Matt’s arm was broken and his cheek was horrifying and Jack had been insufferable for weeks now and Maggie couldn’t take either of them anymore.
So she’d made a decision.
Was it the right one?
Probably not.
Did it help with either the Jack or the Matty situation?
Well, given that Jack could now add ‘tried to fight Thor’ to his resume, and given the way that Matt had come to her, seriously concerned that someone was stalking him and determined that she needed to apply safety precautions to her life generally: no.
No, it had helped no one.
Maggie held her face in her hands and groaned as quietly as she could through her fingers.
She’d hoped--she’d hoped--that Steve Rogers and his ilk would understand what the word ‘discretion’ meant. Everything she’d ever read or heard about him and them had suggested that they were professionals (and by God, her family needed nothing less than professionals) but she’d forgotten that humans were humans, enhanced or no.
Exhausting.
She needed to stop with the deal-making bullshit. It was only bad news.
“Matty,” she said, “I need you to take a deep breath.”
Not on his life would he do that.
“Matt,” she warned.
For a man with enhanced hearing, he was sure shit at listening.
“Matt,” she snapped.
The sputtering and flailing halted immediately.
“I’m not in danger,” she said. “You’re in danger.”
She could practically hear Jack crowing in righteousness from where she’d locked him in her room. She scowled. He wasn’t allowed to be right. They’d had this conversation daily for the last twenty years. Giving in to him, even from afar, tasted bitter.
“I’m always in danger,” Matt said with the cock of his head and no regard for the bruises at the top of his throat. “That’s kind of my gig.”
What had she done to be given the stupidest pup in the seven seas?
“Fisk is dangerous, Matthew,” she told him as patiently as she could.
She knew he didn’t get it. But it was her moral obligation, as a nun and his mother, to at least give him a fighting chance here.
“Yes? And?” Matt drawled.
She sighed.
“Matty,” she said firmly. “Who broke your arm?”
“Me. And Jess, but mostly by association. I’m blaming her, though. She knows this.”
“Maidíu.”
Matt grimaced.
“Jess,” he insisted. “It was her. All her.”
“Do I look like a fool, son?”
“Well, I wouldn’t kn—”
“Do I look like a fool, son?”
Matt fidgeted. Picked at the edge of the plaster of his cast.
“No, Mum,” he submitted.
Damn right.
“Sorry, Mum.”
These children. Running around. Forgetting themselves in front of their elders. Ridiculous.
“Who broke your arm?” Maggie pressed, not missing the way that Matt suddenly had an interest in everything in the room but her.
He mumbled something.
Uh-huh.
“He’ll kill you next time, Matty,” she said. “He’s gathering many of our kind. You’re not strong enough to stand in the face of them as well as him. You’re too human.”
Matt’s jaw worked and he still didn’t try to find her face.
“No one else is doing anything, though,” he murmured.
This boy.
Lord help her and this boy.
“It’s not your job to solve every one of Hell’s Kitchen’s problems,” she said.
Matt’s fingernails were stained with dried blood in places. They needed a nail brush. They’d get one after this conversation was through.
She looked up and watched his shoulders slump.
“No one else is doing anything,” Matt repeated.
“He’ll kill you, Matty.”
They could have this conversation for hours and nothing would change.
“Maybe this is how I have to die, then,” Matt sighed.
It wasn’t.
“He didn’t use to have the fae,” Maggie said. “Where is he getting the fae?”
Matt chewed a lip.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Jess is looking into it. They’re her kind so far. Mum.”
She didn’t like the sound of that.
“I think he might have the Sight,” Matt said, shivering.
Of course he did.
“Mum, can he—would he—can people with the Sight see me?”
Unclear. Possibly. It depended on the person’s sight and it depended on the time of the month for Matt. The closer he was to his natural shift, the more fae he’d appear, even if he couldn’t follow through all the way.
He was getting there now. He wasn’t talking back as much or saying a whole lot. He was repeating himself and squeezing things with his hands.
It was never Maggie who had been unsafe.
“If he can see me, what does that mean?” Matt asked quietly.
It didn’t matter. What mattered most was that Matt’s name stayed away from Mr. Wilson Fisk’s brainwaves. Period. End of story.
“Guard your name, selkie-child,” she told her son. “And don’t you worry about me. Take your Da with you for the next week.”
Matt didn’t want to. But he wasn’t in a position to refuse.
Jack was a very useful spirit at the moment, even if he wasn’t quite at the point of being able to take physical form yet.
He was still very useful.
He quieted the especially grumpy babies in Maggie’s care while she looked after the slightly older ones and he played friendly poltergeist with the older kids by leaving little gifts and knickknacks in places where they didn’t belong.
Nothing malignant. Mostly just feathers and pebbles and the like.
When he wasn’t doing that, he was often sleeping or looking after Matt as much as Matt would allow himself to be looked after. And until he got his physical form back, he acted as one of Maggie’s marks, which she had to say, was one of his most useful qualities.
This was because while Matt had a soft spot for his father and would usually put up with an above-average amount of fussing from him from time to time, he was less tolerant of Maggie putting her markers on him to tell other fae to clear off.
He claimed it was embarrassing to still have his mother’s marks wrapped all around him all the time. He was too old for that shit, he said.
This was a standard pup complaint though, so she generally elected to ignore it.
She was glad that Matt had largely resigned himself to her ignoring his whining because it meant that, while she had a word with Matt’s ‘stalkers,’ Jack could convince him to stay in place long enough to give that broken arm a rest. If need be, he could also deter whatever unfortunate soul got it in its head to make Matty its target for the day.
So long as it was fae.
If it was human, then Matt would be on his own.
And here was where the ‘stalkers’ were really fucking this dog and pony show up.
She’d found an elder for the cúsidhe. It hadn’t taken much. The elder had moved up away from the city and into the forests where people were more cognizant of the fact that they were sharing space with worlds they did not always know.
She was touched and honored to have been reached. She said she would take responsibility for the young cúsidhe and would evaluate his situation to see what further action would need to be taken.
She agreed to meet with James Buchanan and came away from their meeting calling him ‘nothin’ less than a doll.’
This was Maggie’s end of the deal completed. She’d fulfilled all her promises. James Buchanan Barnes was now among his people again and apparently working fastidiously to build a repertoire of favor and respect among the forest and prairie folk since there were no moors for him to wander at the moment.
The forest wanted another cúsidhe. They liked the one they had. They liked how legends of baying and howling brought more and more curious people into the forest. The more people who came, the more incidents could be had. The more unexplainable incidents that happened, the more stories were made.
The roots of legends came in such stories.
And through all of this, respect was paid to the creatures that lived in those woods.
Now it was time for James Buchanan and his bondmate to uphold their end of the bargain.
“Lady, have you met your kid?” James Buchanan asked immediately with the gratefulness of a newly bathed cub. “Just trackin’ him is a task and a half.”
She shouldn’t have been as pleased about that as she was.
“He knows you’re all chasing him. It’s giving him anxiety. I asked you to be discreet,” she said.
“We’re tryin’,” Steven said. “Not tryin’ to scare him, ma’am, I promise. But getting close enough to protect him is complicated.”
“He fights right here,” James Buchanan said with his fist balled about a foot away from his chest. “There’s no way to be discreet when you’re yankin’ someone away that close to someone else’s face.”
Maggie sighed.
“Maybe there’s a different way to do this?” Samuel asked gently, coming up from his thoughtful perch on a metal post on the side of the roof’s viewing alcove.
“Such as?” Maggie asked him.
“Maybe we can talk to him, get him to understand what’s going on here so he’s a little less jittery about the whole thing?” Samuel offered.
Maggie tried desperately to imagine Matt being approached with this information and handling it in any other way than sheer terror and embarrassment.
She could hear the whining already.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said. “Matthew’s had a difficult upbringing, I’m sorry to say. He struggles with frank communication.”
He wouldn’t speak to her for months if he found out a deal had been made in his name without him knowing.
“Alright, well. Why don’t we approach him and ask if he needs help then?” Samuel tried. “We can say that we’ve heard someone big is getting into some trouble around these parts and we want to help him handle the situation.”
That would be good except for the part where Matt trusted no one as far as he could throw them and he’d be immediately suspicious if big-shots like Captain America came and found him for what was ostensibly a Hell’s Kitchen problem.
“Alright, so we’ll send JB in then,” Samuel said. “You said your kid knows Nelson, right? And he was ready to jump down Buck’s throat over the whole flute situation? If we send Buck and have him say he’s just tryin’ to make things right with Nelson, then that’ll be at least plausible, won’t it?”
Well…
Maybe.
“Once he trusts Buck, then me and Steve can hop on, since we are kind of a package deal at this point, and he’d be none the wiser. We could keep an eye on him until whatever this shit is passes.”
She wasn’t so sure.
Matt was smart as the devil himself. And he was used to playing mind games.
But the alternative was more anxiety and hand wringing, and that in turn would make Jack only more insufferable than he already was, which was all bad news in Maggie-land.
“Do what you think you must,” she said.
Matthew came to her in a panic, worried out of his mind because he’d run into Captain America that night.
Captain America, he told her, had the Sight.
“He saw me, I think,” he said anxiously, digging fingers unknowingly into his cast. He realized he was doing it and wrapped his arms over his chest, breathing shakily. “He gasped. I heard it. I--What if—what if he’s working for—what if he’s working for—”
The stutter was a sign that the last thing Matt needed at the moment was to be running around in the horns. He needed to sleep. To have a bath, take some painkillers, and sleep.
“He’s not working for Fisk,” she said. “Fisk wouldn’t hire someone like Captain America, son. You’re not thinking clearly. This is all below water, remember?”
Matt settled somewhat under her hand and nodded lightly after a long silence.
“You’re tired, it’s too close to your shift,” she told him. “Take tomorrow and the weekend off. Sleep.”
Matt’s fingers twitched at the mention and he scowled.
“I can’t,” he said. “Fisk’s gathered two more pixies. Or rather, two have gone missing at least. Jess says everyone at the hive is looking for them and she can’t find them anywhere.”
That was bad.
But, as unfortunate as it felt to say it. They were still just pixies.
The real problems would come when Fisk started to go for bigger fish. Such as, oh, say. A selkie. Or even a half one.
“Go home. Sleep,” she said. “The pixies will find their folk.”
“He’s got to be doing something to them,” Matt said. “They aren’t even responding to the cries of their people.”
“Matty.”
“He’s getting bolder, Mum.”
“Matty. Come. Let’s pray.”
Matt sagged and stopped picking at his cast. He followed her when she tugged at his coat sleeve.
She understood that what had happened was a mistake. A fluke. Steven was still upset and apologetic, however.
“It’s okay,” she said absently.
Ever since she’d heard of the two pixies, her chest had felt warm. Like indigestion, but hotter.
She felt like she knew what was going on here. She just needed to be sure before jumping into something stupid and un-nunlike.
“Are you sure?” Steven asked her. She looked up and realized that there were three sets of eyes on her now. James Buchanan’s left eye flickered between gray and gold. She wondered if he knew he was doing it. Probably not. But he could probably smell a lie.
“The man who’s doing this has likely snatched two fae,” she said. “My pup thinks that you are working for him. He is worried that this person is gathering people with the Sight to help him target victims.”
Steven cringed and dropped his eyes.
“I couldn’t see him very well,” he admitted. “Not like you, if that’s any comfort. He’s more like a—uh—”
Maggie felt her back stiffen with sudden interest.
She didn’t know how much of the Sight Steven had been granted, but if Fisk had the Sight or the Sense, then knowing how Matt appeared was beyond important.
“What does he look like to you?” she asked carefully. “Can you tell me?”
Steven rubbed a couple of knuckles against his bottom lip.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to explain.”
“What do I look like to you?” Maggie asked, trying to be calm and not let the urgency of the question leak into her tone.
James Buchanan and Samuel both watched Steven carefully, as though measuring his anxiety with their eyes. They were protective of him, both of them were. It was nice to see. A human and fae working together to support someone.
“You have…” Steven met her eye. “Black eyes. And spots. Like—” he made a flicking gesture at his face with his hand as though he was shaking water off it. “All over.”
Interesting.
“What color is my coat?” she asked.
Steven blinked in surprise.
“Brown? Black? Spotted?” He tried.
“Marbled,” Maggie said patiently, giving this boy a word to use for in answer to her next question. “When you saw Matthew, what did he look like to you?”
Steven frowned.
“He’s.” He paused. Frowned harder. “He’s not marbled,” he said. “He’s—I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell, everything’s always moving and it was dark, but he’s—I think he’s mostly brown?”
Hmmm.
Shit.
“I need you to meet with someone,” she said.
Foggy was understandably hesitant, but a quick explanation got him on board anyways.
He understood. Though an annoying child, he’d grown up to be quick as a whip and sharp as a knife. His name was rising in circles because of that, whether he wanted it to or not.
“If Fisk can see Matt, then he’s not trying to kill him, he’s trying to catch him,” Foggy said.
“If Matthew appears to those with the Sight as a selkie, then Fisk won’t know he’s missing his coat,” Maggie said. “He’ll try to make him shift. If he forces Matt to shift without his coat, it’ll kill him. And if he throws him into the water mid-shift, he’ll be drawn to the sea and drown.”
Foggy dragged hands through his hair and pursed his lips.
“There was supposed to be no hunting in New York,” he said quietly.
Oh, child of the island.
Nowhere is as safe as those shores.
Putting Foggy in a room with Steven and James and Sam was strangely awkward.
Foggy had worked with all of these people before, but never like this. And never, in his whole life, should anyone have asked him to show these unfamiliar bodies his true shape.
He was excellent at glimmers, Foggy. That Steven hadn’t noticed anything off about him prior to that moment was a testament to that.
But times were dire.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Samuel asked Foggy as Maggie set the last precautionary ward into the door of the office. She could smell Matt’s light scent in the place, but she knew that he and Jack were playing a fun game called ‘that’s not where that goes, Dad, stop cleaning things’ back in Matt’s apartment.
Foggy said nothing.
He wouldn’t.
Not when an older selkie was in the room.
He’d been raised traditionally like that.
“He’s agreed to do this,” she said to the confused looks thrown her way. She pulled away from the door and clasped her cold fingers in front of her.
“He won’t speak to you until I ask him to,” she said. “But he understands that this is important. It is uncomfortable, you’ll understand, to have your secrets drawn out this way. But,” she made eye contact with Foggy who met her gaze for a second before averting his eyes. “He cares deeply for my son.”
James Buchanan frowned hard. His gold eye carried no shadows in it, so when his gaze slipped slowly from Foggy to the empty office door on the left hand side of the room, it brought everyone else’s attention with it.
“Oh,” Steven breathed quietly.
Samuel’s eyebrows shot up and he jerked his face back towards Foggy. Foggy firmed his jaw and refused to meet anyone’s eye.
James Buchanan let out a slow breath.
“Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess,” he said. “But—”
“He’s blind,” Maggie said before any nonsense could start up. “It happened when he was very young. He’s lived without sight for longer than he’s lived with it. That is not the issue at hand here.”
The silence that answered her felt cloying.
“Stiofán,” she said. “I need you to focus and tell me what you see of Foggy.”
Steven blinked and looked quizzically at Foggy. Foggy’s shoulders remained rigid. Steven cocked his head slightly.
“White?” he asked.
Foggy took a harsh breath and asked Maggie with his eyes if he should allow this further. She nodded at him.
“Go on,” she told Steve. “What else?”
Steven twisted his head the other way and took a step forward.
He froze.
“Can I?” he asked Maggie.
“Can you?” she said.
“Come closer?” he asked.
She deferred to Foggy.
He clenched his jaw.
That was an unhappy yes.
“Go on,” she said.
Steven was made uncomfortable by the clear distrust Foggy was putting off, but he slowly took a couple more steps so that he was only a few feet away from Foggy.
“You have spots?” he asked. “Black—grey? Dark ones? Around your face, but only on this side. They look like—”
“I can’t do this,” Foggy interrupted, breathlessly.
“I’m really sorry,” Steven said over the sound of Foggy retching in the office’s toilet.
“It’s not your fault,” Maggie said.
“I didn’t mean—is he okay?”
He would be in the long run.
“What exactly happened just now?” Samuel asked. “I feel like I’m a little out of the loop.”
“He’s anxious is all,” Maggie said. “It’s intensely uncomfortable to be seen by a human without your permission. Describe him for me again,” she told Steven. “As much as you can.”
Steven saw a white seal, he said. A white seal with a bit of mottled gray in its coat and a few spots on the right side of the its head and sides. They blossomed out in only a couple places, like a carnation dipped in ink and used as a stamp. Like flowers, Steve said.
“What else did you see?” Maggie pressed. “Was there anything between the face you’re used to and the seal?”
Foggy had a dual human form. Not everyone needed them. Most selkies’ human shapes passed well enough among real humans. But Foggy specifically, as a harp seal, was too pale to escape notice. He wore a glimmer over top of that shape which brought more saturation and warmth to his face.
Steven shook his head.
“I just saw the seal,” he said. “And hair, I guess? His hair looked a bit different.”
“How?” Maggie asked.
“It was just, maybe lighter?” Steven tried. “I’m sorry, it’s not very clear.”
No, no.
That was fine.
That was good.
Actually, no.
That was bad. Really bad.
The Cap trio went home. Maggie and Foggy stayed behind, thinking. Or in Foggy’s case, sipping at ginger tea and working through the nausea.
“Why should Fisk have the Sight?” he asked quietly. “Why would the land and sea give that to him? What’s he done to earn it?”
Foggy was a bright spirit who’d grown up in a community surrounded by bright, if mischievous, and benign, if antagonistic spirits. New York was not so kind as the island. It never had been.
“There is darkness in the world that balances out the light,” she told him as gently as possible. “Darkness rewards its own just as lightness rewards us.”
Foggy lifted his eyes, too upset to bother with the extra glimmer.
“I made a promise to Matt,” he said.
“I know,” Maggie told him.
“I’m not ready to make good on it. And definitely not because of Wilson Fisk.”
She knew. She knew.
“What do we do?” Foggy breathed.
She sucked in air and let it out slowly, playing through all of the scenarios in her mind. Her heart remained as hot as ever.
“We tell Matt,” she said.
Matt was curled up in Foggy’s coat in his bed. He slept in it like he’d once slept in Maggie’s. Like he’d once slept in his own.
Jack had been convinced that he’d suffocate for years. He’d developed a nervous habit (one among many) of checking on Matt’s breathing a few times before he himself fell asleep.
Back then, Matt hadn’t woken up. Now, he lifted his head at the creak of a floorboard to soft for either she or Foggy to hear.
“Mum?” he asked.
“Matty, get up,” she said. “We need to talk.”
Matty clenched and unclenched his hands on his knees, thinking. Thinking. Thinking.
“He has to know,” he said. “We’ve been playing this cat and mouse game for years. He has to know. And he’s angry. So he’s acting on it now.”
He would kill Matt. Without a doubt. He’d either catch Matt and use him and kill him or he’d plough through fae until he found one or many of them that were willing to do it for him.
“You can’t fight him in these circumstances,” Maggie said. “He must be reading. He’ll find out about the fire folk soon enough.”
And her pup would burn on a shore as they did in the old days. Only he’d have no coat to cover him as he was swept off into the tide. His skin would be cold and his body would be battered apart before the sea spirits collected it.
Horrible.
Matt swallowed. Jack’s pale shape slipped off the window sill where he was keeping guard and settled in next to Matt on the floor. He swept a hand through his hair and pulled Matt’s cheek into his shoulder.
“Matt,” Foggy whispered. “What are we going to do?”
Matt was struggling to think of something. The only times he’d escaped Wilson Fisk’s radars so far were when he’d been presumed dead. Otherwise, Fisk set himself to plucking the strings of the people around him. Trying to find the right one which would make Matt sing.
Little did he know that Matt couldn’t sing for shit.
“I’ll—I’ll make a deal with him,” Matt whispered.
Jack wrapped his other arm all the way around him and leaned his cheekbone on against Matt’s head.
“No deals,” he said. “You’re human, remember?”
Matt closed his eyes, then pushed out of Jack’s grip until he was sitting up on his own again.
“I’ve been human,” he said. “But Fisk can’t use me as a human. He can only use me as a fae. If I cut a deal with him and say that I could be one of his fae if he finds my coat, then that’ll buy us some time to help the others get back to their people.”
Maggie’s child would die before he put himself first. He would burn on the shore if it meant others walked free.
It was his way, even if it was infuriating.
“He won’t find the thing,” Matt added, as though sensing Maggie’s irritation. “And as long as he can’t find it, we’ll be locked in a stalemate.”
“But what if he does?” Foggy asked. “Sister Maggie says he might have gotten his Sight through spirits of darkness. So what if--?”
What if those spirits knew where the coat was?
And what would they give to see a selkie dragged down to their level and converted into one of their own?
Maggie hadn’t heard of it happening before. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a possibility. And given this particular person’s sense of right, wrong, and balance, she wouldn’t put it past him to pursue that sequence of events.
Jack said nothing. But whatever he wasn’t saying, he was sharing with Matt because Matt had closed fingers around the wrist of the hand that had come around him again to thumb lightly at his cheek.
“I’m scared,” he said to his father, as though there was no one else in the room with them.
“Don’t be scared,” Jack told him.
“I always wanted to be like you,” Matt mumbled, leaning into Jack’s palm.
“You’re plenty like me,” Jack said a smile. “Worryingly like me.”
Matt huffed a little laugh.
“It’s okay to just be you,” Jack said.
Matt clutched at his hand.
“I don’t know who I am,” he said.
“No, but you know where you need to start,” Jack hummed.
Matt opened his eyes again and tried to find Jack’s. Jack caught his chin to give him some help.
“You were always meant to be more than me, baby,” he said.
Matt’s eyes flicked down and settled there on something no one could see.
“Fisk can’t find my coat if I find it first,” he said, pulling Jack’s hand away from his face.
Foggy leaned back in shock. Maggie’s heart did something confusing.
“Matt,” she said.
“I’m tired of the waxing and waning,” Matt said.
“The sea spirits will ask you for something,” Foggy warned him. “It’s going to be big.”
“Can’t be bigger than my life,” Matt pointed out.
And well.
He wasn’t wrong there.
“You know I’ve wanted this for you for ages, but I don’t want you to do it if it’s going to hurt you,” Foggy said.
Matt considered this, slowly rubbing his thumb against a cracked knuckle.
“Whatever they ask will hurt me,” he said. “But I’m already hurting. And nothing’s changed since I gave it away to begin with, except that now, people are hurting because of me. I thought I could escape the exchanges as a human, Fogs. But all I’ve learned is that when it’s possible to give without taking and take without giving, humans will almost always just take until they can’t anymore.”
He nudged Jack’s shoulder lightly.
“Nothin’ against you, Dad,” he clarified quietly.
Jack chuffed a little in amusement.
“If you’re serious about this, Matthew, then we need to start working now,” Maggie said, unfolding herself. “If the spirits ask you to complete a task, it could take months. Years, even.”
Matt straightened his spine.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
“Depends,” Maggie said. “You want the coat in hand before you make the offer or after? If you have it early, it becomes a target. The deal might not seal if you aren’t truthful when you make it. Which is fine, if you want to be an ass about it, but problematic if he can tell that it’s not sealed.”
Matt pursed his lips and deferred to Foggy.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Foggy startled.
“What, I get a say in this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Matt said.
Foggy balked.
“Of course,” he repeated. “Yeah, of course—what are you talking about? I never get a say in any of this. Who are you? Where’s my mate?”
Matt laughed.
“I’m a new man, Fogs,” he said. “Maybe even a new seal. I think you’ve earned having a say in my idiocy at this point.”
Foggy puffed himself up, pleased and trying not to show it.
“I think we’ve got to make a case out of it,” Foggy said. “Get all our ducks in a row before going in for the deal.”
“You want to do research,” Matt said flatly. “God. I should have known. You always want to do research.”
“I want to be responsible,” Foggy corrected forcefully. “And being responsible means reading the fine print. Sir. Fellow attorney, sir.”
Matt sneered.
“How do you research how to get a coat back?” he demanded. “What, are we gonna talk to the sea and make a checklist of pros and cons, Fogs?”
Foggy jerked up his chin defiantly.
“Yes,” he said, “Yes, we are. And if we’re gonna do it, we’ve got to do it right, which means that we’ve got to—”
“—Go back to the island,” Matt groaned.
Foggy was pleased as peaches.
He beamed triumphantly at Maggie.
She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about this all. Matt had been miserable when he’d given up his coat. He’d been sick. He’d been exhausted. He’d been literally inconsolable.
Having it back—having her selkie-child back again—it was strange. Just the thought was strange. She’d wanted so badly for him to have that choice as a wee one. She’d kept him so far away from everyone to make sure he’d have the opportunity and Jack had put up with so much baby seal bullshit that no human could or should have ever been expected to.
Their lives had always been in limbo around their child’s identity. And at least when he’d chosen to be human, for good and for real, that turbulence had been over. Things had lined up, not neatly, but in a semblance of order, for the first time in ages.
But.
At the same time.
It wasn’t her choice.
Never had been. Never would be.
And if the choice here was between her pup drowning or burning under a human’s filthy hand or living the life she’d found herself trapped in, then there was no choice here at all.
“You’ll need more than just Foggy with you if you go back to the island,” she said. “You’re going to need as much help as you can get.”