Page 58 of Rock Bottom
“How is your brother? I see him in the news every once in a while. He seems to be doing well financially, at least.”
“He is. He dates here and there, but doesn’t seem interested in looking for his one true love just yet. He’s having too much fun being single, for now.” Or that’s what I figured, anyway.
I wrapped the conversation up and let him go, realizing that was all the closure I was going to get. He didn’t regret not giving me permission to go, and that was the end of that. He’d wanted a full-time slave, and the second I no longer fit the bill, it was never going to work.
Closure doesn’t always feel like a door gently swinging shut. Sometimes it slams in your face and leaves you blinking.
If I hadn’t had plans for later, I’d have likely dressed as a guy — it’s easier to ignore emotions when I’m a man. However, if I wanted to talk to a bunch of women about having a vampire boyfriend, they’d be most likely to open up if I was in girl mode.
So, I fixed my hair, put makeup on, and then looked at the clothes I’d brought. I wasn’t up for a dress, so I put on boy jeans with a girly top. It would have to do.
Somewhere in the middle of swiping mascara on, my hand stilled and I caught my own eyes in the mirror — shadowed, a little haunted. Maybe not quite as over it as I thought, but I blinked it away, pulled it together, added a little sparkle of gold dust under my brows to brighten everything up, and moved on.
It turned out, we had a blast. Endless margaritas with lots of finger foods. Sophia came a little early and worked with me on proper shielding. Ronnie also gave me some pointers after she arrived.
Later, once the alcohol was flowing, Cora and Ronnie opened up big time on all the things they get up to with their vampires. It turns out, for wolves and lions to get drunk, they have to do dozens and dozens of shots all at once, and even then, they’re only drunk for a handful of minutes — but both were in the mood for shots, so they were goofy with us in short sprints.
I also learned there’s a way for the flock to get to the farmhouse without going through the main house, and that Marco has chosen to keep his people from Kirsten as much as possible.
“I’ve talked to all of them,” Kirsten said. “They’re where they want to be, and that’s all I absolutely need to know. A couple of them have lost the right to be able to make those decisions, and I’ve had to learn to be okay with how the supernatural world deals with that. Vampires have flocks, and a vampire lives with us.” She shrugged. “I respect Marco, but even more, I trust he won’t do something Cora and I would be ashamed of.”
“Also, Mordecai and Nathan would tell us if something hinky was going on,” Cora said.
Kirsten smiled. “Yeah. What she said, but I couldn’t be okay with any of this if I didn’t trust Marco not to break the trust I’m giving him, which I realize is convoluted, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
At some point, I mentioned I’d lost my chance to ride a dragon, and the next thing I knew, I was walking through the woods with Sophia, and into a portal between two huge trees. It was daylight, rather than night, but it was more than that. The colors were richer, the air heavier with power.
Then Sophiachanged. One second she was taking her clothes off, her back turned to me, and the next, she was a dragon — massive, gleaming, otherworldly. Her scales shimmered, catching every color of the sun, and when she moved, the earth beneath my feet trembled a little.
Do you still call it earth, in Faerie?
In a deep, lower-than-bass voice that resonated in my bones, she talked me through how to climb her, and how to find the part of her shaped like more than a ladder but not quite steps, just behind her head. At the top was a carved-out space where her neck met her shoulders, fitted with handholds like a custom saddle grown from her body.
Since it was daytime, we soared and glided over rolling fields so green they looked oversaturated, otherworldly, and breathtakingly beautiful. She ascended and dipped, wings slicing through brilliant-blue sky, wind screaming past my ears. She swooped low once and I caught a glimpse of a…fuck, what do you call them when they are half man and half horse? A centaur? I think that’s right. Anyway, no matter what you call it, I got to see one.
She landed near a barn and warned me, “Don’t eat anything, and don’t speak to anyone. Not even me. If you thank someone, there might be consequences, so it’s best to just not speak. Look to your left.”
I nodded and turned my head to see seven unicorns grazing near a gorgeous barn. Real unicorns. Muscled and sleek, pure white with long, spiraled horns gleaming in the sunlight.
Was it still called a forehead when it was on a horse? I had no idea. But I damn near cried from how beautiful they were, and it took everything I had not to whisperthank youto Sophia.
We lifted into the sky again, wings beating the air, and she circled a castle carved from living stone, letting me drink it all in before gliding back to the field near the portal, between stone trees on this side, majestic statues reaching to the sky.
She talked me through climbing down with that oh-so-deep dragon voice, shrank back to human sized and shaped, pressed a finger to her lips to remind me to stay quiet, got dressed, and took my hand. We stepped through together, out of Faerie and back into the human world. Back into the night.
“I can talk now?”
She nodded, and I threw my arms around her. “Thank you! That was the most incredible experience of my life. I don’t even have words.Wow, I just…wow!”
Her eyes sparkled, her smile beamed. “Considering you are Silver, bass guitar player for Mythic Beast, that’s saying something.”
“So, you’re a queen in Faerie, Kirsten’s queen of Alfheim, Cora’s a big-time alpha wolf here — it’s like, girl power on steroids.” I shook my head. “No. Not steroids, since that’s kind of a testosterone thing. Estrogen doesn’t really screambadass warrior,though.”
She looked at Cora and Kirsten, and grinned. “It does if you’re living proof.” She looked back at me. “Girl power works, and we all knew what you meant with the steroid thing.”
Her smile softened. “I was raised to marry whoever my dad picked to be king after him. I was never supposed to have power, but I kind of took it from my father.” She sighed. “No, I ripped it from his hands, I didn’tkind oftake it, but he didn’t give me a choice. It was the only way to secure my freedom. Kirsten didn’t go looking for power, either. She had to accept it to save her life. Come to think of it, I don’t think Cora wanted all this power, either. When the former alpha was killed, the title and everything that came with it landed on her shoulders. I like to think we’ve all managed the power responsibly, though.”
“I love that you all get along with each other. There’s no competition, no vying for power. It feels, to me, like you all have each other’s backs.”
