My heartbeat was racing so fast I was afraid that I’d combust in a moment, but I never did. Kellan calmed me down, still kissing me with a finger on the pulse at my neck. He rubbed against it, and somehow it calmed me. But then the hunger for him burst inside of me. It exploded, and I held on, weak, as if I was starving. My lips searched his.

He gripped me tightly against him, and then we were going to the surface. We broke the surface, and I gasped, pulling away. My eyes saw everything through a glaze of water still on my eyelids. It was as if we were still swimming, but I blinked a few times and brushed away the water. I saw it all clearly and then too clearly—everything until Kellan held my head in his hands. His eyes bore into mine, and he commanded, “You can control this. She was a part of you before. She’s a part of you now. Accept it. Accept her. Accept everything else, even though I know you don’t want to, but you have to.” He jerked me against him, wrapping his arms around me in a tight hug and kissed my shoulder. “Accept who you are. Please. I need you.”

My fingers clung into his shoulders, digging into them. I was trying, I really was, but everything was too much. I felt the birds as they landed on their nests. I heard the laughter from a neighbor on his phone miles away. I felt my aunt’s concern in the house behind us, sitting in a corner in the kitchen with a glass of wine to calm her nerves. Her hands clenched it tightly, and her fingers were tapping the counter, in a nervous reaction. I felt everything. Still. And I couldn’t handle it—then I gasped, arching upward in the water, surging against him.

“Shay,” Kellan choked out, the sound gurgling in the back of his throat, as he held onto my waist when I leapt upward.

It was too much. It was all too much, and then something in him shifted—he shifted inside of me. It was his demon. He reached inside, leapt with me, and yanked at everything. It was fine—it was all gone. I still felt all the information, everything that I had sensed, but it was okay. I could handle it, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what had happened, but I realized that Kellan’s forehead was pressed to my shoulder, limp. He hung on to me, as if I was holding him afloat now. He’d gone slack from exhaustion. Something occurred between us, something with his demon, because all his energy was spent.

I swam to the edge, holding him with me until we got to the bank. Then I pushed him up and rested beside him, collapsing.

A clothed foot stepped beside me, and my aunt’s silver cloak bunched to the ground when she knelt at my head. Her hand came to rest on my cheek. “You should rest, child. You have gone through much.” She straightened, and I heard her say further, “As has he.”

We were both lifted in the air. Kellan was asleep, but his hand fell out, reaching for me. I put my hand in his, and then we were both being carried through the air to the house and to my bed. Kellan was placed next to me and his arm reached out to curl around me, pulling me close. He tucked his chin on my shoulder and twisted a leg around mine before he fell into a deep sleep.

I looked up at my aunt who had followed behind to perch on the edge of the bed at my head. She smiled in the moonlight now and combed my hair back behind my ear. “You are very beautiful. Just like her.”

An image of my mother flashed through me. Pain followed quickly behind.

She added, “My name is Aumae, and I am honored to meet you, Shay. To meet both of you.”

My eyelids fluttered closed, the exhaustion was too much, but I wondered whom she meant—the messenger and me or Kellan and me? Then I fell asleep, and nothing mattered.

When I woke, it was night again, and I sat up.

“How are you?” Kellan asked, perched on a windowsill. It gave him a mysterious, feline, and lethal look at the same time. Then he blinked, and all mystery was gone, rising in a fluid motion.

My heart skipped a beat, but I answered, breathless, “I’m fine. You?”

He cracked a grin. “Shay, don’t lie to me. How are you? How is she?”

Then it all flooded me again, the sensory overload, the pool, the kiss, and then his demon… “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing.” He stood before me as I still sat in bed. Neither of us moved, but we breathed as one. The air felt heavy, too heavy.

One breath. Two breaths. I asked, holding mine, “Was that you or was that…”

His eyes held mine, shining with a fierce emotion. “What do you think?”

I already knew—his demon had gone inside of me, but why? What did he do? What did he want? “Did he hurt me?”

Kellan snorted. “He helped you. Are you serious?”

“But—” Why would a demon help me? Help a hybrid?

“I’m a hybrid,” Kellan bit out, in front of me in a flash. He braced both arms on either side of me on the bed and bent forward until his nose was an inch from mine. As his eyes bore into mine, he repeated slowly, with deadly promise, “I am a hybrid, too. I am human, and I am a demon. You’re not just a hybrid, Shay. And by the way, she’s merged with you. My demon helped you with that because you were freaking out, so much that you fought against accepting her. You should be thanking him, thanking me. Not wondering why we would want to help you.”

Jerking away from me, he turned, but I heard him mutter, “She doesn’t trust me.”

“I never trusted you.”

He looked back, and I waited for a few moments until he said in a low voice, “You did, in some small part. Part of you hated me, part of you distrusted me, but a part of you loves me. The part that loves me, and even more now, trusts me completely. And a part of you can’t handle that. Can you?”