The lump in my throat swelling even larger, I shook my head more violently, hoping she’d understand.
That wasn’t it at all. I liked her too much. I liked her so much, I’d lost my composure entirely.
A sharp waft of burned mint scented the air between us as she shuttered her eyes, and put the knives away. “Got it. Well, no need to say it out loud then. I’m not everyone’s cup of poison. See ya around.”
I reached for her, but she stepped away before I could touch her, and was gone long before I could explain what I’d meant. I followed her down the hall, but by the time I rounded the corner, she was already gone. I searched, trying every handle, pulling at the wood panels, looking for hidden entrances to her tunnels.
Not five minutes later, Lachlan stood in front of me, panting, sweat rolling down the sides of his face, his eyes panicked, and an oddly herbal sweetness filling the hall. “We have to go, Kellin,” he whispered. “Get me out of here.”
We’d left Drakonspear that hour, and only returned to Starlak five years later. Now Rada was coming here, and I might have another chance. But instead of joy, I felt that familiar panic. My tongue grew thick as a sea slug in my mouth. I hadn’t grown more suave with time. Only older.
My mother’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Son, come into the house.”
I barked a reply, and she barked back impatiently.
“Your brother’s already dressed. It’s been six months since you took legs. The warlord’s coming home, along with some of his friends, and you will greet them standing beside us, or I willhave your skin in a chest for the next year, Kellin of the Eastern Trench.” By the end, she was shouting louder than the wind and waves combined.
In fact, the wind seemed to have died down, subdued. I slid into the water and approached the beach, focusing on the change she’d demanded, ignoring her as much as possible. A feat which became harder when I struggled to pull the power from my core that I needed to shuck my sealskin.
My vision blurred as I struggled, the skin half off—one arm and one leg human, the rest seal form—and my lungs not functioning at all.
“Mind of a moon jelly,” my mother gritted out, wading into the shallow water and taking hold of my human ear. She grabbed it hard and began shaking it, moving my whole body with each powerful jerk of her wizened, human-shaped arm. “We. Are. Not. Amused.” She punctuated each word with another sharp, painful tug.
“Oh, you know you’ve eaten the last scallop if Mother’s using the royal third person,” my brother yelled from somewhere behind her. “By the depths, are you really stuck mid-form?” His laughter gave me the strength I needed to finish my shift, but when I did, Mother held my sealskin in her hand.
I stared up into her wrinkled face and disappointed brown eyes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Kellin. I’m not sure you know what’s wrong, either. But I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to explore the topic over the winter.” She stalked out of the waves as I sucked in breath after breath, the wind and salt whipping on my fragile human skin.
“Here, brother,” Lachlan murmured, carrying a large rectangle of cloth to me when I managed to stagger onto dry rocks. “Dry off. I have some extra trousers in my room.”
“Fuck trousers,” I grunted.
He scratched his chin. “You know, I wonder if that’s a thing? Fuck trousers. Trousers for fucking, with some sort of flap or hole? For the females, I mean. I know the males have a piss flap. I’ll ask Goran.”
Lachlan had become the very best of friends with the Warlord of All Starlak over the past few years, even doing the ritual to becomevasyls, selkie brothers in blood. The two of them had a tradition of drinking themselves stupid on the summer solstice on the beach, telling all the stories they could think of.
Goran mostly told stories ofher, when he got drunk enough. I tried not to drink as much ale as they did. I was afraid my own loosened inhibitions would have me telling him what an idiot I thought he was.
He’d had Rada and let her go, and his slurred, tearful explanations made no sense to me. What honor could there be in allowing an Omega to wander alone all over the continent and beyond, in more danger with every step as she traveled unprotected through the hordes of men? What reason could any man have to let go of a goddess on earth, once she’d found him worthy?
I’d been planning my apology to her for nearly eleven years now, inking my apology onto parchment and leather, not knowing if or when I might see her again to try and rectify my own flubbed beginning with her. But if I’d had the courage to speak to her when we met, and she’d found me worthy of any scrap of affection, I would’ve handed her my skin and clung to her like a barnacle?—
“Kellin, get your ass into the house. They’ll be here before the tide changes, and I need help making up the rooms!” Mother’s shout had me running.
And falling on my face.
“Ouch,” Lachlan said, hauling me off the rocks. I tasted blood where I’d bitten my tongue. “Forgot how to use legs, huh? Let me help.”
“Has he said anything about Rada recently?” I found myself asking.
Lachlan grunted as he helped me walk. “No, and I’m glad. Selfish little thief.”
I pushed away from him, preferring to stumble on my own than hear my brother insult my true mate. Normally, he kept his less charitable thoughts to himself. Though I’d never told him who she was to me, he must have suspected something.
Selkies had stories of destined mates, though very few ever found theirs. Our kind took chosen mates instead, ones we called moon mates. The bond was temporary for the first month and was usually broken painlessly at the end of the moon without hard feelings. Nothing about what I’d felt for Rada since I first glimpsed her was temporary… or painless.
An hour later,I’d made up the rooms, dressed, and was being inspected by my mother. “You clean up well.” She took my chin in her hands and frowned as she patted my cheek. “Too thin, though. You look haggard.”
“You look beautiful, as usual. I’m sorry I stayed away so long.” Mother was the oldest selkie alive, and her age was obvious from her wrinkles and sea-foam silver hair. But I’d always thought she was beautiful in a timeless way, like the sea itself. She was every bit as strong, too. She’d never shown a hint of weakness, not even when the rest of our pod had been killed by an undersea volcano when Lachlan and I were pups.
