Chapter 19

We were headed to another breach. We’d been called out to at least one or two every day this week. It was crazy. And exhausting.

“Can we try it this time, Mads?” Logan asked me, without preamble, once we were in the TRD truck.

But I didn’t need him to explain what he meant. I knew exactly what he was talking about. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Yes. The only way I’ll know if we have to tweak the spells is if we try them.”

I gave him a nod. “True. Okay, if there aren’t any witches there, and Cos and Jude think it’s okay, then I say yes.”

“I’m okay with it,” Jude said.

“It isn’t nice to eavesdrop,” I said automatically, and my dyad held up a middle finger at me without turning around in his seat up front.

Logan snorted. “What about you, Cos?”

My mate mulled it over for a few beats before saying, “As long as Mads and Jude think it’s a good idea, I’m fine with it.”

Logan turned back to me with a huge smile on his face. “This is going to work.”

I smiled back and couldn’t help but hope he was right. I didn’t want to see him sad or disappointed if it didn’t.

Logan had already explained to our team exactly what he’d been working on, and earlier this week, we’d told Simon’s team since they were always with us on breaches. Most of the shifters seemed to think it wasn’t possible, but everyone was willing to let Logan and Wren try.

It was impossible for anyone not to love Logan and Wren and to try to make the cute kids happy, so I wasn’t surprised with how easily they all agreed.

I mean, really, all they’d have to do is just stand there and wait, so they shouldn’t mind anyway.

The tear was only an eight-minute drive away, so when we arrived, only four taragorians had come through the tear, which was great news. As soon as we piled out of the truck, Ash, Wren, Logan, and I were on top of catching them.

We also placed tear-closing weaves along the edges of the tear to stop it from getting bigger. We weren’t closing it yet since we needed it for Lo’s spells, but we also weren’t about to let things get out of control, either.

“You have the paper?” I asked Lo.

He nodded. “Yep.”

I glanced around, and Jude gave me the go-ahead nod, so I said, “Awesome. Get to it, ce’oso.” He bit his bottom lip, so I gave him a small nudge and a smile. “You know it’s okay if it doesn’t work, right?”

He let out a long sigh. “I know. I just… really want it to.”

With a soft smile, I gave him a side-hug. “Do you want me to come with you?”

He stared at me for a long moment, and even though he was older and grown now, I swore it was the sweet little kid Jude and I had rescued from the side of the road staring back at me. His eyes searched mine for a long moment before he nodded. “You don’t mind?”

I scoffed. “You think I mind testing out brand-new spells? Do you know me?”

With a snort and an eye-roll, most of his nerves seemed to flee, and he nudged me over to the edge of my shield.

He looked over his shoulder and asked, “Wren? You’re coming, too, right?”

Wren sent him a grin and a nod and joined us at the edge of my shield.

I opened it up so we could pass through, then sealed everyone else up tight and anchored it to the ground as I slung a new shield around the three of us.

Cos caught my eye and sent me a wink that made me smile. For some reason, it sorta felt like my cheeks heated. Which was stupid. Why the hell would my mate winking at me make me blush? I felt like an idiot, but Cos sent me a wave of love and affection, and maybe just an ounce of amusement, my way, so I shook it off as best I could. And tried to ignore the fact that the bond was making me want to walk back over there and just, like, climb on him and cling to him like a monkey.

I internally sighed at my own ridiculousness.

Logan, Wren, and I approached the veil tear because we needed to be close to test Lo’s spells out. Lo pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and ripped it into three pieces before glancing at us.

“Ready?”

“Which one do you want to do first?” Wren asked.

“How about the one with slice in it?”

Wren and I nodded, and I said, “Sounds good. You want to do that one by yourself or do you want us to help?”

“I think I got it. This one isn’t as complicated as the others.”

We nodded again, Logan handed me the extra pieces of paper, and we stood to the side to watch Logan work. He had his Bo in one hand and the paper in the other, and I watched as runes lit up on the staff as he expertly weaved the spell together.

The spell formed a sort of shield around the paper, so Logan was able to release the paper, and it was surrounded with a ball of magic.

Once he was ready, Lo took a breath, gave us a nod, and used air and fly to send the ball toward the veil tear. At first, I thought it was going to work. It sort of pressed in a little bit before the ball burst and the paper singed into ash quicker than any of us could react to pull it back.

“Fuck!” Logan yelled in frustration.

He looked like he was about to freak out, so I grabbed his arm and said, “It’s okay. We have two more to try. Move on to the next one before more beasties come out.”

He took a very deep breath, let it out, then nodded and took another piece of paper from me. Wren and I watched as he worked a more complicated spell around the paper, forming another ball around it.

He floated the paper toward the tear, and this time, the second it touched the tear, it popped. And because Lo was pushing with his magic, it had too much momentum for him to pull the paper back before the whole thing burnt to a crisp against the tear.

“No, no, no, no, no. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Logan said, sort of mumbling to himself but getting louder as he went.

“Hey. Hey, ce’oso, it’s okay.” I moved closer to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He was worrying me with how upset he was getting. I had to shake him a little to get him to look at me. “It’s okay, Logan. I promise it’s okay. Please calm down, kiddo. It’s okay that it didn’t work. That’s just part of the process when creating new weaves. And we still have one more left to try.”

Wren came up on the other side of Logan and wrapped their arm around his waist. The two of them were the same height, but for some reason I never really realized it. I always thought Wren was smaller. Wren rested their head on Lo’s shoulder and said in their sweet voice, “Let’s try the last one. Remember that today’s about seeing what works and what doesn’t. It isn’t about finding the right spell right now. It’s trial and error, right? And we already have an idea of what works better. So let’s try the third one and see what we need to do to improve the spell. Yeah?”

Logan took another breath, gave us both a squeeze, and said, “Yeah, okay. Let’s do the last one.”

Right as he finished speaking, I watched as a giant green arm pushed its way through the veil tear right in front of us. I yanked my two pride mates back, pulling them and my shield out of the way. Yeah, the shield would protect us, but I didn’t exactly want to be knocked around by a giant taragorian if I could help it.

We stood there, waiting for it to pass all the way through, and I couldn’t help but frown. The beastie was taking forever, and it almost felt like he changed his mind halfway through or something. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I wished he’d just come through already.

We’d been here for far longer than we usually would be, and we’d left the tear open way too long. I was surprised we hadn’t had more beasts coming through before now. Hopefully we’d stay lucky. And at least the tear wasn’t growing on us.

Once it was finally all the way through, I was about to form a shield and catch the thing, but Wren was quicker than me. They weaved a shield and pushed it out over the top of the green taragorian. As soon as it was far enough away from the tear, Wren placed the shield over it as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do.

When I glanced at them, they sent me a small shrug and a smile, saying, “You already have a lot of runes going, so I figured I’d help out.”

I smiled. “I appreciate it.” And I was hella proud of the kiddo. They were really a force to be reckoned with these days. I gestured to the tear. “Shall we?”

Logan blew out a breath. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

We approached the tear, and I passed Logan the last piece of paper. He blew out a long breath before activating runes on his Bo. Wren and I stood beside him, watching him work. This spell was different than the others because Logan had found some new information in one of the old magi tomes he had—the ones he’d gotten from the compound when Jude was poisoned by that tarasecta thing.

This shield also had a little bit of an offensive component that the other two spells hadn’t had. It sort of pushed back if you touched it. That way it could hopefully push through the part of the tear that seemed impassable.

Logan’s theory about how the tear worked was that there were two layers and each of those layers were like doors that only opened one way. When the tear happened, the doors that opened into our world unlocked and opened, but the doors that opened back into the Tarago realm were not.

So Logan’s theory with this spell was to sort of push open those other doors so the taragorians could pass back through.

I was really hoping he was right.

He was going to be disappointed and beat himself up if he wasn’t.

I crossed my fingers behind my back and was pretty sure all three of us were holding our breath as the paper’s shield touched the veil tear. I waited with bated breath, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. Logan added more force into his air and fly, trying his best to push the paper forward, and to my utter surprise, it moved. And then it kept going.

I bent down to see if I could look through the bubble around the paper and into the other realm, but it just looked dark and honestly felt really creepy. I wasn’t sure if it was my mind playing tricks on me or if the Tarago realm was truly giving off a creep factor, but I didn’t like the feeling at all. So I straightened and watched Logan’s magic.

He was going slowly, but the paper and its bubble moved smoothly, as if there was nothing in its way. He pushed it through farther and farther until it passed all the way through, disappearing as the veil closed behind it.

Logan took a breath and shook himself out, and I rubbed his back.

“What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. It just felt weird when the tear closed behind the shield. It cut my magic off, and I felt the spell sort of snap and disappear, but it just felt… cold. And strange.”

“Did it hurt?” Wren asked.

That was a great question. It seemed like it would hurt to have your magic cut off like that.

Lo shook his head. “Not really. Maybe a small twinge when the spell broke up, but no. It was fine. Like I said, it just felt weird. And cold.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by cold, but… I was sure I’d find out. Because if this worked on a piece of paper, surely it would work on a taragorian.

I grabbed Logan by the shoulders. “Ce’oso, it worked. You did it!”

A slow smile spread over his lips. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Wren swooped in and gave Logan such a big hug, they picked him off his feet and made him laugh. “Holy crap, you were awesome, Lo!”

“Thanks, Wren.”

After Wren released him, I laughed and gave him a small shake. “Let’s try it on a taragorian.”

He cringed. “What if it’s different on a living thing?”

I shrugged. “We won’t know until we try it, and I don’t think we should try it on anything else. I don’t want to mess up their world or anything.” Who knew what the consequences were of pushing random things through the veil to the Tarago realm? Especially living things like plants, bugs, or small animals. We were doing this to help save taragorians, but what good was that if we fucked up their environment?

He nodded but looked unsure.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to kill one if something goes wrong.”

The taragorians on this side of the veil were going to die anyway, but… I understood what he meant. It was bad enough being the people who captured the beasts and only let them go to be attacked by shifters. It was a totally different thing for us to push them through the tear and be the ones to actually hurt them.

“Do you want me to do the spell on the first one?”

He stared at me for a few seconds. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all.” The truth was, if it didn’t work and I ended up hurting a taragorian, I was going to be devastated. But… Logan didn’t need to know that, and I’d much rather take on that guilt myself than have him or Wren do it.

“Thank you.”

I gave him a nod, then ushered him and Wren toward the beastie Wren had just caught a few minutes ago. “Let’s try it on this guy.” I tried to sound eager and unbothered, and since neither of them said anything, I suppose I managed it.

We all agreed, and I glanced at Jude to activate the right spells. Wren opened up a hole in their shield so I could slip my own spell inside. I took a breath as I worked the weave around the taragorian.

I had it surrounding him everywhere except under his feet. I had no idea how to get the spell under there. Crap.

Luckily, Wren and Logan figured it out for me. They both started banging on Wren’s shield to get the beast’s attention, and it lifted a foot to step closer. I slipped the spell underneath it, then groaned out loud when the massive thing stepped right on my spell work. It did not feel good.

It took another minute for the beast to move his other foot, and when he did, I finally closed the spell all the way around the entire beast. Then I activated three of each air and fly. I needed that much because a taragorian weighed a ton.

With as much power as possible, I used all my airs and flies to push the beast toward the tear. Wren dropped their shield since I had full control of the taragorian, and the three of us stood there and watched as I very slowly pushed the monster back through the veil tear and back to its home.

As soon as it was through, I felt my magic almost pop. There was a split-second of a small spike of pain—nothing more than what a tiny backlash hit felt like—but then it faded almost as quickly as it’d come. And a strange cold sensation seemed to wash over my entire body.

I’d expected it to feel invasive or wrong, maybe… evil. But instead, it felt invigorating. It felt almost friendly, happy, and excited. If a sensation could be sentient, anyway.

The three of us looked at each other before we all screamed in a loud cheer, throwing our arms around one another and jumping up and down as if we were on a football team and had just won the Superbowl.

Except this felt even better because it meant we could save the lives of the taragorians we came across.

Our family and friends were cheering behind us just as loudly.

Holy shit. We could save taragorians. We. Could. Save. Them.

The only problem was… did we really want the NHSO to have this information? We were going to have to do a report and explain why we’d been gone for so long today, and yet, there were no taragorian bodies. That was the key, really. What were we going to say? That the tear here was super small so no taragorians got through? Would they believe that? Especially with how long we’d been here.

But that was a worry for after we got this done.

We parted, all smiles and excitement, and I said, “Let’s get the rest of these bad boys out of here and back home.”

Logan smiled at me, and the two of them took off toward the closest shielded taragorians. I walked over to one as well and went through the same process. We were going to have to find a better way to get the spell under their feet because it took too long when we had to wait for them to lift their feet.

But again, that was a worry for another day.

Wren and I silently made the decision to let Logan go next since it was his spell. So we stood back with our beasts wrapped up in Logan’s spell while we waited our turn—this tear wasn’t big enough to send two through at the same time.

Logan pushed his taragorian through slowly, and when he finished and faced us, his smile rivaled the one he wore when he and Haiden had come back home after they’d tied. He was so damn happy, so damn proud, and I was fucking proud of him, too.

“Proud of you,” I said as he walked past me to collect the last beast.

He shot me a grin but didn’t reply otherwise.

Wren went next with their beast. They moved slowly, too, but a little faster than Logan had. Their smile was huge also, and they turned to me and asked, “Do you think it matters how fast we push them through?”

I shrugged. “Not sure. Probably not, but I guess we’ll have to try going a little faster and see?”

They nodded. I didn’t want to force the issue and hurt a beast unnecessarily, but I also knew time was of the essence. The longer we kept a tear open, the better chance we had of being overrun by taragorians. Not to mention, the tear itself could grow big enough to let one of those tarasectas come through. We definitely didn’t want that.

Not at all. We couldn’t risk it.

So… we’d have to risk the taragorians themselves and see if we could push them through faster. I decided to try mine a little faster this time. I moved forward and pushed mine through. It was still slow but much faster than before.

It worked. My guy went through without a hitch. Thank the goddess.

“I went faster,” I yelled over to Wren and Logan, and they both nodded back. “It went fine. It felt exactly the same, so I doubt speed matters.”

Logan pulled his taragorian along. “Okay. Let’s try a little faster with this guy.”

I was hesitant because I didn’t want anything to go wrong, but I knew there was no point in arguing. He already had the beast wrapped up and ready to go. What was I going to do? Ask him to undo all his hard work just so I could redo the exact same thing and be the one to push him through quickly? Goddess, I could imagine exactly how that would go, and it wouldn’t end well for me at all.

So I stepped back and let him push the beast through the veil tear. He went even faster than I had, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it made it through easily. That was it. All the taragorians that’d come through were home and… safe.

The three of us looked at each other, and I smiled widely as Logan and Wren sort of jumped and squealed or something. They sounded like teenagers, and it made me chuckle as I focused on the veil tear. I glanced at Ash and gave him a nod, and the two of us started closing the tear.

It didn’t take Lo and Wren long to figure out what we were doing, and soon all four of us were closing the tear. Working together with my family members made the experience so seamless, so easy. It felt right in a way that working with other magi never had.

Wren, Ash, and Logan’s magics all mixed with mine—and with each other’s—so well that it felt like we’d been casting magic together our entire lives.

I liked it.

Once the tear was closed and Cos confirmed that there was no sign of other taragorians in the area, I dropped my shields and everyone ran up to Logan to congratulate him and give him scents, hugs, and head and cheek kisses. They did the same to Wren, too.

I stepped back to give everyone room, and as soon as Cos was done scenting Logan and Wren, he made his way over to me. He threw his arm over my shoulders, and I leaned into him easily, our bond almost sparking between us at the connection after being apart for even that long. I hummed and scooted even closer to him.

“You okay?” he murmured, too quiet for anyone else to hear even if they had shifter senses.

I nodded. “Yes. I was stressed out because I didn’t want to hurt them, but I’m good now. I’m so happy something worked.”

“Me, too. I think Logan needed that.”

I nodded in agreement, and after a brief pause, I said, “What are we going to tell the NHSO? They’re bound to notice the lack of taragorian bodies, and I wouldn’t put it past anyone to record us. We have to tell them before they find out another way.”

“I agree, but I don’t know how to tell them that we can’t send other things through the tear. I mean… we literally just sent a piece of paper through.”

I grimaced. “We’re going to have to lie. I… I don’t want them sending people or robots or whatever over there and damaging another realm, you know? Our people, they… they destroy things in the name of science. After everything we’d heard the humans doing to shifters, magi, and even taragorians, I just can’t imagine what they’d do if they were ever able to go over there.”

It was like these people in power always, always, always wanted more. It didn’t matter what that more was, and it definitely didn’t matter how they got it, they just wanted more. More power, more money, more gadgets, more, more, more, more.

And I really didn’t want that more to become the Tarago realm.

Taragorians might’ve been terrorizing our world for over two decades, but that didn’t mean we should go into their world and mess with it, possibly hurt or destroy it. No way. We couldn’t let that happen.

Cos sighed and murmured, “I agree with you. So what do we say?”

I shrugged. “I guess we keep it simple. Tell them the spell only works on taragorians because they’re from that realm. Like… maybe say that we hook the spell onto their hides and into their DNA so that’s the only reason it works. Or something like that. They can’t see our magic, so we can tell them whatever we want. I’ll talk to Logan to get his opinion.”

“Sounds good to me.”

I grinned up at him and gave him a nudge that he probably barely felt considering he’d hardly moved.

No one liked having to kill the creatures, so this new spell was going to bring great things to the magi and shifters who worked to protect the city. We weren’t going to be able to use it every time. There were going to be times where there were too many taragorians running around, times where they were too far away from the tear, or times when there were too many coming through the tear so we would have to close it up as soon as possible and wouldn’t be able to leave it open for this spell.

We were still going to have to kill some of the taragorians.

But at least now that we had this in our arsenal, we could use it whenever we could. We could save the lives of many of the poor monsters from another realm.

This was going to be amazing.

As long as we didn’t let the NHSO abuse this new power.

The last thing we needed was having them hold a magi captive and force them to push a robot or a person through a damn tear. Or to have them try to open it up themselves.

But they wouldn’t do that, right?

They learned their lesson with the First Veil Tear, right? They knew how dangerous it was to mess with things humans weren’t meant to mess with.

Right?

No. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t do something like that. Not even the NHSO was that stupid…

I hoped.

Logan ran over and gave me a hug, squeezing tightly. “Thank you for helping me.”

I shrugged. “You know I’ll help you anytime I can.”

“I know.”

That made me grin into his shoulder.

He released me, and Cos pulled him into a hug, whispering sweet things and saying how proud he was into his ear. When Logan pulled back, he was red as a tomato but also so damn happy. It was sweet.

Logan ran over to his own mate, and Haiden wrapped him in his arms, a huge smile on the tiger’s face.

“Ready to head back?” my mate asked me, holding out his elbow.

I snorted. What a dork. “Sure.” But even though he was being a dork, I still stepped up to him and slipped my hand through his elbow for the short walk.

He gave the top of my head a nuzzle before leading me over to the TRD truck. I climbed into the back, and Cos went to the driver’s seat. Sometimes, I admittedly missed having him back here with me, but I also liked seeing him up there and knowing he was in charge of our team. Well, him and Jude were, which was even better than only one of them in charge.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the two of them would lead our team well.

As soon aswe got home, Cos called an emergency SWC meeting with everyone in the Magi Division, which meant Jude had to be there, too. Logan, Wren, and I also crammed into Cosmo’s office to be a part of it since we were the ones who did the spell.

Everyone seemed shocked when we told them, and I swore it didn’t look like they believed us. But since we did, in fact, have vid footage taken off a security camera that’d been aimed at the street, we were able to show them. Luckily, we confiscated the vid before anyone else even knew it existed.

We didn’t show the part where we used paper. We’d erased that as soon as we’d gotten the vid because we didn’t want it getting out that other things could pass through the veil. The evidence of that was gone, and none of us were going to even mention it to anyone outside the pride or Simon’s pride.

“Holy shit.” That was Councilor Emilia Artigas of the People’s Liberation Union, who was probably Cosmo’s closest ally on the SWC, as soon as the vid ended. She sort of cringed a bit when she realized she’d said that out loud. I’d heard her curse when it was just her and Cos on a call, but I was sure she didn’t act that way in front of the others. “I can’t believe it. I never…” She shook her head, then made fierce eye contact with the vid, although I wasn’t sure which one of us she was actually looking at. “Logan Ono-Nai, this is phenomenal work. You have my deepest gratitude for sharing it with us.” She put her hand over her heart and did a sort of small head bow.

Logan’s eyes widened, and he glanced at me for help. I reached over and squeezed his biceps, leaving my hand there before facing the holoscreen. “Thank you, Councilor Artigas. We appreciate that, and we ask again for your discretion.”

She did another small bow. “Of course. We will only pass this along to a few trusted magi and send them to you to learn the spell if they’re interested. And we will absolutely be sure everyone knows it only works on taragorians.”

She knew the truth, of course. She was a shifter like most of the others, so we could’ve lied to most of this group, but it would be impossible to hide it from the very people who would be weaving the spell together. Any magi who came to us to learn the spell would be able to tell. So we’d told them and already impressed on the entire group that we didn’t want the governments knowing the truth, especially not the US human leaders.

I didn’t exactly feel good about lying to the humans about it, but I also felt like we should try to protect the Tarago realm and all the taragorians. I couldn’t even imagine what the veil tears had done to their ecosystem. With so many taragorians coming over to our side never to return, we could’ve already done irreparable damage to their world. I hoped we didn’t, but I definitely didn’t want to be responsible for doing any more damage than we already had.

It seemed like everyone in the SWC Magi Division agreed with us, which was a relief. Again, I didn’t love lying to the human government, but it seemed like it was a necessary evil to protect a realm that was innocent in all of this. It certainly wasn’t their fault we’d opened a tear they could come through.

First Councilor Callum Stewart, who Cos actually liked for the most part, cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Ono-Nai pride, for sharing your discovery. It’s truly remarkable. I agree with your analysis of the situation, and seeing as I speak for the whole of the SWC, I will ensure that we stick to your narrative. No shifter outside of this call will be told otherwise, but I leave it up to you to spread the word to your fellow magi as you see fit.”

“Thank you, First Councilor Stewart,” Cos said.

Jude added, “We appreciate that, sir.”

Then the two of them started talking about specifics, and I sort of… tuned out. This was exactly why I never wanted to be involved in these sorts of politics. I didn’t have the patience for it.

Logan shoulder-bumped me and smirked, murmuring out of the side of his mouth. “At least look like you’re paying attention.”

“I can’t help it.” I kept my voice as quiet as possible and kept my lips from moving as best I could. I wasn’t even sure if he could understand my mumbling.

He let out a quiet snort and shoulder-bumped me again, so I sighed and tried to refocus.

It only lasted about thirty seconds before my mind wandered again, and Wren had to poke me back to focus. Ugh. At least I had two cute magi kids here to keep me in line.

I hatedthe fact that we needed to tell the NHSO about this, but if we wanted to use the spell in the field and actually save as many taragorians as we could, we had to tell them. There was no other way to justify spending so much time at a tear and not having any beastie bodies lying around. Plus, we were bound to get caught on a vid, anyway. Hell, we already had; we’d just been smart enough to catch it before anyone else did.

So here we were, in a conference room with my entire team, Simon’s team, and Director Dipshit. Up on the large holoscreen at the front of the room was the director of the entire NHSO.

Staring at him made my skin crawl.

He was the same man who’d run the NHSO the entire time they were controlling magi, basically enslaving us, torturing us, issuing out heinous punishments, stealing our children from their mothers, forcing magi to breed and make more little slaves for them to mistreat and abuse, and so many other things that I couldn’t even think about right now.

Maybe he’d agreed to free us after the President of the United States forced his hand, but I could tell from the look on his face that he still thought we were beneath him. He was honestly one of the most disgusting human beings I’d ever had the displeasure of meeting. And that was saying something with where I came from.

The entire time my mate and my dyad were explaining things, he had a look of disgust on his face. Like he couldn’t stand the fact that he was listening to non-humans. I wasn’t fully convinced he was even listening to them.

All I could do was sit in my seat with my arms crossed and a sneer aimed his way. Well, that and continuously send love toward my mate and my dyad. I made sure to push how proud I was of them through the bonds, too. Hopefully they could feel it.

From our bonds, I knew they were both annoyed and angered by that man, too. They were both so much better at hiding it, though. Cos with his calm and seemingly endless patience, and Jude with his stoicism that he could bring out in even the most stressful of situations.

And then there was me, glaring and trying to murder the man with my eyes. I didn’t even care if he saw me. He knew already how much I hated him, and since I was so beneath him, he didn’t even spare me a thought, anyway.

When my mate and dyad were finished, the man said, “Why would we go through all of that when we already have a system in place?” He waved his hand, as if to wave off our whole plan, or perhaps, our entire existence. “Keep it simple and keep killing the monsters.”

Everyone just stared at him for a long moment before Cos said, “Excuse me, sir, but I’m not sure if you fully understand the extent of this discovery.” That was a polite way to say you’re a fucking idiot, now fucking listen if I ever heard one. “The new spell would save lives. Not to mention, it’s safer for the TRD teams who won’t have to fight the taragorians and risk injury or death, and it’s a lot less clean-up as well. It should save the NHSO a lot of money in the long run.”

The man harrumphed, then fell quiet for a long time. It went on so long I started fidgeting and was about to demand a response when he finally said, “Fine. Davis, write up a report on exactly what you want to happen. I’ll take it to the board later this week and see where they stand. I don’t foresee any issues, so you may proceed with this new… spell for now, but do not tell the other teams until Davis gives you the go-ahead.”

“Yes, sir,” Cosmo said. “Thank you, sir.”

The man grunted. “I expect a report by the end of day tomorrow, Davis.”

He hung up before she could even respond.

Director Dipshit cleared her throat as she stood. “You heard him. Keep this to yourselves for now, but feel free to keep using the spell. Thank you all for bringing this to my attention now so we could get ahead of it. I appreciate your cooperation.”

Cos gave her a nod, but that was the extent of niceties sent her way. No one in this room trusted her after what she’d done at the wall, and honestly, about a million other things before that. She’d also been in charge of this office when there was a lot of abuse going on, so she’d lost my respect a very long time ago.

We cleared out of the room and went straight for our office. The second the door was closed, I gave Jude a quick hug and cheek kiss, then walked into Cosmo’s arms and sighed, letting my anger and tension drain away.

Jude said, “I already have three messages from people who want to learn the spell. I’m going to forward them to you, Mads, since you, Wren, and Lo will be teaching the other magi.”

I looked at him and spoke without releasing my mate. “Sounds good. Thanks.”

He waved me off and allowed Kulani to pull him into a hug.

I smiled, gave Cos a squeeze, then backed up so I could get to work. It looked like Lo, Wren, and I were going to be putting on a little taragorian-saving class. We’d probably have to do it every couple of days for a while until everyone who wanted to learn it did.

It was a weird feeling, but I was actually looking forward to it.