Milo
Both?
How was it possible to have both? Rowan couldn’t get to the colony, and I couldn’t exactly move the colony to Rowan.
Could I? No. There was no way everyone would fit in his house.
There were other houses, but humans lived in those, and I had a very strong feeling the colony wouldn’t be as eager to move to land as I was.
So how would it be possible to keep both of them?
“If it were possible… to lead the colony but live with Rowan, I would do so.”
I couldn’t find a solution to how that would work, but she was a goddess. She was capable of far more than I’d ever be able to comprehend.
I waited.
She was silent.
Rowan gasped, his head darting around us as he frantically looked for something.
“What is it?” I asked, unable to hear what he was hearing.
“A voice.”
My eyes widened. She was speaking to him?
The goddess who, to our knowledge, had never even spoken with selkie before had blessed me with hearing her voice as she heard my prayer, and now she was speaking to my mate.
My eyes heated along with my chest. That had to be a good thing.
It had to mean that at some level, she found him worthy.
Rowan’s eyes met mine again as they glassed over.
What was she saying to him? I wanted to hear everything, wanted to know what it all meant.
He nodded slowly. “Yes,” he answered her, perhaps unable to use mind speak, or he just didn’t know how. “Yes,” he answered again. “Anything.”
“What’s she saying?” I asked, unable to hold in my curiosity any longer.
“Shhh,” he shushed me with two fingers over my lips.
I scowled at him, watching his face closely for any indication of what was being said.
His eyes widened, as did mine, even though I didn’t know why.
Rowans mouth opened, closed, opened again. He cleared his throat and nodded. “Yes, I will. Every day for the rest of my life I will treasure him.”
I needed to know what she was saying right now!
Tears welled in his beautiful ocean eyes. “Thank you.”
He smiled. It was the biggest, brightest smile I’d ever seen on his perfect lips.
It left me breathless, and suddenly what the goddess had said mattered less to me than the pure joy and relief it brought him.
I wanted to paint a picture of that smile to remember it always, or spend hours just witnessing it, but then his mouth was crashing against mine and I felt the curve of it against my lips instead.
He kissed me as if he could pour his joy directly into my soul like some form of magic, and maybe he could, because my body relaxed in his arms and my heart beat in time with his. His joy was my joy. His hope, my hope.
And the tension eased. The pull like a magnet, like a rope around me, yanking me back to the colony…
it eased. Faded. Not entirely, but the urgency of it.
The crushing weight. I was free from the responsibility of it for a little while longer.
Whatever he had said, agreed to, it bought us time, at the very least.
“Go, my child. Take your mate, and keep my people safe.”
My mate. She approved of us. Had blessed us. That was what I was feeling. It wasn’t that the weight of my responsibilities had disappeared, it had been halved, shared with my bonded mate.
My vision blurred as my eyes opened again. My nose brushed against his as I inhaled his exhales. I knew without him telling me that we didn’t have to worry anymore, that we’d be able to stay together.
“I can come live with you?” I whispered.
He huffed. “No.”
My brows pulled together in confusion.
“I can come live with you.”
“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.
Then we were in his shower, and the heated water soothed our bruised skin and tired muscles.
As much as I wanted to mate with him, the moment his arms wrapped around me in the comfort of our nest in front of a newly built fire, I felt so comfortable and so tired. My eyes closed against my will, and I no longer had any strength to fight it.