Page 58 of Make Out With A Merman

I turn toward him fully. “You’re saying itknewthose boys would come to the water?”

“I think it called to them.”

The bottom of my stomach drops.

He continues, voice tight. “It’s not just reacting anymore. It’s choosing. Learning.”

I shake my head. “That’s not how wild magic works.”

“It is when it’s old enough. Deep enough.”

“But… how? Why now?”

Ryder looks at me, and for once, he doesn’t hold back.

“Because I’m here.”

“What?”

He swallows. “Because I came back. And the part of me that’s connected to it,it knows.It’s not just reaching for prey now. It’s reaching forme.”

The silence between us pulses like a heartbeat.

“And maybe,” he adds quietly, “because it knows I’m not afraid of it anymore.”

I reach out, grab his hand.

He lets me.

“You’re not alone in this,” I say. “Not anymore.”

He looks at our joined hands like it’s the only thing tethering him to the shore.

“Let’s hope that’s enough,” he says.

And neither of us dares say the rest out loud.

What if it isn’t?

Later that night, when the camp finally goes quiet and even the lake seems to rest, I sneak out of my cabin.

I’m not heading to the dock this time.

Instead, I duck into the storage shed behind the old staff building, the one Julie keeps locked with a charm and a lie about “rusty nails and aggressive raccoons.”

I picked a similar charm while trying to escape detention in high school. It works.

Inside, the smell of dust and salt hits me hard.

I flick on the hanging bulb and move straight to the back shelf, fingers tracing old spines of leather-bound manuals and arcane first-aid guides.

I find what I’m looking for wedged between a rusted anchor and a jar of glowbeetle resin.

Tethered Tides:Wardcraft for Elemental Water Dwellings.

It’s ancient. Heavy. Probably illegal in at least three dimensions.

I crack it open and start flipping.

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