“Do you want to go out with me?” Briar asks, a little too loudly. A little too bluntly. Almost angrily, really, like this is happeningtoherwhen she’s the one making this offer, and I swear it makes my heart hurt a little. I feel like Iseeher. “To a club. Because it’s Saturday. And my birthday. And people do festive shit like this.”
There’s a beat while we digest this, except I’m already there.
“Honestly?” I say. “I can’t think of anything that I would rather do more.”
Briar jerks in her chair at that, like she was expecting me to bring the wolf out and eat her for dessert. Like she was expecting to be cruelly rebuffed, and that makes me soften toward her even more.
“Same,” Winter says staunchly.
I can feel Savi staring at us, but I grin at my housemate—of a sort—and friend. “We would love to go out with you, Briar.Clubbingin Medford on the far side of the Reveal. Whatever that means to you.”
This is how the four of us end up milling around a crowd of the Kind in the ruins of what was once an old-age home called the Manor that sat atop its own little hill in the midway point of the valley. These days it houses a collection of various species, all living together instead of off in the usual Kind clans that have been sticking to their own for centuries.
This is the kind of progress I wish werewolves could make too. It’s not every day you see a centaur canoodling with a Valkyrie in the middle of a rave, and it might not seem like a revolution, but I know it is. We all got to step out of the shadows that were pushed upon us only for my pack to step back in of their own volition.
There has to be a better way. Maybe it really is dancing.
Maybe I just want it to be this close to the all-pack gathering, where new ideas of any sort are not exactly encouraged, and especially not from females who should be mated by now.
Savi looks around, looks bemused, and disappears. Literally. One moment she’s standing beside me, the next she’s gone, and a few moments later I think I see her up high on the rooftop of the highest building. Alone.
Briar follows my gaze and looks like she wishes she was up there, too. “This is so great,” she says, though she sounds like there’s glass in her mouth, and her face is bright red. “I’m going to, uh, go get us drinks or something.”
Before I can tell her that she should know better than to drink strange brews made by strange magic in even stranger places, she shoves her way into the crowd. In moments, I can’t even track her beanie.
“I don’t want to know what happened to all the people who lived here, do I,” Winter mutters as she looks around, taking in the crowd around us and the loud music that seems to do its own dancing, lifting and falling andbeckoningto such an extent that I suspect the DJ must be a siren.
“You already know,” I tell her, and I fling an arm over her shoulders as we move deeper into the party.
“Is this really what monsters do every night while all the humans lock themselves up in fear?” she asks, her eyes wide.
I don’t know how to tell her that while I understand where she’s coming from, I find thisglorious. Back when I was growing up here, parties like this took place way out in the woods, but very seldomly.Verycarefully. No one ever wanted to draw too much attention. And even then, there wasn’t too much interspecies mingling. We all knew about each other, but it wasn’t wise to get together in one place. Better not to be an easy target.
“Not every night,” I assure her. Because some nights it rains.
There are mages everywhere, making the sky bleed different colors above this hill. It’s better than disco balls and all the flashing neon lights that punctuated the clubs I went to in New York City. The music seems to wind its way into my bones, into everyone’s insides from the look of it, and creatures of every description are dancing, laughing.
Free.
There’s a lot about the Reveal that I don’t love, but then, on the other side, there’s this. The Kind out here beneath an open sky without having to worry about being discovered. Without knowing that if we’recaught, we’ll be the reason our families—or our whole species—will be exterminated.
Exterminated if we’re lucky. Experimented on and then exterminated, if not. Humans with their scientific labs and hatred of anything they can’t explain have always beenourboogeymen.
I can’t say I miss those days. And though I try to remain sensitive to Winter’s mostly human response to this—and what it means that this can happen, here in a place where humans lived—I can’t help myself.
For a little while I throw my head back, lift my arms up, and let myselffeel. I let the beat take me on this journey with everyone else. I let the music do its level best to convince me that just because one world ended, that doesn’t mean the next one can’t be beautiful.
I want to believe this. Ineedto believe this.
Winter doesn’t throw herself into the dancing like I do, but when she does move it’s like there’s a force field around her. Everyone simply ... gets out of her way. There’s a ring around her wherever she goes, and it’s only when she looks at me in confusion that I realize she probably hasn’t been in a crowd like this since everything went down between her and Ariel.
“It’s his mark,” I tell her. “Everyone is here to party, not risk the displeasure of the vampire king. They’re giving you space because if they don’t, they know they’ll have to deal with him. No one wants that.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” she says.
I laugh, and dance a little more wildly. “I feel that we should take advantage of having our own dance space wherever we go.”
I realize that I have no idea if Winter is the dancing type. I didn’t know her very well in high school, we certainly didn’t run in the same circles, and the past couple of months haven’t lent themselves to a whole lot of levity.
