Hákarl Rán

The bottle of Brennivín sat on his desk like an accusation.

Hákarl couldn't remember the last time he'd done this, actually sat down with intent to get drunk rather than simply eating or working or swimming until exhaustion dragged him under. Decades, probably. Maybe longer. The alcohol barely worked on his metabolism anyway; he'd need to finish the entire bottle just to feel pleasantly numb, and even then, the effect would burn off within hours.

But tonight, he was trying.

The office was quiet. That particular kind of quiet that only happens after everyone else has gone home, the hum of the building settling into itself, the distant rattle of the ventilation system, the absence of footsteps and voices and all the small sounds humans made without realizing. He'd left his door open. He didn't know why. Some rare impulse toward not feeling entirely sealed off from the world, maybe.

Pathetic, he thought, pouring another measure into his glass. Two hundred and fifty years old and you're sitting alone in your office, drinking Icelandic schnapps and feeling sorry for yourself.

The Brennivín burned going down. He welcomed it. At least it was something.

His thoughts drifted, as they had been drifting all evening, toward his protege.

Three months. That's how long they'd been working under him. Three months of watching them hunched over research, of correcting their methodology with perhaps more gentleness than he'd shown any colleague in decades, of finding excuses to linger near their desk to discuss findings that didn't actually require discussion.

They were the first protege he'd ever taken on.

In more than a century. In seven doctorates, countless academic positions, an entire career built on the bones of previous identities, he had never once taken a protege. Had never wanted one. What was the point? Humans died so quickly. Investing in them felt like trying to grip water. They'd be gone before he'd barely registered their presence, and he'd be left alone again, and the cycle would repeat until the heat death of the universe or whatever finally managed to kill him.

But something about them...

Hákarl set down his glass. Pressed his cold fingers against his eyes.

Don't, he told himself. Don't do this.

But his mental shields were down tonight, alcohol and exhaustion and the particular kind of loneliness that crept in when the storms rolled over Reykjavik, and he couldn't quite stop the thoughts from bleeding through.

He'd hired them because their research was good. That was what he'd told himself. Their methodology was sound, their references impeccable, their enthusiasm for marine conservation genuine in a way that most humans couldn't fake. A pragmatic decision. An investment in the field's future.

Except he'd caught himself watching them last week when they'd gotten excited about a breakthrough in their data analysis, the way their eyes lit up, the animated gestures, the absolute joy they radiated over something as simple as correlation coefficients aligning, and he'd felt...

Something.

He didn't examine it. Couldn't afford to.

They're human, he reminded himself brutally. They have maybe sixty years left, if they're lucky. They'll age and wither and die, and you'll still be here, and you'll have to watch it happen.

The thought should have shut down whatever treacherous warmth was kindling in his chest. Instead, it just made him pour another drink.

This is what loneliness does, he thought. It makes you desperate. Makes you see things that aren't there.

Two hundred and fifty years without a Fated Mate.

He'd stopped counting around the century mark. Stopped asking what the Call was supposed to feel like. Stopped imagining, stopped hoping, stopped believing that he was anything other than one of the unlucky ones, the defective units that rolled off whatever cosmic assembly line produced shifters, stamped with an invisible mark that said not this one, never this one, this one gets to watch everyone else find what he never will.

The Brennivín tasted like bitterness now.

He remembered his first century with something approaching nostalgia for his own naivety. The faith he'd had. The certainty that it was simply a matter of time, of patience, of being in the right place at the right moment. His community in the Westfjords had watched him with something like pity as the decades piled up—poor Hákarl, still waiting, still alone, and he'd borne it with the stoicism of his species because what else was there to do?

The second century had been worse. Hope didn't die cleanly; it rotted. Slowly. Like something left in still water.

See, here's the thing about Fated Mates that the old stories never mention: the waiting doesn't just hurt. It rots you. Hollows you out from the inside like some parasitic worm feeding on hope.

Now he was just... empty. A predator without a pack, a shifter without a mate, a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old marine biologist who'd outlived every friend he'd ever made and would outlive many more. Whatever mechanism created the bond, whatever divine lottery determined who got to feel complete and who got to spend eternity as an unfinished sentence—

Now he was here. 250 years old. Sitting in an office in a foreign country, pretending to be human, pretending to care about things like departmental budgets and grant applications, pretending that his existence had any purpose beyond the simple biological imperative to keep swimming.

You're not worthy, something whispered in the back of his mind. A familiar voice. His own, probably. Whatever mechanism creates the bond looked at you and found you wanting.

He didn't dispute it anymore. What was the point?

The footsteps were soft.

He registered them first as background noise, someone working late, probably, heading for the elevator, and didn't bother looking up from his glass. His door was open, but humans rarely engaged with him when he was clearly occupied. Something about his demeanor discouraged casual interaction. That was intentional.

But the footsteps weren't heading for the elevator.

They were heading toward him.

No. Past him. Just past his office door. Just—

His protege walked past.

And Hákarl's entire universe compressed.

The glass fell from his fingers. He didn't hear it shatter.

Oh.

Oh, no.

No, no, no—

It hit him like a riptide, sudden and violent and absolutely inescapable, a current that seized every cell in his body and dragged him under before he could even begin to resist. Every nerve ending ignited. Every instinct he'd spent centuries suppressing roared to life with a single, overwhelming imperative:

MINE.

Their scent, he could smell them now, really smell them for the first time, cutting through the Brennivín and the recycled air and the petrichor that clung to his own skin, and it was, it was—

Home.

Their scent was home.

His heart slammed against his ribs. His skin, perpetually cold, flushed with something approaching heat. His vision sharpened to painful clarity, tracking their movement through the corridor with predatory precision, and he couldn't look away, couldn't think, couldn't breathe—

The Mating Call.

The fucking Mating Call.

After two and a half centuries of nothing, after giving up, after letting the hope rot, after convincing himself he was defective, broken, unworthy, it was happening now. In his office. While he was half-drunk on schnapps and wallowing in self-pity.

And it was them.

His protege. His human protege. The one person he'd allowed himself to care about in decades, and he'd told himself it was mentorship, investment, professional interest, and it was them.

Fuck.

Hákarl gripped the edge of his desk so hard the wood groaned. His claws were out, when had his claws come out?, and he was shaking, actually physically shaking, like his body couldn't contain the magnitude of what was happening to it.

They were still walking. They hadn't stopped. Hadn't noticed his door was open, or if they had, they hadn't looked in. Just, walking past. Oblivious. Going about their evening while his entire existence reconfigured itself around them.

He wanted to call out.

He wanted to surge through the door, gather them in his arms, press his face against their throat and inhale until their scent was imprinted on his very cells.

He didn't move.

Because they were human. Because they had no idea what he was. Because the thing that had just woken up inside him, ancient and possessive and terrifyingly, obsessively devoted, was not something he could explain. Not something they had consented to. Not something they could possibly understand.

Fated Mate.

My Fated Mate.

They're my—

The footsteps faded down the corridor.

Hákarl remained frozen at his desk, surrounded by broken glass and spilled schnapps, claws embedded in wood, staring at the empty doorway where they had been.

His eyes were completely black.

He didn't blink.

They're mine, the predator inside him crooned, satisfied and savage and patient in a way that only apex hunters could be. They just don't know it yet.

And Hákarl, the centuries of loneliness and despair crumbling into something far more dangerous, began to plan.