The sea was restless that night
Waves crashed like thunder against the jagged cliffs of Blackshore Isle, where no living soul dared to build a home. But Lucien Blackthorn was not living—hadn't been for over two centuries. He stood at the edge of the cliff, motionless, his pale face catching moonlight as his crimson eyes scanned the black waters below.
He had dreamed of the song again.
It was not the melody that haunted him, but the voice—otherworldly, aching with longing. It had pierced the fog of his eternal hunger and buried itself in the hollows of his soul.
He was cursed. He had always known that. Born into darkness, made vampire by a master long turned to dust. But lately, something ancient stirred in his blood, calling him to the sea.
And tonight, the sea answered.
As the moon reached its peak, the wind stilled. The waves fell silent. Then, from the deep, the song rose—not in his mind, but in the air, like the wind itself had learned to sing.
Lucien stepped back. His heart, long still, thundered once.And then he saw her.
She rose from the water like a dream woven from moonlight and shadow. Scales shimmered along her tail like shards of starlight, and her eyes—violet, glowing faintly—locked with his. A siren.A predator.A legend.
And yet… she sang not to kill, but to call.
Lucien fell to one knee, unbidden. A bond snapped into place—one he hadn't believed existed. Mate. The word echoed in his blood like prophecy.
The siren's song faltered. Her lips parted in shock. She had felt it too.
Lucien's fangs extended slightly as his instincts surged. Mate bonds were sacred, eternal. But between vampire and siren? It was forbidden—impossible.
And yet there she was.
And here he was.
Bound not by fate, but by something far older.
Older than blood.
Older than the sea.
Chapter Two: the taste of salt and blood
The siren did not flee.
She hovered just above the waves, her silver hair clinging to her skin like seaweed. Her eyes—luminescent and ancient—remained locked on Lucien's, as if she were studying something dangerous, or perhaps… sacred.
Lucien rose slowly from one knee, careful not to move too fast. He could hear the storm of her heartbeat from here—
That night, Lucien didn't return to his crypt beneath the ruins of Blackshore Abbey. He wandered the cliff path instead, following the echo of her voice still ringing in his head. The bond tugged at his every nerve—something primal and inexplicable now pulsing through his undead body.
He hadn't felt warmth in centuries. Not until Selene's gaze touched him.
As the stars turned overhead, he finally found himself at a cove far below the cliff—where the sea met a pool of moonlight. The scent of salt hung in the air, mingled with something sweeter. Not blood… not quite. Something older. Something siren.
A gift lay on the shore. A small shell, deep violet, shaped like a spiral. Smooth, polished. Ancient.
Lucien bent and picked it up, cautious, reverent.
He recognized it. A sirenshell.
They were tokens of a siren's vow—never given lightly, never given more than once. If she had left this, it meant her intent was real. A connection acknowledged. A bond accepted.
Mate.
Lucien curled his fingers around it, then lifted it to his lips. It was warm against his cold skin. She had touched it recently.
The wind whispered through the grass behind him.
A presence.
Lucien turned instantly, fangs slightly extended, but it was no threat.
Only a memory.
Elsewhere, deep beneath the sea in a palace of coral and bone, Selene floated alone.
The salt still stung the wound on her palm, where she had bled to craft the bond token. She'd poured her essence into that shell. Her magic. Her voice. Her truth.
It had been foolish—reckless. Her mother, the high priestess of the Siren Court, would have her exiled for even looking upon a vampire.
But Selene didn't care.
Lucien wasn't just a vampire. He was… hers.
When she had looked into his eyes, she'd seen more than hunger. She'd seen pain.
She knew that kind of pain.
She sang quietly now, to herself, a lullaby of the deep that only sirens knew. But this time, she didn't sing to lure or destroy.
She sang for him.
And somewhere above the water, she knew he was listening.
CHAPTER THREE: the moon and the night bled
The tide had turned red.
Not with blood—yet—but with the reflection of a moon tinted like wine. In the lore of both vampires and sirens, a blood moon meant only one thing:
A crossing of fate.
Lucien stood on the cliff again, the sirenshell in his palm. He had not fed since the night before. He couldn't. His hunger had become secondary to something more pressing—the bond.
He had spent the hours scouring the old tomes beneath Blackshore Abbey, hunting for knowledge about sirens. Most of it was riddled with superstition. That they lured ships to sink. That their kiss rotted the flesh. That their blood was lethal to vampires.
But nothing explained this—the pull in his veins, the way the shell warmed in his palm when he thought of her.
A sharp breeze rustled his coat. The sea was too still.
Then he heard it.
The song.
But it wasn't like before.
It was not hers.
This song was wrong—shrill, piercing, like a blade made of sound. It didn't beckon. It warned.
And then came the scream.
Lucien turned, eyes flaring crimson.
Below the cliff, Selene burst from the water, her violet glow dimmed, her face pale with terror. Behind her surged three figures—sirens, darker than Selene, with fins like knives and eyes like black pearls.
"Selene!" Lucien leapt from the ledge.
He fell like a shadow and landed hard on the rocks near the shore, fast enough to fracture stone. He ran toward the water, just as Selene collapsed near the surf, coughing salt and blood.
The other sirens stopped at the edge of the sea. They would not touch land. It was ancient law.
But they didn't need to. Their voices sliced the air.
"You've broken the sacred law, Selene of the Deep!" one hissed, her song warping the wind.
"You've chosen the dead! You've chosen ruin!" sang another.
Lucien stood between them and Selene, fangs bared, his rage glowing in his eyes. "Touch her," he growled, "and I'll silence your song forever."
The lead siren bared her teeth, jagged and glinting. "She is ours. You are nothing but ash and rot."
Lucien let out a sound between a growl and a laugh. "Then come prove it."
The sirens shrieked—but they didn't advance.
Not tonight.
Not under the blood moon.
They retreated into the sea with one final warning: "If the bond is sealed, you both will die."
Silence returned.
Lucien turned to Selene, who had dragged herself onto the wet sand, her body trembling.
"You shouldn't have come," she whispered.
He knelt beside her and touched her cheek, surprised to feel how warm she was. "You knew I would."
Her eyes fluttered open. "They'll try again. Next time, they won't care about the laws."
"Then we'll make new ones."She looked at him for a long, aching moment, her lips trembling.
Then she said, "There's only one way to keep me safe."
Lucien's gaze narrowed. "What?"Selene took his hand, placed it on her heart, and whispered, "Claim me."
CHAPTER FOUR :
The Depths Will Rise
For a moment, the world was silent, save for the rhythm of Selene's breath and the distant lapping of waves.
Lucien's hand rested over her heart, and he could feel it—not just the physical thrum beneath her ribs, but something deeper. A cadence that matched his own. A rhythm not born of life, but of fate.
"Claim you?" he repeated, his voice low, cautious.
Selene nodded, her voice barely audible. "It's not just a bond anymore. The others know it. If we don't anchor it, if we don't choose it—then it'll consume us. Or they will."
Lucien's fingers twitched against her skin. Her heartbeat responded with a tremble.
"I don't know what claiming means for a siren," he said slowly. "But for a vampire—it's binding. Permanent. Sacred. It changes everything."
Her eyes searched his, ocean-blue and shadowed with fear, but fierce beneath it. "For a siren," she said, "it's surrender. Of magic. Of voice. Of self."
He stilled.
"You'd lose your power?"
"No," she said. "I would give it. Freely. To you."
The weight of it crashed into him like the sea against stone. She was offering herself—her voice, her magic, her soul. No tricks. No enchantments. Just choice.
"I could destroy you," he said, almost a whisper. "Even now, I'm not sure I wouldn't."
"You could," she agreed. "But you haven't."
He looked down at their hands—his pale and cold, hers glowing faintly with siren light, dimmed by pain but still alive with wildness.
"The claiming," she said softly, "is done with blood and song. Yours, mine. It binds through will, not ritual."
Lucien exhaled, and for once, the hunger in him wasn't for blood. It was for her. The way she looked at him with fire, not fear. The way she chose him, even as the sea turned against her.
"Then we do it," he said. "Now."
Selene's breath caught. "Are you sure?"
"No." His lips curled into something close to a smile. "But I want you. Even if it damns me."
She smiled faintly, trembling as she sat up, her voice already shifting into song. Soft, tentative, like a ripple forming on still water.
Lucien bit into his wrist, crimson flowing like wine.
He offered it.
She took it.
And then she sang.
Not the siren's lure, but something ancient, older than the sea itself. A claiming song. One sung not to enslave, but to bind. Her voice wrapped around his blood like silk, seeping into her veins, her body arching as the magic rushed in. It burned, but she didn't stop.
Lucien's eyes flared red, his body tensing as something snapped into place—inside his chest, inside his mind.
A surge of power. Of connection.
He could feel her thoughts. Her pain. Her memories. The way she had once danced with the tide. The loneliness of the deep. The longing that had always been there… waiting for him.
And Selene could feel him too—the hunger he had battled for centuries, the violence, yes—but also the gentleness. The guilt. The aching desire to belong to someone, to protect, to mean something more than death.
The claiming settled in them both like fire sinking into bone.
The blood moon flared brighter.
And from the depths of the sea, something stirred.
Selene gasped and gripped Lucien's hand. "They felt it."
Lucien's head snapped toward the water. The tide began to churn, black and vicious.
"What is that?" he asked.
"The Deep," Selene whispered. "We woke it."
And from far below the surface, a low, inhuman rumble echoed upward.
The sea was rising.
And it was angry.
CHAPTER FIVE:
The Deep Remembers
The storm came without warning.
Waves slammed against the cliffs of Blackshore, wild and unnatural. The sky, once clear, twisted with roiling clouds. Lightning cracked in shades of violet and green, and the sea howled like a creature newly awakened.
At the heart of it, Selene stood trembling, her body slick with seawater and blood-bond magic still simmering beneath her skin. Lucien had wrapped her in his cloak, shielding her from the wind, but neither of them could ignore the truth:
They had broken something sacred.
"What is The Deep?" Lucien asked, his voice hard against the rising wind.
Selene's eyes were far away, staring at the churning sea. "The Deep is older than sirens. Older than the bloodline. It's what we came from. What we were shaped by. A god, maybe. Or a graveyard of gods."
She turned to him, her voice barely above the wind. "It sleeps beneath the ocean floor. But when the bond of a siren is claimed by a creature of death… it wakes."
Lucien's jaw tensed. "And now it's coming for us .No," she said softly. "It's coming for me."
Lightning split the sky. From beneath the waves, a dark swell began to rise—not water, not storm—but a presence. Something vast. Viscous. A shape that had no body, but weight. Its aura coiled through the tide, pressing against the shore like a hand testing the barrier of land.
Selene's knees buckled. She cried out and fell, clutching her chest.
Lucien caught her. "Selene!"
Her eyes turned solid silver, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her magic flared bright—too bright. It was leaking from her, uncontrolled. The bond was being tested.
Ripped.
"No," Lucien hissed. "You're not taking her!"
He bent his head and pressed his forehead to hers, letting his power open, letting the bond stretch, deepen, root.
"You're mine now," he whispered fiercely. "And I am yours."
Their connection snapped taut, stronger than before. Selene gasped and inhaled sharply, her magic stabilizing—but only for a moment.
From the sea came a voice. A thought, not spoken aloud, but ancient and immense:
"Return what you've stolen, daughter of the deep."
Selene's eyes widened. "It speaks…"
Lucien turned to the sea. "You'll have to take her."
The waves recoiled—and then surged.
And from the tide rose a figure.
Not a siren.
Not a vampire.
Something far more ancient. Towering, shadowy, its form constantly shifting—sometimes a woman of seaweed hair and coral crown, sometimes a creature made of jaws and shells and memory. The Deep had taken shape.
Selene clutched Lucien's hand. "It's testing us. It wants to know if we'll break."
Lucien stepped forward, shielding her. "We won't."
The Deep regarded him with a thousand eyes. Then, it smiled—a terrible, knowing curve of its faceless form.
"Then let the storm judge you."
With a roar, the sea rose higher than the cliffs.
CHAPTER SIX: The Sea Remembers
Long before the blood moon.
Before Lucien.
Before the song turned dangerous.
Selene had been chosen.
She was barely twelve tides old when they brought her before the Maw.
It wasn't a place, not really. It was a rift beneath the ocean floor, a chasm of swirling abyss where the water turned black and warm with ancient breath. Every generation, one siren child was offered—not as a sacrifice, but as a vessel. The Deep needed voices to carry its will. Songs to seed its power among the sea-folk.
Selene had been the youngest ever chosen.
"Why me?" she had whispered, her small hand trembling in the coral grip of the priestess.
The elder's eyes were colorless. "Because you hear it, child. Even before it speaks."
And she did.
Even then, Selene had felt the currents move when she sang. Schools of fish paused mid-swim. The water bent around her like it listened. And beneath it all, she could hear a humming. Distant. Low. Endless. Like something dreaming far beneath the world.
They took her to the Maw on the night of a black tide.
The priestesses formed a ring of light, their gills flaring as they sang the Invocation. Selene stood in the center, alone. Afraid.
Then the voice came.
"You are mine."
It echoed not in her ears, but in her bones. It filled her chest with heat and ice. And from the dark trench, something reached up—a tendril of not-flesh, of thought and water and memory.
It didn't touch her body. It touched her voice.
It wrapped around her song and tied it to itself.
From that day forward, Selene had sung in two voices—her own, and one deeper. Not always audible, but always there.
A reminder.
She belonged to The Deep.
But Selene was different from the others.
As she grew, her songs healed instead of harmed. She calmed waves, stilled tempests. When sirens sang to lure, Selene sang to protect. And in secret, she began to wonder:
What would happen if I ever sang for myself?
The question was dangerous.
Treasonous.
Because The Deep demanded obedience.
And it had not been defied in over a thousand tides.
Now, years later, on a storm-ravaged shore, with Lucien's blood in her veins and love blooming where fear once ruled, Selene remembered the Maw.
And she remembered the promise she made when she was barely more than a child:
"I will not be a puppet."
She opened her eyes in the present and felt the storm magic roiling overhead.
Lucien stood beside her, waiting.
And for the first time in her life, the voice of The Deep did not drown out her own.
She would not bow.
Not to gods.
Not to fear.
Not even to the ocean that made her.
Selene stood slowly, the memory of the Maw still burning in her mind. The Deep's voice loomed in the air around her, ancient and expectant.
"Sing," it demanded.
"Prove your bond. Survive, or be unmade."
The waves churned into monstrous forms—spires of water shaped like serpents, jaws open, eyes glowing like drowned stars. Lightning cracked again, and this time it wasn't just skyfire—it was magic, summoned from the ocean itself. The trial had begun.
Lucien stepped forward, coat whipping in the wind, his crimson eyes fixed on the storm. "What do we do?"
Selene's voice trembled as she said, "We survive together—or we don't survive at all."
She reached for his hand. Their bond pulsed like a second heartbeat between them.
The first wave struck.
It wasn't water—it was memory.
Lucien was thrown backward into the sand. But when he hit the ground, it wasn't sand anymore. It was stone, black and cold. He was in Blackshore Abbey again, blood dripping from his fangs, a human girl dead at his feet. His first kill.
"No," he snarled, shaking his head. "This isn't real."
"It is what you are," whispered the sea.
Selene screamed as another wave hit her, but she did not fall. Instead, her surroundings twisted. She stood in the Maw again. But this time, she saw herself as she would be if she obeyed—her voice hollow, her magic leashed, her eyes glassy with blind obedience.
"You belong to me," hissed the Deep.
She clenched her fists. "I did. Not anymore."
Lucien forced himself to his feet, growling against the illusion. His memories tried to chain him in guilt, to drown him in shame. But then—
He felt her.
Selene's voice.
Not a siren's call, not a seduction.
It was defiance. It was strength.
It was hers.
And it reached through the storm to him.
He answered it—not with a voice, but with power.
Lucien raised his arms. His shadow thickened, darkened, wrapping around them both like wings. Vampire magic surged from his blood, old and forbidden. The storm shrieked in fury.
The Deep struck again, sending a tidal wave taller than the cliffs crashing toward them.
Selene stepped forward.
Her eyes glowed silver.
And then she sang.
It wasn't pretty.
It wasn't polished.
But it was real.
Her voice cracked the wave down the middle, cleaving it like a blade. The water hissed as it fell away in harmless spray.
Lucien reached her side. The sea between them and the Deep writhed like a wounded beast.
And yet—they were still standing.
The sea stilled. The wind stopped. The silence afterward was deafening.
The Deep reformed into its towering, formless shape once more.
"You defy me," it said.
Selene lifted her chin. "No. I choose."
Lucien's voice joined hers. "We both do."
A long pause.
And then—the Deep began to dissolve.
Its form melted into mist, its power drawing back into the tide like breath exhaled. Not gone, but… retreating.
"So be it," it rumbled.
"You are no longer mine."
The sea fell flat.
The storm vanished.
And the blood moon dipped below the horizon.
Selene collapsed to her knees, exhausted. Lucien caught her before she hit the ground.
"It's over," she whispered.
Lucien looked down at her—his claimed mate, glowing faintly with the afterlight of power. "No," he said quietly. "It's just beginning."
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Tides of Fire and Blood
The storm was gone.
But its echoes remained.
Selene lay in the shallow surf, the tide gentle now, like the sea itself had grown quiet in awe. Her body ached with the memory of power. Her throat burned. She had sung not just with her voice, but her soul.
Lucien knelt beside her, his arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her against his chest. For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between them—his breath on her cheek, the rise and fall of their joined heartbeats.
She tilted her head toward him, voice barely a whisper. "I didn't know if we'd survive."
"You didn't run," he said. "That's how I knew we would."
Selene gave a soft, tired laugh. "You're either the most dangerous creature I've ever known… or the one I've waited for my whole life."
Lucien's crimson eyes flickered with something she couldn't name. Reverence, maybe. Or fear of how deeply he wanted her.
He brushed his lips over her temple, slow and reverent. "Maybe I'm both."
Their bond pulsed again—steadier now. Anchored. Whole.
But peace never lasted long.
Not for them.
Not for what they had become.
Far below the surface of the sea, in the twilight city of Naedreth, the siren courts trembled.
The High Matron of the Tide, Lady Nereixa, stood before a pool of scrying water, her fins flared, her voice ice.
"She sang outside the Will."
A court of glowing sirens circled her, expressions grim.
"She claimed a vampire," one hissed. "It violates the Laws of the First Current."
"She defied the Deep," another added.
But Lady Nereixa's eyes narrowed. "No. She survived it."
A hush fell.
"Which means," she said slowly, "Selene is no longer bound by the sea's leash. She has become something… other."
A court elder bared her jagged teeth. "Then she must be destroyed."
"No," Nereixa said. "She must be understood."
She turned to the scrying pool again, watching the image of Selene and Lucien walking side by side on the sand, their hands brushing as they moved toward the dark forest beyond the beach.
"Before she becomes a goddess—or a weapon."
Elsewhere, in the vampire stronghold of Ravenreach, the news arrived not with whispers, but with blood.
Lucien's claiming had sent shockwaves through the bloodlines.
"He bonded with a sea-creature," growled Lord Veridan, elder of the First House. "He's broken the Pact."
"He's strengthened something older than the Pact," said another. "I felt the magic shift. The Deep stirred. Then it silenced."
The vampire council argued for hours.
Until an ancient voice, dusty with time, echoed through the chamber.
"She is his mate now. To kill her would be to kill him."
Lord Veridan turned, face pale. "Then what would you have us do?"
The voice answered:
"Watch them. Let the bond grow. And when the time comes… take them both."
Back on the cliff, Lucien and Selene stood once more where it had all begun.
The wind was soft now.
The sirenshell still pulsed in Lucien's palm.
"We bought ourselves time," Selene said quietly. "But not peace."
Lucien looked at her. "Then we use the time. To prepare. To grow stronger."
She nodded, but her gaze was far away. "The courts will come. The vampires will want answers."
Lucien stepped close, cupped her face, and said softly, "Let them come. I'll burn down the world before I let them take you."
Selene's breath caught.
Because part of her—the part shaped by the Deep—believed him.
Wanted to believe more.