Page 77 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

Soren moved it to the window after watching me slowly murder it on a shelf with no natural light. He turns the pot every few days when he thinks I'm not looking, and there are three new leaves unfurling toward the glass. I've chosen not to point out that he's hoarding my houseplant now too.

The room has changed almost as much as the plant has. My books have worked their way onto his shelves, my toiletries have colonised half the bathroom, and the blanket my grandmother made lies across the foot of the bed. There's a lamp on my side now, along with whatever book I'm reading and one glass of water Soren will replace if he decides it's been sitting there too long.

It happened gradually. I brought things over as I wanted them, a few pieces at a time, and Soren found a place for every one. The first time I came over with an armful of books, he rebuilt half a shelf to make room for them. When I brought my grandmother's blanket, he ran his hand over the stitching for a long moment before asking where I wanted it.

Giving up the apartment feels like the last piece of paperwork catching up with a decision I made weeks ago.

Sunday nights are for flying now. The first time Soren breathed a plume of fire across the lawn as we came in to land, I laughed so hard I nearly slid off his back. He’s done it every time since, which means the east lawn has acquired several impressive scorch marks.

Work is taking a little longer to figure out, but I'm surprisingly all right with that. I've taken a couple of short courses, started making notes for something of my own that may or may not become anything, and spend a few hours each week helping Gael with intake screening at DDC.

She pays me properly, expects me to know what I'm doing, and has never once called me Margie.

I adore her.

I’ve also started eating the lemon protein bars, which means Gael has finally won whatever argument she’s been having with the rest of us about them since long before I arrived.

She buys two boxes now.

Soren has changed how he works too. He handles consultations, trains the newer doms and has somehow turned mentoring into an excuse to terrorize grown men about inadequate aftercare plans. He's still part of DDC in every way that matters; he's just no longer taking clients.

We don't spend every minute together. I don't want to, and neither does he, although his dragon remains unconvinced by the concept. I'm learning what I want my days to look like, and Soren has become remarkably good at asking what I'm working on without immediately offering to fix it.

Bree started therapy two months ago. Last week she called after an argument with her therapist, and I listened without offering a solution. It was excruciating.

My mother is harder, but we're getting there. Sometimes I answer. Sometimes I call her back later. Sometimes I let the phone ring because I'm doing something else and have finally accepted that another person wanting me does not automatically make whatever I'm doing less important.

That afternoon, I take a stack of intake files into the common room and walk straight into the usual chaos.

"She's domesticated him," Mikael announces from an armchair as I walk in. "There's vegetation in his nest now."

"It's one plant, Mikael."

Grath looks up from where he's sitting on the floor. "He talks to it."

I stop. "He what?"

Across the room, Soren gives Grath a look that would probably kill a human.

Grath remains unmoved. "I've heard you when I walk past."

"I turn it toward the light," Soren says.

"That isn't what I heard."

I look at Soren.

He folds his arms. "The plant is doing very well."

I bite the inside of my cheek and put the files down before I say something that will make my dragon's dignity impossible to recover.

Evander is by the window knitting something in the same shade of green as my favorite sweater. Ronan is stretched across the other end of the sofa offering opinions nobody requested, and Godric is somewhere above us in the rafters.

I'm still deciding whether to interrogate Soren about his private conversations with my pothos when Gael walks in with her tablet.

"If everyone has finished discussing horticulture, I have actual work."

Gael glances down at her tablet. "I have a new request. She asked specifically for 'the kraken.'"