Page 77 of Ensnaring the Siren

“Shorewalker is your sister?”

“Half sister. Same mom, different…” He flexed his hands, trying not to ball them into fists. That was a conversation for another time.

Setting the journal down, Nireed tilted her head, studying him carefully. “You do have the same hair, but that’s the only obvious feature.”

“I take after my dad.” He shrugged. “She’s the spitting image of my mom.”

Nireed leaned in, nostrils flaring as she sniffed him. She didn’t even try to hide it.

A thoughtful look crossed her face. “There’s a similarity in your scents. It’s subtle. And I think I noticed it before, but I didn’t realize what it meant. I just thought it was familiar because I recognized you from the night we met.”

“You can smell that we’re siblings?”

“It’s not that specific. Just that you’re family.”

“Still, that’s wild.”

“It’s in the blood.” Nireed lightly traced a claw down a prominent vein in his forearm. “We can smell emotion too. Whether a person is angry or sad or scared. Any changes in the body really. When someone’s aroused. Or pregnant.”

He swallowed thickly. “I didn’t realize it was that acute.”

“It is.”

“Why do you call her Shorewalker? What does it mean?”

Nireed’s expression darkened. And he did not like it one bit.

“Tell me.”

“Shorewalkers don’t have happy origins,” she forced out. “Not in the last two generations, anyway.”

It wasn’t like her to be indirect. “What are you saying?”

“The Surface Dwellers weren’t willing.”

As the meaning filtered in, he felt hot and cold all over. Extreme aggression had been noted repeatedly in the mermaid studies, caused by a mutated morbillivirus with rabies-like symptoms. It also said that the virus expressed itself differently between sexes but not to this extent. The research said nothing about mermen attacking human women on shore.

What happened to his mom wasn’t a onetime thing. In fact, it had happened often enough that the merfolk had a special word for it. A word they gave to his sister as a nickname, defining her by her dark history.

“Why would you call her that?” he bit out, unable to hide his anger. He’d never met the woman, but he was furious on her behalf.

Nireed reared back, surprised. “It wasn’t always like that. And it isn’t anymore.”

“But it’s real for her!”

She sunk down, her chin skimming the water’s surface. “That’s true,” she admitted quietly. “I never thought of it like that. Don’t think the others did either.”

“How many other Shorewalkers are out there?”

“We don’t know.”

Anger boiled inside him. He tried to dial it down to a simmer, but the words that flew out of his mouth were brutal. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Your kind just fucks then bolts? Doesn’t bother keeping tabs on the kids they force on others?”

Nireed flinched. “Why are you yelling at me? I didn’t do this.”

“I’m sorry.” He yanked his hair, staring up at the sky as he let out a feral growl. “But my mom was one of the people hurt, and she’s carried those scars alone for years. No one believed her, not even my dad. Do you realize how fucked up that is? How angry that makes me?”

“As you should be. It made me angry too.”

---