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Corbin looked at him. “Are you okay? You seem…restless.”

“I think I am. I don’t know what to do about Hawk.”

“What about him? I thought you were like all over the thing with him. Like super happy.”

“I am, and I’m not gonna get rid of him or anything. I mean. I love him so much already, but I just—don’t know how to deal with some of the stuff that’s going on in my head. You know?”

“Wait, you have a brain?”

“Oh, shut up, you asshole.” He frowned thunderously, and Corbin held his hands up.

“Joking. Joking. Wow, you’re really caught up in this guy, if you can’t take a joke.”

“Well, I am. I mean, I really am!” And he found himself dangerously close to tears, which really pissed him off. He threw one hand up and stormed to the fridge. “Never fucking mind, I’m fine. I just need a drink.”

There was silence from behind him, and Cosmo was going to have an absolute temper tantrum if his brother just walked off and left him when he was in a snit and didn’t even say he was sorry or anything, when familiar arms wrapped around him, hugging him tight.

“Dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that it was this big.”

Not bad. Corbin hadn’t said bad, and that was a huge jump forward for his stubborn brother.

“It really is. You don’t understand. He’s willing to stay here and never cross over just to be with me because I want to be with you both.”

“Well, you know that if you needed to…” Corbin couldn’t even finish the sentence before Cosmo was shaking his head.

“But we all know I can’t. None of us can. This isn’t about what we wanted. No one ever asked us. You do understand that, right?No one asked us because we never had a choice. We were always going to be the next Guardians.”

“Did Hawk tell you that?”

“No. No, but I’m not stupid. I have enough sense to know when I hear the stories about the other guardians of the other places—when they were all half dragon and half something else, or half something and half something else and there was always three of them—Aren’t you listening?”

Corbin stared at him. “Yeah. I’m listening.”

“Aren’t you mad?”

Cosmo was, and he wasn’t even sure absolutely one hundred percent why, but he knew he was mad.

Possibly because nobody had given them any choice and warned them, even though there really wasn’t anybody to warn them, because they’d already been stuck in this job before Hawk was there to explain to them what the history was so that he could figure out that they were fucked.

Cullen came down, frowning. “What the hell are you guys screaming about?”

“I’m not screaming.” Corbin pointed out. “That’s Cosmo. He’s very angry.”

“Obvi. What the fuck is going on?”

“None of you are listening to me! We’ve trapped Hawk here. Completely by accident.”

“No, we haven’t. Nobody did anything. He can go.”

Cosmo was going to hit Cullen in the face. Bang.

It was less fun than normal to hit Cullen in the face because, well, he was already purple. So when he bruised, he just sort of got a little darker. It wasn’t particularly colorful, so that wasn’t near as satisfying, but the sound, just the sound of going whack?—

“No hitting.” Corbin sighed. “I really think you need a drink.”

“I really do.” Cosmo sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. Hard.

“I got you.” Cullen went to the fridge to pull out milk, then grabbed the Mexican hot chocolate stuff. Oh. Hot cocoa would be good.