“What’s wrong?” Jaxon asks, rolling onto his side so he can get a better look at my face. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”
I take the out, not willing to betray Hudson’s confidence. “I am, actually. What if it’s as bad as Eden’s grandmother says?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jaxon answers with a confident smile. “I’ll protect you.”
“That’s not the point.” I sit up, annoyed by his sudden “I’m the guy; I’ve got this” attitude. “The point is we’re asking a lot of people we care about to risk their lives to help me. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve got this,” Jaxon says. “I can protect all of you. It’s what I do.”
“And I keep telling you that I don’t want someone to protect me. I want to stand on my own two feet, beside my mate, not behind him—” I break off as the FaceTime ring starts coming from my phone.
“What?” Jaxon asks, looking confused.
I don’t answer him. Instead, I hold my phone up and say, “I’ve got to take this. I haven’t talked to Heather in forever.” I drop an absent-minded kiss on the top of his head before walking through the alcove toward the stairs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ve gotta say, Grace,” Hudson tells me as I swipe to answer Heather’s call, “you never cease to surprise me.”
79
Talk About a
Trust Fall
The next morning, I fire off a couple of quicks texts to Heather as Macy and I hustle down the last hallway toward the tunnels.
Me: So good to FINALLY talk to you last night
Me: Can’t believe your parents bought you a ticket to Alaska for your bday!!!!! Can’t wait to see you xoxoxo
It was so good to talk to her last night that I never wanted to hang up. I miss her so much and can’t believe she forgave me for my four-month absence as easily as she did. I was totally prepared to grovel.
Instead, I found out she’s going to come visit me for spring break…if I survive the next few days, anyway. And if I can figure out how to break the news to her that paranormals exist and that I’m a gargoyle. I could try to hide it, but there’s no way I’m bringing her here and treating her the way they treated me when I first got to Katmere. No damn way.
Heather: Me too!! Also, calculus sucks balls
“We’re here,” Macy says, just as she and I step into the dungeon where Eden had texted everyone to meet her. I’ll admit my heart stuttered last night when I realized that must mean the Dragon Boneyard was beneath the school—near the dungeons.
Although honestly, once I thought about it, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. I mean, I’d already guessed Katmere was more closely tied to the dragons than any other faction, what with the jewels embedded in the tunnel walls and bone corridors. In one of my hours of research in the library, I’d stumbled upon a whole history of the school.
Turns out Katmere hadn’t always been a school.
It had started as a dragon lair.
And not just any dragon lair but the original ruling family’s lair. They’d sided with Cyrus in the Second Great War, though, and as a concession after their loss, the lair had been claimed and Katmere established to foster interspecies relationships by making all the factions school together.
I’d asked once what happened to the original family, since I knew it wasn’t Flint’s parents, but Flint just shrugged and said most of them died in the war, and no one really knew where the rest scattered.
So much loss and tragedy in this supernatural world. And for what? So one group is in charge and another isn’t? Is it really all about power?
“It rarely is,” Hudson says, and I walk over to where he’s idly running his fingertips along the jeweled walls. He’s been in a funk all morning, and I’m going to need him to check his attitude at the door if I hope to keep my wits about me in the Boneyard. Hudson can make me forget everything else in a blink when he pushes my buttons. Zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds.
“What are you, a Bugatti?” he asks. “That’s the only car in the world that can go that fast.”
“When you start bugging me, yeah,” I answer, and he groans.
“Worst. Pun. Ever.”
“I do what I can,” I tell him with a grin before glancing back