When we came down from the high together, I caught my breath as I pressed my forehead against Triton’s neck while he held me close.

Maybe he was right about being abducted by the king of the sea.

Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened to me.

Hell, maybe it was even the best.

We spent the rest of the day in the ocean, practicing my magic.

Which inevitably led to more sex, of course.

And more soreness the next day, because swimming still wrecked me.

The following day went the same—morning sex, followed by training, more screwing, and more swimming.

The day after that, we had to go back into the castle to find something to eat. We ended up chatting with a bunch of turned humans and their mates. Someone asked for help with something after our meal, and somehow, I ended up holding the cutest baby I’d ever seen while Triton played a game with a net of water and a small army of children.

When the game ended and I (somewhat reluctantly) handed the baby back to her mother, we stopped by an office near the throne room before heading to our grotto.

Triton’s spies didn’t have any more news about the selkies’ plans, unfortunately, but they spent some time trying to come up with and prepare for a handful of things that could go wrong in the coming weeks.

After the meeting, Triton ran me through the steps of what would happen if there was an attack. We’d be practicing that process repeatedly over the next few days, and I wasn’t at all against the idea.

There weren’t any other problems to deal with, so when we were done with that, we went to the beach and made our way back into the ocean for more training.

While we were swimming, Triton showed me everything around the castle. He wanted me to have a mental map of the ocean near the island, so I would always know how to get back home if I needed to.

It was strange to think of the castle that way, but it was genuinely starting to feel like it.

And while navigation had never been one of my talents, I started to get a feel as far as which direction was which underwater, and I figured out how to get back even after he took me a long way from the castle.

Days passed quickly, and turned into weeks. My magic started to feel like a part of me, instead of feeling foreign.

We spent a lot of time with the turned humans, and I always ended up holding a baby or two. Or four.

The other ex-humans were not-so-secretly trying to make me catch the fever… and it was kind of working.

Kind of.

A month went by without any problems or drama with the selkies.

Then a second month.

And a third.