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She was supposed to fear the monster in the dark—not beg him to touch her like that. Dive into the hottest monster romance out right now! #chapter Chapter 1 Crystal’s POV Position: [not specified]. Location: Saint-Barthélemy, on-site housing provided. Compensation: €4,500/month. Start date: immediate. Requirements: female, single, good health, experience with caregiving preferred. Good fertility. Nature of work: daily care and interaction with exotic creatures. Interested applicants reply to this address only. I'd found it buried in a local forum between an ad for a retired fisherman's boat and someone selling homemade coconut oil, and I'd screenshot it before it could disappear, the way things on that forum tended to do. I read it for the fourth time, and it didn't get any less suspicious. The waiting room was trying hard to impress. White leather chairs, a marble coffee table, and a massive aerial photograph of Saint-Barthélemy's coastline. I crossed and uncrossed my legs. Checked my phone, read the listing again. "Weird listing, right?" The woman two chairs over was watching me. Mid-thirties, tanned, the kind of sun-bleached hair that came from actually living near the ocean She nodded at my phone. "No company name, no job title. Just 'exotic creatures' and a salary that's too good to be real." "We might be considered crazy for coming here." "Honey, half the island applied. That money?" She whistled low. "I've got two kids and an ex who thinks child support is optional. I'd scrub dragon cages for that number." I almost laughed. But before I could open my mouth, the door at the end of the room opened, and a voice cut through. "Crystal Le Grand?" I put my phone away so fast I nearly dropped it. The woman who stepped through was the kind of beautiful that made you immediately aware of every flaw on your own face. Her badge was saying ‘Anaïs’. Tall, dark hair pulled into something effortlessly perfect, sharp cheekbones. She looked like she belonged on the cover of Vogue. "That's me." I stood and extended my hand. "Nice to meet you. I love your shoes, are those…" "Follow me, please." Anaïs turned on those shoes I wasn't allowed to compliment and walked back through the door. I followed, hand still half-raised, smile dying on my face. She was the assistant to the facility's owner, and she had the interpersonal warmth of a tax audit. She led me to a small office, gestured to a chair, and opened a folder without looking at me once. "I see here you were previously married. Is that correct?" "Correct." I smiled tightly. ‘Best’ decision I never made. I was twenty-one and stupid and in love, and he had a smile that made me forget nobody had ever taken care of me without a price tag. "And your current relationship status?" "And your current relationship status?" "Single. Very, very single. The marriage was annulled, so technically I was never even married. Fun little legal detail." My now ex-husband vanished and left a stack of credit card statements with my name on them. Debts I didn't know existed, signatures I stupidly signed without looking. Now I understood why he'd been in such a rush to walk me down the aisle. Not in the name of love, but because he couldn’t wait to max out credit cards in his wife's name. Anaïs wrote something without looking up. The pen moved in short, precise strokes. Her nails were clean and unpolished, trimmed to exactly the same length. "Your credit history shows some irregularities. Can you explain?" "Student loans. You know how it is." I laughed. Anaïs didn't. Everything about this woman was controlled — posture, breathing, the way she held her face like a mask. Student loans my ass. I've got about four weeks of savings, a mountain of debt, and a disabled brother whose care I help pay for. "Menstrual cycle. Regular or irregular?" I blinked. "Regular, but that's kind of a…" "Clothing size?" "Eight. Sometimes ten if it's European sizing, which, honestly, always feels like a personal attack." "Professional experience?" "Nursing. Two years at Hôpital de Bruyn before I took a break." Before my fiancé convinced me to quit. "I'll take care of us, baby. You deserve better than nightshifts and bedpans." Turns out what he meant was he'd strip away every safety net I had, then vanish. "Do you have family or close contacts on the island? Anyone you speak with regularly?" "My mother, on the mainland. She takes care of my brother Lionel — he's disabled. I call her every few days, send money when I can. Here on the island? No one." Anaïs's pen stopped moving. She looked at me and something shifted across her features. Quick, controlled, barely there. Surprise and something sharper underneath it, almost like satisfaction. Then it vanished, and she was writing again. "Do you have family or close contacts on the island? Anyone you speak with regularly?" "My mother, on the mainland. She takes care of my brother Lionel. I call her every few days, send money when I can. Here on the island? No. Caleb was my whole social life, which, again, is a red flag. I'm seeing all the red flags now." Anaïs closed the folder, excused herself, and returned two minutes later with him. Albert Bernard, the owner of this company, walked into the room. Tall, obscenely handsome, the kind of man whose jaw looked sculpted rather than grown. He shook my hand with both of his and smiled like we were already old friends. "Crystal! Anaïs tells me you're perfect." "She… Really? She didn't seem…" "Wonderful! Tell me about your sex life." I choked on nothing. "My what?" "Your sex life. Active, dormant, somewhere in between?" He leaned back in his chair, completely at ease. "I ask because I want you to be comfortable. Some of the work here is intimate in nature: not sexual, but physical, close-contact, and I need to know your boundaries won't make you a liability." I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Albert tilted his head like a man watching a fish try to climb a tree. "I'll go first, since you look like you might swallow your own tongue. I'm bisexual, and the last person I was with told me I had the emotional availability of a desk lamp. Your turn." Surprisingly, It worked. Something about his absurd candor cracked the seal. I was still stiff when I found myself talking: "Dormant. Dead, actually. My ex killed any interest I had in men, and honestly, at this point the only physical contact I want is the kind where nobody asks how I'm feeling afterward." Albert listened with his chin on his fist and nodded like everything I said was fascinating. The contract was three pages. I should have read every word. I read the salary line, the housing clause, and the duration — twelve months, renewable — and I signed. Albert clapped his hands together. "Anaïs, transport! We leave now." “H-Hold on, what?” “Why wait? You’re gonna have so much fun there!” Anaïs stood, and as she passed Albert's chair, his hand swung out and slapped her across the ass — casual, proprietary, the sound sharp in the small room. She didn't flinch, didn't react at all. Just kept walking. I stared. My mouth opened, closed. Two attractive adults, I told myself. Clearly a thing between them. Who am I to judge? God knows I wouldn't mind someone who looked like either of them doing that to me. I tried to forget the look on the other candidates' faces when Albert enthusiastically told them to leave because the position was closed. Outside, a black SUV waited with the engine running. Anaïs took the wheel without a word; Albert held the rear door open for me with a little bow that was either gentlemanly or mocking, hard to tell with him. I climbed in, and the leather seats were cool against my thighs. Nobody spoke. Anaïs drove like she'd made this trip a hundred times, eyes fixed ahead, and Albert scrolled through his phone beside me. The drive took us to the island's far eastern edge, where the roads narrowed to dirt and the vegetation thickened until the ocean disappeared behind a wall of green. The facility sat at the end of a gravel path — low concrete, no signage, built like something designed not to be found. Inside, the air was cooler and carried a strange undercurrent, something organic and faintly mineral, like wet stone in a cave. Albert walked ahead, hands clasped behind his back like a tour guide. "Your schedule will be straightforward — feeding rounds three times a day, health checks once in the morning, and the rest of the time is yours to spend with the residents. Think of it as..." I was trying to listen, I really was, but then we passed a corridor junction and I saw the monitor. A security screen mounted high on the wall, showing a dark chamber in grainy night vision. Something massive was moving inside: too many limbs, too fluid, and a thick muscular appendage uncurling against the reinforced glass, ridged suckers pressing flat against the surface. My vision tilted. The corridor stretched and compressed, fluorescent lights bleeding into long white smears. My knees folded, and the last thing I registered before the dark swallowed everything was the cold of the concrete floor against my cheek. #chapter Chapter 2 Crystal’s POV The first thing I saw was Anaïs's face, upside down and slightly out of focus, like a painting viewed through water. Then Albert's, closer, and… shirtless. My head was resting on something soft that smelled like expensive cologne. His shirt, I realized. Folded neatly under my skull like a makeshift pillow. I was on the floor. Inside the facility. The fluorescent lights above buzzed against my temples, and the cool concrete pressed through my clothes. "There she is," Albert said, crouching beside me with his elbows on his knees. He was smiling the way someone smiles at a kitten that walked into a glass door. "It's impressive how fragile you are. Very cute, honestly." I tried to sit up. The corridor tilted again. Anaïs's hand appeared near my shoulder but didn't quite touch me, hovering like she'd been trained to offer support without actually providing it. "What happened?" My voice came out scraped and thin. "Heat, dehydration, first-day nerves — take your pick." Albert stood, rolling his shoulders, and I tried very hard not to stare at his torso. I'd spent my whole life picturing scientists as half-bald men with soft middles and reading glasses on chains. Albert Bernard looked like he'd been carved from something expensive. The tattoo I hadn't noticed before — small, geometric, just below his collarbone — shifted when he moved. "You'll adjust. Everyone does." He turned and walked down the corridor without checking whether I could stand. That seemed to be his style — moving forward and assuming the world would keep up. Anaïs waited. She didn't offer her hand, but she didn't leave either, and somehow that felt like more than Albert's entire performance of warmth. I got up on my own, brushed off my clothes, and fell into step beside her. "I'm fine, by the way," I said. "In case anyone was worried. Which I can see no one was." Anaïs didn't smile, but the silence that followed was less hostile than the ones before. I took it as an opening. "So what exactly am I walking into? Because so far I've signed a contract I didn't fully read, fainted in a hallway, and used my new boss's designer shirt as a pillow. I'd love for the next hour to involve fewer surprises." "Think of it as a farm," Anaïs said, her heels clicking a steady rhythm on the concrete. "The creatures here are recovering. Once they're strong enough, they'll be released. Your job is to keep them healthy and comfortable until that happens." "A farm," I repeated. "With exotic creatures." "Seven chambers, seven residents. Some look more human than others. Each has specific protocols." She glanced at me sideways, and for the first time I had the sense she was actually assessing me as a person rather than a line item on a form. "The scorpion — don't hold eye contact for longer than a few seconds. She reads it as a challenge, and you won't win that challenge. The spider is simple: leave the tray, step back, don't linger. The siren…" She paused. "Stay away from his water. He will pull you in, and he will not let go. He thinks drowning people is charming." "Noted. Don't get drowned by the charming one." "Your core duties are feeding, health monitoring, and communication. That last one matters most. They're more social than you'd expect. But each one responds differently, and finding the right approach takes time." I let that settle. A farm. Social creatures. Health monitoring. It almost sounded reasonable when she said it like that — clinical and contained, like reading the back of a cereal box. I could do this. Probably. "Anaïs, can I ask you something directly?" She didn't say no, so I tried my shot. "Am I in danger here?" She smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her do it, and it wasn't comforting. It was the kind of smile that carried weight behind it, something she'd earned rather than learned. "If anyone in there tries to assault you," she said, her voice perfectly even, "bite his dick off. I've heard it actually works." I laughed — a short, startled sound. "And if there are ten of them?" "Then bite the biggest one first." She said simply. "The rest will hesitate." I waited for the punchline. For the corner of her mouth to twitch, for her shoulders to drop, for any signal that this was the dark humor of someone who'd worked a strange job too long. None came. The corridor suddenly felt longer than before. "Where are my colleagues?" I asked. "The other girls. You said everyone adjusts, you said I'd get used to it, so there must be others, right?" Anaïs's stride didn't break. "They're no longer employed here." "Where did they go?" "Elsewhere." A pause so slight it almost wasn't there. "This position has had turnover." We caught up with Albert at the end of the hall, where the passage opened into a wider space lined with heavy doors — each one numbered, each one sealed. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, a fresh shirt on, apparently retrieved from somewhere in the time it took us to arrive. "All briefed?" he asked Anaïs. "She knows the basics." "Wonderful." Albert turned to me, clapping his hands together once. "Then let's not waste time. Pick a door. Any door. Consider it your first introduction." While he spoke, I caught movement at the edge of my vision — Anaïs, no longer looking at either of us. She was staring at one of the numbered chambers, the second from the left, and her expression had shifted into something I hadn't seen on her before. Her jaw was tight, but her eyes were soft, almost liquid, and the combination looked like grief wearing a professional mask. It lasted two seconds, maybe three, and then she blinked and it was gone. I wanted to ask, but I didn't get the chance. "Come on, Crystal." Albert placed his hand on my back and nudged me forward. "Nothing in there bites. Well, most things in there don't bite." I chose the first door because I didn't trust myself to stand there deliberating without losing my nerve entirely. The handle was cold. I pushed it down, stepped through, and the door swung shut behind me with a sound that was far too final for something mechanical. The room was dim, warm. The air tasted different in here — heavier, damp, carrying a mineral edge that coated my tongue. I couldn't see much beyond the first few meters: stone walls, a pool of dark water that stretched toward the far end, and shapes I couldn't identify pressed against the edges of the space. Then something wrapped around my left ankle. I looked down. A thick, dark appendage — smooth, muscular, ridged along the underside — coiled once, twice, and before I could scream, a second one caught my right ankle and they both pulled. My feet left the ground. The ceiling rushed toward me, then swung away as my body inverted, and I was hanging upside down in the dark, hair falling past my face, blood pounding into my skull. Something moved in the shadows ahead of me. Footsteps, bare feet on wet stone, slow and unhurried. A figure stepped into the faint light, and even upside down and half-blind with panic, I registered three things in rapid succession: he was beautiful, he was barely dressed, and he was covered in ink. Shorts. Just shorts. Everything else was muscle and tattoos: dark lines that climbed from his waistband up across his ribs, over his shoulders, along his neck, disappearing into dark hair that hung to his jaw. His eyes were black, like something that absorbed light instead of reflecting it. He tilted his head and studied me the way you'd study an insect that had landed on your windowsill. I panicked. Completely, spectacularly panicked. My brain, in its infinite wisdom, decided the best course of action was to cycle through every language I'd ever encountered. "Bonjour — hello — hola — um, guten — sprechen Sie — parla…" His expression went from indifferent to disgusted in the space of a single breath. He stepped closer, close enough that I could see the tendons in his neck shift when he spoke. His voice was low, clear, and dripping with contempt. "Am I some kind of Neanderthal to you?" #chapter Chapter 3 Crystal’s POV Blood pooled in my skull, my hair hung like a curtain, and the most beautiful man I'd ever seen was looking at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe. "I speak your language," he said, each word bitten off clean. "I speak four, actually. None of which I learned by having a terrified woman scream tourist phrases at me." From beyond the sealed door, Albert's voice rang out: "Oh, congratulations, you've met our boy Renard! He's a moody one. Good luck in there!" Renard. His jaw tightened at the sound of Albert's voice the way a fist tightens before a punch. "Put me down," I said, trying to sound firm and landing somewhere around moderately less pathetic. "Please." He didn't. Instead he stepped closer, and from this angle — me inverted, him standing directly in front of me — his body was a landscape I couldn't avoid mapping. The tattoos interlocked and climbed, script in a language I'd never seen winding along his obliques and disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts. His stomach was flat, ridged, close enough to my face that I could see each muscle shift when he breathed. Heat rose in my cheeks that had nothing to do with gravity. "You're not here for the reasons you think," he said, his voice dropping low, almost intimate. "You won't last long. And nobody in this building wishes you well." "That's... a really terrifying thing to say to someone who's hanging upside down in your room." I tried to smile, though I wasn't sure it landed right from this angle. "I'm Crystal, by the way. Since we're apparently going to be spending time together." Something flickered across his eyes: not warmth, but a brief pause in the hostility, as if my refusal to match his coldness had caught him off guard. "There were others before you. Plenty of women, sent in one after another like cattle. Some died. Some lost their minds. Some were maimed badly enough that death might have been kinder." His tentacles shifted and I swayed with the motion. "And some simply didn't fit. No click." "What click? What are you talking about?" "You don't need to know. You won't be here long enough for it to matter." The words hit harder than expected. Not because they were cruel, Caleb had been fluent in cruel, but because they sounded honest. Albert's voice pierced through again: "How's it going, sweetie? You two are already becoming friends, I can feel it!" Pure panic tore out of my throat. "We are not becoming friends! He wants to eat me or kill me, this monster is going to…" Renard's entire body changed. His pupils narrowed to vertical slits, something inhuman surfacing through that beautiful face. The tentacles uncoiled and I dropped. My back hit the stone floor and the impact punched the air from my lungs. Before I could gasp, two tentacles pinned my wrists above my head. A third coiled around my waist and squeezed, tracing the curve of my ribs like fingers reading braille. The fourth slid down my calf, circled my ankle, and traveled back up with agonizing deliberation, the ridged underside dragging across the bare skin between my shorts and knee. Every sucker left a faint pull, a tiny kiss of pressure, and my body catalogued each one with a specificity I despised. "Just want to see what kind of replacement they've sent us this time." He said, crouching beside me. His voice was bored, clinical. The tentacle at my waist tightened and tugged my shirt up an inch. Cool air hit my stomach. The one on my leg climbed higher, curving around my inner thigh, and a sucker latched just below the hem of my shorts with a wet pop that sent a jolt straight through my core. I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste copper. "No imagination," he murmured, studying my face. "Same as the others." From this close I could see details I'd missed, and one I hadn't expected. Around his neck sat a thin electronic band, sleek and dark, fitted tight against his skin like the shock collars they put on dogs. A small light at the throat pulsed a steady, quiet red. "You're shaking," he said. His breath carried something rainy and salty. "And not all of it is fear." "It's all fear." His tentacles released me and he pulled me to standing in one fluid motion. Then his hands caught both my wrists and pinned them above my head against the wall. His body pressed close — not crushing, but unavoidable. "Really?" he murmured against my ear. "So if I fuck you right now, against this wall, what do you say? Rough or gentle?" Everything between my hips did the opposite of stopping, and I hated myself for it. "Albert wouldn't allow it," I said with every ounce of manufactured confidence I had left. Renard smiled — slow, razor-edged. "Are you sure you want to test that?" The silence was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. His grip on my wrists didn't tighten or loosen. Those bottomless black eyes held mine, and I understood he was giving me a choice. Not a kind one, a real one. "Get out," he said suddenly. He released my wrists and pulled back in one fluid motion, the warmth of his body replaced by cold air so fast it felt like a wound. "Now." I scrambled — no grace, just knees and elbows and survival. My shoulder hit the door frame on the way through. The corridor's fluorescent light blinded me after the dim warmth of his room, and I pressed my back against the wall, breathing like I'd surfaced from deep water. Every place his tentacles had gripped me throbbed. By morning there would be bruises shaped like something no one would believe. "Excellent!" Albert materialized beside me, radiating weaponized optimism. "First introduction, done. I'd call that a success." "A success? He pinned me to the floor." "And yet here you are. Upright, breathing, limbs attached." "The thing on his neck," I said. "What is that?" Albert glanced back, unsurprised. " The electronic collar. Precautionary measure. It's not as bad as it looks." He said it the way you'd describe a smoke detector. "You… shock them?" "Only when necessary. We hardly ever activate them. Come on, let me show you your quarters." I caught up to Anaïs, who had appeared silently beside me, and kept my voice low. "How long has Renard been here?" "Longer than the others." "What is he, exactly?" "A hybrid. Part human, part aquatic. The details are classified above my clearance." Smooth, automatic, rehearsed until it sounded almost true. "And the women before me. He said some died, Anaïs." Her step faltered — barely a hitch that anyone else would've missed. But I'd spent two years reading patients' bodies, and I caught it. "The work carries risk," she said carefully. "Some candidates weren't suited. That's why screening exists." "You and Albert asked me personal questions and he decided it’s a brilliant idea to share his sex life." Anaïs said nothing. I could feel her choosing silence the way a surgeon chooses instruments — precisely, knowing what each one would cut. Albert opened a door at the end of a side corridor — small, clean, white sheets, a desk, a narrow window showing dense vegetation. "Rest. Tomorrow you start properly. You're going to be wonderful, Crystal." He slid his arm around Anaïs's shoulders and pulled her against his side — easy, possessive, broadcasting ownership rather than affection. Anaïs didn't lean in or pull away. Her body simply tolerated it. In the corridor's last light I saw it — lips parting a millimeter, eyes warming with something urgent and unspoken. She wanted to tell me something. I could see it pressing outward like a breath held too long. Albert's fingers squeezed her shoulder, and whatever it was collapsed. Anaïs smiled, the same rehearsed, empty curve she'd worn all day, and said what she'd probably said to every woman who'd stood in this doorway before me. "Good luck." #chapter Chapter 4 Crystal’s POV I woke to silence and a printed sheet of paper on the desk. The instruction list was typed in clean, impersonal font — feeding schedule, chamber numbers, dietary notes for each creature. Beside it, a handwritten note from Albert: Back tomorrow. Time TBD. Make yourself comfortable. You're doing amazing sweetie! — A.B. The exclamation point had a small smiley face in it. I stared at it for a while. My phone sat on the nightstand, useless. No signal, not even one flickering bad. The only means of outside contact was a desktop computer logged into a company portal connecting to one recipient: the facility's administrative office. No browser, no email, no way to reach anyone beyond these walls. My mother's face flashed through my mind: tired, always tired, standing in Lionel's doorway at five a.m. because his breathing had changed. If something happened, if he needed me, if she needed money wired I couldn't even know about it. Raise it with Albert tomorrow. There has to be a solution. I also couldn't go outside without approval. Every exit was locked, monitored, or both. Unusual job, unusual conditions. I said it three times, and by the third it almost sounded convincing. Then I grabbed the feeding schedule and got to work, because standing still was the one thing I couldn't afford. Tucked behind the schedule was a battered notebook — handwritten, illustrated with careful ink sketches of each resident. Someone had drawn them with surprising tenderness: the giant spider, Cyprien, curled around a pillar, the smoke creature mid-drift, the crystal-backed baby with her tiny paws tucked under her chin. Each page listed a name, a diet, and a set of warnings. Some trays held normal food — fruit, cooked meat, grain bowls. Others made my nursing stomach lurch. Live beetles clicking against metal edges. Slugs in viscous liquid. A sealed container I opened, gagged, and closed immediately. The spider took his tray and retreated without acknowledgment. "You're welcome," I muttered to the dark. The smoke creature — Élixane, the notebook said — hovered in the far corner, her body shifting like ink dissolving in water. I set the tray down slowly. "Hi. I'm Crystal. I brought you…" She drifted past me without a sound, and when I looked back the tray was empty. "Okay. Cool. Great talk." The smallest resident nearly broke me. A tiny creature like a cross between a baby pangolin and a hedgehog, her back covered in smooth crystals that caught the light like rose quartz. Unmistakably a little girl. She pressed herself into the corner and made a soft chirping sound and I crouched low and whispered, "Hey, sweet thing. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you." She chirped again, quieter. It took everything in me not to open her door and scoop her up. The humanoid chambers stayed quiet. I knocked, announced myself, left trays. Nobody emerged, but I could feel them listening behind those doors. We'd meet properly soon enough. Then I reached the water chamber. More grotto than room: dark stone walls slick with moisture, soft blue lighting filtering up from a pool stretching across most of the floor. The water was impossibly clear, turquoise deepening to black where it dropped off. I set the tray on the stone ledge. "Breakfast delivery. I'll just leave this and…" He surfaced without a ripple. Water sheeted down his shoulders, his chest, catching the blue light and turning his skin luminous. His hair was light, slicked back, dripping, and his eyes — narrow pupils, almost feline — caught mine with an intensity that froze my hand mid-reach. He was stunning in a way entirely different from Renard: fluid, effortless, the kind of beauty that made you lean in before you realized you were moving. His jaw was sharp but his mouth was soft, curved into a half-smile that promised nothing good and made you want it anyway. Dark markings traced his collarbones and disappeared beneath the waterline. "You must be the new one." His voice was rich, unhurried, carrying an accent I couldn't place. He had the same electronic collar as Renard. "They told me you'd be pretty. They didn’t lie." "They… Who told you?" "Word travels. Even in a prison there is gossip." He tilted his head. "Crystal, right? Take a seat, talk to me. I've been staring at walls for months and you're significantly better scenery." I should have left. Anaïs had warned me — stay away from his water. But his voice made caution feel silly. He wasn't threatening. He was warm, the first creature who'd spoken to me like a person. I sat on the ledge, keeping a safe distance from the water's edge. "You seem surprisingly cheerful for a prisoner." "Charm is a survival mechanism." His smile widened, and something about it was so disarming I felt my own mouth curving in response. "Also, they feed me well and I have an ocean view. Granted, it's a fake ocean, but I've learned to lower my standards. Tell me about yourself, goldfish. What brings a woman with your face to a place like this?" We talked. The dangerous part was how easy it was. Noévan, that’s how he introduced himself, asked questions and actually listened to the answers. He laughed at things I said, not performatively but with genuine surprise, his head tipping back and eyes crinkling at the corners. He made a joke about Albert's hair that was so accurate I snorted water I hadn't even been drinking. Twenty minutes evaporated like mist. "Can I ask you something?" I said, feeling brave. "You can ask me anything, goldfish." The way he said it should have been a warning. "The caretakers before me. Where are they now?" The shift was subtle. His smile didn't disappear — it stayed perfectly in place, like a mask someone forgot to remove. He glanced down at the dark water. "Somewhere at the bottom, I'd imagine." My blood iced over. Every muscle in my body locked. Then he laughed — bright, rolling, genuine enough to crack the tension. "Siren humor. We're terrible at it. Forget I said anything." I exhaled, heart still hammering. "That's not funny." "It's a little funny." Noevan’s eyes sparkled, and he leaned closer on the ledge, chin on his folded arms, looking up at me through wet lashes. "You're tense. You should relax. Here, give me your hand." I didn't decide to move. That's what I remembered afterward — the absence of decision. One moment I was sitting with my hands in my lap, the next my fingers were reaching toward the water… The surface looked so inviting, warm and glowing, and Noévan's voice had gone soft and rhythmic, like a current pulling me somewhere I wanted to go. "That's it," he murmured, tucking my hair behind my ear and cupping my face with his cold palms like he was about to kiss me. "Just a little closer. The water's warm. You'll like it." My fingertips broke the surface. Warmth bloomed up my wrist. I leaned forward, the pool's blue light filling my vision, Noévan's face right there, those impossible eyes pulling me down… The wall exploded with sound. A massive impact — concrete shaking, dust falling — followed by a voice roaring through the ventilation. Male, furious, words in a language built for anger. I jerked back so hard I nearly toppled off the ledge. The warmth drained from my head, and the pool suddenly looked deep and dark and very dangerous. Noévan sank lower, rolling his eyes. "Ignore him." "Who was that?" "Your tentacled friend next door. He yelled 'leave her alone.' As if I was doing anything." A lazy shrug. "Go feed the others before he puts a hole through my wall." I stood on shaking legs and grabbed the empty tray with hands that wouldn't stay still. At the door I looked back. Noévan floated in the center of his pool, arms spread, watching me with those feline eyes and a smile that was equal parts apology and promise. No other creatures appeared during the remaining rounds. The silence felt heavier after Noévan's room. I was washing the last tray when a voice behind me said, "How was your first morning?" The tray hit the floor. Albert stood in the doorway, arms crossed. I hadn't heard the door, hadn't heard footsteps. "You need to stop doing that," I said. "Monthly checkup. Standard procedure. Follow me." The examination room was small and clinical — padded table, cabinet, overhead light a shade too bright. Albert pulled on latex gloves while I sat on the table's edge. "What does a monthly checkup involve?" "Vitals, bloods, a quick injection. Routine." "Injection of what?" "Supplements. The environment here is unique, your body needs help adjusting." "What kind of supplements?" "The helpful kind." "Albert. What's in the syringe?" He turned with the needle ready and smiled the way someone smiles when they're done entertaining questions. "Lie back." When he reached for my shirt, I grabbed his wrist. First defiance. We both felt it. His eyes met mine and something shifted: surprise, then something clinical, a scientist watching a rat choose the unexpected path. "I didn't give you permission to inject me with anything," I said. Albert laughed — warm, rich, and it made my skin crawl. "Crystal, you gave permission for everything when you signed that contract." He leaned closer, rotating smoothly out of my grip with unexpected strength. "Besides… I need your uterus in working order." #Email The needle pierced below my navel before I could process the words. Cold, then heat, then pain so total it felt like my organs were being rearranged from inside. I screamed, my body seized, every muscle contracting, the fluorescent light fracturing into white splinters before the dark swallowed everything.