Chapter 14
Aileana
She needed to think and try to understand all Kendrick tried to explain to her. This unbelievable fact that she now knew existed, and not just in her seanmhair’s tales of Selkie folklore. It would have been a fanciful fairy tale if she hadn’t seen Kendrick climb up on the pillars out beyond the breakers. To witness his transformation from a seal to man; seeing him remove his Selkie skin and stand there upon the rocks a naked man was unsettling, to say the least. Aileana tried to wrap her brain around the facts he was a Selkie and his family’s next ruler, which brought her to the shoreline on this moonlit night. The sound of the waves lapping against the shore seemed to soothe her frantic mind.
He’d told her he was born the second son to Murdock Morgan, the ruler of the Selkies off the northern coast of Scotland, she was aware of this part of his story. Because Murdock’s firstborn son was killed back some five years ago, which was the reason Kendrick would be the next Selkie ruler. Before she had left the beach Kendrick told her about his brother’s death. Callum, his older brother, had been shot by a roughneck out on an oil rig. The men were drunk and in their stupor thought shooting seals who were within range of the rig was a game. They shot his brother while he was in his Selkie form before their company man found out the idiots were out on the drilling platform drinking and shooting the wildlife.
The men were fired and taken off the rig the next day, but they had no idea of the horrendous act they had committed. Aileana couldn’t begin to understand how difficult it must be to lose a loved one to a stupid cruel act. Even if the men didn’t know they had killed someone’s brother. It wasn’t as if they had planned to eat their kill because their family needed food. It was just an act of malicious cruelty. She felt such overwhelming grief for Kendrick and his family.
She still didn’t know which was harder to comprehend, that he was a Selkie or that he was a Selkie lord-to-be. This was a tremendous amount of information to process. Her world had now tilted on its axles and she needed to process and deal with it. Yeah, right. Whatever.
Her attraction to Kendrick was harder to fight each time she saw him. When she came here this year to Scotland she had only wanted to see her seanmhair and work through her pain from the breakup with her ex-boyfriend. Aileana sought out work in this corner of the globe. The trip here had been with the intention of making a break from the members of the male species. She hadn’t had the best of luck with men lately. Aileana started to think all men were sketchy. She needed to bail out on the whole dating situation before she ended up swimming with the men in the gray suits.
She thought back to the time coming home to the house she shared in California. Aileana had arrived home early one day to see Paul-Mark, her live-in boyfriend at the time, with another woman, having wild sex in their living room. When she walked in the door, he’d been busy pounding into the other woman’s body. He didn’t realize Aileana stood in the living room with a stunned look on her face at the scene in front of her. He gave a loud groan as he had his orgasm and then realized Aileana stood in the same room. He jumped up and tried to tell Aileana, the woman meant nothing to him.
“From where I’m standing it sure looked like it meant something,” she told him.
She tried to keep calm and let him know that it was over between them and she would be moving out the next day. She didn’t want him to know how much he had destroyed her heart. Aileana drove to her parents’ home and told them she would be staying with them for a while, and she then proceeded to cry buckets of tears.
For the next few days, she felt sorry for herself and wallowed in her grief. After the third day, she decided that she would put on her big girl panties and pull herself together. Aileana knew she just needed some time to get over the arrogant cheating jerk. She had always told herself everything happened for a reason, even if the reason made little sense at the time and hurt like hell. She knew it would hurt less in six months, and she now just had to get through those next six months. Her life would get better and no one would ever have the chance to hurt her in that way again, she would make sure of that.
So after licking her wounds for a few months at her parents’ home, she decided to make her grandmother’s home in Scotland her base of operation for the next year or so. She could live anywhere and still work as long as there is an internet connection to keep in touch with her editor at the magazine.
Aileana now knew part of the reason she’d been so drawn to Kendrick. He was the one male who had treated her as an adult. She was now sure he’d been aware of her schoolgirl crush twelve years ago. Even as a young girl she understood that he was a decent and kind human, or so she thought human. She thought to herself, Let’s just stick to the facts, a decent and kind male. That wonderful summer she’d had the attention of someone older than herself. She had wondered if he was in his twenties. Little did she know that he was a hundred and thirty-five-year-old Selkie! As she had just now come to find out, a hundred-year-old Selkie was considered a young adult in the term of their life span. Kendrick explained that they were able to live up to four or five hundred years. No wonder he appeared the same as when she met him back twelve years ago. She just thought he’d been blessed with good genetics.
He told Aileana that many Selkies had human lovers but seldom took a human as their life mate. Humans were drawn to a Selkie’s magic and beauty. Selkies were able to feel the emotions of the land dwellers. They wanted to comfort and heal wounded hearts and souls of the humans that were drawn to the ocean shores in a time of sorrow. The few Selkies who take human lovers and have children with them often, take the children and disappear back out to the sea, not to be seen again. Selkies only stayed with a human lover who was their life mate.
Aileana decided she needed a long walk by the moonlit seashore; walking tended to be extremely cathartic. She thought a walk would help her put the facts in some kind of perspective; any kind would help at this point in time. Didn’t she want to run away? Just escape from such a tangled convoluted situation? She couldn’t even imagine why she wasn’t running as fast as she was able. What happened to the woman who’d sworn she wanted no involvement with men in the near foreseeable future? Little had Aileana ever imagined that when she came to Scotland she would run into her teenage crush.
In the twelve years since she’d met Kendrick, not once did she see him or hear of him when she came to Scotland each year. Aileana had all but forgotten him, except for the beautiful pearl he’d given her.
Her walk along the shore with the water lapping at her feet did make her feel calmer and seemed to bring some peace to her mind. The strong, steady pull of the moon on the water was just gravity at work, but seemed like magic with its hypnotic cadence. Just like the pull, she felt toward Kendrick.
Maybe Selkies and their magic were something which happened to be what it was and nothing more. The only questions were about what has not been explained, not what is already known. It would seem some things just defied rational thinking since Selkies appeared to be real—in fact. The Selkies prefer the world not to know of their existence. Didn’t the world just newly discover an unknown tribe in the Amazon rainforest a few years back? The people of the world weren’t aware of everything there was to understand about the planet.
Aileana realized Kendrick was still the same being that she knew twelve years ago, and the same being she had a chance to get reacquainted with now. She was not the type of person who would just put a label on a group of individuals and not try to understand them. She was proud to think she wasn’t narrow-minded, but open-minded, a liberal, receptive to understanding all people. We are all God’s creatures in one way or another.
She guessed her walk along the shore was a good idea as she now felt a calmness, which took over her mind and gave her a clearer understanding of the knowledge Kendrick shared with her. Aileana would now say she was one of the lucky few to have this knowledge. She still wanted to talk to her seanmhair and find out what she could tell her about the Selkies and how she knew about them. Her seanmhair was a lot like her, in that she was a “straight-shooter,” very honest and direct with her answers.
Aileana decided then that she would go and try to find Kendrick first to let him know that after some time and a lot of reflecting on his information, she was sorry that she had reacted so awfully. She understood in her heart that Kendrick was a decent and kind being. Those were the most important qualities anyone could wish for in a lover.
So she walked farther down the beach, then up the walkway to his cottage that he had pointed out to her on one of their walks. She knew she could do this, but it still didn’t make it easier.
Her heart was racing, but not because of knowing he was a Selkie. It raced at the thought of him as the male she was drawn to. She didn’t know if this strong attraction she felt was because of him, or if it was some sensual Selkie magic. Just thinking of Kendrick made her stomach and insides clench with want and need.
She needed to let Kendrick know that she wanted to see where their path would take them. She wanted him to understand that she would try to wrap her mind around the whole Selkie thing. She didn’t comprehend all the ins and outs of the Selkie race, but she wanted to learn and understand. This information was a life changer if she continued her relationship with Kendrick. How would this affect her life and her family? Perhaps her seanmhair would be able to shed more light on her questions.