Page 70 of Selkie AU: Beyond the Storm

My brows pulled together in confusion.

“Ican come live withyou.”

“In the colony?”

He nodded.

It wasn’t often I found myself speechless. I had so many thoughts, so many feelings and questions, and the only one I could bring myself to verbalize was, “How?”

Rowan kissed the tip of my nose. “I’ll show you. Let’s go back.”

His body was still cold, his bones still rattled as he shivered, but his smile was warm as he pulled my coat from around his shoulders and over me again. I trusted my goddess, and I trusted my mate, with my whole heart and soul. If Rowan said he could come live at the colony with me, then I believed it had to be possible.

“Thank you,” I projected to the goddess.

Rowan gasped. “Again.”

“What?”

“Mind speak again.”

Could he hear me? “I love you.”

He laughed. “I love you too, little hurricane.” Rowan’s voice reached me even though his lips didn’t move. We really were bonded. Blessed. We had a future together. We could have a family together.

I squealed as I launched myself at him. He grunted as his back met the cold stone.

“Come on, trouble. I don’t know about you, but I need a hot shower and a big sleep.”

“Together.”

“Together,” he repeated, placing a kiss on my forehead.

The swim back to the boat was much faster, a sudden, powerful current propelling us through the underwater tunnel.

She had listened. She had heard me. She’d kept him safe.

Then hands were pulling at our arms and helping us back up onto the boat. I rushed to get Rowan’s clothes for him, but he walked over to where we had stored the selkie coats we’d found at the base.

They’d been nearly identical, as our coats often were, only the selkie they belonged to able to distinguish between them easily. Except now I was shocked to discover one of them clearly didn’t fit with the rest. It was larger, and a lovely auburn color. The same color as Rowan’s hair.

His face lit up in amazement as he pulled it around him. She’d given him a selkie coat!

I cried, rushing at him. My feet left the ground, and he caught me with a grunt. He was so warm, no longer shivering.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I prayed.

Rowan smiled, his large, warm hand smoothing over my back. “I think you need to give my poor back a break, little hurricane.”

My toes touched the ground again as Rowan lowered me back down, but I refused to step away from him. I needed some part of him to be touching some part of me for the rest of eternity.

To say the others were surprised too was an understatement. Not only had we both heard the goddess’s voice, but she’d given Rowan a coat of his own. I tried to pull it over him, but it seemed despite his obvious connection to it, he couldn’t shift into seal form like a selkie. His dick was also still outside his body—I checked—so his body was still human too. But this gift from the goddess would surely allow him to get to the colony.

We dropped Aanaa and Raq closer to the colony and promised them we’d come join them soon. For now, we’d been away from our nest for far too long, and I wanted to mate with Rowan somewhere far away from curious selkie eyes and ears. We’d go back to his home on the hill first, and we’d rest, then tomorrow we could pack up our nest and bring it back to the colony and test just what Rowan’s new coat would let him do.

Miki offered us food again, and this time I ate so fast I nearly choked. Her cooking wasn’t as good as Rowan’s, but it was still good. Maybe we could bring Rowan’s cooking things with us to the colony… and the dryer.

Rowan pulled his clothes on, except for his coat, which he made me put on in case any humans saw us on the way back to his house.