"Is there a difference?" Vale asked, glancing back over his shoulder with an innocent expression that fooled no one.
"One requires effort," Riven pointed out.
"Effort is overrated," Vale dismissed with an airy wave of his hand. "Besides, Lily likes my singing."
"Lily likes everything about us," Thane said happily, swimming alongside us with a dreamy expression. "She told me so."
"I said I liked your eyes," I corrected, though I was smiling despite myself. "That's not the same as everything."
"It's close enough," Riven said, his tail brushing against my legs as we swam—casual, possessive, constant. "You're ours. That means you like us." The logic was absurd. It was also somehow impossible to argue with.
Night in the deep ocean was different from night on the surface. There was no true darkness here, but there was a shift, a settling. The creatures around us changed their patterns, some waking while others drifted into sleep. The temperature dropped slightly. The currents slowed.
My sirens pressed closer.
We'd settled in a hollow near the garden, surrounded by softly glowing coral and kelp that swayed like curtains in the gentle current. They'd arranged themselves around me in what I was starting to recognize as their default configuration—Kaelanat my back, Riven pressed against my side, Vale and Thane taking turns being close enough to touch.
It should have felt suffocating. Instead, it felt like safety.
"Tell me about your scars," I said into the quiet, my voice soft in the stillness. Riven went still beside me. I felt the tension ripple through his body, felt the others shift in response.
"You don't have to," I added quickly, reaching out to touch his arm. "I just—I want to know you. All of you. The good parts and the bad parts."
Silence stretched between us. Long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer.
Then he spoke. "I got them protecting the pack." His voice was rough, scraped raw with memory. His golden eyes stared at something I couldn't see. I turned slightly in Kaelan's arms so I could see Riven's face—the lattice of white lines that mapped his skin, the way they caught the faint light.
"There was another pack," he continued, his jaw tight. "Centuries ago. They wanted our territory. Our hunting grounds." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "They came for us in the night. Thought they could take us by surprise."
"What happened?" I whispered, my hand tightening on his arm.
"I killed them," he said, simple and brutal and honest. His claws extended slightly, then retracted. "All of them. But not before they—" He gestured at his face, his chest, the scars that covered so much of him. "This is what they left behind."
"You saved us," Thane said, his voice thick with old emotion, tears already gathering in his golden-brown eyes. "You fought them alone while we escaped. We found you afterward, barely alive, floating in a cloud of your own blood."
"I healed," Riven said, his golden eyes finding mine. Something vulnerable flickered in their depths. "Eventually."
"The scars stayed," Vale added quietly, his silver eyes soft with old pain. "Siren magic can heal almost anything, but some wounds... some wounds leave marks. Inside and out."
I reached out, my fingers hovering just above the worst of the scarring—a thick rope of white tissue that ran from his jaw to his collarbone. "Can I?"
His answer was to press his face into my palm, a shudder running through his massive body. I traced the scars gently. Each line, each ridge, each place where his body had been torn apart and put back together. He shuddered under my touch, his eyes falling closed, a low rumble building in his chest.
Not quite a purr. Something deeper. Something more vulnerable.
"You're beautiful," I told him, my voice fierce with conviction. "Every single scar. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." The sound he made then wasn't words. It was raw and broken and desperate, and then his mouth was on mine, kissing me like I'd given him something precious instead of just the truth.
When we finally broke apart, all four of them were watching me with that look again. That devastating, overwhelming look that said I was the center of their entire universe.
"Tell me more," I said, settling back against Kaelan's chest, his arms wrapping around me automatically. "All of you. I want to know everything."
They told me.
Vale spoke first, his silver eyes going distant with memory. "The first time I used my voice to lure a sailor to his death... I was young. Curious. I didn't fully understand what I was doing until it was done."
He paused, swallowing hard.
"The guilt nearly destroyed me," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper. "It made me go silent for decades afterward."
