Zenya did sit beside Kyle for breakfast — and then for dinner, as well. She talked with him throughout the day, clearly uncomfortable at the start, but that slowly developed into a quiet peacefulness for which I felt incredibly grateful. Given how much she had settled, I asked Kyle during dinner if I could see him shift since I hadn’t ever actually seen him as a wolf. I had seen Zoey, but since everyone made it out like they may as well not be related, I was intrigued by what he appeared like in his other form. Instead of replying, his eyes bounced between Zenya, me, and Zoey, trying to gauge if everyone else would be alright with my request.

  Zoey merely shrugged. Zenya thought for several seconds before cautiously nodding.

  Kyle then asked how much he should shift and, if needed, if he could use the restroom to perform the change, given that he wasn’t comfortable stripping down in the middle of the living room with people he had just met. Zenya suggested just his ears and tail first since she knew she could tolerate Zoey that way.

  With a good-natured shrug, my best friend from another lifetime shifted, and I stifled a giggle.

  He looked precisely like Zoey did — bright white and unmistakably canine — except everything about his fluffy ears and tail wiggling about at the dinner table made him look adorable, in stark contrast to how Zoey’s animal form made her appear majestically untamed.

  Zenya looked at him appraisingly for several moments before asking if she could touch his tail. Kyle wagged it in front of her, stretching it out playfully for Zenya to catch, twitching it back and forth as the vampire drew her slender fingers through the white fur. Zenya kept watching him throughout the meals and then, after dinner, asked him if it would be too much trouble to shift fully.

  “For a friend of James’,” he replied, “It would be an honor.” Then, cheekily, as he was leaving the room, he added, “Of course, it’s no trouble regularly. Just a rarity that someone wants to see the clumsy, small, slow, weak baby runt of the pack when Zoey’s right there.”

  Zenya glanced between the siblings, eventually saying, “Zoey is dangerous. I don’t think she’s a danger to me, quite the opposite, but her form is capable of it. You’re like her, but you’re safe.”

  Kyle smiled before he stepped into the bathroom. “I’m sure there are guys out there who would take offense to that, but, genuinely, thank you. That was an incredible compliment. It does, however, raise one question that I’m hoping to answer for myself soon.”

  Everyone seemed to hang on bated breath as he shifted from light-hearted, jovial chatter to a seemingly serious point. Kyle waited, one foot in the bathroom and his hand on the doorframe, still peering back at us, as he said, “If I’m safe and Zoey’s dangerous, what does that make James?”

  He came back a few seconds later, fully shifted into his wolf form, and once again, I was struck by the similarities between him and Zoey. The issue was that they were fully only similarities rather than shared characteristics — with as little offense to my best friend as possible, he was the store brand version of a great wolf. When Zoey’s wolf form stood, her front shoulders came nearly to the same height as mine when I was standing. On the other hand, Kyle resembled a pet dog, coming to the height of the cushions on the couch. Zoey’s jaw looked terrifying and powerful — Kyle’s looked about right for a scoop of kibble and a nose boop. Zoey’s legs looked designed for jumping and hunting in the woods — Kyle slipped on the polished hardwood floor in the hallway, only catching himself by leaning against the wall.

  Eventually, he made his way to us sitting on the couch, where he climbed onto the cushion and put his head on Zenya’s leg. On his other side, Beth slowly began brushing her hand through his fur. It took a few minutes of his literal puppy dog eyes to entice her, but Zenya slowly lowered her hand again and gently rubbed his now canine face.

  With the two of them literally petting her brother, Zoey felt obliged to roll her eyes and snark, “Be careful, Kyle; that’s how we got domesticated.”

  In response, Kyle stretched his limbs out and yawned. It was just enough movement that Zenya took her hand back for a moment, but it was quickly returned as Kyle settled in between them. Evidently, traveling early in the morning had been tiring for him.

  I did shift, too, so that he could see my other form, though not as completely as Kyle did. He was amazed as my wings sprouted in my living room, unfurling and spreading through the entire space. He made Zoey shift, too, so he could compare my fangs to hers, and then finished a can of soda he had bought on the train and handed it to me so that I could crush it with my claws.

  When he finally went to bed, I hadn’t yet had a chance to talk to Beth, Zoey, or Sam about what Evgenia had asked me. That wasn’t really an issue, given that all three of them had given me their approval preemptively, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted to fully invite Evgenia in before I had talked to Marjorie. It may have just been that I had decided I was going to do that first and was now sticking to it so I didn’t have to consider anything any further, but reversing the decision to not do that didn’t feel right either.

  Sam looked at me pointedly as she went to sleep. And then she left about a bodywidth of space between her and me when she finally did, her arm wrapped around the empty space to make contact with me. Her point was clear.

  On Friday morning, I felt myself struck with a cutting pain of inspiration — something that I should have thought about before I acted but now definitely needed to consider. I steeled my resolve and asked Zenya to call Antonin and ask if he was available this week, as I had something I was interested in researching.

  Thankfully, he was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until later in the week, so I’d have to sit with my temporary fit of paranoia for a few more days. I really felt as though my forethought had let me down and had hoped Antonin would’ve been able to clear things up for me sooner rather than later.

  In the meantime, much to my relief, I did have plenty of things to occupy my mind.

  The first was a flight lesson.

  Which was, for the first time in quite a while, a deviation from the now banal and valueless time spent coasting inside the airfield hangar. For starters, I had company coming with me. Kyle was naturally interested in seeing me fully shift, especially after Beth had let slip just how much larger I got.

  The bigger deviation was that we were headed back to the trampoline park, where I had practiced landing several weeks ago. That was because Beth and Sam were also coming with me. I had mentioned flying to both of them and the idea of having a harness made. I needed ideas on how to do that, and I was really hoping that by bringing the two of them and having them observe me and discuss things with Mallory, some progress would be made. We were heading to the trampoline park so that Mallory could sit astride me in the air and not have to worry about how she was going to land, at least for the most part.

  “If I could get permission for you to simply fly somewhere outside,” she grumbled as we arrived at the closed facility, “falling wouldn’t be an issue.”

  “Why not?” Beth asked.

  “If we could fly outside, he could simply go higher up. It’s not like we’d be testing this harness next to the airport or above 10,000 feet. A thousand feet of ground clearance would make this a lot easier,” Mallory continued grumbling as I stripped down.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Beth replied.

  “If I sit on his back here and we test things, but I fall off of him while he’s moving, I’m hitting one of the trampoline nets or the foam pits. If I get hurt, yeah, he can fix me right up, but it’s not like I want to have a broken wrist for a few minutes. If he flew a thousand feet up and I fell off of him, I could shift myself and just fly back to him.”

  I shifted fully after Mallory had ensured that the facility was set up how she wanted it. I had pulled Kyle aside in the morning before we left and mentioned that my whole body shifting had some peculiar effects and that I wasn’t sure if it would affect him. His eyebrows shot up when Beth, Sam, and Mallory made it clear that they were enjoying my scales, but it was evident that he wasn’t affected by the same sensation. I felt that that was noteworthy, but I didn’t know what conclusion to draw from it.

  “That’s why you didn’t want to show me your entire draconic form in the apartment yesterday?” he asked.

  I shrugged, as best I could on four limbs. “Don’t like forcing it on them if I can avoid it. Flying means I have to shift, though.”

  “God, that never gets old,” Mallory sighed as she came back to her senses.

  “Makes me wish I was the one riding him,” Sam added before her eyes darted around to see if we had heard her. I had, but Mallory and Beth were too busy panting, and Kyle was both genuinely intrigued by being in the presence of a dragon and willing to pretend he was enthralled by that experience so as to let Sam’s dignity remain as unscathed as it could be.

  “To be honest,” I said, wishing I could whisper in my dragon body, “I was nervous it would affect you, too. I wasn’t sure one way or the other, but since going all the way seems to have that result with everyone I live with, I thought it would. I didn’t really want to just drop that on you yesterday while you were talking with your sister and trying to be as pleasant to Zenya as possible.”

  He nodded and then took a seat beside Beth and Sam as Mallory began coaching me through the drills and warmups she thought I needed before attempting to carry a person. Both of my mates watched comfortably alongside Kyle, who was fixated with unashamed fascination. When, after what felt like ages to me but must’ve only been a handful of minutes, Mallory called time and had me return to the landing they were observing from, he was smiling broadly.

  “You’re so quick!” he exclaimed when I landed. “I knew you’d be fast — I’d heard stories of dragons flying across continents with comparable speed to modern jets — but I didn’t realize just how agile and responsive you’d be.”

  I sheepishly shrugged, still feeling as though I wasn’t quite in tune with the dragon form in the air. Having the beast sharing space in my mind meant he could simply take control when he knew what needed to be done — essentially a second set of impulses I could cede control to — but when I was flying like this, where I was in control and trying to move myself instead of simply allowing him the controls, I still felt clumsy.

  Then again, I had watched Kyle struggle to simply walk down my hallway in his animal form. My flight being good enough that visible progress was now hard to come by with my practice being so limited (an exceptionally irritating reality) made my adoption of the second skin seamless and natural in comparison to his.

  Mallory climbed on top of me after a few seconds of appraising how she wanted to try. Then we had a few minutes of me merely walking about the facility, feeling how her weight changed my gait and how her sitting astride my back limited the mobility of my wings. It wasn’t as much as I had thought it would, as she sat further forward than I assumed, basically straddling my shoulders.

  Then she had me fly. For a few minutes, I simply did lazy, repetitive circles in the air, feeling how her weight sat on me as I flew and how she affected the air as I turned and climbed. I did notice how firmly she held onto me, with her legs pinned into my sides. That didn’t bode well for anyone else riding me today, and it also seemed to ensure we’d have a time limit and would have to avoid any complex maneuvers. I couldn’t imagine Mallory holding this forever or fighting off significant accelerations and I didn’t want to make Beth or Sam hold me like that unless it was necessary.

  Mallory dismounted me when she was content with how the circles had gone and spent the next five minutes describing what kind of maneuverability checks she wanted to perform while riding me and making the necessary adjustments to the facility. Several areas were stacked with extra pads, with metal framing around the edges of several trampolines and lightly covered walls and corners that wouldn’t be near the play area in regular usage getting as protected as they could be. It was incredibly unlikely that Mallory would get seriously injured if she fell off of me, but the precautions were definitely worth enacting just to prevent the worst case.

  The werebat’s concerns were almost immediately proven correct when even a slow speed sharp turn had her slip from my back and slide some twenty feet across one of the mesh trampolines before coming to a stop at one of the newly placed pads.

  She sighed, had me start again, and somewhat adjusted how she sat on me. It seemed to work for that turn, but on the other side, she again went flying as she slipped off of me. We repeated this a half dozen times, with her inevitably losing her grip on me at a few points.

  Then she really slipped once, after encouraging me to move faster, and landed hard against one of the walls.

  “I’m okay,” she groaned from a crumpled heap on the ground. “I’m okay. I’m — FUCK!”

  “James, she’s not okay,” Kyle helpfully shouted at me.

  “No, I’m — ow — good,” Mal tried to say, even as she winced in pain as she stood back up.

  “Believable,” Beth muttered.

  “I’m good. I just landed wrong on my wrist. I’ll be fine.”

  Before I could even open my maw, Sam was objecting with as much energy as she could muster, given that her eye rolling took a considerable amount as well. “Mal, you’re literally riding a magical first aid kit. Don’t play tough when there’s literally no upside.”

  She glanced at me with discomfort evident in her eyes but then asked the confusing, “Won’t he want something in return?” which only brought laughter out of me.

  “Oh, you mean like beyond the constant flight training?” I asked.

  “Aisling pays me for that, not you.”

  “And you just go through the motions for the paycheck, yeah? No effort beyond the bare minimum?”

  She seemed to shrink. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

  “You haven’t gone out of your way to find the limits of what you were permitted to teach me, fighting them where you thought it was unjust and going out of your way to do as much as you could?”

  When she opened her mouth to object, I continued, “You didn’t try to comfort and guide Zoey when she was confused right after we first met, did you? You didn’t do your best to soothe her suspicions and, even when she gave in to them, prevented her from doing anything she couldn’t work through? You haven’t shown up here, during the holidays, to entertain my desire to allow my mates to ride me whenever I am eventually allowed to fly freely?”

  “Well, you said you’d consider letting Sophie have a go.”

  “Do you think you misjudged me?” I asked. “Those weeks ago, in the hallway by the pool, when you said I was more of a lost kid than Zoey was — do you think you were wrong, now? Or when, in Sophie’s apartment, did you get it wrong when you asked me to be gentle with Zoey and Sam unloaded on you? Do you think what she said was a farce?”

  “No.”

  “Then get over here, and let me make sure you aren’t hurt. I have an idea to try next time, too, to hopefully prevent that,” I said as I walked directly up to the stricken werebat.

  I took her whole arm into my mouth, wrapping my tongue around her forearm and dragging it up and down her wrist.

  “Ah!” she squeaked. “That tickles.”

  Beth lightly tapped Sam on the arm. “You had very different words for how his tongue felt.”

  Sam blushed, but she didn’t simply swallow the jab. “Well, I haven’t gotten to play with the dragon yet, little Miss Gets smothered against the bed, wall, window, ceiling, bathroom floor, kitchen table—”

  “His wings around me feel nice,” Beth halted Sam’s running commentary on the places I had taken her. “Being close to him is really nice.”

  “Okay,” Mallory interjected. “That’s enough from the peanut gallery, and my arm’s good, I think. Let me just—” She slowly withdrew it from my mouth as I magically siphoned the saliva away from her skin and held it in my mouth. She then rotated her wrist around in several circles, testing how it felt, and then pushed on the wall she had impacted to test how weight felt on it. “—Yeah, I’m good now. Thanks. Sorry for being weird about it.”

  “Of everyone here,” I said, “You might be the least weird.”

  “Huh,” she uttered as she climbed back onto me. “I hadn’t thought about that.” She pondered that for a moment before wiggling her hips on my back and saying, “So, what was your idea to keep me glued to you?”

  “Magic,” I responded. I left a healthy pause for suspense and then tried to shrug, which wasn’t particularly effective given that she was sitting on my shoulders. “I didn’t have a single idea, really, but if I tied your legs together underneath me with a conjured rope, you wouldn’t fly off me.”

  “Well, I have doubts. Give it a go?”

  I did.

  She was right to have doubts. There are reasons why we don’t tie our legs together to ride a horse. On turns, she ended up just as much tossed about as she was before, but instead of falling off of me, she slid along my back with her legs fully tensioned, bruising her inner thighs horribly.

  I let her take my saliva into her hand to rub on those — much to Beth’s disappointment.

  My second idea, of conjuring a pair of magnetic strips around my neck for her to sit between didn’t work either.

  My third idea — conjuring a pressurized air pocket above my back where she sat so that she was merely affected by gravity instead of airflow — didn’t exactly work, as she was still tossed from my back by her own momentum. She did, though, confirm that as an idea worth keeping in my pocket for whenever we did get a rider setup to work.

  “If you fly high enough, it’ll be freezing for your rider, and there won’t be enough air for them to breathe, at least without some kind of magical intervention. If you fly fast enough, well, cars have windscreens for a reason. Don’t really want a mosquito to the face at a hundred miles an hour. At the very least, goggles or a helmet should be another idea you look into.”

  We went back to my first idea — conjured attachments — but a lot more complex. It was incredibly fortunate that Sam had joined us today because my first attempt to hold the web of connections Mallory asked me to utterly failed as soon as I also had to fly, leading to Mallory taking a quick flight herself. Sam stood atop the observation area from then on, holding her own concentration on the summoning as Mallory described how she thought a harness would work. Eventually, obviously, there would be a physical piece of hardware there instead of a conjured one, but for now, Sam summoned temporary ones so that Mallory could test her ideas. All of our previous testing had been so that she and I could feel how her body would be stressed by flying and now she could design something that would work for Sophie. Oh, she was perfectly content with Sam and Beth using it, too, but her primary motivation was to share the joy of flight with her beloved.

  I was a little concerned that she might break her protocols and have me fly without permission once we had an actual harness built, just to guarantee that Sophie would get the experience. Mentally, I was leaning away from her doing that — if only because of the potential endangerment aspect of being undocumented in unregulated airspace — but it would be a lie to say that I wouldn’t be tempted.

  Mallory played with a couple different harness and connection designs before she had us stop. I was physically tired, as takeoff and landings still took a bit out of me, and Sam was clearly mentally wavering. Mallory herself wasn’t doing too hot, as even though my saliva had dealt with the lasting impacts of her injuries, she had still been battered, bruised, and broken several times over the hours of flight practice. She was physically repaired, but the experience of being hurt over and over still had a toll on her.

  So she bade us goodnight.

  I went home exhausted. Sam was just as spent. Beth was still alert, which was good because Kyle didn’t exactly know the way back to our apartment on his own. We ordered takeout for dinner on the way back to avoid having Sam cast more. She said she could’ve. I didn’t want her to have to.

  I did try to figure out why I was so tired, even if those thoughts were hampered by the fatigue itself. The meeting with the dragons had suggested that my relationships growing should’ve revitalized me. Instead, I left the flight training drained. The only conclusion I could come to was that I hadn’t accomplished anything during my time at the trampoline park. This wasn’t like the first time where I was actually learning new things for myself. I had set out with a goal — learn to fly with a passenger — and I hadn’t really accomplished it. I had made strides, but not to a conclusive next step. We had to get a harness constructed and then test that.

  So, hopefully, next time, I wouldn’t be wiped out.

  Saturday morning, Zoey and I went to the gym. It wasn’t a part of our regular schedule, but she told me I needed to — and a part of that was because she needed to do something extra to try and work out some of the stress she had been feeling. I didn’t disagree in the slightest. I was feeling slightly burdened with the idea of being more with Zenya when I didn’t know what she actually wanted — or if she was capable of wanting — then bringing Asmara into my household and helping her adjust to the magical world in the same way I had been, and how I was going to support everyone long term. The dragons had given me ideas to pursue, but now I wanted to check something with Antonin before I started moving forward with the one that was most palatable.

  So Zoey and I worked. We didn’t go as heavy as we could, but several working sets just below our respective maxes occupied our minds enough. Given that it was almost as heavy as I could do, and every other time I had gone hard, people had come to unashamedly gawk, I was surprised that there were no spectators today.

  Zoey wasn’t. “Very few of us are actually from Philly, James,” she informed me. “People do tend to go home over the holidays, if they have homes to go to. It’ll be quieter for a week or two.”

  “Huh. I figured the security offices would’ve staggered your leaves just to keep some kind of reactive capacity.”

  “Most of them aren’t boots-on-the-ground security operatives. Lot of management, lot of data analyst types. And not everyone here is actually even a part of our organization. But the Seat’s here, so everyone in the entire northeast who has any importance to Her ends up here, at least for part of the year.”

  The workout felt good to my body in a way that flying didn’t. It felt obvious now that with how easy it was to see incremental improvement in the gym, to know that each rep and each set was building to something in the future, I would be restored by it. Flying, on the other hand, was capped at the moment. Until Mallory got the permission she had been stonewalled on, I had no more progress to make.

  On our way back from the gym, we stopped at Marjorie’s boutique. I wasn’t even expecting her to be open, but the door was unlocked, and the sign at the front said she was, so we walked in. Marjorie was talking with a customer when Zoey and I entered, so we waited quietly, glancing at some of the outfits she had on display to pass the time. When the customer left, he nodded at us politely before doing a double take as the inner door swung shut behind him. Zoey smirked as we said hello to Marjorie.

  “Lots of people have a little extra money this time of year, James,” she said in response to my concern about her being closed. “At least for the types who are purchasing magically tailored garments. Christmas bonuses make impulsive purchases more easy to fall victim to, and everyone wants a new blouse or blazer to show off in the new year. On the other end of the spectrum, there are lots of people who are given clothes by family and friends during the holidays and need an adjustment or two. If I’m not open, I can’t capitalize on either of those opportunities.”

  “Seems like it leaves you stuck here for the holidays instead of with your own family,” I said.

  She nodded halfheartedly. “During the day, at least. Getting this week done pays for a vacation in the spring, though, when the kids have the week off from school.”

  “Do you have any gemstones to charge today?” I asked.

  She fished her hand around underneath the counter and pulled two little ones out, offering them to me as she asked, “You need work done and were confused about why I was open?”

  I shook my head. “I need advice.”

  She looked at me hesitantly. “About clothing?”

  “About Evgenia.”

  “Oh! What do you need advice on regarding Evgenia?”

  “It’s been brought to my attention that I’ve been keeping her with a foot on both sides of the border between professional and personal but that she’s quite unlikely to ever advocate for moving one way or the other.”

  “No, she’s quite likely to simply accept whatever position she’s put in,” Marjorie affirmed.

  “But, given her past, or, at least, the hints of her past that I’ve gotten, it also seems like if I simply move forward with what I think, I’ll be taking advantage of her trained behavior, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “Have you tried talking to her?” Marjorie asked.

  “Yes,” I replied initially before grimacing and correcting myself. “Kind of. My mates suggested that I open our family to her. Since she’s already integral to my life here now and is living with us seamlessly, she’s functionally already a member of our family instead of simply being the advisor she is in title right now. All of us like her; at least we enjoy the her that peeks through the shroud of her past.

  “This past week, she’s tried to work with Kyle, Zoey’s brother, to acclimate herself with wolves. He came down from our hometown to see Zoey for the holidays. That seems to me like she’d be open to more since she’s trying to be comfortable with us. And it coincided with her giving me a request. A while ago, in exchange for the work I knew she was going to do eventually, I asked her to find something she wanted that would be hard for someone else to acquire. She asked for something once, which was horrible, and I couldn’t stomach the idea of that being her request.”

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  “The silver,” Marjorie said, nodding. “It was good of you to help her with that.”

  “I didn’t know if anyone else knew, but yeah.”

  “She told me about it years ago and then showed it to me. Showed me after you had handled it, too. Miraculous doesn’t begin to describe the transformation.”

  “Well, I didn’t want that to count. That was righting someone else’s wrong, not compensation for service. To make a long story long, she asked for something else recently, and, in conjunction with my thoughts about incorporating her into my family more clearly, I wanted to talk to you first, given that you seem to be the only person in the world who cared for her before she was dropped in my lap.”

  “What did she ask for?”

  “She wanted to sleep with me.”

  Marjorie’s eyebrows went up, but her response wasn’t what I was expecting. “Wait, you mean she isn’t already? She had made it sound like she was already receiving your affection.”

  I cringed, but I figured I knew exactly where the confusion was coming from. “Ah, so, no. First, she meant literally sleep. She doesn’t need to, and I don’t really either, but she simply was asking to be held in bed at night when she had nothing productive to do. Sam invited her to lie against me a week ago as we watched movies to unwind, and Zenya enjoyed it then. She wanted to know if she could have that experience more often. I figured that agreeing to that — at least, regularly in my own bed — would lead to her being more involved with me than she already was rather quickly, so while I said yes, I wanted to get your opinion on that potential before I acted on it.”

  “I thought you already were,” she said plainly. “She had spoken of you unlike anyone else, as though you were a lover instead of an employer. Or, both, I guess, but she did say she didn’t feel as though she had any tasks to actually perform most of the time.”

  “That part does worry me. I don’t want her to feel like she has to get physically closer to me just to remain in my good graces when I don’t have things for her to do. I’d be happy to simply have her live with me and assist when I need her expertise if that were what she wanted. Or to help her live on her own, if that were what she preferred.”

  “Are you going to tell me why she framed it as though you were already intimate?”

  “What did she say, exactly?” I asked. “Did she actually say that we had been together?”

  “She said that you were the only male who had ever gotten her off, or something less crass to the same effect, and said that it had happened even before she had ever found herself in bed with you.”

  I nodded glumly. “Right, so, the thing is, whenever I’m with one of my mates and I get off, they do, too. All of them. Regardless of prior stimulation. Recent experimentation suggests that it’s only for women, but I’m not sure about that right now. Either way, that extends to people in my immediate vicinity rather than just my mates, so—”

  “So every time you’ve gone to bed with your numerous mates, she’s gotten off, too,” Marjorie concluded. “Do you want her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you want Evgenia to be more than an advisor?” Marjorie restated. “You’ve said a lot about how you want to treat her and aren’t sure about what actions you feel you can take based on what she’s said. But it would be just as wrong for you to bring her into your family simply for her benefit if there’s no desire on your side as it would be for you to bring her into your family without her full understanding of what was going on. Before I give you any advice, I need to know if you want her, or if you’re simply willing to entertain her because you feel bad for her, or because it’s convenient, or—”

  “No, it’s not that. I like her. I enjoy it when her personality comes out, and I like it when I’ve actually interacted with her.”

  “Are you attracted to her?”

  “Yes?” I answered with an eyebrow raised.

  Marjorie shrugged. “I had to ask. It’s not like she looks like any of your mates. Beth’s tiny and adorable, Sam’s all woman, and Zoey’s too fit to be a runway model without being pigeonholed into athleticwear. Zenya isn’t that. She’s—”

  “Lean. Healthy. Yeah, she’s not as voluptuous as Sam or as chiseled as Zoey, but her skin, now that it’s healed, is like a fresh snow-covered landscape, pristine and unblemished and serene. Her eyes are like the sky after storm clouds clear over the ocean, and they show the strength that she’s had to have to carry on despite the trauma I haven’t earned the right to know about. She’s bright and has an instinctive knack for knowing what I need to know before I know it.

  “Yeah, I do want her. I want her in my life and in my family and by my side. I was just terrified that if I said yes to her request to sleep in my arms, she would find herself dragged into that position without feeling like she could say no to me.”

  Marjorie nodded. “Well, to be honest, I already thought she was involved with you. You know how many objections I’ve made when you’ve seen me.”

  I sighed in exasperation. “But if you had felt them, would you have been able to voice them? There’s an obvious conflict there, whereby telling me off for something obviously wrong could potentially lose you a customer and a business relationship. And lots of people will say they have the balls to confront that up until the moment they actually have to.”

  “I think, at least as far as she’s capable of it right now, she’s in love with you,” Marjorie interrupted my rant with. “Again, she speaks of you like a lover, not a boss. She talks to me about ways to better support you, not in the legal sense, but in living your life sense. She’s talked to me about which neighborhoods and suburbs she should consider looking in, should you desire to move your home — which ones have the best schools for your future children, transit options so Zoey can get downtown when she needs to, where the parks and zoos are, where the grocery stores aren’t, what magically inclined shops are in each area, and so on. Yes, she’s dedicated, but that says to me that she’s planning to be with you for the future.”

  “So, you’re saying I should move forward, then.”

  “I’m saying you have my encouragement to, but that you should really talk to her about it. Tell her you want her. Let her make the decision.”

  “That was our position,” Zoey added, speaking up for the first time since we entered the store. “Has our support if Zenya wants in, but she needs to want it, too. Right now, though, they’re both acting like nervous teenagers at a school ball, too timid to admit that they’d be great if they just got over themselves and held hands.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Zoey, you still are that teenager.”

  “Not timid at all, though, was I? First time I saw you, I wrapped myself around you and shoved my tongue down your throat.”

  “Touché,” I conceded.

  “Bring her to sleep with you, as she’s asked. Do that for a night or two. Then ask if she wants more or if that’s where she wants the line to be,” Marjorie suggested.

  “That’s sensible. I can live with that. I can do that.”

  “Hearing you say that you want her makes me comfortable encouraging the idea. She’s been the most human that I’ve ever seen her, and I thought it was because you were already together. If there’s potentially more there, I’m in favor of it, given that you try to talk to her. You might be a dragon, but it was clear to me from the first time we met that you weren’t what people were calling you online. She probably won’t actually have an answer, especially at first. Ask her and give her time; she might surprise you.”

  “She did by asking for this, after all,” I answered. “Well, this has been, perhaps not enlightening, but at least has confirmed I’m not messing everything up. Thank you.”

  “Did you need any of my actual services today, James?”

  Before I could answer that I didn’t, Zoey spoke up, indicating that she actually did have something she wanted.

  I wasn’t invited to that conversation, though both of their eyes kept coming over to me as they talked. I was given more crystals to charge while I waited, had them cycled out several times, and then Zoey came out of a changing area with Marjorie and a dark-colored bag with the boutique’s logo proudly displayed.

  She didn’t even hint at what was in the bag, though Kyle seemed to have some intuition when we got back to the apartment. His eyebrows raised when she came in carrying it, but she shut it down.

  “Not a word, Kyle. It’s not even for me.”

  He raised his hands in resignation. “Not a word, I swear. I do want to ask who it’s for, then, but I’ll leave it to you.”

  She leaned into him and began whispering into his ear, and his eyes opened widely immediately, but then he went silent and nodded along as she continued explaining something for nearly a minute.

  When Zoey was done with whatever she had to say, she turned and smiled devilishly at me before practically skipping her way to the bedrooms.

  “Not a word?” I asked.

  “You’re a lucky bastard, James,” was his only response.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s pretty clear my sister is wholly in love with you.”

  “Is that what you got from that exchange?” I asked.

  “Yes. Easily, yes. I know what she brought home and what she told me not to tell you. I also know that she said you had bacon in the fridge, which I could have with dinner since you were only having pasta.”

  “Oh, yeah. I can see if Sam—”

  “Sam’s busy right now.”

  I cocked my head. “What?”

  “Sam is currently occupied,” he replied with a smirk.

  I reached out mentally to Sam to see what was going on and, much to my surprise, Zoey responded to me instead. She told me that Sam was indeed occupied and that I should make dinner with Kyle, especially given the revelations from Arjun that I should be capable of it and Sam’s admission that she didn’t actually enjoy it.

  That made a lot of sense. If it was something I was genuinely capable of, which, really, I should’ve realized before now instead of simply accepting that it was Sam’s thing. It wasn’t really fair to simply leave it all to her.

  So, I tried. I really did. I left Kyle’s bacon to him, given that only he and Zoey were likely to have any, and instead focused on trying to get a small, even flow of mana into the sauce and pasta as I started to heat them up.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly successful, and I didn’t understand why. The first piece of pasta I sampled after pushing mana into it tasted like I was eating flour with a spoon, blended with a brick of the sea salt I had added. The spoon of sauce that I tried had me gag in response to feeling like I had directly bitten into a clove of garlic and a whole raw onion at the same time, and chased it with a tomato smoothie. It wasn’t because of the elements individually. I liked those flavors. But I had somehow turned their magnitudes to infinity so that I was tasting 100% of three different flavors in each bite. It was nauseatingly overwhelming.

  I had Kyle try a piece of pasta and a dash of the sauce at the same time, but when he winced and gagged, I tossed it all. I didn’t like to waste it, but I didn’t know how to fix it or who would eat it.

  I knew, in theory, what I had done wrong. I had simply put far too much mana into the food, making my enhancements overpowering instead of pleasant. But I hadn’t been free with my mana. I had pushed a tiny touch of it into my utensils as I stirred the sauce. It tasted like I had forced an overwhelming amount in when I had barely even opened the valve to let a trickle out.

  I sighed and tried again.

  I did switch away from Sam’s new cutlery, hoping that the less magically conductive material inhibiting me would actually be a benefit. It sort of was. As it tested the second batch, the food came out strong in the most dissonance-inducing way: every flavor was intense. It wasn’t like a single element was overpowering and washed out all of the rest, like I had come to expect mundane cooking to be. Every aspect was powerful, though thankfully no longer painfully so, without compromising any other flavor. It made the typically simple dish of pasta and sauce feel noisy and intense.

  Zoey came out from the bedrooms when I was trying to decide if I should give it a third go or not and stole a taste from the pot.

  “Hmm,” she mused, “we’ll work on it.”

  “Sam makes it look easy,” I sighed.

  “Why don’t you go show her how you feel?” she offered. “I’ll keep the food warm and get to spend a little more time with my brother.”

  In my head, she added that Sam wanted some alone time with me — and that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to capitalize on that later. My confused glance was responded to with an eye roll and a telepathic, “C’mon, James. If you ask Zenya if she wants to snuggle tonight, she’s not going to wait.”

  I handed her my ladle and departed towards the bedroom where my redheaded lover was waiting for me, hearing Zoey mutter, “Mmm. Bacon,” as I left.

  To my surprise, given the instructions I had received, the lights in my bedroom were off, and Sam was holding the comforter around her body.

  “Hi, James,” she whispered, and I could tell she was nervous.

  “Why are you hiding, Sam?” I asked, not crossing the room until I knew what was bothering her.

  “Zoey got something for me to wear while you were out.”

  “That’s not a full explanation, princess.”

  “It’s a bit much. I feel really exposed in it, and I don’t look like Zoey, so I’m not comfortable in it. I know you enjoy it when she wears things like this, but it’s really not me.”

  “Do you want me to leave, and you can get changed?”

  She shook her head. “No. I just want to feel confident in my body.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, and she rolled her eyes. “No, James, I know that you’re attracted to me. I know that you’re going to like it. And, to be honest, I even want to wear it for you because I know you like it. But I haven’t worn anything like this before, and I’m not used to it.”

  “Do you want me to leave and you can get changed?” I repeated. “We don’t have to do this today, even if you want to eventually.”

  “No,” she replied resolutely, sliding her legs to the side of the bed and inching her foot down to the floor. “I want this now. Zoey explained why she got it today and why she thought I should wear it now.”

  She stood up as she flowed out of the bed, dropping the comforter as she stood, revealing that she was wearing a form-fitting red bodystocking. Her legs and arms were covered in a simple fishnet pattern, but her torso was framed seductively by a lace, patterned teddy. Somehow, the lace seemed to support her plentiful bust, creating a devastating display of cleavage that was covered by the garment, transitioning back into the fishnet pattern through to her collarbone.

  “Well, that’s one way to give me some confidence in how I look in it,” Sam said, a smile spreading on her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “James, I think you stopped breathing for a second there. Normally, the descriptions speechless and breathless aren’t meant literally.”

  “Holy shit, Sam,” I muttered.

  She stepped up to me, her hand dragging across my chest until it found my neck and pulled my face to hers. Her lips reaching mine seemed to break the spell she had cast on me. My arms sprung to action, wrapping around her body and pulling her against me as I kissed her, our lips meshing together. My hands explored her backside, feeling the texture of her outfit change as I descended from her shoulders to her back to her behind, coming to rest cupping her ass and holding her hips to mine. My fingers played with the individual threads of the fishnetting covering her skin, tracing along their runs before slipping between them and her body.

  It was only a few moments of kissing her before I wanted more. She had lit a fire in me that wasn’t going to be satisfied until I had all of her.

  I lifted her from her legs, drawing a surprised squeak from her mouth before she wrapped her ankles around my hips. I carried her the two steps back to the bed and set her on the edge, kneeling between her legs.

  “It’s, um, crotchless,” she pointed out now that I was staring at her. I could see that already, given where I was.

  “It’s amazing, Sam. You’re so beautiful regularly, but this is like the difference between a fireplace and a steelworks.”

  “What?”

  “Normally, you’re hot. Right now, you’re an inferno,” I explained as I lowered my face and began peppering kisses on her body. The instep of her foot, the opposite ankle, her calf, her knee, her thigh — I forged a trail of kisses and nibbles up her body, dragging my lips along her to feel the difference between her soft skin and the regular interruption from the fishnet stockings.

  “You know I wasn’t the one who picked it out, right?” she asked, though it was immediately followed by her gasping “Oh!” as I pressed my mouth to her mons venus, teasingly avoiding the exposed flesh an inch away.

  “I know,” I responded, keeping my face where my lips brushed against her skin. “Zoey’ll get my thanks for convincing you to wear it eventually. But right now, I just want to devour you in it.”

  “Okayyyyyyy,” Sam moaned out in response as I began to taste her. I continued moving slowly for the moment, though, kissing around her lips and gently brushing against her. I wrapped my hands around the underside of her legs, my hands grasping the front of her hips and holding her where I wanted for the moment, and she flopped back onto the bed, giving me an exquisite vision of her breasts rising and falling with her breathing.

  She was more than ready for more. She had been physically ready for more from the moment I walked into the room, to be fair, but my reaction to seeing her had made her mentally ready for more, too. That was perfect, as far as I was concerned, because I wanted her. Pressing my tongue to her opening and dragging it across her length, transforming it slightly at the end of its journey into my forked draconic tongue so I could wrap the end around her sensitive clit.

  Sam whimpered and twitched as my tongue touched her, and she dug her heels into the side of the mattress to push my face ever more firmly against her.

  I hummed in satisfaction at her reaction.

  Beth moaned from the doorway.

  Beth moaned from the doorway? That was the first hint that Sam and I weren’t alone. I mentally reached out to Beth through the bond once it registered in my brain that I had heard her. She was wearing her pajamas — the matching black shorts and shirt she wore during our slumber festivities — though they were sitting about an inch below her hips, having been untied and slid down to make room for her hand between her legs.

  I mentally nudged Sam. “Hey. Beth’s watching.”

  When she responded with “I said she could as long as she didn’t join,” I had an idea.

  I didn’t want to detract from Sam’s experience, though, and I knew it would take at least some of my concentration, so I asked her, “Can I try something with Beth? Magically? As far as you’ll know, it’ll just be the two of us, but it might—”

  She interrupted me mentally to say, “Do whatever you’d like with both of us, James. Just stop stalling,” which was enough permission to press my face back into her opening, my hands wrapping slightly further around her legs to hold her skin exactly where I needed it for my tongue to have free reign with her.

  At the same time, inside Beth’s loosely hanging shorts, I conjured a phantom copy of my tongue and had it replicate the actions of my real tongue on her. It took more mana than I thought was reasonable just to have it mirror my tongue, but since it took less brain power and let me give Sam the attention she deserved, I accepted the exorbitant cost quite contently.

  It wasn’t like I wouldn’t be more than full by the end, anyway.

  Beth moaned wantonly as my phantom tongue lapped between her folds, but that wouldn’t do. Sam didn’t want Beth to actually participate. Being a silent voyeur was one thing, but if she was going to verbally insert herself every time I toyed with her body, she was no longer merely an observer.

  So the second time my summoned tongue wrapped its forked length around her clit and swirled in circles and she gasped in pleasure, I summoned another phantom copy of one of my body parts to use on Beth. This time, though, it was a part of me still trapped beneath my clothes. I conjured a replica of my cock in front of Beth’s face, and when she opened it to moan in response to my other attention, she found herself with a mouthful of me.

  She coughed as it slid home, and I was immediately happy that it was just a copy of my dick because her reaction was to bite down on it. After a handful of seconds, she stopped trying to breathe through her mouth and stopped choking just before I was about to withdraw it and make sure she was okay. Before I could contact her through the bond and make sure she was okay with what I was doing, she mentally whispered, “Thank you, now love her while you fuck me to death.”

  So I did. I put my heart into pleasing Sam, knowing that the entire time, every little movement of my tongue was being replicated on Beth. I tasted every inch of her before focusing on her sensitive nub. She wrapped her legs around me, over my shoulders and onto my back, as I focused my attention on toying with her.

  She didn’t quite muffle my ears with her thighs, though, because I still heard her moan, “Fuck, James,” as my tongue chased her release. I still listened to her breathing hitch as I took a spontaneous nibble of her inner thigh. I still felt the little muscles in her hips tremble and twitch as I edged her closer and closer to release.

  And then she did muffle my ears as her soft thighs clamped down around my head. That didn’t stop me from hearing her, though, because when she hoarsely moaned out, “Oh god, yes!” it was loud enough that everyone in the apartment probably heard her.

  I loved how uninhibited she was when her mind was lost to the pleasure. The few moments of hearing her groan wantonly were easily worth any amount of fatigue on my tongue. Watching her breasts rise and fall as she panted in the afterglow was even more rewarding.

  “James,” she whispered after a minute of just breathing, “Why am I so empty?”

  “Because—”

  “Shut up and fill me already,” she insisted, tugging ineffectively at my shoulder to pull me up onto the bed with her. I resisted, though only because I was still dressed and because I wanted to move her further up onto the bed. Once I was no longer encumbered with my clothes, I climbed up after her and started helping her slide up the bed.

  Which wasn’t what she wanted, given that she promptly put her ankles over my hips and grabbed my shaft to try and position me at her entrance. She didn’t actually manage to get me inside her, which was good considering I was still repositioning both of us on the bed, but she did succeed in getting me fully coated in her juices.

  Which made it very easy to slide all the way into her depths as soon as I had her where I wanted her.

  “Fucking fuck,” she moaned as I filled her. She wiggled her hips as I held myself completely inside her, taking a second to adjust to the sensation of being wholly engulfed inside her.

  I also took a second to check in on Beth. Unsurprisingly, she was just as intoxicated on lust as Sam was in the moment. She had slumped onto her knees, still leaning against the door frame, both hands on the floor supporting her weight. Her drooling mouth was still occupied by my phantom cock, but given that I was no longer actively using my tongue on Sam’s body, Beth was no longer getting any stimulation.

  That was remedied by reusing my tongue idea, except with my dick. I summoned a second one and pushed it inside her sopping slit. Even though I couldn’t see her, I could feel through the bond as her eyes shot open and she sat up straighter as I suddenly filled her. Then I tied both of the summoned appendages lodged well into Beth’s body to my own, but I played with the magic — Sam wanted to be loved while Beth wanted to be fucked, after all, so I set the conjured cocks in Beth to move at twice the rate of my own. I considered higher, but, at least to start, a factor of two seemed prudent.

  And then I lost myself in Sam — her lips on mine, her hair splayed out on the bed, her breasts against my body, her legs wrapped around my back, her hands on my neck, and the velvety depths of her insides wrapped around mine. I let myself be fully smothered in the feeling of having the woman I had loved for years in my bed, moaning and begging me for more. It was perfect. There wasn’t anywhere better to be.

  The dragon raised a metaphorical eyebrow and asked about having a second woman who I was in love with in my bed. Or a third. Or maybe a fourth. I swatted him with the newspaper and told him he was being greedy. He rolled his eyes, insisting that I was just rejecting reality.

  The fact that Beth was moaning around a clone of my dick in her mouth on the floor was an undeniable point in his favor. The fact that I could feel Zoey through the bond sitting down and letting Kyle take over the final touches on dinner so that she would be ready when I finally filled Sam was another point.

  Rather than follow that train of thought any further, I ramped up the intensity for Beth’s spectral dicking from a factor of two to a factor of four. Now, for every slow, loving, intimate stroke I took with Sam, Beth would get four aggressive jackhammers. And loving, slow, and intimate was what Sam got. Her lips remained locked with mine the entire time, both of our nostrils hissing as we struggled to breathe, neither of us willing to give up the other even for the very air we needed.

  I could hear Beth panting behind me, her desperate breathing loud enough that she was audible even over my own and Sam’s. It wasn’t, though, at her limit, as far as I could tell, and I was completely caught in the cauldron of lust that was brewing in the room, freely letting myself be carried along with the surf. I returned a phantom tongue between Beth’s thighs, this time simply dumbly stroking my sunshine’s abused little nub at the same pace as the two conjured cocks stuffing her, licking up with each instroke and down with every outstroke.

  And then, I did something impulsive as the concoction of sensations I was feeling encouraged my libertine behavior: I summoned another appendage to enter Beth’s rosebud. It wasn’t a full replica of my cock — even as inebriated as I felt, I wasn’t going to do that without getting an invitation — but it was a thumb-sized cylindrical projection of force. I ensured it was coated in a copious amount of conjured lubrication before I pressed it to her opening, but I could still tell that it caught her off guard as it sunk the two inches into her ass. Her breathing went from the consistently patterned screeching of a human steam engine pumping for all its might to the random, chaotic collapse of an avalanche as a sudden release washed over her.

  Feeling Beth collapse into a puddle on the floor, my conjured implements still using her twitching, moaning, overwhelmed body, filling her with excruciating pleasure was almost enough to make me cum myself. Almost enough.

  And then Sam pulled her lips just far enough from mine to whisper, “Let me have it, James,” and any willingness to resist that I was pretending I was capable of fluttered away like dust in the wind.

  “Fuck, Sam,” I moaned out, though I wasn’t capable of hearing it as I pressed my hips against hers, filling her as thoroughly as I was capable of. White hot satisfaction inundated my conscious mind. Vaguely I felt Sam join me, her thighs clamped tightly to my body as her sheathe hungrily milked me, sucking every drop that I had.

  The only sensations my completely blissed-out brain was capable of sensing for the next minute were her limbs around my body and the sweat making our skin slide on each other where we touched as we both gulped air in our overtaxed lungs.

  When my brain started firing again and began reconnecting me to my surroundings, I began planting kisses on Sam. On her lips, on her forehead, on her temple, on her ear, down her neck — everything I could reach without moving, since I wasn’t yet sure if I could.

  “God, Sam,” I groaned, “That was amazing. I really needed that.”

  “Me too,” she whispered into my ear. “I’m really glad Zoey talked me into it.”

  “Right. Zoey talked to you about doing this now? And you agreed with why?”

  Sam shrugged underneath me. “Yes, James. I get it. At least until she’s clear that it’s what she wants, you don’t want to muddy the waters and have her end up involved with things she didn’t actually agree to simply by proximity.”

  “Was that all you heard from Zoey?” I asked.

  “Well, she told me she listened to your entire conversation and that it was different from the one you had with us, but, in general, Marjorie agreed with giving Zenya what she asked for, and you feel uncomfortable drawing Zenya into this part of our relationship right now.”

  “Without her at least expressing an interest, yeah. It’s hard to tell how far is right to push.”

  “Zoey said Marjorie asked if you wanted Zenya, and you said yes.”

  “I did, yeah. I’ve had some time to think about it. Surprise! You were right, Sam. At least, I want her if I can have her and feel good about it, you know?”

  Sam nodded. “James, I spent fifteen years of my life wanting you without being allowed to say so. Yes, I very much understand the idea of wanting someone if and only if getting them doesn’t ruin their entire existence.”

  I kissed her again. “Why are you so perfect for me?”

  She smiled softly. “I’m not.”

  “What?”

  “Not on my own. All of us, combined, are perfect for each other. And you do a lot of that — giving us what we need individually and as a group.”

  “Taking any credit for that feels kinda gross, to be honest,” I replied.

  Then I slid out of Sam, looking to lie beside her, at least for another few minutes before we had dinner. That final half stroke withdrawing from her tight clutches drew a panic gasp from our crumpled voyeur, which only then reminded me that I still had all of her holes filled and a tongue pressing on her clit, even if none of them had moved in several minutes. Letting them fade into nothingness was the least I could do.

  And I was correct; despite the cost of having them move semi-autonomously, I had even more mana now than when I had started.

  “Mercy!” Beth gasped, finally able to speak as I slid the magical dick out from her throat. “Mercy, James. Mercy. Oh, fuck, where did my legs go?”

  I glanced at Sam, whose pointed eyes seemed to say, “We’re done in bed now. I got all of you that I wanted and then some. Why aren’t you comforting her, too?” So I slid off the mattress on my own shaky limbs, gathered my shuddering sunshine in my arms, and brought her back into the bed so that I could lie between her and my princess.

  “Too much?” I asked.

  Beth giggled. “Nooooooooo. Well, too much for another round. But being filled completely air-tight with you was amazing. You might have to carry me for the rest of the day, though, James. I think you broke me.”

  “That’s fine, Beth. For starters, we’re going to snuggle here for a bit.”

  That made Sam smile and nuzzle in closer to me. Beth tried to, but merely the contact with me seemed to cause overstimulation aftershocks in her, and several times, she twitched and groaned. It took nearly twenty minutes for her heart rate to actually come down.

  “Are we going to eat?” Sam asked when Beth finally stopped shuddering sporadically.

  “I don’t feel like it,” I responded honestly. “Zoey’s enjoying time alone with Kyle. I’m loving being between the two of you.”

  “Mmm, okay,” she accepted happily.

  Another fifteen minutes passed, and my mind was finally rebooted enough to desire some kind of stimulation. And I had an idea of a way I could do something while spending time in bed with two of my loves. I was in a good mood, with each arm full of a woman I cherished. This would be a good time to do it, right? Since even though she had irritated me to the ends of the earth with a single action at the meeting, there was no way her letter of apology would actually be worse, right? Her sister had said I could simply ignore it if I wanted to.

  So I telekinetically floated Juliana’s letter from my desk over to the bed and then pried it open magically, drawing the paper inside out and unfolding it.

  And, it turned out, I was wrong. She could manage to make things worse with an apology.

  “What the fuck, man,” I groaned as I tried to internalize what I had read.

  “What’s it mean, James?” Beth asked.

  “That he has a decision to make, I think,” Sam offered.

  “That it’s time to have a really in-depth conversation with Aisling about why this is permitted in her land first,” I replied conclusively. “And then to see if I get banished for not displaying the proper reverence befitting a queen or something obnoxious like that. Because there’s no chance I’m going to be pleasant about this.”