The badgers followed along behind them, moving in their steady, deliberate way.
Iz watched as more and more of Sebastian’s hoard found their way back to their own lives.
Wherever Sebastian had gone, Iz hoped that he couldfeelthem escaping. The loss of a hoard was one of the worst possible punishments for a dragon, and Iz wanted him to feel every bit of it. This was what happened when you tried to hoard living things,wildthings.
Go,she thought, watching the slow parade.Be safe. Be happy. Remember, living well is the best revenge.
Finally, as the portal sat unused for several long moments, it collapsed in on itself—just a temporary wrinkle in their world getting smoothed out nice and neat, a tear in the fabric getting mended.
Iz exhaled.
“You didn’t want to go?” Logan said softly.
For a second, she thought he was talking to her. She hadn’t been able to tear her attention away from the portal, so she hadn’t realized there was anyone elsetotalk to, besides her and Cat.
But now she looked around, and the tears she’d been trying to hold back changed into a hot rush of gratitude.
Some of them had stayed.
Nathaniel the winged greyhound, silvery-brown and with turtledove-white wings, was currently trying to drape his whipcord-thin body around Logan’s shoulders like some kind of doggy stole. Cat, of course, was still on her wrist, now snoring soft, hissy snores that tickled a little. And three fluffalo—the ones whose colors had always made Iz think of different flavors of macarons: pistachio, strawberry, and lemon.
They all seemed spectacularly unconcerned about having missed the closing of the portal. Of course, maybe they could just summon another one anytime they wanted. But somehow, that wasn’t the feeling Iz got from them.
Magical animals were smart. It was possible they could understand her, even if she was stuck without telepathy.
“You want to stay with us?”
The pistachio fluffalo lay down at her feet. The other two followed it, and Nathaniel settled down into a boneless flop over Logan’s shoulders. It looked very comfortable forhim, if not quite as much for Logan.
“I guess that’s a yes,” Logan said. His grin was as bright as the sunlight that had streamed through the portal, and it made her knees weak. “I did ask you if you want to co-raise some fluffalo with me.”
“You did,” Iz agreed. “And I said yes, and they knew it. Didn’t you, sweethearts?”
“Grunt,” confirmed the strawberry fluffalo.
It was funny to think back to Logan asking her about caring for the fluffalo with him. That had been in their very first conversation, when they hadn’t really known each other at all, and she still remembered the unbelievable feeling ofreliefat finding out that he was easy to talk to, no matter what he thought. He was funny and sweet, and he had been right from the start.
Only now, in retrospect, she could guess at how hard it must have been for him. By now, she had seen some of his bad days, when human language and human niceties were hard to come by, and she could understand a little more of the hell that had forced him into that kind of survival mechanism.
He had dragged himself back to painful engagement with the world to try to keep her from being as scared and lonely as he must have been, in his own first days.
He was the bravest person she’d ever known. And it would be an honor, a privilege, and apleasureto co-raise three fluffalo, a winged greyhound, and an air-snake with him—if only she could know for sure that she would be up for the task.
One thing at a time.
“I’ll go ahead and call us that ride,” she said breezily, like the prospect of suddenly calling the boss she had failed or the family she had unintentionally abandoned didn’t weigh on her like an anvil on her chest. “And put an APB out on Sebastian, at least in the shifter community, along with a warning about that basilisk-wyvern fang. I don’t want anyone else falling into this kind of trap.”
Logan answered her with a very heartfelt nod and started playing with Nathaniel’s paws.
The look on his face was distant and strange, and Iz wished she knew what he was thinking.
He was glad to be free again, of course, but was he glad about her too? She could see a lot of reasons he maybe wouldn’t be.
Her mother’s voice, calm and graceful, overrode her anxieties:
Never mind about his feelings right now. He’s hungry, exhausted, and overwhelmed, and a good hostess wouldn’t leave him standing out in the wilderness without a good meal and a proper bed. Be reasonable, Isabelle.
Good point. She might not know much yet about what a good mate would do or not do, but she certainly knew how to treat a guest. No matter how embarrassed she felt about having to ask for help, she couldn’t leave Logan standing out here in the woods.