Epilogue
Margot
Three months later, my leasing agent emails to ask whether I plan to renew my lease.
I stare at the message longer than the question warrants, mostly because I can't remember the last time I slept in the apartment.
I've been paying rent on a very expensive storage unit while gradually moving my life into Soren's rooms one bag at a time, under the impression that this somehow doesn't count as moving in.
I type back that I won't be renewing and put my phone down beside the pothos.
The pothos, against all odds, is thriving.
Soren moved it to the window after watching me slowly murder it on a shelf with no natural light. He turns the pot every few days when he thinks I'm not looking, and there are three new leaves unfurling toward the glass. I've chosen not to point out that he's hoarding my houseplant now too.
The room has changed almost as much as the plant has.
My books have worked their way onto his shelves, my toiletries have colonised half the bathroom, and the blanket my grandmother made lies across the foot of the bed.
There's a lamp on my side now, along with whatever book I'm reading and one glass of water Soren will replace if he decides it's been sitting there too long.
It happened gradually. I brought things over as I wanted them, a few pieces at a time, and Soren found a place for every one.
The first time I came over with an armful of books, he rebuilt half a shelf to make room for them.
When I brought my grandmother's blanket, he ran his hand over the stitching for a long moment before asking where I wanted it.
Giving up the apartment feels like the last piece of paperwork catching up with a decision I made weeks ago.
Sunday nights are for flying now. The first time Soren breathed a plume of fire across the lawn as we came in to land, I laughed so hard I nearly slid off his back. He’s done it every time since, which means the east lawn has acquired several impressive scorch marks.
Work is taking a little longer to figure out, but I'm surprisingly all right with that. I've taken a couple of short courses, started making notes for something of my own that may or may not become anything, and spend a few hours each week helping Gael with intake screening at DDC.
She pays me properly, expects me to know what I'm doing, and has never once called me Margie.
I adore her.
I’ve also started eating the lemon protein bars, which means Gael has finally won whatever argument she’s been having with the rest of us about them since long before I arrived.
She buys two boxes now.
Soren has changed how he works too. He handles consultations, trains the newer doms and has somehow turned mentoring into an excuse to terrorize grown men about inadequate aftercare plans. He's still part of DDC in every way that matters; he's just no longer taking clients.
We don't spend every minute together. I don't want to, and neither does he, although his dragon remains unconvinced by the concept. I'm learning what I want my days to look like, and Soren has become remarkably good at asking what I'm working on without immediately offering to fix it.
Bree started therapy two months ago. Last week she called after an argument with her therapist, and I listened without offering a solution. It was excruciating.
My mother is harder, but we're getting there. Sometimes I answer. Sometimes I call her back later. Sometimes I let the phone ring because I'm doing something else and have finally accepted that another person wanting me does not automatically make whatever I'm doing less important.
That afternoon, I take a stack of intake files into the common room and walk straight into the usual chaos.
"She's domesticated him," Mikael announces from an armchair as I walk in. "There's vegetation in his nest now."
"It's one plant, Mikael."
Grath looks up from where he's sitting on the floor. "He talks to it."
I stop. "He what?"
Across the room, Soren gives Grath a look that would probably kill a human.
Grath remains unmoved. "I've heard you when I walk past."
"I turn it toward the light," Soren says.
"That isn't what I heard."
I look at Soren.
He folds his arms. "The plant is doing very well."
I bite the inside of my cheek and put the files down before I say something that will make my dragon's dignity impossible to recover.
Evander is by the window knitting something in the same shade of green as my favorite sweater. Ronan is stretched across the other end of the sofa offering opinions nobody requested, and Godric is somewhere above us in the rafters.
I'm still deciding whether to interrogate Soren about his private conversations with my pothos when Gael walks in with her tablet.
"If everyone has finished discussing horticulture, I have actual work."
Gael glances down at her tablet. "I have a new request. She asked specifically for 'the kraken.'"
Corvin doesn't look up from his book. "They usually do."
"Not like this one." There's something in Gael's voice that makes him glance over. She taps the edge of the tablet against her palm. "I think she might actually challenge you."
That gets his attention.
Corvin closes his book and holds out a hand. "Send me the intake."
Gael does.
His phone buzzes on the table, and the room carries on around him as he opens the file. I'm close enough to see the moment something catches his attention. His eyes darken slowly from gray to the blue-black of deep water, and he goes back to the beginning and reads it again.
Gael watches him over the rim of her cup.
"Well?" she asks.
Corvin's gaze stays on the screen.
"When can she come in?"
That evening, I find Soren adding something to the hoard.
I'm stretched across the bed with a book when he comes in holding the scarf I lost at a restaurant last week. I'd already assumed it was gone, but I underestimated what happens when a dragon hears the words I lost something.
I lower the book. "Where did you find that?"
"The restaurant."
"You went back?"
He gives me a look suggesting the answer should be obvious.
"Soren, I would've bought another one."
"This one is yours."
He folds it once and considers where to put it.
I watch him for a moment. "You know I still use that, right?"
His hands stop.
"You can't just add things to the hoard while I'm actively using them."
"I retrieved it."
"And I'm very grateful, now give it back."
His expression suggests I'm being unreasonable, but he brings it over anyway. I take the scarf from him and toss it onto my side of the bed.
"There. Hoarded."
"That is not how a hoard works."
"It is now."
The gold in his eyes brightens.
I put my book aside and hold out a hand. He takes it, letting me pull him down beside me.
Three months ago, I thought being cared for meant owing something in return. I thought love had to be justified somehow, that if I couldn't point to what I provided, I had no reason to expect anyone to love me.
I'm still learning otherwise.
Some days I'm better at it than others.
But tonight there's a dragon stretched beside me, my pothos reaching toward the last of the light, and an apartment across town I finally remembered to stop paying for.
Soren curls an arm around my waist and pulls me closer.
"Happy, Angel?"
I settle against him and feel the purr begin beneath my cheek.
"Very."
His mouth brushes my hair. "Good girl."
Once, those words made something inside me ache because I needed them to mean I was doing everything right, that I'd finally earned the care that came with them.
They don't mean that anymore.
I smile against his chest and let the words settle somewhere warm.
I'm his good girl.