Page 111 of Aftermarket Afterlife

He growled, tail still lashing, and looked for a moment like he was going to lunge and bite her. Candice gave Alicia a sharp look, and the girl knelt to take the boy’s head in her hands, turning it so that he was facing her.

“You’re very brave, and we’re all very impressed by what a good job you’ve done taking care of us,” she said. “But I have to go with Verity now, to make sure we get Madi back, and you need to stay here with Whitney and Angie, so they won’t be scared.”

Dragons live and die by how well they can hide in the human population. It shouldn’t have been grimly amusing to me how many dragons have names like “Angie” and “Candice,” but it is. Nice, generic, blonde-lady names for a society of nice, generic, blonde ladies. The boy probably had a name like “Trevor” or “Scout.”

And I wasn’t judging. They needed every scrap of camouflage they could possibly get, and if having solidly middle American names made them feel safer, I was all for it. They’d earned a little safety.

The two younger girls hugged Alicia, and the one with the missing shoe glared at me in a way she had very much learned from her mother, all furrowed brow and judgement. I had already failed her, according to that expression, just by choosing to exist in the lair while distinctly human. Anything I did from here would just be an attempt at a redemption I didn’t deserve, but which shemightbe willing to grudgingly grant if I forced the issue.

“Cindy, what do we say?” asked Candice.

“See you later,” said the girl, still glaring at me.

“Definitely your kid,” I said softly, and Candice cracked the sliver of a smile as Alicia started for the door and I followed after her, leaving the rest of the Nest behind.

She waited until we were out in the hall before she looked at me, frowning without most of the heat Cindy had been serving up. “You’re human,” she said.

“Yup,” I agreed.

“Those people who took Madi away, they were human too.”

“That seems very likely.”

“Why would you help us against other humans?”

There was no way she didn’t know about the current situation with the Covenant. The dragons were as inclined to shelter their children as any other sapient species, but there’s only so much sheltering you can do from a paramilitary organization bent on wiping out your entire species. She might not have all the details, but she knew the basics of what was going on, no question.

Unless she didn’t, and Candy was going to kick my ass when we came back.

Well, at least she’d be kicking my ass with Madi safely home, and not kicking my ass with one of her own people missing. I took a sharp breath. “That’s a complicated question,” I said. “There are so many humans in the world that we don’t put as much value in species solidarity. We don’t have to. If a few dozen of us die, it doesn’t affect our overall viability.”

Alicia recoiled at the idea of anyonenotpracticing species solidarity. “So you’re a traitor?”

I tried not to show how much the word stung. “That’s what some people call my family.”

“Madi says you used to be Covenant, and we shouldn’t trust you.”

“She’s right that myfamilyused to be Covenant, a long time ago, but I was never Covenant.”

“Your husband was.”

She didn’t know. She didn’t know, shecouldn’tknow, and she wasn’t trying to be hurtful. I breathed in and out through my nose, pushing back the grief and anger, until I felt like I could speak again without screaming. “Dominic was born into the Covenant. He didn’t get to choose that. And when he came to New York and people like me, and Candice, and William started telling him the Covenant was wrong, he was willing to listen to us. He didn’t have to do that. It would have been easier for him if he hadn’t done that, because being part of the Covenant for him was like being part of the Nest is for you. When we decided he couldn’t do that anymore, it was like if you walked away from all your aunts and sisters and your new little brothers, and knew that they would never speak to you ever again because of what you’d done.”

Alicia looked stunned by the idea that anyonecoulddo such a thing, much less actually would. “Why?” she asked. “Why would anyone decide to leave their Nest?”

“Same reason Madi left Boston,” I said. “He fell in love.”

“With you?”

“With me. I got lucky.” I shrugged. “We both did, I guess, because I fell in love with him, too. And we’ve been really happy together, even when everything’s been awful, and I guess that’s all you can really ask the world to do for you. Just give you chances to be happy, and hope you can grab hold of them while they exist.”

“Oh.” Alicia frowned, and kept walking. “The Covenant’s really scary.”

“You’re right about that.”

“They scare you, too?”

“I’m a traitor to my species, remember? As far as they’re concerned, I gave up the right to be treated like I was a human being as soon as I decided I’d rather help dragons than hunt them.”

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