Elder Halvrek couldn’t even find the breath to cough properly, knowing that if he didn’t deliver his answers fast enough, those invisible fingers would find his throat again. "He has found a mermaid in the human seas. They are shipping the creature here to Silver."

Nick’s smile returned slowly. "You should have led with that." He said, bringing the cigarette back to his lips. "It’s about time. It’s about fucking time. I never thought I would be this glad I didn’t kill him that day, he has found me my precious."

"Should I send men to intercept the shipment and take it from him?" Elder Halvrek asked, rubbing at his throat.

"No. Let him bring it to Silver. I will take it from there once it arrives. A mermaid is not a creature that is easily captured and he has captured one." He remarked, glancing at the elder who was sweating visibly beneath the aura Nick was quietly releasing into the room.

He should have unleashed that on his cousin the day Sebastian tried to intimidate him into staying away from Vee. He should have, but he hadn’t, because he needed to remain her best friend. Her innocent, harmless Nick.

"Keep me updated on the shipment." Nick waved the elder toward the door, but stopped him just before he reached it.

"Wait. I need you to send someone to dig up Javier’s grave once they leave for Mexico. Cut off his head and send it along with my dear mother. Make sure it’s hidden where she wouldn’t see it until Mexico. I want it to haunt her for the rest of her miserable life. She doesn’t want me? Fine. Let her see her precious son’s head wherever she looks for the rest of her days."

Elder Halvrek thought that was going several steps too far, but he didn’t dare say so. He simply nodded and turned to leave. He would never understand why Nick didn’t just step forward and openly challenge Sebastian for the seat, they carried the same bloodline energy, and a duel would have resolved everything and spared them all this trouble.

Halvrek was still quietly holding out hope for his niece. If she were to marry Nick, it would benefit them all greatly, for Nick was a very powerful man and his rein would be hard to control as elders.

After the elder left, Nick found himself whistling quietly as he searched through his wardrobe for something to wear. A date. In the disguise of using half his ability to force a mate bond on the woman he loved.

She would finally be his, and Sebastian would watch the woman he was trying to keep away from him slowly and irresistibly fall in love with him the way a mate would. Viola would be his Luna, and he would give her everything Sebastian couldn’t.

Nobody knew he possessed the bloodline they cherished.

His mind drifted back to the night everything had changed for him and he had gained these powers.

It had been snowing heavily, the kind of snowfall that left everything white and shrouded in fog, making it impossible to see clearly. The cold was bitter, but Nick hadn’t felt it at all. The only thing he had been aware of that night was the pain lodged in the center of his chest and the single thought of walking through the snow until his body finally shut down.

Nick had wandered to the only beach in Silver, its surface frozen solid, unable to see anything beyond the few feet in front of him, when he found it, a creature dragging a bleeding tail across the snow, desperately trying to pull itself back into the water, only for the surface to be sealed shut by thick ice.

The teenage Nick stopped and stared. The blue scales along the tail shimmered even in the darkness, catching what little light filtered through the snowfall. He had never seen anything so hauntingly beautiful in his entire life.

Mermaids were real...

And he was looking at one.

The creature stilled the moment it noticed him, and turned to look at him, tears streaming down a beautiful, bleeding face, each one turning to a small pearl the instant it fell onto the frozen surface.

"Don’t kill me, please... I am harmless." She pleaded, her voice hoarse and barely there.

"You can talk?" He muttered in surprise. "What are you doing out of the water?" He’d asked out of curiosity, studying the creature and keeping a distance from it.

"I am looking for my daughters. I mean no harm to you..."

Nick had never seen a mermaid before in his life. He had heard everything about them, knew that werewolves would kill one without hesitation to claim the power it carried. He had once wished, in the quiet and desperate corner of his heart, that he would come across one himself.

Something that would give him what he needed to make his mother stop resenting him. And now here one was, right in front of him, and upon closer inspection, her tail had been chopped nearly in half. His heart had leapt at the sight of it. Was his wish actually coming true? Here was a weak mermaid in front of him.

"Help me and I will give you whatever you want..." The mermaid looked completely drained, no longer able to drag herself any further toward the water as the snow continued to fall down and her wounds continued to bleed on the white blanket of it.

"You are a sea creature. My kind kills your kind," he said, walking closer and crouching down beside her. Being someone raised not to see sea creatures as beings to be pitied but as a source of food, Nick couldn’t pity her as much as he hoped he would. "What brings your daughters to the land?"

"They were taken from me when I gave birth to them years ago. Please, help me. Someone is trying to kill me..."

"Why should I help you? I’ve heard creatures like you are skilled at manipulation."

She didn’t reply. Her strength had completely given out, and she lay there breathing in shallow, labored breaths against the snow as the fog continued to thicken around them.

"Hey." He nudged her, and when she didn’t respond, Nick felt a genuine pull of compassion stir somewhere inside him, before it stopped. He looked down at her and the cold logic settled in. There was nothing he could realistically do. She was going to die regardless, with a tail split nearly in two. A dead mermaid was no use to anyone and would do nothing for him.

And then the thought came into his mind.

His nails lengthened into claws and he reached down and turned her over, she had lost consciousness completely. His claws sank into her chest, and she gasped one final time, her clear blue eyes flying open and finding his, filled with a sorrow so deep it looked almost human, before they closed and did not open again. He took her heart and devoured it raw right there on the snow-soaked ground.

The repulsion hit him almost immediately afterward. He was sick for a long time in the snow, throwing up everything he had in him, and he had felt genuinely terrible for what he had done to something so beautiful, so human-looking, with those clear blue eyes he couldn’t get out of his head.

Nothing happened that night. Nothing happened for weeks. He had almost entirely forgotten about the mermaid he had eventually pushed back into the water he broke when his first ability surfaced on the night of the next full moon.

Nick finished dressing and left his apartment to go and wait for Viola, just as he had planned.