I love Meekah like an uncle, but he has the worst freaking timing.
17
Aaron
Iclose my eyes and try to breathe but Meekah’s voice is somewhere far away, muffled. Mara’s face is the only thing I can see. I cup her cheeks again.
Her tail curls around my wrist. The tassel tightens and holds, and the gentle pressure of it nearly unravels me.
“Aaron, please.” Her voice is soft.
“Don’t think I’m not going to report this to Headmistress Ebony!” Meekah snaps from somewhere behind me, but I can’t make the words form into anything that matters. All I hear are his footsteps, heavy and furious, storming down the hall, and the crack of his tail slapping against something on his way out.
Mara’s tail uncurls from my wrist and her hands come up to cover mine. She holds them against her face and tilts her head, her amber eyes sweeping over me like she’s looking for something she can fix.
“Let me get my bag,” she says quietly. “We can go home and figure out what’s going on so I can help you.”
I nod. I give her a smile that feels hollow on my face. She doesn’t say anything. I release her face and she steps away fromme, cautious, then turns and goes around her desk, packing her tote bag.
I stand in the middle of her classroom and start to formulate plans. This is all supposed to happen tonight.
I run my hand over my face. My heart starts pounding, hard and fast. I don’t have time to figure out if it was a dream or something else. The way things are playing out right now, I have to act.
Mara sticks a thick folder inside her tote and pulls the bag over her shoulder. She’s grinning when she turns around. “Papers to grade,” she says, patting the side of the bag.
Her grin fades when she reaches me. Her nose twitches, her chin lifting, and I watch her read the pain rolling off me. She doesn’t name it. She just reaches for my hand.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
I tear the air open. Blue-gold light splits along a vertical line and the portal opens onto our living room. Mara’s fingers lace through mine and something inside me almost breaks. She’s trusting me completely. Her ears are perked forward and her tail sways behind her in a lazy rhythm and she has no idea what I’m about to do.
I lift her hand to my lips and press a kiss against the back of it. She smirks at me, warm and easy, then pulls her hand free and steps through the portal. I follow.
The suite is quiet. Late afternoon sun cuts through the windows and lays warm lines across the hardwood floor. Mara crosses the room and sets her bag on the small table by the bookshelf, then walks over to the sink in the kitchen and turns on the water.
I stand where the portal closed behind me. I just watch her.
She’s got this glow about her. She starts humming as she washes her hands, swaying slightly, and I recognize the tune.She was doing it this morning too. It sounds almost like a lullaby.
I start thinking. The memory of that dream—or was it. If it was the future, I wasn’t anywhere near the Witching Glen when she died. She was with Tiana. So where was I? I didn’t hear everything in the classroom, but I heard enough. Mara making plans to separate from me so she could join my sister.
That shit is not happening.
Mara finishes washing her hands and reaches for the towel. My arms wrap around her from behind, pulling her back again.
She giggles. A purr vibrates through her body, rolling into mine.
“Aaron, I love you,” she says, tilting her head to give me more of her neck.
“I love you more, Mara.”
Her tail lifts and starts to wrap around my thigh, the tassel brushing against the back of my leg. I hold her tighter, breathing her in.
“Why did my sister come to you today?”
Her tail immediately unwraps. It falls limp against her leg, and the submission in that movement makes me frown.
“You should not have threatened your sister like that,” she says. “What has gotten into you?”
