“Okay,” she said. “We find out together.”
“Together.”
She fell asleep in his arms, her breathing evening out into the deep rhythm of rest. Alessandro lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling her heartbeat against his chest.
Downstairs, he could faintly hear Dante and Bea still arguing, something about the theoretical applications of chaos magic in contract law. They’d been at it for hours. At some point, someone had ordered pizza. Neither seemed inclined to stop.
But Alessandro couldn’t focus on Dante right now. His entire awareness was consumed by the woman in his arms: her warmth, her weight, the soft sounds she made as she dreamed.
Eleven days. That’s all they had left.
The full moon would rise, and the bond would break, and he would have to make a choice. Return to Manhattan and his empty penthouse and his endless search for a cure. Or stay here, in this small town that had somehow become home, with a woman he was falling in love with.
Falling in love.
And he was already terrified of losing her.
Even in sleep, he felt her dreaming: peaceful, for once. Warm. She shifted closer, her hand finding his even unconscious, like she was reaching for him in her dreams.
He pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to her hair.
Whatever happened when the full moon rose, he would face it. They would face it together.
But for now, in this quiet moment between heartbeats, Alessandro let himself hope.
Marina shifted in her sleep, her fingers tightening around his.
Chapter Thirteen
Marina woke up happy.
The sensation was so unfamiliar that she lay still for a moment, analyzing it like a strange ingredient in a familiar recipe. Warmth. Contentment. The particular lightness that came from waking up next to someone whose steady breathing had become the soundtrack to her dreams.
Alessandro was still asleep, truly asleep, not the restless half-consciousness that had bled into her own sleep during his first weeks here. His face had lost that sharp, controlled quality he wore like armor during waking hours. Like this, he looked younger. Almost soft.
She reached out and traced the line of his jaw. He registered the touch even in sleep: a pulse of warmth, of recognition, that rolled through her like a tide.
This is dangerous, the cautious part of her brain whispered.You’re in too deep.
But for once, she didn’t want to listen to that voice.
The bakery could wait. Just for a few more minutes. Just long enough to memorize the way the morning light caught the dark waves of his hair, the way his arm tightened around her waist when she moved closer.
Ten more days until the full moon. Ten more days until they’d have to choose.
Marina was beginning to know what she wanted to choose.
She slipped out of bed carefully, padding to her closet while Alessandro’s breathing stayed steady and deep. The trunk was where it had always been: shoved into the back corner, covered in sweaters she never wore, deliberately forgotten.
Her selkie pelt.
She hadn’t opened this trunk in two years. Hadn’t let herself touch the silvery-grey fur that connected her to the sea, to her heritage, to the part of herself she’d locked away after her grandmother died.
But this morning, with happiness warming her chest and the memory of Alessandro’s arms around her still fresh, Marina found herself kneeling on the cold floor. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the lid.
The pelt was there. Soft. Shimmering faintly in the early light. She could smell the ocean in its folds: salt and seaweed and something wilder, something that called to the deepest part of her blood.
She wanted to feel the water on her skin, wanted to dive deep and let the current carry her, wanted to remember what it felt like to be completely herself.
