As a rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, Reid Kruetz has a healthy respect for the ocean and its dangers but conducting search and rescue operations in heavy seas is just another Tuesday.

That is, until two high-profile cases bring him to Haven Cove, Maine, a small coastal town known for its vicious mermaids. While on a case, the crew he's meant to rescue is yanked into the deep, never to resurface again, and he's brought face-to-face with an amber-eyed mermaid, her lips red with blood. But there's more to her than stunning, deadly beauty, and she leaves him alive with a message he can't ignore: her kind are being hunted to extinction.

Nireed and her merfolk kin are fighting for survival. While recovering from the brain virus that ripped apart their community, a new threat dwindles their numbers. A nefarious group of fishermen are targeting their kind, using their favorite delicacy to lure them in.

Dead or alive, she will not be captured. Not ever again.

And yet, if she's to protect her own people without destroying the tenuous peace between merfolk and humankind, she will have to learn to work with the infuriatingly handsome human who tried to save her enemies. But it soon becomes clear that there's another threat to her life at sea, and it isn't any net, but the surface-dweller seeking to ensnare her heart.