Page 68 of Selkie AU: Beyond the Storm

“You scared me for a moment there,” I huffed, nuzzling my nose against the icy tip of his, just so I could feel his breath against my lips and further confirm he was breathing. I still had him.

He chuckled. “I’m not leaving. Not when you’ve given me so much to live for.”

I smiled, pressing my forehead against his as I climbed into his lap and felt his arms wrap around me. We held each other close, and I pulled my coat tighter around him, trying to keep his body as warm as possible as he shivered.

“Why have you given your coat to a human, child?”

A voice echoed around us, feminine and melodic, layered over itself. It wasn’t selkie nor human. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. My breath caught. My chest tightened. She was here. The goddess.

“What are we suppose—”

“Shhh.” I shushed Rowan as he started speaking, holding two fingers over his lips as I looked around us. His brow pinched in confusion, but he didn’t try to speak again. He couldn’t hear her like I could.

I couldn’t see her. If she was here, it was only in my mind.

“He’s my mate,” I told her. “I’m keeping him warm and safe.”

“He would be warm and safe with his own kind, but youhave brought him here.Why?”

I swallowed. “We came to pray.”

Silence.

“I wish to live with Rowan, away from the colony. I beg you, please, to release me. Choose someone else to lead them after my grandmother. Let me stay with him.”

She was silent for a long moment before I heard her again.

“You followed my guidance. You led my children well. Saved them from human dangers. You are my chosen to lead them further.”

I exhaled sharply. Rowan looked up at me, uncertainty in his eyes as he tried to read what was happening from mine.

“That isn’t where I wish to be. Please. I want to be with him.”

“You would rather be with him than your own people?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I inhaled slowly. “Because he’s my mate.”

“He is not—”

“He is! The mate I have chosen for myself. I ask to be released, so I can be with him. I ask you to bless our bond and allow us to live together.”

“And if I do not?”

I swallowed. What would I do if this was all for nothing? If she refused to let me go? Rowan would still be my mate, regardless of what happened here. He’d said he could buy a new boat, that he’d live on it so I could come and be with him as much as possible, but that life could never satisfy me. No life would except the one where I could be beside him every minute of every day, and sleep beside him every night.

“Then… I’ll be separated from my heart. Every day will be filled with longing. Your colony will be led by a selkie who will only ever desire to be elsewhere. That isn’t the leader they deserve.”

My thumb smoothed over Rowan’s cheek. I loved my people dearly, but Rowan was my true home and always would be.

“I cannot exist without him by my side.”

There was more silence, until I thought she’d abandoned us entirely. Then her voice rang in my mind again in a question I hadn’t dared to consider.

“What if you could have both?”