Wonderful.
I could tell that my friends were feeling it too, though maybe not quite as strongly as I was.
“Oh!” Megan exclaimed, and looked at Griffin with starry eyes. “I see now. He feels for Kaitlyn the way you feel for me!”
“And the way you feel for me, my Witch Queen,” he murmured, smiling back at her. “I’m going to want to bite you tonight, and drink your sweet blood, you know.”
“That’s fine,” Megan whispered. “I want you to.”
“You two should get a room,” Avery said, but he didn’t sound exasperated as he usually did when he gave that advice. “This is amazing,” he murmured to himself, looking from me to the Drake and back again. “It’s just…unbelievable.”
“I believe it,” Emma whispered and when I looked at her, I saw there were tears glimmering in her eyes. “It’s beautiful. Oh, Kaitlyn—you’re so lucky!”
Up until that moment, “lucky” was the last word I would have used to describe myself. After all, I had lost not one family but two, and I had been turned into a substandard Nocturne by accident, not to mention being scarred all over my body by The Fire that stole my parents. And yet now, basking in the glow of my Drake’s love, I did indeed feel like the luckiest girl alive.
This is right, whispered a little voice in my head. This was meant to be.
And I knew it was true.
“Do you all believe now?” I asked, looking around. “Does anybody have any doubt that I need to go with him?”
“No.” Megan shook her head. “We see it now, Kaitlyn. You have to go—you really are his fated-mate.”
“That’s very clear,” Griffin said, nodding agreement.
“The two of you belong together,” Emma admitted. “Or, I guess the three of you?” She frowned. “This is still kind of confusing.”
“Yes, it is,” Avery agreed. He sighed. “But I can’t deny it either. You should go, Kaitlyn, although I have no idea how in the world we’re going to explain it to Headmistress Nightworthy.”
“Just tell her I had to go,” I said simply. “And in fact, we should probably get going while it’s still dark.”
The Drake agreed with that wholeheartedly. There was some distance to fly to get to the rift between our worlds, he informed me. And we needed to get started if we were going to make it there quickly with no human interference.
“I have to go,” I told my Coven-mates again.
“Not without a hug!” Avery exclaimed.
“Group hug,” Megan said and put out her arms.
Right there, standing beside the Drake’s massive head, we all huddled together and hugged. And once again, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Yes, I had lost my Mom and Dad and little Allegra, but I still had people who loved me and I was so very grateful for that.
At last I pulled back with tears in my eyes.
“Thank you, guys,” I said, sniffing and trying not to cry. “Thank you for understanding. I’ll come back if I can, though I don’t know when.”
“You may be coming back sooner than you think, depending on how Ari’s parents take the news,” Griffin said soberly.
“I know,” I said, biting my lip. “But that can’t be helped.”
Behind me, I felt the Drake telling me that it didn’t matter if Ari’s Sire liked me or not—it wouldn’t change his love for me. If we had to, we would come back here and live in some secluded spot in the mountains just so we could be together.
I wasn’t sure about that, but I was sure that we weren’t going to be parted. There was just no way—not with the connection between us. You might as well try to part gold and silver after the two metals were already melted together—it just wasn’t going to happen.
“Be careful,” Emma said, smiling at me through her tears.
“We love you, Katydid,” Avery murmured.
“Thank you. I love all of you, too,” I told them. Then I looked up at my Drake. “Okay—now how do I get on you?”
The Drake advised that my friends should stand back because he was going to move. I relayed this message and my Coven-mates stepped back quickly and got to a safe distance. I took a few steps back myself and then the Drake uncurled himself, like giant cat.
When he rose to his full height, I thought that he might be the size of one of those huge sauropods that had roamed the Earth millions of years before. But again, though he was as big as a dinosaur, he wasn’t built like one and didn’t move like one at all. He had flowing, graceful movements and when he held out one large taloned hand to me, I stepped into it with no fear at all and waited for the spear-like talons to close around me.
“Wait!” Avery exclaimed, just as the talons were closing. He ran forward and pushed a bundle through the long claws. I grabbed it and saw that it was Ari’s clothing—his white shirt and uniform blazer and trousers. “Not that he doesn’t look spectacular naked,” he murmured, giving me a wink. “But things might get kind of awkward later on without these.”
“Thank you!” I gripped the bundle of clothes to my chest and the Drake lifted me carefully to his massive back.
It wasn’t like riding a horse. He put me just behind his neck, but it was much too thick at the base for me to straddle with my legs. Instead, I found a little hollow which seemed to be a dip between two of his immense vertebrae.
I found that I fit perfectly into the hollow, which was as soft and warm as the rest of him. I curled into it comfortably, sitting cross-legged and waving from the immense height down to my Coven-mates below.
The Drake asked if I was comfortable and secure and I told him that I was. He informed me that he was going to take off and that we would
