Tuesday and Wednesday came and went. The only noteworthy part of the first half of the week was that I received traditional mail for the first time since we had moved to Philadelphia. Or, more accurately, I received traditional mail that wasn’t either junk advertisements, a cold-call offering of an exchange of some sort that Zenya handled on my behalf, or something for Cynthia, and, therefore, Evgenia actually passed it on to me to look at for myself.

  There were three different pieces of mail that passed her inspection and were given to me. The first two were straightforward letters, obviously connected to each other, but the third was just a cube with a printed address label sticker stuck to it. I didn’t understand what it was, and there wasn’t any information that came with it. It didn’t even have a return address. I could feel that there was mana imbued throughout the tiny little cube, and a lot of it, too, but it was masked and shrouded and not immediately apparent what I was supposed to do with it. Rather than get bogged down in figuring it out immediately, I simply set it on my desk.

  Where Zoey immediately snatched it up and began inspecting it. My werewolf mate cum self-appointed bodyguard spent a few minutes examining the strange cube before she allowed me to touch it again, scolding me for handling something so obviously magical before having it deemed safe. I didn’t mention the fact that, if it were genuinely unsafe, there would likely be fewer consequences if I were the one handling it. I also didn’t mention how unacceptable it would be for her to put herself at risk testing things once she was actually pregnant. I simply enjoyed her overabundance of caution. I wasn’t particularly bothered about the cube itself, anyway, given that I had no intention of looking at it any time soon. I didn’t know who had sent it to me or why. I would probably get curious and fiddle with it at some point, but that day wasn’t Christmas Eve.

  The first letter was from Juliana. I set that on my desk as well. I wasn’t interested in reading anything she had to say, though I knew I probably would want to at least give it a chance at some point in the future. I was glad Evgenia gave it to me, at least.

  The second letter was from Adriana, and I opened it up after setting the other two things down. It was penned on hotel-branded stationery but handwritten. The handwriting was definitely feminine, though the flourishes were compact. The letter also smelled noticeably pleasant as I opened it, though it was faint enough that I wasn’t entirely sure if it was intentional or just incidental. My gut said intentional with plausible deniability, but it was so very plausible that I couldn’t be sure.

  In the letter, Adriana apologized again for how her sister had behaved, which didn’t seem fair to me, as she wasn’t the one who had acted that way. I understood why she felt she needed to, though. I was a potential connection, one who had access to both the dragons and the magical realms. Alienating me wasn’t something Adriana wanted to do, especially not secondhand for something she didn’t even choose to do.

  She also gave me her contact details — a cell number, an email, and their address in Brazil, as the letter had clearly been written and sent before they left the States and therefore didn’t have a meaningful return address — and asked me to keep in touch. She invited me down to their estate, pending their Seat’s approval, in order to see how they lived. She suggested that, while Jules was definitely over the line, seeing her everyday life might go some way toward explaining why she made the initial assumption, at least.

  She also explained that she had encouraged Juliana to send an apology letter of her own to me. She then apologized for doing that because, in her estimation from our brief time together, Juliana’s apology wasn’t something I would desire. Adriana was quite sure that her sister still didn’t grasp what had gone wrong, and consequently, her attempt to apologize for it had completely missed the mark. Adriana advised me to simply ignore the offer if I wasn’t inclined and to try not to hold it against Jules forever, if I could.

  I gave the number to Sam, and she called and talked to Adriana for half an hour Tuesday night. The short answer to the question she asked was that Adriana, as a female dragon, had never had a monthly cycle. She told us that male dragons had a way of inducing fertility in female dragons but that, since that wasn’t something that was permitted anymore by the time she and Juliana made it to adulthood, she didn’t actually know how it worked. It wasn’t something she wanted, anyhow. Her life was simpler by not having to worry about it. Sam thanked her. She then tried to contact Clement and Eleanor with the number they had left Zenya but couldn’t reach anyone — evidently, Clement must’ve given us one of his office numbers, at least based on the voicemail that played.

  Now off the phone, Sam helped me in more ways than one. The first way was that she looked at the gift I had gotten for Zenya in person, instead of simply through my thoughts, and told me what we could do with it. Then, she told me she didn’t know how to do what I wanted to. Fortunately, she pulled up FaeBook on her laptop and started tapping away, quickly finding a set of tutorials that offered guidance on how to accomplish what we wanted. Half an hour later, with the help of several videos from an overly cheerful woman and her inquisitive cat watching her demonstrate the work, we had finished what I wanted.

  And then I had to fill it, which was gross, but I knew why I was doing it.

  We had a pleasant but relatively simple dinner on Christmas Eve, with Sam making a creamy vegetable pot pie alongside a cheesy baked cauliflower dish with sweet potato rolls (that I cheekily split open and filled with the gooey cauliflower dish like I did as a kid with the rolls and mashed potatoes during Thanksgiving). She also made a honey-glazed ham for Cynthia and Zoey, as well as two rolls of the poppy seed bread (one for everyone to enjoy after dinner and one specifically for Zenya to have herself).

  Then it was Christmas day, and I had a few surprises tucked away for my family. Nothing large, as no one seemed to actually want anything. Zoey didn’t seem to want anything besides clarification on what was going on with her body, which made her impatient and resentful of the entire holiday experience, since it was something that had to happen before she could have a doctor’s appointment. Beth and Zenya weren’t actually used to receiving gifts, which meant that I had to be measured, at least to start. Sam already got what she wanted — a life with me. It was hard to say that wasn’t a gift when, if I reversed the positions, I felt like getting her was more than enough for me. Cynthia hadn’t so much as mentioned wanting a gift, but we already had the pair of heels for her from the work we did with Marjorie.

  The first real gift I had lined up required me to head to the train station. On my way there, I just took the subway, but I ordered a rideshare car for the return trip. I wasn’t sure how many bags there would be and figured he wouldn’t want to be jammed into public transit with them.

  The text message told me what line he was coming off of, but that didn’t mean anything to me. He must’ve seen me as I was fiddling with my phone — both trying to tell him where I was in the massive ceilinged columned building and watching the updates from the rideshare app — because he walked right up to me before I even realized he was off the train.

  “Holy shit, James,” Kyle opened with. “Did you have to move to Philly suddenly because the 76ers offered you a contract? When did this happen?”

  I shook my head sheepishly. “No. Just a day after I got here. The first time I, well, you know. Shifted. Was like part of me grew to support the wings and then when I shifted back, I didn’t shrink.”

  “And Zoey’s really tied to you?”

  I rubbed my head. “Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “Why on earth are you apologizing? She thought it was never going to happen. I couldn’t pick a better guy for her than you, and that was before your recent ascension.”

  “Because it feels strange, Kyle. That she wasn’t really given a choice.”

  He nodded as we packed his duffel bag into the trunk of the car that was there to pick us up. “Yeah. Not like you really did either though, man. And, man, she always knew that was how it was going to be. You didn’t, and I’m sure she’ll tell me you’ve been great to her since. Hell, you didn’t know anything.”

  “How’s school been?”

  “Ah, quiet,” he replied hesitantly. “Billy and Amanda came over for a bit after you were declared dead.”

  “What?” I asked incredulously.

  He winced. “Sorry. That’s just what happened.”

  “Have you—”

  “Yeah. I went and saw your parents for your services, which was really, really tough when I knew the truth.”

  “How did they—”

  “Not well. Sam’s mom was there. She’s been around every few weeks. I think she’s been trying to lighten their grief, help them get back to being people again. But that’s hard, kinda impossible.”

  “Kyle,” I said, staring blankly at him.

  “Yeah. It’s fucked. Yeah. I don’t know, man. It’s fucked. I don’t know what else they were supposed to do, though. It’s not like you’re just an illusionist who was going to make money on stage shows, you know? One of the most powerful things in existence and no one noticed for 20 years. They panicked. It’s hard to blame them. Made me question things. You didn’t have a clue, though.”

  “I kind of expected that as a question,” I admitted.

  “Nah. I thought about it a lot. You couldn’t fake how you treated Zoey as a kid. You saw her struggling and, without understanding the why, knew it had something to do with the expectations placed on her and how she was different from me. If you knew, if you had any idea this world existed, it would’ve been the same ‘tell her to suck it up for another year before she goes and becomes a super badass top secret agent sniper spy huntress alpha wolf’ that everyone else in our world offered. You acknowledged that she was struggling and tried to give her help, which no one in our shoes did because we knew where she was going. Meant a lot to her. Another reason why I’m not even slightly concerned about her being mated to you. Probably the best-case scenario.”

  “Cynthia’s been home, though?”

  “She was when I was there, and my parents made it sound like she was regularly. They’ve gotten closer, our parents. Mine talked a lot with yours. Put them in contact with one of the grief counselors my dad used when he was out of the security service. The one Zoey’s talked to about stuff she wouldn’t even share with him. But, my dad talked with your parents about what it was like having Zoey go in after him and how nervous that made him and how it was awful for anyone’s child to be taken from them, but how that, at least if it happened to him, he knew it was possible going in. Just talked about how he had mentally readied himself if something were to happen to her. Not that it’s the same, but my mom seemed to think it helped. And, he mentioned that, because of his old position and because of Zoey, you weren’t the only child who had been taken too soon. Think he put them in contact with a couple of other families, too.”

  “I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t given it much thought.”

  “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to just dump this on you. Not really Christmas conversation. Suppose you did need to know, though. But, uh, this is where you live?” He gestured at the building as he unsubtly shifted the conversation.

  “Yeah,” I replied, grabbing his bag. “And I know at least one person in there who is going to be happy to see you.” When the driver took off to his next job, and I could speak more openly, I admitted, “At least I hope so. My dragon is really attuned to her wolf. She spoke of having difficulty being around you before—”

  “Yeah. My wolf’s weak. Horribly weak. So weak that it’s actually a good thing, given that I’m not really tied to it. But it made hers judge me. She didn’t have any control over it, though.”

  “But, I felt like that changed once she realized how we were connected. She’s no longer evaluating everyone else as potential partners and by how much value they’d add to her life.”

  “That sounds right to me,” Kyle said with a nod. “Without feeling the pressure to hunt for a mate, her wolf can just relax most of the time. Most married weres I know are a lot more relaxed about strangers like that. The really, really strong ones get it awful, and everyone else is somewhere in the middle.”

  As I stepped up to the door and took my key out, he stopped me, wrapping his arms around me in a surprising hug. “It’s really good to see you, James. Really good to know you’re alive and still you despite how much everything has changed. Messages over FaeBook aren’t enough, especially when they started with my sister being so confused about you.”

  After a second, he released me and nodded. “Right. I had to say that. But, now, let’s see if my sister’s appropriately surprised. You didn’t tell her, did you?”

  “Didn’t breathe a word,” I said quietly as I unlocked and opened the door.

  I had woken up Beth when I got up — she had felt me get out of bed — but when I said I just had to get one of the presents before everyone else got up, she nodded and wrapped her arms around Sam. Now, I could feel that Zoey and Beth were awake, and I nudged them both through the bond. Sam was roused as the other two shifted on the bed, and the three took a few moments before coming out.

  Sam recognized who was standing beside me immediately after she crossed the threshold into the kitchen. Beth didn’t, though she saw that Sam had when the redhead paused for a step in the hallway. Zoey was grumbling about being dragged out of bed on Christmas morning, one of the few days she thought she’d be not just allowed to, but rather encouraged to sleep in on. Instead, she was being told she had to put clothes on and get up out to the kitchen for something.

  Her complaints halted when her brain caught up to her eyes and she saw who was standing beside me in our living room.

  Zoey, in an act surprising to everyone besides me, ran up to Kyle, wrapping her slender brother in her arms and twirling him around like lovers reuniting after months apart. Kyle, to his credit, took the act in stride, simply folding his arms over her shoulders and smiling as Zoey spun him around.

  “Kyle! You didn’t tell me you were coming! What’re you doing here?” she shouted, though directly into his chest, muffling it. She set him down as she finished speaking but kept her arms around his torso, looking into his eyes with surprise and elation.

  “Well, someone here messaged me and said he wanted to have something approaching a normal family holiday. Said he’d cover my travel expenses if I came down to give him another touch of his old life. Said he wanted to see us together, since it had been so long.”

  Zoey’s eyes grew wet, but not for the reason everyone else would’ve expected. She was overcome with emotion upon seeing Kyle again for the first time in nearly five years, but it wasn’t joy, like you might’ve thought.

  No, Zoey was overcome with guilt. Guilt that I had unintentionally made unavoidable for her.

  “I’m sorry, Kyle,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to force you out, and I didn’t mean to run off without saying anything. I just, I, I—”

  “Shhhh,” Kyle hushed. He brought his hand up and tousled her hair, an action that contrasted sharply with their appearance. Somehow, he had comfortably claimed his spot as elder sibling, even if she was clearly the physical presence. He had made himself what she needed at the moment. “I know, sis. I know you couldn’t stay. I know your wolf only saw me as a weak sniveling thing to, at best, pity, and, at worst, put out of my misery. I know you had opportunities you felt you needed to pursue and the farther away, the better.”

  “But, I didn’t have to—”

  “Shush. I was — am — weak, scrawny, slow, and clumsy in comparison to you, and yet I was given even more resources than you were. I didn’t have any of the gifts of being a wolf, nor did I have any of the curses. I got to be different. I get why it felt wrong to you that I got support and praise and attention for being precisely so weak and pitiful. I wasn’t haunted by my connection like you were. I’ve known who I am for a long time, Zo, and I never had an issue with it. Everyone else’s eyes may have always been on me because I was weird for a wolf. But mine were on you. I got to see you struggle, every day for years, trying to exist next to me. Trying to overcome your wolf’s desire to push out the scrawny weakling taking all of the attention so that you could be civil with your brother. You owe me no apology, Zo, because I saw how hard you worked to try and get us to coexist. It couldn’t happen while you didn’t have a mate, and then you disappeared, and maybe I’m speaking out of turn now, but I didn’t think it was ever going to happen. I accepted that. You tried so hard to fight yourself for me. I loved you for trying.”

  He turned slightly, his eyes finding mine, “Who could’ve guessed that it would end up being the one person you managed to connect to when you were a restless pup, huh?”

  Zoey didn’t say anything, simply clinging to her brother for several moments. With just a few words, it felt like Kyle had completely absolved her of something that had weighed heavily on her. It had been subtle, or at least, I hadn’t been aware of it, not that it had this amount of impact on her. I imagined that it would rebound slightly when Kyle left, but for now, she was moved with relief.

  In a flash, her arms were around me, instead. Kyle chuckled as Zoey plastered herself against me, whispering utterly unnecessary thanks into my neck. I wrapped my hands around her body, supporting her, happy that I had unintentionally brought her something wonderful. As much as I would say that Kyle’s presence was a gift for her, he was equally here for me. Just a touch of normalcy.

  As Zoey’s death grip around me refused to falter, Kyle took stock of the two other women standing in the living room. His mouth fell open for a second before he regained his faculties and spoke.

  “Holy shit, Sam, you look amazing!” he said in complete shock. Then he realized what he might’ve implied and tried to recover. “Not that you weren’t always rather becoming, but, holy shit. Have modelling agencies got in contact with you? Because I’d bet they will. If you were in California, they’d be calling you already.”

  Zoey, without lifting her head from my chest, mumbled, “They did. We did an advertising shoot for one of our friends who runs a boutique downtown, and all of us got calls, though James got the most. Sam didn’t want anything to do with them, though. None of us really did, but she really didn’t want the attention.”

  Sam blushed. “I’ve gotten all the attention I wanted.”

  “Yeah,” Kyle added. “Really nice that you got caught in his gravity. That’s one positive of all of this. Can’t imagine how you would’ve felt if he had ended up in our world but you hadn’t ever gotten a real shot.”

  “Cheated by fate, probably,” Sam replied honestly.

  “But, damn, girl. What have you been doing? You look amazing.”

  Sam blushed again. “Nothing, honestly.” When Kyle looked suspicious, she continued, “No, really, nothing. It’s all the dragon magic. I mean, I’ve been going to the gym with Beth since James has been going with Zoey to get used to being a dragon physically, but that isn’t what has done this. The dragon magic did.”

  I looked at Sam and Kyle in confusion. “I mean, she’s lost a couple pounds, I guess, but—”

  “No, man, no,” Kyle interrupted me. “Her skin’s cleared up — she practically doesn’t even have pores anymore, they’re so small — and her eyes are bright, almost like she’s a cartoon character. Her hair looks so much healthier, though that admittedly could be just a change since I’ve seen her, but her nails look good, her lips are fuller, and I can see from here that her fat distribution has changed. She doesn’t have a tummy anymore; It’s like all of the fat she has left is in her bust or behind. Her arms are lean, and there’s no loose skin to suggest she was ever overweight. Nothing under her chin, either.”

  Everyone stared at Kyle for a few seconds before he sheepishly shrugged and apologized. “Ah, sorry, Sam. I just kinda notice things.”

  “If they weren’t firmly in the past, I’d smack you for pointing all of them out,” she replied dryly.

  “Yeah. Fair. Reasonable,” Kyle nodded, wincing with regret at how clearly he had outlined sensitive spots for Sam.

  “What do you mean, Sam? Yeah, you look a little firmer than you used to, but it’s not a massive change, right? We all know Kyle’s detail-oriented.”

  “Err, J,” Beth started.

  “Nope,” Zoey asserted. “Different girl than the one you went to school with.”

  Sam blushed and shook her head. “No, James. Everyone else has noticed. Everyone besides you.”

  “Oh,” I uttered dimly. “Jeeze, I liked to think of myself as a little more observant than that.”

  Sam shook her head as Zoey started to let go of me in order to take another glance at the topic of discussion. “No, James, you don’t get it. It’s not just that you didn’t see what changed with me; You’re not capable of seeing the difference.”

  “That’s a bit harsh. Guess I’ve earned it, though,” I replied glumly.

  Sam furrowed her brow in frustration and let out a little huff that indicated she hadn’t quite said what she wanted to, and I had misinterpreted it. “No, James, that’s not what I meant. You can’t see the difference because your magic changed me to be what you saw every time you looked at me. I didn’t understand the changes until weeks after Zoey joined us. It makes perfect sense to me why she’s back to being all-powerful; that’s exactly how you think of her. Beth’s changes were small, too. She put on a little muscle, a little fat, her scars faded, her eyes got better, and so on. She looks like a healthy version of the girl you saved that night because that’s how you think of her.

  “But, J, in comparison, you really sculpted me. I lost like 45 pounds. My tits went up a cup size while I otherwise lost weight. My skin got clearer, and my freckles evened out, and my eyebrows practically trim themselves. My ass is tight and firm despite being a little bit thicker than it was before. Marjorie would’ve made a killing adjusting all of my clothes had you not made it worth her while a thousand times over. Nothing from two months ago fits me. She’s looked at everything I haven’t purchased new since we’ve been here — and some of the things we got that first week, too.

  “And I tried to figure it out, for the first month. At first, when my breasts were a little swollen and my bras didn’t fit right, I thought I was pregnant. But you didn’t see anything. Didn’t feel anything was different. I lost my tummy to the point that if I had Beth’s bust now, the girls would still be larger than my belly. That wouldn’t have been true two months ago. When everyone else was amazed by the transformation, but you didn’t really seem to pick up on it, even when I mentioned losing weight to you, I figured it out.

  “I look the same to you. That’s not a criticism, James. It’s just, humbling and eye-opening, I guess? Kinda heartwarming, kinda bittersweet, to realize that this is how you saw me everyday years ago. You always thought I was this bombshell, and I wasn’t. Kyle’s reaction is what everyone else has, James, but you can’t see it because I always looked like this for you.”

  “It’s no surprise he spent years pining after you,” Kyle added with a smirk. “I hope the lovebirds got everything they wanted.”

  “And then some,” I said. “Not all of the extras have been positive — being told that my parents and sister think I’m dead goes in that column — but a lot of them have been. Kyle, this is Beth. She’s the one who found the dragon in me.”

  Beth, I could sense, was uncharacteristically nervous. She was, frankly, more anxious now than she had been when we met with Aisling for the first time. When I subconsciously asked why through the bond, the flash of sensations I got immediately in response gave me the complete picture.

  Beth was nervous when Sam showed up initially because she was terrified that the guy she had been staying with had somehow followed me home. She remained nervous when Cynthia showed up because it felt like I had unintentionally dragged her into a government agency intervention — which she could admit now she probably needed, but at the time, it wasn’t her choice and, as such, was terrifying. When it turned out that the intervention was for me, she remained a little nervous, but my presence kept her calm.

  When we met with Aisling, Beth didn’t really understand who Aisling was or why she was important. Beth was nervous because Aisling clearly was important, but the magnitude hadn’t sunk in. To be fair, it still really hadn’t. For someone who seemed to be micromanaging my life, Aisling was surprisingly personally hands-off.

  Kyle, on the other hand, was my best friend, Sam’s only other friend, and Zoey’s sister. He was someone whose opinions and thoughts we all cared about. Why he was important was obvious from the start. Beth really wanted to make a good impression because Kyle was always going to be at least a little in our lives, with all of the shared connections, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to do that.

  The smirk I gave her didn’t help. Her green eyes shot daggers at me when I suggested she simply be herself.

  All of that passed in just the moment it took for Kyle to turn his gaze to her and then back to me so he could ask, “Found the dragon?”

  “She was being harassed as I walked home from your place the last time I saw you. I encouraged the drunkard who was blaming her for his money problems to leave her alone. Or, actually, I was a vehicle for the dragon to do it. When that was all settled, she told me that she didn’t have a place to stay because the asshole screaming at her was her place to stay, so I offered her my bed for the night. The dragon acting out woke something up, and I apparently blasted energy around all night. Sam felt it and came to figure out why I was being a dick the next morning. So, yeah, Beth found the dragon.”

  “Hmm,” Kyle mused, looking back at Beth. “I think, James, that when you tell people that story in the future, you might have to alter it.”

  “Why?” Beth asked.

  “Well, in the storybooks, it’s a knight in shining armor coming to save the maiden, not a ferocious dragon. Does the meet cute plot work with him being a dragon? Or does it work even better because you’re subverting their expectations? Just things to think about before you publicize it. Oh, maybe take a stroke from Villanueve? ‘The Princess and the Beast,’ perhaps?”

  “Sam’s his princess,” Zoey said plainly, bringing Sam’s blush right back as it started to fade.

  “‘The Dragon’s Bride?’” Kyle offered.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Too on the nose,” Sam replied.

  “‘Wings In the Night?’”

  “You’re not writing a screenplay of my life for at least the next twenty years, bud. Maybe by then, we’ll have enough of an understanding of what happened that you can bend the truth and adapt it.”

  “I just need one compelling story to make it big,” he said with a completely genuine smile. He had no interest in making it big as a playwright — his engineering degree was his ticket to the future he wanted. Writing was just a hobby.

  I did make a mental note to tell Zenya that, in any request where someone wanted to talk about writing a story, movie, or play about our lives, that one of my conditions was that Kyle be included in the process. A proper writer’s credit was both impossibly challenging to get without spending years in the industries and was something that Kyle had made plainly something he dreamed of having, even if he wasn’t going to work directly for it.

  “Gotta see how this one ends before we figure out if it’s compelling or not, Kyle,” I replied. “There’s some other stuff to figure out first — the how and why parts of me ending up as a dragon.”

  “It’s far too early to talk about that, even if it weren’t Christmas morning,” Sam said.

  “Is everything alright?” Zenya asked as she stepped into the kitchen, wearing the pajamas she had on during our movie night. “I heard you all talking—”

  She stopped suddenly when she saw Kyle and her naturally cool blue eyes iced over as she visually took his measure. She sniffed, twice, then glanced between Zoey, me, and Kyle, and I winced at how foolish I had been to invite him here without even mentioning it to her. Given her reaction to Zoey, and with Kyle being a guy, I couldn’t imagine how awful his presence was for her. Their combined presence.

  After a moment, she crossed the few remaining steps between the hallway and Kyle as the rest of us stood nervously in silence.

  Eventually, she looked at me curiously and asked, “He’s a wolf?” as though she wasn’t sure.

  “Yes,” everyone else in the room responded.

  She looked back at Kyle. “Why doesn’t he smell like one, then? Not a real one.”

  “Because I barely am one,” Kyle responded softly. “I can shift, but I’m the sniveling runt not just of my own line but of every wolf on the continent. Might be the world, but I haven’t been everywhere to check.”

  She eyed him studiously for another moment before his words sunk in for her. “Oh,” she remarked, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “That’s quite alright. You weren’t half as mean about it as my sister was.”

  “Kyle, I—” Zoey started.

  “That’s quite enough apologizing from you, Zoey. I was making a joke, though, evidently too soon. It just seemed that Miss—” he hung on the word, looking around expectantly for an introduction.

  “This is Miss Evgenia Popov, my legal assistant and business advisor. Zenya, this is Kyle, my best friend from my childhood, one of the most observant people I’ve ever met, Zoey’s older brother, and as you’ve deduced, sort of mostly a werewolf,” I explained.

  “— Evgenia was uncomfortable with my presence, to begin with, and then with the idea that she might have caused offense where she hadn’t, so I wanted to set her at ease.”

  “Zenya, I’m sorry. I invited him here without speaking to you. Is it going to be uncomfortable for you if he’s here?”

  She cocked her head in confusion. “Why are you asking me?”

  I sighed. “Because this is your home, and you have the right to be at ease here.”

  She shook her head. “This is your home, and you’re gracious enough to allow me to use it. I have no say over who you invite here, Sir.”

  I grimaced and turned to Kyle. “Would it—”

  “Not a problem, James. I’ll find a hotel,” he answered before I had the question out of my mouth, pulling out his phone.

  “As long as I’m footing the bill. This is my fuckup.”

  “If you’re going to twist my arm about it, I suppose I’ll let you pay,” he replied with a smirk.

  “Wait,” Zenya interjected. “He doesn’t have to do that.”

  “Zenya, you deserve a place of your own that you can exist in and be comfortable in, and I’d like that place to be here.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re clearly uncomfortable with wolves and merely tolerate Zoey because of my bond with her.”

  “One of the reasons I’ve been dragging my feet,” Zoey whispered into my ear.

  “Miss Lyon is rather intimidating. She reminds me of my past,” Zenya stated. She then turned to face Kyle. “Mister Lyon, no offense intended, isn’t intimidating. He doesn’t set me on edge like Zoey did the first time I smelled her on you.”

  “Absolutely no offense taken,” Kyle confirmed.

  “We can get him a room somewhere else,” I offered. “He doesn’t need to stay here. He can sleep somewhere—”

  “James, I don’t sleep, so I don’t have that hangup. He’s going to be here all day to celebrate with his friends and family, which I’m not going to object to. He’s less bothersome to me than Zoey is, and I’ve come to terms with her. It’s fine, okay? I am fine with Mister Lyon being here today and tonight and however long he wishes to stay. I’ve met with four other dragons this past week. A polite werewolf isn’t a concern. I was just surprised.”

  I wasn’t sure if I could trust that her words were the truth rather than simply her acquiescing to my foolish impulsiveness because of our difference in station. In my hesitation, Beth poked my mind.

  “You need to let her have this,” she mentally conveyed. “You need to trust her to set her own limits. I know you want to right every wrong she’s ever experienced, and you feel like you’re committing one right now, but you need to trust her. Give her this. Making decisions for her isn’t the way to help her. Not this one, anyway.”

  I nodded. She was right, of course. “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind, okay?”

  The very edges of Zenya’s lips curled up in the vaguest hints of a smile as she nodded her approval. “Yes, James, I will let you know if my needs change.” With that, she turned to Kyle and said, “Mister Lyon, it’s been a pleasure, but I’ll leave you to your reunion now.”

  Sam caught my eye and mentally asked a question. I nodded in response, so she turned to the departing vampire and said, “I’m going to start on breakfast, Zenya. Come back out in half an hour?”

  For the next half hour, we devolved into two different groups having separate conversations. Kyle and Zoey sat on the couch, catching up on more than just the two halves of my life they had seen. Zoey caught my eye several times throughout their conversation. Her wolf was still unimpressed with her brother’s lack of physical prowess, but she submitted to the dragon’s contempt for evaluating people that way — as, after all, he had firmly outclassed her, and yet the reaction to our game of tag was bringing her into our family. Firmly telling the wolf that the human woman needed it had the wolf sitting quietly with its tail tucked between its legs in shame.

  I sat at the dining room table while Beth and Sam got started on our Christmas morning breakfast. Before Sam got further than discussing her plans with Beth, though, I gave her the present I was saving for her. I had a really hard time coming up with things for these two — inviting Kyle for a few days was just as much for me as it was for Zoey, as much as she’d love to see him and get a handle on how her wolf could coexist with him with a dragon holding her accountable, the gift I had worked with Sam to make for Zenya felt inspired, and our group gift for Cynthia felt straightforward, too. It was only Beth and Sam that I struggled to find something that really seemed to fit. What I had ended up with felt impersonal, even if I knew it was going to be somewhat practical, but it was at least something I could offer.

  To be fair to me, finding something that felt as personal as what I was going to offer Zenya was challenging when Sam was quite adamant that she already had everything she had spent her life chasing, and Beth still wasn’t fully accustomed to the notion that she was actually permitted to desire things at all. I might have had access to their minds directly, but that only made me less confident in what I was doing because of how genuinely they seemed to be happy, not just content but truly happy with what they already had.

  My search for what to give Sam started by talking to Antonella about what, beyond flowers, she grew because I was in search of mana-dense herbs for Sam to cook with. That quickly turned into a lesson about how plants utilized the natural mana in the environment and spellcaster-induced mana, which I listened intently to because, firstly, knowledge of the workings of the world was ever so rarely not valuable to have, and, secondly, because Antonella seemed lonely. She had a few regular patrons who came by — collecting things like weekly arrangements for their churches while sharing a cup of tea with the senior kobold — but she didn’t seem to have a friend. I didn’t know of any other kobolds in the city, there weren’t any other dragons, she didn’t have an apprentice, and she seemed to socialize occasionally with Antonin merely because they were both older than the country we lived in. She didn’t really have peers. Maybe it was simply because our scales were so similar (although, when I saw her again after the dragons had identified how the different markings, I noticed that her scales had patterns and a more navy blue outlining instead of my slate grey), but she seemed to perk up and grow uncharacteristically chatty whenever I entered her store. So, I indulged her. It was to my own benefit, anyhow.

  Her lesson ended with both a handful of fresh herbs for Sam to try to cook with and several further recommendations. I followed those suggestions to several grocers around the city, who were quite happy to both have been named in a recommendation from Antonella and to have the city’s resident dragon as a potential patron. They each stocked a selection of other mana-infused ingredients that caught my attention — earth-seasoned flour for baking, storm-laced flavored salts, and fire-infused cooking oil — but before I got overwhelmed by the offerings, I simply purchased three gift cards, one from each store. Then I bought a pan, a pot, and a set of utensils, each made with some kind of magical material I didn’t fully understand that was supposed to help in some way or another.

  I was surprised to see that Sam was already aware of one of the stores I had a gift certificate for, and she was quite enthusiastic about trying the new tools — apparently, after several months of practice, she could feel the implements she was using to cook with as her mana moved through them. She commented on how the things I had selected felt easier to manipulate magically than the regular mundane cookware. They didn’t actually make her a better cook or increase the amount of mana that ultimately ended up in our food, but they did make her feel like the old knives and cookware had her wading through molasses, whereas now she was walking through a sprayed mist.

  For Beth, I had two other gift certificates. The first was to an academic bookstore, since I knew she was looking to at least look at classes in the spring. I was well versed enough in the surprisingly aggressive pricing of textbooks for classes, and even though I would’ve happily purchased them when she needed them, I was aware that Beth still struggled to see the money in the accounts as our money rather than my money. The gift certificates, for some reason, made it more palatable for her, even though I was hedging my bets that they wouldn’t cover even a single semester’s worth of books and online access codes. If I stepped in and covered the difference then, she could still feel like she was in control of things.

  The second certificate for Beth was from a publishing house that had an office in Philly. It had been easy enough for me to get into contact with them now, as a dragon, and speak with an actual person. In exchange for a testimonial about how much I used their various titles when I was in school, they were perfectly content with agreeing to offer me a number of free releases every year, with a discount on additional purchases I wanted to make.

  Of course, I didn’t actually need the books anymore, and it wasn’t like I could guarantee that whichever professors Beth ended up with would base their curriculum on titles from this publishing house.

  What it did mean was that I could offer Beth essentially as many new textbooks as she could need for the kids she worked with in Rosa’s club in a way that felt like a more organic development than me simply purchasing them all. The publishing house was well aware of where the books were going, after all, and they were happy to spend a little of their marketing budget on supplemental things like notebooks and pencils to go along with the donated education material in exchange for a picture or two every year. To be fair, my acknowledgment of them seemed to be more than the value they’d get from any advertising money they’d spend, anyway.

  While Sam got right into playing with her new toys as she prepared breakfast, Beth started looking through the initial catalog of potential texts to see if there was anything she recognized from the top of her head that Rosa needed. When Beth didn’t, she asked me if she could send the list to Rosa, which I only responded to with a giggle and a “the deal won’t be worth very much if you don’t.”

  When Sam was nearly finished with breakfast, I walked back to my bedroom, said hello to Rosa through the video chat Beth had called her on, got sidetracked for a moment as Jess popped on to wish both of us a Merry Christmas, and then grabbed the gift I was going to give to Zenya before making a hasty retreat out of the room before I could get caught in the conversation. I wasn’t sure exactly why the three of them thought 8 am on Christmas Day was the best time to have a video chat about this, but neither Jess nor Rosa seemed bothered, from what I could see, so I let my concern fade.

  I knocked on Zenya’s door and, unsurprisingly, found her at her computer rather than in the bed. Given the pristine state of the blanket, her bed still didn’t look like it had been used, at least not recently. When I glanced back at her monitor, I was mildly surprised that I did recognize the spread of ASCII spritework on her monitor and medieval-inspired MIDI tunes quietly playing through her speakers though, before giggling slightly at how fitting it seemed to be. The giggle was what turned her attention to me rather than the screen.

  “What?” she asked, almost in embarrassment.

  “It’s just perfect, actually. It’s not what I would’ve expected, and I’m sure there are inaccuracies there that bother you, but that kind of management simulation blend seems perfectly designed for you.”

  She listened to what I said, considered it for several moments, and then nodded. “It is a touch troubling that the vampires are exclusively pests that need identification and expulsion, or else they indiscriminately murder others inside my fort, but, at least for gameplay reasons, I understand it. It’s also not like it isn’t still a concern these days. New vampires are always a problem until their initial hunger is sated, and that can take years.”

  “I’m sorry you so frequently get grouped with monsters.”

  Zenya shrugged. “James, even if you want to argue that I’m not one, the others can be monsters and have been in the past. Just like you’re not a despotic tyrant of a dragon, everyone is concerned because the other dragons certainly aren’t great ambassadors for themselves despite actually being the best selection from all of history. I’m a vampire. Vampires have done horrible things. Mundanes making entertainment portraying us as monsters in human skin is of no personal offense to me. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about the game.”

  “No, actually, I came to offer you a Christmas present and then to invite you to breakfast. I figured that it would be more comfortable for you to either accept or decline it from me in private, rather than opening it in front of everyone.”

  She nodded slightly. “I think that’s reasonable. Thank you.”

  I held out the small package I had been carrying. It was wrapped in simple black and white snowflake paper, which Sam had thankfully helped me with because I would’ve made a mess of it otherwise.

  “I can go, if you’d like to open it in private,” I added as I handed it to her.

  She shook her head and carefully slid her finger along the seam of the folded paper, catching the piece of tape and unraveling the covering. She slowly slipped the metal flask out of the wrapping, turning it over in her hand to look it over in its entirety. She found the silver engraved E that I had inscribed into the casing and ran her finger along it.

  “I’m not sure I understand the significance, James,” she said as she looked it over. “You seem quite nervous about giving it to me, so I’m assuming it has some that I’m merely missing.”

  “For starters, the silver, it, well, it came from the shards that were in you.”

  “Oh,” she merely uttered.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but it felt wrong to simply give it away or otherwise get rid of it without you telling me that was actually what you wanted. I still have the rest of it, and we can replace it with something else if it’s too much to have it there. Maybe I’m too forward with this, but I rather liked the idea of giving you a nicer way of carrying it, since you’ve brought it so far.”

  “But why a flask? I’m a vampire, James. I don’t drink for pleasure. I can’t even taste things, and I have no desire to imbibe alcohol.” She looked at me harshly as she continued, “And I thought I had been quite clear that I had no intention of ever using blood. So, why a flask, James?”

  “Because you seemed so disgusted, so repulsed by blood, Zenya. But, you are a vampire. Your body can use the blood.”

  She glanced back at the flask in her hands and, though I didn’t think it possible given her natural complexion, paled slightly. “You aren’t saying—”

  “No,” I quickly clarified. “There’s no blood in there. That’s my saliva, in a temporally enchanted flask designed to keep it fresh forever. It will need a touch of mana about once every eighteen months to keep the enchanting running, but no, Zenya, there’s no blood. Just a flask’s worth of something that can mostly replace the function of blood for you. I wanted you to always have an alternative to blood that you could feel comfortable with, and I didn’t want you to feel like you’d have to come to me and ask for it. I just wanted you to already have it. I’ll refill it, god forbid you ever need it, but I just wanted to make sure that you never had to compromise what you felt simply to heal yourself again, or to instead suffer through an injury because you couldn’t bring yourself to use your vampiric nature.”

  She stared at the flask for several seconds, turning it over in her hands before setting it down on her desk, standing up, and turning to me.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. Then she tentatively reached out, wrapping her slender arms around my chest, pulling herself against me in a hug. “Thank you, James,” she said again as I carefully placed my arms around her shoulders, holding her against me. She didn’t tense like she had in the past, simply accepting the embrace and nestling herself against my body. It felt, all things considered, right for her to be there.

  “The food will be ready shortly,” I whispered, though I made no attempt to move.

  “Okay,” she whispered back, leaning against my shoulder to look at me.

  After several more seconds of near silence, with only the menu music of her game playing to interrupt us, she added, “This feels really good. Friday night, with the girls, was the first time I had ever done something like that.”

  “I really enjoyed it. All of it. Sam did a great job with the time she had.”

  “I am really grateful that she included me, even if I wasn’t sure it was a good idea at the time. I’m very grateful you enjoyed it, too.”

  “What are you saying, Zenya?”

  “Do you still feel like you want to give me an incentive, sir?” she asked, seeming meek and unsure of herself. “That removing the silver I had borne doesn’t count.”

  “Yes,” I replied instantly. “If there’s something you feel you actually want that is in my power to provide, I’d like to make it happen.”

  She nodded against me and seemed to gather her courage. She smelled nervous.

  “Given that I feel as though I finally have been able to provide value for you—”

  “That wasn’t ever a concern, Zenya.”

  “Maybe for you. For me, it always was a concern. A significant one initially, fading to merely a constant, quiet thought. Regardless of your opinion on it, mine has now settled. Given that I finally feel as though I’ve been able to provide value for you and your family, I now feel justified in asking for something from you.”

  “You could have asked at any time, Zenya.”

  “Yes, and you likely would have done your best to accommodate me. But now I feel as though I might deserve your attention, and that was important to me. A strange feeling for me, truly, since I have spent my entire life wishing that I hadn’t caught the attention of the most powerful beings everywhere I went. Besides, James, I only figured out what to ask for just very recently.”

  She inhaled, held it, and then continued, “James, can I sleep beside you at night? I don’t need sleep, being a vampire, but I found your arms around me to be so incredibly comforting. I know it’s selfish to ask for it, considering all three of your mates do actually sleep, but you told me to ask for anything, when I finally identified something. And, if you’re going to be inviting another woman here, even if you didn’t invite her here as a wife as she desired, the potential for that is there, and I’d rather like to have my sleeping in your bed to be established and normalized before she gets here, just on the off chance that things develop that way.”

  My mouth was already open and on its way to saying yes before I even heard the question. I paused for half a second, partially to let Zenya actually get it out in its entirety, and partially to mentally nudge Sam, Beth, and Zoey to see if they had any immediate objections. Sam and Beth both immediately encouraged me to say yes. On the other hand, Zoey didn’t have an objection, exactly, but she did raise the question of whether Zenya would be comfortable sharing a bed. Zoey’s wolf wasn’t particularly keen on giving up her — admittedly self-inflicted — limited snuggling time with all of us. Not that it actually needed a concrete answer this minute because Zenya could simply sleep with me when Zoey wasn’t here for the time being, but it was something to consider, at least.

  It also felt like this request was obviously leading somewhere more, perhaps not directly on Zenya’s part, but inevitably, given the proximity. I still wasn’t sold that the equal parts fragile and driven woman leaning against me actually wanted that for herself, and I wasn’t sold that putting her in that position was in her best interests. Still, she had actually asked me for it. That was more than I had expected and more than any of my mates had expected, even if it wasn’t exactly what any of us had meant. Denying her out of a sense of doing right by her when the request was largely innocent didn’t feel right. Accepting meant I’d need to talk to Marjorie sooner than I had planned on.

  Maybe Beth was more right than I wanted to admit when she spoke to me at the dragon moot. I wasn’t sure I felt capable of saying no to Zenya as she pressed her lithe frame against my chest, her ghostly pale skin with a hint of a blush from her nerves just under the icy blue eyes staring at me as she awaited an answer. If Juliana had approached me like this, would I have reacted similarly?

  It didn’t matter. I felt content with my decision. I wanted Zenya in my life. I wanted to unravel the pain that she carried every day, to soothe what I could, and to shoulder some of the rest so that she could live a life she felt was worth living. My three mates had given their approval and encouragement. My dragon was intrigued by what kind of connection he could make with something that was both dead and living.

  Saying no was never an option.

  “Yes, Zenya, but that doesn’t exactly feel like a good reward for your efforts, either. I’m still going to ask you to keep your eyes out for something that you want for you. There are also a couple of complications to consider, first.”

  She blinked slowly, seemingly surprised that I had immediately said yes, but then nodded, encouraging me to continue with my concerns.

  “The first and most pressing question is to consider how you feel sharing a bed with Zoey.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Zenya replied seriously. “I was on Friday.”

  “Okay. I’m reluctant to agree so quickly, but I am willing to attempt it before suggesting anything else. My second concern has to do with the discrepancy in our relationship compared to my mates.”

  Zenya’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?” she asked.

  “Uh, well, you know, if you want to be in the bed, and you end up being more comfortable with Zoey there than I think you would be right now, well, if you’re there—”

  “James,” she interrupted me. “Are you suggesting that you might be inclined to have relations with your mates in your own bed sometimes and that my presence might make that awkward?”

  “Err, yeah, Zenya. Exactly that.”

  “That’s a perfectly reasonable desire, James, and is certainly a more reasonable place to do that than, say, the floor in the living room.”

  “Wait, you—”

  “But, I’m an adult, James. I was an adult a hundred years before you were born. I’m more than aware that that was something that was happening already, especially given your unique nature.”

  I scratched my head. “Sorry.”

  “I’m definitely not asking for an apology and I won’t be accepting one for sharing them with me. From what I understand from Samantha and Beth, you didn’t know at the start. I’m certainly not complaining that I’ve gotten to experience you. I’m simply saying that I’m well aware of what a man and his lovers will do in bed together and that I’m not going to be offended by it.”

  “Right,” I replied, trying to determine how to rephrase my concern.

  “If it bothers you, or any of them, I’ll excuse myself,” Zenya assured me. “I know where I’m asking to be invited, James. A lingering kiss or a stray hand aren’t going to offend my sensibilities.”

  “Let’s talk with them about it, together, soon?”

  “That there is a possibility of it at all is enough for today, James. I know it’s quite the request.”

  I sighed. “It is, kind of, but mostly, it isn’t. I just can’t say ‘yes, just hop on in tonight,’ you know? ‘Yes, but let’s do it slowly to make sure you’re actually okay with both Zoey and me, and that all three of them are content with it because you are essentially asking to share something they enjoy, too,’ is what I need to say. So, yes, I’m definitely open to the idea, but also, no, this isn’t a reward.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Something enjoyable between friends?” I offered hesitantly.

  “Hmm. I do believe we are friends, James. You are probably the second friend I’ve ever made. But I do not believe friends typically invite each other to sleep together.”

  “It’s the second time I think I’ve heard you actually ask for something. Even if it’s not exactly normal, the fact that you so infrequently do makes me really want to do my best to make it happen.”

  Zenya nodded, but I realized she hadn’t moved throughout the conversation. She had been simply leaning against me the entire time we talked.

  “You know, you used to be quite apprehensive around me,” I said conversationally. “You weren’t that very first day, which made it feel like it was something I had done to make you that way.”

  “I think I was too overwhelmed to show it, if that makes sense,” Zenya replied softly. “At first, I felt like I was being lied to by Aisling. She told me she was sending me to work for a dragon who had just moved here, but there weren’t any dragons. She had me write the contract. It wasn’t any different than the ones I had been operating under before, so that wasn’t exactly confusing for me.”

  I frowned, but she shook her head fervently. “Don’t think poorly of them. When Vlad first brought me here, I was in no state to care for myself.”

  “Vlad?” I asked.

  She snorted. “Bob is what he would have told you to call him since you speak English.”

  “Right.”

  “When he gave me to Aisling to try and see if she could find a productive use for my time after he had failed, she carried the same contract. Now I see how that could’ve been abused, but at the time, I didn’t know what I could do, and she didn’t know what she wanted from me, so agreeing to something specific didn’t make sense, and I didn’t know any better. I was already in the best position I had been in, so pushing for more didn’t feel right.

  “Regardless, I’m not there anymore. As I was saying, I wrote and notarized the contract with you, but I didn’t entirely believe what I was being told. Sure, you were important somehow, but there weren’t any dragons coming here. So I didn’t think about it, and it didn’t affect me. But then you were a dragon, and I was permanently assigned to you, but I didn’t have anything to do for you. I know, now, that you aren’t concerned about that. But at the time — James, I’m old. I didn’t know any dragons in the old days, but I heard about them. The people I was scared of were scared of dragons, okay? So, at the time, I suddenly realized I was the personal advisor and assistant to an incredibly powerful person, someone who I thought was dangerous, and yet I didn’t have any way to balance our scales. You were letting me live here, use your house, socialize with your mates, eat your food, drink your tea, and all the while you simply smiled and handled the things you could on your own, asking nothing of me. And then you had me rewrite the contract to be more in my favor and healed my back.

  “I know now that you were content doing all of that. You feel as though you had been given a great gift and had plenty for yourself and your loves and to spare. I hadn’t had any experiences like that before. I expected you to want your pound of flesh, one way or another.”

  “I’m sorry,” I quietly said back.

  She laughed, which was incredibly rewarding to hear on its own, given how infrequently I heard it. “Why are you apologizing to me? I’m leaning against you for comfort, asking you to share your bed with me instead of your mates, and explaining how I was prejudiced against you from the very start because of my history — and you’re apologizing to me.”

  “You were uncomfortable with the situation for reasons that didn’t have to exist, if only I had taken time to think about them sooner.”

  “Time that you didn’t have because you had just discovered you were a dragon, James. Give it a rest. I’m finally starting to feel like I’m alive again. Taking a couple extra months to get there when I wasn’t even dreaming about it a year ago is still a blessing.”

  “Okay. If you say so.”

  “Didn’t you say breakfast was going to be ready like 20 minutes ago?”

  “Yeah. This was important.”

  “That is, too, James. I wanted to eat with Kyle.”

  That drew a double-take from me. “Kyle? Why?”

  “You were right to ask if I would be alright with Zoey. I haven’t been at all veiled with my distaste for wolves. But one of your mates is a wolf, and she has been nothing but accommodating to me. I want something that means she’s going to have to be even more accommodating with me. It’s only fair that I actually try to treat her like she is who she is — not the wolf I have issues with, that is.”

  “So, Kyle?”

  “Well, he’s a wolf, and he’s a male. Normally, those would be issues. But, first, I’m surrounded by all of you, so I know that I’m safe and cared for. That hasn’t been guaranteed before. Second, he’s your friend, and a close one, not just a visitor, so I have some further trust for him because of that. On top of that, he’s, well, not much of a wolf, is he?” she asked with a queasy expression. “I’m sorry, that’s rude, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so. I also don’t think he’d disagree. I think he’d suggest that, for him, being not much of a wolf has been quite a blessing, actually.”

  “Well, either way, he isn’t quite as intimidating as any other male wolf I’ve met, and I’m in the only place in the world where people go out of their way to accommodate my concerns. I’m safe, James, and if I suddenly feel differently, I trust all of you to listen to me, to hear what I’m saying — or, perhaps, what I’m not saying — and to act with my best interests in mind.”

  She paused for a moment, leaning back away from me to get a better look at my face while keeping her hands on my shoulders. “So, let’s go enjoy whatever creation your lovely Samantha has for us today, hmm?”