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She looks up at me, resting on my chest with her chin on her crossed hands. “Why won’t you teach me?”

“You want me to teach you to fly?”

“Yes, I would so much rather you than him. At least when you’re mean and grumpy it might be hot. I don’t think that guy has ever had sex. Does he even know what it means?”

“Teaching flying involves strictness and sternness. I imagine you had enough of that from me already, no?”

“Why can’t any of you just relax?”

“Because when wejust relax, people have a tendency to sprout wings, steal horses, uncover lost artifacts, and fall from the sky all in the course of twenty-four hours. You are chaos incarnate, my mate, and there is absolutely no relaxing around you.”

“Well, I don’t like the sound of that at all,” she frowns. “That’s what you think of me? You think I’m a big chaotic mess?”

“You are not a big mess, but you are chaotic. The truth is often hard to hear, but you knew it already, didn’t you. You knew it when you were racking up fines in college, and before then too, I’d bet. You’ve always needed some semblance of real order, and now you have it. So yes, you will attend flying instruction, because it is good for you.”

Melissa

I suddenly feel like a little girl who doesn’t want to go to school. It’s strange, because I never felt that way in the past. I loved going to school. It was where my friends were, and where adults had to at least pretend they cared.

All the feelings Ornix stirs in me feel new. He makes me want him in a way I’ve never wanted anyone. He makes me want to run, because I know that he has already changed me forever, and he’s going to change me even more before he is done. He makes me want to stay, because underneath it all, I like the way I am changing.

He wraps his arms around me and snugs me tighter, giving me some physical comfort after all I have suffered in the flying class. It’s like being cuddled by a heater. Just being in contact with him makes me relax.

“I like seeing you like this,” he says. “This feels very real.”

I know what he means. It’s an almost mundane interaction compared to everything else we have been through. All the seal stuff, all the wings, the scares, the dramas. This is just coming home after a long day of bullshit and being cared for.

I close my eyes and I let him hold me for a while. I find myself starting to feel better. More energy, less like I’ve just been drained. It would be so much better if I could just stay with Ornix. I mean, I guess I’m still planning my imminent escape,but other than that, being with him all the time feels amazing. I wonder if I can escape and still come back somehow.

“You really won’t take over and teach me how to fly yourself?”

“You’re going to keep going to the classes,” he rumbles, rubbing my ass with the flat of his hand. “You’re going to do what the instructor says, and you’re going to suffer the consequences if you don’t. Think of it as a do-over from college, all the times you got away with things there, you won’t here.”

“You’re saying he can punish me?”

“Ican punish you,” he growls. “Nobody else can touch you.”

“Well, he said that if we didn’t obey, there’d be consequences. He said he’d ground us. I am grounded, by the way. I couldn’t stop flying every time I opened my wings. And every time I opened them, he pulled me back down on that damn chain.”

Ornix smirks. “I don’t know if you have as much control as a typical whelp would. Wings are tricky at first, and you have some strange human version of them. It’s not going to be easy.”

“That’s why you have me in a baby class learning how to fly with creatures who still think that farts are funny.”

Ornix smiles at me. “Best place for you. There’s total supervision, and they’re used to mischievous brats who make trouble and almost kill themselves. It’s the first time you’ve used your wings without injury, isn’t it?”

“I guess?”

“Then yes, you keep going.”

“Well, I can’t go tomorrow.”

“Why not?” He asks the question indulgently, running his hand down my back and then down over my butt in a soothing motion.

“I have to go to the human world with you and find the seal, remember? If we don’t find the seal very soon, everything will be bad forever. So I can’t go back to flight school tomorrow. I have to go to the human world and find the seal.”

“Mhm. Well, I wanted you to recover somewhat before we did that. And those wings of yours are hard to hide. I don’t know that taking you back to the human world is really an option.”

“What?”