Dark Angel Academy (The Complete Series) - G. Bailey Page 0,136

alive, go for it,” I shrug.

“You’re not meant to sound happy about being told off,” Myles grumbles and kisses my shoulder.

“Sorry,” I grin, and they laugh.

“Katy, we have something to show you,” Myles says, stepping into my bedroom. It’s been a week since the battle, and everyone is just about getting used to the new peace we have found. There were so many people injured that it took a long time for us to heal them all. Thankfully, Madi has made it clear we are welcome here until we make a plan for the future. Turns out a good few thousand angels survived, many women and children from the city. They elected a new leader, a woman named Jesmine Kultx, who happily signed a peace treaty with us, the tales, demons and wolves. I tuck Aala into my bed where she has decided to sleep for the last week and a half, needing me close, I suspect. I’ve just fallen more in love with her by the day, and so have the guys. They even playfully argue who is going to make her food and go with her on daily walks around the island. We just work as a family.

“And before you say anything, the auntie-slash-babysitter is here,” Vesnia says, stepping in the room after Myles. I grin and hug my bestie, who kisses my cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper back, letting her go. The battle badly hurt Vesnia’s leg, almost leaving her with a limp, but she doesn’t seem to care or let it bother her. I’m just happy it wasn’t anything worse. I hook my arm in Myles’s, letting him take me out of the room where Thallon, Ren and Henry wait in the corridor next to a portal.

“Where are we going then?” I ask, and Myles looks a little sad, shaking his head once.

“Just wait and see. It’s our gift to you,” Ren says, waving a hand at the portal. Curiosity ruling me, I step through the portal to a...graveyard. I know this graveyard, it’s right outside the church I went to as a kid with Riley. The gravestone in front of me is new, and I fall to my knees in front of it, touching the white stone and running my fingers over the engravement:

Here lies Riley Becker.

Son and best friend.

May the angels bless you

And welcome you home.

Tears fall down my cheeks as I bow my head, wishing for a moment things could be a tiny bit different. Riley should never have become an angel, it corrupted his very soul and changed him into a monster. But I will never remember that man...I’m going to remember the boy who was my friend.

And miss him all the same.

Chapter 71

One Year Later

“Katy!” Aala shouts my name as I finish washing up the dishes from our breakfast. I pick up a tea towel as Aala crashes into the room, her red hair whipping around her shoulders like it’s alive. After the war, Aala was the light in our lives to bring us back to reality and what we all wanted for our future. I grieved for Riley, for all those we lost, but having to put on a brave face for Aala taught me how to actually be brave. How to move on. Shoving her locks of hair from her face, she grins at me. “I was invited to the tales ball for the little ones! Can I go?”

“That depends if a boy or girl invited you,” Henry grumbles, stepping into our kitchen behind her, another gust of wind from outside messing up her hair.

“What Henry meant is sure, but one of us will be taking you there and back,” I say, and she stubbornly huffs before hugging Henry and then running back outside to play with her new friends on our island. Henry’s eyes run slowly up and down my body as he walks over, and I don’t need to ask what he is thinking anymore. We simply just know each other. I wrap my arms around his neck as he picks me up, dropping my butt on the counter as he steps in the middle of my legs.

“How come you’re back early?” I question. The new vampire island, or as we like to call it Sizuta Island, is a big island not far off the top of Ireland, and it was completely isolated. Ren said some of our ancestors used to live here before they were killed, and it had some remains of