Chapter 49
FORTY-NINE
DELOS
ONE MONTH LATER
Delos sprawled in a booth at Wolf Moon Brewery, nursing a beer he’d barely touched and watching his boss—his friend, actually, after everything they’d been through—make heart eyes at a storm witch across the table.
Aero Tau. Eight centuries old. Dragon elder. Former emotional disaster. Currently gazing at Cassia Gale like she’d hung the moon and stars and possibly invented the concept of weather itself.
Delos had never been prouder.
The bar was packed with Haven Shores’s supernatural community, all of them celebrating the newest mated pair.
Someone had hung streamers. Someone else had convinced Dahlia to bake a cake before she left for Paris—a towering confection decorated with lightning bolts and tiny fondant dragons that Delos had already photographed from multiple angles. For posterity. And blackmail purposes.
“You’re staring,” Beck said, sliding into the booth beside him with two fresh beers. “It’s getting weird.”
“I’m savoring. Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to see him happy?
Fifteen years.” Delos accepted the beer, gesturing toward where Aero was tucking a strand of hair behind Cassia’s ear.
She swatted his hand away, laughing, and Aero—Aero actually smiled.
Not the barely-there twitch of lips that passed for amusement in dragon elder circles.
An actual smile. “All that time watching him pretend he didn’t have feelings.
Of translating his emotional constipation into something resembling normal interaction.
Of being told that he didn’t form attachments while he literally refused to fire me despite my complete inability to maintain professional boundaries. ”
“Worth the wait?”
Delos watched Cassia lean into Aero’s side, watched Aero’s arm come around her with the ease of someone who’d finally learned that touching the people he cared about wouldn’t kill him.
The brand on her hip—Delos had caught a glimpse of it yesterday, the dragon-in-flight with lightning patterns branching through it—marked her as permanently, irrevocably his.
“Yeah.” His voice came out rougher than he’d intended. “Worth the wait.”
The brewery was decorated for the occasion—fairy lights strung between exposed beams, tables pushed aside to make room for dancing, a playlist that seemed to consist entirely of songs chosen for maximum romantic embarrassment.
Currently, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” drifted through the speakers, and Leo was attempting to waltz Junie across the dance floor while she argued about his footwork.
Some things didn’t change, even after mating.
Theo’s pack occupied the pool table area, a rowdy cluster of wolves who’d apparently decided that this celebration required competitive billiards.
Hux was holding court near the bar, his political charm on full display as he glad-handed everyone who wandered within reach.
The witches had claimed the booth nearest the jukebox—Avine curled against Theo’s side, Narla observing everything with those knowing eyes of hers.
Haven Shores’s supernatural community, all gathered to celebrate a dragon elder falling in love with a local weather witch. Three months ago, Delos wouldn’t have believed it possible.
Then again, three months ago, Aero had still been convinced that mate recognition was a statistical anomaly that couldn’t possibly apply to him.
“So.” Beck’s tone shifted, became something careful and deliberately casual. “Rosemary’s three months are up.”
Delos went still. The wolf beta had become an unexpected friend over the past weeks—fellow sidekicks bonding over the disaster areas they both worked for, sharing war stories and questionable advice.
He knew what the three-month deadline meant.
Knew about the expedition offer. Knew Beck had been trying not to hold on too tight while simultaneously being unable to let go.
“And?” Delos asked.
Beck’s hands tightened around his beer bottle. The label was already shredded, little paper strips littering the table like confetti from a celebration that hadn’t happened yet.
“She turned it down.” His voice cracked on the words. “The expedition. Two years in the Pacific. Leadership of her own team. Everything she’s worked for.” He swallowed hard. “She said she’s staying.”
“Beck—”
“She said she’s done running from the thing that scares her most.”
Delos waited, because some confessions needed space.
“Being chosen.” Beck’s laugh was wet, disbelieving.
“Staying in one place long enough to actually let someone love her. She said—” He had to stop, pressing the heel of his hand against his eyes.
“She said she spent her whole life using the ocean to run from commitment, and she’s finally ready to stop swimming away. ”
“That’s…” Delos raised his beer. “Congratulations, man. You deserve it.”
“We’re still figuring things out.” Beck wiped his face, managing something like a smile. “Won’t be easy. She’ll still want to travel, do research, and be out on the water. But she’s going to come back. Every time. She’s going to come back to me.”
“That’s all you can ask for.”
They clinked bottles, drinking in companionable silence while the party swirled around them.
On the dance floor, Leo had given up on waltzing and was now dipping Junie with a theatrical flourish while she pretended to be annoyed.
Cal and Dahlia had finally arrived from the airport—Dahlia still in travel clothes, Cal looking more relaxed than Delos had ever seen him—and were being swarmed by friends demanding hugs.
The Paris trip had been delayed by the tsunami emergency, but they’d made it at last, a few weeks of international pastry success and—if the rumors were to be believed—bear shifter yoga. Delos chose not to examine that second part too closely.
“Look at them,” Beck said quietly, nodding toward the room at large.
“A year ago, half these people barely spoke to each other. Wolves and lions. Witches and bears. Territorial disputes and old grudges and all that historical bullshit.” He shook his head.
“Now we’re all drinking beer and celebrating a dragon mating. ”
“The surge changed things.”
“The surge started things. The people finished it.” Beck’s gaze found Rosemary across the room—talking to Narla, her auburn hair catching the light, her smile softer than Delos had ever seen it.
“Turns out supernatural creatures are just as capable of getting over themselves as regular people. We just needed the right motivation.”
Delos thought about Aero’s long years of isolation. About the storm witch who’d crashed his walls like they were made of paper, demanding that he feel things whether he wanted to or not.
“Speaking of motivation.” He nodded toward the front of the bar, where Elder Sue Tidewell held court in a throne-like chair someone had definitely conjured for the occasion. “What’s the deal with her?”
Sue was ancient, insufferably smug, and currently watching someone new. Her gaze kept drifting to the door, sharp and calculating, as if she were waiting for a specific entrance.
“She’s been insufferable since you dragons arrived. Keeps muttering about “completing the set” and “unprecedented synchronicity” and other cryptic nonsense that makes no sense until suddenly there’s another mating announcement.”
“You think she’s actually causing this? The surge, the matches—”
“I think she knows more than she’s telling. Which is true of literally every supernatural elder.” Beck shrugged. “She orchestrated Avine and Theo, or claims she did. Takes credit for Junie and Leo. Definitely had something to do with Dahlia and Cal, though no one can prove it. And now you two.”
“She didn’t cause Aero’s mate recognition. That’s biological.”
“No. But she assigned Cassia as his research assistant.” Beck raised an eyebrow. “Convenient timing, don’t you think?”
Delos opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Because it had been convenient. Suspiciously so. Almost as if someone had known exactly what would happen when an eight-century-old storm dragon encountered a surge-amplified weather witch with control issues.
“Huh.”
“Yeah.” Beck took a long drink. “Anyway. I’m pretty sure she’s got her sights set on someone new.”
“Did you hear about Nerissa?” Beck asked, his tone dropping. “Deepwater Courts sent word last week. Sentenced to a century of isolation in the lower depths. No magic, no contact. The courts don’t forgive attacks on neutral territory.”
Delos absorbed that. “Good,” he said finally. “She doesn’t get to walk away from what she did.”
“No.” Beck’s jaw tightened. “She doesn’t.
” He was quiet for a moment. “The Courts’ investigation turned up something else, too.
Evidence of deliberate weather manipulation along this coastline going back over thirty years.
Not just the tsunami—sustained interference.
Small storms made worse, currents redirected, fog patterns altered.
” His voice dropped further. “Long enough to have touched lives people never knew she’d touched. ”
Delos thought of Cassia. Of what Aero had quietly told him, weeks ago, about her mother. About a storm that hadn’t behaved the way storms should. About guilt Cassia had carried for years that might never have been hers to carry at all.
“Fits,” he said at last. It was all he could manage.
“Looks like Haven Shores isn’t done with supernatural romance yet.”
“It never is.” Beck raised his glass toward Aero and Cassia. “To the mating surge. May it continue to ruin our lives in the best possible way.”
“To the surge,” Delos agreed.
He excused himself from Beck’s booth, making his way through the crowd toward where Aero and Cassia sat. They barely noticed his approach—too busy being disgustingly in love, their heads bent close, lightning flickering occasionally between their fingertips where their hands were intertwined.
“Excuse me.” Delos dropped into the seat across from them with deliberate obnoxiousness. “Could you two stop being nauseating for five minutes? Some of us are trying to drink without losing our appetites.”
“Jealous?” Cassia laughed, not bothering to move away from Aero’s side.
“Horrified. I’ve endured years working for the emotional equivalent of a glacier, and now he’s gazing at you like you invented weather. It’s disturbing.”
“I don’t gaze,” Aero said, which was a blatant lie.
“You literally haven’t looked away from her face in the last hour. I timed it.”
“Research. I’m documenting post-mating behavioral changes.”
“That’s the worst excuse you’ve come up with yet.” Cassia snorted.
“It’s not an excuse. It’s—” Aero paused, his jaw tightening in that way that meant he was fighting a lifetime of emotional repression. “It’s… I like looking at you.”
The confession came out stilted, awkward, clearly painful to admit. Cassia’s expression softened.
“That’s almost romantic.”
“Delos made me practice.” He shot a glare at his assistant. “Flashcards.”
“The flashcards worked!” Delos protested. “Six weeks ago, you couldn’t say “I like you” without making it sound like a scientific observation. Now you’re actually expressing emotions. In public. With witnesses.”
“I’m expressing nothing. I’m simply stating facts.”
“The fact that you like looking at her.”
“Yes.”
“Which is an emotion.”
Aero’s eyes narrowed. “I will end you.”
“Empty threat. Cassia won’t let you murder your only friend.”
“He has other friends now,” Cassia said, amusement dancing in her sea-glass eyes. “Theo invited him to poker night. Beck keeps trying to get him to do shots. Leo offered to teach him ‘emotional vocabulary.’”
Delos clutched his chest in mock betrayal. “You’re socializing without me?”
“Haven Shores is… different.” Aero’s voice had gone quiet, thoughtful. “The community here. The way everyone looks out for each other. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“That’s the surge,” Cassia said. “Or the elders. Or just the fact that coastal supernaturals are inherently weird and codependent.” She pressed closer to his side, her head finding his shoulder. “Does it matter? We’re here. We’re staying. We’re—”
“Home,” Aero finished. The word came out rough, almost reverent. “We’re home.”
Delos had to look away, throat tight with something he refused to name.
Fifteen years he’d worked for this man. Long enough to watch him drift through immortality like a ghost, refusing to let anything touch him, convinced that caring about things would only lead to loss.
The Continental Council had received Aero’s formal relocation request three weeks ago—a meticulous document citing “extended longitudinal research opportunities” and “deep integration with a statistically significant supernatural community.” They’d approve it within the week.
Delos was fairly certain the words “mating bond” had appeared nowhere in the filing, and that both parties preferred it that way.
And now here he was. Eight hundred years old, claiming a mortal witch, choosing to feel things. Choosing home over isolation, hope over the cold comfort of emptiness.
Worth the wait, Delos thought again. Absolutely worth the wait.
Tonight, Delos raised his beer toward the couple across the table—toward his boss, his friend, the closest thing he’d had to family in a century of wandering.
“To finding home,” he said.
Aero’s hand tightened on Cassia’s. His eyes met Delos’s, and something passed between them—gratitude, acknowledgment, the kind of wordless understanding that only came from years of shared history.
“To finding home,” Aero agreed.
And outside, the weather stayed calm.
For now.
～ END ～