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Well… more or less.
As normal as life could get when followed everywhere by a snake.
At first, Sorin assumed it was because she was cold. The little leather jacket Harry had given her only covered a few inches of her body, and as winter crept nearer, the ambient temperature dropped until it was quite chilly indeed. Snakes, like dragons, were cold-blooded creatures, and as such preferred to stay warm, so to an extent, her clinginess made sense. People made for a perfect space heater, and Sorin’s arms and legs were the perfect size and shape for her to coil around, but that reasoning began to fall apart when one day, Sorin set her near the hearth for safekeeping while he went to fetch water from the well, only to find her waiting for him by the door when he returned. Snakes were not very expressive creatures, but the excited way she flicked her tongue when she saw him said everything.
She didn’t want warmth.
She wanted him.
And maybe pregnancy hormones were to blame, but in that moment, Sorin fell in love with his sweet little noodle.
She spent the rest of the day wrapped around his neck like a necklace, only slithering away to find a new warm place to curl up in when it was time for him to sleep.
“Have you thought of a name for her?” Bertram asked over dinner one week to the day following the conversation with his father. They had been dodging what was sure to be a difficult discussion about their future with small talk, but nothing could distract Sorin from the tension he felt knowing they’d have to get serious soon. “If you are, indeed, keeping her, I do not feel right only referring to her as ‘the snake.’”
“I’m keeping her,” Sorin said with certainty. As though overjoyed by the news, the snake curled around his wine glass—which was disappointingly full of water—and flicked her tongue in celebration. “I just haven’t named a snake before, and I want to take my time to make sure I pick something that feels right.”
“You’re spending more time agonizing over her name than you did the whelps,” Bertram teased. “I’m sure whatever you pick will be perfect. You have a good head on your shoulders, and I trust you will make a sound decision… which is why I will now cede the floor to you. It’s been a week since my father extended his offer. Have you made up your mind about what you’d like to do?”
Sorin dropped his gaze, stalling, and watched the snake slither happily across the table. She gave his dinner plate a wide berth, avoiding all glassware and cutlery, and came right to the edge of the table. She peeped at what lay below, then lowered herself down and dropped neatly onto Sorin’s lap, where she curled up like a cat. Enamored with her, and—frankly—glad for the distraction, he traced the length of her body with a gentle touch.
The snake, happy with his affection, relaxed.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about it,” Sorin admitted without looking up at Bertram, admiring the way the light caught the snake’s scales. “On the night you spoke with your father, I thought I knew what I wanted, but the more I thought about it, the less certain I became. There’s just so much to consider. What if things don’t work out? What if we find ourselves in a situation where we have to leave in a hurry again, only this time, with a clutch or a baby to worry about? It seems reckless to uproot ourselves from relative safety and risk starting over again somewhere we aren’t sure we’ll be safe, but…” He frowned. “Then I think about what we’d be giving up if we didn’t try. There’s still so much good we could be doing, and if your father really will forgive us, we’d finally be in a place where we could start making meaningful change. Our children would get to grow up with their cousins, and we wouldn’t have to live in isolation. We could have friends. We could make ourselves part of your family. We could…”
Sorin’s throat caught, preventing him from finishing his sentence, but it didn’t matter. Bertram knew his heart as well as Sorin did, and finished it for him. “We could live as mates to the same extent as my brothers and their mates, no longer having to hide our love or play pretend.”
It was the truth, and it was a simple truth at that, but hearing it made Sorin’s chest tighten like someone was wrenching it from the inside. The simple life they would lead if they were to stay here, in Scotland, was fine, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t wish for what the Drake mates had. For five hundred years, he’d made do with “good enough” and “better than nothing,” but now he had a chance at more.
A chance to lead a charmed life.
He thought of the diamonds studding Peregrine’s ears.
Pearls pinned in nursemaids’ hair.
He brushed his arm across his eyes, wiping away the misty tears that had gathered there, and by the time he dropped his arm, Bertram was no longer in his seat. He’d come around the table as silently as a shadow and now knelt by Sorin’s side.
“I have been doing a lot of thinking, too,” Bertram admitted, taking Sorin’s hand gently in his own, “and I have concluded there is no easy answer. Either choice could be the wrong one. We could end up hurt either way. But when I think of the future—when I really stop to think of the life I want for us, and for our future family—only one of our two possibilities makes me yearn for what could be. No matter how much my head tries to refute it, my heart has made up its mind… and I think, based off your reaction, yours has, too.”
He didn’t need to say which possibility he had decided on.
Sorin already knew.
With a laugh that dissolved all too quickly into tears, he gripped Bertram’s hand and slid out of his chair, joining him on the floor. Bertram swept him into his arms, and they held each other tightly, joy and fear and all of the emotions in between popping off in their bond like fireworks. Bertram held him through it all, stroking his back to soothe him while he whispered sweet, reassuring things in Sorin’s ear.
That he would always protect him.
That he was worth fighting for.
That he was loved.
No dark thoughts refuted those claims.
They couldn’t—the love Bertram poured into their mate bond shone so brightly, there was no place for the darkness to hide.
At some point during that time, the snake—who had been dislodged when Sorin left his seat—found her way around Sorin’s ankle and clung tight. She was such a small thing, and had not lived an easy life, but she still had room in her heart for others. Was still brave enough to trust that somehow, love would win. And with her and Bertram there to remind him that he was more than the awful things his mind sometimes led him to believe, Sorin was beginning to believe it, too.
After all, what they did, they did for good.
