“Well, I would say partly because my assuming the mantle of clan leadership has been predetermined for nearly two centuries and partly because when my parents died I wasn’t off on some beach somewhere nailing my human girlfriend.”
Oh, he was pissed. Though neither his voice nor his face changed during his diatribe, rage crackled in every syllable he spoke. I willed my own anger to rise in response, but there was nothing. Just an overwhelming sadness that I had once again screwed up something beautiful. Especially when I looked into his eyes and saw the pain he was working so hard to hide.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” I told him, laying a hand on his bare biceps. “I know you couldn’t afford the time to do this and I appreciate that you did anyway. That the news came from you.”
He looked away, his jaw working. For long moments he didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything. But then his head jerked in a strange up-and-down motion that I realized was supposed to be some kind of nod. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
“And I’m sorry. For everything. I never meant to hurt you.”
He pulled away, all but turned his back on me as he looked far out to sea. His head was thrown back, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his board shorts, and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked alone. More, he looked lonely.
“Kona—”
He turned back to me, and the vulnerability was gone. In its place was the arrogance of a king, the arrogance I’d grown far too used to seeing lately. “You didn’t hurt me,” he said. “You simply reminded me of what I knew all along. Selkies and humans don’t mix.” If possible, human sounded even worse when he said it this time.
I nodded, unwilling to get into yet another argument with him. “I’ll head back first thing in the morning. After I say goodbye to everyone—”
His sigh was extremely put-upon. “Tempest, I don’t think you quite understand.” He waved an arm, and I saw a number of selkies lift their heads out of the water. “You’re a queen now—and more of a target than you’ve ever been. You don’t get the option of swimming around the ocean unprotected anymore.”
I reeled a little under his matter-of-fact summation of events. I was a queen now. I was a queen. I was merQueen. “You came to escort me back?”
“I came to ensure your safety. The last thing I need is an ungoverned kingdom along my most vulnerable border. But I’ve already been gone several days. We need to leave, tonight.”
I started to shake. Not because of the leaving thing, necessarily, but because this was it. I’d wanted to put it off a little longer, to lay the groundwork, but fate decided to take the choice out of my hands. Big surprise. It had been doing that very same thing for a year now.
It was time for me to say good-bye. For good this time.
Mark walked me back to my house while Kona and his guards waited in the water for me to return. Kona stopped just short of telling me to hurry, but I knew if I took too long he’d be knocking down my door.
We stopped on my front porch, Mark waiting patiently while I fumbled my key out of the small beaded clutch I’d been using as a purse all night. He had to know what it meant that Kona was here, but he hadn’t said a word on the walk from the beach. And neither had I. I didn’t have a clue where to start.
But the decision of how to tell him was taken out of my hands soon enough. I was shaking so hard as I tried to put the key in the lock that I dropped it. Then, when I bent to retrieve it, I ended up dropping the contents of my purse onto the porch as well.
“Whoa, Tempe,” Mark said as he crouched to help. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I picked up my dad’s phone—he insisted I take it whenever I was going to be out late—and my favorite lipstick, then froze when I realized what Mark was holding.
“Tempest?” he asked, more puzzled than angry as he handed me the chain. “What’s this doing in here?”I stared at the belly chain and nearly started bawling. I’d stuck it in my purse because I’d planned to give it back to him after breaking up with him tonight. But this wasn’t how I’d wanted to do it, how I’d wanted to tell him that we were over. Then again, nothing else about this visit had gone according to plan. What was one more thing?
I took a deep breath, straightened back up to a standing position. My skin felt like it was on fire, but that didn’t matter now. Nothing did but getting this over with. I’d broken up with two guys in my life—Mark and Kona—and neither time had felt anything like this. The times Mark and I had broken up in the past, it had always been a mutual thing—usually with the understanding that it wouldn’t be forever.
But this time, it was different. This time Mark wasn’t going to make it easy. It wasn’t going to be easy. I loved him and I didn’t want to break up any more than I wanted to leave. But what I wanted and what was best for him and the rest of my family were two totally different things. If I was going to get through this, I just had to remember that.
I had to remember him tied up, under the surface and running out of oxygen.
Had to remember Moku lying in that hospital bed so close to death.
Had to remember just this morning when that creature had nearly killed my father to get to me.
If I remembered all of that, I’d be able to get through this no matter how hard it was. Enough people had been hurt or died because of me. I couldn’t stand by and let that happen to one more person. Not now. Not ever again.
“Tempest?” Mark prompted.
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for the right words. But in the end, all I could say was, “I’m leaving, Mark.”
“I already figured that out. But when will I see you again?”
“You won’t. I’m leaving for good.”
He stared at me blankly. “I don’t understand.” The look of incomprehension grew worse, not better. Mark was one of the smartest guys I knew, so the fact that he couldn’t grasp my words meant he was all in. He hadn’t even considered that one day we weren’t going to be together anymore.
It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, standing there watching as it finally dawned on him what I was saying. He glanced down at the chain in my hand and then back up at me, his eyes wide and disbelieving and more scared than I had ever seen them.
“No, Tempest! Fuck, no!” He grabbed me then, his hands desperate but still careful as he held my arms right above the elbows. “I won’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I can. I will. This is wrong; you know this is wrong.” His eyes were wild now, pleading, and it hurt to look at him. Then again, at the moment it hurt just to breathe.
I looked down at the chain clenched in my hands, the gift I’d been carrying with me all night for just this moment. I pulled away, then extended my fist. “Here. I can’t take this. Not now.”
He physically recoiled. And that’s when I saw it happen: the light went out of his eyes and he started to believe—really believe—that we were over.
“Why are you doing this?” he whispered. “You love me. I know you love me.”
“I—” My voice broke, so I swallowed. It was like trying to force razor blades down my throat.