40. Milo
Milo
Four months later
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Rowan apologized as he placed soft kisses over my forehead. His thumbs smoothed away my tears, only for more to follow.
Everything was ruined.
“I messed up. Please tell me how to fix it?”
“You can’t!” I sobbed. I knew he didn’t do it on purpose or to be mean, but he still should have known better.
“I’ll put it back.”
“It’s not the same now.”
“I’ll buy you another one. As many as you want.”
“No.” I cried harder. “It’s not the same.”
My nest was perfect. Just the way I wanted it. Or it had been, before Rowan had taken the shampoo from its place and used it.
His brow pinched together as he looked at me as if he were in pain. He was really sorry. I knew that, and I wasn’t mad at him, not really. But I still couldn’t stop crying.
It had been like this all the time lately, even before my belly started to grow with our pup.
I was sick of crying about everything, but I couldn’t stop myself.
All it took was running out of the snack I wanted, or needing to put clothes on to go outside, or even dropping a spoon on the floor, and I’d be an emotional wreck.
Rowan never got angry or frustrated with me. He was a good mate. My perfect mate. But he’d messed up the nest accidentally and now I didn’t know how to fix it again.
He placed another kiss on my cheek. “How about I go to the store and get some more supplies, and I’ll make you more cookies when I get back? Something new maybe?”
I sniffed. “Like what?”
He thought about it. “Danish butter cookies.”
I didn’t know what that was, but my tummy growled in response and I nodded. “Baby wants them.”
Rowan smiled. “Then baby will get them. Do you want anything else?”
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and nodded. “I want marshmallows.”
He nodded. “Of course, baby.”
“And seaweed.”
He paused before responding. “Of course, baby.”
“And ice cream.”
“You want to dip fish sticks in it again?”
I nodded.
“Okay. I’ll go get those for you.”
“I don’t want you to go.” My bottom lip pushed out in a pout.
“Do you want to come with me?”
My eyes heated as I started crying again. “I don’t want to put clothes on.”
“I know, sweetheart. So I’ll go, and I’ll be so quick, okay? And you can work on making our nest perfect again while I’m out, because you’re so good at that.”
I nodded. Rowan placed a gentle kiss on my lips then lifted me from the sofa to the nest.
He kissed me again, then lowered down my body to kiss the baby as well before he stood up and went to go get us some more food.
He always kissed us both when we had to be separated.
I hated being apart from him, but it was never for long.
Whether it was at the colony, or here in his house, we were always together.
Rowan’s coat didn’t let him shift into a seal.
He was still completely human and hadn’t gained any new abilities since our blessing from the goddess.
All her magic was in the coat. While he had it on him, he could get to the colony.
It kept his body warm and allowed him to hold his breath for long enough to get there, and it let him see better in the darkness.
After my heat, we’d gone there, and Rowan had been amazed at how beautiful it was.
I’d shown him my nest, but it wasn’t as good as the one here.
We’d made it better since then, and had taken lots of extra blankets and a bunch of Rowan’s clothing down so it smelled like him.
We’d also put up some walls with Raq’s help, so Rowan would feel more comfortable having our privacy.
Selkie nests usually had basic walls, made of furs and seaweed or plants and bits of fishing nets when we found them in the ocean.
But ours was even better. Panak had helped us bring some wood to the colony on his boat, and some of the selkies had helped us get it inside and set it up.
It was lovely now, but it did little to stop the sounds from escaping, and Rowan would get very embarrassed when anyone heard us.
That was part of the reason we still spent so much time here.
That, and the fact that most of the food I wanted was human food, and it took too long to get it when we were at the colony.
I really didn’t mind where we were, as long as we were together.
And the goddess had given me a break from the constant pull to be at the colony.
She knew I’d accepted my role as the next leader, and my grandmother was still going strong there without us, so we were free to be where I was most comfortable at any given moment.
I busied myself trying to fix our nest while Rowan was out, moving the clothes that smelled most like him to my side.
I glared at the bottle of shampoo, still wet from Rowan’s morning shower.
There was less in there now than there had been.
It was part of our nest because I liked the way it smelled.
Rowan said it was cinnamon scented. I opened it and took a sniff.
My stomach twisted, the familiar scent provoking an unfamiliar reaction to it as bile crept up my throat.
I scrambled to my feet, barely making it into the bathroom before I was throwing up.
Then I was crying again. Why did the things I liked make me feel sick?
And sometimes I’d be sick for no reason at all.
I liked being pregnant. I liked watching my tummy grow and feeling the life inside me, but there were also parts of it that were just no good at all.
I was still sitting on the bathroom floor crying when I heard the front door close.
It didn’t take Rowan long to find me. Then he was kneeling on the ground beside me and rubbing my back, and I immediately felt better.
“I got you something,” he told me. “Want to go to our nest and see?”
I sniffed and nodded.
Rowan scooped me up and carried me back to our nest. I was going to tell him the shampoo was bad and make him throw it outside, but then I noticed what was new in our nest. There was a little seal, white and fluffy.
It wasn’t alive, and it was much smaller than a real seal was, but it was so soft and it had such big eyes.
“Why is it so cute?” I sobbed, crying again for a whole new reason.
Rowan’s fingers combed through my hair. “Do you like it?”
I nodded and cuddled it to my chest. “It’s perfect.”
He placed a kiss on my temple, and I turned to snuggle into him, the little fake seal and my bump with our growing real baby seal between us.
Rowan held me until I was calm and sleepy, then his warmth moved as he shuffled to get up.
“No. Stay.”
“Do you want me to make cookies?”
I thought about that for a moment before nodding and wrapping my arms around his neck.
He understood what I wanted right away, and he grunted as he lifted me up and took me with him to the kitchen, to set me down on the counter so I could watch him bake.
When I was comfortably seated on a blanket he kept there just for this purpose, he went to unpack the shopping bags.
“You have to get rid of those,” I told him as I spotted several new bottles of shampoo. “They smell bad.”
He looked between me and the shampoo before sighing as he nodded, then put them back into the bag.
“I thought of some more names while I was out,” he told me as he handed me the marshmallows and seaweed.
I tore the packets open, taking a sheet of dried seaweed and wrapping it around one of the fluffy, soft marshmallows before stuffing it into my mouth. The salty-sweet flavor made me kick my feet in delight. “Tell me.” I spoke with my mouthful.
We had some names already that we really liked, but I wasn’t happy enough with any of them to stop looking yet.
“Kai,” he told me.
I thought about it as I stuffed another seaweed-wrapped marshmallow into my mouth. “What does it mean?”
“It means different things in different places, including ocean, warrior, and king.”
I nodded. I liked it, though I still wasn’t sure it was the one.
“Nivi, if they’re a girl.”
I shook my head immediately. “We’re having a boy.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do!” I huffed.
“Well, maybe we can keep some girl names too, just in case.”
“No. We’re having a boy!” My eyes heated.
“Okay, okay, my love. I’m sorry.” Rowan’s hands smoothed up my thighs as he claimed my lips. “We’re having a boy, you’re right.”
The tears retreated before spilling. It was very important that he believe me, and I believed that he did now.
“How about Rory, then?”
“Rory,” I repeated, smiling wide. I loved the sound of that one.
“What does it mean?”
“It means red king.”
I kicked my legs in excitement. “That’s it! His name is Rory! He’s going to be selkie king one day, and he’s going to have red hair like his daddy. It’s perfect, Rowan!”
Rowan chuckled, and I shuffled off the counter to launch myself at him. He caught me.
“Let’s go put it on the wall!”
“Okay,” he agreed, kissing my cheek and taking me into the room that Rowan used to sleep in.
We’d slowly been making it into the perfect room for the baby.
Rowan had even built him his own nest out of wood called a crib.
I’d been painting the walls with all beautiful things for Rory to enjoy.
My favorite fish, the comb jellies that surrounded the colony, Rowan fishing on his boat.
I’d even painted the Naninuk from the base, along with the foxes and the harpy we’d rescued, so that one day I could tell Rory all about it and he could see them for himself.
Rowan got me a brush and my paints, and I took them from him as I went to the wall before stopping. Rowan had taught me how to write his name and my own, and some others, but I wasn’t sure how to write Rory.
“The first two letters from my name,” he told me, and I quickly brought the brush to the wall to start. “Then the first letter again.” I did it. “Then a new letter.” Rowan’s hand smoothed up my wrist as he helped to guide me in painting the new letter.
RORY.
It was perfect.