Graves didn’t have many comforts in life. Military service had stripped most of them away, left him with grit in his teeth and blood on his hands, and even the weight of commanding Shadow Company didn’t bring satisfaction—only more responsibility, more loss.

But he had found one thing.

You.

The day his men dragged you from the sea, half-drowned and snarled in some careless fisherman’s net, something in him shifted. He should’ve thought of you as a curiosity, an anomaly. Half-human, half-something else, delicate where the world was brutal. Pink-tinged skin that almost glowed in the sun, scales that shimmered like oil on water, gills that flexed and fluttered when you breathed. You looked like a myth made flesh, fragile and untouchable.

And yet—he touched you. He claimed you. In his mind, at least. The second his eyes locked on yours, he knew there’d be no turning them away.

It was pathetic, maybe. A man like him reduced to this—pacing a creaking pier night after night, waiting for the moment you’d rise from the dark waters to meet him. He told himself it was just curiosity at first. Some soldier’s indulgence. A distraction. But no. It was worse than that. He couldn’t stop thinking about you. He needed you.

Because you weren’t just beautiful. You were proof that there was still something left in the world worth keeping, worth guarding with his own hands if need be. And he would. God help anyone who tried to take you from him.

He knew he was far too possessive. He knew it. But the thought of letting you slip back beneath the waves and vanish forever was unbearable. You weren’t just a fleeting joy—you were his now. His little sea angel. His secret reprieve from a world that had taken everything else from him.

And he wasn’t about to give that up.