One of the children starts wailing. “Shit!” Savage cries. “What do we do?”
I suppress a sigh before going over to the little one and patting him on the head. “It’s alright. We’ll get you home soon, hatchling.”
“They saw Mace die,”Savage tells me with his arms crossed.“Now they’ll all need therapy like me. And now that you’re in the pack, you’ll go to therapy too. Lyle makes us all do it.”
“I don’t need therapy,”I say. “My basilisk doesn’t function like you weaker orders.”
I know my regina is behind me before I scent her. Savage’s eyes light up as he sees her coming down the corridor. The child I’m patting wraps his arms around my leg, and I can’t move, so I wait for Aurelia to come to my side.
She has always been beautiful, but when battle-weary, with dirt and blood all over her body, she is a stunning creature from my dreams. I can’t help but raise a hand, still gloved, and brush it over her cheek. Her eyes, red-rimmed but alight with new hope, bore into my eyes in the way she knows I like. “Are you alright?” she asks softly.
I look at my hands and decide then to take the gloves off for good. She watches me as I tug them off and put them in my pocket. “I’m only okay when I have you in my line of vision.”
She gives me a wry smile. “Don’t start going soft on me now, Ash.”
My fangs are out at that. My new name. Is it a new start? “Unfortunately, I’m still the same person, regina.”
The children crowd around us, gaping at the revelation, many of them too young to be on social media. She smiles at them all. “Who’s hungry? We’ve got burgers and fries already cooking.”
The children are reluctant and confused, but Savage starts blabbing about how good the academy food is, and they have no problems walking to the dining hall with us.
My regina sticks by my side the entire way, and I cannot help but revel in her closeness. Thecasualnature of it and how?—
It hits me then, walking into the dining hall, that I don’t have to leave her. That I don’thaveto go back to Serpent Court and attend to Mace’s orders. Ever again. It’s been so long since I knew freedom that I’m trying to understand the shape of it.
“Hey, isn’t that serpent scum?”
I cast a lazy look at the group of males sitting at a table together. These look like Scythe’s sworn beasts, called in fromhis various outposts to help in the fight. This is only the first of what I’m sure will be many more unnecessary questions.
I’m about to reply that they should run, but my regina growls at them. “There are children here.”
“He’s wearing the serpent general’s uniform, Lady Boneweaver,” says the feline.
“The last one standing,” says another.
“We’re all on the same side now,” Aurelia says. “If you have?—”
“Is there a problem?” Scythe’s voice cuts through the hall, and the group visibly straightens. The shark stalks through the outside door, scanning the room and finding his regina. There is wet blood on his shirt, specks of it on his face, and a sudden wind chills the air as the great white pins his gaze on his beasts.
“We…We’re just saying,sir,” the feline says, “that a serpent general shouldn’t be allowed in here.”
Scythe’s eyes land on me before his men. “You should be aware that Ash is my pack-brother. You are to give him the same respect as you do me, Savage, Lyle, and Xander.”
The males quieten. A long-dead part of me pokes his sleepy head out from his cave and looks around with bleary eyes. My regina’s smile is smug as she glances at me, then sashays forward to help the children with the hot chocolate gargoyle.
Xander, now wearing track pants but nothing else, is fiddling with a coffee urn, and Lyle comes out of the kitchen wearing an apron, both hands carrying baskets of fries, fresh from the oil. Savage lets out a cheer, to which Stacey, Eugene’s flock, and the Devi pack let out a returning cheer from where they sit at the back of the hall.
Nimpins zip around the room, chirping with excitement. My regina returns to me with a chipped white animus mug in her hand. She offers it to me with a tired smile. It seems like so long ago that I’d found her, sitting in my old bungalow. It seems likean age since I watched over her from the shadows, always alone in my darkness. But now I get to be out in the open.
I accept the mug from her, our bare fingers brushing against each other. She takes a beat too long to remove her hand. “It might take some getting used to,” she says. “But I think you’ll come to like them. We’re all just as crazy as each other.”
Xander frowns at his reflection in the urn. I murmur, “Like is a strong word, regina.”
I gesture at the dragon, and Aurelia turns to look at him, gasping a breath. Scythe, Savage, and Lyle all turn to look at the dragon too. Because on his neck, Xander’s mating mark is no longer void black, but has reclaimed its celestial glow. I allow the shadows to recede from my own neck, an old habit of so many years. The light must catch Xander’s eye because he looks towards me too. I nod stiffly at him.
Xander sets the urn down and reaches for his headphones, tentatively plucking them out. I narrow my eyes at him, watching the golden orbs for signs of the Berserker madness.
But it doesn’t come. The dragon takes a deep breath and his shoulders sag as if he has been relieved of some great weight.
