Page 16 of We Hunt the Night

“Wait!” Maz shouts behind me, and I pick up speed. “Dammit, you’re fast. Come on.”

I stop and spin, making him dig his boots into the academy floor to stop himself from crashing into me. “Look, you can flirt with me as much as you want, but you know it’s forbidden for us to have sex, so what is the point? I’m not going to sleep with you. I don’t know what game you’re playing, trying to be my friend and then turning around and siding with those insane fuckers inthere. You realize what happens if I get to the lower part of the board, right? Death.”

“Same thing happens to us if we get to the lower part of the board.” He hesitates. “There’s a reason why we can’t have dragon riders anymore.”

“Why?” I snap.

“I’m not allowed to say,” he murmurs low. “If we were to side with you, any of us, even me, it would change things. Things that cannot be changed back. I did not side with them because I do not want to be your friend. I do want to sleep with you, I’ll admit to that. But, goddess, hear my words, you’re gorgeous. What did you expect?”

I shake my head at him. His glasses fall slightly down his nose, and I step closer to push them up. “What’s with the glasses?”

His shoulders drop just a bit. “I’m going to get some food and we can talk about it. I guess we’re going to be bonded for life, and I might as well tell you before some other nosy fucker does. It’s not a secret; it’s more of a legendary tale in my clan. Even if we only keep the story for a little while longer.”

“Do you want it to be a little while? I mean, you’re the last dragons in existence. Surely you want to live and have more dragon babies,” I question as we begin to walk.

“With who? There are no female dragons left.” He shrugs. “Without a female dragon, a half dragon at least, there’s no future for our kind. It doesn’t work like that for dragons. We can rarely breed with witches, and it would rarely happen. I don’t know a record of a halfling in our history. We’ve accepted that we’re just the last. We have no plans to make a future generation, and maybe there shouldn’t be.”

I want to ask more about that, but we come out to a sprawling cafeteria, and it’s full of people. Dozens of students are spread out across the cafeteria, where there are three long servingcounters with glass displays and piles of trays to slide across the counter on the other side. It is fully staffed—with shifters, I think—but they are older and wearing all green.

He takes me over to one of the counters. “All the food’s free and I always try to eat as much as I can.” He explains, handing me a tray. I take it, looking at the food as we pass it, and my mouth waters. There’s everything from lovely golden eggs and sausages to bacon and toast, not just normal toast but French toast too, and cups of Nutella at the side. I grab one of the plates of French toast and one of the Nutella cups before putting a bunch of fruit on my plate and picking up a bottle of water. When I turn around, I’m surprised to see Maz has three plates of pancakes, one plate of waffles, far more fruit than I thought was even there, and eggs piled on top of it, and two bottles of water.

He follows my gaze and flashes me a grin. “I’m a dragon. I need more than this. I’m bigger than you.” He grins. “Don’t worry. I still look gorgeous when I’m eating all this.”

I just shake my head at him, but he makes me smile. He somehow makes what happened in class seem less awful. We go and sit at a table that’s empty, right in the corner, away from anyone else, and I’m thankful. Enough people are staring. I don’t want to sit down and have more questions thrown at me. We eat in silence for a long time, the minutes ticking by. The French toast is perfect and likely one of the nicest foods I’ve ever had. Melody always put me on diet after diet, claiming no one likes a woman with curves, so meals like this would have been out of the question.

Maz has finished a good portion of his meal when he pauses and looks up at me. “Tell me about you. Like where you lived and what you liked to do.”

I blink at the question. He wants to know about me? “I lived with my foster mother Melody, and she has a daughter who goes here. Her name is Rue,” I begin. “I love studying and?—”

“No, wait.” He stops. “Tell me something not many people know about. I don’t want the practiced speech you did to get in here.”

How did he know? “I like small creatures. I think the witch world is cruel to them and they shouldn’t be.”

He grins. “You’d fit in well with my foster family then—in fact, all the shifters. We believe the small creatures are the goddess’s eyes and we should treat them as such. I don’t think I’ve met a witch who doesn’t call them vermin.”

I wince at the word. “They aren’t that. I used to sneak out into the forest to leave food for them, potions that I know help them grow food in the forest. Sometimes they’d leave me rare ingredients for my potions. My classmates couldn’t figure out how I got them without money, and they hated that. It was amusing.” Maz laughs, and I chuckle with him, but my stomach turns to led when I sense my other bonded. I turn, seeing Vale walking in with Black, both of them deep in conversation. “I don’t think I can face Vale again in class if he’s gonna act like that to me.”

“He’s being a dick. He wants a rise out of you,” Maz deadpans. “But come on, Juni. You are a very fucking smart witch who got in here, so do something back and don’t tell me.”

I stare at him for a long moment. “I’m not sure where your loyalty lies, dragon.”

“My loyalty lies with the people that are back in our clan. My adopted clan that is. The shifters that grow up knowing there’s a very good chance that they’re going to be captured like dogs in a forest and forced into a war that is not our war.” His voice is quiet but loud enough that it carries to me but to no one else. He whispers a word, not a few words, in Latin, and the sound disappears from around us. The world goes silent. It’s an impressive spell to know and perform so well. “To be honest with you, you don’t know what you’ve walked into here at thisacademy. Many of the people back in the clans are not in good shape. We will attend every class because it sends food back to them. They starve otherwise.”

“I didn’t know?—”

“Witches mostly look the other way when it comes to us. You need us for the war, and we need you because we can’t leave the forest and therefore starve in it. Sometimes I think whoever wins in the end doesn’t matter.”

He looks at me for a long moment. “I was born in dragon form. It’s rare that dragons survive being born in dragon form, within an egg, but my mother did. It’s said that she had been ripped apart by a thousand spells, yet she still managed to fly away from the enchantress’s army, from the Mindless that were pulling her down. She got up into the sky. I think she wanted to land somewhere with me, to give birth to me. She was already in labor, but she couldn’t get to somewhere safe. The enchantress has a dragon Mindless too, and one flew up to the sky, right towards my mother.” My hands tremble slightly, and I tuck them onto my lap. His poor mother. The enchantress has Mindless dragons? “She gave birth mid-air, and the egg fell into the trees, smashing. When the egg smashed, the branches scarred me in dragon form when I was a newly born dragon baby, and I lost my sight. I’ve never been able to see in dragon form, but in my human form, these glasses are heavily spelled so I can see. If I take them off, I will not see a thing.”

“I’m so, so sorry.” I reach across and touch his hand. Electricity spikes through our touch, and I almost gasp. He locks eyes with me as he turns his hand, linking our fingers softly. “That’s awful, Maz.”

“Yes. That’s why I always try to be happy, because I’m a miracle and I want to make sure that my people survive this, like the wolf shifter who ran into the forest, picked me up in a forest full of Mindless, and carried me out.” He shrugs. “I was taughtto be brave like my mother. Like him. Like my father, who died before he knew my mother was pregnant.”

“And why don’t you fight in the war? Surely, if the war’s over, your people will be free too,” I whisper.

“When the war’s over, it’s over for witches only.” He looks right at me, taking his hand away. “Whoever told you that there was only one war lied. There’s another, and I am on my people’s side. I’ll never be on the witches’. Not even for you.”

Why do I feel like I’ve heard that before?

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