Page 47 of Alan

She quirked a brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, your parents, that was quite some time ago, right? Maybe hundreds of years ago? Or did I get that wrong?”

“I’m not sure how long…” She shrugged.

“But you’re only in your twenties. Right?”

Another shrug. “Yeah, I wondered about that. Maybe it’s my dragon blood? It aged me slowly? Or my Priestess genes?”

I shook my head, no less confused than she. “Who knows.”

“I’ll have to ask Selene. There’s got to be some magic involved.”

I nodded. “Could be. Do you think you’ll ever be able to shift, like they do? The dragons?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.

She shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t even know if I want to. This is so much to take in all at the same time.”

“And I’m only heaping more on your shoulders, babe. I’ll shut up now. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes flew open wide. “No, no. This is good! I need to be able to talk about it with somebody, and Tamhas doesn’t get what it’s like to be a fish out of water. You do. I was telling Alan that very thing when you were unconscious.” She pulled her feet up onto her chair, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“What did you say?”

“That I needed you and hoped you weren’t going to shut me out forever. I needed you to understand, since nobody else here would.” Her chin rested on her knees. “And you do.”

“I definitely know what it’s like to feel like I’m on the outside, looking in,” I admitted.

“They’ll all welcome you,” she assured me.

“Oh, I know. Everybody’s so friendly.”

Ainsley walked past and smiled our way.

“You’re lucky,” she giggled. “They weren’t so friendly to me. They fought me, actually.”

“And I bet you showed them what a mistake they made by doing that. Right?”

She only smiled—then, she turned thoughtful. “You know something? I wonder if it was meant to be—us being friends, I mean. Meeting up when we did. What were the odds of us crossing paths in the foster system? Out of, what, thousands of kids?”

“Not just meeting up but forming a connection the way we did. I already wondered about that,” I admitted.

“And?”

“And… I guess it was meant to be, like you said.” I shrugged. “You were always going to find your way back here, one way or another, and I was meant to come after you. Your family was waiting here for you.”

“And Alan was waiting for you,” she added. “He was frantic when you fell. Even more so than I was. It’s special, what you two have. I know how surprising it is, how strong. How you might tell yourself it can’t be real because it’s not like anything we’re used to in the other world. The world we grew up in.”

“The other world,” I murmured. “It sounds so… weird to say it like that. Up until now, that was the only world.”

“We had no idea.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Maybe that was why we always felt so out of place,” she suggested. “Because we were never meant for that world. This was where we were meant to be.”

Was she right? Was this where we were meant to be all along? Was I meant to live there, in a tricked-out cave, working with Owen to keep the clan’s location safe from hackers like me? Loving the clan leader to the depths of my soul, helping him in any way I could, being proud of him for always doing what he felt was best for his clan?

He caught my eye then, still standing outside the doorway. There he was, so tall and gorgeous and mine, working out the details of adapting to life with another eleven inhabitants of the cave.

No. Twelve. Including me.

I smiled, and he smiled back.

Whether or not it was meant to be, I was all in.