Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

  He wanted more than that.

  “With your life here on the island,” he said.

  Her chin firmed. “I am content. I am doing work I love with children I am coming to care for.”

  She would always, he thought, make the best of any situation. She was by turns fierce and determined, pragmatic and kind. Conn had chosen her well for her role as teacher of Sanctuary’s children. Griff had chosen well.

  The thought depressed him.

  “And that is enough for you.” His tone made the statement not quite a question.

  Emma did not answer.

  Griff tried again. “You said once you dreamed of a home and family of your own.”

  “I dream about seals.”

  His breath stopped. “What?”

  She gave an embarrassed half laugh. “I’ve been dreaming about North Devon. Not the farm, or my family. But walking the sea cliffs where I grew up, watching the seals on the beach below. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Not so strange, given that you spend your nights under a sealskin.” His sealskin. Did she ever dream of him?

  “Is that what the fur on my bed is?” Her face clouded. “Poor seal.”

  “It gave its pelt to keep you warm.”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “But they are such beautiful creatures.”

  “Emma.” He paused, searching for words, for reasons that would convince her. “Conn is well pleased with your work. The children like you. If a ship comes—when a ship comes—you do not have to leave.”

  She regarded him steadily with her big blue eyes. “Would that be enough for you?” she asked, echoing him. “If I stayed for the sake of Lord Conn and the children?”

  It had to be.

  Among the children of the sea, alliances and affections were fleeting. Selkies might mate, but few pairings sustained for centuries.

  Yet Emma, in the way of her kind, sought assurances. Commitment.

  So Griff told the truth.

  “I want you to stay,” he said. “I miss you. One time only we had, and I cannot stop thinking about you. I have not had another woman since that night.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and he wondered if truthfulness was perhaps a mistake. Human ways were different. Emma was different.

  “I do not want another woman ever,” he added carefully. “Only you.”

  She tipped her head to one side. “Griff, are you…courting me?”

  He held her gaze. “If that’s what it takes to have you, aye.”

  “Well, then.” Her smile danced across her face like sunlight on the sea. His heart turned over in his chest. “I suppose I will stay.”

  SIX

  A home and a family of my own.

  Emma stood on the tumbled shore as the wind whipped the waves to froth and chased the clouds like whitecaps across the sky. The castle on the cliffs reared at her back. She watched her pupils straggle in and around the tide pools, gathering mussels for dinner. Iestyn gazed out to sea with a pensive expression, the breeze snatching at his rags. Roth chased Una and another girl across the rocky beach, waving broad strands of kelp like battle flags.

  The students were not really her children. She did not really belong here.

  But after several weeks, Sanctuary felt curiously like the home she had always longed for.

  Because of Griff. His attention made her feel appreciated, supported, accepted.

  Loved.

  Emma wrapped her arms about her waist, hugging her happiness to her. He had promised to join them on the beach this afternoon after his meeting with Conn. Emma could not imagine what the two men spent their time talking about. Most lords and stewards discussed land and tenants, livestock and crops. But the island appeared as poorly populated as the castle. She saw no old people and no very young ones. The hills and heaths produced nothing but wild oats and apples, and the only animals she saw, beyond the teeming colonies of seabirds, were small brown wild sheep.

  It did not matter. Griff saw to it that she and the children were fed.

  Emma had met her employer exactly twice, once when Conn had offered her the post of teacher, and again when she informed him of her decision to stay. The lord of Sanctuary was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, with hair the sleek blue black of a mussel shell and eyes the color of rain.

  He was also the coldest.

  However, he told her, in his polite and formal way, that he was pleased to have her here and offered her the princely salary of forty pounds a year. Emma did not see how this bare estate could afford such a sum. But then, she couldn’t imagine how she was to spend it living on this island, either.

  Griff told her she had only to ask for anything she wanted. The island, he said, traded for what it needed and could not produce. And despite the noticeable lack of a harbor and his earlier warning about transport lines, Emma noticed there were frequent visitors to Sanctuary. She glimpsed them sometimes in the hall or the corridors that led to Conn’s tower: broad-chested men and women with a great deal of bosom showing. Once she looked up from her teaching to find a woman watching her from the back of the classroom, a woman with Iestyn’s golden eyes and a silver chain like Griff’s about her neck.

  For the most part, however, the castle visitors paid little attention to Emma. Clearly, a mere schoolteacher was beneath their notice. And she paid little mind to them. She preferred to concentrate on her students, her students and Griff, shoving away the occasional awareness, a growing sense that something was not quite…normal about her full, satisfying, productive life.

  She hugged her elbows tighter against a sudden chill.

  Foam burst against the rocks and drained away, revealing the white bones of barnacles and a spill of scarlet weed like blood.

  Along the water’s edge, the girls laughed and shrieked as Roth chased them with the flapping kelp. Their screams mingled with the call of the gulls. And then the tenor of their voices changed, became cries of alarm. Distress.

  Dread shivered along Emma’s arms. She shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun, squinting down the beach. Something was wrong. Una—

  Emma began running, her boots clattering and sliding over the rocks, even before the girl screamed and fell to the ground.

  The children stood like sheep around the body writhing at the water’s edge. Una shrieked again, clutching her stomach, her lips drawn back in pain.

  Emma’s stomach rocketed to her throat. “It’s all right, my dear. You’re all right.”

  But she wasn’t.

  Una screamed again, panting like a woman in childbirth, gasping, guttural breaths that ripped at Emma’s heart. Beneath her simple dress, her body undulated. Heaved. A seam split, and fur, pale, brindled fur, poured through the opening.

  God. Dear God. The girl was being swallowed alive, consumed by the beast coiling under her gown.

  Emma dropped to her knees, fumbling in her pocket for the knife Griff had given to her. Una hissed. The children swayed and pressed closer with pale faces and glittering eyes.

  “Get help!” Emma yelled at them. “Get Griff!”

  Una moaned and clutched at her. Her nails drew blood.

  Emma yanked the knife from its sheath. But she could not see where the girl ended and the beast began, could not risk plunging the blade through the straining fabric into the shifting mass where the girl’s legs should be.

  Sobbing in terror, she slid the knife through the garment’s seams, ripping Una free from the constricting cloth.

  “Warden’s coming!” Iestyn shouted.

  Thank God. Emma spared a glance from Una’s twisting body.

  Griff charged—naked, a shock among all the other shocks—from the direction of the castle, a dark bundle in his arms. A blanket? A cover. The fur cover from her bed.

  Emma’s jaw dropped.

  He ran barefoot over the rocks, muscled legs flexing, broad shoulders gleaming, until he reached the edge of the sea. His strong feet gripped the rock. His arms extended over his head. Just for a moment, his gaze met Emma’s, hi
s eyes dark and fathomless, churning with emotion.

  The fur swirled over his shoulders.

  The air shimmered with mist.

  And on the beach where he had stood, a gray bull seal reared on the rocks.

  Shock slammed through Emma, exploded in her chest, burst in her head. Her vision dimmed. She cried out in loss and denial.

  No. Dear God, please, God, no.

  Una wriggled in her arms.

  Shuddering, Emma glanced down—at the whiskered face, the round, brown eyes, the fat, sleek form of a young seal.

  No, no, no, no, noo….

  She sat helpless, stunned, as a wave washed up and wet her skirt, as the children crowded around her, as the bull seal herded the young cow into the sea.

  Leaving Emma kneeling on the shore, clutching the tatters of Una’s gown and the shreds of her own illusions.

  A candle burned, quiet against the dark. A single yellow flame against the starless night outside Emma’s window, against the smothering numbness of her soul.

  She had already cried—well, bawled, really—as she had not cried since that night in Griff’s arms. The memory of his tenderness nearly set her off again.

  But eventually her tears were done, gone, leaving her wrung out and hollow, and there was nothing left, not shock or sorrow or fear or pride. Only this cold emptiness.

  How could she not have known? How could she not have questioned? Blinded by happiness and her own desires, she had seen only what she wanted to see. She had made assumptions about Griff. About their future.

  Just as she had with Paul.

  She was a fool. But how could she possibly have imagined…this?

  She shuddered and closed her eyes.

  There were legends around the islands of Scotland and the Cornish coast, stories of beautiful creatures with powerful sexual allure who took the form of men and women on land and the form of seals in the sea, tales made up to while away a long winter evening in front of the fire—or justify an unexplained pregnancy.

  Any village girl reluctant to name a married man as the father of her baby could claim she had been seduced by a stranger from the sea. Of course, everyone in the village knew such girls were foolish, deluded. Mad.

  But now…

  Emma had proved herself as foolish, as deluded, as any one of them. She could be the girl abandoned onshore while her belly swelled with…what?

  She had seen with her own eyes what Una had become. And Griff.

  She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. She would almost have preferred to be crazy. Instead, she was bereft, betrayed. Alone in the dark.

  Alone.

  Griff had deceived her. The man she loved—had trusted with her body and her heart and her future—was not really a man at all.

  The door whispered open behind her. She felt his presence before she opened her eyes, like a rise in the temperature of the room or a weight pressing on her chest.

  “The first Change is hard,” Griff said quietly in his deep, burred voice. “Even when they know, even when they are prepared for it.”

  Emma turned to face him, afraid of what she might find. Dismayed by what she felt for him. Still.

  He stood just inside the doorway, watching her in the dark, his eyes gleaming in the light of the single candle. Animal eyes, she thought.

  “I was not prepared,” she said.

  He winced. “No.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He cleared his throat. “There was no time—”

  “You had weeks.” Her voice rose on the word. She was almost shrieking. If she were not careful, she would start screaming, and then she might never stop. She gripped her hands tightly together at her waist. “Weeks of me living here, teaching here, talking with you—”

  Loving you, she thought but did not say.

  “You should have told me,” she finished bitterly.

  “Aye.” He shifted, as if he were suddenly uncomfortable in his big, graceful body. “But I wanted you to stay.”

  Oh. A fissure opened in her heart.

  She ignored it. She didn’t want to fall into that chasm, into the emptiness and the dark.

  “Where is Una?” she asked. “How is she?”

  “She is well. As you can see.” He moved aside from the door, and Una, bright-eyed and pale, rushed into the room and flung her arms around Emma.

  Almost, Emma recoiled. But this was Una, a child, not a monster. A pretty adolescent who stumbled over fractions and flirted with Iestyn and had lent Emma her comb.

  Her arms came up automatically to embrace the girl as Una turned her head against Emma’s chest, her arms tight around Emma’s waist.

  Emma found it difficult to breathe.

  “The first time is hard,” Griff repeated. “They—we must generate our skins from within ourselves, the first time. But the change becomes easier with practice.”

  Easier for whom? Emma thought.

  As if he heard her thought, Griff’s mouth tightened.

  “I was glad you were there,” Una said against Emma’s dress front.

  Emma stroked the girl’s dark curls. “I’m glad, too.” Remembering the child’s screams, how could she feel otherwise? And yet…“I wish I had known how to help you.”

  “You held me. And the warden brought me back.” Una looked at him, her eyes shining. “The land beneath the waves…It was wonderful.”

  Emma had a sudden, uncomfortable vision of Griff’s big body crowding Una into the sea.

  Griff met her gaze stolidly. “The young ones need a guide the first time out. The call of the sea is strong in us. They must learn to find their way back to Sanctuary and human form.”

  They must find their way back.

  Yes.

  Only sometimes the things said and unsaid, the spoken lies and unuttered promises, formed an insurmountable barrier.

  “Sometimes,” Emma said, with a catch at the heart she refused to acknowledge, “there is no going back.”

  “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.”

  “Because I revolt you.”

  “No!”

  She saw the faint easing of tension in his muscles, the subtle relaxation of his lips, and hated herself for her ready response, for her vulnerability, for her honesty.

  Hated him for making her feel.

  Because he did not revolt her. Far from it.

  “A relationship between us is impossible. You must see that. I’ll get old and wrinkled and die, and you’ll always be…” She flapped her hand at him, one gesture encompassing his strength, his immortality, his perfect masculine physique. “Like this.”

  Griff took her hand. Held it, despite her attempts to tug away. “Not always. The island’s magic keeps us young. That’s why our children are fostered in human families and why they take so long to mature once we bring them here. But outside of Sanctuary, we age as humans do, for as long as we are in human form.”