There was no finesse to it. I shoved past a cluster of old men painting their noses with spiked cider. I nearly tripped over a dog in an elf costume. But every time I thought I was gaining ground, another surge of people cut across my path.
Some kid lobbed a handful of parade candy into the air, and it pelted me, hard. A dozen children stampeded for it, blocking my way with sticky hands and wide eyes. I couldn't even sidestep, the crowd pressed too tight, shoulder to shoulder, everyone yelling for a better view or a better treat.
The smell of peppermint intensified, like someone detonated a hundred air fresheners at once. Caden gagged, retreated, and came back even meaner. My senses went haywire. No dragon alive could track a scent through this much mint. My eyes watered from the overload.
It was parade hell. No way out.
I fought my way around them, heart cranked to the max, and searched for a trace of them. Anything. For a second, I thought I caught the girls' voices, but it was just a pair of teenagers arguing over hot chocolate. The only certainty was the pain drilling holes through my chest, and Caden's refusal to let the hope die.
I checked the cross street. Nothing. Tash and the twins were gone.
All at once, it hit me. I'd failed. They were right here, under my nose, and I let them vanish. The panic twisted with something else. A bruising, unwelcome ache I hadn't felt since the morning after we'd met. I wanted her back in my sight. Close enough to touch. Close enough to breathe in.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw every folding chair in the street. My hands shook as I reached for my phone, trying to ground myself in anything that wasn't raw panic.
I squared my shoulders, fighting the urge to roar, and pressed further into the crowd.
They might be my daughters. They were my daughters. I had no way to know, but I knew. And the red harried one had a dragon fighting to emerge.
The thought almost floored me. I braced against a lamppost, lungs scraping in cold December air, and stared down the alley where their footsteps had disappeared.
Mere seconds ago, they'd been right here. Now the crowd swarmed in, blocking every path with lawn chairs, wagons, and tinsel-stuffed coolers. I tried to scent them out, but the peppermintdrowned every note. Even a dragon's nose couldn't cut through that weed.
Rage. Pure, unfiltered rage.
Caden went feral. He wanted to shift, to rip the world open and fly over the rooftops just to get eyes on them again. I gritted my teeth and clung to the last scraps of human self-control, refusing to lose it in broad daylight on Main Street.
I turned and began heading for the bakery, grabbing onto control like a fist.
Chance
I yankedopen the bakery's back door so hard the bell nearly flew off. I needed space, and the kitchen was the only place in Laurel Gap where I could be private. Caden roared in my skull with every step. I slammed the door behind me and started pacing, hands flexing open and closed.
The stainless-steel counters gleamed under the kitchen lights, all neat and perfect. Not for long. I slammed my hand into the nearest surface, hard enough to make the pans jump and clatter. Caden wanted out. He shoved at every boundary, sick of waiting, sick of being ignored. My pulse was still hammering from the way she'd looked standing in that crowd. Cheeks flushed, hair mussed from the wind,eyes sharp as ever. It was sensory overload, memory and desire hitting like a two-by-four.
You saw them, he snarled. Each word dug claws into my head.Both of them. Our blood and bone. We need to search for them.
I shook my head. "I don't know how it's possible." My hands curled around the edge of the counter, and I squeezed to keep from hitting something else.
I turned, fists at my sides, and stalked back along the prep table. The smell of orange and hot sugar clung everywhere. Maeve's breakfast buns, probably cooling on the racks. The kitchen looked like a warzone, flour dust swirling in the air where I'd knocked over a bag. It covered the tile around my boots.
Caden didn't care about the mess. He only cared about the girls. He shoved the memory in front of me again, sharper this time. Brown eyes that caught everything. The line of a jaw I'd seen before, seventeen years ago, pressed to the pillow next to mine.
You saw them. You smelled the truth.
The teenager with the auburn curls and the storm in her eyes, the other girl holding her hand like she needed an anchor. I'd barely gotten a look before Caden went berserk.
His ferocity didn't make it less crazy.
"This is unheard of," I muttered. But even saying it, I couldn't shake the imprint she'd left on me so many years ago. The scent of her skin, the way she'd pressed against me like she trusted every part of me that night.
Doesn't matter.
"Dragons haven't reproduced with humans in centuries. We've got records, we've got—" I broke off, too worked up to even think straight.
They're yours,Caden insisted.Rare and impossible are just words. It's them. Our daughters.
The word stuck in my heart. Daughters. But behind that revelation lurked something more primal. The instinct to get close to her again, to close the seventeen-year gap and breathe her in until the ache finally let go. I paced harder, chest tight, my whole body pulsing with heat. My scales itched under my skin, wanting to break free. This kitchen wasn't built for dragons like at my family's home. I'd rip the place apart if I let Caden even halfway out.
