She woke choking.
No air. No instinct. No sense.
Just cold—liquid cold—rushing into her mouth, sliding down her throat, expanding inside her lungs like she had inhaled the ocean whole.
Her body jolted upright on reflex, palms slapping against slick stone. The world reeled. Darkness vaulted overhead like a cathedral drowned. The water clung to her like a second skin, pulling at her ribs, her hips, her thighs with a slow, deliberate rhythm. Every inhale, every exhale—if she could call them that—felt wrong. Too heavy. Too smooth. Too fluid.
She coughed and got nothing.
No relief. No air.
Only more water.
A strangled, animal sound tore from her throat. She grabbed at her neck with shaking hands, fingers digging for gills, slits—anything that would explain how she was still alive inside this suffocating cold.
Nothing. Smooth skin.
Familiar. Human.
And utterly useless.
Her heart hammered so fast it felt lodged in her teeth. Her breath—if this could even be called breathing—came in jagged, impossible pulls that made her chest ache. The pearls at her collarbone had grown cold enough to bite. They felt like a chain, a verdict she didn't remember putting on, and the memory of Caleb's hands—soft, practiced, gentle—shoved its way into her mind.
The velvet box.
The champagne.
His smile.
The shove.
"No—no—no—" The words dissolved instantly, swallowed whole by the water hugging her lips.
She pressed her forehead to the black stone beneath her, trying to steady her heaving body. The slab she lay on was half-submerged: a smooth, volcanic shelf slicked with a thin coat of algae and salt. Half of her body lay on its cold surface. The other half floated, suspended in the slow heartbeat of the tide.
The waterline clung to her ribs and wrists, curling against her skin like it wanted to decide whether she belonged to it or not.
And God help her—her lungs kept working.
Breathing water.
Pulling it in.
Pushing it out.
Calm. Steady. Impossible.
She wasn't drowning.
But she wasn't alive in any way that made sense.
Her fingers curled into the slab until her nails stung. She forced herself upright—slowly, carefully—bracing her arms to keep the world from spinning.
The cavern came into focus in pieces.
A domed ceiling, patterned with jagged stalactites.
Faint blue-green threads of light veining the rock—bioluminescent algae forming lines like frozen lightning.
Particles drifting suspended in the water, flickering when she moved.
The far wall was cut open by two black mouths where tunnels met the chamber—one wide and horizontal, breathing the tide in slow pulses; one narrow and vertical, a dark chimney leading up toward distant air.
The cave seemed to inhale and exhale with her, every ripple echoing back in a low, measured rhythm. It smelled like salt and iron and something older—something untouched by light or surface.
Her stomach flipped with nausea and terror. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make sense of anything.
But the memory came back with surgical precision.
The yacht.
Caleb leaning in.
His hand on her cheek.
The brief, soft whisper of her name.
And then—
the push.
Hard.
Deliberate.
Final.
Her pulse lurched. She pressed both hands to the stone, grounding herself before her thoughts dragged her under again.
This had to be shock. Trauma. Fever.
Dead people didn't breathe water.
Drowning victims didn't wake up in sea caves.
Her vision blurred, sharp again, blurred. She blinked hard, smearing salt water from her lashes.
Don't think.
Not yet.
Move.
She tried to stand.
Her legs slid out from under her immediately—the tide pulling gently at her calves, undermining her balance. The water around the slab surged softly, then retreated—tap, draw back, tap—echoing off the cave walls with unnerving deliberation.
She grabbed a protrusion in the rock to steady herself. It broke off in her hand—brittle coral, long dead.
Her breathing sped again. Her lungs flooded—not with panic, but with more water. It was too smooth. Too easy. Too terrifying.
She forced herself to focus on what she could see. On geography. On information. On anything that resembled logic.
The wide tunnel at the far end pulsed with the swell. Each incoming push brought a low, throaty sound through the water—like the entire cave was humming.
The narrow chimney above her held a trembling sliver of air that might as well have been on the moon. Too far. Too vertical. Too slick to climb.
The barnacle rings along the stone showed where the tide rose and fell. She was somewhere in the middle.
Trapped.
Half submerged.
Breathing an element that should have killed her.
Her skin prickled with a new sensation.
A weight.
A presence.
She froze.
At first she thought it was the tide changing—a faint disturbance in the water brushing the edge of her ankles. But no. This was steadier. Heavier. Directed.
She lifted her head.
Her pulse stuttered.
The water beyond her feet was darker than the rest of the pool. Not just deep—occupied. Something was there, just beyond the drop-off where the stone disappeared into blackness.
A faint glimmer caught the bioluminescence.
A shift of shadow.
A subtle glide.
Too controlled to be a fish.
Too large to be anything she had ever seen.
Her breath locked in her throat. Her heart seemed to rise up behind it.
Don't move.
The thought wasn't instruction—it was instinct. Something in her bones told her that sudden movement would be a mistake, a bright, loud invitation in a place where she needed to be silent.
The water stilled.
The algae dimmed.
The cavern seemed to brace itself.
Then she saw it.
Not a face.
Not a body.
A shape.
A silhouette in the water.
Human in outline.
But wrong in the ways that mattered.
Too tall.
Too still.
Too close to the stone without touching it.
And beneath the surface, a long, slow-moving shadow swayed behind it—like a tail or a massive fin, gliding in dark arcs.
Her blood turned to ice.
Something—was watching her.
She didn't breathe. Didn't blink. Couldn't.
The figure didn't move. Didn't flinch.
It simply existed in the water like it had always been there, as much a part of the cave as stone and tide.
The faint glow from the algae caught on what might have been eyes—two pale reflections, round and unblinking, fixed entirely on her.
Isla's fingers dug into the stone until her knuckles burned.
Her mouth opened, water drifting out in a silent tremor.
The silhouette shifted—just a fraction—but it was enough. A ripple traveled all the way to the slab, brushing her calves like a warning or a greeting.
Her heart slammed once.
Twice.
She didn't know if it was human.
She didn't know if it was animal.
She didn't know what world it belonged to.
But she knew the truth with bone-deep certainty:
She wasn't alone in this cave.
And whatever shared the water with her…
was not prey.