Page 27 of Salt and Knot

My heart flutters. This man is so good. “Yes.”

“Good. Now, since your heat is under control, I thought you might like to explore the house? Since you’ll be staying here.”

“You want me to stay?” Feeling truly welcome and wanted is unfamiliar, but like the sea, it’s too tempting to resist.

“You’re my mate, Isla,” he says, and his tone is low and sincere. “My home is your home. Now, which rooms would you like to see first?”

Chapter 13

Dylan

We walk around the house with her hand in mine, our fingers laced together. She’s small compared to me, only coming up to my shoulder. My little omega.

“You have so many old things,” she comments, gazing at the oak doors and stone walls.

“I’m pretty old.” I move with her, allowing her to look at anything she likes, and my alpha instincts are content having her safe with me. My kraken is less happy. It took all my strength to hold him back when we were on the beach. Half a second longer by the water and I think I’d have shifted and dragged Isla into the waves.

“What do you do?” Her brows pinch in thought as she pauses next to yet another painting of a ship. I have far more than I realised. “Like, as a job?”

“When I was younger, I was a ship’s captain.” The memory of it is faded now, and dreamlike, now that Isla has taken up my whole present.

“Younger, like, a few years ago?” She looks up at me.

“Younger like, in the fourteen hundreds,” I reply dryly.

Her eyes are like saucers.

“Yeah. Things have changed since then.”

She nods slowly. “Right, yes. Do you still do that?”

“It’s less socially acceptable now to do what I was doing then.” That puts it diplomatically.

She tilts her head, curious.

And because this girl is my mate, I tell her, even though I’d rather she thought better of me. “I was a pirate.”

“Ohhhh.” The realisation is like a sunrise. She glows with excitement. “So this was built with pirate treasure?”

I nod.

A smile tugs at her mouth. “I’d like to hear about that.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” Eventually. Once I’m sure she’ll forgive me.

I take her to the top of the house where there’s a skylight you can climb into and see the whole of the rocky bay to the south. The opposite side to the beach where I found her.

And she lets me enfold her in my arms as we look out over the sea together. She fits perfectly.

The sun is shining, and clouds chase each other across the sky, preventing it from being too hot. And we’re far enough from the water that my kraken is grumpily resigned. Being with Isla makes him docile, even if he’d rather we were in the sea.

One floor down is my bedroom and suite, and several others. Isla peeks curiously into the spare rooms, cooing at the antique decor. She admires every room, marvelling at bedrooms with dark-brown wooden four-poster beds from back when I—and everyone else—thought they were the pinnacle of taste. They still have a certain charm.

“You could have your own bedroom, if you like,” I suggest.

She makes a face. “If I enjoy losing my mind while I’m in heat?”

“Not while you’re in heat, no. But afterwards.” I pause. Six hundred years and this is so important to not screw up, I’m nervous as though I’m twenty-something like her. “For as long as you want, you can stay here.”