Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
I didn’t exactly react well to Elliot’s claim.
After expressing my shock and disbelief, I stormed off, leaving him standing in the hallway outside the library, looking a bit shellshocked.
Did you know this? I demanded of Miki-Leopard as I stormed up four flights of stairs.
Bad- Dragon sexy.
I sighed. I know you think he’s sexy. As it happens, so do I, but that doesn’t answer my question. Did you know he’s our mate?
Bad-Dragon mate?
Yes. He says he’s our mate.
A burst of happiness exploded through me and I realized that just like me, she hadn’t known. She’d just been following instincts, reacting to his scent without knowing why, which made perfect sense now that I thought about it, considering how young she was.
Miki-Leopard mate Elliot-Dragon?
There was so much hope in that one thought, I couldn’t possibly tell her no. I didn’t want to tell her yes either, though. Maybe. Probably. But not yet.
Soon?
If I knew anything about supernaturals, monsters and shifters in particular, I wasn’t going to be able to avoid the mating for long. Biology and sheer, old-fashioned lust would get the better of me eventually. Yes. Soon.
Miki-Leopard mate Elliott-Dragon soon.
At least one of us was happy about this turn of events.
Dear goddess, Elliot was a chameleon dragon, just like Lydrel Zowen. What if something happened to me? Would Elliot follow me into death the way fated mates were supposed to or would he follow Zowen’s path and turn into a true monster?
This was why I never wanted a mate. The outcome could be as devastating as it might be wonderful.
A few moments later, I burst into my room and barreled through the open doors from my room to Jasmine and Kasi’s.
Jasmine was lying across her bed, studying a book.
Kasi and Jahrdran were nowhere to be seen.
This wasn’t unusual.
Chances were they were somewhere in the Shadow Realm together, possibly just beyond the shadows beneath Kasi’s bed.
I flung myself across said bed as Jasmine scrambled to a sitting position.
“You’re back soon. So how did tutoring go?”
“Terrible,” I grumbled.
“Really? Elliot has such a reputation for being in control of his dragon, I was sure he could teach you a lot about being a shifter.”
“It’s not that.” I flopped over onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “He told me we’re mates.”
The shriek Jasmine let out was high and piercing.
As the daughter of a siren, it literally shook the building.
“Oh, my goddess, Jasmine!” I exclaimed, hands over my ears, cringing.
A pounding came on the door at the same moment shadows streamed from under the bed and coalesced into Kasi and Jahrdran’s forms.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” Kasi and Jahrdran both looked as if they expected Zowen to leap out at them at any moment.
I groaned. “Nothing, just Jasmine being dramatic.”
Jasmine flung open the door at the same moment and said cheerfully to whoever was on the other side, “Sorry, I just got the best news. We’ll try to keep it down in here, okay?” She slammed the door and whirled to face us. “Say it again, Mikaela, so that Kasi and Jahrdran can hear it too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Could you be any more ridiculous?”
She thought about it a moment before finally concluding, “Yes, I honestly think I could.”
I had to chuckle at the serious way she said that, then said in a resigned voice, “Elliot tells me we’re mates.”
“Oh, is that all?” Jahrdran asked. “I thought you were going to tell us something surprising.”
Kasi slapped his arm.
“What?”
She shook her head and said to me, “That’s good news, though, isn’t it?”
“He’s a chameleon dragon,” I said. “What if I die and he goes insane like Zowen?”
“The likelihood of that happening again is so statistically small as to be mathematically insignificant,” Jasmine said, pushing away from the door and sauntering back over to her bed.
Realizing Kasi and Jahrdran were standing because I was on Kasi’s bed, I stood and waved them to it while joining Jasmine on hers.
Jahrdran gave us a suspicious look. “Is this one of those girl-talk moments?”
Kasi grinned. “Probably so. Do you mind?”
“Nah. I’ll go find Elliot, see if he needs congratulations or consolations.” Jahrdran gave me a look that made me feel horribly guilty and sauntered out.
“So which is it?” Kasi asked as she settled on her own bed.
I winced.
“Consolations, eh?”
“No!” Jasmine exclaimed. “Mikaela, tell me you didn’t break Elliot’s heart!”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? He doesn’t know me well enough to have his heart broken. We haven’t even known each other a full day.”
Jasmine let out a huff. “Well, it’s been a very eventful day.”
I grinned. “I suppose it has at that. Don’t worry. I’ll see him tomorrow in Extreme Sports Ed.”
“Wait. What?” Jasmine exclaimed. “When did you sign up for that class? You’re the least athletic person I know!”
I groaned. “I didn’t sign up for it. It just appeared on my schedule this afternoon, probably as punishment for that disastrous Dragon Riding class.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Kasi asked. “If they’re now handing out extra classes as punishment, the entire student body’s going to revolt within a month.”
“Or less,” Jasmine said.
“I have a feeling it’s a special punishment, just for me,” I said morosely. “It’s not my fault my leopard never manifested before now or that I have no control over Miki-Leopard. But all the professors are acting like I should have perfect control already.”
“I don’t think it’s about punishment,” Kasi said slowly.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They have to know, just like we do, that you’re a potential target, that when Zowen comes back, he may try to take you again.”
“Ohhh,” Jasmine said. “So they’re trying to get her ready?”
“That’s my best guess,” Kasi said. “I bet they’re riding you so hard, Mikaela, because they’re worried and they want you to be able to use every tool at your disposal, including your leopard, to defend yourself against him.”
“Shit,” I sighed. “That actually makes sense. Now I can’t exactly be mad at them, can I? Not when they’re doing it to help me.”
“Well, they don’t have to be jerks about it,” Jasmine said. “They could have just told you why they were assigning extra classes.”
I grinned. “Right. So we’re back to being mad at them. I can live with that.”
“When are you taking Extreme Sports again?” Kasi asked suddenly.
“Tomorrow morning. Why?”
“I was just thinking Jahrdran has Extreme Sports tomorrow. Wait, and didn’t you say Elliot would be there? They’re both fourth years. Why are you taking the course with them?”
“ Apparently, there’s a multi-year section and I was just lucky enough to be placed in it. Yay me.”
“Well, that just lends even more support to your theory, Kasi,” Jasmine said.
“Why’s that?”
“No one in their right mind would put Mikaela, the least athletic person I know, in an extreme sports class with Fourth Years. They should have put her in with the First Years.”
“Thanks, Jasmine,” I muttered.
“You know it’s true,” she said. “Which is why Kasi’s theory makes sense. They put you with the Fourth Years so that you’d be trained with the most experienced.”
“All that’s going to do is make me look more incompetent and more like a potential victim if Zowen happens to be spying from the shadows,” I said sourly.
“Well, at least Elliot will be there,” Jasmine said brightly. “I bet he’ll help you with whatever you need.” She waggled her brows suggestively.
I rolled my eyes.
“You are going to mend his broken heart, right?” The look on her face told me she’d be crushed if I said no.
I heaved a sigh of annoyance and grumbled, “I suppose, especially since Miki-Leopard is so happy about it. She keeps tossing imaginary confetti in my head and it’s keeping me from freaking out as badly as I might otherwise.”
Jasmine giggled. “That’s adorable.”
At that moment, Shadow came bounding out from under Kasi’s bed, leapt onto it and began wrapping herself around Kasi over and over again.
“Now, that is adorable,” I said.
The sound of my voice caught Shadow’s attention, which was odd because I couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever really acknowledged Jasmine or me.
Kasi claimed she knew who we were and even had a special name for us, but I’d never seen any real evidence of it since she never engaged with us .
Now, though, she was staring right at us.
A moment later, she leapt across the gap between the two beds and landed between me and Jasmine, making her gasp.
Shadow began winding her way around me the same way she’d been winding around Kasi: rubbing her face against my arm, walking across my lap, brushing my torso along the way, before turning around and doing the same thing back the other way.
It was weird. She wasn’t really solid at all, just a bunch of shadows in the shape of a cat, yet I swear a small part of me could feel those shadows as they drifted by.
That was when I realized that Kasi and Jahrdran’s shadows hadn’t triggered me when they’d entered the room earlier, nor was Shadow triggering me now.
Perhaps we were making progress, Miki-Leopard and me.
Shadow-kitty.
Yes. She is a Shadow-kitty.
Play shadow-kitty?
Uh. I looked up at Kasi, who was watching us, a stunned look on her face. “Miki-Leopard wants to play with Shadow.”
A smile broke across Kasi’s face. “I think Shadow would probably like that.” Her eyes went unfocused as they always did when she was speaking with her shadow-kitten. A moment later, she said, “If you want to let Miki out, Shadow would love to meet her.”
“I’ve never done this on purpose before. ”
“Just imagine you’re in leopard form and let go,” Kasi advised.
“Let go?”
“Of your human body. Stop holding it together and let it go.”
Okay, Miki-Leopard. Are you ready to play?
Yes!
Okay, so ? —
Before I could visualize or let go like Kasi had suggested, Miki-Leopard lunged free, the way she’d done earlier that day, bursting from my human form with a raspy growl of joy.
Shadow froze in her happy pacing, then pounced on us in a move that seemed to emanate pure joy.
We wrapped around each other and rolled right off the bed onto the floor, where we kept on rolling.
We rolled beneath the bed and came out in the Shadow Realm, where we leapt to our feet and raced each other from one end to the other, chasing and winding and playing in the shadows, bursting from them back into the dorm room, where we chased each other in and out of the closet, through the bathroom doors into my room and back again, under the beds and into the Shadow Realm again, then back out.
Every moment was quite simply pure joy.
I don’t think I’d ever felt so much happiness and sheer freedom as I did in that moment, locked inside my leopard, experiencing her boundless energy and happiness as she played with her new friend, Shadow.