that's how it works. In the human world—" I started, but the words felt hollow even as I said them.
"I don't care how it works in the human world." Vale drifted closer, and I saw his claws extending, silver and wicked and sharp enough to gut a whale. His iridescent tail caught the light, beautiful and deadly. "I care about what he did to you. I care about the fact that he made you feel like a thing. A commodity. A broodmare to be traded for business deals."
He reached out and touched my face, impossibly gentle despite the murder in his eyes. His thumb traced along my cheekbone, feather-light.
"I have spent centuries using my voice to lure sailors to their deaths. I have sung them into the water and watched them drown with smiles on their faces." His voice was soft. Intimate. Terrifying. Like a lover's whisper wrapped around a blade. "I would sing your father to me. I would make him follow my voice into the depths. I would make himhappyto die, and then, at the very last moment, I would let him understand exactly what was happening to him. And why. I would let him feel the fear. The betrayal. The helplessness."
Lure sailors to their deaths.
The words echoed in my mind, and something clicked into place. Something I'd been deliberately not thinking about, not examining too closely. Mermaids in the stories didn't lure sailors to drown. Mermaids were beautiful and tragic, falling in love with princes, trading their voices for legs. But there were other creatures in those stories. Creatures with beautiful voices that sang ships onto rocks. Creatures that dragged men into the depths andfed.
Sirens.
I looked at Vale, at his sharp teeth, his silver claws, the predatory grace of his movements. At Riven, massive and scarred, blood still drifting from his self-inflicted wounds. At Thane, gentle Thane, whose claws were out and whose eyes held centuries of rage. At Kaelan, still as death, with eyes like the abyss.
Not mermaids. They'd never said they were mermaids. I'd just... assumed. Hoped. Told myself a prettier story.
They eat people, I thought.They've killed. They've drowned sailors and fed on them and they're not even a little bit sorry.
I waited for the fear to come. The revulsion. The desperate need to flee.
It didn't.
They're monsters, I thought.And they still treat me better than any human ever has.
I filed the realization away somewhere quiet in my mind. Something to examine later. Or never. His thumb traced my cheekbone again, and I shivered.
"I would let him feel exactly what you felt when he sold you." Vale spoke his tone going sharp. Thane moved closer, and I expected gentleness from him, he was always the soft one, the tender one. But his claws were out too, and his golden-browneyes were hard. Harder than I'd ever seen them. His honey-brown tail coiled tight beneath him.
"The men who would have taken you to that breeding house if you'd been caught." His voice was quiet, but there was an edge to it I'd never heard before. A sharpness that didn't belong on his gentle face. "The ones who 'correct' omegas who resist. Tell me about them."
"Thane—" My voice cracked. Of all of them, hearing this darkness from him hurt the most.
