“Ariella!”
Merrick’s voice echoed, distant but determined. She didn’t look back.
The streets of the village gave way to dirt paths, then to rocky trails that wound up the coastal bluffs. Her formal shoes were useless on the uneven terrain; she kicked them off and continued barefoot, her elongated toes and webbed feet gripping the stone with ease. The ruined dress hampered her movement, so she tore the skirt away at the knee, leaving herself in something like a tunic that let her legs move freely.
Faster. Have to go faster.
The sun beat down on her back, and sweat mixed with the salt air on her skin. Her skin was glowing wildly now, broadcasting her desperation, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t afford to care.
The sea cliffs rose before her, the ancient stone carved by millennia of waves into spires and crags and hidden caves. She raced unerringly towards the one place on Cresca where she’d ever felt truly safe. Valrek’s cave.
She scrambled over the final ridge and dropped into the cove below, her heart pounding so hard her whole body was shaking. The cave entrance yawned before her, dark and inviting, and she threw herself towards it without hesitation.
“Valrek!”
Her voice echoed off the stone walls.
“Valrek, please?—”
She rounded the corner into the main chamber and stopped dead.
The cave was empty. No fire in the hearth. No signs of life except for a small object sitting in the center of the stone floor, glinting in the dim light that filtered through the entrance.
The echo-pipe.
She dropped to her knees beside it, her hands trembling as she lifted the ancient instrument. It felt warm to the touch, thrumming with the same strange energy she’d sensed when she first found it in the deep trench. For a moment, she could have sworn she heard it sing—a single, mournful note that resonated in her chest like a promise.
Where are they? Where did they go?
Footsteps sounded outside the cave and she rose, clutching the echo-pipe to her chest. Her Song gathered in her throat, ready to defend, ready to attack, ready to do whatever it took to protect herself and the people she loved.
A figure appeared in the cave entrance—a mountain of scarred muscle silhouetted against the afternoon sun.
“Valrek.”
He was staring at her like he’d seen a ghost—or maybe like he was seeing her for the first time. His nostrils flared, drinking in her scent, and something shifted in his expression.
“You came back.” His voice was a growl, low and rough and vibrating with emotion.
“Always.”
She was in his arms before she knew she’d moved.
CHAPTER 18
“You came back.”
The words scraped out of Valrek’s throat before he could stop them, raw and broken and nothing like the controlled growl he’d intended. Three days. Three days of pacing the cave like a caged animal, of Lilani asking why the Star Lady wasn’t visiting anymore, of his beast howling at the moons and demanding he hunt down his mate and drag her back where she belonged.
And now she was here, clutching his people’s sacred relic to her chest, her ridiculous human dress torn to ribbons and her skin glowing like starfire.
Mate.
The beast roared the word through every fiber of his being.
Then she crashed into him, and thought became impossible.
She was shaking—he could feel the tremors running through her body as his arms locked around her, pulling her so tight against his chest that he could feel her heartbeat pounding against his own. She smelled of fear and adrenaline and something chemical and wrong, like she’d been trapped too long in a sterile human box. But beneath all of that, her true scent sang to him: cold sea and warm honey, the call of deep water and sunlit shores, everything he’d ever wanted and never dared to ask for.
