The sun was only just starting to break over the horizon and warm the waters when Nero awoke to a pair of lips brushing against his nose. Then they brushed over both his cheeks, and finally his lips. “Nero!” Karina whined with a huff when she grew tired of the game. Her tailfins struck him gently across the ribs as she kissed him again. “I know you are awake! Open your eyes.”

Nero shifted in the sand and snaked an arm around Karina’s waist. He rolled over onto his other side and dragged her down with him despite her protesting squeaks and breathless laughter.

“Nero!”

Finally, he opened his eyes to find her frowning at him. Her brows were furrowed and when she huffed, she blew a jettison of bubbles at him.

“You are persistent this morning,” he grumbled.

Evidently, she could not stay annoyed with him, because her pout morphed into a poorly concealed smile. “Only because you refused to rouse,” she complained. “Get up and come for a swim with me.”

Nero groaned. He loved Karina and was always eager to spend as much time as possible with her, but she had far too much energy this morning for him to keep up. Instead, he pulled her closer and nuzzled the nape of her neck with a hum. “What if we stay here and cuddle instead?” he proposed.

It only took a moment for Karina to have her lips pressed to his once more. Nero’s hum deepened to a purr as he kissed her back. Her hands came up to cup his face and a bubble popped on her lips as she pulled away after a moment. “Nero? If you do not get up and come for a swim with me right now, you will be sleeping alone tonight,” she threatened.

Nero opened one eye to gaze at her lazily. “You would punish both of us to make your point?”

“Yes.”

Nero sighed and reluctantly pushed himself up from the sand. He shook his head and brought a hand up to brush a few stray kernels from his hair. Then he pushed his arms above his head and arched his spine to loosen all the muscles that had lain dormant through the night. “Alright,” he caved. “What is it that has you so jittery?”

A bright grin pulled across Karina’s lips, flashing him with her ivory teeth as she leaned in close and rubbed her nose against his. “I have a surprise for you.”

Nero grinned back and teased his fingers through her free-flowing golden hair. Karina was never very good at subtlety or secrets. Sure, if he told her something in confidence, she was like the jaws of a giant clam, firmly clamped shut against anyone who would pry. But surprises and plans and things that excited her tended to burst from her lips at breakneck speed when she could no longer contain them. It was no wonder she was so eager to get going before she wound up spoiling her own surprise. “That is very sweet of you,” he murmured. He offered her his hand. “Let us take that swim, then.”

Karina grasped his wrist with both hands and hauled him from the sand with an impressive heave of her tail. Her grin was still wide and she yanked eagerly on his arm again.

Nero merely chuckled and shook his head before lashing his tail to keep up with her. He was pretty sure she was keen enough to get going that she may just rip his arm right off if he did not get moving. He tugged free from her grasp, but her resulting frown quickly lifted into a content smile as he took her hand in his and matched her pace, rather than being towed by the wrist.

Her happy aura permeated the waters between them as she gripped his hand firmly and led him away from the reef her static dwelling pod called home. Nero was not certain where she was taking him as they passed over sandy dunes and long beds of seagrass that took them further and further from the center of her pod’s territory. Karina did not normally travel far from home, but he supposed she had been getting braver of late. He had not realized she had started doing so on her own though, usually foraging and harvesting in the nearby kelp beds were as far as she ventured alone, and they had left those behind rather quickly at Karina’s rapid pace.

Nero wanted to ask, but he kept his lips pressed together. Karina was radiated excitement and he knew that any questions would have her blurting out her surprise early. He was too smitten with her joy to dare do anything that risked disappointment that would overshadow her eagerness in such an incident. There was no need to spoil the surprise and Nero was rarely ever uncomfortable with silence, so he merely squeezed her fingers and continued following her. Though his heart skipped a beat as he watcher her smile grow just a little bit wider as he did.

A few cycles ago, if someone had told Nero that at twenty-one cycles of age, he would already have a life partner, he would have probably scoffed at their ridiculousness. The company of other mer, especially strangers, left him awkward and tongue-tied and he rarely ever enjoyed it. It would have been impossible to imagine himself with a mate, much less one as vibrant and sunny as Karina. But here he was and he could not be happier.

Gradually, the ground beneath them grew less smooth. The fine sands gave way to darker, more coarse grains piled into sharper grooves and ridges, before the ground dropped away entirely. It was not a deep drop, only a few tail-lashes deeper, but the ground remerged in a ravine between two sandy hills. On either side, long kelp strands were just enough of a concealer that Nero was not surprised he had never been here, despite how he often took long swims with and without Karina, especially when he had been newly recovered from the terrible injuries that had stranded him with her pod initially.

At the bottom of the ravine was a long line of interlocking smooth and rough rocks easily large enough to drape oneself over. Karina was practically jittering as she dragged him down towards them with a gaping grin on her face. Her eyes were crinkled in the corners and her lips pulled back to reveal her pearly teeth and ivory fangs, and Nero felt an eager pressure rise in his chest.

He suddenly understood why Karina had been so over-anxious to show this to him. He loved her and it had been his choice to remain with her pod, with her, once he had healed, but that did not mean there were not things he missed about his own home. His family, for one, and the travel and exploration as well, but namely, he missed rocks just like these. The sands around Karina’s home reef were pretty barren of them, while his own pod often migrated through several zones with large, flat rocks and their coarser brethren. It was often timed perfectly enough with Nero’s shedding cycles that he could seek the easy relief the cool surfaces offered. But since staying with Karina’s pod, his shedding cycles had become more unbearable than ever in the past. They itched and burned and he often had strips of the leathery hide flapping painfully as he swam for several turns before they were no longer too tender to tear.

Though he had never openly complained, he had told Karina stories of his pod and their lifestyle and talked a bit about some of the things he missed. Rocks like these being one of them. The fact that she had remembered, much less taken the time to search and find some of them made Nero’s heart swell in his chest and his throat close. He squeezed the hand he was still gripping and pulled her close to wrap her in an embrace tight enough that her breath croaked from her throat.

“Surprise!” she wheezed as she hugged him back and a hum built in her throat.

Nero broke the embrace just long enough to pull her face to his so he could kiss her. He lashed his tail and then curled it around hers to keep her close while his hands were busy holding the sides of her face. Her purr deepened and his rose to meet it. “I do not deserve you,” he murmured against her lips.

Karina giggled and pulled away for a heartbeat before leaning in to bump noses. “No,” she teased while her tongue poked cheekily out between her teeth. “But you have me anyway.” She pressed her lips to his nose and he angled his face up to capture her lips once more. His fingers tangled in her silky locks and her mane flicked against the digits as he brushed over it. They sank through the water together until they were tangled up against each other perched on one of the rocks.

“I know your tail bothers you,” Karina whispered. “When it sheds. I know it is not now, but I just thought that when it does…we can come here. Maybe it will help.”

“It is perfect,” Nero agreed. “You are perfect. Thank you.”

Karina wriggled and dropped her head against his chest. Her fingers danced over the rough hide of his tail as they cuddled. “I found it a couple of turns ago. No one really comes out this way, so I was thinking that if we wanted to spend some time just the two of us, we could come out here…you do not have to be in shed, right?”

“Of course not,” Nero agreed. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close before kissing the crown of her head. “I would love that.”

His mate angled her head so that her glossy brown eyes were staring up at him and sparkling brightly. “We could stay here now,” she suggested.

Nero grinned and nodded. “I am comfortable if you are,” he agreed.

Karina purred again and nodded. She nuzzled his chest and flipped her tail up so that it was draped lazily over his. “More than comfortable,” she agreed.

***

The better part of the morning was spent simply cuddling with Karina, chatting and enjoying her proximity. The sun continued to rise until it sat directly overhead, warming the waters so that the cool rocks beneath them felt even more pleasant. Even Karina had begun to sprawl and stretch over a particularly smooth one. It had Nero grinning. He was not surprised she found it pleasant on her skin the same way he did on his shedding tail. Rocks like these made for pleasant basking spots.

But as the day progressed into the afternoon, Nero could not shake a weird sensation in his chest. It was a familiar and yet equally foreign and foreboding feeling, as though something was off but he could not quite place what. At first, he tried to ignore it, but it was growing steadily more intense until Karina seemed to take notice.

“Nero, are you okay?”

Nero frowned and shrugged. “Just have a strange feeling. I cannot place it.”

“What sort of feeling?” Karina pressed.

He leaned back on the rocks they were sitting on and brought a hand to his chest. Karina shuffled closer and folded her hand over his. He could feel her gaze levelled on him and it was disheartening to see the frown creasing her lips. They had been having such a lovely morning that he hated to be worrying her now. “I do not really know. It feels strange. Not necessarily bad, but strange, like I am being pulled towards something. But it also almost feels familiar, though I do not recognize it.”

Karina pursed her lips and clucked her tongue. “Does it feel dangerous?”

After taking a breath, Nero closed his eyes to analyze the sensation a little more closely. Usually, his instincts were pretty strong, honed from the hunting parties he joined in his pod, and if something was unsafe, he would get prickling chills down his spine, but there was nothing like that sensation now. “No,” he reported after a moment.

For a moment, they just stared at each other and then she leaned closer. “Is it far? Wherever the sensation is pulling you?”

Nero took another breath and shook his head. “No. That is the thing that confuses me. The only draw I have ever had has been to my pod, and now to you, but we are seldomly far enough apart for me to feel the pull. But my pod is much too far for this to be them.”

“Maybe they are closer? You said they migrate after all.”

“Not in this direction,” Nero refused with a shake of his head. “Besides, surely I would recognize a proximity draw to my pod?”

“I suppose so,” Karina agreed with a rueful shrug. Nero grabbed her hand and squeezed her fingers. She never strayed very far from her own pod, she probably had no idea what it would feel like to be pulled towards them from a distance. She did not have any input, but that did not mean he did not appreciate her efforts. He watched her flick her fins and chew on her lip for a moment. “Do you…do you want to follow it and find out?”

Nero’s lips parted as he stared at her. She was shifting slightly under his gaze and he could taste her uncertainty as he breathed. Karina loved hearing stories about all the different places he had been and things he had seen being part of a more nomadic pod, and on occasion, he had coaxed her into venturing a little ways from her home territory, but never further than they could travel back in half a day. Never before had she been the one to suggest it. They were already a little further than she was normally comfortable casually going to, and now she was willing to venture further with him? It warmed his heart and he leaned in to pull her close and kiss her again.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too.”

He pushed himself up off the rocks and extended his hand out to her. “We won’t go far,” he assured her. Whatever the sensation was, if it started to take them a way out, he would abandon it.

Karina smiled and shook her head as she took his hand. He pulled her up and she leaned close enough to bump shoulders with him while she held onto his hand firmly. “I feel safe with you,” she replied.

His heart fluttered in his chest as she said it. She was willing to go because he made her feel secure. She trusted him to protect her and bring her back home safely. Whether or not she trusted him had not been something he ever needed to question, but this was a new level. Karina was always very nervous about straying from her family because she had only ever known a stationary life and lacked a lot of the more intensive survival skills that travel taught.

Meeting her had been one of the best things that could have happened to him, and bonding had done wonders for both their confidence levels. His social confidence had gotten better. Karina was too cheery and bubbly not to interact with others and she was helping him get more comfortable with it. Meanwhile, he had noticed how her self-confidence had been increasing slowly the longer they were together. The Karina he had first met had been wrought with poorly hidden anxiety and self-loathing, always questioning if she was good enough, always hiding her real dreams and feelings behind a smile, always afraid of saying or doing or wanting the wrong thing. Now, her smiles were more genuine and she hid less and less from him and was starting to express more of her personality and interests and desires, and each new discovery only made him love her more.

As they left the basking rocks behind and made their way further from her pod’s resting grounds, Nero pressed closer to his mate and began to purr. But he was surprised to find that she was shedding some of her initial uncertainty and instead it was excitement that he could taste. Her gaze was darting around, taking in the new sights as they left the shelf behind into more open water. Sure, they could still see the bottom, where a mass of crabs were scuttling over one another, but these were far more open and deeper waters than Karina had probably ever been. “Want one?” he inquired. He did not give her time to answer before towing her deeper.

Karina’s breathless laughter cackled in his ear as they swooped over the writhing crustaceans and arched back up through the water, each coming away with a prize. Karina’s smile was incredible as she beamed at him before sinking her fangs into her catch. Though shrimp and their more elusive brackish counterparts were her favourite foods, Karina had a taste for all crustaceans, so he was not surprised at how eagerly she broke through the outer shell and into the tender meat beneath. Nero reluctantly released her hand and swam side by side with her so that their tails brushed on each downstroke so that her hands would be free to enjoy her meal. He made quick work of his own snack as well, and when she had finished, Karina quietly reclaimed his hand once more.

They were travelling at a steady pace and it was not long before the water grew shallower once more into another reef. This one was large and vibrant, with shoals of colourful fish darting around and swimming in spirals out into much deeper water beyond as the continental shelf dropped away entirely. Karina’s sharp intake of breath and her fingers tightening around his hand made Nero glance at her worriedly, but her eyes were full of wonder. “I wonder if our pod knows this is here,” she murmured. The reef was full of the scents of clam beds and there were urchins and vegetation all over amongst the twists and branches of coral.

“They do,” Nero assured her. “They probably forage a lot from here.”

“How do you know?” Karina checked.

Nero shrugged. He rarely joined the foraging teams, but instead took a few of the more confident and competent hunters into deeper waters for fish, but the scents of mer, of her pod mates, lingered in the area. “Taste the water,” he suggested.

Karina tilted her head at him and then parted her jaws and a sheepish look crossed her features. “Ah,” she acknowledged.

He bumped her with his hip and hummed. He had been teaching her a few things and if she ever worked up the courage, he knew she would make an excellent hunter and he longed to travel further with her, but he would never push her further or faster than she was ready for.

Here on this new reef, the sensation was growing stronger and more demanding, and it really was becoming alarmingly familiar. There was a familiar scent on the water too. He could taste it in his gills and when he finally realized what he was, he already had a blue and brown blur barrelling toward him.

Despite her smaller size, the force as she crashed into his chest was enough to rip his hand from Karina’s and then he had a sobbing child clinging to him and burying her face into his torso. Nero’s jaw dropped and he experienced a sensation akin to his heart soaring and plummeting at the same time. It had been cycles since he had seen her.

“Kera?” he queried.

Her sobbing died to gentle whimpers as she squeezed him tighter. “I found you,” she cried. “I knew. I knew they were wrong, I knew you were not dead.”

Nero swallowed the lump in his throat and gently placed his hand on his little sister’s head. She shifted until he could see her crystal blue eyes, wide with desperation, peering at him from beyond the waves of rich brown hair that now cascaded past her shoulder blades. It had been short the last time he had seen her. It had been four cycles, and now his little sister was nine and though she was still small for her age, it seemed like she was finally beginning to grow into the slightly oversized fin and undersized, stumpy tail she had been born with. She was thin, but not unhealthily so and her eyes glowed with life.

He swept her up into a proper hug and squeezed until she began to wheeze. He had not realized until this moment just how much he had actually missed her. She hummed and nuzzled him. “Nero,” she whispered.

“Oh Kera,” he murmured into her hair. “Wait…Kera, how did you get here? Where are mother and father?” He pulled away and instinctively tasted the water, but the only scents of his parents were the stale ones still clinging to the young mer in front of him.

Kera shifted against him and did not answer, so Nero pulled her away enough to level his gaze on her. His sister fidgeted again. “Umm, they are back with our family.”

Nero grimaced and cast his senses out. His family did not feel nearby. “Kera, are they close?” he checked anyway. He had failed to register her proximity properly, so he had to be sure. When she shook her head, he swallowed the lump in his throat and posed the next question he already knew the answer to. “Do they know where you are?”

Kera shook her head again. “No one believed me! I tried to tell them that you were alive. I knew you were, but everyone just said that I could not accept the truth.” She bared her short fangs and lashed her pale blue, heart-shaped fin. “But I could not just forget about you. I had to know for sure.”

Nero shook his head and gripped her by the shoulders. “What you did was dangerous and foolish. You are still a child. You could have been hurt or killed and no one would have known where you were. Mother and father must be sick for worrying about you. What were you thinking?!”

“I-” Kera faltered and he saw her eyes widen and her lip began to quiver. “I am sorry. I just wanted to see you…you never came home and I missed you. What was I supposed to do? No one would agree to come to look.”

“You should have stayed where you belong, where you are safe, not swim off without telling our parents.”

“They would not have let me come,” Kera protested.

“Then you should not have!”

Kera flinched bodily and her posture slumped, but Nero could barely see straight, much less calm himself. His heart was hammering in his chest as his mind played through all the dangers Kera could have faced, all the things that could have happened to her. She was still so small, so fragile.

But then Karina laid a hand on his shoulder and everything came into sharp clarity once more. He glanced at his mate to find a soft expression on her face. She shook her head gently. “You are allowing fear to fuel anger into rage,” she murmured. “It is unfair. Be firm, but do not be mad.”

Nero took a breath and then glanced back down at his little sister. She was still shrunken in on herself with wide eyes staring desperately up at him and a rancid scent was pouring off of her. Nero sighed. She was still just a child and this was not how he wanted her to see him after so many cycles apart.

The tension slipped from his shoulders and he swept Kera up into his arms once more. “I am glad you are here,” he told her. “I am grateful that you are unharmed, and I am sorry I got upset with you. But what you did was still incredibly foolish. You could have been seriously hurt and that scares me. Please promise me that you will never do anything like this ever again.”

Kera whimpered, but after a moment she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face into his shoulder. He could feel her fingers grasping at the ends of his hair and brushing against the top curve of his dorsal. “Okay. Nero, I am sorry.”

Nero gently hushed her and began to stroke the crown of her head and down her back as he hugged her back. “Do not apologize, little remora. I am happy to see you, I just do not want to see you putting yourself needlessly at risk. And look how big you have grown. The last I saw you, you were barely an anchovy.”

“I was not!” Kera huffed.

Nero chuckled. “Well, maybe just a little bigger, but you have grown since then for sure, baby sister.”

Kera stuck her tongue out at him. “I am not a baby.”

“But you will always be my baby sister,” Nero argued.

Kera opened her mouth like she wanted to argue, but instead, she simply hugged him again. For another moment or two, the nine-cycle mer was silent. Then she posed the question that Nero had been silently dreading since she showed up. “Nero…what happened to you? Why did you never come home?”

Nero chewed on his lip and stirred the water with his fin. “It is complicated, Kera.”

Surprisingly, his sister bared her fangs and hissed. He had never heard her hiss before. She was usually such a happy, easy-going child. Or at least she had been. With four cycles of separation, he supposed he no longer knew with absolute certainty what she was like. “I hate it when adults say that,” she growled. “Like I am too dumb to understand something.”

“No,” Nero soothed as he rubbed her back and hugged her again. “You are not dumb, Kera. Sometimes adults say that because they don’t know how to easily explain something. It is not that you cannot hear it, it is that I do not know how to say it.”

Kera squeezed him as tight as her little arms could manage. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

For another few heartbeats, Nero just enjoyed getting to cuddle with his sister. He had not realized just how much he had missed her, how much he still missed the rest of his family.

“Who are you?” Kera’s voice shattered his revere and he followed her line of sight to find her staring at Karina.

Her question had not been accusing or rude, simply the blunt inquiry of a child, but Karina responded with a bright smile. Her mane flicked as she drifted closer. “My name is Karina,” she replied. “It is lovely to meet you, Kera. Nero has told me a whole lot about you.”

“Kera, Karina is my mate,” Nero elaborated.

“Oh.” Instantly, Kera drooped and Nero’s heart sunk. Confusion flickered across Karina’s face and he hated the way his mate tried to hide it behind a much faker smile. “You have a new family,” Kera murmured. “You do not need us anymore. That is why you have been gone.”

“No,” Nero refused.

Before he could elaborate further, Karina recovered. “You are irreplaceable, Kera,” she assured her. “I am not trying to replace you or your parents in Nero’s life. I just want to be a part of his family too…if you will allow me. It would make us sisters too.”

“It would?” Kera’s inquisitive blue eyes returned to Nero’s and he nodded. Kera turned back to Karina and after a moment, offered her a shy smile. “Okay,” she agreed. “I…I would like that.”

Karina’s eyes glowed at the response and Nero mentally sighed with relief. “Nero, we should probably head back,” Karina suggested. “Kera is probably hungry.”

“Yes please,” Kera added eagerly.

Nero chuckled to hide how his gut was clenched. A trip like she just took definitely would have taken Kera more than a turn or two of travel and she was too young to hunt still. He had no idea when the last she ate was. “Good idea,” he agreed. As soon as he turned to head back in the direction they had come, Kera wiggled from his grasp and flipped over him to grab ahold of his dorsal. She curled her fingers around it and her tail wrapped around his waist as she settled in with a hum.

Nero burst out laughing and Karina, who had heard several stories about Kera, was quick to join in. But Nero did not mind, so he simply held his hand out to Karina, who took it happily and they swam side by side back towards her pod with Kera contentedly in tow. There was a lot to work out, but for now, he just wanted to get his sister back to the safety of a pod, get her fed and checked over, and then figure out how to handle the situation from there.

He stole a glance at Karina and smiled softly. He was always grateful to have her, but now even more so. It was easier to face challenges with someone by his side. And there was no one else in the entire world that he would rather have with him.