“If you throw me out of Nocturne Academy, I have nowhere to go,” I told the Headmistress in broken tones. “Please, don’t throw me out, Headmistress—or send me to one of those awful colonies for Made Vampires!”
“It’s all right, L’lorna,” Ari murmured, putting an arm around me and offering me another one of those beautifully monogrammed handkerchiefs he carried around. “You’ll always have a home with me, I swear it. And no one will send you anywhere you don’t want to go.”
“That is another matter we need to discuss,” the Headmistress said, frowning at him severely. “What were you thinking, Mr. Reyes, to mark a non-Drake female and claim her as yours? More to the point, what do you think your father, the Alpha Drake and ruler of the Sky Lands is going to think about it?”
Ari lifted his chin defiantly.
“I don’t care what my Sire says,” he growled. “My Drake chose Kaitlyn and my heart followed his. I cannot help who I love—and I wouldn’t even if I could! Kaitlyn is the one I want and my Sire will have to deal with it.”
“He most certainly will,” Headmistress Nightworthy said grimly. “Your marking of Kaitlyn sent a surge of power through all of the Other spheres—including the Sky Lands. Your father has already sent me a message, asking that you return home at once.”
“At once as in right now?” Avery asked, before Ari or I could say anything. “Because you do realize, Headmistress Nightworthy, that Ari is Kaitlyn’s only source of nourishment. If he leaves, she’ll starve, er, thirst to death.”
“No, I did not realize that.” The Headmistress turned her ice-cold blue eyes on me. “Why, may I ask, Miss Fellows, are you not drinking bagged blood as most Nocturnes do?”
“Because she cannot,” Griffin said calmly. “Her system rejects it on contact.”
“He’s right,” Emma put in. “The minute it goes down, it comes right back up again. Have you ever seem someone vomit blood?” She made a face. “It’s pretty gross.”
“Being a Nocturne myself, I have beheld such things, Miss Plunkett,” the Headmistress said dryly. “However,” she continued, turning to Ari. “Your father has requested that you come home alone. So I am afraid Kaitlyn will have to stay here and we will have to find her some other, er, donor.”
“Headmistress, as you are a Nocturne yourself, you know very well that allowing one you have marked to take the vein of another goes against every instinct,” Griffin said, frowning. “You might as well tell a man his wife will have to sleep with another male while he is gone.”
“That, Mr. Darkheart, is a rather melodramatic analogy, don’t you think?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
“I don’t!” Ari exclaimed. “Dios, Headmistress, do you really think I’ll go back to the Sky Lands and leave my avowed L’lorna behind when she is in mortal danger every moment she is here without me? And before you accuse me of being melodramatic also,” he went on, “I am not only speaking of Kaitlyn’s need for my blood. I’m talking about the way the fucking Guardian tried to eat her—and wants to eat her still!”
The Headmistress’s lips thinned down to a white line.
“Mr. Reyes, kindly watch your language while you are in my presence! And what in the world do you mean the Guardian tried to eat Miss Fellows?”
“He means exactly what he says, Headmistress,” Megan said. “Not long after you left for your conference, Kaitlyn fell in the lake around the castle—well, she was actually shoved in by some idiots who were roughhousing—and the Guardian tried to eat her.”
The Headmistress frowned skeptically.
“Maybe it looked like he was about to eat her, but the Guardian does not have an appetite for either human or Other flesh.”
“No.” Ari shook his head. “He was going to eat her—of that I am positive.”
“Oh? And how can you be sure of that, Mr. Reyes?” the Headmistress demanded.
“I know because he told me,” Ari growled. “Or rather, he told my Drake when I changed forms to rescue Kaitlyn.”
Headmistress Nightworthy’s eyebrows shot up.
“You changed to your Drake again? When I expressly forbid you not to, Mr. Reyes?”
“I had no choice,” he said shortly. “If I had not, Kaitlyn wouldn’t be standing in front of you today.”
“He’s right!” Megan exclaimed, defending Ari. “We all saw it—the Guardian opened its mouth and tried to eat Kaitlyn!”
All my Coven-mates nodded and Headmistress Nightworthy sighed.
“All right, Mr. Reyes—what exactly did the Guardian tell you—or rather, tell your Drake when you rescued Miss Fellows?”
“He said that he wasn’t usually attracted to anything but fish flesh but that Kaitlyn smelled so delectable that he had been unable to help himself,” Ari told her. “He further said that he couldn’t promise not to eat her in the future.”
“What?” I cried. “You never told me that!”
“Dios, Kaitlyn!” He spared me a quick, apologetic glance. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”