xxvi.

"YOU'RE WHAT?" SAID Madge.

"Yeah, just made my first appointment with the doctor," said Fifer into the phone. "I'm pregnant." She had not really apprised her family of the entire situation yet. She'd been distracted, what with everything with Hollis and the Hunt, and all of that. And besides, she'd figured it would be better to explain once it was all settled. But Madge was, predictably, not pleased at having this dropped on her.

"But I didn't even know you were seeing him anymore," said Madge. "The last we heard, you were saying that you'd never speak to him again. He stole your fucking skin, Fifer!" Stealing a selkie's skin was an unforgivable sin in the minds of her family. And all of selkie culture, for that matter.

"Well, yeah, but he's changed," said Fifer.

"Yeah, you think he's changed now, now that you're already deciding to procreate with him," said Madge. "Well, with a surrogate. I mean… donor sperm. I mean… tangles and briars, Fifer, this is all insane."

"He's mortal now, Madge," said Fifer. "He's not going to take my skin now. We're going to be together for the rest of our lives. Oh, we're going to get married. Figuring all that out, too."

"If he ever lays a finger on your skin," said Madge, "I will destroy him."

"I would expect nothing less of my only sister," said Fifer.

"You're happy?"

"I've never been this happy, Madge."

A sigh. "Well, I want to be happy for you, then."

Hollis had to grovel with Madge and their mother. They were not pleased. But things were better by the time of the wedding, which was lavish and held in Shepherdstown. Hollis played "Thunderstruck" at the reception and all of their friends from the Meck got too drunk.

By then, she'd swum in front of Hollis in her sealskin, under the watchful gaze of both Madge and her mother, who had insisted that such an intimacy must be done in their presence if it was going to be done at all.

It was months before she and Hollis ever did it together, swimming in a public salt water pool. She felt safe with him, though, safer than she felt with nearly anyone. He was hers, and she knew it.

All of her appointments with the doctor were attended by both Hollis and Ross. To the credit of the medical professionals, they didn't ask too many questions, and accepted the idea that the baby had two fathers. If they were curious how that all fit together, they didn't let on.

She went on a few mini-tours in her second trimester, but by the time she was huge and straining, all she wanted to do was lie around and whine about how uncomfortable she was while being waited on hand and foot by either Hollis or Ross.

She went into labor a week early and was carted off by both of the men to the hospital, where they all paced the halls together—walking was the only thing that helped her contractions—until the wee hours of the morning, where, at 4:23, Miles Mac Ross Ione made his debut into the world, slithering into the world in his sealskin, which he peeled out of to show off his tiny tail and wings. Half sphinx, half selkie, and the most beautiful thing in the world, at least according to his three parents.

Fifer held her beautiful little son, marveling in his small and sweet features, nursed him for the first time—well, tried, really, was that supposed to be instinctive, because it wasn't—and then fell promptly to sleep.

Life got slow after that.

Slow but fast.

She was always stunned at how quickly little Milo was growing. He was barely in newborn clothes for three weeks before he was too big for them all, and it seemed—every day—he was doing something new.

But the pace of it, the pace of caring about what happened or about keeping up with anything at all , it just fell away. Life was comprised of little moments, all strung together, and the only thing that mattered was this new little being that had suddenly become the center of their universe.

And something about watching a burly skull-headed man tenderly hold a tiny baby, singing softly some fae lullaby in a language she didn't know, his deep voice like a drifting boat on a calm sea—the impossibility of his brutal strength and power honed to nothing but tenderness? Something about that was everything in the world. Something about that was the point of it all in some unfathomable way.

They were happy.

Ross was a good father, like he'd always said he'd be. At first, when Miles was very small, the baby spent all his time with his mother. She was his food source, after all, and—try as she might—Fifer never managed to pump enough milk to feel that she could send the baby off overnight, not when he was still so tiny.

It wasn't until he was starting a little bit of solid food that she started thinking it might be possible. And even then, Ross was only taking the baby one night a week, supplementing with formula.

She couldn't say that having that night to herself wasn't absolutely restorative. She loved Miles with her entire being, but she appreciated the sleep, and the time to just be with Hollis, the two of them. So, it worked very well for them, even if she also couldn't say that sometimes it was hard, surrendering her infant for an entire night.

Miles grew, and as he got bigger, he could spend more time with Ross, and they settled into something somewhat like a joint custody agreement, though the three adults never had any kind of estrangement amongst them. They were all good friends.

If she'd wondered if Hollis would be different now that he was mortal, she was reassured that he wasn't, not really. He was just Hollis, the man she'd fallen in love with, and he was still that powerful, ancient ageless thing down in there, even though now he was vulnerable in a way that he'd never been before.

Did they have a sex life?

Yes, a fantastic one.

Hollis still had magic, but he didn't have the capacity to enter her mind in the way he'd once been able to do. He couldn't feel her orgasms from inside her, nor could he see what it was she was imagining. Even so, the primary way that they made love was through shared fantasy—usually hers, though Hollis had become more invested in creatively adding to it now that he had a functioning physical sex drive. They whispered words to each other. And more often than not, it was really just mutual masturbation.

Sometimes, they touched each other. He liked her to get him off more than she really liked it reciprocally. She was simply better at getting herself off, she thought, and more often than not, she preferred to touch herself. She wasn't opposed to finishing him off with her hand in the wake of her climax, though, if he managed to last that long.

But that didn't mean they didn't actually have intercourse, him inside her, their bodies pressed together. Because they did. It was less frequent, however.

She couldn't quite integrate the feelings of love and connection with her feeling of arousal.

She tried things like touching her clit while they were joined, whispering fantasies to him as he worked himself in her, but it always felt to her as if the two things didn't connect to each other. His penis in her distracted her from the pure feeling of arousal, from achieving her orgasm. And wanting her orgasm distracted her from feeling connected to him, from merging into him. She could have either, but not both. Or at least, not at the same time.

She wondered if there were people out there who felt it at the same time.

She wondered if someday, she'd just figure out how to do it.

She wondered if, because she was thinking so much about it, she was keeping it from happening.

She wondered a lot of things.

She wouldn't mind endlessly experimenting with her skeleton-headed husband until their bodies got too worn down for such things, she thought. If there was somewhere to go, they were still in the middle of the journey. Getting there, that was the end, that was death.

She wanted as much middle as possible.

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