It was the man’s turn to scream, and he did it as the wave crested, washing away whatever sticky little squirt he’d managed to pump inside her before he was simply… gone.
Flesh peeled from bone.
A corpse tumbled through the unnatural current. Dragged down and broken, shredded across trees and rocks, mouth agape in an endless, eternal scream.
Tangled in netting, swept through the wave with a cry that made the black waters shiver and dance, Kore was liberated.
Gasping.
Bound.
The net pulled tight around her limbs—arms locked behind her, eyes wide, and hair a chaotic lashing halo. And her lips, they gaped wide open around a breath that couldn’t come.
Helpless without him to guide her.
Held immobile where she was suspended. Afloat.
Weightless.
A drowned bride held aloft by the tide, tangled in her own foolish folly, naked and shimmering for his pleasure. Her throat arched, and she thrashed, legs flailing against inevitability.
Her death.
For her life as a human was over.
And her rebirth as a Siren?
Glistening skin speckled with scales that caught the light as the earth was washed away. Her eyes were wide, limbs slack, drifting as the wave swallowed her whole and let her fall.
Cutting through the surf, Nyxarion lashed at the current. Snaking through the carnage he’d summoned, fins stretched to sail through the turbulent waters, he rose.
Stretching one massive hand forward, the other on his trident, he claimed her. Tearing through the net with deadly claws, Nyxarion pulled her from its grasp and freed her from the trappings of humanity once and for all.
Head lolling, the girl was pliable in his grip.
Unconscious.
Her gills a seam beneath her jaw that did not flutter or gape.
Panic bubbled in his chest, then.
The flash of memory a cruel reminder of the bride he’d lost.
But the creature in his grip twitched. Still warm, heat radiating from gleaming skin in lazy pulses. Growing weaker, she was fading with every moment lost beneath the surface.
Drowning.
“No,” Nyx snarled, straining not to boil the water around her. “I will not lose another.”
Pressing his lips to those that were cold and slack, he forced a breath into her lungs. Thumb adding a gentle pressure to the seam where her gills were meant to filter oxygen from water.
And so he felt it when that flesh flickered. Weak, at first. A tremor unused to the never-ending work ahead.
Suspended in his grasp, Kore twitched.
Muscles lurching as she fought his claim to the very end.
He kissed her.
