"You're not broken." Eliza leans forward. "What else?"
"I can hold my breath longer than anyone I know. Four minutes, sometimes five." The confession tumbles out. "My university swim team coach wanted to send me to the Olympic trials. I said no because I couldn't explain it and I was afraid someone would figure out I wasn't normal."
"What else?" Moira's voice is gentle but insistent.
"Storms. I know when they're coming before the weather services do. And the tide—" I set the cup down before I drop it. "Sometimes when I stand at the water's edge, it reaches for me. Like it's trying to touch my feet even when it shouldn't come that far up the beach."
Eliza catches my gaze. "When I first came here, I thought I was losing my mind. I was human and didn’t have a clue about shifters, except what I read in romance books. Turns out I was just learning what was real." A rueful smile crosses her face. "You're not broken. You're waking up."
The fire crackles in the silence that follows, and outside the windows, I can hear the eternal conversation between wind and wave. My grandmother spent decades listening to that sound and knowing she could never truly answer it. She chose human love over her own nature, chose a life of longing over a life of belonging.
But she never stopped hoping that someone in her line would find their way back to the sea.
"The obsession with marine biology." I speak the realization as it forms. "The research that brought me to Skara. The dreams, the pull toward these waters specifically. It was never about the whales, was it? It was about coming home."
Moira's expression softens. "The sea's been calling you your whole life. You just needed to be ready to hear it."
"And now I'm here." I set the cold tea aside and stand, moving to the window where the dark water stretches to the horizon. The pendant pulses warm against my chest, keeping time with the waves. "What happens next? What does this mean for who I am, for what I can do?"
"That depends entirely on you." Moira joins me at the window, her reflection appearing ghostlike in the glass beside mine. "The awakening's begun, but it doesn't have to continue. You could leave Skara tonight, return to the mainland, live ahuman life the way your grandmother did." She pauses. "But the sea won't stop calling. The dreams won't fade. You'd just learn to live with the longing the way she did, standing at windows and listening to rain and perhaps regretting what you left behind and never knew."
The words settle between us, heavy with truth. I could leave. Board a ferry tomorrow and return to the mainland, accept a position at some comfortable university, spend my life studying the ocean from a safe distance. The blood would still call, the dreams would still come, but I could ignore them the way my grandmother did. Live a half-life, always aware of what I was turning away from.
But even as the possibility takes shape, something deeper rebels against it. My grandmother made that choice and spent sixty years standing at windows, speaking to rain, clutching my hands and apologizing for things she couldn't explain. The longing hollowed her out from the inside, left her diminished in ways I'm only now beginning to understand.
I won't make the same mistake.
"Maritime." I turn from the window to face Moira directly. "They're not just threatening the ecosystem. They're threatening everything your people have protected for centuries. If Carrick gets access to those sacred waters, if he exposes what sleeps in those trenches, everyone suffers. Not just the shifters. Not just the selkies. Everyone."
"Yes." Moira's expression sharpens with something that might be hope. "The protected sites are the foundation of supernatural existence on these islands. If they fall, if the old powers are disturbed or exploited, the consequences will extend far beyond Skara. The ley lines that run through these islands connect to other sacred places across the British Isles and beyond. Damage here could ripple outward in ways we can't predict."
"Then I can't leave." The certainty locks into my bones like the cold weight of deep water. "I came here looking for answers about whale behavior and found something much larger. Maybe that was always the point. Maybe this is what the sea's been trying to tell me all along."
Moira studies my face for a long moment, searching for doubt or uncertainty. Whatever she finds there seems to satisfy her, because she nods once with an expression that holds both approval and warning.
"The path you're choosing isn't easy. Awakening selkie blood is a transformation that changes everything. You'll perceive the world differently. Feel things more intensely. The ocean will become more than a subject of study. It'll become part of who you are."
"It always was." I touch the pendant again, and this time the warmth feels like a greeting rather than a warning. "I just didn't know how to listen."
Eliza rises from her chair and crosses to stand beside us. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you're staying. The brotherhood could use someone with your knowledge of these waters. And sometimes it takes an outsider to see solutions that those too close to a problem can't."
"I'm not really an outsider though, am I?" The question contains layers of meaning I'm only beginning to unpack. "Not if my grandmother was born here. Not if this blood connects me to Skara in ways that go beyond geography."
"No." Moira's smile holds ancient sadness and present hope intertwined. "You're a Drummond. The sea remembers, even when people forget."
The conversation continues deep into the night, Moira answering questions I didn't know I had, explaining aspects of selkie existence that my grandmother didn't live long enough to share. I learn that the awakening will be gradual, unfolding overtime as my connection to the sea strengthens. I learn that the pendant serves as a kind of anchor, helping to focus and channel abilities that might otherwise overwhelm someone unprepared for their emergence. I learn that there are rituals, practices, ways of communing with the water that can accelerate or deepen the transformation if I choose to pursue them.
By the time Moira finally declares that we all need rest before the challenges ahead, my head's swimming with information and implications I'll need time to fully process. Eliza walks me back toward the shore road, the path illuminated by a moon that hangs fat and silver above the quiet water.
"It gets easier." Her voice is soft in the darkness. "Accepting the impossible. When I first came here, I thought shifters were stories. Now I'm mated to a wolf." A rueful smile crosses her face. "The world's bigger than we thought. That's not crazy—it's just true."
"Is that how it was for you? When you discovered what Declan was?"
"Terrifying at first. Then exhilarating. Then terrifying again when I realized what it meant for my future, for my sense of who I am." She pauses at the junction where the path splits, one branch leading toward the village and my rental cottage, the other curving back toward the harbor where the boathouse sits. "But I wouldn't trade any of it. Not the fear, not the confusion, not even the danger. Because on the other side of all that was a life I never could have imagined. A love I never could have found if I'd stayed safe and small and certain."
She squeezes my hand once before releasing it and heading back toward wherever Declan waits for her. I stand alone at the crossroads, watching the moonlight play across the water, feeling the pendant pulse against my chest in time with the waves.
I should go to the cottage. Should try to sleep, to process, to prepare for whatever tomorrow brings. But my feet carry me in a different direction, down the path toward the harbor, toward the old pier where fishing boats bob at their moorings and the sea stretches endless toward the horizon. Toward the water that's been calling me home my entire life.
