All Chapters of Alpha Draco And His Omega Luna : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

SofiaTwo hours. I turned the number over in my mind as we walked back through the grounds toward the estate Lilly and Rocco behind us, together and separate in the way of two people who had just found each other and didn't yet know what to do with it, the rest of us ahead, moving with the compressed purpose of people who had two hours and a great deal to do with them."How many Alphas?" I asked Draco."In the territory? Eleven." He was already thinking ahead of the question. "Aldric will have been building toward this. The council meeting today gave him the opening, he needed an audience larger than twelve people, and now he has one.""He's going to tell them I'm a witch.""He's going to tell them you're a witch, that you've been concealing it, and that your presence here represents a threat to pack stability across the territory." His voice was even. "He'll frame it as a safety concern. He'll use the language of protection.""And they'll listen.""Some will. Some won't. The ones who

SofiaNobody moved. Not for a full breath. Maybe two. The corridor held us all me, Draco, Xavier, my grandmother suspended in the specific quality of a moment that had just changed the shape of everything around it, and none of us had caught up yet.Then Draco said, very quietly, "Go."And we went.The northern road left the estate through the maintenance gate and ran along the edge of the east wood before opening into the wider territory beyond. We took two cars Draco driving the first, Xavier the second and the headlights cut through the dark and the cold and the particular stillness of a night that had already held too much and was apparently not finished.I was in the front with Draco. My grandmother had refused to stay behind, which I had not argued with because there was no argument that would have worked and we didn't have time. She was in the back with Elara, who had also refused, and the two of them sat in the dark with the compressed energy of women who had spent too many ye

SofiaThree people tried to stop me. Gracie, in the hallway, who stepped into my path with the expression of someone who had been asked to intercept and was taking the responsibility seriously. "Sofia. He asked not to be disturbed. He was very specific...""I know," I said, and kept walking.Elara, at the top of the stairs to the lower east wing, who did not step into my path but said, quietly, "He is not himself when he gets like this. I have seen it. I need you to understand what you're walking into.""Tell me," I said.She looked at me for a moment. "The parts of him that are not wolf the demon, the dragon, the vampire they don't integrate cleanly under extreme emotional pressure. The control that holds them together requires, it requires him to be calm. Or at least functional." She paused. "He is neither right now.""Has he hurt anyone when he's been like this?""No," she said. "But..""Then I'm going," I said.She looked at me for a long moment. Something moved in her expression,

SofiaThree things happened the morning after Draco came back. The first was that I woke up and the bond was calm not the strained, pulled quality of the past four days, that compass awareness of north being too far away, but settled. Present, he was in the estate and the estate knew it and my chest knew it and I was not going to spend any time thinking about how much I had noticed the difference.The second was that Kara appeared at my door before I had finished dressing, sat down on the bed, and looked at me with the expression she used when she had decided to say something and had been rehearsing it."Say it," I said."I'm not saying anything," she said."Kara.""I'm just sitting here.""You have your saying-something face."She pressed her lips together briefly. "I just think," she said, "that four days was a very long time to be that worried about someone you claim to be keeping at arm's length.""I wasn't..""Sofia. You came to find me on the second night and you were.." she sto

SofiaMy grandmother found me in the library that evening.She came in without knocking, she never knocked and settled into the armchair with the careful deliberateness of someone whose joints were registering the cold more than usual, and looked at me with the expression she wore when she had something to say that she had been turning over for a while.I put the book down."Say it," I said."I'm not saying anything yet," she said. "I'm looking at you first."I let her look.She had been doing this my entire life this specific, thorough attention, the kind that was not assessment but something closer to inventory. Checking what was there. What had changed. What was the same."You look different," she said finally."I look the same.""You look different." She settled back. "You look like someone who has stopped spending all their energy on containment." A pause. "It suits you."I looked at the window."He touched my hair today," I said.She said nothing."I didn't flinch," I said.She