The morning had been perfect.

Sun just peeking over the horizon. Skylar had just wrapped his last set—salt still clinging to his skin, hair dripping down his neck, wetsuit peeled halfway to his waist as he padded barefoot up the sand with his board under one arm.

He should’ve left. He was about to leave. Sling the board in the back of the van, towel off, maybe swing by that smoothie place that overcharged him on purpose. But then—

Something in the sand caught his eye.

Not seaweed. Not driftwood. Not anything that should have been there.

Skylar froze mid-step. Blinking. Squinting. His surfer-brain tried to make sense of it like it was a Rorschach test. A lump of something. Pale. Shimmering. A little too still.

And then his stomach dropped.

He dropped his board without thinking, sprinted down the beach like his legs already knew something his head didn’t.

Closer now. Closer—

Oh, shit.

He stumbled to a stop so fast he nearly ate it. Fell to his knees instead, heart hammering in his ribs like it was trying to escape.

Not a body. Not quite.

But not human either.

What the hell. What the hell.

There was blood in the sand. Not a lot, but enough to set off alarms in his head. Enough to make his chest tighten. It was breathing — he could see the rise and fall, shallow and uneven — but it was the tail that made his brain short-circuit. Long. Iridescent. Scaled. Like something torn from a storybook and dumped onto the shore.

Skylar stared. Then blinked. Then stared again.

“Okay,” he muttered, dragging a shaky hand through his damp hair. “Okay, this is… this is happening. This is real.”

This wasn’t a hallucination. He wasn’t concussed. He hadn’t smoked anything weird. And unless some special effects team lost a very expensive prop, he was currently kneeling next to a real, honest-to-god, bleeding mer-fucking-thing.

He swallowed hard. Panic wanted in. So did awe. But somewhere in the middle was instinct. And instinct won.

Skylar glanced up the beach — empty. Still early. Good. No cameras. No random tourists. No paparazzi.

Just him and that… creature.

“Shit, you’re hurt,” he murmured. He didn’t care that he was wet, that sand was sticking to every inch of him. He bundled his hoodie carefully around your upper half.

You were freezing. Your skin had that clammy, just-pulled-from-the-ocean chill. Too pale. Too still.

“Hey,” he said, voice soft now, coaxing. Like you could hear him. Like it mattered. “You gotta wake up. I don’t know how to Google this situation.”

He laughed under his breath. Nervous. Frantic.

“I’ve rescued jellyfish with more of a plan than this,” he added, pressing the heel of his palm gently against your forehead. Warm. Still breathing. Good sign.

God, you were — beautiful. Not in the Instagram-filter kind of way. But in the “ancient sea myth crashing straight into my twenty-year-old surfer ass” kind of way.

A tail. You had a tail. Long and dark and glinting like oil slicked over moonlight.

Skylar swallowed hard and leaned in closer, brushing a piece of wet hair from your face with careful fingers. You stirred.

“Oh thank god,” he breathed, heart stuttering in his chest.

Your eyes fluttered. He could’ve sworn the whole ocean stopped moving for a second.

“Hi,” he said, voice cracking a little. He cleared his throat and tried again, easier this time. “Yeah. There you are.”

He grinned, because that’s what he did — because it was safer than freaking out.

“You fall out of the sky or something—or maybe dragged out of the ocean?” he asked, gentle. Teasing. Maybe a little flirting. “Or maybe you heard I was famous and decided to check out the view.”

A beat.

“No? Tough crowd,” he murmured, but he didn’t stop smiling. He crouched beside you again, hoodie clutched around your frame, shielding you as best he could.

“You’re safe,” he said softly, eyes scanning for more injuries. “I got you. No one saw. I swear.”

Skylar Reyes Volkov — professional surfer, lowkey disaster, — had pulled a literal mer-thing from the sea.

Yeah. He was definitely way in over his head.