I RETURNED THE MERMAN WHO HATED ME

"You were supposed to be assigned a little fox.

Our staff sealed a merman into the box by mistake." When the call from the Beastkin Assignment Bureau came in, the merman had just shoved me to the floor.

To keep this one family member, I gave him a name, drained my savings for a tank, and reached for him again and again. What I got back was always a cold face and a refusal.

The rep said they would send the fox over, and asked if it would be all right for me to return the merman. I wiped my tears away and took one last look at him. "Mm.

It's all right." Chapter 1 When the call from the Beastkin Assignment Bureau came in, the water in the bathroom hadn't stopped running.

Lucian had shoved me away, his thin lips still red from my kiss, and walked fast into the bathroom, breathing hard.

I'd hit the carpet, my wrist catching the edge of the coffee table, a bruise spreading across it in seconds. I pushed myself up through the pain.

I looked at the closed frosted door, my vision going blurry, and demanded quietly, "Lucian, do you… really hate me that much?" The water kept crashing down. Lucian didn't answer me.

He turned on the showerhead and rinsed every place I had touched, carefully, over and over. I sat there on the floor, dazed.

I don't know how long it was before the tears finally came, falling one by one onto the back of my hand.

On the other end of the line, getting no response from me, the rep asked again, carefully, "Ms. Clementine Dalton? Is that you?

Are you still on the line?" I wiped my eyes quickly. "Yes, I'm still here. Go ahead." The rep let out a breath of relief. "Here's the situation, Ms.

Dalton." "One of our staff made an error and sealed the merman into Box 9, the box assigned to you. We are truly very sorry." I went blank for a second. "What does that mean?

He was put in the wrong box?" The rep's voice went a little tight. "Yes, Ms. Dalton. I'm so sorry." I paused. I looked toward the bathroom without meaning to.

Lucian still hadn't come out. That long, solid shape stood behind a panel of frosted glass. An arm lifting. A head tipping back. A hand turning the valve.

Every movement carried something I couldn't put a name to. But right now I wasn't in any mood to admire it.

Much less to do what I used to do: pry the door open, slip inside, and get my hands on his abs.

I gripped the phone and walked fast out to the deck. "Then — then who was supposed to be assigned to me?" The rep answered honestly. "A fox." "This morning we found the fox in the basement, trussed up and beaten black and blue.

That's how we learned the boxes had been switched." I went blank again. "The basement? Why was he thrown in the basement?" The rep said, "Ms.

Dalton, the merman was originally going to be assigned to Ms.

Gwendolyn Dalton of the Dalton Group, and both parties were very pleased with each other." "We mentioned you in our internal communications.

He must have misunderstood and thought the Ms.

Dalton we were talking about was Gwendolyn." Chapter 2 "So he beat that fox half to death and climbed into Box 9 himself." The line went quiet for a moment.

Then the rep added, more softly, "You must know who Ms. Gwendolyn Dalton is." "She's extremely beautiful.

Her hearing isn't good, but that takes nothing away from how beautiful she is." "We have a lot of beastkin here who would pay money for the chance to be assigned to Ms.

Gwendolyn Dalton. She's very popular with us." I said nothing for a long moment.

I turned my head toward the window. "So that's how it is…" At some point it had started to rain outside. As hard as the day I went to bring Lucian home.

But I felt nothing like I had that day. Before Lucian took human form, he was a beautiful little fish, every color of the rainbow, with amber eyes that had room for no one but me.

One of my lower legs is malformed. I walk slowly. Whenever I stopped to rest, I would see Lucian pressed up against the glass of the tank, watching me without blinking.

Something in me went soft.

I tapped the glass lightly with one finger and mouthed the words at him without a sound. "I'm going to be so, so good to you." He could already understand human speech by then.

As the last of those words left my mouth, his rainbow scales flushed red, inch by inch. Then, with a plop, he sank to the bottom and didn't come up once.

I held on to the tank and laughed, and somewhere in the laughing the tears came, because from that day on I wasn't alone anymore.

The morning Lucian took human form was the most ordinary morning imaginable. I was carrying a glass of water past his door when it opened from the inside.

I looked up on instinct, and everything in me stopped. I don't know what love at first sight is supposed to be.

But Lucian was standing there in front of me, wet black hair against his temples, those beautiful eyes still dazed from the change.

And when he looked at me, quiet like that, my heart skipped hard. But everything afterward went nothing like I had imagined. Lucian always went out of his way to avoid my eyes.

He could talk once he had a human body, and he never once started a conversation with me. I would smile and tell him the weather was nice.

He would look down and fidget with the hem of his shirt. I would ask, eager to please, whether he was hungry. He would turn around and study the pebbles in the fish tank.

At mealtimes I would move my chair over to sit next to him. And he would stand up at once, nowhere near full, and back away to stand as far from me as the room allowed.

Like he was getting clear of a flood or a wild animal, leaving me standing there, tugging at my own sleeve, at a loss. It didn't discourage me.

I even told myself, naively, that Lucian was just having trouble adjusting to human life.

To close the distance, and to get him used to living like a human faster, I clung to him harder than ever, orbiting him twentythree hours a day. He dodged, I chased.

He backed off, I moved in. I lost every round and kept coming back, kept coming back and kept losing.

I believed the whole time that one day I would be like everyone else, close as anything with my own beastkin partner. Until today.

Until this call from the Beastkin Assignment Bureau, which forced me to look again at everything between Lucian and me. Gwendolyn and I went to high school together.

I saw her beauty with my own eyes, the way she shone. Three years running, the whole school voted her the prettiest girl. Everywhere she went, every eye followed her.

If Gwendolyn was the one Lucian had really been assigned to, then everything made sense.

Chapter 3 It wasn't that Lucian didn't like to talk, or that he hated being assigned, or that he couldn't adjust to human life.

He had simply seen someone better, and someone better had been in his heart all along. And ordinary, unremarkable me had taken the wrong box by accident.

I had stood in front of him in Gwendolyn's place, and I had been so impatient that I bonded with him the moment the box opened, so that he couldn't leave even if he wanted to.

All that hope, gone just like that. Lucian must hate me so much.

That was why he sank to the bottom of the tank the first time he saw me, why he flinched away whenever I came close, why he scrubbed himself like a madman after I touched him… And he couldn't even strangle me to get it out of his system.

Because a beastkin who injures a human can't be reassigned, and then he would never get back to Gwendolyn.

My heart felt like it was caught in someone's fist, being squeezed over and over. I pressed a hand lightly to my chest. I worked to keep my voice steady.

I said to the rep on the line, "If the boxes were switched, then what happens next?" The rep said, "Ms.

Gwendolyn Dalton left the country two months ago and is still traveling abroad.

Could you put the merman back into the original box for now?" "When she's back next week we'll come pick him up, and we'll bring the fox to you at the same time." I made a sound of agreement.

Then something important came back to me. "That might not work. He's already taken human form.

The old box won't hold him." The rep clearly hadn't expected that. "He's taken human form?" "Yes." The rep said, "How is that possible?

Merfolk beastkin need at least a year to take human form. It's only been four months…" "He must have paid a terrible price, or traded away something precious.

Either way, nobody does it easily." "Actually — when did he change?" I thought back. "A little after eight in the morning on the third of last month." That was my birthday.

So it had stayed with me. After Lucian changed, he slipped out while I wasn't paying attention.

When he came back, two scales were missing from the side of his neck, and there was a necklace lying in his palm. It was the kind of necklace a store throws in free with a purchase.

Whoever sold it to him had clearly seen how easy he was to fool.

They charged him for something they give away, and it hurt me so much that I cried and cried. "That explains it…" The rep sighed, helpless, and the sigh pulled me out of the memory. "That day was Ms.

Gwendolyn Dalton's birthday. This merman must care for her so deeply…" I went still. That day… was Gwendolyn's birthday too? I dug out my phone.

I found my old Instagram account from back then. I tapped into Gwendolyn's page. Her most recent post was from three days ago, tagged in Bali.

In the photo Gwendolyn was smiling sweetly, a delicate shell necklace hanging above her collarbone. I stared at that necklace for a long time. And then it came to me.

Maybe nobody had fooled Lucian at all. Maybe he had bought Gwendolyn a real necklace. And passed the free one along to me. The water in the bathroom shut off. I came back to myself.

I rubbed hard at my stinging eyes. "I'll figure out the box. Text me once the date is set." The rep thanked me over and over. "Of course, of course. Thank you so much, Ms.

Dalton." The call ended. Lucian came out just then, slow about it. He'd forgotten to put on a shirt.

Water ran off the ends of his hair and drew bright wet lines down his solid chest.

Chapter 4 That gorgeous face was flushed from the steam, from his cheeks all the way to the roots of his ears, the outer corners of his eyes tinged faintly pink. I checked the time.

Lucian's showers never ran longer than ten minutes. Today he'd been in there over forty, long enough to come out steamed like a fish. And all of it only because I had kissed him.

I pulled my mouth into something like a smile, took my eyes off him calmly, and walked toward him in long strides. The tips of Lucian's ears twitched. He didn't look up.

The hand at his side curled into a fist. Braced to endure. He probably thought I was about to do what I always did and drag him off to sleep beside me. I didn't slow down.

I kept six feet between us and walked past him without turning my head. Lucian stayed where he was.

It took him a moment to turn and look at me, something startled flickering in his eyes. That night