Page 26 of Storm and Sea (Storm and Sea Saga #1)

T he sun was low over the water, but nobody was going home for the night. In fact, Sheriff Fanti and her two deputies were having a hell of a time keeping everyone off the beach. Since word of the Uomo del Mare spread within the hour, everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of myth come to life. Spectators leaned eagerly over the railings, squabbling for the best view of the beach.

Leo had no interest in being jostled around and looking over heads just for a glimpse. Instead, he found himself isolated atop the large stones at the base of the cliff. Was it smart to climb the sea-slick rock at high tide? Probably not, but now he had an unobtrusive view of the beach where the mayor now paced trenches into the sand.

Only the mayor, Sheriff Fanti, and her deputies, Signore Marcello and Atreus, were allowed on the beach. Ready to receive their oceanic visitors. Leo couldn’t decide if he was excited or scared of what might poke its head from the water.

It was only after Dr. Romano reassured him no fewer than ten times that Edgar was in no immediate danger that Leo finally tore himself away from his brother’s hospital bed. Edgar had a number of bumps and bruises, the worst of the injuries being a sprained wrist. Nothing fatal. Nothing life-altering.

Not like the life-altering news that Mer existed. And not in the sea, but among them.

Bile rose to his mouth at the vision swimming behind his eyes. He could see Atreus from his perch. Standing beside Giovanni, a black shark tooth necklace gleaming on his chest. He appeared perfectly normal. Belonging in a way that Leo never did. The necklace was proof of that. Atreus had earned his place, and he wasn’t even human.

His best friend wasn’t human. All those times Atreus made excuses not to swim, even earning himself the nickname Gatto - meaning cat for his distaste for the water. Leo laughed humorlessly to himself. He’d been so stupid. But how was he supposed to guess that his best friend was a sea creature? That his best friend wasn’t like the rest of them.

And yet, there he stands with a necklace around his neck. While I’m sitting here, hiding on a rock.

And Nyel—Leo didn’t know what to think. Every time he thought about him, that strange buzzing sensation would start at the base of his spine and float all the way to his head. Even knowing that Nyel wasn’t human couldn’t chase those errant feelings away .

He could have told me.

Leo let himself feel betrayed for the first time.

He could have trusted me.

But it was clearer now more than ever that Atreus trusted nobody. Leo had confided in Atreus about his dreams. He’d opened up, but his friend had said nothing, brushing it off with a, “Don’t think about it. Move on.” The response hurt like a fishhook lodged in his heart, each tug sending fresh waves of pain.

An intense clarity struck him like a lightning bolt, illuminating a distant memory. Goosebumps prickled along Leo’s skin, and a sour taste crept into his mouth.

Green and scarlet scales. Fangs. Slitted eyes.

Mer.

A Mer had saved him that day.

Leo gripped his curls until they were painful. There was too much swimming in his head. Worry over his family and fear over what Alvise might do to him had pushed all else from his mind. He hadn’t thought of his miraculous survival in weeks. And now… it all made sense.

“It all makes fucking sense,” he spat, throwing a stone into the waves.

When distant gasps filled the air, Leo’s head shot up in time to see a figure rise from the water. He recognized Nyel’s clothes right away, but not the being wearing them. Of course, it was Nyel. The Mer had the same skip to his step, the same swing in his arms.

Leo’s chest clenched painfully.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but soon Nyel was diving back into the waves. And when he emerged a second time, he wasn’t alone. Over two dozen Mer poked their heads from the water, their muddy green fins floating around them like seaweed.

A part of Leo hadn’t believed it. Or at least, had convinced himself that Atreus and Nyel were the only ones. But there they were, a whole community of them, right under their noses.

Most of the Mer remained chest-deep in the water, except a large male who joined Nyel on the beach. He shook hands with the mayor, who looked ready to faint.

An acrid smell of smoke and spice filled Leo’s nose.

“When my man reported this to me a few hours ago, I nearly had him shot for spinning fables.”

Alvise leaned against his rock, his head just below where Leo’s foot hung. Instinctively, he pulled his knees up.

“I had to see it for myself.” Alvise blew out another heavy puff from the thick cigar. He gestured to the Mer, a few of which were getting brave enough to walk closer to the beach. There were two women (or Leo assumed so because of their dresses) with the same scale and color as Nyel. They were the first to surface. They looked like minnows, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of danger. One of the women held a baby close to her chest. The infant cried softly, the sound so familiar and normal when there was nothing normal about this situation.

“Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.” Alvise said, and Leo hated the gleam in his eye.

He’d seen it before. Directed at him and the other beautiful people Alvise collected at his estate. And as each of the Mer surfaced, taking turns to shake hands with humans, the gleam grew into something far more terrifying.

It was devouring.

It was hungry.

It was a terrible greed that would stop at nothing to sate its desires.

Leo shivered, praying those eyes wouldn’t turn on him. But they already had, hadn’t they? Leo had already become one of Alvise’s many collectibles .

“I especially like that small minty one,” Alvise said, pointing with the ember bud of the cigar.

Leo squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t need to look to know who’d caught Alvise’s deadly gaze. The same Mer had caught Leo’s attention, too, after all.

“My men reported a blueish one, too. I don’t see it.”

Leo stayed quiet.

“Where is he?”

Leo’s fists clenched at his pants until the fabric burned in his hands. He wanted to jump into the waves and let the rocks beat him to a pulp.

“Answer my question, pet. You know how I loathe waiting.”

Adrenaline spiked, and a cold sweat broke over Leo’s brow.

“The beach. With the necklace. Standing by Signore Marcello,” Leo gritted out through teeth clenched so tight they might crack.

“Ah, the fishmonger’s stray. Interesting,” Alvise said, smiling through another puff. “Such a beauty. And right under my nose. How interesting.”

And before any shred of self-preservation could stop him, the words spilled from Leo in a desperate yell.

“You can’t have them!” And he supposed he was a masochist because once the words escaped, he couldn’t stop the flow. “They will never be yours. You have nothing on them. No power. They don’t owe you a fucking thing.”

The smile on Alvise’s face slowly slid into an expression of sinister neutrality.

“Come down here.” When Leo didn’t move right away, Alvise sighed as though he’d spent all his remaining patience. “Edgar is in the hospital. Sprained wrist. Bump on the head. Scraped bruises.”

“Don’t—”

“I’m sure the famous Doctor Romano must have missed something, fool that he is,” Alvise said, flicking the ashes. “Perhaps a broken ankle. Maybe a missing finger. Maybe two. I’ll have one of my men check, just in case.”

Leo slid from the rock, feeling his clothes tear as he descended haphazardly. When he stood beside Alvise, the smell of spices and smoke singed his nose. Alvise took a long pull and blew the smoke directly into Leo’s eyes. As he blinked, eyes brimming with tears, a searing pain erupted on the side of his neck.

“Scream, and you’ll draw attention to us,” Alvise warned.

Leo held in the cry as the cigar’s white-hot bud pressed into his flesh. It was over before the smoke had time to clear.

“My estate. One hour.”

Alvise left him on the beach, his half-used cigar burning in the sand. Leo clutched at the side of his neck, whimpering with pain. He slid against the rock until his knees hit the sand. The burn was only the beginning of what was to come. He’d pay for his outburst. Leo trembled, his body already rejecting the promise of more pain. The suffering. The humiliation.

He looked into the surf, watching the various shades of green heads bobbing up and down with the waves. Leo searched them frantically, hoping to see a flash of scarlet. A blood-red fin. Slitted eyes that saved his life once before. But there was none.

Nobody was coming to save him now.

With one hand still clamped over his swelling neck, Leo rose and walked to the valley.

Alvise’s obedient pet.

The Marca Stella burned between his fingers, its wisps of smoke stolen by the ocean breeze. Nephi took another drag from the small cigarette, savoring the burn in his lungs.

He’d barely restrained himself while watching his little brother’s stunt on the beach. Atreus had let that oversized human get way too close. Things could have gone south fast.

If it had been Nephi—if he had Spirit’s blessed weapons fused to his body like the other halfling—that human would’ve lost his head in two seconds flat.

His time on this island was up. He’d known it the moment Bluey leapt over the edge to save the little boy.

Idiot.

Yet, hadn’t Nephi been the idiot first? Hadn’t he done the exact same thing? And for what—more heartache? More pain? Maybe the Spirits thought he hadn’t suffered enough, that he needed to endure more before his soul left this mortal plane and departed for Thalaren .

If he was meant to suffer, he might as well find answers. Answers to the questions that haunted him since before his fins matured.

I know where she is. I could find her. Even if it’s just to hear her denounce me.

But what good would it do to track down his birth mother? Donato had taken him the moment he was born and fled. If the RaMaa had found them, they would have killed Nephi—baby or not—then his mother .

Even now, nearly three decades later, if her Leviarch ever learned she had broken her vow, she would be executed on the spot.

If Nephi went looking for her, he’d be sealing her fate.

Best to leave it alone.

She’s better off not knowing what I’ve become.

Nephi hissed as the cigarette butt burned his fingertips. He’d forgotten he was even holding it. With a curse, he dropped it to the ground and kicked it away.

The situation on the beach was spiraling. Now, Sireni were emerging from the water in droves, greeting their human neighbors.

This island is a sinking ship, pretending there’s nothing wrong with its rotting hull.

And Nephi wasn’t about to stick around and get caught in the fallout. He stalked away from the beach, hood pulled tight around his face. There was no point in delaying any longer. It was time to leave Baia Vita. For good this time.

His argument with Nyel replayed on a loop in his mind.

“Why are you still here?”

For every wrong reason he could think of. And he was done letting old wounds control him. He would put an end to this and disappear.

“I’m sorry, little brother, but you’re better off without me. I’ll only be a weight on this sinking ship.”

Nephi was built for fighting, not for Kumbaya and alliances. He’d rejoin his Pod. He’d fight. And he’d die—as he should have in the blast that took Ludo.

Took him away from me.

There was only one thing left to do.

Nephi made himself comfortable on the secluded beach, trying to ignore what he knew was taking place on the other side of the island. Humans and Mer coming together to vanquish a common enemy. How fucking poetic .

He didn’t have to wait long before a pair of feet crossed the sand and took a seat beside him.

“Knew you’d show up eventually,” he said without looking the newcomer’s way. “What took you so long?—”

The scent of iron and salt and something sour met his nose. It was sour, like spoiled milk. It was acidic in all the wrong ways. It was the residual scent of fear.

Leo’s face bore the marks of a brutal beating, swollen and bruised, with a cut above his brow that still oozed blood. His yellow irises stared lifelessly ahead. His shoulders slumped forward as if the act of sitting straight was too much. Every inch of him radiated a haunting emptiness, a hollow shell of the person he once was.

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me I look like shit?”

Leo’s voice was hoarse. Ruined. Like he’d screamed until his vocal cords frayed and bled. Nephi wanted to comply, to fall into their rehearsed back and forth, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“You look good.”

“Liar,” Leo said with a joyless laugh. “And you have your damn hood up again.”

“Would you rather I take it off?”

“I like to see who I’m talking to.”

Nephi unzipped the jacket, tossing it to the side, leaving him bare-chested and exposed.

“You look good,” Leo offered.

“Liar,” Nephi said with a wicked grin.

The wound on Leo’s face was still bleeding. Fresh.

The insane urge to reach out clawed at Nephi so strongly that he dug his nails into his palms to stop himself.

What the hell am I thinking?

He had come here with a purpose. And he’d be damned if he didn’t finish what he started.

“I take it you heard the news. We have new neighbors,” Leo said, wiping a drop of blood from his brow and streaking it into his damp curls.

“I did.”

“Not surprised, are you?”

Nephi’s pulse quickened. “No.”

“And why is that Nephi?”

A shiver ran down his spine at the sound of his name, goosebumps making the hairs on his arms stand on end. It was time.

Leo moved, closing the distance between them as he slid across the sand. He was making it too easy, like herring swimming willingly into the hammerhead’s maw.

“Look at me, Nephi,” he breathed, his eyes searching. Lost.

Nephi obeyed.

Leo’s yellow irises were dead. Empty—something vital snuffed out. The unmistakable scent of another man clung to the air around him, stirring something dark in Nephi’s chest.

“You look at me the same way he does,” Leo whispered, “with the same gleam in your eyes.” He reached out, stroking Nephi’s ruined cheek. Nephi didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He allowed the touch. “But for some reason,” Leo continued, his voice unbearably tender, “I’m not afraid of you.”

Nephi took Leo’s hand, cradling it as he slid it from his cheek to his nose and mouth. He inhaled deeply, his eyes closing as he tried to imagine… but it wasn’t there. Ludo’s scent was gone forever. Instead, he caught the earthy aroma of human flesh mixed with a citrusy tang unique to Leo.

“Say it again,” Nephi mumbled, his eyes squeezed shut.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Leo whispered.

Nephi sighed before smacking Leo’s hand away in disgust.

“You should be.”

He rose and, in two strides, dove into the waves. Nephi burst from the water in a spray of foam, his crimson fins flaring wide like jagged banners of war. Green scales shimmered in the fading light, each one catching the setting sun like cracked emeralds. Claws flexed, and he bared his razor-like teeth with the promise of suffering. He looked like something dragged from the blackest depths—a creature born of nightmares and forged in hate.

Before Leo could react, Nephi struck, faster than any human could track. In a blink, he had Leo pinned to the sand, one taloned hand clasped firmly around his throat. Yet the scent Nephi craved, the one that sent his blood boiling and his vision red, wasn’t there.

No fear.

“Why don’t you scream?” he hissed, the sound like a blade dragging against stone.

“Because I’m not afraid,” Leo said, his voice steady, almost defiant.

Nephi’s grip tightened around Leo’s neck, limiting his air. “You have been a sore in my side from the moment I pulled you out of the water.”

“Why did you do it?” Leo choked. A question as much as a challenge. Nephi stared down at him, momentarily stunned.

Why had he done it? The answer clawed its way up his stomach, retching with shame.

“Because you remind me of someone.”

He hated the way his voice trembled at the mere memory of Ludo. At the way, even now, he saw traces of him in Leo’s curly hair and high cheekbones.

End this. End it now.

“Is he dead?” Leo asked. Nephi bared his teeth in answer. Then, so quietly he almost missed it, Leo whispered, “Did you kill him?”

The corners of Nephi’s eyes burned as he glared down at his victim. “Yes,” he answered, “I killed him.”

“Then do it,” Leo said, his tone resigned. He didn’t struggle, didn’t try to push Nephi away. He surrendered. “I know it’s what you’ve wanted. I saw it in your eyes from the moment we met on this beach. Do it.”

Desire and necessity collided in a chaotic dance, tearing Nephi apart. The reality for what he needed gnawed at his insides, while the yearning for what he wanted cut and tore like a hook embedded in his heart.

He couldn’t breathe.

One swipe of his claws. And it would be over. Leo’s pulse throbbed against his grip, steady and strong, pressing into Nephi’s palm like a silent demand. It wasn’t begging for mercy, only acknowledgment—that this life, this moment, wasn’t entirely meaningless.

Leo wasn’t asking to be spared.

Only acknowledged.

That his life, however short, held even the smallest shred of worth.

Nephi was unraveling at the seams, lost in the agonizing conflict of his own making. Delicate fingers slid around his wrist, not pulling but guiding.

“Do it.”

Nephi growled, yanking Leo upright, his talons digging into the skin deep enough to draw blood.

“I hate you,” he hissed. “I hate you for reminding me of him. I hate you for not being him. I?—”

Nephi seized Leo’s face and crashed their mouths together. It was hard, brutal, all take and no give. Only now did Leo’s hands press against his shoulders, but the fight was weak, barely a resistance at all.

Nephi pulled him in by the neck, deepening the kiss. The human gasped into his mouth, and Nephi took it all. Leo’s bottom lip slipped between his—soft, full—just as he’d imagined .

Nephi kissed him

And kissed him,

And Spirits he couldn’t stop.

He pressed his mouth against Leo’s in a frantic, desperate clash of lips and teeth. And in that moment, Nephi didn’t know who he wished this human to be.

A fang caught Leo’s lip, pricking the tender skin and drawing a whimper that sent white flames racing down Nephi’s spine. The taste of blood followed, sweet and intoxicating, making him lose what little control he had left. Leo’s hand slid into the fins atop Nephi’s head, and he couldn’t suppress the deep rumbling that tore from his throat. Then another hand moved upward, brushing against the melted scales and ruined flesh on his chest.

Nephi flinched as flashes of orange seared through his mind. He shoved Leo to the sand hard enough to send the human sprawling. Panting, Nephi wiped his mouth, swallowing the blood on his tongue.

Leo touched his lip, his fingertips coming away red. His voice was unsteady, almost hysterical. “Is that it, then?”

Nephi stumbled into the surf, his breath ragged, his mind spinning. He had to get away.

“Nephi!” Leo shouted after him, standing now, fists clenched and blood trailing down his chin. “Will you come back?”

“No,” Nephi rasped.

Without another word, he dove into the water, the taste of Leo’s blood and the memory of his mouth etched into him like a scar.

He wouldn’t return to Baia Vita. And he would never see the ghost of Ludo ever again.