CHAPTER 6: The Proposal — Lucian's Secret

That night, Lucian didn't take Odessa to the mansion.

He took her to the old pier. The same pier where she was left crying three years ago. The same pier where he first found her five years ago.

The pier was empty. The sea was calm, black glass under the moon.

"Why are we here?" Odessa asked, hugging his black coat. She was back in a simple dress, no power suit, no red gown. Just Odessa.

Lucian didn't answer immediately. He stared at the water, his forbidden blue-gray eyes reflecting the moon.

"Five years ago, when Petrus found you, you were not just wet," Lucian said quietly. "You were dying. You had no pulse. You were cold as the sea itself. Petrus thought you were dead. I told him to take you to the hospital, but you woke up on his fish stall, coughing water that wasn't seawater. It was... glowing."

Odessa felt a chill. "What are you talking about?"

Lucian turned to her. "You don't remember anything before Petrus, do you? Before you were sixteen?"

Odessa shook her head. "I tried. I only remember waking up, and Petrus saying 'You smell like the sea.'"

"Because you are the sea, Odessa," Lucian whispered. He took her hands. "My family... the Dela Cruz family... we have owned this port for a hundred years. But we don't just own ships. We protect something. A legend. The fishermen call them Sirens. Children of the sea who can control storms, who can breathe underwater, who smell like salt and rain."

Odessa laughed nervously. "Lucian, are you— are you saying I'm a siren? That's crazy—"

"Is it?" Lucian pulled out an old, wet photograph from his coat pocket. It was faded, but clear. A little girl, around ten years old, with black hair, sitting on this same pier, with a woman who looked exactly like Odessa, but older. Both of them had the same stormy eyes.

"This is you," Lucian said. "And this is your mother. I found this photo in my father's safe. Your mother was the last siren. She disappeared ten years ago during a storm. Everyone thought she drowned. And you disappeared with her."

Odessa's hands were shaking. She took the photo. The little girl... it was her. She had the same small scar on her knee that she still had now.

"I... I have a mother?" she whispered.

"Had," Lucian said softly. "She died protecting you that night. She put you in a small boat and pushed you into the sea. The sea kept you alive for five years, Odessa. It kept you sleeping, drifting, until it brought you back to this pier. To me. To Petrus."

Tears were falling down Odessa's face now. Not sad tears. Tears of a memory she didn't know she had. The scent. The sea calling her. It all made sense.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, hitting his chest lightly. "For three years you knew and you didn't tell me?"

"Because I wanted you to remember on your own," Lucian said, cupping her face. "And because I was selfish. If you knew you were a siren, you would have gone back to the sea. You would have left me. I couldn't let you leave. I have been in love with you since the day the sea gave you back to me."

Odessa looked at him, this possessive, forbidden, dangerous man who had saved her twice, who had waited for her.

"Lucian..."

Lucian suddenly knelt down. On the same pier where Marco once pushed her bag into the water, Lucian Dela Cruz — the man who owned the entire port, the man everyone feared — knelt down with a small black box.

Inside was not a diamond. It was a ring made of a black pearl, glowing faintly blue, like the sea at night.

"Odessa, child of the sea, girl who smelled like the sea, woman who now owns the storm," he said, his voice shaking for the first time in his life. "Will you marry me? Not because of a contract. Not because I protect you. But because I can't live another day without hearing your footsteps in my hallway."

Odessa was crying and laughing at the same time.

"You idiot," she said. "You possessive, forbidden idiot. You made me wait three years for this?"

"Is that a yes?" Lucian asked, smiling.

Odessa pulled him up and kissed him, hard, under the moon, on the pier where she was once left with nothing.

"Yes," she whispered against his lips. "Yes, you possessive bastard. Yes."

Lucian slipped the black pearl ring onto her finger. The moment it touched her skin, the sea around them reacted. The calm water suddenly rose, a small, beautiful wave that touched their feet and then went back, as if blessing them.

Odessa gasped. She felt it. The sea. Inside her. It wasn't calling her anymore. It was celebrating.

"Did you see that?" she asked, amazed.

"I saw it five years ago," Lucian said, hugging her tightly. "When you first woke up. The sea has always loved you, little storm. And now, so do I."

He picked her up and spun her around on the pier.

From a distance, Petrus was watching, sitting on his old fish stall, smiling and crying.

His daughter was home. And this time, she wasn't alone.

She had the storm. And she had the man who owned it.

"They regret losing you," Lucian whispered in her ear. "And it's too late for anyone else to ever have you."

Odessa buried her face in his neck, her black pearl ring glowing faintly.

"No," she whispered back. "It's just the beginning."