Mine.
I didn't know her name. Didn't know anything about her except that she was brave and strange and had looked at me like I was wonderful.
Already, impossibly, irrevocably?—
She was mine.
Chapter Three
LILY
Three days.
Three days since I'd seen him, and I was starting to think I'd imagined the whole thing. It wouldn't be the first time my mind had played tricks on me. Isolation did strange things to a person. So did fear, and exhaustion, and the constant low-grade terror of being discovered. Maybe I'd been oxygen-deprived. Maybe I'd dreamed the whole encounter in that hazy space between diving too deep and surfacing too fast.
Maybe there was no creature with ink-black hair and dark eyes and a tail like carved obsidian.
Maybe I'd given my pearl to nothing but the sea. I threw myself into work with a desperation that made even Brennan raise an eyebrow. Scrubbed decks until my hands cracked. Mended nets until my fingers bled. Hauled rope and sorted catches and did every miserable task I could find, anything to keep my mind from wandering back to that moment in the blue.
It didn't work.
Every time I looked at the water, I thought of him. Every time I caught a flash of movement below the surface, a fish, a shadow, the play of light, my heart stuttered with ridiculous hope. I found myself inventing excuses to be near the railing, staring at the waves like they held answers.
Stop it, I told myself.You're being foolish.Even if he was real, why would he come back? You're nothing to him. Just a strange human who invaded his territory and offered him a rock.
The pearl had been beautiful. He'd taken it, and the way he'd looked at me...I shook my head and went to find more rope to coil. The ship life continued its grinding rhythm. Days blurred together in a haze of labor and vigilance. The betas continued their casual cruelty, shoving past me in narrow corridors, making snide comments about my size and my silence, assigning me the worst tasks whenever they could.
Decker seemed to have made tormenting me into a personal hobby. He dumped a bucket of fish guts near my hammock one night, so I woke to the stench of rotting innards. He "forgot" to tell me when meal times changed, so I missed dinner twice in a row. He told the other betas I was bad luck—cursed, maybe, or touched in the head, and I could feel their sidelong glances growing more frequent, more suspicious.
"Strange one, isn't she?" I heard him say to another beta, not bothering to lower his voice as I walked past. "Never talks. Never smiles. Just stares at the water like she's waiting for something."
"Maybe she's thinking about jumping," the other one laughed.
"Wouldn't be a loss if she did."
I kept walking. Kept my face blank. Kept the hurt locked down deep where no one could see it.
The alphas were worse. Cort had apparently decided I was worth pursuing. He found excuses to be near me constantly,appearing around corners, blocking doorways, always watching with those small mean eyes. He hadn't touched me again, not since that day with my hair, but I could feel him circling. Getting closer. Testing boundaries. The other alphas had started noticing me too. Small things, a head turning when I passed, nostrils flaring, brows furrowing in confusion. My scent blockers were holding, mostly, but something was leaking through. Something that made them look twice where they'd once looked past.
One of them, a broad-shouldered man named Harris, stopped me in the corridor one evening. He didn't say anything, just blocked my path and breathed deep, his eyes going slightly unfocused.
"You smell different," he said finally.
"I've been working with the fish guts." The lie came easily. "Decker's orders." He frowned but moved aside. I felt his eyes on my back all the way down the corridor, and I didn't breathe properly until I'd turned the corner.
Three more weeks. That's what I kept telling myself. Three more weeks until we reached port, and I could disappear again, find another ship, another hiding place, another temporary sanctuary. Three weeks felt like a lifetime when every day brought new dangers. When every night I lay awake listening for footsteps outside my hammock. When every moment I spent on this ship felt like a countdown to disaster.
I needed the water.
I'd been too afraid to dive since that day. Too afraid of what I might see, or what I might not see. If I went back and the water was empty, I'd have to accept that I'd imagined him. That I was losing my mind, cracking under the pressure, seeing mermaids that weren't there.
And if he was there—I didn't know what I'd do if he was there. By the third evening, the need had grown toostrong to ignore. The deck was crowded with the dinner shift, everyone focused on their meals and their complaints. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, painting the water gold and crimson, and the pull of it was like a physical ache in my chest.
I slipped away to my hidden spot at the stern. Not to swim, I wasn't ready for that, not yet, but just to be near the water. Just to breathe the salt air and watch the waves and pretend, for a moment, that I was free. I found my usual perch on a coil of rope, hidden from view by the stacked supplies. The evening was warm, the breeze gentle, the sound of the waves a steady rhythm against the hull. I pulled off my cap and let my hair fall loose, sighing at the relief of it. The weight of the braid piled on my head always gave me a headache by evening, and it felt good to let it tumble down my back, to feel the wind move through it.
I sat there for a long time, just watching the water. Watching the colors change as the sun sank lower. Watching for movement beneath the surface, even though I told myself I wasn't.
Then, without quite meaning to, I started to sing. It was an old song. Something my mother used to sing before everything changed, before I became valuable, before the light went out of her eyes and she started looking at me like a problem to be solved instead of a daughter to be loved. A lullaby, maybe. Or a love song. The words were about longing, longing for something you couldn't name, searching for a place where you belonged.
