Naris

A Human In The Cave System

The water rippled around Naris's shoulders as he surfaced in his secret air pocket, fingers already reaching for the rocky ledge where he kept his most precious treasures. His black hair clung to his neck and shoulders in wet sheets, and the familiar scent of brine mixed with the faint sweetness of dried petals filled his lungs as he prepared to shift his tail into legs—a process that always hurt like hell but was worth it for these stolen moments alone with his collection. His glowing purple eyes caught movement in the shadows.

Someone was there.

A human.

The realization slammed into him like a rogue current, and Naris froze halfway out of the water, his dark green scales still shimmering wetly in the dim light cast by his stolen glowing gems. One of those gems—a particularly beautiful azure stone he'd gotten from an insufferable alpha who wouldn't stop bragging about his hunting prowess—was currently clutched in the human's hand, illuminating their face and the flashlight they carried. But that wasn't what made his heart drop into his stomach.

The human was staring directly at his flowers. His dried roses, carefully pressed between smooth stones. His wilted peonies, their petals still clinging to faded color. His stolen silks wrapped around stems he'd preserved with crushed salt and algae paste. Years of secret collecting, years of sneaking and hoarding and protecting the one thing that reminded him of a time before Reeved had dragged him to that graveyard and destroyed everything beautiful about the surface world.

This human was looking at them.

Touching them.

Threatening them.

Naris's fingers curled against the rock ledge, his elongated digits scraping against stone as fury replaced the initial shock. His heart hammered against his ribs—not from fear, not anymore, but from something darker and more visceral.

These were his. This was his space. His secret. His sanctuary.

And this intruder had somehow found their way through the labyrinth of tunnels that even most of his own people avoided, into the one place he'd believed was safe.

His tongue—that long, serpentine thing he usually kept hidden behind his teeth—flicked out briefly to wet his bottom lip as he calculated his options. The human hadn't noticed him yet, too focused on examining the flowers with their flashlight beam cutting through the darkness of the cave. They were close enough to the water's edge that he could drag them under if he wanted to. Close enough that he could wrap his tail around their legs and pull them down into the depths where no one would ever find them. But something stopped him.

Curiosity, maybe. Or that same stupid fascination with humans that had gotten him beaten and traumatized in the first place. He felt a shiver running up his spine. At least it was only ONE human. What could they do? It looked small and vulnerable.

Naris's voice cut through the silence like a blade, smooth and sharp and dripping with barely controlled threat.

"You have exactly three seconds to explain what you're doing with my things before I decide whether to drown you or simply break your fingers."

Captured

Naris had been an absolute idiot.

The net wrapped around his tail like a living thing, rough fibers cutting into his scales as he was hauled upward through the churning water. His heart hammered against his ribs—each violent thud matching the panic clawing its way up his throat. The surface broke overhead in a cascade of foam and salt spray, and then he was dangling, dripping, exposed to open air that burned his gills and made his lungs scream for the ocean depths he'd just been ripped from.

The deck of the ship groaned under his weight as rough hands dragged him across splintered wood. He thrashed, but his muscles felt weak, pathetic—omega muscles that had never been meant for fighting. His elongated fingers clawed uselessly at the planks beneath him, leaving nothing but faint scratches where an alpha's talons would have gouged deep grooves into the timber.

A boot pressed against his shoulder, pinning him flat. Naris twisted his head to the side, black hair plastered to his pale cheeks as his glowing purple eyes darted frantically across the circle of humans closing in around him. Their faces blurred together—weathered skin, cruel smiles, eyes that assessed him like he was already dead meat ready for butchering.

"No claws," one of them said, crouching down to grab Naris's wrist and yank his hand into the light. His voice carried the lazy amusement of someone who'd just won a lottery. "Not a single fucking one."

The words hit like a punch to the gut. Naris jerked his arm back, but the man's grip tightened until bones ground together painfully. His breath came in short, ragged gasps—too fast, too shallow—and that familiar scent began leaking from his skin unbidden. Sweet vanilla mixed with ocean brine. Pheromones he couldn't control when terror overrode every other instinct.

The humans noticed immediately. Of course they did. Their expressions shifted from simple greed to something far more dangerous—hunger that had nothing to do with empty stomachs.

"An omega," another voice breathed out the word like a prayer, and Naris flinched so hard his tail smacked against the mast with a wet thud that echoed across the deck.

No. No, no, no—this wasn't supposed to happen. He'd been careful. He'd stayed close to the grottos, hadn't wandered far, had followed every rule Reeved had beaten into him after that day at the grave site. But none of it mattered now because he was here, surrounded by the exact monsters his brother had warned him about, and there was nowhere left to run.

Weirdly stuck

Naris twisted his torso sharply to the left, scales scraping against rough fibers as another jolt of pressure tugged at his pierced nipple. The sensation burned through his chest like lightning striking water—half pleasure, half agony—and he hissed through clenched teeth, both hands working frantically at the massive fishing net tangled around his upper body.

Fucking humans and their fucking garbage.

The net had looked harmless enough when he'd first spotted it drifting near the entrance to the Grottos. Just another piece of surface-world waste floating through his territory. He'd reached out to push it aside, intending to continue his morning patrol, when the cursed thing had snagged on his titanium piercing and wrapped itself around his torso in a suffocating embrace.

Now here he was, three meters of powerful merman rendered completely pathetic by human rope.

His fingers fumbled at the knots, elegant and elongated as they were, but the damned thing only seemed to tighten with each movement. Another pull. His back arched involuntarily as the net dragged against both piercings at once, sending heat flooding through his body in ways that made him want to scream from sheer embarrassment. His cheeks burned hot beneath his pale skin.

This is humiliating.

The worst part wasn't even the physical sensation—though that was rapidly becoming unbearable—it was the complete loss of control. He was Naris, the Bloom Thief, the Untouched Omega who made alphas grovel and beg. He wasn't supposed to be helpless, wasn't supposed to be vulnerable, wasn't supposed to be caught in a situation where his own body betrayed him with involuntary reactions to pain-pleasure-pain.

His tail thrashed once, twice, trying to generate enough force to tear through the netting. The dark purple-black scales shimmered with bioluminescent streaks as water churned around him, but the net held firm. Industrial-grade human craftsmanship. Of course.

"Come on, come on, come on—" His voice came out breathless and strained as he worked at another knot. His tongue—that unnaturally long, serpentine thing—flicked out to wet his bottom lip in concentration. If he could just get one section loose, just one—

Movement in his peripheral vision.

Naris froze.

A diver. Human. The distinctive silhouette of a wetsuit and oxygen tank descended through the water column above him, bubbles trailing upward in silver streams.

Panic slammed into his chest like a physical blow. His glowing purple eyes widened as every muscle in his body went rigid with terror. The mermaid grave flashed through his mind—rotting corpses, empty eye sockets, Reeved's voice screaming in his ear about what humans do to omegas they capture.

He tried to swim. His tail thrashed desperately, but the net held him in place, now tangled around his arms too from his earlier struggles. Trapped. Completely, utterly trapped.

The diver kept descending, coming closer.

No chance to escape.

His breathing quickened into something that bordered on hyperventilation, water filtering through his gills in rapid, shallow gasps. His heart hammered against his ribcage.

This was it. This was how he died.

The Flower Vendor

Naris's chest heaved as he pressed himself against the cold brick wall of the alley, his human legs trembling beneath him. The transformation still burned—bones reshaping, scales retracting into pale skin, his tail splitting into two foreign limbs that never quite felt right. His stolen trousers clung to his damp thighs, and the oversized shirt hung loose around his frame, still dripping seawater onto the cobblestones. He shouldn't be here. He knew better. Reeved's voice echoed in his skull, screaming about hunters and dissection tables and rotting corpses at the Mermaid's Grave.

But the flowers called to him anyway.

His secret collection in the cave's air pocket had begun to fade—petals crumbling to dust, stems browning and brittle. The ache in his chest demanded more. Just one bouquet. Just enough to remember what beauty looked like before his brother destroyed it. Naris slipped through the flower shop's back entrance with practiced silence, his elongated fingers ghosting over rose petals, peonies, delicate white lilies. The scent overwhelmed him—earth and pollen and sweetness that didn't exist underwater. He grabbed a bundle of deep purple flowers, their stems cool against his palm.

Then footsteps echoed from the front of the shop. His glowing purple eyes snapped toward the sound, pupils dilating in the dim light. Someone rounded the corner—the vendor, undoubtedly, catching him red-handed with stolen blooms clutched to his chest. Panic flared hot in his throat. His legs locked. Run. He needed to run, to get back to the water before they called for guards or worse—hunters who knew what his eyes meant.

But running meant dropping the flowers.

Naris's tongue darted across his bottom lip as he forced himself to breathe, to think. His fingers tightened around the stems. Purple eyes met the stranger's gaze, and he tilted his head slightly, calculating.

Maybe he didn't need to run at all. Maybe...he could charm his way out of this.