MIANE DIDN’T TAKE a real breath until Leila stepped onto Cifica, the city rocking gently under them in a rhythm that was the sea’s pulse. The young woman had been ferried by yacht to the nearest large BlackSea city, then put on a high-speed plane home. That plane had landed two minutes ago on the water beside BlackSea’s main city in the tropics.
“Leila.” She took her packmate into her arms, held her while Leila cried.
“They made me ugly,” Leila whispered against her chest. “I was never pretty but now I’m a monster.”
“Never say that again.” Miane fought her fury, squeezed Leila tight. “You are strong and beautiful and one of mine.”
Leila’s voice was thick when she answered, her fingers rising to her face. “The scars, Miane . . . I want them gone.”
“We have an excellent surgeon.” He was human but an angel with scars. “I’ll get him to come out to the city.” That Leila had spoken first of her scars didn’t surprise Miane. All victims of trauma reacted differently, and she knew from Olivia Coletti that sometimes, a superficial statement or request wasn’t superficial at all.
Each time I look in the mirror, Olivia had whispered to her, I see them. This isn’t my face. It’s what they made me.
“Will it work?” Leila asked shakily.
“Yes.” Olivia’s scars were already so fine that it was difficult to spot them under normal light. “He’s very good.”
A jerky nod. “I’m not vain. It’s just . . .”
“I know.” She kissed the shorter, slighter woman’s temple, kept her warm and safe within her embrace. “We’ve missed you, Leila.”
Sobs broke out of Leila’s body anew, heartrending and painful and raw. But when it was over and Leila lifted tear-drenched eyes to Miane’s, those eyes held a luminous light. “The world doesn’t understand. They think because some of us swim alone and because the ocean is so vast, that we don’t care.”
Miane wiped away Leila’s tears. “We know the truth and that’s what matters.” Miane would turn predator for her people, would fight any enemy to keep them safe. “We are BlackSea.”
“We are one,” Leila whispered, completing the motto that was written nowhere and yet that defined water-based changelings.
No matter how far they traveled or how deep, they were part of a bigger whole. Never forgotten. Never discarded. One.