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“Then we must go forward,” Griff said. “Off with you now.”
Una turned her head against Emma’s breast, her curls tickling Emma’s chin. “But I haven’t told her anything yet about the surge or the sea forest or—”
“Tomorrow. You can tell her anything you like tomorrow.”
Una practiced a pout and a flounce on her way out the door. Emma smiled faintly as she caught Griff’s eyes. Apparently even a mythical beast was capable of behaving like an average thirteen-year-old when the mood struck her.
He smiled back, and Emma stiffened.
He knew she would be softened by seeing the child. He knew her. She was being manipulated. Again.
Her smile faded. “What are you?” she whispered.
He reached into the hall for something. His sealskin. Her breath caught as he tossed it onto her bed, as the rich, dark fur spilled over the frame and onto the cold stone floor. “I am that,” he said.
He crossed to stand in front of her, opening his arms until she was compelled to look at him, forced to acknowledge him, his strong, hard face and broad, furred chest and overwhelming maleness. Her heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She could feel the heat of his body.
“And I am this,” he said in his deep voice. “I have not changed, lass. Nothing has changed.”
She took a step back. “Rubbish,” she said in her farmer father’s voice. Judgmental. Accusing. She hated sounding this way. She hated feeling this way. But she could not help herself. “Unless by ‘nothing has changed’ you mean I’ve been living in a fantasy world all along.”
Griff’s arms fell to his sides. “It was no fantasy, lass.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “You’re a seal.”
“A selkie. Aye.”
Anger rose inside her, warming, burning. She did not want to feel it. She did not want to feel. The cold numbness hurt less than this. But she was furious with him. And with herself, for allowing her feelings to betray her into accepting an impossible situation. For trusting him. For loving—
No.
“Forgive me if I don’t see the difference,” she said.
“Seals are animals. Selkies are elementals. We are the children of the sea, formed when God brought the waters of the world into being, the first fruits of His creation.”
“Not human.”
“No.”
“Not…mortal?”
Griff hesitated. “We can be killed. But we do not die as your kind understands death. As long as our bodies, our sealskins, return to the water, we are reborn again in the sea.”
Emma’s legs refused to support her any longer. She sank down on the bed. The first fruits of God’s creation…
“How old are you?”
“There are older among us,” he answered carefully.
Not lying, Emma thought bitterly. Just not telling her everything. “How old?” she insisted.
“Two thousand years,” he admitted. “Give or take twenty.”
She sat dumbly, her blood roaring in her ears.
“Our people are of two kinds,” he continued, “sea born and blood born, those brought into being at the first creation and those born of a union between male and female, mortal and immortal. My mother was human. I can still give you children, Emma.”
That roused her. She raised her head and glared at him. “Oh, no, you cannot. I’m not letting you touch me.”
