“Ana is fine.” I heard the growl in my voice and ignored it. “Rían is a grown man. He has a right to a past. That’s not up for debate.” Mostly because I couldn’t dismiss the certainty growing in my gut that I would maul anyone he mentioned as a past lover. “Let’s find Jess and question her.”
“With the challenge happening today,” Sloane agreed, “we need to act fast in case she has orders.”
With that decided, we elected to wait for her to finish her run and return to her apartment.
Liam went to grab an SUV while Sloane locked up GSG, leaving Rían and me alone in the yard.
“For the record,” he said after a few awkward minutes, “I’ve never slept with a clanmate.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” I squashed the urge to cover my ears. “It’s not my business.”
Hands sliding into his pockets, he nodded then aimed for the sidewalk where he waited for Liam.
His leaving without taking my hand carved me hollow, and I realized my mistake too late. I didn’t want to hear the gory details of his romantic life before me, but I should have listened to what he wanted to say. It wasn’t like I had expected him to be a monk. I hadn’t been chaste either. But the idea of him with anyone else made me want to scour my brain with bleach.
Arms folded across my stomach, I approached him, careful to stay behind him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He stared down the road, his shoulders tight. “Don’t worry about it.”
“This is not how or when I thought we would have the sex talk, but here goes.” I sucked in a deep breath and considered stepping into traffic. Except there was none. Damn it. “I’ve never been in a relationship. I thought I was, once or twice, but it was just loneliness on my part and ambition on theirs. There were no real feelings involved, and I was convinced I had to use sex tokeep the guy invested in me. Even then, as soon as they got the message Carmichael was more likely to demote than promote someone banging his daughter, they left.” I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. “I was afraid you would say you’ve been in love before, that I had competition with the memories of your exes. That’s why I shut you down.”
“That’s not…” He angled his body in my direction without facing me, like he couldn’t force himself to close that final distance. “I knew about you. I’ve always known about you. I should have waited for you, but I didn’t. I had my reasons, at the time, but looking back…” He dragged his gaze up to the level of my chin. “I should have known better. I should have had more faith. I shouldn’t have caved to temptation.”
I got the feeling I had stepped on a land mine, but the shrapnel of the past had lodged in his heart long ago, growing thick with scar tissue, and I wasn’t sure there was any hope of treating a wound that old. Not without first slicing him open to remove the debris so that he might heal cleanly this time.
“I’m not mad, if that worries you.” I braved a step closer. “It never crossed my mind that you would have abstained for this long.” He held his ground, his lips mashed into a hard white line. “Did you give up on finding me? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. After so long, the odds were against you.” I rested a hand on his arm. “Is that why you feel guilty?”
“Sartori knew we were closing in on him about two years ago,” Liam said from behind me, scaring me silly because I hadn’t been paying attention. “He’s clever, and he did an excellent job of keeping you hidden, but I heard a rumor about a wish dragon sighting and thought it was our big break. I had just taken over as maguri, and I went alone to investigate the claims. To prove myself. I got there, learned the dragon had been shot down days earlier, and demanded to see the body. The pack who killed it had almost plucked it clean of scales by the time Ilocated them. They owned a deer processing plant, a big one, so they had an ideal location for butchering a beast that size.”
“Oh, God.” Acid churned in my stomach. “That’s horrific.”
“We always figured you for a wish dragon, like your mom,” he continued, “and she was known for being the last of her kind. It stood to reason the corpse I found was yours. Reception was pathetic that far out, so I drove into town to call for backup to retrieve the body and bring it home with me. By the time I got back, they had taken the remains and disappeared, leaving us no way to prove its identity.”
“Liam,” Rían warned, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
“As I’m sure you can imagine, Rían lost his shit. He didn’t burn down the world, but that’s only because I kept him too drunk on booze brewed to subdue his magic. When that quit working, he shifted, smashed through a wall, and flew away. I found him three weeks later, in a hotel buried under a couple of women who pegged him as an easy mark based on the money he was burning through while bar crawling, trying to recreate the numbness I had cocooned him in. I tranquilized him, dragged his ass home, and shoved a new crutch under his arm. I chose an age-old coping mechanism that’s easier on his kidneys: work.”
“Please stop talking.” Rían dropped his face into his hands. “I need to find the nearest manhole cover so I can climb into the sewers and begin my new life as what humans will assume is a flushed pet alligator.”
Stomach in knots, I couldn’t pry my attention from Liam. “Who was the dragon?”
“We’re not sure there was a dragon. The reek of deer blood and viscera covered any competing scents.” He flexed his fingers. “I didn’t touch it either, so I can’t vouch whether it was real or merely an illusion.”
“Because Carmichael works hand in hand with witches who specialize in shifter enchantments.”
And what better way to shake Rían off his trail than to convince him I was dead?
“Hindsight.” Liam rubbed his nape. “I fucked up, and Rían paid for it. I should have taken Gran with me if nothing else. We could have verified or debunked the remains between us and avoided…” He cleared his throat. “That’s why we’ve taken such pains to get it right this time. It might seem like overkill, but Rían is the heart of our clan, and we almost lost him.Ialmost lost him. I refuse to repeat the same mistakes.”
This explained so much about how Fayne and Liam tiptoed around certain topics with Rían, and with me.
To learn my life held such power over him both humbled and terrified me in equal measure. I was used to being alone, to looking out for myself, but here was this man, one depended on, loved, trusted above all others.
And I had almost ruined him.
No.
Carmichaelhad almost ruined him.
