“He touched your skin,” Frannie says with a thoughtful hum. “Is that how your kind form mate bonds, do you think?”
“I have no idea,” I reply. “It’s not something my mother ever talked about.”
And it’s not as though there are many of my kind milling about to ask them questions. If other selkies are anything like my mother, they wouldn’t exactly be forthcoming with their experiences, either.
“Maybe we should test it out,” I joke weakly.
“No, no, no.” Frannie shakes her head, holding her hands up, palms out. “I’m a one-ogre kind of girl. No offence, Ree, you know I love you, but I’m not into whatever messy thing’s going on here.”
Kit stares down at my skin in his hands, blinking until the glazed look fades from his eyes. He then gives a decisive nod, disappearing and then reappearing with a heavy wooden chest tucked under his arm.
Under my supervision, he carefully lays my skin inside the chest and flips the lid, fastening it with an ancient-looking iron lock that’s covered in unfamiliar sigils.
“It’s cursed,” he announces once my skin is already locked away. “No one can open it apart from you or me, or they risk thecurse passing onto them.” Plucking a small, dull metallic key from somewhere, he hands it over to me.
“But Noush will be all right? My skin won’t get cursed from being locked inside there, will it?”
He gives me a mock affronted look and gently wraps my fingers around the key. “Of course not. Now, I’ll put the chest in a safe place and then we can see what we can find out about mate bonds. I’m sure I have something in my collection that must mention them. We’ll sit, drink tea, and do some research. How does that sound?”
“Good,” I croak with a nod. More than anything, I need a moment to process what’s happening here.
Within ten minutes, Frannie’s made a pot of tea and Kit is poring over a book on mate marks that he just happened to have in his collection while I sit quietly, staring blindly at the tabletop.
This is not how I was expecting my day to go.
Another half an hour passes, and the cup of tea seems to soothe something inside me.
There’s no use panicking yet, not when Kit might be mistaken. Maybe I was confused by Aster touching my skin too, and I’ve got this entire situation twisted. It might—
“Here.”
Kit leans over the table toward me, tapping the open book. But the pages aren’t what catches my attention. His robe gapes open, revealing a slither of chiselled chest I can’t seem to drag my eyes from.
“I was right. They’re mate marks, see?” He rolls up his sleeve again and then gestures for Aster to do the same thing.
The two of them reveal their forearms. Aster’s wrists are covered in the thick bandage I tied for him, while Kit’s have smudges of ink all over them.
Both are wearing identical marks. A faded circle of gold, almost like a coin. Frannie joins me as I peer down at them both and see something I hadn’t noticed the first time Kit showed me. Probablybecause I got distracted by the three heartbeats pounding out of synch inside my chest.
“Is that... a seal’s face?”
“In cases where multiple bonds form, such as in species whose population has remained low, the bond mark typically forms in a way that’s reflective of the central bond member,” Kit reads. “The mark starts off faded, but as the bond is accepted and strengthened, the mark and connection will reflect that.”
I can’t help but snort. It’s not just any seal etched into their skin. That’s the same face that peers back at me when Noush checks herself out in a rock pool.
She’s going to be insufferable when she finds out both men have her face tattooed into their skin.
“It’s definitely a mate mark, then?” Frannie asks, then shrugs as Kit aims a glare at her. “I’ve never seen one before either. We ogres are prolific breeders, but we’re not the kind of people fate shines down upon.”
“As I understand it, it’s more common in the shifter community,” Kit replies. “In the same way that true albatrosses mate for life, their magical counterparts do the same.”
“Seals don’t,” I reply. “The males breed with plenty of females, not the other way around. Some of them have harems, as I understand it.”
“Well then, maybe you take after male seals,” Frannie replies with a smirk.
“You’re not a seal, though,” Kit replies. “You’re something very rare instead, so maybe it’s an evolutionary thing—”
“You mean my kind would be less likely to die out if we have a harem of fierce, strong males to protect us?” I snort again but quickly lapse into silence.
