Page 23

Story: Cosmo

The knock made Cosmo stir, and he found he could move away from Hawk. They slid apart, and he grabbed his robe on the way to the door. Whoa. He was a little sore and a lot…bowlegged.

He cracked the door open. “What?”

“Breakfast. Come on. We’re going to Ty’s.” One of Corbin’s green eyes peered at him through the tiny opening he’d made.

“See? I told Hawk that was what we would do.”

“You fucked him.”

“First, fucked is just not a very nice word.” Cosmo stopped, chuckled, then rolled his eyes. “God, yes. Do you blame me? He’s beautiful.”

“I kind of blame you.” Corbin sighed and shook his head. “Still, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to go to breakfast, and—” Corbin stopped. “What if he can’t go through?”

“What?”

What did that even mean? Of course. Hawk could go through. Hawk was a dragon.

“Well, the other dragons can’t come through this way. We can meet them out there, but they can’t get through…”

“Oh.” Cosmo hadn’t considered that. “Fuck that’s bad.”

Not that Hawk couldn’t go out, but if Hawk went out, then Hawk couldn’t come back in. And if Hawk couldn’t go out and come in, then Hawk couldn’t be in his house, which was where Cosmo lived.

And Cosmo wasn’t living out there because his brothers lived in here and their whole, entire job was to guard this house.

Oh, this was a problem.

Was it fair to just not to talk about the veil with Hawk at all? To not show him where to go.

Seemed like the easiest answer.

“Well, I don’t like this at all,” Cosmo told his brother. “We have to fix this.”

Corbin’s lips twisted. “But if we fix it, then we open the veil again, and then dragons can come in and out at will, and I don’t think that’s the way this is supposed to work.”

“We don’t know how the hell anything’s supposed to work. We are just making this up as we go along, and we both know it. All three of us know it.” He was not going to scream. Not.

“True. But we have to at least pretend that we understand this, otherwise people won’t trust us when we let them come, and you know, tell them they have to go in. Everyone says that the dragons will come here to get into the veil.” Corbin always had an answer for everything.

Cosmo wasn’t sure what to even say about all this because there was also an opening to the Land of Summer, and he was pretty sure that the dragons weren’t supposed to go in there, even though Dad was in there. This was hurting his head. “How come nobody just lets you have sex and sleep anymore?”

“Do you want me to just bring you bacon?”

“Yeah. Can you just bring me, like, a lot of bacon? Possibly some pastries or something? I’m really hungry, and if I’m really hungry, then he’s got to be super hungry.”

“Of course. You know that I won’t let you starve. Much. And then, only when I’m mad at you.” Corbin stared into the bedroom again, then he got an evil grin. “Was it good?”

“Absolutely fucking stunning. I mean. Like whoa.”

Corbin groaned. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. Tell me what I want to hear.” He waggled his eyebrows at his brother.

“I am so jealous.”

He threw the door open and hugged his brother hard. Partially because he loved his weird, crazy elder brother, but mostly because it was really fun to hear Corbin squeal about bodily fluids because…naked!

Cullen would have been even more horrified, but he would take this.