Page 116 of Legacy Ascended

When I pull back to breathe, his hair is wrecked and his breathing isn't much better than mine.

"Look at you," I say.

"Don't."

"Your hair is a catastrophe."

"Your fault."

"Absolutely my fault." I put my forehead against his. “How long do we have to wait?”

He nods. "Until you aren’t a student or I’m not a professor."

"Don’t say that."

His hand tightens slightly at my waist.

His arm comes around my back, and instead of moving away he pulls me in so I'm tucked against his side with my head under his jaw.

I start telling him about my classes. The mirror exercise and Voss saying my wolf did not help me once, and he says, “He's right,” and I hit him, and he catches my hand and keeps it.

By the time I stand, the fire is low and I have a practical in the morning. My left foot has gone completely numb.

Jon walks me to the door and leans on the frame while I find my coat.

"Jessica."

"Mm."

"Don’t give up on me," he says.

I stand there holding my coat.

"I won’t," I say.

He grins, then catches the front of my coat and pulls me back for one more kiss, his hand at my jaw and his thumb along my cheek.

"Good night Jon."

Chapter twenty-two

Jessica

So we're building another request.

That's my life at the moment. Things I've asked for, sitting in other people's queues. The rescue block went out without me, and I checked the Preserve weather every morning it was out like somebody's anxious mother, and I haven't told anybody I did that.

The records Elise brought with her include a list of documents the Fourth House turned over after the fall. We asked the archive for the records that matched that list, and most of what came back lines up.

This one doesn't.

Elise's record says they turned over the original. The archive's intake record says it received a copy.

Same document. Same reference. Same date.

Original in one record. Copy in the other.

"So where's the original?" I ask.