Archive of Our Own

Jason felt it before he saw it. A siren always knew when someone or something had encroached on their territory. He let out a few soft hums of a song, one of warning, of telling them to leave, to avoid danger. Of course there was no danger, sirens were a calm folk, they had no real power to kill or destroy. Their powers were their voices, once used to lure pirates to their deaths but mostly to scare others from their territories, to keep them from getting close or causing harm to the siren. It was their strongest line of defense.

Their only real sign of defense.

Which was why worry started to flood the young siren’s veins as he continued to feel the presence at the edge of his territory. He let out a snarl, unlike most sirens, he was not about to sit there in his nest like a sitting clam. He would fight, even if it killed him.

It wasn’t as if he had much to live for these days. Not without his pod, his family.

Jason shook his head, casting the thought aside as he grabbed the large branch he kept beside his nest and started to swim towards the intruder, ready to fight off whatever or whoever it was.

He swam closer and closer until a barely there lump was spotted in the sand, red blood swirled through the water. Jason swam closer before his heart stopped in his chest.

It wasn’t just a lump in the sand. It was much worse. Far worse than a lump or an intruder. The siren gripped his branch tighter, the bark digging into his hands.

The merman lay unconscious in the sand. His tail a pale green, skin sickly pale, nearly translucent as Jason’s eyes traced the visible veins that covered his arms and chest. He looked further down at the pale tail, so different from his own.

Jason had his long winding red tail, whispy fins trailing from his tail and arms, matching the red algae of the ocean. His skin was sun kissed and tan, dark hair moving around his head like a crown.

The merman before him was the opposite. His skin deathly pale, his hair white as snow, tail the only pop of color but even that a pale green. All traits used to make him near invisible in the ocean, to make it easier to blend in, so that one could only notice him until it was too late and his too sharp fangs were wrapped around their neck. It made Jason’s stomach turn just thinking about. Sirens were vegetarian, preferring to be friends and coexist with the others in the ocean.

Merpeople, on the other hand, they ate whatever they could get their claws on. Tore into it with their claws, relished in the bloodshed as they devoured their prey.

His eyes stopped trailing down the merman’s body, though, as they landed on the large harpoon that pinned the merman to the ground still seeping blood into the water around them.

“Shit,” he cursed, swimming closer. He cast the merman a wary look as he poked the being with his branch only for no response. He did it again, just a bit harder and cursed as the merman didn’t so much as move.

If it weren’t for the slight pulsing of his gills at his neck, Jason would have been sure he was dead. Instead, though, he let out another muttered curse before he leaned down and pulled the merman into his arms and held him carefully to his chest, praying to the goddess that the merman wouldn’t wake up and rip his throat out. The merman was horrifically light, weighing near nothing. His body was slight and frail, long thin arms, long spindly fingers that ended in claws. Scars littered the merman’s body from the tips of his fingers to his throat and down his chest. Even his scales looked rough with missing patches here and there, scars that dug deep into his tail.

Jason chewed on his lip as he swam back to his nest as quickly and as carefully as he could. He laid the merman down on the bed of red algae he typically curled up in late at night and pursed his lips as he looked at the harpoon.

“Fuck,” he cursed as he stared at the metal human object. He was going to have to pull it the rest of the way through before he would be able to clean the wounds and try to fix the merman up.

He finally took a look at the merman’s face and his heart stopped for just a moment. He was beautiful, white lashes rested upon pale skin, freckles dotted his face and arms. His white hair had wisps of black missed in, his nose a delicate point, and his lips, a soft pink, white fangs just barely visible underneath his upper lip. He was—well he was beautiful. The most stunning creature Jason had ever seen.

“I’m so sorry for this, please don’t try to eat me,” he said before he reached down and with both hands ripped the harpoon all the way through his tail. Bright blood filled the water just as a snarl let loose from the merman and he shot up, teeth gnashing in Jason’s direction.

The siren flew back, his back hitting the hard rock of the cave as he stared at the merman with wide eyes, his heart pounding in his chest.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” he said nervously as the merman tried and failed to get up, pure agony glancing his face for just a moment. “You were shot by a poacher. I pulled out the harpoon and if you let me, I’ll tend to your tail. But I can’t do that if you try to rip out my throat.”

The merman’s eyes were captivating. A milky blue color, showing that the merman was blind or nearly blind. His nose wrinkled, though as he took a sniff in Jason’s direction. Whatever he smelled, it must have been enough for the merman to decide that Jason truly wasn’t a threat as he laid back down on the algae and crossed his arms over his chest, his lips pushed out in a pout.

“Are you going to let me touch you?” Jason asked hesitantly as he started to swim closer to the being. He let out a low guttural snarl but nothing more as Jason rested his hand on the tail and took a look.

Jason didn’t know much about the health and wellness of a merperson, but he remembered once, vaguely, when his brother, Tim, had gotten his tail cut on a piece of sharp coral, their grandfather, Alfred had wrapped it in sea lettuce, stating that the scales would heal themselves and they would just need to change the bandages regularly. The bandages primarily there to protect the wound. That was for a siren of course, but maybe the same could be done for a merperson.

He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment before he swam out to his garden and looked around. He vaguely remembered Alfred telling him that the plants with the yellow flowers would prevent infection or rot and help with pain. He grabbed a few of them before puling the seaweed out as well.

He swam back to the merman to find him exactly where Jason had left him, eyes still closed and breaths shallow.

“I’m going to wrap your tail,” Jason said carefully. The merman still flinched, though as Jason rested his hands on his pale green tail. He threw the leaves of the pain reliever plant in his mouth and chewed it up as best as he could before pressing on either side of the wound and wrapped the tail as carefully as he could.

“I’m Jason, by the way,” the siren said as he took a seat beside the merman and looked him over. “You can stay in my nest as long as you’d like. Just, please don’t try to eat me. I don’t think I taste very good.”

The merman popped open an eye to stare at Jason, a small amused smile on his pink lips. He closed his eye once again and Jason suppressed a smile as he got comfortable in his nest himself, ready for sleep.

Jason woke to a grunt on the other side of the cave and shot up from his makeshift nest to find the merman trying to sit up.

“Are you alright?” he asked, rushing towards the merman only for him to snarl at Jason, a low guttural thing that had the siren backing up quickly.

“Do you know what I’m saying? I don’t—I don’t know if merpeople and sirens speak the same language,” he said, his hands up. The merman gave him a look of pure annoyance and Jason sucked on his teeth. Well, at least he knew that the other could understand him. Now if only he could get the guy to use his words.

A grumble filled the water between them and Jason looked at the mer’s stomach and winced.

“You’re hungry,” he stated and the mer growled at him. “I don’t…eat meat. Can you eat plants?”

Cloudy blue eyes looked at him, narrowed and unamused. Jason sucked on his teeth, flat and dull compared to the merman’s.

“Thought so,” he muttered. The idea of hunting made him sick to his stomach but he couldn’t let the merman die of starvation. “Do you like mussels?”

The merman licked his lips, answering Jason’s question for him. Jason let out a sigh and sent out a silent apology to the mussels that grew on a rock nearby as he grabbed the rucksack he had found months before and made the journey towards the large rocks. He filled his bag with as many as it could hold, not knowing how many the merman would need and Jason truly didn’t want to make multiple hunting trips. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stomach it.

He made his way back to the nest and handed the bag to the merman.

“Here,” Jason muttered, thrusting the bag into the being’s clawed hands and watched as the merman pressed a sharp claw between the shell and popped it open with ease before he sucked the meat out of it. The merman smacked his lips and looked Jason over for a moment.

“Danny,” he finally said and Jason blinked in surprise.

“What?” He finally asked.

“My name. It’s Danny,” he said slowly as if Jason were an idiot. He cracked open another mussel and Jason looked away, his stomach turning in disgust.

“I thought pretty little things like you stayed in pods,” Danny finally said after a few quiet minutes of eating.

“What?” Jason asked, looking up from where he had been playing with his algae.

“Sirens, you’re pod creatures. Where’s your pod?”

“Lost mine,” Jason said with a grumble, trying his best to not let Danny see that he had surprised him. Not that he could see very well in the first place. Merpeople were known for bad eyesight, relying on their other senses more than vision.

“Dead?” Danny asked, his eyes now shut as his claws slid across another mussel, opening it with ease. Jason tore his eyes away from the merman and instead stared out of his nest and into the abyss outside.

“Separated,” he finally said. It had been a few hours, he likely needed to check on Danny’s wrappings. It would likely be a better idea to do so when he wasn’t eating, though, not wanting to lose a hand to those razor sharp claws. “I was caught my a fisherman six cycles ago and by the time I escape, I lost my pod. I’m unsure where they are.”

“Why don’t you look for them?” Danny asked, cocking his head to the side. Jason looked over to find milky eyes looking at him curiously.

Jason arched an eyebrow. “Why does it matter so much to you? Besides, teh ocean is huge and vast and I don’t know where they could be.”

Danny frowned, his brow furrowed as he set down his mussel shells. “I was under the believe that you beings stayed in one place, made…nests,” he said and motioned to the nest surrounding them. Jason couldn’t help but smile, he had a lovely nest. His family would be proud of they were there to see it.

He looked back at the merman. “We travel with the seasons, following the warm weather. We don’t do well in the cold. Wherever we go we make nests for that season and then as the season starts to change, we migrate. They are likely in the south.”

Danny cracked open another mussel. “And yet, it is mid winter and you are still here. Are you not afraid to be attacked by those who thrive in the cold?”

Razor sharp teeth flashed at Jason for just a moment before he ripped into his mussel.

“You’re going to make yourself sick if you don’t slow down,” Jason told him.

“I have not eaten since the last full moon,” Danny said, setting the empty mussel to the side.

“My pod is amazing,” Jason said wistfully as he took Danny’s wrappings off of his tail. It was the fourth night since Danny had shown up injured and near dead. So far things hadn’t been too bad. He wasn’t the perfect guest, he snarled and snapped at Jason, ate an insane amount of mussels and enjoyed complaining. But he also told Jason of his travels, of the levels of the ocean he had been to that Jason could only imagine experiencing. The deeper one went, the colder it got and Jason, like all sirens couldn’t handle the cold very well. The fact that he was staying for the winter was a problem as it was. The cold made him sluggish and sleepy, made it difficult for him to defend himself.

Of course, this just furthered his belief that it was likely a bad idea to have a dangerous merman in his nest.

“We all came from tragedy and formed a pod of our own so we’re a little hodgpodge. Our leader, Bruce, took each of us in after we were left alone. My parents were shit and I ran away before they got me killed. My brother, Dick, his parents were killed by fisherman, Cassandra and Tim were abandoned by their pods and left to survive on their own. Damian is a half siren half merperson, his mother raised him until he was old enough to survive on his own but instead of leaving him like merpeople do, she brought him to Bruce. Duke’s parents were taken. The rest of our pod is the same way, finding themselves to us one way or another, we protect each other and love each other. I’ll find them one day,” he said quietly as he pulled the last of the wrappings off of Danny’s tail.

He looked over the damage and let out a hum. There was thankfully no infection setting in from what he could see and the wound seemed to be getting better. It was no longer bleeding, in fact everything had finally scabbed over.

“I think if we keep this wrapped for a few more days you should be mostly healed. Can you move your tail? How is it feeling?” He asked.

He was no Alfred but he could at least try to help him. It was the right thing to do wasn’t it? Bruce likely wouldn’t necessarily approve given who it was, but the others would. Wouldn’t they?

“What happened to Bruce?” Danny asked instead, claws moving down to press around the wound.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked with a frown, watching Danny’s sharp claws press around the wound, his tail flinching every so often.

“You said everyone joined your pod out of tragedy, what happened to your father figure?”

Jason hesitated for a moment as he turned to grab his supplies to wrap Danny’s tail up once again.

“They were killed by a merman,” he said quietly. “Not sure what happened but it traumatized him.”

“He would be pretty livid if he learned you had an evil merman in your nest, wouldn’t he?” Danny asked dryly. Jason snorted and shook his head.

“Who cares. You were hurt and I couldn’t just leave you,” he said quietly. “Besides, Damian’s mother is a mermaid. I think he’s just wary of the threat your kind can cause.”

Danny let out a hum. “The wound doesn’t feel like my entire tail is burning off. Whatever you’re doing is helping. I can flex it but if you asked me to try to swim, I would be belly up in a heart beat,” he said, flexing his tail to show the movement.

Jason gave him a small smile. “Few more days and then you’ll be good.”

“Few more days and I can get out of this nest, how in the seven seas do you manage to keep it this hot?” He groaned, laying across his bed of seaweed dramatically.

Jason let out a soft hum. “Nest is over a hotspot,” he said with a small smile. “Keeps me warm in here but let me tell you; the moment I leave my nest I’m freezing my fins off.”

Jason laid out his dinner in front of him. A fresh array of delicious plants that he had never tried before living in the cold and licked his lips. Across from him, Danny was playing with his own food, holding the mussel in his clawed hands.

“I don’t know my family, I don’t remember them or if I had one,” Danny spoke up. Jason flicked his eyes over to find the merman giving him a contemplative look. “Merpeople, we’re born out of tragedy you know. Damian, your brother, he’s a rare occurrence. I know that I was human once but I don’t remember. I remember waking up in the deep, starving, confused, in pain. I started to roam the ocean, that’s all I have done ever since. Just roam the ocean looking for something, a small piece of where I belonged.”

“What do you mean Damian’s a rare occurrence?” Jason asked, frowning.

“I don’t know very many merpeople, but I do know that we’re solitary for the most part. We don’t run in pods, we don’t typically mate and if we do it’s bloody and violent.” There was a sadness in Danny’s voice, as if he wished it wasn’t the truth. That the very idea of being a solitary creature broke something in him.

But wasn’t that by nature? Why would he not want to be what was in his nature?

Then again, Jason had spent the last six cycles alone and the loneliness hurt. It was ache so deep that he would never fully be able to carve out of him. It was why the cold felt so soothing, felt so comforting because it matched the inside. The frozen, aching part inside of him that had felt frozen ever since he lost his pod.

It was a bone deep ache inside of Jason. He knew that the majority of merpeople didn’t hatch the way sirens did, that while thre were some guppies, like Damian, the majority were adults. He hadn’t known that they were created from tragedy, though, that they formed from something happening in their human loves. It made the sorrow he felt for the merman before him seem to grow even more.

“I do not need your pity,” Danny suddenly snapped, pulling Jason from his reverie. Jason looked up to find cloudy blue eyes narrowed in Jason’s direction. “I am content.”

“Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you wish for more?” He whispered, squeezing his hands into fists to keep from reaching across the nest and clutching the merman’s arm. To keep from pulling him into a hug the same way that Dick would do with him any time he was upset or hurt.

“I do not need your pity,” Danny snapped, his cloudy blue eyes narrowed in Jason’s direction. “I am content.”

“Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you wish for more?” Jason whispered, squeezing his hands into tight fists to keep from clutching the merman’s arm, to keep from pulling him into a hug the same way Dick would do with him any time he was upset or hurt or just moving his tail in the wrong direction.

Maybe he was projecting, maybe he was pushing his feelings onto Danny. But he didn’t think so. He could see it in the way the mer held himself, the way his shoulders drooped just talking about his life before they met.

Danny’s shoulders relaxed and he gave Jason a timid smile, his eyes sad. “It’s all I know. I haven’t experienced a pod like you have. Are you lonely? Without your pod?”

Jason’s shoulders drooped and he leaned against the wall of his home. “More than I can ever express,” he rasped out.

There wasn’t a day that went by where he didn’t wonder what his family thought. If they thought he was dead. If they missed him, if they were looking for him. Did they grieve his death? Had they moved on?

He didn’t know what hurt more. Them still grieving or them moving on.

Jason watched as Danny flexed his tail and rose in the water, his fins pumping through the water and a breathless smile on his face. It took an entire moon cycle for him to heal completely but he was fully healed.

To the point that the merman could leave if he wanted, to continue on with his roaming. Something about that made Jason sick to his stomach, though, the idea that he would leave him.

He had come to enjoy the merman’s presence. The easy conversation, the snide remarks he made. The constant complaints about only being able to eat mussels for an entire cycle. It was fun, to listen to him tell Jason stories about his travels, the experiences he had. It also had him sad, at times, to listen to his bitter stories of how fearful others in the ocean were of him. How he had yet to find a single being who wasn’t scared of him. Who wanted to get to know him or at the very least get close to him.

It was clear to Jason that all the merman wanted was someone to know him, to know he existed and understand him on some level.

“You know, once the winter season ends, maybe we can go looking for your pod,” Danny said as he flexed his tail this way and that, slowly swimming around the small cave the held Jason’s nest.

“How?” Jason asked, leaning back in his nest and watching Danny move around.

“I may not be able to see as well as you can,” Danny said and Jason nodded. Danny had explained merpeople’s poor eyesight, explaining that it was due to their kind living. in the deep ocean where light didn’t quite reach.

“But I can smell far better than a siren could ever dream,” Danny continued, giving Jason a sharp tooth grin that had a shiver go down the siren’s spine. That was the other thing, since spending all this time with the merman had Jason—well he may have developed a small crush on the merman. He was beautiful, unlike anything Jason had ever seen before. And when he smiled at Jason? It made him feel like the most important being in the world.

“If you are willing to travel, I will keep you warm and I will not allow harm to come to you.”

Jason frowned. “What do you want out of all of this? You don’t like warm seas.”

Danny gave him a pretty smile. “In exchange, you will teach me what it’s like to not be lonely.”

There were plankton fluttering in Jason’s stomach.

“Deal,” he said, a smile splitting his face.

Danny smiled and swam closer to Jason, pressing his nose to Jason’s throat and taking a sharp sniff. Jason stiffened, floating in place as Danny’s nose ran along his skin and scales as he tried to focus on not letting his heart race like it wanted to.

“What-what are you doing?”

“If we are going to find your pod, we need to know what they smell like. All pods smell of each other, even with some distance between them, they will still smell of you,” Danny said as his tail carefully wrapped around Jason’s and he pressed his nose further into Jason’s throat.

Jason’s hands floated awkwardly around Danny, unsure what he needed to do with his hands.

“We leave tomorrow,” Danny told him, pulling away from Jason and slowly swimming back to his small nest surrounded by mussel shells and little bits and bobs that Jason had found and given him.

“That’s very soon,” Jason said, swimming over and resting beside the merman.

“It is, but the sooner the better,” Danny said.

“But what about your tail? Just because you’re finally able to swim again—”

“Jason, I have dealt with worse, I’ll be okay,” Danny said softly, resting his shoulder against Jason’s.

“So, you can’t see but your other senses are more enhanced, right?” Jason asked as the two swam through the ocean. Danny had decided that the first place they needed to go was the last known location that Jason’s pod was in. According to Danny, it would give him a better idea of their scents so that he knew what he was looking for in such a giant ocean.

“Yes, I can smell better than any predator in the world, and while I can’t see like you can, I can see with my fins and claws,” Danny said, waving his claws for good measure. Danny explained that his fins and claws were also highly sensitive tools that helped him navigate the world, measure tight spaces, and understand his surroundings using vibrations and water currents. It was beyond anything Jason could understand, but apparently it allowed him to see the world in a very different way from anyone Jason knew.

Not only that, but lucky for Jason, the merman could heat the water around them, which explained how he could survive in the deeper, colder waters. It came in handy, too, as Jason was a creature of summer, of warm beaches and shallow waters where he could soak in the sun. Something that was difficult in these winter seasons.

But Danny lived in the deep, in the frigid cold and each day it seemed to get warmer and warmer around them.

“Your body is better suited for the cold, right? Isn’t it too hot?”

Danny hummed and laced their fingers together, his claws pressing into the sensitive skin on the back of Jason’s hand.

“I’m a nomad, our bodies are suited for any weather. My powers control the water itself, I can freeze it, I can heat it up. I can stir up waves and tsunamis, use it to destroy nests and homes. Merpeople prefer deeper waters because there is bigger game, bigger beings for us to sink our fangs into. Also farther from humans and their contraptions to kill us.”

“You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?” Jason teased, running his fingers against the back of Danny’s hand. “Wouldn’t you enjoy being closer to the surface where you could destroy the humans?”

Danny huffed out a laugh and used his free hand to motion towards his eyes. “Blind. Remember? It isn’t safe closer to the waters when we can’t see, when there is sea grass and small fish bumping against my fins which makes it harder for me to see in my own sense.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Jason said with a hum.

“But to answer your question, I am a monster meant for hunting and torment, a reminder of the tragedy bestowed upon me from my life before.”

“You’re cute,” Jason mused before his cheeks immediately heated. He couldn’t have possibly said that out loud, could he have? Danny let out a soft growl and as much as Jason hated to admit it, he found it endearing and somehow even cuter.

There was something attractive to Danny’s dangerous facets. The fact that Danny could easily murder him sent shivers down his tail. Maybe it was fucked up, maybe there was something wrong with Jason and he was a fucked up freak. But Danny was breathtaking and everything he did or said furthered that belief.

They were building a good relationship with one another, too. Jason helped Danny hunt. With there being so much stimuli around, it made it difficult for the merman to hunt. So, as weird as it made Jason feel, he did the hunting. Found that Danny actually very much enjoyed crustaceans and would round up as many as he could. In return, Danny protected them from predators, from boats that got too close, and he kept Jason warm.

Each night they seemed to cuddle closer together, arms wrapped around Jason’s waist, a chin buried in his shoulder, nose pressed against the curve of his ear.

Days went by as they continued their journey, each day providing Jason with a chance to better learn about Danny, about merpeople and in exchange tell Danny more about themselves. As they continued on, Jason found himself falling more and more in love with the merperson.Found himself wondering if there was a chance that they could ever work out.

He knew that merpeople were nomadic. Danny had explained to him that there was an itch under his skin the entire time he was in Jason’s nest, that his very nature called for him to journey, to never stay in the same place for too long. Unlike sirens who settled in nests for the summer and winter seasons, preferring to stay in one place unless the seasons changed.

There was no reason for it. No biological demand that he stay in one place. In fact, he grew jealous of all of the stories Danny had about his journeys and couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if they did so together, how they would be able to protect one another, provide for one another.

Love one another.

“They’re close,” Danny said suddenly. “I can smell you all around us.”

“I smell fish,” Jason said, looking around dubiously.

“You always smell fish, Jason,” Danny said with a soft laugh, his face angled in Jason’s direction. “They’re close. I imagine if you continue onward for another day you’ll find them.”

Jason stopped swimming. “You’re not going to join me?”

Danny gave him a sad smile. “You don’t want me here. I have used you enough, you taught me what it means to never be lonely and I will forever be in your debt. But that is your family,” he said.

Jason chewed on his bottom lip. If his family truly were still in their nest from the summer, that meant that they had stayed there, they never left him, likely in hopes that Jason would find his way home.

“It looks like they’re staying here for the winter. You’re going to have to keep us warm, at least until the summer months come,”

“Jason, I’m—”

“My mate,” Jason said, taking Danny’s hand in his. “You know it, I know it. I can feel it in my heart that we’re supposed to be together. Besides, I told you I would show you what it’s like to not be lonely. How am I supposed to do that if you leave me?”

“I can’t stay in one place, I—”

“I know, Danny. I know,” Jason said, giving him a small smile. “So hear me out. We stay for the winter, in the summer, we go wherever your heart wants us to go. See things, explore anywhere. In the winter, we come back here, we nest and you keep us warm and we can explore this area each day.”

“But your pod,” Danny started.

“My pod loves me and they’ll always be here. The fact that they stayed proves that to me. They’ll love you too if you let them. Besides, you need to teach Damian more about his merman side, I don’t think he knows how to use his powers as well as you do and I know he would be thankful for a teacher.”

Danny stared at him. Those milky blue eyes seemed to stare into his very soul as he took Jason in.

“Okay,” he finally said quietly. “We can try.”

“That’s all I could have ever asked for,” Jason whispered as he leaned forward and before he could stop himself, or change his mind, pressed his lips to Danny’s. Clawed hands wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer. Jason rested his arms atop Danny’s shoulders, winding his fingers into hair, pressing dull nails to his scalp as he released a soft moan, shuddering ever so slightly at the feel of nails digging into his sides. He could do this forever, he could drown himself in Danny', allow the merman to eat him up entirely if it meant he could continue with this. If it meant he could continue being kissed as if he were the only thing in the world.

“I love you,” he whispered as soon as they separated.

“I love you,” Danny said quietly. “Now, what do you say we go and meet your family?”

“I say there’s nothing I want more than to present my mate to my pod,” Jason said, resting his forehead against Danny’s. “But we can do that tomorrow. Tonight, there is something I want to do instead.”

Danny let out a soft chuckle before sharp fangs bit into Jason’s bottom lip, tugging it closer. “I don’t think I mind one bit.”

Jason grinned, a feral, wild thing. This was it. This was everything he had ever wanted. Everything he ever needed. His family was so close, he would see them so soon, his mate was in his arms, he was going to have a chance to explore the world like he had always wanted.

Everything he had ever wanted or needed were right there in his grasp and all he needed to do was take it.