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He huffed out a sigh and spoke with his hands. “My voice is gone, so I will say it again. I am u-n-s-t-a-b-l-e. I would only do more hurt than good.” Then he added, “I am of no help to anyone. I may turn on you or your people should I try. I cannot even be with Mavka, Linh.”

Her brows drew together to frown at his hands, before her eyes rose to his skull. “Your own kind?”

“I don’t know why your presence eases me, but you have done so from the beginning,” he admitted as his shoulders drooped. “Before I found you at my pond, I was much more violent. The day on the beach was a r-e-o-c-c-u-r-i-n-g issue that happened every day.”

“I didn’t know that.” Her eyes bowed in sympathy for him, and he tried not to be annoyed at that. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was more I could do for you.”

Why doesn’t she see how much she has done for me already?These past few weeks had been like heaven to something with such a twisted mind as him. He’d been able tosleep.He’d also been able to avoid his fragments for the most part unlesssheslept. Only then would they usually pull him under, as if heneeded her to flit and dance around in his senses to keep him steady and focused.

That relief... if he’d been a softer being, may have made him weep.

“As much as I wanted to meet my b-r-o-t-h-e-r-s – brothers – in my return to life, I worried for them and their brides. I do not wish to harm them, nor have them h-a-t-e me for things I cannot control. They would not forgive it if I accidentally hurt one of their brides or ate them in a rage. I am a big Mavka, I am strong, and I have much humanity. I am dangerous, and my tail means I can i-m-m-o-b-i-l-i-s-e and kill another of my kind with ease.”

The only reason Merikh managed to win against me was because of his echidna spines.He was the one Mavka Nathair couldn’t hold.

Much like Nathair, Merikh’s outside was just as monstrous and dangerous. He was a ball of blades, something Nathair couldn’t stand wrapping his body around.

As much as Nathair trusted Linh, he realised then that his trust only ran so deep.I do not want to tell her how my kind... die, in case she leaves me.

He would not be the reason one of his kind might materialise in Tenebris, the afterworld. His brothers were breeding, and Nathair didn’t want to be the reason a young, mindless Mavka had their skull crushed. The idea left him feeling hollow.

He knew how it felt and wouldn’t wish it upon any Mavka. His trust in humans was, justifiably, low.

“I came here for a r-e-a-s-o-n – reason,” Nathair continued. “I came to this part of the world to be away from my kind, from humans, and to be near the beach. I...”

He paused when he realised his hands were beginning to shake. He was trembling because the future he’d decided for himself was unravelling due to this female before him. It was still a possibility, and it was a saddening one.

Sucking in a calming breath through his nose hole, he let it out with renewed strength.

“I had planned to see if I could fight the fragments on my own. I found my pond, and this cave, by accident, but I chose to remain for a reason.”

He’d originally slipped inside the pond to escape his mother pointlessly mothering him like a weakened baby bird. She had been undoubtably kind since his return, and what did that do for her?I attacked her multiple times.All due to his fucking fragments.

And there was little Weldir could do.He’d merely saved his female by calling her back to his realm before Nathair could eat her, and likely his siblings she carried beneath her cloak.

He’d gotten a little better on his own. He controlled them better in the few months since he’d forced his family’s departure. Eating a few humans seemed to have balanced him a little more.It isn’t enough.

“Why did you choose it?” Linh asked when he didn’t continue.

He hadn’t realised he’d looked away and just placed his hand over his chest because it was hurting.

“To leave,” he signed, bringing his sight back to her, and he hated the blue that swirled in it. “The world is v-a-s-t. I have eaten the souls of humans who come from other lands. I planned to leave if I could not fight this, and find a place to r-e-s-t-a-r-t. To swim in the ocean until I was l-o-s-t – lost, and let it be my life, find what treasures lay on the ocean floor. My only e-n-e-m-y would be the s-h-a-r-k-s and the Demons, and it meant I could not harm anyone that did not deserve it, humans i-n-c-l-u-d-e-d.”

“Y-you were planning to leave?” she asked, her voice breaking an octave.

Nathair shook his head. “Nothing is set in rock.”

Her dark brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

His orbs deepened in their blue hue. “I cannot answer that without breaking my p-r-o-m-i-s-e – promise – to you.”

Her brows furrowed again, and her soft lips pursed along with them. “Your promise?”

“My answer could be considered m-a-n-i-p-u-l-a-t-i-v-e,” he signed.

“B-but it’s not meant to be, right? I won’t take it that way.” She looked up at him expectantly. When he didn’t answer, she hooked her pinkies together. “Promise.”

He waited to see if there was truth in that, but what point was there in hiding the facts? It was how he felt, and likely what he would do.