Still, as long as Isidor—his mate Isidor, how happy he was to think those words!—was by his side, he could not find it in his heart to worry about anything.
He was glad to see Mentor Fox back safe and sound, and gladder still to see how Doris’s hand sought Mentor Fox’s. The two had worked out their differences, it seemed. Xi Yong was pleased for them.
“We’ll do our last run as soon as everyone departs,” Mentor Fox told Xi Yong quietly, as they passed each other in the doorway, carrying items outside. “What can we do to help the rest of the family get safely on the road?” he said more loudly, directed to Doris.
“Food and suitcases out to the cars,” Doris stated. “The container of perishables is sitting on the sideboard, the suitcases by the stairs. Then the linens have to be folded. The kitchen floor is last, before the final inspection . . .”
Isidor said quietly to Xi Yong, “How about if we take the suitcases out?”
Xi Yong agreed, content to do any job, but happiest to be with his mate.
As they carried the first load to the cars, Isidor turned sparkling eyes to Xi Yong. “I have to confess, I keep expecting to turn my head and find you gone—that I’ve been asleep all this time, and dreaming.”
“Then we share the same dream,” Xi Yong said.
“I’m serious,” Isidor said, but he was smiling. “It usually takes me six months before I feel a relationship is a real thing. If it even gets that far. You and I, we went from zero to sixty in a day.” He huffed a laugh. “Ten minutes, more like. Is that your mate bond?”
“It is yours, too,” Xi Yong said.
Isidor set his pile of plastic tubs down by the Lebowitzes’ car. Then he straightened up and put his hands to his chest. “I feel it. Is it always this way?”
“At its best,” Xi Yong said. “But you must ask Mentor Fox for details in the many ways it can be difficult.”
“I still haven’t had a chance to really talk with him yet. He’s always been in the middle of a group, helping, or else cooking, or else off with Nicola’s Aunt Doris. He seems like the nicest type of guy.”
“Yes,” Xi Yong said soberly.
“And he has mythic powers, too?”
“He does. Very powerful, in his own way. Not violent, if he can help it. Foxes prefer to use their minds, rather than their teeth or tails.”
Isidor leaned against a car. “And there I am again, feeling like I’ve fallen into a dream. The shifter world is . . . I don’t even know what to call it. Weird, and wonderful. Magical, if I can use that word. The word ‘magic’s kind of worn out—people in my life constantly say I have a magic touch, when really all I have is patience. Well, and I’m good at sports.”
“Sports,” Xi Yong repeated. “What sports?”
Isidor gave him a wicked grin. “You’re going to find out, as soon as we’re alone.”
Xi Yong laughed, and then sobered. “There will be danger once all the humans are gone. I’ve told you a little about Cang, but I cannot impress upon you strongly enough how vicious he is. You should leave with the others, rather than waiting for me.”
“But I want to wait for you,” Isidor said quietly. “I won’t let you go into danger without me. That’s what being mates means, isn’t it?”
In all his daydreaming, Xi Yong had never thought of this problem: the cold fear of loving another more than your own life. He would give anything to have Isidor safe, and now he suddenly began to realize what Mentor Fox had been going through with Doris.
But a mate did not cease to be an independent person just because you loved them. They must make their own decisions still.
“Besides,” Isidor added, “Doris is staying too, isn’t she?”
Xi Yong glanced over at Doris, who was helping her sister pack her car. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen any sign of Doris packing her things, or heard anyone mention which car she was going in. Somehow he was not surprised. He gave a sigh.
“Very well,” he said. “But please obey all our instructions, no matter how strange-sounding. There may be things happening on the mythic plane that you are not aware of.”
“Mythic plane?”
“Let me tell you of it,” Xi Yong said, and they went inside to get another load.
***
In the end, the fight was over, it seemed, almost before it had begun. Xi Yong’s body still fizzed with the memory of the dragonfire as he had used his qilin light-controlling powers to take it inside himself.