Chapter 12
Tess
"You're not eating enough."
Mason's voice cut through the noise of the dining hall as he set a second roll on my plate. Not asking. Just doing.
"I had breakfast," I said, even as I picked up the roll. It was still warm. He'd grabbed it from the back of the basket, where the fresh ones were.
Of course he had.
"You had half a banana and two bites of a granola bar.
" His hand settled on the small of my back as we shuffled forward in the line.
The mate bond hummed where his palm pressed against my spine, and my body was still running hot from the kiss outside—his mouth on mine, the way his hands had tightened on my waist like he was holding himself back from something bigger. "That's not breakfast."
"You're tracking my meals now?"
"Always have."
He said it like it was nothing. Like monitoring my caloric intake was routine.
And the worst part—or the best part, depending on how I looked at it—was that he wasn't wrong.
He'd been doing it since we were kids. Packing extra snacks in his bag because he knew I'd forget.
Sliding his fries across the table without a word.
The mate bond hadn't changed any of that. Just amplified it.
I added roasted vegetables to my plate because I knew he'd relax once he saw green things, and we turned toward the tables.
The dining hall was filling up—the post-training rush, everyone moving with that particular combination of exhaustion and relief that came from surviving another day of being thrown around by people more powerful than you.
Noise bounced off the vaulted ceiling. The long communal tables were already half-full.
I found our usual spot. Sat down. And my eyes went to the empty chair before I could stop them.
Kane's chair.
Not that it was his chair. Not officially. But he'd sat there enough times that the absence registered—the gap was there, whether I looked at it or not.
Stop.
I pulled my gaze away. Looked at who was here.
Raze was already holding court at the far end, gesturing with a chicken leg while telling some story that had two people I didn't recognize laughing hard enough to choke.
Anya sat across from him, her dark hair spilling over one shoulder.
She caught my eye and gave me a small nod—the kind that said I see you, I'm glad you're here, I'm not going to make a thing of it.
Mason solid beside me, his shoulder against mine. Ciaran somewhere in the dark wherever Ciaran went when he wasn't here, but still mine in the way that mattered. Thalon humming steady at the base of my skull.
These people. My people.
I sat down and chose to be here. Not just physically. All the way.
"—and then Talven just sat on it," Raze was saying. "The whole training dummy. Splinters everywhere. Theron's face—I wish you could've seen Theron's face—"
"Theron always looks like that," I said.
"No, this was a new level of done. Like, existentially done. Like he was reconsidering every life choice that led him to teaching."
"So his normal face."
Raze pointed the chicken leg at me. "You're funnier when you're tired. I'm noting that."
The conversation built from there—overlapping, messy, the way it always did when this group gathered after a long day. Someone asked about the training schedule, and Raze pulled it up on his phone, scrolling through while reading highlights aloud between bites.
"Team sessions with mentors most mornings. Cohort-wide tactical classes twice a week. Flight training starts this week once the dragons settle into rotation." He whistled low. "And eventually observer missions. Actual field work."
"How eventually?" I asked.
"End of semester, maybe sooner depending on team readiness. One semester of this, then we're autonomous Riders." He said it casually, but I caught the way his jaw tightened. One semester. That was it. Weeks between student and soldier.
While he talked, Raze had been absently lining up peas along the edge of his plate. One by one, nudged into a neat little row with the tip of his knife.
I watched the line grow, until I couldn't help asking, "What are you doing?"
He glanced down like he'd forgotten. "Oh. That's the number of zeroes."
"Zeroes in what?"
"Our monthly stipend." He popped one of the peas into his mouth. "Training pay. Apparently they don't want Dragon Riders to be, quote, 'susceptible to external financial influence.'"
"They don't want us open to bribes," Anya translated.
"Which—fair," Raze said. "But also, damn. And it goes up once we finish training."
I stared at the remaining peas. That was… a lot of zeroes. I'd been a librarian. I'd clipped coupons for fun. This was a different universe.
"Don't spend it all on books," Raze said.
"No promises."
The conversation shifted around me—someone asked about dragon rotations, another voice chimed in about flight schedules—but I was still doing the mental math. That many zeroes meant I could actually replace my laptop. Get new boots that didn't leak in the rain. Maybe even send something back to—
I stopped that thought before it finished forming.
Mason's thumb moved against my leg. Small circle. Grounding.
"Tomorrow's Threat Assessment," Anya said. "All teams together. First thing."
Right. All teams.
I didn't let myself think about what that meant.
Mason's hand found my thigh under the table. Not squeezing. Just resting there. The mate bond lit up at the contact—heat up my spine, my body still reading him as more after that kiss. Every casual touch carried his mouth, his hands, the low sound he'd made against my lips.
I leaned into his shoulder without thinking about it. His thumb traced a slow line along my inner thigh, and I lost the thread of whatever Raze was saying for a solid three seconds.
Focus, Tess.
I felt Draven before I saw him—warmth and pull at the edges of my awareness. My skin prickled. My breath caught, just slightly, just enough that Mason's thumb paused on my thigh.
Then I saw him, and my body made the rest of the decision without consulting my brain.
He'd cleaned up from training—dark hair still damp and curling at his temples.
His shirt clung just enough to remind me exactly what was underneath, muscle and ink and that tan skin that made me want to bite him.
Tattoos wrapped his forearms where his sleeves were pushed up, and I wanted to trace every one of them with my tongue.
Draven moved through the dining hall unhurried. His hazel eyes swept the room once, then landed on our table.
On me.
He didn't hesitate. Didn't ask. Just pulled out the chair across from me and sat down like it had been waiting for him. Because at this point, it had.
"Evening," he said.
"Draven." Raze raised his glass. "You missed the Talven-versus-training-dummy story."
"I was there. Talven was showing off."
"Talven was being magnificent."
Draven's mouth curved. He reached for the water pitcher, poured himself a glass, and his eyes found mine over the rim as he drank.
Not staring. Not pushing. Just—there. Present.
Where Mason was bedrock, Draven was focus.
Intention. Attention that made you feel like the only person in a crowded room.
I was managing two gravitational pulls at the same time, and neither of them was asking me to choose. Mason's hand on my thigh. Draven's gaze across the table. Both steady. Both real.
Both making it very hard to follow conversation.
Draven asked Raze something about storm magic and slid into the group's rhythm without disrupting it.
He laughed at Anya's dry observation about the training dummies being more expressive than most of the instructors.
He listened when Raze talked. But every few minutes, his attention drifted back to me, and each time it did, I felt it land—heat across my skin, a quiet I see you.
I was reaching for my water when I caught movement in my peripheral vision—someone passing our table with a tray, heading for an empty spot three tables away. Alone.
Lunessa.
Her lavender braid swung against her back as she walked. She moved through the hall like she had a destination and didn't need company to reach it.
Lunessa was on my team now. We'd be working together for months—training, missions, maybe life-or-death situations if the observer assignments went sideways. And she was walking past us like eating alone was a perfectly reasonable life choice.
Maybe it was. But not tonight.
"Lunessa," I called out. "There's room here."
She stopped. Looked at me. Looked at the table—at Raze's sprawling energy, at Draven's quiet intensity, at Mason's sheer physical mass. One eyebrow lifted.
"You sure? Looks like you've already hit maximum chaos capacity."
"We can always fit more chaos."
A beat. Then she changed course, set her tray down at the end of the table, and dropped into the seat.
Raze turned the full force of his charm on her immediately. "Lunessa! Welcome to the chaos. I was just about to—"
"Tell the training dummy story again?" She picked up her fork. "I was there. Talven sat on it. It broke. Theron looked like he wanted to retire. Saved you three minutes."
Raze blinked. Then grinned. "See, that's the efficient version. I prefer the director's cut."
"The director's cut is why Theron wanted to retire."
Raze laughed—a real one—and I saw the dynamic click into place. Lunessa wasn't going to be won over by warmth. She was going to match it with something sharper and funnier, and Raze was going to love every second of it.
But when Anya asked her how Kaelthar was settling into the new roost, Lunessa's rhythm shifted. The quip she'd been loading didn't land. Her amber eyes softened.
"He doesn't like the noise," she said. "Too many dragons in close quarters. He's better when it's just us." A pause. "He'll adjust."
There it was. The thing underneath the sarcasm—genuine care. She went back to her food like it hadn't happened, but I'd heard it.