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“I will,” he mutters.

Over his shoulder, Solomon is talking to a young bear from Axel Clan and isn’t bothering to keep his voice down. “They only hate us because they don’t know us. If the radicals saw one of us up close, they’d see we aren’t monsters. Someone just has to show them.”

The bear laughs it off, but Solomon doesn’t. His scent turns stubborn. I’ve smelled that on Ezra every time he’s about to do some dumb shit. My wolf quits pacing and goes on alert.

I need to keep an eye on him.

EZRA — LATER THAT NIGHT

I picked Aya up after the signing and dropped her off at Wintermoon Medical. I bitched until she kissed me at the doors. I fucking hate that she works there. My dragon sulks every time I fly off and leave her behind. I’d rather wrap her up in a blanket in our cabin and keep my mate and our son where I can smell them. But she’s luna of Ash Clan now, and she’s still going to be a nurse. She figured out she can serve our dragons and be who she wants to be without losing herself. She has some incredible women to thank for that. Lauren, Hazel, Nia, and my mother have stood by her. I don’t get a say. I’m still grumpy about it, though.

I’m gliding in over the Academy when I spot her and my mother crossing the lawn toward the hill. They walk side by side, still in their scrubs. I drop down behind them and put my wings away.

I tug Aya in by the waist and kiss her first, and my dragon croons at the wild berries and the little one tucked under them. Then I press my lips to my mother’s cheek.

She isn’t paying us any attention. She stands at the bottom of the hill with her hand over her mouth and stares up at the planetarium.

The scaffolding is gone. Lights inside make the glass dome glow gold. Underneath it, the walls are carved with every constellation Amari and I traced off my father’s old star charts. At the foot of the stairs, his dragon stands uncovered in dark stone with his wings spread wide and his face turned up to the sky.

“Father hasn’t shown you?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I wanted to get the first look on the night of his first seminar.” She looks up and smiles at the stars. “It’s the perfect night for this.”

I grab her hand, then Aya’s. “Well, we can’t just stand here all night. We’ll miss it.” I start for the stairs with them in tow. “And we’re late. I’m sure it will be hard to find a seat.”

“I don’t mind standing this time,” my mother says.

I hope Amari made it. He drew most of this place. I owe him a thank-you.

Inside, the dome rises over rows of seats that circle the floor, all of them full. Shifters line the walls and pack the aisles around the brass star projector in the middle of the room. The air is thick with more scents than my nose can sort. Every clan in Wintermoon is here for my father tonight.

Amari waves us over to where he’s standing with Josiah, Layla, Bobby, Nicole, and Carla. Layla gets a look at Aya’s belly, turns to the young wolf sitting in the front row, and hisses at him with her fangs out. He scrambles out of his seat and trips over his own feet.

Layla pats the empty chair. “Sit, Luna.”

Aya bites her lip to keep from laughing and sits. Farther down the front row, Levi winks at her, and Nia leans across him to blow a kiss. Retirement looks good on the old wolf. I stand beside Amari and grip his shoulder. “Thank you,” I tell him. “For all of it.”

He nods up at the ceiling. “Thank me when you see what it can do.”

I throw my arm around my mother and pull her into my side. Up on the little stage, my father stands next to Angie with his hands clasped. He finds me in the crowd, and his eyes fill up. I shake my head. Don’t you dare. Not yet.

All of Ash Clan is here in the back rows. Valek stands in the aisle behind them with Kenya tucked against him. His scent is stiff and sour, but he came.

The lights go down. The projector hums to life and throws the night sky over the dome. Angie raises her glowing hands. Her blue-gold magic pours up into the stars, and they move. Planets float between them, and clouds of color roll across the glass. No one in here makes a sound.

My father steps to the front of the stage. “Good evening, everyone. The last time I gave this lecture, we were packed into the auditorium in the main Academy.”

My mother squeezes my waist. Overhead, Angie forms a swirling cloud of blue and gold. “Back then, I talked to you about stellar nurseries,” my father tells us. “These are clouds of gas and dust where stars are born. They’re chaotic and unpredictable, and out of all that chaos comes something incredible. I believed that about the universe. I never believed it about myself. I was the last of Stormscale, and I was sure our name would die with me.”

In the front row, Aya rubs her belly in slow circles. Our son kicks under her hand, and she whispers to him like the rest of the room isn’t there. My dragon purrs. My mother hears it and leans into my shoulder.

Angie closes her fist. A light in the middle of the dome swells bright and bursts. Blue-gold fire sprays across the glass, and everyone flinches.

“When a star dies, it doesn’t disappear,” my father says. “It explodes. We call that a supernova. Everything it was gets thrown out into the dark. Iron and carbon, the stuff in our bones and our blood.” The pieces pull back together into a ring of tiny new worlds. “Then it gathers again, and it becomes something new. Every one of you is made from stars that burned out before the first wolf ever howled. So when someone tells you that where you come from decides who you’ll be, remember that.”

“I’ve spent my whole life naming stars, because there was no one of my blood alive to share them with.” He turns his face up to the glowing cloud. “But here’s what they taught me. Some of the light you’re seeing right now left its star thousands of years ago. It’s been traveling through the cold and the dark this whole time, longer than Wintermoon has existed, and tonight it finally reached us.”

With a flick of her wrist, Angie splits the cloud open into a cluster of brand-new stars. The young ones in the front rows gasp.