Chapter 1
Because I was poor, the village never assigned me a beastman husband.
Every year, the women with better houses, fuller pantries, and family backing got first pick. The rest of us were left to smile through the humiliation and pretend we did not care.
I cared.
Of course I cared.
In our village, a woman with no beastman at home was easy prey. Men with bad intentions got bolder. Gossip got meaner. Every chore felt heavier when you had no strong pair of hands beside you and no warm body waiting in your bed at night.
So when the village distribution ended and my name was skipped again, something bitter and reckless lodged itself in my chest.
That was how, on a moonless night, I took a net down to the shore and decided that if nobody would give me a beastman, I would go catch one myself.
I did not think too far ahead.
I did not think about whether I could afford to keep one.
I definitely did not think about what kind of man I might pull out of the ocean.
All I knew was that I wanted one.
Needed one.
And when I hauled my net in on the third throw and found the most beautiful sea-born man I had ever seen tangled inside it, dripping silver water and glaring at me like I had personally offended the gods, I knew I was in trouble.
His name was Adrian.
At least, that was the American name I later gave him. The first thing he said, after spitting seawater out of his mouth and shoving wet hair back from his face, was, “Are you blind? I’m a siren, not a squid. Why are you dragging me out of the ocean?”
Moonlight silvered the sharp planes of his face. His features were almost unfair. Beautiful in a way that felt dangerous. Delicate eyes. Cold mouth. Long pale body disappearing into a massive fish tail covered in iridescent scales.
I stared at him so hard I nearly forgot how to breathe.
Then, because apparently I had lost all sense that night, I blurted out, “I don’t have a man. I came to the ocean to catch one.”
He went very still.
Wind rushed between us.
Then his ears turned red.
Actually red.
He looked away first and muttered, “Then I want a really big pool.”
I had no pool.
I barely had a yard.
What I had was a broken little house, a chicken coop leaning sideways, and a battered wooden tub barely big enough for laundry, let alone a prideful ocean predator.
He found that out as soon as I brought him home.
He slapped my back with his tail so hard I nearly ate dirt in the doorway.
“You lied to me,” he snapped. “Human women are all liars. You call this a place to keep a siren?”
I should have sent him back right then.
That would have been the smart thing to do.
Instead, I hauled bucket after bucket of seawater into that cracked little room until the tub was full enough for him to curl into, and by the time I finally collapsed on the floor, breathing hard, he had already made himself at home.
That was two weeks ago.
Now I stood at the entrance to my yard with a jar of lard in my arms, listening to the old bachelor at the village edge laugh under his breath.
“Back from town, Ellie?” he called, eyes flicking greedily to my chest and then toward my house. “What’d you buy? More supplies for your pretty little pet? You can’t afford food, but you want to play house with a beastman? You’d be better off living with me.”
I tightened my grip on the lard and walked faster.
By the time I shoved open my gate and stepped into my yard, my chest was already tight with that old familiar mix of embarrassment and anger.
Then I heard water splashing inside.
The second I entered the room, a pair of cold, irritated eyes swung toward me.
Adrian lounged half-submerged in the tub, one pale arm draped lazily over the rim, his hair damp, his shoulders slick, his whole expression foul enough to sour milk.
“What took you so long?” he said. “Were you trying to let me dry out and die?”
I set the jar down, scooped out a little lard, and rubbed it between my palms to warm it.
“I ran short on cash,” I said softly. “I had to talk the grocer into letting me take the rest on credit. That took time.”
For a second, the room went quiet.
Then Adrian clicked his tongue.
“Serves you right. Who told you to go dragging home a siren when you can’t even afford proper oil? If it had been anyone else you caught—”
My hands stopped.
Because beneath all that irritation, beneath the cutting words and lifted chin and spoiled-prince attitude, there was a tremor in his voice I had started recognizing.
He looked over his shoulder at me.
“Why did you stop?”
His eyes were already pink at the corners.
I panicked.
“No reason. I’m happy I caught you. Really.”
Too late.
He started crying anyway.
Not ugly crying. Adrian did nothing ugly.
Tears slid down his face in perfect crystal drops, landing against the side of the tub and bouncing onto the floor as luminous white pearls.
Real pearls.
One after another.
He snatched the lard jar out of my hands with an offended sniff, dug out a huge amount with his fingers, and smeared it over his own shoulder like he was making a point.
I watched, horrified.
That lard had cost me half the last coins in my house.
Then I looked at his face.
Then at the pearls scattered across my floor.
Then back at the lard.
My head started to hurt.
Maybe the old bachelor had been right.
Maybe poor women like me had no business trying to raise a beastman at all.
Maybe I had been blinded by vanity and desire and loneliness and the stupid dream of finally being like everyone else.
Maybe I deserved this.
Adrian cried harder.
“You regret it, don’t you?” he accused. “Too bad. You already dragged me here. You even kissed me. You can’t just throw me away now.”
He was talking about the first night, when I had nearly dropped him trying to carry him through the doorway and my mouth had brushed his by accident.
He had acted deeply offended for five full minutes.
Then he had clung to me for the rest of the night.
I had not understood him then.
I still did not understand him now.
All I knew was that the floor was covered in pearls, the lard was disappearing by the fistful, and somehow this beautiful, impossible man had become the center of my life before I ever noticed it happening.