“And I thought I had an eventful night. Babe, I am so happy for you.”

“It feels like a dream, and I don’t want to wake up.” I sighed. “But there’s no pause button for a Dominus’s life. How did it go with Vi? Any luck?”

“Of course. Have I ever let you down?”

“I wish you’d let me come with you.”

She gave me a doh look. “Lucky I didn’t. You might have missed your proposal window otherwise.”

“Point taken.”

“Besides, I had it handled. I got the spell, and Vi’s working on preparing it. Apparently, it’ll take a few days to get everything set up to try the spell, and with Christmas around the corner, Vi says she has shit loads to do for the Masterton Christmas ball.”

“Oh, shit.” I sat up excitedly. “Christmas is in three days!”

Keon entered the kitchen. “Demons don’t celebrate Christmas.” He sniffed the air. “The Academy awaits.”

“Yeah, well, I do celebrate, and I’m not working Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.”

He looked at me levelly for a long beat and then shrugged. “I’m hungry.” He peered at my bowl of cereal. “What is that?”

I got up and fixed him a bowl. “There you go. Try it.”

He stared at the bowl of cereal as if it was a holy offering and then took it carefully.

O-kay…

He climbed up on the chair—like literally climbed on it, sitting in a crouch and then lapping at his food.

I flinched at the size of his tongue. It was long but flattened out to scoop up the cereal.

“Oh, blue boy, what an interesting tongue you’ve got,” Cora said.

She widened her eyes in my direction, and I choked back a laugh while Keon continued to eat his cereal.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done. “We should train now,” he said to me. “You need to master the weapons.”

He hopped off the chair and then looked down at me with an unfathomable expression. “Thank you for feeding me.”

“It’s no problem.”

He opened his mouth as if about to say something more, then snapped it closed and shook his head. “Training room in ten.”

And then he left the room.

Cora stared after him. “God, he’s super weird.”

I stared at the doorway. “I don’t know, Cor, he just seems lonely. I feel sorry for him.”

“Um, Fee, he’s a killer, a cold-blooded assassin who only a couple of weeks ago offered to tear your face off for his queen.”

“I know, but I get the impression there’s more to Keon than meets the eye.”

Cora took my hand in hers. “Just be careful with him, okay. I know you and your need to help and fix and make things better, but not everyone can be or even wants to be fixed. Keon belongs to Lilith, and I doubt she’ll take kindly to you messing with her weapon.”

She was right, of course. Keon was deadly. I’d be nice to him, of course, but no more hang-out sessions.

I bumped into Azazel on my way to the training room to meet Keon. He was all dressed up in his Dominus gear, and his silver hair was pulled back off his face, highlighting his strong bone structure. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, and his step slowed.

“Hello, handsome.” I beamed up at him.

He smiled with his eyes. “Hello, beautiful.” His voice was an intimate rumble as if we were lying in bed post-coitus.

My heart did a backflip. “You coming to the Academy with Keon and me?”

“Not today, I have outlier business, but I’ve spoken to Master Luena, and she’ll be introducing you to Conah’s class and making the transition smooth.”

I made a face. “She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t understand you. Just focus on the older cadets and leave the younglings to her.”

“I won’t argue with you, but I still think children need to be allowed to be children.”

“Yes, let’s not argue.” He kissed the top of my head. “I spoke to Mal…We should set a date for the wedding. Something to work toward.”

I touched his jaw. “Once Conah is back. Once I know we won’t be dredging up pain for him, then we can set a date.”

Azazel gripped my fingers and then kissed the tips. “Whatever you want.”

“I’ll see you later.” I pushed up on tiptoes and kissed his lips, ignoring the stab of fear that sliced through me.

Nothing was going to ruin my high.

I wanted to die.

I lay on the mat in the training room, staring at the ceiling while waiting for the tiny canaries to stop flying around in circles above me.

“You lost your rhythm,” Keon said, appearing above me. “Get up and try again.”

I was soaked with sweat, my pulse fluttering erratically in my throat. I was done. My goose was cooked, my pepper was stuffed, my donut sucked dry. Okay, that last one sounded a little sexual.

But yeah.

Done.

Keon’s aquiline, feral face was a blue smudge above me. “Are you broken?”

I was busted, fractured, shattered.

I held out my hand. “Help me.”

He hauled me up easily, so I flew up and slammed into his chest. I pressed my palms to his pecs to push him away, but he held on to me a moment longer. And wait, did he just sniff me.

But then I was free and stumbling backward.

“Again,” he ordered, falling into a fighting stance, tail whipping back and forth, ready to attack me. “Defend.”

I must have imagined the sniffing. Focus, Fee.

I lightly touched the holster at my waist. A sturdy one with leg holes and a fucking appendage just like his.

They called it a tail because that’s what it was. A shoel tech tail that connected with the wearer’s mind to allow the wearer to wield it.

“You need to think of it as a limb,” Keon said. “An arm or a leg. As part of you. This is a daemon’s advantage. They will each have one, barbed or serrated. Some will have two, and this is what will make them formidable in battle.”

Daemon were fast, able to fly, able to shift from place to place, able to fend off bullets with wings that were almost armored. The tail was made from obsidian and Virilium steel. Materials that could pierce a daemon’s skin. Being able to wield a tail would even out the odds.

“You’re basically teaching me how to kill your kind. Doesn’t that bother you?”

He blinked, and then his expression hardened. “There are no more of my kind. I am the last.”

He attacked, and I evaded or tried to, but the tail thing got in the way, and I tripped and fell on my face.

“Ouch.”

Hands wrapped around my waist, and I was hauled to my feet. Shit, he was strong. “Are you broken?” he asked again.

“No. No, I am not broken.” I brushed him off and rolled my shoulders to iron out the kinks. “How come you’re here with me when you could be training at one of the academies higher up on the list?”

“They already have tails in their arsenal. Already trained.”

So, Conah’s Academy, our Academy, was the only one left untrained. Lilith really must think we were subpar.

“Enough talk. Let’s fight,” he ordered.

I faced him. “Easy for you to say. Your tail is a part of you.”

He walked over to the chest, picked out another tail and strapped it on, then walked toward me, both tails whipping back and forth in perfect synchronization. He looked insanely threatening now. All steel blue muscle and sinew, royal blue hair kissing his high cheekbones, black horns gleaming in the overhead lights.

“Um…Keon…” I held up my hands. I wasn’t ready.

But then his tails slammed into the ground, launching him up into the air and over my head. He landed behind me. I spun to face him only to find him crouched a meter away with both tail heads aimed at my face.

Motherfucker!

He stood slowly. “You can do this. Just stop thinking so hard and predict.”

“Predict?”

“Yes. Do you think when you walk? Do you tell your limbs to make the movements?”

“No, of course not.”

“You simply decide you wish to walk. And when you fuck”—he moved closer—“do you tell your hips to move, do you tell your back to arch?”

My mouth went dry. “Okay, I get what you mean.”

His yellow cat-like eyes tracked across my face. “Predict the way you want your body to move. The tail is a part of you. It will accommodate you and move in the way you need to achieve your goal.”

I was tired, like bone-achingly tired. We’d been at this all fucking morning, but seeing him wield two tails had the competitor in me surging up. The Loup simmered under my skin, and my alpha nature asserted itself.

Like fuck was I failing at this, or anything else for that matter. Our Academy may be on the bottom of the pile, but our cadets wouldn’t be.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, tuning in to the low-grade buzzing in my head until it was all I could hear, and then I opened my eyes and fixed my gaze on Keon.

“Attack me.”

He didn’t wait to be asked twice and rushed me.

I needed to leap.

And then I was sailing over his head, propelled by the force of my tail slamming into the ground behind me. I landed with my back to him but imagined my tail lashing out from behind me.

Euphoria filled me as the tip of my tail crashed against his, and I finally turned to face him with a fist pump.

Keon backed off with a grin that showcased his fangs. “Good start. Now for the hard stuff.”

Wait, what?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I landed in the Academy courtyard and stumbled forward when my knees gave way. Traveling through a river was a strange experience, and I still had to learn the location of them all. Luckily for me, Keon was pretty up to speed, but I’d need to get Azazel or Mal to draw me a map to memorize or something when we got back to base.

A shadow fell over me—Keon getting ready to land—but my attention was on the building around me. The red brick and shiny windows. The balconies and nooks for secret study. This place was Conah’s place. His voralex. This was a part of him.