Page 36 of Monster's Melody

His snakes simply dropped below the table and made their way to me, wrapping around my legs and heading north.

“Vorzak!”I hissed.

He gave me a ridiculously innocent look.

“Retract your snakes!”

“You know they do what they want.They don’t listen to me at all.”Still, he made a clicking sound and the snakes all popped their heads up from under the table and looked across it at him.

He glared back at them, and made another clicking sound.

They reared up a little higher and then engaged in what appeared to me to be a stare-down with Vorzak.

I swallowed a snicker.

My goddess, they were so damn cute.

Vorzak gestured at me, then clicked at them again.

As one, the snakes all turned their heads and looked at me.

I would swear they looked devastated, like I’d hurt their feelings or something.

Dangit!

I quickly started dropping kisses on their heads, which apparently gave them permission to continue on their way.

Luckily, none ducked back under the table, but instead, continued their paths northward.

Two wrapped around my arms, one around my torso, another around my neck and shoulders and the last one settled his head on top of mine.

Once again, I was wrapped in Vorzak’s serpents.

It made things a bit difficult to move, but since I was simply providing Vorzak all the background he needed to survive a semester in Extreme Water Sports Ed, I really didn’t need to move a whole lot.

Those first three days of classes pretty much set the pattern for the semester.

Dragon Riding 101 was utterly stressful because Vorzak’s snakes insisted on challenging the dragons every single class period.

Some days, they wouldn’t challenge them until the very end, but it always happened.

The end result was always chaos, with some dragons going on a rampage, some spewing fire, some taking off in flight, even if a student happened to be in the midst of climbing on their back or sliding from it.

For some reason, Vorzak’s snakes seemed to feel this meant they had won.

Culinary Delights saved my sanity on those days, as it allowed me to bake and eat my stress away in the afternoon hours.

Unfortunately, that was always followed by a tutoring session with Vorzak (and Mikaela and Elliot, not that they contributed much other than the kissing).

Even after I’d shared everything Vorzak had missed first semester, he insisted we continue to meet because he wasn’t feeling confident in either of the classes we had together.

Truthfully, it would be a miracle if he passed Dragon Riding.

He’d even tried covering his snakes with a giant scarf, but they’d apparently bitten him multiple times in the process.

He’d come to class that morning with tiny bite marks all over his face, neck and hands.

I really shouldn’t have laughed, but honestly, I just couldn’t help it.I kept picturing Vorzak trying to wrangle all five of his snakes into one scarf and getting bitten, over and over again, for his trouble.