Chapter 12
“Yeah,” she said. “The university accepted my master’s thesis proposal.
I can’t exactly put swans and dragons in it, or even something simpler, like wolves and werewolves, so I picked something with enough data and a real-world angle: domesticated rabbits versus eastern cottontails.
They’re close, but not the same species.
Some overlap, some genetic incompatibility.
It’s a controlled way to study hybridization. ”
Felix predictably perked up. “If you want to make a better rabbit, I’m all ears over here.”
That earned him a burst of laughter from the table, Rhea loudest of all. Even Arabella giggled, and Ajax kissed the top of her head with an affectionate smile.
Emmy gave Felix a lopsided half-smile. “Any experiments I do with you will go in an entirely different direction.”
Before anyone could respond, she kept going.
“Cottontails can’t be easily domesticated.
They’re wild through and through, but their genome has enough similarities to domestic breeds that people have tried to force crosses for centuries.
Sometimes you get viable offspring, but usually not, and there’s no way to know unless you try.
I want to map where the line really is.”
Maren leaned in, brows high. “So you’d be figuring out what makes one species compatible with another?”
“Exactly. Where the DNA can stitch together, and where it unravels. If I can show a reliable pattern in rabbits, it builds a case for broader study — foxes, coyotes, wolves. Eventually, it could answer the hybrid question in a way no one’s managed yet.”
Toby tilted his head, interest sharpening. “You’ll publish that?”
“Yes. Peer-reviewed, accessible, the whole deal.” Emmy sat back, a little thrill running through her at the thought. “It has to be bulletproof, though. Genetics is political, whether people admit it or not.”
Felix smirked. “So what you’re saying is, you’re gonna break the rabbit code.”
“Pretty much.”
Arabella’s voice was soft. “It sounds important.”
Emmy met her gaze and nodded. “If I can figure it out, it will be.”
What she didn’t say was that, eventually, she wanted to figure out where the genetics ended and magic began, but first, she had to figure out the genetics.
The conversation drifted after that, lighter topics floating up as the boat moved through wide-open water.
People speculated about orcas, traded stories of past trips, and argued good-naturedly over who’d spotted the whale first. Outside, the horizon shifted — the glacier from before growing closer, clearer, the jagged ice glowing an impossible blue in the sunlight.
The captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker again, pointing their attention forward. This time no one hurried. They all stayed where they were, talking quietly while the boat steered toward the next wonder.
The glacier loomed larger with every passing minute, the jagged wall of ice cutting across the horizon like a frozen barricade.
Up close, the colors were sharper and more surreal — deep sapphire veins running through the white, sunlight fracturing across broken edges so bright it hurt her eyes when she tried to look at it without sunglasses.
When they went outside, the air was colder, a flow spilling off the ice and seeping into skin, a reminder this wasn’t just scenery, but a living thing.
Not live like a biological being, but like a fire. The opposite of fire — wet and cold rather than hot and dry.
The captain slowed the engines, letting the boat idle in the chop. People pressed shoulder to shoulder along the rails, cameras clicking. Emmy slipped into a space beside Felix, her hoodie pulled tight against the wind.
The crack came again, louder this time, like a rifle shot magnified through a canyon, and the sound shivered across her bones.
How wonderful would it be to let her dragon loose in this landscape?
A slab of ice sheared free, tumbling with deceptive grace before it slammed into the sea. Water erupted upward, a geyser of spray drenching the lower deck. Emmy flinched as cold drops peppered her face and hands, and Felix whooped like a kid at a theme park.
“Holy hell!” he shouted, dripping and grinning. “That was amazing!”
Even Ajax looked impressed, his gaze steady on the glacier as though measuring its power. Arabella clung to him, his arm around her waist, her eyes open in wonder.
Crew members moved to the side, lowering a long-handled net into the water. With practiced ease, they scooped a chunk of ice the size of a basketball from the waves and hoisted it aboard. The crowd pressed closer, curious, snapping photos of the glistening prize.
“Fresh from the source,” the crewman called cheerfully. “This ice is thousands of years old.”
The slab was lifted and dropped, then passed around in smaller pieces, everyone eager for their moment. When it came to them, Felix snatched a shard first, holding it up like treasure. “Behold, the world’s fanciest ice cube.”
He promptly pressed the ice to the back of his neck, yelping at the shock of cold. “Colder than it looks!”
Arabella cradled it delicately, fingertips pinkening. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, tilting it to catch the light refracting inside.
Ajax held it without comment, but his hand swallowed it whole. It looked fragile against his bulk.
When Emmy’s turn came, she held the shard up to her eye, peering through the fractured lines like a prism. Light broke into shards of color — faint, pale rainbows that shimmered across her vision. She grinned despite herself.
“Lick it,” Felix dared, eyes gleaming.
“Why?”
“Because then you’ll officially have a glacier in your mouth. Bragging rights for life.”
Rhea groaned. “Don’t encourage him.”
But Emmy raised it, stuck her tongue out, and then touched the ice to it, and held it there a beat longer than necessary. Cold bit into her taste buds, numbing them instantly, but there was something undeniably satisfying about it.
“See?” Felix crowed. “She’s a team player!”
Emmy flipped him off with her free hand, and the group laughed. The moment stretched warm despite the chill rolling off the glacier, a shared ridiculous moment binding them all.
The engines rumbled back to life, pushing them farther along the glacial face. Emmy leaned on the rail, eyes tracing the jagged towers, the deep crevasses, the stark reminder that nature could rend itself apart with no warning and no regret.
Then the call came again, sharper this time: “Whale! Off the bow!”
The boat erupted with movement, tourists surging forward. Emmy found herself squeezed between Ajax’s solid shoulder and Felix bouncing on his toes like a kid.
The water ahead roiled. A plume of spray shot skyward, glittering in the sun.
Then a humpback breached, rising higher, higher, until its entire massive body cleared the surface.
Time slowed, and she could see every scar across its back, every rivulet of water pouring off its flanks before it crashed down in an explosion that shook the boat beneath their feet.
Screams and cheers blended into one deafening roar. Emmy’s pulse surged with the impact, her ribs vibrating with the echo. She clutched the rail tighter, half wild with exhilaration.
Felix threw both arms up like a referee. “Ten out of ten! Perfect dive!”
Arabella squealed and clapped, the sound unguarded and pure. Ajax steadied her without looking away from the water, his arm still around her smaller body.
Another humpback surfaced nearby, smaller, sleek — maybe a juvenile. It rolled gracefully, then slapped its tail against the waves, sending another spray across the bow.
Rhea laughed, wiping droplets from her cheeks. “They’re showing off for us.”
“Or warning us,” Ajax countered. His voice held no fear, only respect.
Emmy could barely breathe. The scale of it, the raw power, made every human concern feel trivial. It takes a lot to impress a mighty dragon, but she was completely enthralled.
She glanced at Spence. He stood apart but not distant, gaze locked on the ocean, lips parted like he was whispering something to the sea itself.
“Magnificent,” he said again, and this time Emmy understood.
Emmy had wondered, at first, why Spence bothered to arrange this trip, but she got it, now. It was about everyone having fun together, about exploring Alaska, about fully experiencing life outside the walls of the coterie. They were food for vampires, but they were also more.
The whales lingered for long minutes, breaching, slapping, rolling in the waves as though the ocean itself was a stage. Tourists filled memory cards, shouted oaths of disbelief, and clutched each other in shared awe.
When the pod finally slid beneath the surface, leaving only ripples and the faint shimmer of flukes vanishing into the deep, reverent silence followed.
It lasted until Felix broke it with a sigh. “Well. Guess we can all die happy now.”
Rhea elbowed him, but her grin matched his.
Emmy leaned on the rail, heart hammering, the spray drying on her cheeks like salty tears. She thought of contracts and dungeons, of being used and burned, and felt the residual trauma sliding away under the vast weight of the ocean and the whales that claimed it.
Today, she wasn’t food, sadist, or scholar. She was just a girl on a boat, breathless at the sight of giants.
“You’re as big as them, you know,” Spence told her, speaking low enough none of the humans around could hear over the sounds of the engines and wind.
She nodded. She’d seen her siblings and parents in dragon form while she was human, but that was kind of an everyday thing when they were in Faerie. This was the first time she’d seen whales.
“I know, but this was just…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I see fantastical creatures when I visit my famous aunts, and you’re right that I’m basically one of those, but I’ve never seen humpbacks before.”
“I get it. Zander let me go to Alfheim with Kirsten for a couple of days a while back, and the entire experience was magical, but this is right up there with it.”
“Oh, I love Alfheim. It’s another place I can just take off and fly whenever I want, and I adore Zeta. Thank you so much for putting this together. It’s been a really special day.”
“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed yourself. I think I most enjoyed the human pony stables in Faerie. The beauty and regalness of beings in top shape dressed up as animals. The headdresses, the reins.”
Emmy smiled. “I may or may not have spent more time in the stables than you probably want to hear about. Back when I had plenty of funds, and could bid on the winners of the races.”
“We aren’t the same.” He grinned. “I wished I could spend a day being a horse in the stable, but without Zander there to give the okay and watch over me, it wasn’t possible.”
“Even if he could get permission from my aunts to go, he’d have a hard time leaving Midgard,” Emmy said, remembering why Marco couldn’t go to Alfheim. “He’d have to hand his power over to Kendra before leaving, or the weakest vampires might not survive.”
Spence nodded. “Exactly, but he’s happy to let me go off on adventures here and there, as long as I’m not gone terribly long.”
Emmy sat on the upper deck in the wind on the return trip, just breathing the air and watching the living panorama of sea and sky. Seabirds skimmed low over the waves, and white gulls rode the wind in easy arcs while murres dove straight down like arrows — more penguin-like birds that aren’t.
A golden eagle appeared out of nowhere, broad wings catching the light as it dropped fast and hard, snatching a fish from the surface before lugging his haul back toward the cliffs, clenched in its talons much as her dragon flew away with sheep in Faerie — and she ate mostly sheep while in dragon form because her father was paranoid about the wildlife being poisoned.
There are toxins that don’t hurt mammals but will kill dragons.
That was how her father’s entire family had been killed.
All the natural dragons and the shifters — except for three shifters who’d been away at the time.
Felix came outside with a blanket, and the two curled up inside of it together, comfortable in the silence between them, just enjoying the day. They saw otters again, but no more whales.
Emmy slept on the bus ride back, her head against the window.
And when they arrived back at the coterie house, she went to the feeding room and bent over the feeding station to wait for Byron to enter the room, fuck her ass, and feed from her. She’d been on his schedule, and he’d said he could wait for her, rather than get someone else earlier in the day.
Over time, she’d come to appreciate the coldness of it. And really, if she was a being who had to feed from people, maybe she wouldn’t want to talk to her food all the time, either. Some, she probably would, but likely not all of them.
Byron just wanted her blood and a handy place to stick his dick and, oddly, she understood him more than some of the other vampires.
After a shower, she made her way to the kitchen, where two huge pots of chili awaited — one with three kinds of meat, the other vegetarian.
She added crackers and cheese to her large bowl, and then dug in while she watched the huge wall monitor, where Spence showed them the pictures he and others had taken. Photos of the wildlife, and people watching the wildlife as well as just hanging out and enjoying each other.
Someone had gotten a candid of her and Rhea that she wanted, and of her shooting Felix a bird while she held her tongue to the glacier shard, and she texted Spence to ask him to send her both.
Later in the evening, Toby sent her a picture he’d taken of her and Felix under the blanket, and it made her smile.
And then she thought of all the times Felix had made her laugh. Offering his services as a “rabbit” when she talked about her thesis project, and then later, getting her to lick the piece of glacier.
On top of making her laugh, he could keep up with her intellectually, and their D/s dynamic was precisely what she needs in a submissive. When with him, she felt powerful and desired.
Could this be what falling in love felt like? If so, it was probably the closest she’d come to it.
But then she considered her future. What would come after grad school, when she was actually working as a genetic engineer? It was hard to see him fitting into her life outside of the coterie house. Maybe he could, but forever was hard to see.
But right now? He was perfect, living just across their shared bathroom. The future was just going to have to figure itself out.