20. QUESTION AND ANSWER TIME

I walked into the archive a man on a mission. Perhaps more accurately, a dragon on a mission, as I leaned on my second half for the strength I felt I needed. I had questions I wanted answered, and Antonin was the only one I was comfortable asking — the only one I believed had any incentive not to spin me a line of shit from the start. He had his own reasons to want me here, as a combined research test subject and fellow analyst in Antonin’s quest to solve the fundamental workings of magic underlying draconic functions. I was the only one in the world accessible to him, and the others certainly weren’t likely to be anywhere near as cooperative and accommodating.

At least, that’s what I had been told.

As of late, I was growing increasingly suspicious of what I had been told.

Everyone I had met had been through Aisling directly or at Aisling’s request. The handful of incidental interactions I’d experienced had been only one step removed from Aisling. How had I not run into anyone truly organically? Sure, I hadn’t been running around outside trying to start a grassroots political campaign, cold approaching everyone I saw, but I had nothing to show for my time in public, nothing that couldn't be linked to Aisling within a step or two.

It seemed confusing to me. Beside Antonin, the people who should’ve been briefed on who I was hadn’t been. Neither Evgenia nor Zoey had been fully read in on my situation before simply being assigned to me. Everyone else, despite seemingly being random interactions, already seemed to know who I was now. Maybe I was being paranoid, but the way Mallory had described requesting clearance for an outdoor flight rubbed me the wrong way.

I had encouraged Sam to stay home under the guise of letting her rest after yesterday. She acquiesced rather readily, content to sleep in with Beth. The younger woman was going to make a spicy chili with Zenya during the day, and Sam was content to hang out and put her magic into it. Once the idea was brought up, she wanted to see if Zenya could feel any difference between regular dishes and ones empowered with her culinary mana.

So I marched alone into the archive, determined to get some truth, and found the elderly archivist eying me warily as a similarly aged woman talked at him. She was sipping tea, wearing denim overalls and a big straw hat despite being indoors, and was speaking very slowly, laboriously elongating every phrase she wielded. On the table were nearly thirty potted plants — flowers, cactuses, ivy, bamboo, ferns, a bush the size of a washing machine in a massive pot off to the side — but I didn’t allow myself to be distracted and drawn into a lesson plan until I had answers. I had worked myself into a righteous fervor on my way over here, and I had no intention of letting it be wasted or tempered before I began.

Oh, and the woman was covered in red scales, little ebony horns poking through designed, reinforced holes in the hat, and a thin, scaled tail wrapping around the leg of her chair. She looked almost like a wingless bipedal version of me, strangely. If anything was going to distract me, she was it, but I swallowed my curiosity and leveled my gaze and my questions at the archivist.

“Antonin, are my interactions being controlled? Are the people around me being screened before I can see them?”

The elf stroked his wispy hair, set his coffee down on the table, and sighed.

“Obviously, drakeling.”

“Why? Why on earth did I have my whole life uprooted to be placed inside some Truman Show parody?”

Antonin pursed his grey lips. “Do you know, drakeling, who else has their interactions limited and potential meetings screened first?”

“Prisoners,” I spat at him.

He rolled his eyes. “Business moguls. High-level politicians. Movie stars. Think, James.”

My anger withered momentarily as I was caught off guard by Antonin actually using my name. “What are you saying?”

“It is possible to prevent you from having random interactions for your benefit.”

“Without my knowledge or consent? Without my approval and direction?”

“Do you know what is being screened for? Do you know who is being filtered and why? Would you have anything to contribute to that discussion?”

“Yes? How would my opinion not matter?”

“James, in your previous life, if a known scammer from India wanted to get in contact with you but your phone provider automatically declined to connect him, would you be upset? If a phishing link was sent to your email, but it was automatically placed in your spam folder and deleted, would you be upset? These things were done without your prior knowledge or consent and without your solicited opinion on which things to actively filter.”

“So what are you saying, Antonin? The only things being prevented are obviously malicious agents out to take advantage of me?”

He shook his head dejectedly. “No. For you, we are being more aggressive. You are simply too important to allow any risks. Only particularly conclusive passes are allowed to interact with you. You are dangerous, new to this world, young and rash, and could be convinced you have nothing to lose. There are too many pieces on the board to only be 99% effective in shielding you from unseemly influences. No, in my metaphor, you are not the celebrity or politician themselves. You are the celebrity’s son, shielded similarly from the general public but not in control of how the barriers shielding you function.”

I frowned at him, furrowing my brow and scowling. “And why not inform me of this? Surely, if it’s being done in my interest, it would be valuable to explain to me what you’re looking for and why not just anyone can interact with me.”

Antonin bobbled his head back and forth, “I was of that opinion. I was encouraged to let things play out. It wasn’t immediately apparent how long these precautions would be needed, though, now I fear they will be here for the foreseeable future.”

“What am I being protected from, Antonin?”

“I don’t know, James. If you want to know the history of either side of the curtain or the technical aspects of specialized magical theories, I am the elf you talk to. My revulsion and rejection of the current state of the realm is why I am allowed to mentor you. I don’t know what they’re looking for or who is moving against Aisling. I don’t know what lurks in the shadows these days. I know that, for a time, you were heavily scrutinized yourself and are still being watched. There are those who do not believe you for what you are. I have heard rumors of things that will shake the world, but they are only rumors until they come to pass,” Antonin explained, seeming every bit as tired and reluctant as his age deserved.

“Is that why Mallory would need to get permission for me to simply fly? Did Zoey need to get permission for us to go to the state park, too?” I asked, the majority of my anger dissipating in sympathy for my mentor. He had gotten a dragon to work with and ended up at the center of schemes he wasn’t even being kept informed of — sharing the position with him made it quite easy to understand his discomfort and mellow my tone.

“Yes and yes, drakeling. Your wolf mate has actually gotten permission on your behalf for all of your recent activities.”

“Was that actually required and no one bothered to inform me? What would happen if I got up one day and decided to go for a walk on my own through the city?”

He shook his head, “It was required of her because you asked her to make connections for you. I would encourage you to be forgiving with her. You are her mate, yes, but she has a decade of engrained training and procedure carved into her every thought. Convince her that you’re her CO and use that training. Her actual officers were content to cast her to your maw, anyway.”

“How on earth would I do that?”

The woman spoke for the first time since I arrived, “Not literally, sweetcakes. Tony was suggesting you repurpose Miss Lyon’s training.”

Antonin — there was literally no way I would ever think of him as ‘Tony’ — nodded in agreement.

“Okay. I’m sorry for my tone earlier, Antonin. I hope you can understand why I was upset,” I said. The two senior citizens nodded, and I continued, “But why were Zenya and Zoey not told who I was?”

Antonin grimaced, which made me nervous. “Miss Lyon was assigned to you before the chaos started and before we realized you were different than just a dragon with extenuating circumstances and dubious origin, even if you only met her later.” He paused, taking a sip of coffee, and then said, “Evgenia was a screening test for you that I vehemently objected to, put into motion quickly after Aisling first met with you.”

“Excuse me? Explain, and then tell me where the proof of what you’re saying is.”

“There is no proof, drakeling. Aisling and her advisors are not clumsy, arrogant mortals who need written documents to remember their own addresses. The vampire was sent to you without any information to see how you would treat her. She was a damaged thing that didn’t provide much value to her benefactors and was convenient to create an excuse for you to handle. She was sent to you with a collar and a ball-and-chain around her ankle in that contract.”

Antonin firmly exhaled, scowling himself now. “It was a horrible misuse of our position to do. But, the powers that be wanted you to have absolute authority over something. They wanted to see how you’d act. There were those who believed you, the nefarious dragon, might exploit her that day. Of course, I didn’t think that was likely. If you were what you said, you’d be scared and lost. If you were lying, you’d be much more devious and prepared and would bide your time with her.

“In the end, it was a fucking waste of everyone’s time, except, in a shocking turn of events, Evgenia’s. Those who are convinced you were a developing tyrant are still convinced, after all. Your benevolence and patience with the vampire is either a capricious act or a maneuvering feint, a random and unpredictable act of generosity, or a smokescreen concealing your true guile in their minds. Because it was an inconclusive screening, they allowed Sergeant Lyon to continue with no further knowledge as well. A second stage that, yet again, only raised more questions for those who hadn't yet condemned you in their own minds.

"There is no evidence for my protests, but I would appreciate it if you kept that information to yourself. I have no issue telling you what I perceive as the truth, drakeling, but it can be dangerous for both of us if others feel I’m feeding you partial, privileged information.”

Hearing Antonin swear confounded me even more than hearing him use my name did, to the point that I nearly forgot to continue to my final question. I stared at him for a moment, astonished at the turn of events, trying to ground myself.

“I’ll do that. Why have I been discouraged from seeing my family and friends or remaining in contact with them?”

“Initially, so that we could try and place you in a situation that would be beneficial for everyone,” Antonin responded sullenly. “The powers that be needed to investigate and figure out how on earth a dragon was born in our laps and no one noticed for 20 years. Of course, looking at the information, it seems as though you’ve been a dragon for less than eighteen months. Looking at ambient energy signatures around your hometown, there are sudden, inexplicable upward trends that originate some two years ago. Before then, the area had some anomalous high activity days, but nothing was sustained. If you were born a dragon, it would've been easy to see. Days you took a field trip out of town, the ambient level would've decreased, and so on.

“So, now the security professionals need to know why you suddenly changed from a human to a dragon and are investigating your past — ignoring the fact that they won’t find anything there. They’re going through the procedure for finding a missing murder weapon when they’re looking for a UFO. That is to say that they’re acting like they know what they’re looking for or that they will even recognize something strange if they see it. It’s like trying to claim evidence of energy-generative cold fusion based on interviewing the janitor who was outside the laboratory room the night an experiment happened without even understanding what a nucleus is. We don’t have any idea how or why you changed or what the mysterious third part of you is — how can they expect to find any evidence of foul play when they don’t even understand the play in the first place? It’s preposterously arrogant.”

“I think I understand.”

“To answer your actual question, drakeling, you are being isolated from our world to protect you from strange happenings I am intentionally not fully informed of. At the same time, you have been encouraged to isolate yourself from your previous world while so-called security advisors attempt to chase ghosts in your past. They waste our finances and their own time looking for things they don’t understand, attempting to clear everyone in your past of wrongdoing they couldn’t possibly have committed, or at the very least, that there will be no recognizable evidence of. Miss Lyon’s brother has been cleared, if you wish to talk with him. He’s the only one I know of for certain off the top of my head. I wish I could give you a time frame to go on, but I have little other information. To be frank, I am hesitant to commit to saying that you will ever be allowed to visit your family again. I don’t want to give you any indication that it will happen soon, and I don’t want to tell you that it’s guaranteed to happen.”

I pulled out a chair at the table and sighed. The dragon hung his metaphorical head, apologetic for the mess that he felt he had caused. Which wasn’t fair for him, I internally insisted, unless he had a choice in beginning to exist in my mind. It was just a mess. A mess I at least now had some knowledge of.

“Well, I can’t say that I’m pleased with what you said, but I am pleased that you said it. Honestly, I’ve spent the last weeks mentally pretending that I’m off at summer camp or on a shared vacation with Sam. There’s just been too much going on for me to feel really homesick and miss my family, and if I tried to think about it as a temporary inconvenience, the grief didn’t pop up in the day-to-day. For now, if you’re telling me it’s still up in the air, I think that’s how I’m going to continue.”

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and trying to mentally reset, and then continued. “So, if this is summer camp, it’s probably time we got to today's activities.” Turning to the woman, I smiled and said, “Hi, I’m James. Terribly sorry you had to sit through my temper tantrum, and I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

She laughed boisterously, clinking her teacup and saucer together, “Darling, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for. I’ve been known to be perturbed by much less life-altering things in my time. If this curmudgeon would do his job and introduce us—”

Antonin interrupted, “James, this is Antonella—”

“Just call me Elle, sweetie.”

“—And she’s here to teach you the basics of applied phytomancy.”

I looked at the two of them, then at the plants spread out all over the table, and then back at Elle and said, “I’m getting some pretty strong context clues here, but I’m afraid I don’t actually know what that means.”

Elle smiled, “Because Tony spends all his days with his nose in books, dear, he needs to use incredibly precise words that other people have never seen before. I’m a florist, darling. I specialize in growing flowers into arrangements, especially elegant, intricate displays for weddings and events. Today, dearie, I’m going to show you how to feel them. Tony said you can utilize multiple mana specializations, yes?”

I scratched my head, “Sort of? I wasn’t effective when I tried to do some enchanting, basically just destroying the materials I tried to use. With warding, I sometimes struggled to understand the concepts, although one of my companions assisted me. Evocation felt really natural, almost second nature.”

Antonin added, “Your struggles enchanting were intentional. Those cheap metal plates have a shallow feedback threshold, and I knew you would lack the precise control necessary to utilize them.”

Elle thanked Antonin and set her tea down, pulling a cut flower from a bag I hadn’t seen before and handing it to me.

“Hold it gently, sweetie. I know you’re a strong young thing, but the flowers usually aren’t.”

She sat back for a moment, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, clearly waiting for something. After thirty seconds, I didn’t feel any different. After a minute, I felt strange, as though all of the plants in the room were watching me. They hadn’t moved, but I could feel them yearning for my attention as a collective.

Then Elle gasped, and the sensation faded. Her hands trembled and shook, and Antonin carefully held her tea for her, precisely tipping it to offer the red-scaled woman a sip without words. Elle hadn’t even opened her eyes yet.

After she had swallowed, she asked, “Did you feel it, darling? It’s challenging for many who don’t find themselves blessed with a green thumb, I know.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, watching her struggle from the effort of demonstrating something for me. “I could feel the plants reaching out to me. It was a bit overwhelming, suddenly having all of them watching me.”

Ella gave a slow, lazy nod, practically moving her entire body to agree with me. “Wonderful, darling. Now, feel the plant in your hand. Ask for its help. Reach out to it.”

At first, I kinda shrugged and mentally posed questions to the flower, before realizing that was utterly inane and not at all what Elle had meant. Then, I tried sensing it with my mana. It felt odd, blurry and distorted and warped and not at all what I expected. Of course, the only living things I had really tried to sense this way had been other mortals, mostly Sam. I tried once with Beth and that hadn’t worked, but it had been obvious how it wasn’t working. Rather than pushing against a spring like with Beth, where all my energy and effort was stored to work against me, trying to interact with the flower felt like walking in quicksand. Every direction felt wrong; every attempt pulled me deeper in and added more resistance to my flailing limbs.

Of course, I hadn’t ever pushed ideas that way to Sam. I hadn’t needed to. We had words the first time, and now we had a rapidly developing nonverbal bond cheating for us. When I lashed out in frustration and asked the flower why the fuck it was fighting me so hard when all I wanted was to understand it, the pressure released. The energy of the flower in my hand turned over, and I got a glimpse of a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations I didn’t understand detailing what the flower had experienced. When I pushed some energy into the flower, I could feel the stem stiffening in my hand, the starting vestiges of a wilt disappearing as I moved the touch of life into it from my fingertips.

Elle clapped her hands gleefully and we moved on. She continued instructing me on feeling and sharing with the mana of other living things, surprised at how easily it came to me given that I was neither a spirit nor someone who had been doing this naturally throughout my entire childhood. When I sheepishly admitted that I had been doing it to share energy with Sam, she cocked her head, took her hat off, and looked at me like I had grown wings and a tail.

I could feel her considering that information over the next thirty minutes, as she had me identifying the different plants based on how their energy felt and how they reacted differently to mine. After I finished predicting how much water they needed in the next day, week, and month to sustain their current sizes, including a trick question where one of the cactuses had been deliberately over-hydrated and needed to be left alone, I felt that Elle had made a decision.

In the end, she didn’t ask to experience my mana sharing. She did give me a card and told me to come to her shop at some point in the next week and that, in exchange for some energy every now and then, she would do the flowers for my upcoming weddings. When I asked her who told her about my relationship status, she rolled her eyes.

“Sugar, you’re a dragon. Nicest, gentlest dragon I’ve ever interacted with, ‘temper tantrum’ included, but you’re a dragon. If you don’t have a cute little doll mewling for every ounce of your attention by Thanksgiving, you’ll be the strangest dragon in recorded history three different ways rather than two. I don’t need to know anything about your relationship plans to know that someone eventually will want a ceremony with you. Normally, I would’ve kept quiet. You make me think you’ll agree to have one and that I won’t regret associating my name with it. So, swing by and let me know.”

I tentatively agreed to stop by in a few days, then helped her carry the plants to her car. Given Elle’s patience, drawn-out speech, and relatively low energy threshold, to say nothing of the diversion I caused at the start, we had spent longer than expected on my lesson. Antonin waved me off when I returned, saying he had other things to do since we had already exceeded our allotted time.

At first, I thought that was a blessing. I didn’t really want to try to do anything else before meeting with Zoey, but that wasn’t going to be until 5:30 or so, an hour from now. I was mildly concerned because I had texted her this morning to see if she preferred to meet us there or group up somewhere else first and she hadn’t yet responded, but since I figured that she was at work, it wouldn’t be an issue to worry about until after four.

Then I opened the apartment door and found Zoey leaning against the counter, talking with Beth and Sam. She was dressed casually, in simple beige shorts and a black crop top, her blonde hair tied back into a ponytail, and yet she managed to carry an imposing aura that neither Beth nor Sam matched. It made me pause for a moment, comparing how Sam could seem effortlessly feminine and beautiful no matter what she wore and how Beth always seemed to be effervescently adorable with just a hint of mischievous energy.

That presence was shattered when Zoey saw me come through the door and reflexively exhaled and deflated, saying, “Oh, thank fuck. Time to get this over with.”

Beth and Sam looked surprised, unsure of how to react to Zoey’s change in demeanor. Zoey folded her hands in front of her stomach, glanced at me, and then turned to my two girlfriends.

“Sam, Beth, I’d like to take the time to apologize to you. I was blinded by my ego, and I put the two of you through a quite unpleasant evening under false pretenses. It would be easy for me to hide behind my good intentions, but I never considered the potential consequences for the two of you. To be honest, I hadn’t considered the possibility that I could be wrong — that James was telling the truth — when I decided on how to treat you on Friday.

“I’m sorry that I put you through an interrogation on Friday. I’m sorry that I held you apart, isolating you and holding you hostage for my own means. I’m sorry that I didn’t respect you or listen to your words or how you said them. I didn’t think that it would be possible that you were telling me the truth. I didn’t consider ending up in this situation, apologizing to the women I’d have to share the rest of my life with. I couldn’t conceive of having to ask the two women I would ask to help raise my children for their forgiveness for how I accosted them in our first meeting.

“I can see how much you two care for him and how much he cares for you. I can see now how the three of you are trying to make this work. I can only hope that my actions haven’t completely alienated me from the two of you. I want to join you two; to contribute and to make this insane situation work for all of us, but I need to ask for your forgiveness and your acceptance of me, first. If you need more time, I understand. I’m sorry.”

Sam stood frozen, having started to lift a glass of water to take a drink when Zoey began speaking. I could feel that she hadn’t expected a serious apology from Zoey and that she had actually forgotten Zoey had agreed to do so while they were talking earlier. Beth was less startled and had recovered as Zoey spoke, and she responded.

“Zoey, I can’t say that I understand what you were afraid of, but I know that your intentions were in the right place. It’s hard for me to be mad at you when you didn’t feel like you could believe the words coming out of our mouths. I know what it’s like to not be able to trust that someone is telling you the truth, and I know how hard it can be when you’re trying to help them when you can’t trust them. I’m not going to hold a grudge against you.”

Sam set her glass down and pulled Zoey into a hug, turning the tables and freezing the blonde in place.

“Zo, I’m happy to have you here. I didn’t have an issue when I realized what you were doing. I had my own mini-interrogation with him before he even realized what he was, so I certainly understand the thought process. You were looking out for us. It made the night awkward, but that’s it.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Zoey took a deep breath and eventually returned Sam’s hug, “I really appreciate how understanding you two are.”

“He told you about our bond, right?” Beth asked. When Zoey nodded, she continued, “It makes it easier to be understanding. He can sense how Sam and I feel and what we're thinking about. We can feel his thoughts. It’s easy to be understanding when he has a thought and it shows you a whole idea you missed.”

Zoey smiled at Beth and slowly withdrew from Sam, which gave me an opportunity to ask her, “What are you doing here so early, Zoey?”

“To be honest, I was anxious about doing that. I wanted to get it over with,” she replied.

“Shall we head out, then?” I asked.

Sam looked at me, confused, “I thought you were planning on six? Where are we even going?”

“Yeah, I was. The entertainment doesn’t start until then, but we can still go and get something to eat and talk amongst ourselves.”

Beth raised an eyebrow and asked, “Get something to eat?” causing Zoey to look confusedly between us.

“Well, alright, I planned to go to a trivia bar. It would be polite to order food and a drink or two while we’re there, just as customers,” I said to Beth. Then, to Zoey, I explained, “The dragon magic that gives me healing abilities is transmitted in saliva and makes it possible to sidestep consuming food.”

Beth teasingly added, “If we suck face with him enough, we can eat whatever we want or skip it entirely.”

Zoey remained looking confused, “You have healing abilities?” Then she shook her head, “Sorry, you can explain on the way. Let me grab my jacket.”

I explained my healing powers as we headed out of the apartment and into the city again, and Zoey seemed quite interested in hearing about how I used them on Zenya. She wasn’t aware dragons had any sort of healing; she was only being informed and trained to tackle the inherently dangerous capabilities of dragons.

As we approached the bar I had registered at, I asked Zoey a question I had been wondering about for a while.

“Hey, so what’s the deal with ‘Luna’? Antonin made it sound like there weren’t any gods, but...”

Zoey smiled, “But I mentioned Her name a few times, and you’ve heard the rumors that leaked into the mundane world, and now you’re curious?”

“Well, somewhat.”

“She’s a cultural touchstone for weres, not an actual Goddess. Well, not any more than any other pagan religious figure. I mean, you’ll probably find a few communities out there who still actively worship her, but it’s largely fallen by the wayside. She was a historically conjured explanation for why we were different from humans that’s kept around to complain about the downsides of being were.” Zoey affected her voice, sounding incredibly annoyed, “Oh, I’m turning 25, and my hips are giving out, and I’m getting cancer because I’m half mouse? Gee, thanks, Luna. That kind of stuff.”

She finished her performative answer as I held the door open for her. Inside, the bar seemed pretty quiet, with only a handful of tables occupied. The hostess looked at the four of us nervously, letting us know that they had trivia in an hour and weren’t sure if they’d have an available table. When I informed her that we were actually here for the trivia and were just stupidly early, she smiled and, after checking our reservation, brought us to our designated booth. I sat with Zoey on one side of the table, while Beth sat across from me beside Sam.

Given the state of the restaurant, it was only a few seconds later that our server arrived. Zoey ordered a steak without even looking at the menu, to no one’s surprise. Sam, Beth, and I split a shareable of loaded tater tots.

Then, when he left, Sam asked Zoey, “So, what’s your living situation like?”

“Normal? I’ve got a flat in Manayunk,” Zoey answered hesitantly.

“I was just wondering because of your goals. Since you want to try for motherhood with our boyfriend, I wanted to know what you thought about moving in with us. No pressure, of course, but if we’re going to be a family, I wanted to extend the offer to you.”

Zoey looked at the three of us, spending a second contemplating while looking at all of our faces, before answering, “It’s so strange to me that you’re fine with this. I’m used to dealing with non-monogamous were families and demi clans all the time, but, Sam, you’re a human. And Beth’s a norm. You’re really cool with me just jumping your man because I say he’s my mate?”

Beth blushed, and I could tell that it was because she wanted to see exactly that. Thankfully, Sam fielded the question. “I’m not cool with you just ‘jumping’ James. Integrating as a part of our family? Sure. Beth, what did you call us?”

“Team Girlfriend.”

“Right, Team Girlfriend. Beth’s fun and spunky and impulsive, but suffered a lot in the past just to get here. I’m a little more rigid, yet idealistic because of how I grew up. James is quite insistent that the two of us together, our separate parts, all contribute to make him better, and vice versa.”

Beth added, “You’ve already helped, too, getting him into the gym to feel his new body and learn to fly. And I don’t know what you said to him on your date, but he came home calmer. He spent his first week almost terrified to touch me, scared to be active and take control, but now it seems like he’s settled. Whatever you two talked about helped him see something Sam and I missed.”

Zoey shook her head, trying to rationalize what she just heard. “Sorry, are you sure you’re real? I basically harassed you into telling me all sorts of things the first time we met, and now I’m inserting myself into your relationship, and you both seem far too accepting of it.”

Sam looked to Beth, then responded, “Do you want us to be catty and bitchy about it? Like you said earlier, you’re going to spend the rest of your life with us. We could be upset about things outside our control, or we could try to support each other and find ways to make this work.”

Zoey sighed, sitting back in the booth, “This is just unreal. I went from thinking — actually, that’s not strong enough. I went from knowing I was alone and having to fight for everything I wanted on my own with no time to sit down and think to having a mate I couldn’t trust. Now, I’ve got a pack that wants to work with me despite what I’ve done. I’m trying really hard to not be paranoid and suspicious of you, because you haven’t done anything to deserve that, but this is just too good to be true, you know? You don’t get second chances like that.”

Beth reached her hand across the table, placing it tenderly onto Zoey’s wrist, “We did. Why not you?”

Zoey placed her hand on top of Beth’s and looked gratefully at the three of us, sitting still for a few moments. Then the server arrived with our food, and Beth withdrew her hand.

As Zoey started cutting into her steak, looking at how it had been cooked, I asked, “So, you mentioned having a ‘pack,’ and that gets me curious, Zoey. Stop me if this is too personal, but why didn’t you or your parents ever come and visit Kyle at school? Or why did he never take me up on going home together?”

“Nah, that’s pretty simple. A wolf pack is a mated pair and their offspring. When the offspring are old enough to be their own adults, they get pushed out and away from the pair because otherwise, you just have more adults competing for the same resources. The idea of like a community of wolves in the common conception is pretty overblown. Not to say they don’t exist, depending on species and location, there certainly are larger groups of extended families that make it work. Even then, it’s one family, not a whole community of dozens of families.

“But, I was always on edge around them. My parents are more like me than Kyle, so it certainly rubbed them the wrong way as well. It was just two clashing sets of instincts — my human side saying that I wanted my family to be near me and have close relations with them, and my wolf side constantly reminding me that they were just competition and threats to my survival. The only way to be comfortable around Kyle was to try to consider his value as a mate.”

Beth sputtered on the flavored lemonade she was drinking as Zoey comfortably started delving into an otherwise uncomfortable topic.

“Which couldn’t ever work. Obviously, as humans, you get it, but my wolf doesn’t have that specific societal hang-up. She does, however, look at Kyle and see a sniveling weakling unfit to reproduce, which is a really horrible way to act around your brother. So, I moved out at 17. Got an advanced high school diploma and went right into Aisling’s service to get away. I didn’t want to be nasty to my family, but my wolf insisted that the only acceptable options were mates or competition. Dad’s too old to raise my child, and Kyle’s weak for one of us for her, and eww besides. So, we talk every now and then on the phone, but that’s it.”

Sam asked, “But, isn’t James your mate? How could you be sure about him but tentative about considering —” she trailed off, not willing to say the specifics of what Zoey had just divulged. “Someone else,” she eventually concluded.

Zoey waved as she explained, “I’m conflating the terms. I had never felt the tug on my heart and soul that the elders had described as having a true mate, so I had to find one like humans do, just kind of bumbling along and hoping someone would like me. So, because I didn’t have a predestined mate, I had to go make my own. At least, that’s what I thought. Now, I’ve got my own pack,” she concluded with a smile, looking around the table at each of us.

“And, after what you said about your family, is sharing me with Beth and Sam going to be an issue?” I asked.

Zoey shook her head, her ponytail bobbing behind her. “I don’t think so. First, neither of them are weres, let alone wolves, so I don’t get the constant, inescapable feeling of existential competition with them. Second, my wolf’s pretty confident you’ll be more than adequate at keeping the three of us happy, healthy, and satisfied. She does want to confirm that tonight, though.”

I wasn’t sure how she could be quite so confident when I hadn’t really done anything to provide yet for anyone, only actually sharing things that were gifted to me, but I wasn’t going to question it now. It was something I wanted to change, and I had asked Zenya and Cynthia to help me set things in motion already, but I hadn’t heard anything back. Which might be because I wasn’t concrete enough for Zenya to understand what I wanted and I wasn’t Cynthia’s only responsibility.

It was also something I couldn’t precisely solve on my own. I needed more information about what I was even qualified to do. I understood that I was an exceptionally useful energy source and that I could probably drop a hurricane somewhere pretty easily, but I did not know how to turn those skills into productive endeavors. Ultimately, I should probably talk with Antonin about it first, and then get Evgenia and Cynthia working to cement leads he found for me. It certainly would be challenging for Zenya to go and start a relationship with a business somewhere by saying she represented a dragon with no further explanation.

Thankfully, as Zoey ate her steak and the rest of us nibbled on the tater tots, the area of the bar we were in filled up, with all of the other tables being claimed by the various teams of four to six. When the server returned, he dropped off a whiteboard, tally counter, and drink refills. Before he left, Zoey ordered a second entree, a grilled chicken breast and pasta dish. She then seemed uncomfortable, realizing that the three of us hadn’t even ordered an actual meal the first time.

Before the server departed, Sam quickly tacked on a slice of their chocolate pie, if only so that Zoey wouldn’t be the only one eating. Unsurprisingly, Sam ate it unenthusiastically, although that led to a conversation to explain Sam’s newfound culinary magical applications to Zoey. The blonde asked what Sam could do for steaks, which became awkward when Sam, Beth, and I shrugged and said we hadn’t tried yet because of our recent decision to stop eating meat. Zoey was understanding when I explained the thoughts behind that decision and how my girlfriends chose to support it for now because there certainly didn’t appear to be any nutritional risks involved. In fact, the only reason we were even eating tonight was to support the business that happened to be hosting the trivia. Well, that and Sam’s sweet tooth, even if it was left ultimately disappointed.

As the final few tables filled in, the emcee of the night announced himself, spent a few minutes talking to the regulars and introducing the quite basic rules, and then offered up a couple softballs to get the night moving. “What animal is on the bar’s logo?” “Which month is Christmas in?” and “Name One of Philadelphia’s big four sports teams” were the opening three questions.

Then we got into proper questions. They started with a geography section, working through a couple of state capitals (We knew Seattle wasn’t Washington’s capital, but none of us could come up with Olympia before time expired) before moving into physical features. My throwaway guess of the Danube for the longest river in Europe wasn’t correct, but Zoey got the four flag identification questions correct before any of the rest of us had a chance to think, getting us some quick points.

We struggled in the music, television, and movies section. Beth knew a couple of answers from things at least ten years old, though she didn’t know any of the questions about the 70s or 60s bands, while the rest of us sat quietly as we fell behind the other teams. Sam somehow knew that there were 88 keys on a standard piano, and Zoey managed to name all four Twilight books, embarrassedly explaining that she had hate watched the films to see the slander of wolves contained within. That kept us at least within touching distance of the leaders.

Sam surprised us again by correctly knowing that Vermeer painted “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” Grant Wood painted “American Gothic,” and Bruegel (the elder) painted “The Tower of Babel” in the art section, but those were questions that almost every team scored three from three on. Beth knew that Hamlet was Shakespeare’s longest play because she had to memorize lines from it in her sophomore year of high school, and that was a fact that was passed around by the students.

Zoey kept us from completely embarrassing ourselves when they asked several questions about the human body. Did you know that humans have twenty-four ribs? Zoey did before the question was finished. She also knew that lateral epicondylitis was more colloquially known as tennis elbow in half a moment, explaining afterward that her moment’s hesitation was in touching her own arm and making sure that it wasn’t golfer’s elbow, the similarly named medial epicondylitis.

We performed really well during the internet and technology section. A good chunk of that was down to me knowing most of the answers, though I tried to let one of the girls answer first if they knew it. Beth knew that the first antagonist Mario faced was Donkey Kong, not the more iconic Bowser, and I swallowed the pedantic correction that the character had a different name at the time. Sam quickly answered the admittedly easy trick question for the Princess’ name in the Legend of Zelda series. Zoey raised a few eyebrows when she provided the expansion of the initialism DNS correctly, begrudgingly explaining that a massive portion of the training for her previous position had to do with internet infrastructure and data flow. She also asked if we had a VPN service for our connections at the apartment, and that she could hook us up with a Fae Book authorized provider if we didn’t.

The final portion of grouped questions regarded bartending and drink mixes. The other three of us looked to Zoey aspirationally, hoping she could carry us to a strong finish. Instead, she shrugged apologetically and told us that she typically went with whatever Chelsea recommended and barely drank otherwise. We got one question right by sheer dumb luck but were comfortably outperformed by everyone else.

Ultimately, we didn’t score well enough to get any of the prizes offered up for the night. It wasn’t surprising to me, and none of the girls seemed upset at our lackluster finish. Still, besides the result, we had an enjoyable night out. What was surprising was how much I learned about the girls, just from which questions they answered and how they approached the ones we had no idea about.

The four of us left the bar half an hour after trivia ended. The clientele had switched over as the event ended, moving from the mostly dinner-eating, family and tight-group trivia goers into the mostly night-out drinking, primarily single or small group nightlife enthusiasts. I paid for the dinners, despite Zoey insisting that she should at least split since she was the only one who had eaten, and the four of us walked out onto the streets.

At first, Zoey wasn’t sure where to walk with us. Four people on a sidewalk take up an obnoxious amount of room, and Zoey's behavior revealed she was definitely concerned she was fourth-wheeling when Beth and Sam each took one of my hands. When I hesitated, they both picked up on what I was seeing. They considerately let go of me, walking away as their own pairing, Beth giggling as she leaned against Sam.

Which left me partnered with Zoey for our walk home. She still seemed uncertain, but I claimed her hand with one of my own before we had gone a block.

“Is this normal for you?” She asked, watching Beth excitedly point at things in front of us.

“Do you want me to go on my drowning rant again, Zoey? Because I can. I have no idea what’s normal. All I know is that the three of us want the best for each other. And right now, they’re pretty insistent that I need to give you what you want.”

“They’re giving me an awful lot of trust.”

“No more than they’ve given me. Actually, about that, I was told something this morning that I want you to answer. I’m not upset about it, so please try not to project that onto me; I’m just curious. Have you been getting permission for the places I went this week without telling me?”

“Ah, fuck, James. Yes. Yes, I have been.”

“Why?”

She did a double take, unsure how to take my flat, calm question. “Because I was ordered to.”

“What was the goal, though? Was it just to keep tabs on me, or was it to ensure that I didn’t cause any problems?”

“Little of both? My supervisor’s supervisor wants information on you. He thinks you’re up to something big and wants to be ahead of the curve. Ordered me — and Mal, and anyone involved with the training center — to keep him updated on your plans, and to let him know if you did anything involving other magical citizens. After you asked my assistance locating places to go with Beth and Sam, I had to tell him. If I did all of the legwork for the info and then it came out that I hadn’t reported it, it would look awful for both of us.”

“So, if I just keep you on your toes by making my own plans and not sharing them until the last minute, you won’t be obligated to report anything?”

“That’s correct,” she responded glumly.

“What does he want?”

“I don’t have any idea. He’s got a bunch of wealth from private-sector security connections, and I’m assuming he just wants to insider trade his way into more. I don’t understand what he thinks is going on, though. Unless you’ve made bigger plans and not shared them with me.”

I shook my head, “Bringing you home tonight was my only plan in the foreseeable future. I have some ambitions to make myself more useful and get things that are my own, but I still don’t know how to do that, so they're not plans. It’s not like I can get a summer internship through my advisor at school, you know?”

“I’m glad to hear that I haven’t outed myself with you. Or, that is what you’re saying, right?”

“Stop worrying, Zoey. While I’m not trying to force you into tying yourself further to me, I’m willing now to go at your pace.”

She stared at me for a moment, then nodded across the street, “There’s a bench over there.”

“What?”

Zoey smiled teasingly, “Well, if we’re going at my pace, there’s a bench over there.”

I swatted at her behind, “No, we’re going back and using a bed, harlot.”

She pretended to pout, arching her back and sticking herself further out at me. It was an obvious tease that asked for one thing, and I couldn’t help myself but give it to her, slapping her backside again.

“Mmm,” she murmured, “Good to know that you’re ready to take control if I don’t want to play nice.”

“Oh, god,“ I said with a laugh, “Sam, help. She’s worse than Beth.”

Sam laughed as she looked back at us, shaking her head. “Sorry, James, you’re on your own. I’ll happily pet the doggy once she’s house-trained, but not sooner.”

Beth looked back with an excited, hungry look that would've told me exactly what she was hoping for even if I couldn’t feel it in her mind. It also laid plain her interests to Zoey, who looked between Beth and me with a raised eyebrow.

“The little one likes being in the driver’s seat?” Zoey asked.

“Hah. No, actually quite the opposite.”

“So why does she look ready to eat me when we return to the apartment?”

“She’s excited to watch me with you.”

“Oh,” Zoey said, pausing for a moment to contemplate my answer.

“I guess that’s something we should discuss,” I suggested. “What you want and what I want are probably different. I’m sure there’s some overlap, but we haven’t really touched on it.”

“Someone was dragging his feet and pretending this wasn’t inevitable, yeah.”

It was strange to realize how comfortable I had become with Zoey. I was struck by an impulse to tickle her in response to her tongue-in-cheek comment, which made me realize how much our interactions had developed over the past week.

“I just didn’t want to act like it was. Felt kinda gross.”

Zoey laughed, a deep belly laugh loud enough to cause Beth and Sam to turn around and stare back at us again. “That’s too good,” she eventually wheezed out. “Geeze, James, I mean, I get where you’re coming from — it’s certainly uncomfortable to have to question if I like you or if I’m forced to accept whatever you are. I’m just saying that I would’ve been fine going out after we played with your strange dragon bond.”

“Well, I’m ready now,” I answered her. “So, do you want to talk about what you want specifically?”

“We aren’t just going to fall into bed and figure it out?”

I grimaced, “If something was substantially different with my brain, and I was considering a one-night stand with you that happened in a sort of chaotic, natural, organic manner? I might do that by accident. But, if you’re going to be with me for the rest of your life, I want it to be good for you, and I want to put in the effort to make sure you enjoy everything. If you’re going to be a foundational part of my life moving forward, especially since it was out of your control, you deserve that.”

“It’s weird for me to see you being so mature,” she said with a laugh. “Not that you were ever immature as a kid, but you always seemed pretty happy-go-lucky, content to ride along with Kyle. Seeing you trying to plan and control things is nice.

“I think I’d rather know what you want. It’s nice that you want to play the gentleman and act like I still have my dignity, but there must be something you prefer, too. What makes James tick? If this is important for you, I think I want you to go first.”

I pursed my lips, intent on giving her a serious answer and taking the time to think about it. I had an instant gut reaction, but it wasn’t a very satisfying answer. We walked a block in silence as I tried to get any more specifics in my mind, but eventually, I gave up and shared what I could.

“I, honestly, genuinely, enjoy giving my partner what they want. That’s not a line, and I’m not saying it lightly. I want to be a provider, instinctually. I want to be your emotional support, your friend, your confidant, your lover. I’m quite possessive, so I want to be enough to make you want to be mine, as well. I want to scratch your itches enough that you need to come back to me. I want to be such a perfect fit that I deserve all of you. The whole dragon-in-my-head experience makes me wonder if those are truly parts of me or parts of him that showed up early, but they’re so ingrained in my life that it’s not a worthwhile distinction.

“In terms of things that I like physically, I like kissing, and eye contact, and cuddling. I enjoy watching and listening to my partner's reactions when I go down on them. I don’t really enjoy reciprocation as much as most guys do. I like being in control most of the time, or at least on even footing with my partner. I like dirty talk once I’m already worked up, though I’m really, really not into degrading stuff in either direction. Frankly, once you’ve got me ready, there’s not much that falls into my ‘absolute no’ realm.”

Zoey listened intently, then offered her own perspective. “It’s weird to have this conversation, you know? I understand what you want to accomplish and why it’s valuable, but I’ve never had it before. I don’t have an incredible amount of experience, and most of that was fumbling around in the dark and then never acknowledging that it happened afterward. I’ve never had a real, adult relationship. Talking about my expectations and desires makes a lot of sense, but it’s a bit awkward.

“To answer your question, I know I’m going to be a pain in the ass. It’s instinctual for my wolf to want to challenge you and make you constantly earn your position at the top. It’s gotten me in trouble at work several times, but it’s also ensured that things weren’t missed. She wants whoever is in charge to demonstrate regularly that they deserve to be there. So, while I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m deferential, you’re going to need to be assertive with me. And it’s going to be annoying at points, and I’m sorry.

“To that end, I like stuff a little more uptempo than it sounds like you want. Energetic and intense, maybe not quite frantic. Cuddling sounds nice afterward once you’ve cemented your place as my alpha. I’ve never really experienced it, but it sounds nice. Kissing and eye contact aren’t in my wheelhouse, but maybe with you, they could be. Sorry to be a walking cliche, but, I like doggy, so I’m not sure how much we can do those.” She trailed off, seeming apologetic that her desires didn’t perfectly mirror my own.

“I’m quite excited to experience a wolf in her element, Zoey.”

“Really? You’re not disappointed?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I do have two other girlfriends. One of them likes being smothered and completely out of control after years of being hypervigilant and in charge of everything. The other wants to be pampered and preened. I can definitely enjoy both of those, and I think I can enjoy scratching your itches as well. I will enjoy the process, even if the acts themselves aren’t something I would do otherwise, you know?”

“OK, hold up. Why are you so eager to compromise your desires for me? Why just accept that I want something else and go for it?”

“It’s not really a true compromise, Zoey. I still get what I want: you, comfortable expressing yourself with me. I’ll enjoy our time together no matter what we actually do, so there’s no reason to insist on doing things I exclusively want. The real compromise is from you accepting the fact that you have to share your mate with two other women. Not to sound arrogant, as much as the dragon wants me to, but you don’t get all of me. If you’re only getting a share of my time, I really should strive to make it the best for you.”

She shrugged, “It just feels like I’m getting so much more than I have to give up. You’re not just the strangest dragon I’ve ever heard of; you might be the strangest guy.”

“Zoey, isn’t that the goal of every relationship? Like, I get that no one wants to come out and say it because it feels cold and inhuman, but isn’t every interaction supposed to be beneficial? Obviously, you have to compromise around the edges, but if it didn’t make your life better, you would leave.

“Now, before you go and say that you can’t leave or that Beth or Sam can’t leave, I want to cut that off. It’s true, in a sense, but they very much could leave emotionally. They could make this experience miserable for all of us, but that sounds awful. If we want to get the benefits, we have to put in the effort to make it work for everyone. Beth, albeit with a whole lot of ignorance and confusion at the start, and Sam both came willingly. They both want to make this work. I want to make this work. You seem to be here at a fork in the road. Do you want to make this work and accept that with your effort, everyone will get more than they give up for your inclusion?”

Zoey nodded, “Yeah. Yeah, James, I do. Are they really willing to share me with you? To let me mother your children?”

“Yes. Beth’s nervous about how she’ll be as a mother, and Sam doesn’t want to have children of her own right now. Not that she isn’t interested in helping with yours; she just literally doesn’t want to go through the process. They both were very supportive of your dilemma. Beth insisted that I give you what you asked for, even if you weren’t wholly sure that it was what you wanted, because otherwise, I was taking the decision out of your hands.”

“And she’s nervous about being a mother?”

“Yes, for very… They’re not good reasons, but they’re quite understandable. I think we should leave that discussion for another day. Tomorrow, maybe. Never, maybe. I don’t know if it’s a hang-up she’ll get over until your first is our age now.”

Zoey inhaled sharply as I said that. “So, like, you’re open to that idea? Tonight?”

“I’ve had some time to think about it, and I’m just going to let it happen if it happens tonight. I’m more concerned about asking you to move in with us. But,” I said, holding the apartment lobby door open for Zoey to enter, “We’ll have that discussion later, too. Tonight, my runway model werewolf mate had other things she wanted to do, I believe.”