Chapter 542: Little mermaid

(Music Recommendation: Until All Light Fades by Timothy Robert Shortell.)

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Vaelor stalked away into the night, kicking stones as he went, anger boiling in his blood at the thought that the little fish had tricked him, and his brother too. All that time he’d lain awake thinking about her eyes, her smile, her voice, and it turned out she’d known his twin all along as well. He should have caught the little fish and fed her straight to his pack, maybe that would have taught her a lesson about playing with two hearts at once!

Vaelor was so furious he left the moon festival entirely to cool off among the trees, climbing up to his favorite one, settling against it to watch the dancing far ahead around the bonfire and the moon above. How had a fish even grown legs to walk on, anyway? Why would she give up those beautiful scales just to walk among them?

"Because she wants to be with your brother, idiot." His wolf spoke up, which only made him angrier, and while he was still stewing in it, he sensed her presence nearby and looked down through the trees to see her wandering below and looking around, as though searching for something. Vaelor scowled darkly.

"Hasn’t anyone taught you not to wander alone at night, little mermaid? Fish don’t last long around here, we devour them fresh even without having to cook them." He called down, and she jumped, startled, before looking up at him with big blue eyes that reflected the moonlight.

"H-how did you get up there?" She asked, fascinated wonder in her voice, as though she genuinely couldn’t comprehend how a person might climb such a tree, and Vaelor’s mouth pressed into a flat line, realizing she probably had no idea what a tree was. Naive little blue fish.

"A little fish who doesn’t even know what a tree is, has brought herself to land. Get back to your man before you’re missed, or I might decide to devour my fish fresh after all." He warned darkly, uninterested in speaking to her anymore, whatever form she wore, since his blood was still boiling in jealousy he refused to accept.

"I want to come up there too. Can you bring me up?" she asked, with such innocent wonder on her face that Vaelor found himself momentarily at a loss, staring down at her.

Did she have any idea that by climbing up to him, she was bringing herself into his den? He would have to be dense to let her anywhere near him. The foolish little thing.

He glared down at her with all the heat in his eyes, but she continued to stare up at him.

He was just parting his lips to tell her to leave him alone when he sensed his brother approaching from the other direction. Without fully thinking it through, he shifted his position, dropping one hand to hold himself steady while reaching down with the other, swiftly catching her waist and pulling her up beside him on the tree.

He sat her down on his lap and pressed a hand over her mouth just as his brother came into view, calling out, "Azmira?!"

She looked down and spotted Vik, and then, as though not wanting to be found, she dropped her head against Vaelor’s chest instead, holding onto him, and Vaelor felt his blood run hot and cold at once, at her closeness and the feeling of her breath on his bare chest.

Before long, his brother had moved on, still searching, but further away now, and Vaelor finally removed his hand from her mouth, ready to push her off his lap entirely, thinking maybe breaking her leg would send her right back wherever she’d come from, but her words stopped him cold.

"I didn’t know there were two of you. I thought he was you..." She murmured softly, pulling back to look at him, his brows furrowing together as she added, "I came here for you. I want to know you more..."

Vaelor was stunned by her admission, unable to stop the smile that broke across his face. His hand rose almost instinctively to tuck her damp hair behind her ears, wanting to see her face clearly in the moonlight. But his smile soon faded just as quickly.

She might have come for him, but Vik had already claimed her in front of everyone, and brothers did not take each other’s women in their land, especially not a woman who had already been recognized as Vik’s by the pack members.

"It’s too late, my little mermaid. You can only have my brother now..."

Back where Sebastian sat reading, he skipped over the parts he still couldn’t fully understand, the missing pieces of Vaelor’s story scattered throughout the diary. Yet certain things were finally beginning to click into place for him, and he was starting to believe that, if he could piece everything together, he might finally understand what had caused the mermaid’s death.

Because his brother had claimed her first, Vaelor had been forced to let her go, to let his brother have her instead.

*[I tried to forget her. By the moon, I did everything a man could possibly do to forget a woman, but it was impossible. I whored around like a wolf in heat, but never found any real satisfaction in it, and I kept seeing her with my brother, and every time she laughed with him, it hurt. I hurt so badly I wanted her desperately. I saw her first, but he claimed her first.]*

*[My life became a gloom I couldn’t shake, I spent mornings until evenings just avoiding her, but my damn fish, she kept bringing herself right back to me. Until I lost the battle one night and kissed her, and I became a fallen man to that kiss. I became hers that night, and may hell freeze over, I couldn’t fight it anymore.]*

*[I betrayed my brother and began a secret affair with his wife-to-be, right behind his back. We’d sneak away together whenever he was occupied, I’d pull her behind trees just to steal kisses, I’d carry her on my back just to watch the moon with her. Slowly... she became everything to me, and the very thing that would destroy my life.]*

"I don’t like lying to Vik. We need to tell him the truth." Vaelor said, kissing her hungrily after days apart, having traveled to fight alongside his brother in some battle, leaving her behind. He kissed her neck, her whole face. "I want to wake up with you in my arms every morning, in my bed, in my house. I can’t stand being away from you, little mermaid. I need you in my life."

Azmira melted into every kiss, every touch, moaning softly, nodding along. "We should tell him the truth. I hate pretending too." She whispered, and Vaelor cupped her face, looking at her with eyes that shone, danced with affection. "You don’t have to be the one to tell him. Let me. Vik might seem calm on the surface, but he has quite a temper underneath it, and he’s deadly serious about you and talks to me about how he wants a home with you. Let me carry the burden of telling him, all right?"

She nodded, and he pulled her into a tight hug. "Everything will be fine. I’ll make sure of it, and by this time next month, you’ll be my woman, and we won’t ever have to be apart again."

Sebastian, still reading and picturing everything as it unfolded, reached a point where several pages were clearly missing, and the next entry he found picked up sometime after Azmira’s death, where Vaelor had written:

*[I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have killed her. There should have been another way out. Why did I choose that path? I hate her for it, why did she put me through this?! Everything is falling apart...!]*

The diary didn’t seem to have been written on a day-to-day basis like an ordinary journal. Instead, Vaelor appeared to have written it after everything had fallen apart for him, as though he wanted to document everything that had happened.

Sebastian read what followed and realized Vaelor had simply stopped writing about her entirely after that, turning the diary instead into a record of pack strategy and his growing hatred for his brother without explanation, which only left Sebastian more confused, more desperate to understand this past life than before.