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Ever since then, we’d been searching forthe one—this stray mermaid. And I was convinced it was Arya.

“We’ve been over this before, Caesar,” Celeste said cautiously. “While Arya does fit within the parameters of the prophecy, I can’t be completely sure she is the mermaid we’ve been looking for.”

“Why else did it take you so long to find her?” I reasoned. “She’s seventeen years old—”

“And before today, she’d never shifted,” Celeste interrupted. She was one of only a handful of people that could do this without setting me off. “Even for a shifter that we find after their puberty trigger, seventeen is a late age to be found. But Arya is a mermaid—the puberty trigger doesn’t apply to her.”

“Yes,” I agreed, a little annoyed with the proud reminder. “All mermaids are lucky enough to be born with the ability to shift.”

Celeste bit her upper lip. “Although I hate to admit it, my clairvoyance isn’t all-inclusive. There are billions of people in the world, and while a small percentage of them have shifting abilities, there are many we don’t know about who would benefit from what we have here at The Dome. And the mermaid from the prophecy? She could still be out there.”

Deep inside, I felt that Arya was the one. I couldn’t prove it, but in the moments I’d been around the girl, my instincts screamed that she was the prophesied mermaid.

“And we’ll keep looking,” I reassured her.

“That being said,” Celeste continued, “I have hope that Arya is the siren. But only time will tell if she truly is.”

“Time and training,” I added.

“Speaking of which, thank you for assigning her to music class. Having her in close proximity will help me keep a better eye on her outside of my other interaction with her and the other mer students.”

“Music is a powerful form of art that has a magical quality to it,” I said. “And as we both know, music can bring forth incredible things.”

“With Arya, that is the hope,” Celeste said with a smile.

I nodded. “Yes, it is.”

A quietness fell around us as we let that last statement settle in. Itfeltright. We’d work with Arya and help her as best we could. Hadrian had to be stopped. No. Not just stopped. The vampire leader had to die.

My thoughts pulled me into painful memories of the school on Framboise Island in South Dakota when I was eighteen. My mother’s helpless scream pulling me from the sky. The bruised, broken bodies of my parents in gryphon form lying nearby, stripped of their wings, their barren eyes staring at me. And Hadrian’s pale, taunting face catching in the moonlight as he crouched in the window.

Say one last goodbye to your family.

Explosions erupting from the school, burying my family…

“Do you wish to discuss anything else, Caesar?”

Celeste’s question stole the terrible memory away as if it were caught in a breeze.

I blinked a few times, processing her words. “I don’t believe so. We’ll just want to keep our ears out for any more of these rumors about ourstraymermaid. The less people know, thebetter we can protect Arya. She’s dealing with enough already, what with the death of her mother and being whisked away to a new world with foreign abilities.”

“Agreed,” Celeste said with a nod as she got to her feet. “I will keep you posted on the training Arya goes through, as well as her progress.”

“Any and all information is helpful,” I said. “Thank you, Celeste, for all that you have done and are doing for our cause. We couldn’t do this without you.”

She chuckled. “I agree with that statement, too.”

Her pride used to bother me, but I’d grown to see past it. The head mermaid really did care for all shifters, despite the front she put on.

A few taps on my desk tablet opened the classroom door, and Celeste made for it.

“One more thing,” I said quickly, stopping her before she made it to the door. “Could you please send Arya here? I’d like to see how her first day of classes went.”

“I’ll gladly have her sent your way,” she said, then stepped out of the classroom.

I watched her leave.

A notification from my tablet chimed, and I looked down. It was Kai’s schematics for the new vampire tracking system. This only brought back the image of Hadrian’s sneering face.