"I'm trying to protect you." His voice is rough, raw. "I'm trying to keep you safe from things you can't imagine. But you keep pushing, keep looking, and I don't...” He raises his hand, and I think he might touch me, push me away, but instead his fingers hesitate just inches from my face. "I can't think straight when you're near me."
My breath catches. The pull I've been feeling toward him since I first saw him at Moira Flynn's suddenly makes terrible, wonderful sense. This isn't just attraction. This is primal and undeniable.
"Declan...”
He touches my face, finally, his palm cupping my cheek with a gentleness that contradicts the violence in his eyes. His thumb traces my cheekbone, and I feel the tremor in his hand, feel how much it's costing him to maintain control.
"You have no idea how dangerous I am." His voice is barely human now, rough and raw. Every nerve ending in my body lights up. "No idea what I want to do to you. With you."
"Then tell me." My own voice is shaking, my body leaning into his touch without conscious decision. "Tell me what's happening. Tell me the truth."
For a moment, I think he will. His eyes search mine, desperate and wild, and the storm rages overhead, and the stones hum with ancient power. The moment stretches, taut as a wire, everything balanced on the edge of revelation.
Then he jerks his hand away like I've burned him.
"No." The word is violent, torn from his throat. "No, I can't. I won't."
He turns and walks away, his whole body rigid with control, shoulders locked with tension. He doesn't look back. Just strides down the cliff path with furious purpose while the storm he's summoned breaks overhead.
I stand in the stone circle, rain beginning to fall, and shake. My entire body trembles with adrenaline and confusion and a need I don't understand. What the hell just happened? What is Declan? And why does every instinct I have scream at me to follow him, to make him turn around, to make him finish what he started?
The walk back to Clifftop House is a blur. I barely register the rain, the wind, the concerned looks from people hurrying for shelter. My mind keeps replaying that moment—his hand on my face, the storm responding to his emotions, the inhuman quality in his voice.
Guardians. Old bloodlines.
My aunt wasn't writing fiction.
I strip off my wet clothes and try to settle, but sleep is impossible. My skin feels too tight, my blood too hot. I keep feeling his touch on my face, keep hearing his voice. ‘You have no idea what I want to do to you.’
At midnight, I give up and move to the window seat, wrapping a blanket around myself and staring out at the moonlit bay. The storm has passed, leaving everything washed clean and silver. The ocean is calm, the docks quiet except for?—
A man.
I lean forward, my breath fogging the glass. Someone is walking along the pier, his silhouette dark against the moonlight. I've seen him before, down at the docks. Dark hair, lean build, moving with fluid grace.
He stops at the end of the pier and looks up at the moon. Mist swirls up from nowhere, silvery and ethereal in the moonlight. It wraps around him, obscures him completely for the space of a heartbeat. When it clears, a massive black panther crouches where the man stood—easily the size of a tiger, its coat absorbing the moonlight until it looks carved from midnight itself.
I press my hand against the glass. My heart hammers—part terror, part awe I don't want to name. The panther stretches, muscles rolling beneath its pelt, then turns its head and looks directly at my window.
For one heartbeat, our eyes meet across the distance. Golden eyes that hold intelligence no animal should possess.
Then it flows into the shadows beneath the pier and simply disappears, as if it had been made of darkness itself.
I sit there, shaking, as the truth settles over me with the weight of stone.
He changed. A man became an animal. Impossible, but I just watched it happen.
I think about all the stories I dismissed while investigating wildlife trafficking. Whispers in remote villages about people who wore animal skins. Indigenous legends about skin-walkers and shape-changers. Folklore I'd categorized as superstition, cultural mythology that had no place in a serious investigation.
But what if those stories weren't myths? What if they were warnings? Documentation, like my aunt's journals?
My aunt's journals weren't folklore. They were documentation. Evidence. Proof of something that shouldn't exist but does.
I think about every strange moment since I arrived. The way people watch me in the market. The hushed conversations that stop when I walk past. The librarian's too-quick removal of those letters. Martha Riley spending three hours telling me stories about the town's history while carefully editing out anything that matters.
They all know. The whole town knows what lives among them. And they protect the secret with the kind of loyalty that comes from generations of coexistence.
How many are there? How many of Stormhaven's residents can become animals beneath the full moon? The fishermen down at the docks—are they selkies in the water? The woman who runs the pub—does she fly on feathered wings? My mind races through everyone I've met, everyone I've spoken to, seeing them all with new eyes.
