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I watched, curiously, as his gaze zoned in on Velra who’d sat down a couple of seats over from me, all of us spacing out along the length of the row. His eyes fixed on her and the corner of his mouth turned up, before he then sank into a seat right beside her on herleft side, his biceps brushing her as he did.

A hiss of indignation escaped her, but it only made his devious smile widen. “Really something, aren’t you,Wraithqueen.”

Hmm.He’d figured out what she was immediately.

She glared at him, a puff of ice smoke whispering across his face.

It had obviously been intended to bother him, but he groaned instead, and reveled in it.

“Is that what you do with all those you’re charmed by?” he asked her with a devilish wink.

“Not picking up on anything even remotely close to charm,Fangboy.”

Darian burst out laughing.

Lazriel stared into her haunting amethyst eyes. “Not bad. But I’m Grade A prime wolf first and foremost, actually, love. We’ll work on it.”

Warlow let out a barely perceptible low growl that had Lazriel jarring, then snapping his attention to the Speaker’s Circle.

It had been some sort of wolf command, a show of wolf-like authority that Warlow had needed to employ with him.

It absolutely worked, Lazriel settling down from then on out—aside from a few sneaking glances at Velra every now and then.

The meeting progressed, all of us getting down to business.

“You all know why you’re here, so now let’s discuss the Three Pillars of Crossborn. These will be our goals at the outset.Howwe will achieve said goals is something we will decide upon together, bringing each of our unique hybrid experiences to the table.” He took a beat, then went on, “The Three Pillars are as follows. Identification, which involves finding hybrids who are either hidden or being held captive. Advocacy, which will include assisting them to navigate the supernatural world in all areas necessary. Protection, which will encompass any physical threat, as well as ensuring the law evolves to safeguard hybrid beings, too. We’re also going to discussyourthoughts about hybrid needs so we can begin to alter the way that current supernatural governance fails to account for hybrid physiology or magic. We’ll even partner with Ryker Morgan to conduct an overview of syllabus alterations at academies, and Mia Snow regarding Coven curriculums, as well as even the Unity Council to better account for hybrid needs. We aim to create a world where hybrids not only survive, but thrive.”

He'd barely uttered the last word, when applause rang out and we were all clapping and cheering.

Years we’d been hoping for a change like this.

And now, here it was—and herewewere—about to start on the road toward making that an actual reality.

I couldn’t believe it.

But I was undoubtedly here for it.

23

~Kai~

Vorzyr whistled as he took in my lab within the caves a few miles from Maven Academy.

“This is an impressive set up,” I heard him say, as I brought one of the copies of Ariana’s Unity Council test into being, then levitated the golden scroll in front of me in the center of the room, ready for us to get down to work.

I snuck a glance at Ariana who was also looking around, but then she drew close to the site of my latest experiment that involvedher.

Sure enough, she zeroed in on trace elements of her magic present in one of the beakers, obviously feeling it. She frowned in thought for several moments, trying to gauge the overall picture, then she looked out at me. “You need a stabilizing agent.”

“Excuse me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Please, Kai. It’s clear that you were trying to find a way to create a shield against my magic in a much broader way than the anti-magical mind melding ability you developed to protect yourself from my energy surges during sex, when I let go—and Nyx’s allure. When you told me you wantedto experiment more with that ability with me via some down and dirty fucking, itdidcross my mind that it was about more than that for you.”

“Right, well, it didn’t work. I’ve tried a couple of other things since. Using drops of your blood which I obtained after V cut you during our session outsidePolaris.Even that didn’t work. And, there’s no stabilizing agent to Celestial magic, so that’s also off the table.”

“You’re looking at this puzzle purely from a magical lens. There’s more involved with Celestial magic. I don’t even know the whole deal there because of all the secrecy involved and the severe lack of information available on anything Celestial, hence us having to come here to figure out that test and see if it’s tied into the subconscious symbols I’ve been drawing every now and then with my shadow weaving.Butone thing I’m certain of is that one stabilizing agent iswill.”

“Will?” V asked, turning from checking out everything and coming to us, folding his arms across his chest as he stood between me and Ariana, settling in.