Page 59 of Wedding the Werepanther

“Mierda,” Violeta says, but she’s smiling. “Am I that obvious?”

“Yes.” Jasmine laughs.

“Not to me, but I suck at those kinds of things,” I admit. “I’ll try to pay more attention the next time we’re all together.”

“About that.” Violeta leans forward, eyes glittering with excitement. “I have an idea for your wedding.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Shadow

I return from a day traversing Faerie and walk the shadow roads straight to the hallway outside my old apartment in Ferndale Falls.

At my knock, Jace opens the door. “Did you get them?”

“I did.” I push past him.

The apartment looks almost exactly the same as it did when I left: hardwood floors, cream-colored walls, and windows that look out onto the colorful buildings on the other side of Main Street. It’s a pretty place with a comfortable couch and a large TV, but I don’t miss it. I lived here for a year and have only been gone a couple of weeks, but Victoria already feels like home, with her carved wainscoting and brocade wallpaper and antique brass fixtures.

And Kayla. Now that I’ve tasted her, felt her come apart around my fingers, held her in my arms, I can’t imagine ever being apart.

“Well?” the dragon snaps.

I pull the leather sack from behind my back and hold it out.

He snatches it from me and opens it, reaching in to pull out several differently colored crystals. “Good. Thank you.”

“Happy to help.” I grin. “Though I’m kind of curious as to why you sent me for them.”

“I needed more base crystals for my spells.”

“I understand that.” I don’t roll my eyes, but it’s really damned hard not to. I deserve a medal or at least a T-shirt. The dragon knows what I actually asked—he’s too intelligent not to—so he’s being obtuse on purpose. I go ahead and spell it out, so he can’t wiggle away again. I have an idea of what’s troubling him, but he never talks about it, and that can’t be healthy. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t go to Alarria and get them yourself. In your dragon form, you can fly about as fast as I can run the shadow roads.”

Jace breathes a wash of blue flames so cold the temperature in the room drops by several degrees. A ball of ice forms on his palm, and he lifts it higher as if it’s an answer.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“It means I was the only ice dragon trapped in Alarria when the doors of Faerie closed.” His hand compresses into a fist, crushing the ball into tiny flakes, which he disperses with another pulse of magic. “For three centuries, the fire dragons merely tolerated my existence. Only Lukendeverner called me friend.”

“Ah.” It’s as I suspected. “What about Dularia? Surely, there are more of your kind in the dragon realm.”

“There are.” He tips his head, his eyes going from icy to pale blue. “However, my centuries apart made me somewhat of a stranger to them as well. So I thought I’d try Earth.” He gives me an assessing gaze. “I imagine you cannot relate to feeling so uncertain of your place in the world.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” I prop my hip against the table and decide to match his openness with my own. “I should have been able to shift from the time I was a kit, should have grown up fully comfortable in all three of my forms.” I wave a hand at myself. “Yet here I am, an adult cat sith in his prime, who’s only just begun to understand what it means to live as a man.”

“You always seem so assured.”

“What can I say?” I grin and spread my hands. “I’m a cat.”

He grunts, his wings shifting restlessly on his back.

“Look, you’ve got Luke, and you’ve got me.” I clap him on the shoulder. “You’re not alone.”

Jace looks startled by the contact but doesn’t shrug off my hand.

I grin. I’ll take that as a win.

“Now, as for your payment.” Jace digs in the sack and plucks up a small purple crystal. “This should suffice. Do you have the other ingredient I asked for?”