Chapter 14 #2
"The thing is, I keep waiting to feel worse about it.
I keep expecting to wake up one morning just gutted that my mother hasn't called.
And I'm sad. I am. But I'm also..." I turned the bottle in my hands.
"I don't know. Lighter? Which makes me feel guilty, which makes me feel angry, which—" A huff of air that wasn't quite a laugh. "It's a whole cycle."
"What does it say that she stopped calling when you stopped being available?" Anya asked. No judgment in it. Just the question.
That was it, wasn't it? The thing I'd been dancing around for months.
She didn't stop calling because I was busy.
She stopped calling because I stopped being the daughter she could use.
The one who answered every text within minutes, who rearranged her schedule to fit my mother's needs, who absorbed every criticism and came back for more because I thought that was what love required.
I'd stopped being available—and she'd just... stopped.
Not because she missed me. Because I was no longer useful.
"Yeah," I said, and my voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "That's the part I try not to think about too hard."
Pippa handed me another cider without being asked. The gesture said more than words would have.
"My dad was like that," Pippa said, and her voice had shifted. "Different version. He just kept leaving. Came back with promises, left again. My mom spent years waiting for someone who treated 'family' like something you could opt in and out of."
She said it the way you say something you've processed but never quite finished with. "Eventually she stopped waiting. That was the hardest part—not him leaving, but her deciding he wasn't coming back. Because then it was real."
I looked at her—really looked. Pippa, who was all brightness and mischief and relentless optimism. Who kicked down doors with pizza and made everything feel lighter just by being in the room.
She carried this too.
A parent who chose to leave. Who made love conditional. Who taught her that staying wasn't guaranteed.
And she'd turned herself into someone who showed up anyway.
"People who are supposed to protect you and don't," Anya said. "That rewires everything."
"You know what, though," Pippa said, and her voice had shifted. "You've got us. You know that, right?"
I'd spent my entire childhood trying to earn this. Trying to be good enough, useful enough, quiet enough, convenient enough. And here was Pippa, offering it freely. No conditions. No tests. Just, you've got us. Like it was that simple. Like I didn't have to prove I deserved it first.
"I know," I said. And meant it.
"And you've got Mason. And that enormous dragon who would burn down a city for you," Pippa said.
"Thalon would never burn down a city."
"Thalon would absolutely burn down a city."
She wasn't wrong.
"I do miss him during the day," I said. Mason, not Thalon—though I missed Thalon too when we were apart. "The mate bond pulls. He's right here on the grounds, but he's on a different team, different schedule, and I feel the distance every time we're apart."
I pressed my palm flat against my sternum. "But even missing him doesn't ache the way my mother's silence does. And that—" I stopped. Swallowed. "That tells me something about the difference between the kind of love I grew up with and the kind I'm building now."
Pippa's expression softened. Anya's hand stilled on Whiskey's back.
"He's settled in for the night," I said. "I can feel it. He's okay. I just know."
"That's the bond?" Pippa asked.
"That's the bond."
She smiled.
The night wound down the way good nights do. Pippa left in a tornado of crumbs and cheerful threats to make this a weekly occurrence. She hugged me hard enough to lift me off the ground and told me to hydrate before training tomorrow.
Anya lingered. She set Whiskey gently on the bed, gathered her candle and the remaining truffles, and stopped at the door.
"For what it's worth," she said. "I came here to prove necromancy could be something good. I thought that meant a dragon bond." She was quiet for a second. "Turns out it means this."
Anya didn't say things like that. And I knew—I knew—what it cost her to say something vulnerable. To choose me as someone worth that cost. And here she was, saying that friendship—that this—was the thing that redeemed it. That I was part of what made her magic good.
She gave me one of her rare smiles and closed the door behind her.
I stood in my quiet suite, surrounded by the wreckage of a very good night. Whiskey claimed the warm spot Anya had left on the bed. Thalon pulsed through the bond.
I brushed my teeth. Climbed into bed. Pulled my cat close.
You don't announce found family. You just notice it one day, when you can't ignore it anymore. Tonight, it was everywhere.
Monday would bring harder drills, longer days, and people who still thought I had no business being here. Valen cataloguing every move. Omnium observers with their clipboards and their agendas. A whole world that hadn't decided yet whether I was worth the trouble.
I wasn't sure I believed I was worth the trouble either. Not all the way. Not yet. The old voice—the one that sounded like my mother—still whispered that I'd mess this up eventually.
But tonight, with pizza crumbs on my sheets and Pippa's hug still warm in my bones and Anya's quiet confession still in my head—tonight, I could almost imagine a version of myself who was enough. Just as I was.
I had a dragon, a mate bond humming steady in my chest, friends who showed up with pizza and the truth, and a cat who'd already stolen the entire pillow.
I just hoped it was enough to face whatever came next.