John Doe would never understand human ways.

For sea dragons, mating was simple. If you were fortunate enough to find your one true mate, then you immediately consummated the union. Joining minds and souls was a simple matter of uniting bodies in ecstasy. Nothing more was needed.

Apparently, for humans, tiny paper boxes of pink candies were also required.

“They’re wedding favors, not incendiary devices, John,” Griff said with a small smile. The griffin shifter’s uncannily keen eyesight had obviously caught John’s hesitation. “You don’t need to handle the chocolates so gingerly. They aren’t going to explode.”

“I do not wish to make a mistake.” With infinite care, John lowered the minuscule morsel into the waiting nest of tissue paper. “I would not wish to be the cause of any flaw in your strange human mating ritual.”

Next to him, his comrade Chase let out a muffled snort. The pegasus shifter’s dextrous hands never paused in tying gold and silver ribbons around the boxes, but his shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. He and Griff shared a quick, private glance across the table.

John was well used to that particular silent communication amongst his fellow firefighters. It indicated that, once again, he had failed to grasp some fine point of human culture.

Life at the bottom of the sea had been so much simpler.

“I’m already mated to Hayley,” Griff said to John, the laughter lines around his warm golden eyes crinkling with amusement. “The wedding is just a formality. You know that, right?”

“You have devoted six months of unstinting effort to this ‘formality,’ my oath-brother.” John narrowed his own eyes, concentrating on picking up the next chocolate without accidentally squishing it. “And though I am unfamiliar with your mating rituals, I am very familiar with your peculiar human habit of saying one thing and meaning another. I choose to pay attention to your actions rather than your words. And your actions tell me that everything about tomorrow must be perfect.”

Chase cocked an eyebrow at Griff, grinning. “He’s got a point.”

Griff tilted his shaggy blond head a little in wry acknowledgement. “Well, I appreciate the concern, but given that the wedding is tomorrow, we’re going to have to speed up a bit. Don’t worry John, it’s not going to be ruined if a few of the favors are a bit rushed.”

“If you ask me, it wouldn’t be ruined if there were no wedding favors at all,” Hugh muttered from the other end of the table.

The white-haired paramedic had been assigned the duty of attaching decorative plant matter—flowers, John reminded himself of the strange human concept—to the assembled favor boxes. It was a critical task, requiring great delicacy of touch. From Hugh’s scowl, which deepened further with every box, he did not fully appreciate the honor of his role.

“Hugh also has a point,” Chase said, casting a rather mournful look over at the pile of chocolates and cardboard still waiting to be turned into elegant table decorations. “Griff, I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we, as your fellow firefighters and dearest friends, had greatly anticipated spending the evening before your wedding toasting your future happiness with your family’s finest Scotch. Not doing arts and crafts. Are these really necessary?”

“Yes,” Griff said amiably. “For one thing, this is keeping all you bastards too busy to scheme to get me drunk tonight.”

“Why would we seek to impair your physical state before such an important event?” John asked, bewildered, as Chase and Hugh spluttered in protest.

“I know you wouldn’t.” Griff bumped John’s shoulder with his own affectionately. “But trust me, it’s another inexplicable human custom for the groom’s friends to try to ensure he’s nursing a hangover down the aisle.”

Hugh glared at Chase. “I told you he’d spot your scheme, and find a way to avoid it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Chase said, with great dignity. “And in any case, it was your idea in the first place.”

“So you do not truly require these items, oath-brother? This was just a diversionary tactic?” John dropped the box he’d been unsuccessfully trying to fold, a wave of relief sweeping over him. “I must admit, that makes much more sense. I could not believe that even humans were peculiar enough to have a tradition of giving uselessly tiny portions of foodstuffs to guests as gifts, after the end of a meal.”

Griff’s mouth quirked up. “Ah, no, actually that is a real tradition. And I do genuinely need these. Hayley saw them at a wedding fair and loved them, but ended up deciding they were too expensive. So I thought I’d surprise her. Which means I really do need help.”

“Tempted as I am to leave you to deal with the consequences of your too-clever scheme, Connie would never let me live it down if I abandoned these half-finished. She’s taking her role as Matron of Honor rather seriously.” Chase let out a long-suffering sigh, picking up another box. “The things we do for our mates.”

“The things you poor sods do for your mates,” Hugh corrected, pushing his chair back from the table. “This just makes me hope even more fervently that I never meet mine. Come on, John, let’s go get a drink.”

Yes, whined John’s inner human. This is a boring, pointless task. We aren’t even any good at it. No one would mind if we went and enjoyed ourselves.

With the ease of long practice, John suppressed his inner human’s whispers. No matter the soft, two-legged creature that shared his soul, he was a sea dragon. He was above such selfish, hedonistic instincts.

He lifted his chin. “I cannot abandon my oath-brother in his hour of need. You must go if you feel so moved, but I shall stay until the bitter end.”

Hugh looked hard at him for a moment, then dropped back into his chair with a groan. “For someone who claims to be honor-bound to only tell the truth, you are suspiciously good at manipulating people. No wonder the weather does what you tell it to do.”

“I do not manipulate either water or people,” John said, truthfully. “I simply speak. It is up to the listener to decide what to do in response.”

“I should have managed to inoculate myself against your more-noble-than-thou attitude by now.” Despite his surly words, Hugh picked up another flower and started to weave it into the next box. “You’re a bloody bad influence, you know that?”

“Truly, you don’t need to stay and help with this, John,” Griff said. He jerked a thumb at Chase and Hugh. “I may need to keep these reprobates out of trouble, but that’s no reason for you to be roped in as well. You’ve already done more than enough for me and Hayley. You should go, get some rest. We can handle this.”

John’s back stiffened. Only a coward would flee the field while his brothers-in-arms still fought. To suggest that he should do so…well, if Griff had been a sea dragon, John would have been demanding a duel to satisfy the insult to his honor.

He forced his muscles to relax. Humans could not be expected to understand proper etiquette, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. Griff didn’t mean any offense.

“I owe you my life, oath-brother,” he said, as levelly as he could. “Honor compels me to stand by your side in the face of any threat.”

Griff blinked. “I’d hardly call table decorations a threat.”

“I would,” Chase murmured as he wrestled with ribbons.

John tried to simplify the concept, as though addressing a very young child barely past first molt. “You said that accomplishing this task would please your mate. I am your oath-brother, which means I am sworn to guard your treasure as if it were my own. Your mate’s happiness is your greatest treasure, is it not?”

“When you put it like that…” Griff let out a long breath, shaking his head a little. “Well, I just hope I can return the favor one day.”

It was John’s turn to blink. “I do not follow.”

“I mean, help you with your mate,” Griff said, as though that explained anything.

“My mate?”

“Sea dragons do have mates, don’t they?” Chase asked curiously.

“Of course we do,” John said. “But I am a Knight-Poet of the First Water.”

Hugh glanced up, his white eyebrows rising. “I know you’re sworn to celibacy, but I didn’t realize you’d be bound by that even if you found your mate.”

John was rather startled that Hugh knew about that knightly vow. It was one that he’d never felt the need to share with any of his colleagues. Nonetheless, it was clear that even Hugh didn’t understand the real meaning of the vow.

“The situation would never arise,” he said. “I have no mate. No sea dragon knight does. Before we take vows, we must scour the seas, singing for our mate. I did so myself, circling the globe thrice round, and each time was met with nothing but silence.”

Griff’s brow furrowed. “But you just searched underwater. What if your mate isn’t a sea shifter?”

“That does not happen with us,” John said. “Sea dragons only mate sea dragons. None of us have ever found a mate among humans, or even other shifters. We are too different.”

“So you’ve contacted literally every sea dragon in existence, and know that none of them are your mate?” Chase’s usually merry face wore an unusually somber expression. “You poor bastard.”

“Oh, it is not a matter for sorrow,” John reassured him. “Only those without mates are permitted to become knights. I could swear myself to the service of the Pearl Throne, in the knowledge that my loyalties could never be divided between love and duty. Rest assured, I am well content.”

Griff and Chase didn’t look convinced by this, but then, they were mated. John supposed that they could not help but pity those who did not share that fortunate state. Hugh, on the other hand, seemed delighted by the revelation.

“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” he said, reaching up to clap John’s shoulder. “Nice to know there’ll always be at least one other unmated person in the team.”

“Your people too have a similar tradition, shield-brother?” John asked, curious.

He still did not know what sort of shifter the paramedic actually was. He’d never wanted to ask directly, for fear of breaking some unwritten human rule of courtesy.

“You could say that.” Hugh transferred his attention back to the wedding favors. “But enough chit-chat. By my count, we’ve got at least a hundred of these things to go.”

The fire crew went back to their tasks. John couldn’t help but notice that Griff and Chase were still casting him rather pitying glances.

It was irksome. He was the Walker-Above-Wave, Emissary to the Land from the Pearl Throne, Knight-Poet of the First Water, Sworn Seeker of the Emperor-in-Absence, and Firefighter for the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service! He was not accustomed to being pitied.

John set his shoulders, shrugging off their misplaced concern. He reached for the next box, vowing to prove his worth to his colleagues. Though this was not his accustomed arena of battle, he was determined to prevail.

If only these dry-beached things weren’t so small!

When he’d been a child, John had been taught that sea dragons were the noblest and most magnificent of the draconic breeds. He hadn’t fully appreciated the truth of that until, as an adult, he’d first stepped onto land. Even among his fellow shifters on Alpha Fire Team—none of them small men by human standards—he towered.

Now, even more than usual, he felt like a whale trying to school with minnows. His sword-callused fingers dwarfed the delicate candies. He might as well have tried to manipulate individual grains of sand in his claws.

When he finally managed to get three candies correctly placed and aligned, John felt as elated as the first time he’d bested a colossal squid. Unfortunately, swept up by his triumph, he slightly misjudged the amount of force required to close the box’s lid.

Again.

Chase flicked squashed chocolate off the sleeve of his suit. “I don’t mean to insult John’s sensitive honor, but is there nothing else he could do?”

Griff sighed. “John, you really don’t have to-”

“I cannot leave my comrades-in-arms to face a foe unaided, oath-brother.” He looked down at the sad little pile of crumpled cardboard. “No matter how…singularly unsuited I may be to this particular fight.”

Chase’s expression brightened in a way that signaled that the pegasus shifter had just been struck by an absolutely terrible idea. “You just said that your first loyalty always has to be to the Pearl Throne, right?”

“Yes,” John said, cautiously. He had learned to be deeply wary when Chase adopted that particular innocent look.

“And the whole reason you came out of the sea in the first place was to search for your missing sea dragon king, right?”

Why did humans have to be so imprecise? “If you are referring to the Pearl Emperor, King of Atlantis, Ruler over all Shifters of the Sea, Commander of Waves and-“

“Yes, yes, him.” Chase cut off the list of titles with a maddeningly discourteous flip of his hand. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be searching Britain for him, aren’t you? Going off and questioning all the major rivers and lakes and stuff?”

“When I am not otherwise occupied using my skills to assist in the fight against fire and flame, yes.” Not for the first time, John was completely mystified by the currents of the pegasus shifter’s thoughts. “How is this relevant?”

Chase gestured in the direction of the window, at the dark waters of the wide lake beyond. “Well, have you searched here yet?”

Even through the intervening layer of glass, John could still hear the water calling to him, a siren song promising freedom and space. To swim, to stretch into his true form, unbounded by walls or gravity…he longed for it so fiercely that his first instinct was to deny Chase’s argument, purely on the grounds that to agree would be to indulge his own desires.

But still…

“My vow as Seeker takes precedence over my duty to my oath-brother, it is true,” he said, slowly. “And this part of Britain is new to me. I had thought to pursue my quest tomorrow, after the mating ceremony. But if I truly cannot be of service with the current task…”

“Oh, no, you should definitely go now,” Chase said. His expression was solemn, but the wicked glint in his eyes betrayed some hidden amusement. “Go on. Go for a swim. A nice long swim.”

Griff stared at Chase in dawning comprehension. “Oh no. No, no, no.”

John looked at Griff in concern. “Is there some problem with that of which I am not aware?”

“No problem,” Hugh said, a slow smirk spreading across his own face. “Absolutely no problem at all. In fact, I can’t think of a more appropriate place for you to go for a dip.”

John couldn’t help casting a wistful look out at the tranquil waters. “It does indeed seem to be a most inviting and hospitable lake. And I must admit, I have been feeling somewhat stifled, this far from the ocean.”

Griff buried his face in his hands. “You want to go for a swim. In sea dragon form. In Loch Ness.”

Chase and Hugh were both tight-lipped and shaking with repressed laughter. Griff raised his head in order to shoot the pair a dirty glare, which only appeared to increase their mirth.

Even for humans, this was most peculiar behavior.

“Am I missing something?” John asked.

“Never mind,” Griff said to him with a resigned sigh. “Go on, then. Just for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see you.”

Peals of laughter followed John out, undercut by Griff’s muttered curses. John closed the door behind him, shaking his head.

“Humans,” he said out loud, to the uncaring clouds and the unconcerned waters below. “I shall never understand them.”

Neither the clouds nor the lake answered, not that he had expected them to. Water did not listen to the graceless human tongue.

But all water was one water, and if you spoke with the language of the sea…

His blood rose with anticipation as he strode away from the hotel, passing out of the harsh glare of unnatural human lights and into the more welcoming embrace of moon and star. He followed the curve of the lake shore, the quiet song of the water becoming clearer the further he went from the noise of the human world.

Finding a quiet spot out of the view of any window or passing car, he loosened the buttons of his shirt, shrugging out of the constraining fabric. The irritating pants and even more irritating shoes quickly followed. Chase had complained ceaselessly about the cold and damp ever since they had arrived in Scotland yesterday, but to John the night breeze felt pleasantly warm and welcoming. He was always too hot on land, accustomed as he was to the sunless depths of the Atlantic ocean.

The night breeze caressed his skin, whispering echoes of distant clouds. Despite his eagerness, he made himself take the time to carefully fold his clothes. He had only a handful of human garments, since they’d all had to be personally tailored for him. Even clerks at specialist shops for humans of unusual size had blanched when he’d ducked through their doorways.

He could have shifted with his clothes on, of course—all mythic shifters could. But he’d discovered that although his human clothes could survive his shifting, they fared less well with his swimming. Wherever it was they went when he transformed, it didn’t keep them dry, and he’d shifted back on more than one occasion to discover himself clad in bedraggled, ruined garments. Human clothes were not nearly as practical as his own people’s traditional garb in that respect.

He hid the hated human clothes in the shadow of a water-smoothed boulder, and finally, finally, he was ready.

The lake whispered welcome as he waded out into it. As soon as it was deep enough, he dove, striking out away from the shore with swift, powerful strokes. Even in this feeble form, he could have kept pace with a seal, let alone any human swimmer. But it was still slow, so slow, compared to the supple speed of his true self.

The water rolled curiously over his skin, exploring his hard planes and long limbs, murmuring with surprise. Its song echoed in his veins, carried by the tides of his blood: All seas are one sea, and all water is one water. You are of the flow, and yet apart. What are you?

He sang back, as best he could with tiny human lungs and a tongue like a beached fish: All seas are one sea, and the salt lies hidden under my skin. Patience. I will show you.

Bearing in mind Griff’s warning, he swam until the lights of the hotel were pinpricks in the night, and the lake yawned deep and dark beneath his fragile human feet. Like all mythic shifters, John could prevent humans from seeing him in dragon form…but he couldn’t prevent humans from noticing the effect he had on his surroundings.

When he was certain that he was far enough out that the wave wouldn’t attract attention, he shifted.

His own true body was incalculably vast compared to his tiny shifted, human form. A shock wave of displaced water exploded outward in all directions. The entire lake leaped, calling out in a mighty cry of delight and recognition.

Opening his jaws wide, he was at last able to proudly proclaim his name, his true name, every mighty chord and rippling arpeggio of it. The sound of it shook the water, and the lake trembled in awe.

The lake embraced him like a long-lost lover. It wasn’t the saltwater of the ocean, but it was still a taste of home. He luxuriated in it, weightless, stretching out every coil and claw to fullest extent.

I am born of water, and borne by water, and to water I return! he sang, and the lake picked up the melody and joined him in joy.

He could have happily spent hours there, swimming and singing and listening to the lake’s tales of season and sky…but his duty called him.

Do you know my song? he queried the lake. Do you know my shape? Did an even greater one ever grace your depths, a secret power amongst your swift-darting fish?

He’d asked this many times over the past two years, to many different waters. He had swum the fractal coastline of Britain and queried its bays and harbors. He’d called out to lakes both smaller and greater than this one. He’d even ventured into the oily, metallic waters of the great Thames river, and shouted his question over the crash and clamor of London.

Every time he’d received the same answer: No.

And this time was no different.

No, said Loch Ness.

His heart sank within his chest…and then thudded in shock as currents curled coyly around him. Despite the lake’s denial, it did know something. There was a secret here, concealed in its depths.

And it was debating with itself whether to tell him.

Please! he cried out to it. The heart of the sea lies empty, and my heart is empty too. If you know what I seek, if you can fill that void, tell me!

The waters of Loch Ness whispered and swirled around him for a long moment, eddies breaking apart and reforming like the thoughts of a divided mind.

Then it said, simply: Come.