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arrived, but she felt a simultaneous despair.
    It’s for the best.
    She waded into the surf. Waves tugged at her, like strange creatures butting at her knees to pull her under the surface; kelp slid over her bare skin, slithering lengths that made her pulse race too fast.
    It’s the right thing for both of us.
    He was there then. She heard Murrin calling her name. “Alana! Stop!”
    In the end, we’ll both be miserable if I don’t.
    The pelt was heavy in her arms; her fingers clutched at it.
    He was beside her. “Don’t—”
    She didn’t hear the rest. She let the waves take her legs out from under her. She closed her eyes and waited. The instinct to survive outweighed any enchantment, and her arms released the pelt so she could swim.
    Beside her, she felt him, his silk-soft fur brushing against her as his selchie pelt transformed his human body into a sleek-skinned seal. She slid her hand over his skin, and then she swam away from him, away from the wide open sea where he was headed.
    Goodbye.
    She wasn’t sure if it was the sea or her tears, but she could taste salt on her lips as she surfaced.
    When she stood on the beach again, she could see him in the distance, too far away to hear her voice if she gave in and asked him to come back. She wouldn’t. A relationship based on enchantment was ill-fated from the beginning. It wasn’t what she wanted for either of them. She knew that, was certain of it, but it didn’t ease the ache she felt at his absence.
    I don’t really love him. It’s just leftover magic.
    She saw Vic watching her from the shore. He said something she couldn’t hear over the waves, and then he was gone, too. They were both gone, and she was left reminding herself that it was better this way, that what she’d felt hadn’t been real.
    So why does it hurt so bad?
     
    For several weeks, Murrin watched her, his Alana, his mate-no-more, on the shore that was his home-no-more. He didn’t know what to do. She’d rejected him, cast him back to the sea, but she seemed to mourn it.
    If she didn’t love me, why does she weep?
    Then one day, he saw that she was holding the pearls he’d given her. She sat on the sand, running the strand through her fingers, carefully, lovingly. All the while, she wept.
    He came to shore there at the reef where he’d first chosen her, where he’d watched her habits to try to find the best way to woo her. It was more difficult this time, knowing that she knew so many of his secrets and found him lacking. At the edge of the reef, he slid out of his Other-Skin and tucked it in a hollow under an edge of the reef where it would be hidden from sight. Giant sea stars clung to the underside of the reef ledge, and he wondered if she’d seen them. His first thoughts were too often still of her, her interests, her laughter, her soft skin.
    She didn’t hear his approach. He walked up to stand beside her and asked the question that had been plaguing him. “Why are you sad?”
    “Murrin?” She stuffed the necklace into her pocket and backed away, careful to look where she stepped, no doubt looking for his Other-Skin, then glancing back at him after each step. “I set you free. Go away. Go on.”
    “No.” He had dreamed of being this close to her ever since he’d been forced away from her. He couldn’t help it; he smiled.
    “Where is it?” she asked, her gaze still darting frantically around the exposed tide pools.
    “Do you want me to show—”
    “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. “I don’t want to do that again.”
    “It’s hidden. You won’t touch it unless you let me lead you to it.” He walked closer then, and she didn’t back away this time—nor did she approach him as he’d hoped.
    “You’re, umm, naked.” She blushed and turned away. She picked up her backpack and pulled out one of the warm hoodies and jeans she’d found at the thrift store when they were shopping that first week. She shoved them at him.