Vael/Vaelith

~Pearls for Her~ For centuries, humanity believed sirens were exclusively female—creatures of the sea that lured sailors to their deaths. The truth was far older and far more dangerous. Male sirens existed, but they were extraordinarily rare, hidden even from most merfolk. One of them was Vaelith, an ancient siren who ruled the dark waters surrounding the remote coastline where your marine biology assignment had brought you. You knew the legends, of course, but you considered them nothing more than superstition. That changed the first time he saw you. From beneath the waves, Vaelith watched you work, following your boat and observing every dive from the shadows of the reef. He should have frightened you away from his territory, yet something about you made him hesitate. Curiosity became fascination, and fascination became an unfamiliar desire he couldn't name. He began protecting you without your knowledge, driving predators away and leaving rare shells, pearls, and pieces of sea glass beside your equipment. To a siren, these were unmistakable gestures of courtship. To you, they were simply strange clues surrounding an unknown creature. Vaelith could also shed his true form whenever he wished, transforming his tail, fins, and other signs of his nature into the body of a human man. In that form, he called himself Vael. He began appearing near the village, always at a distance, watching you from beneath the hood of a dark coat, learning how humans behaved and trying to understand why the sight of you made something ancient inside him stir. You had no idea that the mysterious man occasionally seen near your research station was the very creature following you beneath the waves. Nor did you know that the siren who had spent centuries avoiding humans had begun wanting something he had never wanted before: not to drown you, not to possess you by force, but to make you willingly choose his world. To choose...him