Siren: A Dark Retelling

by Hazel Grace

  My body leans toward him, my palm planted on his bedside.

  “I have to let you go today, and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same after this. I don’t want to love you anymore, but I can’t help it. You brought me to life in a way that I never knew was imaginable. You promised me with your eyes before you—” I gasp for air as I continue to seize and shake. “—your eyes. You said this wouldn’t be the end, but it feels like it. It feels like I’ll never see you again.”

  My palms start to sweat along the red glass that holds my mother’s whatever, which does nothing for me because she’s still dead. He’s still dead, and the reminders hit me over and over again with no reprieve or mercy.

  Straightening my spine, I study the bottle, not even my mother’s presence makes herself known. The bottle holds nothing for me but another void.

  “What good is it to be the granddaughter of a god if you can’t even have everything you want?” I propel the bottle against the far wall and hear it shatter into a thousand pieces.

  Compelling myself to move, I lower my face to his and press a soft kiss to his lips.

  “I love you, I didn’t say it, but I do. Forever and always, I’m yours.” One of my tears falls on his cheek, and I wipe it away. “Stay in peace, my Viking. I’ll find you again one day,” I whisper. “Just wait for me.”

  Every fragment of strength I have left moves my body toward the door. My forehead rests upon it when I get closer, painfully aware that this will be it.

  Dagen and I will never be in the same room again.

  We won’t lie in bed together.

  I won’t hear his cocky mouth and the way his lips feel against my skin.

  Goodbye sounds so final it doesn’t sit right with us. I can’t accept that this will forever be us, but for now, I have to consent to the reality.

  I have Tobias.

  Given another opportunity to spend more precious time with him while I promise to never take his being with me for granted. He’s the only one that will be able to help me get through this.

  My strength when I have none.

  My hope when I’m forlorn.

  And my faith that needs to forcefully be resolute.

  My hand touches the brass doorknob, ready to brave through uncharted territory, when I pause at a sound outside the door, a soft shuffle. Backing from the door, I’m on guard still from the incident and fight with Taysa. I’m scared of any aftermath plans or anyone else that she may be linked with to finish her plan of power.

  Tobias is outside.

  Rushing back toward the door, I almost collapse to the floor by the next sound. Something that is indescribable and unbelievable to my ears that I’m almost certain I’ve taken a turn for the worse.

  “Blood.” I suspend my breathing, repeating the same octave in my head.

  Hesitantly, I begin to turn around, so beyond terrified that I’m hearing things I want to hear and still viewing the same sight I just did a moment ago. I built up a thin layer of courage to help me get through just today, I didn’t need my subconscious breaking it down before I was out of the room.

  Sluggishly pushing himself up, Dagen’s eyes are open, fallen on me, and crystal clear blue. I recoil back, my spine hitting the wooden door as I take in his straining muscles to shift himself to sit. His lips that are outlined by his dark beard are wet by his tongue.

  Ever since Rohana left me alone in the castle, I’ve seen both of them alive, and that’s impossible.

  I’ve seen them both take their last breaths.

  Felt the emptiness fill my whole body.

  Tobias and Dagen, they were ghosts or spirits back to haunt and torment me for my sins against them.

  “Get your ass over here,” he recites clear as day. “And kiss your man.”

  Slowly, I shake my head. “You’re not real.”

  He perks a brow. “Are you already asking me to show you how real I feel inside you?”

  “Dagen,” I plead. “You’re...dead.” Looking down at himself to confirm that he isn’t, he pulls his eyes back up to mine. “Apparently not.”

  My body begs to get closer, to feel him for myself and see if my skin collides with his or goes through it like mist. He watches me, intently and impatiently, as I expect the worst but hope for the best. My mind cautions me to be ready for my hope to fall flat while my heart implores that it’s him.

  My Viking.

  His hand reaches out for me, locking around my wrist as my body settles in between his thick thighs.

  Chest against chest.

  Breaths mingled together, and that’s all that I get to recognize before his lips are draped over mine, coaxing me to open wider so he can taste me. To possibly know that he’s not dreaming either.

  I oblige, his expert tongue making its way to mine, dancing and savoring. Making my body buzz with excitement, relief, and confusion.

  “You’re really here,” he mutters against my lips. “You still taste the same.”

  “How are you here?” I feel him shrug as his arms wrap around my back.

  “I don’t fucking care as long as this is real.”

  Another lapse of his tongue along with mine and my mind starts to blur with everything but him.

  His thick arms caging me closer. The stubble on his face that my thumb can’t help but caress over and over again. The soft intakes of air that he takes in between kisses that heat the apex between my legs.

  It feels real. I want it to be real, but my grandfather only gave my sisters and I one option of life.

  Reluctantly, I break from him, staring into his lust-filled eyes that look back at me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I hold his gaze. “How are you here?”

  “I don’t know, what did you do?”

  “I was saying goodbye,” I reply. “Yelling mostly.”

  He cracks a smile. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He presses a lingering kiss on my cheek and heads to my ear. “What else?”

  “I got angry that you weren’t responding to me.” His tongue licks the lobe of my ear, followed by his teeth, and I release a frustrated groan.

  “What else, baby?”

  “I told you that I loved you.” His head jerks away like I just burned him.

  “You said what?”

  “I said that...I love you.”

  He gives my face a once-over before saying, “One more time.”

  “Dagen…”

  His hold presses tighter, crushing me to his chest. “I want to hear you say it like it was the first time.”

  “I’m in love with you, you brainless Viking,” I snap.

  “Ah, yes,” he mutters. “Just how I always imagined it.” He presses a chaste kiss to my lips. “And so much fucking more.”

  His fervor heightens, more desperate and wanting, as he owns my mouth. Teasing me with his tongue as his hand squeezes my butt.

  I flinch back, my fingers falling to his grueling kisses. “The bottle!”

  “The what?” His brows fall together.

  “The bottle my mother was kept in when she died.”

  “Kept in?”

  I shake my head. “Well, no, it was her powers.”

  Dagen gapes at me, obviously lost. “Alright.”

  “Taysa said the missing cuff went to Tobias because he was the nearest bloodline to her when she murdered my mother. It contained the lock and key she needed to combine everything together. My mother’s cuffs with her bottled-up power meant she’d have the power of a goddess.”

  He blinks at me.

  “I threw the bottle against the wall because you couldn’t answer me,” I convey. “It held her power in it.”

  “And since I’m the closest...bloodline to Taysa who killed her, it went to me,” he finishes.

  “It brought you back,” I quip with a smile. Dagen’s face remains solemn. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where is Tobias?” My heart nearly floats in my chest at the mention of his brother. How he is actually concerned about him
after a short time of knowing him and loathing him for most of it.

  “He’s outside waiting for you.”

  Dagen’s eyes narrow. “He didn’t follow through with the—” My hands fall to his chest.

  “He did, he did. Just as gallant and as annoyingly as you did.”

  “Then how is he still—he’s alive?”

  “My grandpapa gave us the island and the option for us to choose a life of one of the men that gave up theirs to save his granddaughters.”

  “And dare I ask—”

  “Ask me if I chose him and I’ll kill you again,” I leer.

  “Yes, Blood,” he consents with a smirk. “I’ll ask him later then I suppose.”

  I kiss his nose. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

  “Forgive me if I take my time seeing more of you,” he retorts, leaning within the crook of my neck.

  “We need to go tell everyone,” I half-heartedly assert as he kisses the column of my neck then licks up the base of it.

  “Later.”

  “But they’re waiting for me to—” His teeth bite down gently into my flesh as he pushes himself off the bed and onto the floor.

  “I’m waiting to be balls deep in you right now,” he whispers, holding on to my waist for support. “And not even death can stop me this time, Blood.”

  “You’re—”

  “And I haven’t tasted you in days,” he retorts. “You wouldn’t keep a man that was just dead from his wish, would you?”

  I smile into his shoulder. “No, I guess not.”

  “Good, because my wish is marrying you today.” I try to recoil from his body, but he keeps me where I stand as he compresses more kisses and his tongue into my neck. “Say yes.”

  I open my mouth, but he groans and thrusts his hard cock into my stomach.

  “Say yes, Blood. You know you want me for the rest of your life.”

  “I want you for eternity,” I reply, moving my face so that he has to peer down at me. “Because you know you can’t die without me.”

  Three years later

  The sounds of screams and giggles loiter on the beach as I peer down the shoreline from the castle, watching Triton barely out of the water before each of my children are hanging off his arms. He visits every other day, Davina won’t let them in the water on their own yet without one of us and, even after the years that have passed with Taysa, it’s still badly burnt in her brain. She pokes me almost every morning to make sure I’m still real, that I’m still breathing, which leads to me showing her I’m still alive, still viable, still completely and utterly hers.

  The day I asked her to marry me, she did. Tobias and Triton gave her away, which I use the term lightly. I still get threatened every time my brother comes to visit, still get a hard slam to the back of my shoulder from Triton as a subtle warning to keep his daughter happy every time he leaves. The glares have faded slightly, I’m starting to grow on him, especially since I’ve done nothing but make Davina and our triplets my priority.

  “I’m taking them for a swim,” Triton bellows, seeing me looking down at all of them trying to wrestle with him. “Tell my daughter that I have some guards with me to ease her mind. And stop teaching them your barbaric ways of hitting me in the back of the knees to take me down. And how to—” I extend a hand to get him to shut up.

  “Got it,” I reply. He sends me a glower, which I think turns into a slight smirk as he turns around, taking my two daughters and son into the ocean.

  My daughters, Solandis and Dhara, are just like me—loud, bossy little beasts that want to fight all the time. Our son, Gathan, is just like Blood—mellow, patient to a point, and adventurous. Tobias demanded I name our son after him, that I owed him after he gave Davina away and decided not to fight me into a death match to see if I was worthy.

  I would’ve kicked his fucking ass, but I didn’t start that argument. Apparently, Tobias and I have the same mouth, pride, and need of being right.

  “I told you that I was taking them around the island,” Tobias carps from behind me, making my eyes already look heavenward. Since Davina and I had the kids, everyone wants them. Which isn’t bad when I crave my alone time with my wife, but I’m always getting chastised by my brother or one of Davina’s sisters. “Where are they?”

  “Swimming with the King of Lacuna, do you want to argue with him about it?”

  “No, I’d rather argue with you about it,” he deadpans.

  I peer over my shoulder at him as he stands alongside me. “When did you say you were leaving again?”

  “Whenever I feel like it.” He glances at me with innocent eyes the color of shit. “Are you trying to cut our brotherly love short?”

  I scoff. “Don’t get carried away.”

  “I was abandoned,” he continues. “I have issues.”

  “If you use that line one more time…”

  “You’re going to hug me,” Tobias lifts in an exaggerated tone.

  I lift a brow. “Go ask Rohana.”

  Tobias’s face falls, and his eyes cut into slits. “How quickly you can turn into an asshole.”

  “How already you were an idiot,” I counter.

  “That just added another week to my visit with you, Brother.”

  “Geezus fuck,” I mutter, pushing myself off the banister. “I swear all you do is come here to bother me.” I begin striding many, many feet away from him, to go find my wife and not hear how he denies having any sort of feelings for the lavender little Siren that has timidly had a fascination with him since I’ve been here.

  I say she needs her head checked.

  Davina wants to get involved and have another wedding.

  I tell her to stay out of it.

  She tells me to shut the hell up.

  “It’s the highlight of my visits,” Tobias calls out after me as I turn the corner toward the library, where Davina spends most of her mornings reading.

  Entering the room, she’s laid out on her maroon chaise lounge, red hair all toppled above her as a book is placed in front of her face.

  “Did one of the girls kill Gathan yet?” she asks behind her novel.

  “Not yet, but I’m about to kill my brother,” I convey, reaching for her book and tossing it aside. Her eyes widen as it falls off the lounge and onto the floor with a thud.

  “Don’t use your brutality on my only edition of—” I’m already pulling her to stand, wrapping my arm around her ass and lifting her into the air.

  “I don’t want to use my brute force on anything else other than you,” I mutter against her mouth, clasping onto her plush bottom lip.

  Davina’s legs wrap around my waist, tilting her head to take me deep with her tongue. My body hums while my cock pulsates in my pants, she can take me from irritated or calm to a lust-filled frenzy within a second. Everything about her screams to me, begs me to own and worship her, and I’ll happily accommodate each and every time.

  Her back hits one of her bookshelves, a sharp hiss leaving her lips as she bites down on mine.

  “Taking your words to heart, huh, Viking?”

  “Want me to go slower?” I retort into her emerald eyes.

  She arches herself into me, her pussy brushing against my torso. “Think you can?”

  “Fuck no.” My lips are on hers again, demanding and teasing. Our bodies fused together like a puzzle, not complete without each other.

  I live for this woman. I breathe, love, and adore her. I’d die for her again, not change a thing about how we came to where we are right now. Frustration and aggravation included.

  “Did you tell my father about the new power you acquired?” she breathes into my mouth.

  “I don’t want to talk about your father right now of all times, Blood,” I growl. “I’m trying to drive you mad with wanting me.”

  She presses another kiss to my lips. “I do want you.” Another kiss. “All the time.”

  “Then let me—”

  She pulls her head away. “But you have to tell him.”<
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  I huff like one of my children and fix her with an exasperated look. Since being brought back to life from the bottled-up powers of Davina’s mother, I’ve adapted some forces of my own. Ones I’ve been having a hard time getting used to, if I’m being honest.

  Fish annoyingly follow me around when I’m in the sea with the kids. I can sense trouble a league away, and my skin turns into armor when I feel threatened—that’s the new one. The one that poor Tobias felt the hard way when he snuck up on me last week.

  “I’ll tell him later when he gets back with the kids,” I tell her, leaning in to kiss her again.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Now let me make love to my wife.” She nuzzles her head into the crook of my neck and grazes my skin with her lips.

  “Your wife,” she repeats. “I still love hearing that off your lips.”

  “I still love saying it.”

  “What else do you love about your wife?” She licks the column of my neck, and my cock strains to already be balls deep inside of her.

  “I love when my wife doesn’t tease me,” I rebuff when I secretly love it. Not that I’d ever admit to that in my lifetime.

  “What else?”

  “I love when I’m so deep inside you that I don’t know where I end and you begin.”

  She chuckles, her lips climbing up to my ear. “What else, Viking?”

  “I love you, Blood. That’s all there is to know.”

  First and foremost (and this might be vain as hell), to me. I never in a million years thought I’d be able to jump into left field and write fantasy. I never believed or imagined that I’d be able to build a world and characters that weren’t either boring, didn’t make sense or were just bleh.

  So to me—*high five*.

  To my boys—the late nights, the headphones in constantly, the need to stop me because you were hungry or wanted to tattle-tale on the other one—I love you. You might not understand it yet but all of this is for you.

  To my other half—the support has been unreal. The random shaking of my head and you asking me what’s wrong. When you ask me how it’s going and I sigh in response. Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for being my cheerleader. Thank you for just being you.