Page 44 of Saved By the Selkie

“Lir.”

He doesn’t look up from the baby, who is buried under layers of fur and cloth. He’s awake though, moving, and I realize Lir’s nursing him again.

I glance away, huffing a sigh, then scoot closer. I can’t help the curiosity rising inside me. I want to be close to them. Both of them.

My own father abandoned my mother when I was a baby, and she died when I was twelve. I went to live with my maternal uncle after that, but he didn’t care for anything but the sea. He’s a retired naval officer, strict and unforgiving, and our relationship has been strained for a very long time, mostly because he always favors his own son, my cousin, who is a pretentious prick.

When I was old enough, I went into the navy, then to the East India Company, then abandoned that with a bunch of others when piracy—er,privateering—proved more lucrative.

Crews can be loyal, but it’s hard to keep them together. I don’t think I’ve been with the same crew for more than a couple of years at a time. Porthos and Anna are the closest thing I have to friends, and even then we don’t see each other much. I get hired into one crew, they get hired into another—so it goes. There are a few other pirates I’d call friends—but alliances are often shifty and fleeting.

So, I don’t really have a good sense of what a familylooks like, or what a father does, but I’m drawn to Lir and the baby nonetheless. When I looked in the baby’s eyes, I knew he was mine.

I don’t understand how my father left me now. All my life, I assumed it was an easy thing to do, to just up and leave an infant. After all, they’re noisy and dirty. Demanding. Helpless.

My throat tightens up when I think about how Lir left, how if Johan hadn’t taken a gun to my head and made me row across the bloody Atlantic, I wouldn’t even know I have a son.

“Thought of a name yet?” I ask, peeling back one of the blankets so I can see the baby.

Lir glares at me—probably doesn’t want the baby to get cold—but my son doesn’t seem to mind. He lifts his little head and looks at me. He’s got Lir’s big, dark eyes, but in this form, he’s got tufts of dark brown hair—a testament to my own father’s alleged ancestry. That’s all my mother told me about him—he was a Spanish Moor. I’m not sure if I believe it.

My son smiles, and my heart melts. My father must have left before I was born, I decide. Either that or he was a failure as a man, to be scared off by the responsibility of an infant.

Lir sighs. “No,” he grumbles, wiping milk off the baby’s face, then wiping himself down. I glance away again.

Am I supposed to be into Lir like this? I don’t know. It feels a bit embarrassing, but …

“Well, we can’t keep calling him ‘baby’ or ‘pup.’”

Lir quirks a brow at me, as if to say,What’s this “we” business?I look back at the baby. “What about … Snowy? Because he’s got a white pelt when he’s in his seal form?”

Lir gives me a flat look. “Of course his fur is white—he’s a baby. He’ll shed that in a couple of months.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Besides,” Lir says, “Snowy is a terrible name.”

I want to ask what Lir knows about naming, because so far, selkie names don’t seem terribly creative. And it’s not like Lir’s contributing any ideas of his own here.

I frown at the baby, who frowns back. “Storm? Because he was born in the middle of one?”

Lir considers that for a second, and I think we might be getting closer. Lir looks down at the baby, then says, “Blizzard” in the most imperious tone I’ve ever heard him use.

“Blizzard?” I scoff, and Lir sticks his nose in the air.

“It’s a good name,” he says. “And it combines both of your ideas. And he can be Blizz for short.”

I frown at Lir, then look at my son. “What do you think?” I ask the baby. “Are you a Blizzard?”

The baby—Blizzard, I guess—coos and lays his head against Lir’s chest, curling his little hands in toward him, before sticking one in his mouth and sucking on it. “I think he likes it,” I inform Lir.

I figure Lir should be happy—even smug—that he won, but he says, “Oh, his opinion doesn’t count.”

I bristle, but Lir looks down at our boy and his expression softens. “He’s milk-drunk,” Lir says, fluffing the baby’s hair. “Aren’t you, Blizz?”

Blizzard gurgles happily and looks up at Lir, then giggles and snuggles back in. He closes his eyes and heaves a sigh.

“Milk-drunk?” I ask.