Chapter 6 #2
My grandmother's face surfaces in my memory, her eyes fixed on the horizon as she told me stories about selkies who shed their skins to walk on land.
The photograph in my desk drawer, the young woman clutching something gray and folded against her chest. The letter that spoke of gifts and callings and blood running stronger than she dared believe.
"The corporation." My voice sounds distant to my own ears. "What does it threaten, exactly?"
"Everything." Moira's hand touches my arm gently.
"The sacred waters aren't just ecologically significant.
They're places where the boundary between our world and something older grows thin.
Where shifters can commune with powers that have existed since before humans walked upright.
If Maritime Development Corporation dredges those channels, if they expose what lies in those depths, it won't just destroy the ecosystem.
It will destroy us. Expose our existence to a world that isn't ready to know we exist."
"And you're telling me this because?"
"Because you're already involved." Declan's voice softens slightly. "Your research has brought you closer to our secrets than any outsider in living memory. And because Grayson believes you can be trusted. Believes you might even be able to help us stop what's coming."
Grayson's hand is steady against my back, an anchor in a sea of impossible revelations.
Every instinct screams that I should run, should flee this room full of creatures that shouldn't exist and pretend this night never happened.
That's what a rational person would do. That's what a scientist would do.
But rationality has been failing me since I arrived on this island.
Since the water started responding to my presence.
Since the pendant began pulsing with heat I can't explain.
Since the dreams started dragging me down into depths where I breathed darkness like air and found it sweeter than oxygen.
"Show me." The words come out before I can stop them. "If what you're saying is true, show me proof."
Another exchange of glances. Then Declan nods at Jax, who rises from his position near the door with fluid grace.
The scarred man moves to the center of the room, his expression unreadable, and strips off his clothes with efficient, unselfconscious movements—shirt, boots, jeans—until he stands naked before all of us.
I should look away. Instead, I stare, cataloguing the scars that map his body like a history of violence.
What happens next defies every law of biology I've ever studied.
Mist the color of moonlight rises from the floor at Jax's feet, spreading in a low blanket before surging upward.
It wraps around his legs, then his torso, climbing higher until it swallows him completely.
Streaks of color flash through the fog with quick, sharp bursts of light, and a low rumble rolls through the boathouse that feels like distant thunder trapped inside stone walls.
The air tastes charged, every hair on my arms lifting as the mist thickens, hides him, then thins again.
Where a man stood a moment ago, a massive wolf now occupies the space, eyes fixed on me with an intelligence no wolf should possess.
My legs give out. Only Grayson's arm around my waist keeps me upright.
"Breathe." His voice rumbles near my ear. "Breathe."
The wolf that was Jax watches me for a long moment, then turns and pads back toward the door.
The mist rises from the floor once more, wrapping his furred body in another column of color and light.
Thunder whispers through the boards under my feet as the fog closes around him and then blows away in a soft rush of air.
The man is back, naked, scarred, already reaching for his jeans with the casual ease of someone who's done this a thousand times.
"Convinced?" His voice is rough, challenging.
No words come. My scientific mind has finally fallen completely silent, crushed beneath the weight of evidence it cannot explain or dismiss.
And in that silence, other thoughts rush in.
The dreams I've had since childhood, of swimming through waters too deep for any human diver.
The way the sea has always called to me, not metaphorically but literally, a voice beneath the waves that I've spent my whole life pretending I couldn't hear.
The stories my grandmother told, and the sadness in her eyes when she looked at the ocean, and the way she gripped my hands at the end and whispered about gifts and knowing and weight.
The pendant burns against my skin, hotter than it's ever been, and the question forces itself past my lips before I can think to stop it.
"What am I?"
Silence falls, deeper than before. Every eye in the room turns to me, and I see surprise on some faces, recognition on others. Grayson's arm tightens around my waist, and when I look up at him, his expression holds wonder threaded with fear.
"That's what I've been asking myself since you showed up on my dock." His voice is low, meant for my ears alone. "The sea responds to you, Isla. The way it responds to those who carry the old blood."
Moira moves closer, and when I meet her eyes, I see the same recognition I glimpsed when she first opened the door. She studies my face, my pendant, the way I'm standing, and her expression gradually transforms from curiosity into certainty.
"Your grandmother," she says softly. "She was born on Skara, wasn't she? Left and never came back."
"Yes." The word is barely a whisper. "Ailsa Drummond. She left in 1954."
Something passes across Moira's face, grief that seems both personal and ancient.
"The Drummonds. I should have seen it sooner.
The pendant you're wearing, the symbols on it, they're the same as the marks the old families used to identify each other.
Before the diaspora, before so many of the bloodlines scattered to the mainland and beyond. "
"What bloodlines?" My voice cracks on the question. "What are you saying?"
Moira glances at Declan, at Grayson, at the others watching in silence. Then she turns back to me, and when she speaks, her words carry the weight of secrets kept too long.
"I think we need to have a conversation about your grandmother, Isla." She reaches out and takes my hand, her touch cool and somehow soothing against my overheated skin. "About what she was. And what you might be."
The pendant flares hot against my throat, urgent as a second heartbeat, and somewhere in the darkness beyond the boathouse walls, I hear the distant call of seals crying out across the water.