“Do it,” she whispered, loud enough for Cassia to hear. “Kill me. It’s what I deserve, isn’t it? What I’ve wanted, ever since youlooked at me and saw nothing. At least this way, you’ll remember me. At least this way, I’ll matter.”
Aero’s dragon rumbled—a sound of fury and agreement and barely-leashed violence.
“Aero.” Cassia’s voice came out weaker than she’d intended, barely carrying over the crash of disturbed waves. “Aero, look at me.”
His massive head swung toward her. Dragon eyes—storm-gray with lightning flickering in their depths—met hers across the ruined harbor. She saw the beast looking out at her. Saw the man trapped behind it, fighting for control.
She shook her head slightly. A tiny motion, barely visible, but she knew he saw it.
Don’t,she thought as hard as she could, wishing desperately that the mate bond gave them telepathy the way the old legends claimed.Don’t become something you’ll regret. Don’t let her make you into a killer.
She held her breath. She thought he wouldn’t listen—the dragon too far gone, the rage too consuming. She’d asked too much of him—asked him to show mercy to the woman who had nearly killed her.
Then Aero’s dragon closed its eyes. Took a breath that shuddered through its massive frame. And stepped back from Nerissa’s prone form.
The shift happened slowly—not the explosive transformation of battle, but a gradual pulling-back of the beast. Scales receded. Wings folded and shrank. The massive form condensed, contracted, became the man she loved, standing naked and exhausted on the harbor stones.
Someone—Beck, she thought—threw him a pair of pants. He pulled them on without looking, his attention fixed on the siren still sprawled on the rocks.
“Wyatt.” His voice was raw, wrecked, barely human. “She’s yours. The Deepwater Courts can decide what to do with her.”
Sheriff Wyatt Gentry stepped forward, his panther’s grace evident even in human form. He carried enchanted restraints—cuffs that would dampen magical abilities, shackles that had been spelled specifically for siren containment. His whiskey-colored gaze showed no emotion as he knelt beside Nerissa.
“Nerissa Ran,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of official authority, “by the power vested in me by the Haven Shores Council and the Continental Shifter Alliance, I’m placing you under arrest for attempted murder, destruction of property, and violation of the Supernatural Accords regarding weather manipulation. You will be held for transport to the Deepwater Courts, where you’ll face judgment from your own people.”
Nerissa laughed—a broken, jagged sound. “My own people. They’ll execute me, you know. The courts don’t tolerate failure.”
“That’s not my concern.” Wyatt secured the restraints with practiced efficiency. “My concern is protecting this town. You threatened it. Now you face the consequences.”
He pulled her upright, and for a moment, Nerissa’s iridescent gaze found Aero across the harbor. Something flickered in her expression—not rage anymore, not even hatred. Just a terrible, hollow recognition.
“You’re not going to kill me,” she said. Not a question.
“I want to. I want to more than I’ve wanted anything in centuries.” He stepped back, putting more distance between himself and the temptation of violence. “But I’m trying to be someone who deserves what I’ve found. And that person doesn’t kill a defeated enemy, no matter how much she deserves it.”
Nerissa’s laugh this time was bitter, broken. “She’s changed you. That pathetic mortal witch has actually changed you.”
“Yes.” Aero didn’t look away from Cassia, didn’t even acknowledge that Nerissa was still speaking. “She has. And I willspend however long she has—decades, centuries if I can find a way to give them to her—being grateful for it.”
Cassia’s eyes burned. She blinked rapidly, refusing to cry, refusing to let the emotion overwhelm her in front of everyone. But her heart felt like it might burst from the fullness of what she was feeling.
He was choosing to be better. Not because she’d asked him to, not because she’d demanded it—but because what they’d found together was worth becoming. That was something different entirely from anything she’d ever been given.
Wyatt hauled Nerissa away, her waterlogged form stumbling over the debris-strewn harbor. Other officers moved to assist, forming an escort that would take the siren to holding until transport to the Deepwater Courts could be arranged.
The crisis was over.
Cassia crossed the remaining distance to Aero on legs that barely held her upright. She didn’t care that the entire town was watching. Didn’t care about the pain in her ribs or the dizziness swimming at the edges of her vision. She just needed to touch him, to feel him solid and real and alive beneath her hands.
He caught her before she could fall, his arms wrapping around her with a gentleness that belied the violence of moments ago. She buried her face in his chest—bare skin warm against her cheek, heart pounding beneath her ear—and breathed him in.
“That was dramatic,” she mumbled against him.
His laugh was rough, exhausted, but real. “You’re one to talk.”
“I love you.” The words came easily—no fear, no hesitation, just the simple truth of what she felt. “I love you, you ridiculous ancient disaster of a dragon.”
“I love you too. Even though you can’t follow simple instructions like ‘stay on the porch’ and ‘don’t walk across ruined harbors with cracked ribs.’”
