Chapter 9: Claw Your Tail

Leslie POV

The sound was too loud, too close. Too intimidating.

"What's going on?" My voice cracked as I looked up at the masculine figure gripping my hands.

"Nerissa. Giselle. Care to explain." His tone was firm, clipped, edged with something dangerous. His cold touch left my skin the instant I felt sand beneath me — like he'd been waiting for an excuse to let go.

He turned toward the blurred shape on the ground, the same Siren I'd trampled in the earlier today.

"Don't touch her — get me help, now," I gasped, my fingers closing around his wrist before I even decided to move.

His skin was ice under my hand, and it sent a wave of fear crawling up my arm. Somewhere across the field, a voice cut through the ringing in my ears.

"I can help her. I need to get her to the shore first."

The last thing I remembered was being dragged, the cold of his grip the only thing anchoring me to the world — before everything dissolved into black.

***

"Where — where am I?" My voice barely sounded like mine. I blinked against the light and realized I was lying on sand, the tide hissing somewhere close by.

"Somebody — please, help me!" I scrambled upright, panic clawing up my throat.

"It's okay." A figure broke the surface of the water — beautiful, feminine, gliding toward the shore in a way that made my breath catch. Where her legs should have been, a long tail shimmered instead, and fins traced delicate lines along her wrists, sapphire-blue and matching the scales that caught the light.

"You passed out during your combat placement. Relax."

"And you are—" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. I wasn't backing down, not after everything else that had happened today.

"Relax, girl. I healed you after you bled out of your ear and collapsed an hour ago at the Clawesseum."

That was when the memories slammed back into me all at once — the battle, the whistle, the crowd's roar cutting to silence. Him. The guy who'd called me his mate. The same one who'd sworn he would mark me.

My stomach dropped. "Wait — who else was there? Who was holding me?"

"I don't know his name. But he was a vampire." A pause, her expression flickering. "He's the one who saved you."

I was about to press further when a voice called out across the water, and the girl's head snapped toward it, some silent urgency passing over her face.

"I have to go," she said, already retreating into the shallows. Her tail dissolved in a shimmer of light, re-forming into legs as she stepped onto the sand.

"Wait — I'm sorry, I was rude earlier." I stood, brushing sand from my arms. "I'm Leslie Cooper. I owe you. You saved my life."

"It's okay. That's what mermaids do." She offered a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, glancing over her shoulder like she expected something — or someone — to appear behind her. "I'm Talia. Minnow of the Marina Shoal."

"What's wrong, Talia?" I reached out, resting a hand on her shoulder. Whatever she was holding back, it was close to the surface.

That was all it took. She broke.

Pearls slid from her eyes instead of tears, and I pulled her into a hug before I even thought about it.

"Mermaids are healers," she whispered against my shoulder. "We're observant — we notice everything. But we're terrible at making decisions for ourselves. I need your help."

I didn't know how to answer that. But something in me — instinct, maybe, or the strange pull this whole day had wrapped around me — told me I could trust her.

"With what?"

We sank down onto the sand together, and she told me everything. "As first minnow of my shoal, I've been promised to a merman I don't want. That's why I came to the Academy in the first place — to buy myself time. But now they're calling me back. To marry him."

Her story unspooled between sobs, tragic and strangely composed all at once, like she'd rehearsed the telling of it a hundred times in her head.

"Have you told them you don't want to?" I asked.

Something sharpened in her eyes — hope, maybe, or the first flicker of a plan.

"I knew you'd be the one to ask." She lunged forward and hugged me, breathless with a relief that felt almost dangerous in its intensity. Then, just as fast, her voice dropped low. "Stay away from Nerissa, the siren. She's working with Giselle — and for some reason, they want you gone. Expelled. Or worse."

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the ocean breeze.

We sat a while longer, talking, and I found myself struck by how strange and wonderful mermaids were — gentle, perceptive, carrying storms behind calm faces.

Then Talia went rigid beside me.

"Leslie. The vampire is here."

She didn't get to finish the warning.

The world tilted — a blur of motion — and suddenly my back hit rough bark, a coconut tree pressing hard against my spine. I hadn't even seen him move.

I saw nothing but him. A man crouched inches from my throat, dragging in a slow breath through his nose like he was memorizing the scent of me. Like I was something to be consumed.

"Are you insane?" My voice shook, too loud in the sudden silence.

He lifted his head. His eyes were red — not the soft red of firelight, but something starved, something ancient. Hunger, raw and unhidden, for a thing I couldn't name and didn't want to.

Fear locked itself into my bones. And he felt it — I watched him feel it, watched something in his expression sharpen with satisfaction at the way I trembled.

"Fear me or not," he murmured, voice low enough that only I could hear it, "you're mine. I will mark you."

And then he was gone — vanished into the dark as if he'd never been there at all.