numbers than the selkie. Children are survival and power.”
“Children are children. What if the boy isn‟t finfolk?”
Morgan shrugged. “Then I have no use for him, and he has no need of me.”
A memory of Elizabeth‟s taut, white face flared in his mind. “Ben was there when it mattered. Zack is still adjusting to his
loss. He doesn’t need another disruption or another disappointment in his life. He doesn’t need you.”
Morgan‟s teeth clenched.
“And if he is?” Dylan prodded. “What will you do then?”
Morgan regarded him blankly.
Do?
Their kind flowed as the sea flowed. If fate had given him a child, he would take it, as he accepted the bounty of the oceans
or the gifts of the tide.
“I will take him,” Morgan said.
“To Sanctuary.”
A trickle of unease rolled between Morgan‟s shoulder blades. “Why not?”
“In the first place, Lucy won‟t stand for you taking the kid anywhere without his consent.”
“I do not answer to your sister.”
“Conn, then. He listens to her. And the kid is only fifteen.”
“You were younger.”
“I was miserable,” Dylan said frankly. “And I did my damnedest to make everyone around me miserable, too. Kids have
feelings, you know. The situation on Sanctuary is difficult enough. Do you really think you can run the work crew if you‟re
baby-sitting some misfit teen with a bad attitude?”
The prospect appalled him. “I do not intend to baby-sit anyone.”
“Then before you take this kid from the only family he‟s ever known, you better figure out what you are going to do with
him,” Dylan said.
Morgan regarded Dylan with dislike. All he wanted was a chance to secure his posterity and engage in a mutually
pleasurable seduction. He did not need this half-blood selkie muddying the emotional waters with his talk of feelings.
“The boy will survive,” he said shortly.
They all would survive. Conn would see to that. Would agree to it.
Survival was all that mattered.
The hearty scent of chicken asopao—garlic and onions, pepper and chorizo—rolled from the kitchen and followed Zack‟s
mom up the stairs and into his room. “ Puerto Rican comfort food, ” his dad Ben used to say whenever Mom made one of his
family‟s recipes.
Zack sniffed. Mom was really pulling out all the stops tonight. Because she thought he needed comfort? Or because that
guy was coming to dinner? Morgan. His biological father.
She sat on the end of Zack‟s bed, watching him with a sad, patient expression that made him feel about two years old and
two inches high.
“You know you can tell me anything,” she said like she believed it.
Zack wanted to believe it, too.
But he knew better. He couldn‟t tell her what was really wrong with him. And so he couldn‟t say anything at all.
They‟d already gone a couple of rounds, his mom hitting him with a combination of concern and sneaky open-ended
questions she‟d picked up from the counselor she‟d dragged him to see back home. “Tell me what happened.” “How are you
feeling?” “What do you want to happen next?”
Zack stared down at his hands. He didn‟t want to discuss his feelings, for Christ‟s sake. Or what happened next. He wanted
to be left alone. The pressure—to speak or keep silent—built in his head and chest like a scream.
In sheer desperation, in self-defense, he went for his mom‟s weak spot. “So how well did you know this guy Morgan before
you slept with him?”
His mother‟s face turned white and then red. “Not as well as I should have,” she said calmly. “We‟ve talked before about