Crawling, Kore shuffled closer. Helplessly fascinated by his alien shape.
Breath hitching, she paused to look—truly look.
He was huge.
Even unconscious, pure, raw power radiated off his skin. Shimmering and blinding beneath the cruel glare of the sun.
Scales.
Entranced, she reached and did not look at the same glitter sparkling beneath her own skin.
Because his scales weren’t just flaking away… they were shedding. Sliding off his skin in sheets, to reveal a soft membrane beneath. Fragile. Raw… bleeding.
His gills flapped, wet and rattling. A breath lifted his chest, and it was shallow. Agonized.
Fingers brushing his shoulder, Kore touched the divine. Tracing the line of muscle coiled between elbow and wrist, before she prodded the webbing between clawed digits.
At the contact, his fins flared. Splayed wide and trembling, but that was all. A passive threat from the most dangerous creature she’d ever known.
“I don’t… don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “I should leave. Escape now, before…”
She swallowed.
Took a breath.
And then… “Don’t”—her voice cracked—“Don’t leave me,” she whispered and touched his gills with a single, outstretched finger.
It twitched.
Reflexive.
Still alive.
“Please,” she said, choking on a broken sob. “I—I don’t know how to do this without you. Can’t.Can’tdo this without you,” she admitted, because it was true.
Not the breeding.
No, men had shown her just how cheap and insignificant a commodity the female body really was.
It was… everything else.
Water frothed around them, splashing pink and foamy where it washed away another row of scales.
Helpless to resist, fascinated by the morbid, she touched where he’d been left stripped.
Warm.
Shockingly so. His skin soft. Delicate. Thinner than she’d thought possible. Vulnerable where the armoured plating of scales was absent.
But his body was falling apart.
He’d pushed too hard.
Given too much in the quest to mark her. Spent too much time above the surface when he was meant for the sea.
Pressing her forehead to his chest, Kore took a breath of the brine clinging to his skin. Listening to his heart thump.
She had to try.
