Life did not beginon land.
Whether one asked an evolutionary biologist or a priest, they would get the same singular truth: that life, in its myriad, messy, sharp-toothed forms, began in the depths of an ocean unknown.
Tempest, hungriest of all gods, was said to have been the first to fashion beings. Some stories claimed that it was an impulse borne of greed for worship. Some gave the Hungry God more grace, citing eons of loneliness.
After all, what is a god of love if no one exists to feel it?
Yet others attributed it to Tempest’s competitive streak. Always, it was said, he sought to take from his brothers — inch by inch, wave by wave, he consumed the land and the sky. Was it really so outlandish to think he might take the creation of sentient beings from them, too?
Whether one believed in the Hungry God or the evidence pressed into stone and DNA, there was no disputing that the ocean was the birthplace of life.
It was perhaps because of this that it was also the home of the world’s most deadly predators. To have survived so many eons in the capricious oceans, they could not afford to be soft.
It was a common misconception that merfolk didn’t care what happened on land. In fact, they cared a lot, but not because they were particularly altruistic or envious of the land dwellers.
No, they cared only insomuch as theyhungered.
There were treasures on the land, where not even the most stubborn merfolk dared to drag their bulk, and Emory’s kind were a greedy, possessive lot. He’d been taught very young to reach for whatever caught his eye and be prepared to fight for the right to those things until the bitter end.
It was a lesson passed down from generation to generation, creating covetous people.
And there was nothing in the ocean or on land more worth coveting than a mate.
While fights over the choicest coves or hunting spots were often bloody, they were rarely fatal. The same could not be said about competition for a mate. He’d seen fins ripped off, throats torn out, drownings, even intentional strandings, for the sake of a mate.
His own mother had killed two of her podmates for the right to her mate, and Emory was prepared to do the same for his. In fact, he was growing increasingly certain he would have to.
Initially, he’d been incensed to discover someone had dropped a hulking metal dwelling onto his island. His first instinct, as usual, was to take it apart piece by piece, salvaging the parts as little more than scrap — then do the same to whoever dared to trespass on his home.
Technically speaking, the islands didn’t belong to him. They were the property of the land government. But his father had lived on that rocky slope, and his mother had made her cove there, and he and his siblings had all been born in the water that frothed against Farallon stone. They werehis.
Rather than joining the pod that roamed the cool, bountiful waters off the coast, he’d chosen to stake his claim on the island after his father’s, and subsequently his mother’s, passing. After securing their bodies to the deepest part of the sea floor he and his siblings could reach, he’d returned to his birthplace and never left.
Demon’s Tooth, Maintop, Seal Rock, and the Great Arch all belonged to him and him alone. And then he sawher.
Long limbs. Odd, bouncy hair the color of wet sandstone. Glittering eyes framed by dark lashes. A smile, soft and tremulous, that made his stomach knot like a child’s first rope toy.
Upon first glance he hadn’t been entirely certain he wanted her on his islands, but he watched her walk on the shore with a look of pure awe, he watched her inspect stones and pick up sea glass, and then he watched as she sat heavily on the steps of her home and…wept.
He’d been so startled by the sobbing that he nearly lost his grip on the rocks. He didn’t like how her shoulders shook. He especially didn’t like the way she hugged herself, as if seeking reassurance from someone who wasn’t there.
But after several horrible minutes in which he agonized over whether to abandon her to her sadness or not, his mate slowly straightened, wiped her tears, and spoke into the wind, “I can do this. This ismyhome now. I need to make the best of it.”
He’d watched her rise slowly on unsteady legs and then turn to walk into the cove. In that single movement, he was granted the briefest glimpse of her soft features transformed into something fierce.
This is my home now,she declared, so strong, even when she cried until no more tears could be made.
Yes,he thought, the knots in his belly smoothing out.Yes, it is.
She had claimed the islands. He claimed her in return.
It was all right that she didn’t know it yet.Heknew, and soon the pod would, too. Emory just hoped he wouldn’t have to kill anyone to get them to accept it.
He swayed under the circular opening of his mate’s cove. It was closed, sealed by twin sheets of metal, but that hadn’t stopped him before and it wouldn’t stop him now. For many, many weeks he’d stalked his prey, leaving her gifts and alerting her to his intentions via that poorly guarded entrance.
He huffed out a sheet of glittering bubbles. She was lucky that her mate had been raised by a tinkerer. Emory had applied his father’s mechanical teachings to all sorts of things, including circumventing pitiful little locks on automatic hatches. Mostly he used it to terrorize vessels illegally fishing or harvesting in his territory, but that had changed ever since his little mate dropped into his lap.
The hyper-sensitive pads of his fingers skimmed over the rubber lip at the edges of the hatch, searching for a familiar divot.There it is.Pressing down on the rubber until he could wedge a clawed fingertip underneath it, Emory let out a low, triumphant whistle when he made contact with the cold metal just underneath.
