Part 2My Siren Tail Shattered His World

The Crawford family's private mega-yacht was massive and obscenely luxurious.

The weather outside was apocalyptic. On the eve of the hurricane, the ocean was an expanse of inky, churning blackness, roaring like a beast with its jaws unhinged.

Harrison stood on the teak deck, a crystal glass of bourbon in his hand, letting the violent winds whip through his dark hair.

The three boys huddled safely inside the climate-controlled cabin, pressing their faces against the reinforced glass to watch me. Their eyes were full of mocking pity, like they were watching a madwoman perform.

I was wearing the diaphanous white silk dress Harrison liked so much. Barefoot, I walked methodically toward the railing.

The gale-force winds hit me, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of sea salt and crushed kelp.

It smelled like home.

I took a greedy, shuddering breath, feeling every single pore on my dying body scream in absolute euphoria.

"Are you done with this performance yet?"

Harrison had materialized beside me, his voice slightly muffled over the roar of the squall. "When you're done acting out, go inside. Gemma, my patience has expired."

He thought this was a cry for attention.

He thought I was playing some pathetic human game of 'hard to get.'

I turned around, leaning my lower back against the slick metal railing, and looked at this man I had worshipped for a near-decade.

He was aging.

There were faint lines creeping around his eyes, a dusting of silver at his temples.

As a siren, time meant nothing to me. It left no mark on my flesh. For seven years, to make myself look like a proper human wife, I had worn heavy, mature makeup. I had feigned human frailty.

"Harrison."

I called his name. The wind was deafening, but my voice cut through it, light and crystalline. "Actually, I never told you the truth about that day. The person who dragged you from the riptide... it was me."

Harrison frowned, annoyed. "What kind of nonsense is this? The person who saved me was..."

He was about to say a passing local fisherman's daughter.

That was the narrative he had always believed.

It was the lie I had spun to protect us both.

"Forget it. It doesn't matter anymore."

I smiled softly, reaching up to pull the pins from my intricate updo. My long, dark hair whipped wildly in the storm. Deep within my chest, a dormant, ancient power began to uncoil.

"Harrison, I'm going home."

"Going where? This is your home!" He reached out impatiently, intending to drag me away from the edge.

"Back to the sea."

I took half a step backward. My body was now entirely suspended over the precipice of the railing.

Below me, the black, frothing waves screamed for my return.

Harrison’s face went chalk-white. For the first time in seven years, genuine, unadulterated terror shattered his composed facade. "Gemma! What the hell are you doing?! Get down! Are you insane?!"

Inside the cabin, the boys finally realized this wasn't a tantrum. They threw the sliding glass doors open and poured onto the slick deck.

"Mom! Stop! Don't be stupid!"

"Mommy!"

Ah. So this was their belated concern. It weighed less than dust.

I looked at their terrified, panicked faces, and found that the cavern in my chest where my heart used to beat for them was completely, blissfully empty.

"Harrison, keep the children. I don't owe you a single thing anymore."

With that, I spread my arms wide. Like a kite with its string violently cut, I leaned back, letting gravity take me.

"GEMMA—!!!"

Harrison’s raw, throat-tearing scream was instantly swallowed by the roar of the ocean.

He lunged forward like a madman, his fingers closing desperately around the hem of my dress.

Riiiiiip.

The sound of silk tearing.

I plummeted into the freezing, violent depths.

The moment the dark water swallowed me whole, the agonizing suffocation of the past seven years vanished. In its place was a blinding, intoxicating rush of power.

My human legs fused. The bones cracked and lengthened, morphing rapidly into a massive, breathtakingly radiant silver-blue tail.

The fragile, useless human skin melted away, replaced by impenetrable, glittering scales.

With a single, violent thrust of my tail, I shattered the surface of the water.

The colossal wave I generated slammed into the mega-yacht, sending it violently tilting on its axis.

A jagged fork of lightning illuminated the sky.

And in that flash of blinding white light, Harrison and his three sons stared down at the ocean.

They saw it.

They saw the frail, sickly woman who couldn't even cut an apple without bleeding.

Right now, she was suspended in the heart of a raging hurricane, her ethereal, monstrous tail longer than the yacht itself, glowing with a bioluminescent fire against the black waves.

I looked up at them, my golden, slitted pupils filled with nothing but cold, ancient indifference.

"Goodbye, humans."

I opened my mouth, but the sound that tore from my throat was no longer human. It was the haunting, earth-shattering, ethereal wail of a siren.

It was a song that could drive a man to absolute madness, or force him to forget everything he ever loved.

But I didn't cast a spell on them.

I merely gave them one final, lingering look of disdain. Then, with a magnificent flick of my tail, I dove straight into the abyssal depths.

I left nothing behind but a massive, swirling vortex in the water, and four paralyzed statues on a violently rocking deck.