Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Gate

"Where is she?"

"A runner came," Cassius said. His voice was flat and very quiet. "He said the Headmistress wanted me in her office at once, about the horns. I put Pip in her basket. I locked the door. I was gone ten minutes. The Headmistress never sent for anyone."

The lock on my door hung loose, scratched bright around the keyhole.

The room smelled like roses.

Delphine's rose water.

She wore so much of it you could smell where she'd been an hour later.

"She was in the Hall with me," I said. "The whole time."

"Then she sent someone."

He closed his eyes.

His head tilted.

"I can hear her," he said. "She's crying. That way."

He pointed through the wall, toward the front of the academy.

Toward the gate.

We ran.

My roommate was coming up the stairs with her fox, and saw our faces, and turned around and ran with us without a word.

At the bottom of the stairs, Jory was waiting.

"Delphine's maid," he said, out of breath. "She went out the side door with a covered basket. I followed her to the gate. Your father's carriage is there."

"Why are you telling me?"

"Run," he said, "and ask me later."

The academy gate was at the end of a long gravel drive, and the whole drive was full of students coming back from ranking day.

My father's black carriage stood just outside the iron bars with the horses stamping.

Delphine's maid was handing a covered basket up through the door.

From inside the basket came a high, thin wail.

Lorne stood beside the carriage step.

He saw us coming and planted himself in the middle of the gravel.

"Go back, Bri," he said. "It's your father's property. It always was."

"Move."

"I'm not letting you..."

Jory hit him.

Not with a fist.

He shifted mid-stride, a black wolf hitting a man in the chest, and they went down together in a spray of gravel, snarling.

Students screamed and scattered.

Cassius didn't slow down.

He reached the carriage and took hold of the door with both hands and pulled.

The hinges screamed.

The whole door came off and he threw it behind him onto the drive.

My father sat inside with the basket on his knees.

He looked up at Cassius, at the horns and the gold eyes, and for the first time in my life I saw him afraid.

"That's mine," my father said. "It came from my cellar."

"It came from my hatchery," Cassius said.

My father went gray.

I climbed up the carriage step past Cassius and took the basket off my father's knees.

He didn't try to stop me.

I pulled off the cloth.

Pip shot out of it, scrambled up my arm, wrapped herself around my neck and buried her face in my braid, shaking.

"It's all right," I said into her scales. "I've got you. I've got you."

I looked down at my father.

"You sent a maid to break into my room," I said. "In front of the whole academy, you're stealing a baby out of a basket."

The drive was full of faces.

Every student coming back from ranking day had stopped to watch.

My father looked at them all.

He looked at me.

"Drive," he snapped at the coachman.

The carriage lurched off down the road with no door, and his face in the gap.

On the gravel, Jory let go of Lorne and stepped back.

He shifted into a man again, bleeding from one ear.

Lorne got up, spat, and looked at his brother like he'd never seen him before.

Then he walked away toward Delphine, who was standing white-faced at the gate.

Jory didn't follow.

That night my room was full.

My roommate sat on her bed with her fox.

Jory stood by the window with a cloth pressed to his ear.

Pip was asleep in my lap, finally, after two honey cakes, because I gave up counting.

Cassius knelt by the little table and unfolded a sheet of paper.

"My steward sent this with his letter," he said. He held up a heavy gold ring with a dragon cut into the stone. "The seal of the Reach."

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