Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Last Thread
Jory nodded.
He didn't argue.
He didn't tell me I loved him, the way Lorne had.
"Watch the honey cakes," he said, and walked away down the dark hall.
I shut the door and leaned on it.
"He meant it," Cassius said.
"I know."
"You still said no."
"Meaning it isn't the same as doing it."
He was quiet for a second.
"Fair," he said.
The second qualifier was three days later.
On the morning of the match I went to the kitchen at five, the way I always did, and the cook was standing over a tray of honey cakes with her nose wrinkled.
"Did you make these?" she said.
"No."
"Didn't think so. You don't burn your bottoms." She broke one open and sniffed it. "Somebody's put sleepwort in them. You can smell it under the honey if you know what you're smelling. It's like wet hay."
"Who brought them?"
"The kitchen boy says a tall fellow with silver hair gave him a crown to put them on your shelf. Said they were a gift for your snake."
Cassius, behind me, made a low sound that I felt in my teeth.
"I'll throw them out," the cook said.
"No," I said. "Wrap them up. I'll want them later."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she wrapped them in a cloth and tied it with string, and didn't ask why.
We won the match before lunch.
Two keepers, twins, with a boar shifter the size of a cart.
It charged.
Cassius let it, and slid aside at the last second, and the boar went headfirst into the arena wall and sat down, dazed.
The whole thing took under a minute.
His stone on the scoring wall flickered up to C.
People cheered this time.
Real cheers.
My roommate screamed my name from the third row and waved her ribbons, and her fox howled along with her.
The wolves won their match too.
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