Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Cherry takes one look at Lyra’s face and decides this is the perfect time to remember she’s naked. She wiggles out of my coils and bolts for the bedroom, bare ass flashing on the way past, door slamming shut behind her like that’s gonna save her from anything.

Coward, my smart coward, but still.

Lyra doesn’t even look at her go. Her eyebrow just climbs higher, arms crossing over her half-buttoned jacket, and she starts walking. Not toward me exactly, more like around me, slow circling steps like she’s inspecting a car she’s thinking about buying.

Every instinct I have is screaming at me to do something impressive. Flare the fins. Look demonic. Instead, I just hover, completely still, like a giant, flying ballistic Slim Jim that knows it’s about to get yelled at.

I hover there and let her look. Not like I’ve got much choice; my brain’s currently split fifty-fifty between showing off and figuring out how much trouble I’m actually in.

”Okay,” she says, dragging the word out. ”Okay, okay okay.” She stops in front of me, tilts her head, green eyes tracking from my tail to my fins, to the unreadable stillness of my head. ”I like it. You look like art.”

A pleasant warmth spreads through my core, a heat that has nothing to do with the evolution, radiating through my coils.

”Yeah?” I dip lower, closer to her level, dorsal fins flaring just a little because apparently I can’t help myself. ”You should see me in the nightlight. Whole thing catches the light differently, kinda shimmers.”

”I bet it does.” She reaches out, fingers brushing along one of the scale ridges near my head, gentle, as if unsure it might cut her. It won’t; I’d never let it. ”You feel different too. Heavier. Like there’s actually something behind you now.” Damn right I’m heavier. I’m not a sentient windscreen noodle anymore; I’m a flying, bulletproof battering ram. She can feel the difference. Good.”

”There’s always been something behind me, love.” I press my head into her touch anyway, can’t stop myself. ”You’re looking at a whole new me. Better model, same great personality, extra fifty per cent more devastatingly handsome.”

”Mm.” She’s not buying the bit, but she’s smiling around the edges of not buying it, which is basically a win. ”You scared the hell out of me last night, you know that? I felt something through the bond, this huge pull, like you were drowning. Then nothing for hours.”

Okay, guilt, there it is, right on schedule. ”I wasn’t drowning.” I curl a little closer to her, voice dropping down soft. ”I was just... becoming this, all of this, and the second it was done, first thing I thought about was you. Wanted to see your face when I showed you what I turned into. Wanted you to be proud.” I didn’t; I just wanted to fly, fuck, I’m selfish.

Her eyes go a little glassy at that, just for a second, and I feel her fingers tighten slightly against my scales.

”I am proud of you,” she says quietly. ”You’re an idiot, and you scare me constantly, but I am proud of you.”

A low hum vibrates in my throat, the sound running through my length as I drift even closer, closing the gap between us. ”I mean it, Lyra. Every stupid thing I do, every dumb risk, it’s because some part of me knows you’re gonna be there when I land. That’s nothing.”

She goes still. Just looking at me, mouth slightly open, and for one glorious second I think I’ve actually pulled off the smooth romantic hero thing without tripping over my own tail.

Then her expression shifts, snaps back into something sharper, and I know exactly what’s coming before she even says it.

”Speaking of landing.” Her arms fold back across her chest. ”You clipped the cafe.”

”Clipped is a strong word.”

”Matt.”

”It was more of a graze, a love tap. Barely even structural, hardly touched it.”

[System: Mate, I watched the footage. You went through the front glass like a wrecking ball with self-esteem issues.]

Not helping.

Lyra’s not smiling anymore, not even a little bit, and the full weight of ex-cop-mode Lyra settles over the room like a pressure drop before a storm. ”Do you know your dad gets his coffee from downstairs? Every morning, Matt, the spider barista, your father. And now there’s a you-shaped hole in the front window that one of them is going to have to explain to the other.”

”I panicked, okay? Flying’s harder than it looks.” Seriously? I’m a goddamn flying koi dragon, and she’s treating this like I dinged her car door. ”There’s wind and stuff; I didn’t have the fins figured out yet.”

”So apologise to them.”

I stop mid-excuse. ”Apologise?”

”Yes, Matt, apologise.” She says it slowly, like she’s talking to someone who just got hit in the head. ”Go down there, and offer to pay for it. That’s how this works when you break someone’s stuff.”

”I don’t know about apologising, but I will tell them it was me and pay for it.”

”You know what?” She stops mid-lecture, finger still raised, and something in her face just... lets go. Like she remembered who she was talking to. ”Pay for the window, or don’t. You’re a six-foot flying koi snake, Matt, I don’t actually know why I’m doing the whole speech.” And there it is. The moment she gets it. The rules are different now. Apologies are for people who can’t just buy a new building.”

I stare at her. ”That’s it?”

”That’s it.” She drops her hand. ”I’m not your parole officer.”

”You kind of are though.”

”I really, really am not.” But she’s already reaching up to touch the fin again, thumb running along the edge of it like she can’t quite help herself. ”They catch the light differently every time I look at them, you know that? Like oil on water.”

The core of me goes warm and stupid.