With every step, my dragon fights, snarling fury at the human logic that chooses her safety over our claiming. Some things you don't get to keep. Not when keeping them gets them killed.
The ocean calls me home to darkness and pressure and cold that numbs everything except the ache of recognition. I dive deep, letting the weight crush me into forms that can't feel the pull trying to take root. The shift happens halfway down, human skin giving way to scales, lungs adapting to gills, the familiar transformation that's always felt like coming home. But even dragon form can't escape this. Even in the depths, instinct screams wrong, demands I surface, demands I return to her.
The bond pulls against the pressure, fighting physics and distance and the crushing weight of the trench. Her scent shouldn't reach me here. Nothing from the surface penetrates this deep. But the connection doesn't care about impossible. It drags at my scales, burns in my chest, a tether that distance only makes more painful.
I descend deeper, seeking the places where even whales won't follow, where the absolute dark should swallow everything. The cold numbs my scales. The pressure crushes thought into instinct. And still the bond burns, brighter in the abyss than it did on the cliffs.
Distance doesn't break it. Depth doesn't drown it.
I return to the cave and to the pull of the bond that won’t let me go.
CHAPTER 3
LILA
The cellular structure still defies known biology.
I've been staring at these samples for hours, cross-referencing against every database I can access. The elongated cells, the impossible organelle arrangement, the bioluminescence that pulses in response to external stimuli—none of it matches existing literature. I pull up another sample from a different collection point, hoping for variation that might explain the pattern.
The cells are identical. Same structure. Same impossible configuration.
I pull back and rub my eyes. The converted storage room at the police station feels smaller at this hour, walls pressing closer as exhaustion blurs the edges of my vision. Equipment covers the work table where I've set up the microscope. Sample containers crowd every available surface, each one labeled with coordinates and timestamps from today's collection runs on the Kestrel.
The church bell struck some time ago. The village sleeps while I chase patterns that defy explanation.
I pull up the microscopy images on my laptop, comparing cellular patterns across samples. The bioluminescent signatureis too consistent. Too pure. I've worked with natural algae blooms before—they show variation, contamination, genetic drift. These samples read like they came from controlled laboratory conditions, not open ocean.
Someone cultivated these, fed them, maintained conditions that allowed this level of cellular development. Natural blooms don't achieve this purity, this concentration, this structural complexity.
The sensation of being watched crawls up my spine.
I straighten slowly, keeping my movements casual while scanning the darkened window. The room faces the back of the station, overlooking the empty street and the rocky slope that leads toward the eastern cliffs. No streetlights reach this far. No ambient glow from the village penetrates the darkness beyond the glass.
There's movement in the shadows outside.
I turn my head just enough to see without appearing to look. The window reflects my equipment, my own face pale with exhaustion, the microscope's light creating a bright spot that makes everything beyond harder to see.
Then I see them—eyes. Aquamarine and luminous, watching me from the darkness with an intensity that stops my breath. Not human. The color is wrong. The glow is wrong. The focus is definitely wrong.
I blink, and they're gone.
Heart hammering, I cross to the window in quick strides, pressing my face against the cold glass to peer into the night. There's nothing. Just rocks and scrub grass and the distant sound of waves against the shore.
It's exhaustion. I've been awake too long, collecting samples on the Kestrel, running preliminary tests, reviewing autopsy documentation until the words blur together. Tired eyes playtricks in darkness. The human brain creates patterns where none exist.
I pull the shade and return to my work.
I pull up the autopsy reports on my laptop, cross-referencing the chemical burn patterns with my microscopy data. The concentration of algae around the mouth, nostrils, and eyes matches my depth-specific samples from the eastern trench. Whatever transferred the algae to the victims did so with precision—targeting contact points with mucous membranes.
The cellular dehydration makes more sense now. If the algae is releasing concentrated saline compounds on contact, it would pull moisture from surrounding tissue. The victims weren't just drowned. They were chemically altered before they ever entered the water.
Which means they went somewhere first. Somewhere that exposed them to concentrated deep-water algae before they ended up in shallow water.
Except the algae on their skin comes from deep-ocean species—the kind that grows at depths where pressure would crush an unprotected human in seconds.
The knock on the door makes me jump.
I glance at the clock. It's well past normal hours. The station should be locked, everyone gone home except apparently me and whoever is standing in the hallway.
