Jason's scaled tail swished angrily through the water as the humans kept taking notes on their note-taking whatevers. He was ready to strangle these biologists to death.

"Are you f*cking deaf? Let. Me. Go," he hissed, his fins flaring as his tail slammed against the glass of his enclosure. "I'm going to f*cking kill you and everyone in this damn place."

He'd been locked away from the rest of the merfolk in the conservation center. A lone, dangerous, red-tailed specimen, his habitat a sterile-looking thing of a tank, a small patch of algae and a fake rock the only decorations. Jason had no doubt that the staff was terrified of him. He didn't care that they'd rescued him from a clandestine aquarium, didn't care that his fins had been torn, his tail lacerated, and didn't give a f*ck about their stupid center and their stupid mission to "save" his kind.

"What, you think you can save us by caging us up?" Jason growled, his fingernails splitting from scraping at the glass, leaving red streaks in their wake. "By treating us like animals? We're not f*cking animals." He still had his pride, even if he'd spent the last decade—or longer, he couldn't remember—in captivity, a curiosity and a novelty for humans to ogle.

"Let. Me. Go," he repeated, his voice rough and threatening, his gaze furious. Though he'd learned to speak the human tongue, the water muffled his words, and to the scientists observing him, sounded like little more than gurgling.

His protests went unheard, and the strength finally left him. He floated listlessly to the bottom of his tank and laid on the sandy floor, his body heavy and tired and numb, his tail curling protectively around his frame.

"I hate you all," Jason said bitterly. He could barely remember what freedom felt like, having gone from being mistreated by his parents, to being mistreated by his captors, to this. Not even the other rescued merfolk wanted anything to do with him. "I'll kill you," he mumbled, his words sounding hollow, even to him.

He couldn't do anything at all.