Riven bared his teeth. "She sounds like food that got away."
"She's not food." The words came out harder than I intended. My hand had closed around the pearl again, protective, possessive. "She's something else. I don't know what yet. But she's not food."
Riven's golden eyes narrowed, studying me. I could see him processing, could see the moment his skepticism shifted into something else. Curiosity, maybe. Or recognition—he knew me well enough to know I didn't react like this. I didn't obsess. I didn't protect.
Until now.
"Fine," he said finally. "We'll follow the ship. See this miracle human for ourselves." His grin showed too many teeth. "And if she's not as special as you think, at least we'll eat well."
I should have argued. Should have pointed out that killing her would be the practical choice, the safe choice. She'd seen me, after all. She could tell the others on her ship about the creature in the water.
I didn't want to kill her. I wanted to see her again. Wanted to know why she'd looked at me that way. Wanted to understand what had possessed her to give a monster a gift instead of fleeing for her life.
"We follow the ship," I said. "But no one touches her. Not until we understand what's happening." Vale's smile widened. Thane nodded, something soft and wondering in his eyes. Riven huffed but didn't argue.
We swam. The ship was easy to track. Its hull cut through the water like a wound, trailing noise and debris and the stink of human activity. We stayed deep, hidden in the darkness below, four shadows circling like sharks.
The sun moved across the sky above us, light filtering down in shifting patterns. I could feel the others' restlessness, Riven especially, who was never good at waiting. But we held position, watching, patient as only predators could be.
She appeared again near sunset. I felt her before I saw her, a disturbance in the water, a ripple of movement from above. My whole body went taut, focused, every sense straining toward that small splash. There she was, slipping over the side of the ship in the fading light, diving down into the blue.
Alone. Again. Utterly unafraid.
"That's her?" Riven's voice was barely a whisper, but I heard the surprise in it. Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't this, the small human female with the copper-touched hair streamingbehind her like a banner, swimming deeper than she should, her movements graceful despite her lack of tail or fins.
"She swims well," Thane murmured. "For a human."
"Shh." Vale's eyes were fixed on her with an intensity I recognized. The same intensity he usually reserved for prey. "Listen."
At first I didn't understand. Then I heard it.
She was singing. The sound was faint, muffled by the water, distorted by the distance. But it carried. A human voice, nothing like a siren's deadly song, but something else entirely. The melody was simple, almost childlike, wavering and imperfect.
There was something in it that made my chest tight. She wasn't singing to lure anyone. She wasn't performing or trying to enchant. She was just singing. Like the song was spilling out of her because she couldn't keep it inside. Like she was lonely and the music was the only way to say it.
Vale made a sound beside me, low and wounded, like he'd been struck. Of all of us, he understood song best. He knew what it meant to sing from emptiness, from longing, from a need that had no name.
"She's calling," he breathed. "Not like we do. Not to trap or to lure. She's just calling out. And she doesn't expect anyone to answer." We watched her swim and sing until her breath ran out and she kicked for the surface. She hadn't seen us, we'd stayed deep, hidden in the shadows—but I could feel the pull of her like a current, dragging me toward something I didn't understand.
"Tomorrow," Thane said softly. "We should let her see us tomorrow."
"Not yet." I was surprised by my own voice, by the protectiveness in it. "She might not react the same way if there are four of us. She might be frightened."
"She looked at you and gave you a gift," Vale pointed out. "I don't think fear is her primary response to us."
"Still. We wait. We watch. We learn what we can about her." I looked at each of them in turn—Riven with his barely leashed aggression, Vale with his sharp curiosity, Thane with his gentle wonder. "She's on that ship for a reason. She's diving alone for a reason. I want to know why before we reveal ourselves." They didn't argue. We settled into position, four predators circling in the deep, watching the ship above and the strange human girl who swam in dangerous waters and sang songs that made ancient monsters pause.
That night, while the others rested, I held the pearl in the darkness. Such a small thing. Such an enormous shift. I'd been searching for something my whole life. We all had, that was why we'd left our clans, why we'd wandered the oceans for years without finding a place to belong. The females of our kind were never quite right. Too demanding, too frightened, too interested in what we could provide rather than who we were.
I'd stopped believing I would ever find a mate. Had resigned myself to existing in this pack of outcasts, hunters without a home, alphas without an omega. Now a human girl had swum into my waters and handed me a pearl like it was nothing. Like it was natural. Like I was something worth giving gifts to.
I didn't know what to do with that but I knew I was going to find out. Above us, the ship rocked gently on the waves. Somewhere in its belly, a girl with copper hair was sleeping, dreaming whatever dreams humans dreamed.
I wondered if she was dreaming of me. I wondered if she'd come back to the water tomorrow. I wondered what I would do if she didn't. The pearl glowed softly in my palm, and I closed my fingers around it, holding it tight against my chest.
Mine.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep, somewhere primal, somewhere I hadn't accessed in centuries.
