Ch. 39
“You,” I breathe, the realization hitting me like a tidal wave. “It was you. It’s always been you.”
Wake doesn’t even glance in my direction. He hauls the carcass of the mako shark from the water and tosses it onto the outcrop beside me with a heavy thud, making me jump. Not just any mako—the one that had tried to turn me into its dinner.
“You went back for it? Why?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer, doesn’t even acknowledge that I spoke. Instead, he hikes himself out of the water, his movements fluid and powerful, even as he begins to transform.
I watch as scales and membrane flake off his hips and thighs in waves, peeling away to reveal human skin underneath. Wake scowls in distaste, brushing the scales off into the water to speed up the transformation.
More and more of his legs appear, and when the scales disappear to the knee, he starts kicking off the remaining membrane and fins, almost impatient. With a final splash, the last third of his tail sloughs off, and just like that, he’s standing on two legs again.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was human—at least, in the way that Batman or the Undertaker are technically human. There’s something fundamentally different about him, something more. Even though he looks like a man now, there’s no mistaking that Wake is so much more than that.
“Does it hurt?” I ask, nodding toward the remaining scales littered around the floor.
He looks at me, his expression questioning, as if trying to understand why I care. Then he grunts in reply, dismissing the discomfort as irrelevant, and turns his attention to the shark carcass.
I watch, horrified yet unable to look away, as he grabs a scale from the floor and begins tearing into the shark’s flesh with it. He’s precise, almost clinical, using both the scale and his teeth to rip the carcass apart.
My stomach churns as the smell of blood and salt fills the air, and I wonder how I managed to watch him transform without flinching, but now, with this, I feel like I’m about to lose whatever remains in my gut.
Wake pulls out a handful of entrails, the slimy mess dripping between his fingers, and holds them out to me. “Eat,” he commands.
I gag, shaking my head furiously. “I-I can’t eat that.”
He stares at me, as if trying to comprehend the absurdity of my refusal, then rolls his eyes and takes a large bite of the intestines himself. He chews slowly, deliberately, his movements exaggerated as if he’s trying to show me how it’s done. Then he hands me the entrails again. “Eat.”
Annoyed and desperate to avoid the revolting mess, I shove them back at him. “No! Muscle. I can eat the muscle.”
He looks between me and the half-butchered carcass, considering, then tosses the entrails into the water without a second thought. He takes the scale to the meat again, slicing off a softball-sized chunk of flesh and handing it to me.
I accept it hesitantly, my stomach doing flips as I stare at the raw meat. His eyes are locked on me, waiting, expecting me to eat. I know I don’t really have a choice. He’s providing for me, and in his mind, refusing would be an insult, maybe even a sign of weakness.
I debate the pros and cons of eating raw shark meat in my head. On one hand, it’s fresh, so I probably won’t have to worry about parasites. On the other hand, there’s likely enough mercury in this one chunk to make me start talking in riddles.
Figuring I can get away with a bite or two to appease him, I take a deep breath and sink my teeth into the meat. The texture is tougher than I expected, and the taste—well, it’s not great. I nearly gag, but force myself to swallow and take another bite. And another.
Wake’s eyes never leave me, not until he’s satisfied that I’ve eaten enough. Only then does he start eating himself, tearing into the shark with the same savage precision as before.
Shivering, I set the half-eaten meat aside and wrap my arms around myself, trying to ward off the cold. I can’t help but feel a stab of jealousy as I watch Wake—he doesn’t seem to be affected by the temperature at all, despite being completely naked and soaked to the bone.
“I had a dream,” I start, my voice quiet, almost lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the rocks. “A memory, I think. When I was a little girl, I nearly drowned.”
Wake doesn’t react, just keeps eating, but I press on, needing to get the words out. “Were you the one who saved me?”
He pauses, tearing off another strip of shark meat with his overly sharp incisors. “You are my mate,” he says, as if that explains everything.
“You’ve said that,” I sigh, feeling the weight of his words settle over me. “What you didn’t mention is that you’ve apparently been looking for me my entire life.”
He looks at me, his expression tinged with confusion, as if he doesn’t quite understand what I’m getting at.
“You saved me when I was young, yes?” I ask again, needing confirmation.
He nods, and something inside me shifts, a weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying. An answer to a question I didn’t even remember asking, but one that had shaped who I was at my core.
Had Wake been searching for the same answer? Returning to the same waters every year, singing the same song he’d sung to me all those years ago in the hopes that I’d hear it and come back to him?
And somehow, I had.
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