Page 4 of Selkie AU: Beyond the Storm

They were wild in ways we weren’t. Savage. Hunters that lived for war and called it a game.

I needed air. There was every chance the boy would chase me, but either way, I was dead if I didn’t get moving.

Heat burned up my body as I attempted to move my tail, more red clouding the surrounding water. If I pulled my coat back on, there was no way I could swim fast enough to get to the surface. So I pulled it off, tucking the bleeding coat beneath one arm as I kicked my legs to propel myself higher.

The boy kept watching. His eyes darkened as a tendril of red drifted past his face, but he didn’t follow me.

My leg burned where the injury echoed into this form, but I still managed to get to the surface. I sucked in desperate and greedy gulps of air. I couldn’t go back to the colony. Not while I was bleeding. I needed to find somewhere I could rest until I was healed enough to travel home.

Wind and rain whipped at my face, the sky as dark as the water below. I expected to be dragged back under at any moment, for Kova’s game of hunting me to have begun.

There was a sheet of ice in the distance. If I could make it there, I’d be safe. Aarlinuk couldn’t leave the water like we could.

Not that way.I’d barely made a single stroke through the water when instinct pulled at me, warning me against the plan I’d just formed.Then where?

I turned, trusting my goddess as I instead began to swim toward the open sea.

Nothing happened for far longer than I expected.

Not until my muscles ached and my lungs burned and my body grew heavy. My coat still bled, leaving a trail behind me as I swam. A trail that was followed.

One tall black fin to the side of me. Another behind. Orcas.

Thunder echoed the sound of my heart as it roared above.

Why? Why had my goddess led me to this fate?

Waves crashed against ice ahead. Maybe it wasn’t too late to try for land.

Not that way.

Desperation and rage tore through me. Was I supposed to die here? I didn’t want to. I wanted to live.

Thunder crashed again. Lightning. Illuminating the sky for only a moment. But it was long enough to catch sight of something up ahead. Something that wasn’t ice. A boat.

I’d seen them before, from a distance. When humans would come drop their nets and sharp ropes into our water so they could steal our fish.

Faster.

My legs and arms burned as I continued, the orcas closing in on either side.

Aarlinuk were also forbidden from interacting with humans. If I could make it there… they shouldn’t be able to get me.

“Help me!” I screamed out, hoping whoever was on it would be my savior. “Help!”

A head straightened. A pale face turned to scan the sea.

“I’m here!”

He was close enough that I could tell the moment he spotted me. The human turned his boat, heading toward me. Yes.

The man leaned over the side as he rapidly approached, a large hand reaching for me.

Something nudged at my leg, and I screamed as my body was suddenly airborne, propelled out of the water by a giant slippery orca tail as it played with its food. Then the boat was too close. My head smacked against the hard side of it as gravity pulled me back down.

I barely registered the hand that wrapped around my arm, yanking me up out of the water.

“I’ve got you,” said a low voice.