She whispers, “Careful.”
“Careful?” I ask, laughing when she leans back into me, pressing her ass into my hips. “Of what?”
“I need to eat something,” she says, shaking her head. “And I should probably take something to Nora, too.”
Nora is still passed out, sleeping off the major use of magic she displayed at the ridge. I’m already wondering how much longer she’s going to sleep like this, and at what point we should start worrying about her.
“I’ve never drawn that much out of myself,” Phina says as though she’s thinking the same thing as me. She slides the eggs onto two plates, handing one to me. Glancing up, she says, “I’ll make one fresh to take to Nora after we eat.”
We sit at the table together, and I clear my throat, knowing I’ll have to talk to her about it eventually.
“Seraphina,” I say, and she goes still, looking at me with trepidation. “I think we need to talk about magic.”
Taking a bite, she nods, reaching for her napkin. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
“I want you to know that I’m working through the… ideas my grandpa and dad had about it.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding, her gaze falling to her plate. “I’m sensing abut.”
“But I’m not sure the pack is ready for me to just… allow it. I want to work toward that at some point in the future, but Ithink we have to make a plan. Figure out a way to be strategic about it.”
For a second, I’m worried that I’ve upset her with this proposal, but after a moment, she nods and sighs. “Honestly, I was kind of thinking the same thing. But with what happened at that ridge…?”
“The guys are sworn to secrecy about it. Obviously, they know what happened. But until we figure out what approach we take with all this, we say nothing.”
“It makes sense,” Phina says. “Even if I don’t like it. I think the people in this pack are going to have enough to get used to with me being the luna.”
I reach out, taking her hand. “You’ll make a wonderful luna. You know that, right?”
“Right,” she says, though she doesn’t sound completely convinced. “I know.”
For the next hour, we sit together, talking about magic and what it would look like to get rid of the rules around it. To make the pack a place where magic-wielders could feel included, honored.
After Phina and Nora’s show of power at the ridge, I’m starting to think it was a major strategic mistake for my father to discount magic the way he did. Having wielders on our side might just make the difference between winning or losing if a pack war ever started.
“You guys are having breakfast without me?”
Phina’s face lights up as she looks over my shoulder, and I twist around to see Nora standing in the doorway, eyes trained on the empty plates between us. She looks pale and frail, but she’s standing on her own and is strong enough to comeinto the kitchen. She’s not still sleeping, stuck in that constant exhaustion.
Phina jumps up from her spot and moves to the stove. “I was just about to bring you some. Here, sit. You want scrambled?”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Nora says, yawning and settling into the spot across from me, picking up a half-eaten piece of toast from her mother’s plate and eating from it absently.
“So,” Nora says, raising her eyes to mine. “I’ve been thinking. If we’re going to move in here, I’d like to request that we add some books to the library.”
Phina laughs from the stove, and I feel a chuckle move through my chest. “Oh, is that so?”
“It is so,” Nora says, grinning.
“Alright,” I say, leaning back in the chair, feeling the sunshine through the windows on my face. It’s a beautiful day, and though we have a lot of work to do—to rebuild the pack, rebuild the town, and recover from the fires—I’m hit with a sudden, and unfamiliar, feeling of contentment.
Because right here, right now, I have every single thing that I need in this kitchen with me.
And one of them is pulling out a written list of ISBNs.
Chapter 32 - Seraphina
“Nora Winward, you had better put your ass into gear, or we’re going to be late!”
