I shivered, pressing closer to his side, and felt his arm wrap around my waist, his growl of reassurance vibrating against my back.
"You're safe here," he promised, his breath warm against my ear. "Nothing gets past the reef. Nothing touches what's ours."
They showed me the hunting grounds—a stretch of open water where fish gathered in abundance, easy prey for hungry sirens. They showed me the kelp forests, vast and swaying, where they could hide and rest when they needed solitude. They showed me the caves that dotted the cliff faces, each one claimed by one of them, filled with treasures and secrets and pieces of themselves.
"This one is mine," Thane said shyly, guiding me into a smaller cavern near the top of the reef. The walls were covered in shells—thousands of them, collected over centuries, arranged in patterns that caught the light and threw it back in rainbowrefractions. "I like beautiful things. I always have. I've been collecting since... well, since before I can remember."
"It's amazing," I breathed, reaching out to touch a spiral shell that shimmered with pink and gold iridescence. "All of this, just for beauty?"
"Beauty matters," he said, his golden-brown eyes warm as he watched me explore, a low purr rumbling in his chest. "It makes the darkness easier to bear."
Riven's cave was different, darker, rougher, filled with weapons and trophies from battles I couldn't imagine. There were teeth the size of my forearm, scales from creatures that must have been massive, bones carved with marks I didn't recognize.
"I wasn't always... controlled," he admitted, his voice rough as he watched me examine a particularly vicious-looking spear, his golden eyes shadowed with old memories. "There was a time when the hunger ruled me. When I killed anything that crossed my path, just because I could." He moved closer, his scarred hand finding my hip, his touch gentler than his words. "I'm different now. You make me different."
Vale's cave was the most surprising—filled not with treasures or weapons, but with instruments. Strange, beautiful things made from shells and coral and the bones of sea creatures, designed to be played underwater. He demonstrated one for me, his long fingers moving over the holes, and the sound that emerged was unlike anything I'd ever heard—haunting and lovely and achingly sad.
"Music was the first thing I loved," he said when the song faded, his silver eyes distant with memory, his voice carrying that musical quality even in speech. "Before the pack. Before the centuries of loneliness. There was music, and it was enough. For a while."
"And now?" I asked, swimming closer, drawn by the emotion in his voice.
"Now there's you," he said simply, reaching out to touch my face, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. "And you're better than any song I've ever written."
Kaelan's cave was the largest, fitting, for the pack alpha. It was filled with books and maps and artifacts from centuries of human history, carefully preserved in waterproof containers he must have salvaged from a thousand different wrecks.
"I've always wanted to understand," he explained, watching me page through a book of star charts, his dark eyes thoughtful. "Humans, the world above, the patterns of history. I thought if I understood enough, I could find..." He paused, his jaw tightening.
"Find what?" I prompted, looking up at him, seeing the vulnerability beneath his ancient composure.
"Something to fill the emptiness," he admitted, his voice rough, his hand coming up to cup my face. "Someone to make the centuries mean something. I looked for answers in books, in knowledge, in understanding. But the answer was never in any of those things." His dark eyes held mine, fierce and tender. "The answer was you."
By the time they'd shown me everything, I was exhausted in a way I'd never experienced before—a bone-deep weariness that made my new tail feel heavy and my gills flutter with each breath.
"You need to rest," Kaelan said, noticing the way I was starting to flag, his voice gentle but firm. "Transformation takes a toll. Your body needs time to recover."
"I don't want to stop," I protested, even as a yawn cracked my jaw—a strange sensation underwater, my gills fluttering wildly to compensate. "There's so much more to see, so much more to learn?—"
"There's time," Vale interrupted, his hand finding my elbow, his silver eyes soft with affection. "We have forever, remember? There's no rush." Forever. The word settled into my chest like a warm stone, heavy with promise.
"Back to the nest?" Thane asked hopefully, already swimming toward the tunnel that led to the air pocket above. "I want to curl up with her. I want to hold her while she sleeps."
"The nest," Kaelan agreed, and I felt his hand find the small of my back, guiding me toward home. We swam up through the tunnels, the water growing shallower as we rose, until our heads broke the surface and we were back in the cavern with its treasure and its bed and its soft, warm nest.
Watching them transform was different now that I could see it with siren eyes. The way their tails split and reformed, scales receding into skin, fins reshaping into legs. It was beautiful and strange and utterly natural, like watching flowers bloom in fast-forward.
"Can I do that?" I asked, suddenly curious, looking down at my own tail where it floated in the water. "Transform to legs, I mean?"
"Not yet," Kaelan said, pulling himself onto the stone ledge, water streaming from his newly human legs. "It takes practice. Your body needs to settle into its siren form before you can learn to shift. Give it a few days."
A few days. That seemed like an eternity when I was still so new, still so hungry to understand everything about what I'd become. Then Thane was reaching for me, lifting me from the water, cradling me against his chest as he carried me toward the nest. The heat that had been simmering in my belly flared at his touch, and I heard myself make a sound, low and needy and utterly involuntary.
"Soon," he promised, his golden-brown eyes dark with answering hunger, his voice rough with restraint, a low growlbuilding in his chest. "Soon, little omega. But not tonight." He laid me in the nest they'd built for me—for us—and the others joined moments later, surrounding me with warmth and strength and the overwhelming comfort of pack. My tail curled beneath me, scales catching the soft glow of the bioluminescent light, gills fluttering as I breathed the air that still felt foreign to my transformed lungs.
"How do you feel?" Kaelan asked, settling behind me, his arm draping across my waist, his breath warm against my hair.
I considered the question. Considered the strange new weight of my tail, the flutter of gills that would never quite feel normal in air. The warmth building in my belly, the ache that was becoming harder to ignore. The overwhelming, bone-deep certainty that I was exactly where I was meant to be.
"Free," I said finally, the word coming out quiet and sure. "I feel free."
