I ignored him. Dragons in the wild lived long lives, so what did a decade or two matter to my beast.
After sweeping up the sawdust, I gathered my tools and hauled everything to the truck. Back inside, I wiped down the kitchen counter, making sure I hadn’t missed a speck of dust. Mrs. Arnett would call me if I left a stray screw in a corner.
We’re still waiting. That’s all we do.I should have dropped the subject, but it was the end of a long day and I was grimy and tired.
My dragon didn’t care about my day-to-day life. As long as he got to take his scales and burn stuff, he was content and patient. But I’d been stuck here in my home town for years, though trapped was a better term, and I’d turned down promising jobs on the coast.
I tried not to resent my beast. He was my other half, or as he said, my better half. But he was the reason I’d been treading water instead of living my life.
I locked up and dropped the key off to a neighbor. As I waited for a passing car, I contemplated turning left to go home and a microwave meal or right to the café.
I turned right.
You’re so predictable, he huffed.
Do you want to choose?The last time he did, he shifted behind the hardware store in the middle of the night and feasted on raw meat.
It was venison. That’s the correct word. A deer died, and I didn’t want it to go to waste.
I knew every stop sign, pothole, and house in town. Most of my high school friends hadn’t returned after college. They’d chased careers in the big city and were now reaping the rewards.
I hadn’t planned on coming back other than to see family.
But the summer I turned eighteen, I was working with my dad. We’d been building an extension at Mr. Williamson’s place, and I was halfway up a ladder when fire erupted across my shoulder. I yelped and nearly fell, but when I reached the ground, I wrenched off my T-shirt, convinced I’d been stung by a swarm of wasps.
Instead, red-and-orange flames were embedded into my skin and curling over the top of my arm and shoulder, along with scales on the outer edges of the flames.
My thoughts scrambled. It had to be a prank from my shifter friends. They’d nicknamed me Flames after an incident in high school when I’d set curtains alight.
I gulped as Dad walked over. He placed a hand on my other shoulder and congratulated me. “It doesn’t happen to every shifter, but that tattoo is your mate mark. Someone is out there waiting for you, Son.”
He said it so casually, as though he was commenting on the weather. But my life had just tilted to one side and turned upside down. I didn’t want a mate, not yet. I had to finish college and start a career. The big wide world was waiting for me, and that didn’t include being tied to a person I’d never met.
But my dragon was excited.We have a mate. He purred and blew smoke that made my tummy ache.
“They can wait a lot longer. I have a life to live, and I’m going back to college in the fall.”
We’d argued about it, my dragon and I. He insisted we stayed here. I disagreed. And that led to him shifting, not in the woods, but in town where anyone could have seen him. His scales glittered under the hot summer sun, and I was terrified we’d be discovered and tried to rein him in.
In the end, we reached an agreement. I returned to college after getting assurances from my folks and the shifter community that if a stranger turned up with a flaming scaly tattoo, they’d let me know. It’d be hard to miss a guy with flames on his shoulder in a small town. I was a little worried my family might be so enthusiastic they’d lock the guy up but decided it was worth the risk to get a life of my own.
I finished my degree in design, but my dragon was agitated, saying we had to head home. He did a partial shift while I was driving, and I had to explain to a human neighbor I was going to a costume party when a scaly tail draped out the window and curled onto the roof.
We can’t leave. Not again.He might come while we’re gone.
My dragon wouldn’t hear another word on the subject, so I’d taken a gap year and worked with Dad. My beast agreed to the bargain, but one year became two, then three, and finally eight. He got agitated whenever I tried to bring it up, until I realized we weren’t leaving.
But all the waiting might have been for nothing. My mate could be studying penguins in the Antarctic and didn’t believe in fate. After all these years, he might have had the tat removed.
No way would he do that.The bond wouldn’t let him.
My dragon didn’t know that for sure, and while my beast sensed the connection to this person, I felt nothing.
I do know. He was convinced we’d find him.
The café appeared, and there were cars parked in front. It was Friday night, so it wasn’t surprising no one wanted to cook. After finding a parking space, I peered through the window. There was an empty table at the back. Great. I hoped I could eat in peace without people waiting for my table while glaring at my back.
I pulled open the door and nodded at the familiar faces. But just like the day the tattoo appeared, the world somersaulted and something slammed into my chest. I couldn’t get air into my lungs, and heat erupted under my skin.
