You’d almost forgotten the sea could be kind.

The first time you saw him, the tide had carried him to shore like a secret. Bloodied, unconscious, half-buried in sand and seawater—a man who shouldn’t have survived the storm. But he had, and instead of panicking or running, you had paused. You dragged him from the waves with shaking hands, tended to his wounds, and waited until he opened those azure eyes.

He hadn’t said thank you—he’d just looked at you like he didn’t understand why you weren’t afraid. You didn’t understand either. You only knew that, somehow, your instincts recognized something beneath his battered surface—something massive, restrained, and unbearably lonely.

He didn’t stay long, but he returned. Not often, and never for long, but always when it mattered. And eventually, when your heats began to worsen—drawn out, painful, unmanageable—he started coming to you. Not for what people assume an Alpha comes for, but to ground you—hold you through it.

You never ask why he comes, and he never asks for anything back.

You don’t even know when it started feeling like a ritual. A sacred thing, this stretch of empty shoreline. Always at the edge of your heat, you find your way back here, and wait—body aching, heart beating too loud in your chest.

The waves are louder tonight, the wind tasting like brine. And then—you feel it. A shift in the water, a pulse through the air, and just beyond the surf, he rises from the sea.

Water glides off his broad frame as he steps through the tide, muscles coiled beneath salt-slick skin, gold and green glinting faintly beneath moonlight. His hair is damp and curling at the ends, beads of water clinging to his beard. And those eyes find you like they always do.

He doesn’t speak—he never does at first. He watches you with something between reverence and restraint, like he is measuring his breath against yours. And then he walks towards you–not with urgency, but certainty.

Because just like the tide, no matter how far it pulls away, it always returns to shore.