"The sea responds to a lot of things." Kian's tone is dismissive, but I catch the uncertainty beneath it. "Storms. Tides. The moon. Doesn't mean she's anything more than a human with good instincts."
"You saw Moira's face when she looked at that pendant." Finn's voice holds no surprise, only confirmation of something he has apparently already sensed. "The Drummonds were guardians of the selkie paths. They were never fully human, even when they walked on land."
"We don't know anything for certain." Declan's tone carries a warning against jumping to conclusions. "Moira is researchingthe family history now. Until she has answers, we treat Isla Calder as what she appears to be. A scientist who stumbled onto something bigger than she expected and now needs our help to stop a threat to both our worlds."
But even as I draw strength from their presence, I cannot shake the feeling that this threat is different. That Carrick represents something we have not encountered before, a human who has chosen to step into our world with full knowledge of what that choice means. He is not stumbling blindly into supernatural territory. He is invading it deliberately, with full knowledge of what he's doing.
"Do we?" I meet his gaze without flinching. "Connor was one of us. He understood our weaknesses because he shared them. The necromancer who raised the drowned was powerful, but she was desperate and unstable. Carrick is something else entirely. A human who has spent years preparing for exactly this moment. He probably knows who and what we are, what we guard, and has acquired the tools to challenge us for it."
Because I already sense part of what Moira will tell her. I felt it the moment Isla stepped onto my dock, that first morning when the sea seemed to reach for her like a lover welcoming home someone long lost. The water knows her. The deep places recognize something in her blood that calls to the ancient powers sleeping in those trenches.
She is connected to the protected sites in ways that make her both invaluable and vulnerable. If Carrick learns what she is, if he understands that her blood might be the key to accessing powers that have been dormant for centuries, he will come for her. Not with dredging equipment and development permits, but with the full force of whatever dark resources his collection has given him.
I will not let that happen.
The realization settles into my bones with absolute certainty. This duty has defined my life since my father went down in waters that should have been calm. But Isla has become part of that duty now, tangled up in the ancient obligations I carry in ways I am only beginning to understand.
She came here looking for answers about whale migration patterns and found herself standing at the center of a conflict that has been brewing for longer than she has been alive. She wanted to save the ocean from corporate exploitation and instead discovered that the ocean contains secrets that could reshape her understanding of reality. She is a scientist, trained to seek rational explanations for observable phenomena, and everything she has witnessed tonight defies rational explanation.
My bear rumbles agreement, and for once, we are in perfect accord. She is ours to protect, whether she knows it or not. Whether she wants it or not.
The door at the back of the boathouse opens, and every head in the room turns toward the sound.
Moira emerges first, her expression carefully controlled in a way that tells me she is working hard to contain strong emotion. Eliza follows close behind, one hand resting on the small of Isla's back in a gesture of support that speaks to shared understanding between women who have both had their worlds upended by impossible truths.
And then Isla steps into the light, and my bear goes absolutely still.
She looks the same as she did an hour ago, when she watched Jax transform and asked the question that has been burning in her since she arrived on this island. The same dark hair pulled back in its practical braid. The same determined set to her jaw. The same fierce intelligence in eyes that refuse to look away from hard truths.
But something has changed. I can see it in the way she holds herself, shoulders squared against a weight she did not carry before. In the way her hand rises to touch the pendant at her throat, fingers pressing against the silver disc like she is feeling it for the first time. And the way she looks at me across the room, her gaze holding recognition that was not there before Moira took her aside.
Knowledge. Recognition. The first stirrings of understanding about who and what she really is.
Moira crosses to where the brotherhood has gathered around the table, and the sea witch's voice carries clearly in the sudden silence.
"We need to talk about what I found in the old records. About the Drummond family and their connection to Skara." Her gaze finds mine, and what I see in her expression makes my chest tighten. "About what Isla's grandmother really was."
"Moira." Declan's voice carries a warning. "Perhaps this conversation should wait until we've finished discussing the corporate threat."
"This is connected to the corporate threat." Moira does not back down, and I see Rafe tense slightly beside her, ready to support his mate even against the leader of the brotherhood if necessary. "Carrick isn't just interested in the protected waters. He's interested in anyone who carries the old blood. Anyone whose lineage connects them to the powers sleeping in those trenches."
"And Isla's lineage?" I ask the question even though I already sense the answer, have sensed it since the first moment I caught her scent on the wind.
Moira turns to look at Isla, who stands motionless near the door with Eliza still beside her. The sea witch's expression softens with something that might be compassion, or might be recognition of a kindred spirit.
"Ailsa Drummond left this island in 1954. She was twenty-two years old, and she was running from something she couldn't bear to face." Moira pauses, and the silence stretches taut as a sail in high wind. "She was a selkie, Grayson. A seal-woman who shed her skin to live among humans. And she left her skin behind when she went, buried somewhere on this island where she believed no one would ever find it."
Isla's voice comes from behind Moira, rough with emotion. "I have a picture of my grandmother taken before she left the island. She's clutching something gray I could never identify."
The words hang in the air, heavy with implications that ripple outward like stones dropped into still water.
"Isla carries her grandmother's blood." Moira's voice is gentle now, pitched for the woman standing frozen by the door. "Dormant selkie heritage, passed down through generations of women, some who never knew what they were. The ocean has been calling to her because the ocean remembers what her family tried to forget."
I look at Isla, and she looks back at me, and in her eyes I see the same thing I felt when I first understood what I was: fear and wonder and the terrible weight of a truth that changes everything.
The sea has not just been calling to her—it has been calling her home.
CHAPTER 8
