Even in wolf form, his eyes were so… human. They were the same midnight-blue as before. But they weren’t as closed-off and wary as his human eyes had been. His wolf’s eyes practically overflowed with emotion.
Jacqueline’s heart was in her throat. She felt as though the wolf-Arlo was trying to communicate something with her, but what?
He broke eye contact first. Jacqueline watched, frozen, as he sniffed at each of the seal pups in turn and barked softly. He shook his coat and flicked his ears towards the bed.
The seals whined. Jacqueline blinked. There wasn’t any other word for it. Kenna made a grumbling noise that sounded so, so… teenaged. Even coming out of a seal’s mouth.
Regardless of how much they grumbled and whined, all three seals followed what were obviously the wolf’s instructions, and clambered up onto the bed. Tally was too small to make it by herself, so Arlo helped her, pushing his snout under her sausage-like body and boosting her up.
The kids cuddled together in a heap, their fat bodies making a cozy dent in the middle of the mattress. Jacqueline’s breath caught as Arlo leaped up on the bed and trotted around them, gently pressing his nose to each of their snouts in turn. Tally gave a whuffly bark, and he licked her forehead. Then he picked up a corner of the blanket between his teeth, dragged it up over the seal pups, and lay down curled around them.
It was the strangest, sweetest picture of family love that Jacqueline could have imagined. And it hurt more than she could have imagined.
I have to get out of here.
She stood up so quickly her head spun.
“I, er,” she muttered brokenly as Arlo raised his head and pinned her with those too-human eyes. “I just need to…”
Jacqueline gave a stupid smile and climbed, practically flew, up the stairs to the hatch. She wrenched it open and barely managed to stop herself from slamming the door shut behind her.
Up on deck, all her breath rushed out of her at once. She closed the hatch—slowly, carefully, not wanting to interrupt—made it to the side of the boat, and folded over the railing like a wet towel.
“What the heck was that about?” she asked herself when the world stopped spinning around her. As though she didn’t know.
She stared out across the water for she didn’t know how long. Darkness had properly fallen now, coating the world in inky black. The boat lights made rippling golden lines on the water. Far away, past the darker texture of black on the horizon that she assumed was the coastline, the sky glowed faintly.
Dunston, she thought. Home.
Her whole life was there, somewhere under that faint yellow glow.
And here on this boat, in the dark, gently rocking ocean…
“Jacqueline?”
8
Arlo
Jacqueline wiped her eyes before she turned around. Arlo’s chest clenched.
“Are you all right?”
Jacqueline smiled and shook her head slightly. “I’m fine.”
Arlo frowned. His wolf was confused—the smile was an obvious lie. It didn’t go to her eyes. It looked like it hurt, and that was wrong. His wolf wanted to go to her, to give her the same simple comfort it had offered the pups. They were asleep now, after all. And his mate needed him. Why wasn’t he already at her side?
Humans are more complicated than that, he told it, and cleared his throat.
&n
bsp; “You moved pretty quick back there, I was worried—”
“Are the kids okay? They got to sleep?” Jacqueline’s voice teetered on the edge of brittle. Arlo took the hint.
“They’re out like lights. It’s—” he paused, and then added: “Things are simpler, when we’re in our animal forms. Human worries don’t seem so important. It’s easier to let them go for a while.”
Jacqueline’s eyebrows pulled together. “That’s good. But—what about their animal worries, are they—” She stopped, grimacing. “Sorry. This is none of my business. I shouldn’t have—have forced you to bring me along.”