Fyrestar slants me a cautious look. “Kellan came by every day to check on you.”
My heart sinks. “Don’t. I can’t.” Fyrestar loves Kellan, and no doubt wanted us to stay together and have little half-dragon shifter babies he could tuck under his wings and coo over. All my birds loved him. Kellan treated them like family.
Sol looks up. “Kellan brought us snakes to eat. Then we could stay with you and not go out hunting. I like snakes. Better than rats. No tummy aches.”
I bite my lip. “That was nice of him.” I appreciate his thoughtfulness toward me and my birds. “And Bale?” I ask almost hesitantly.
“Bale too,” Fyrestar answers. “Every day—just like the rest of the team and their wing guards.”
Is that answer meant to caution me?
I sigh. “I should get over it, shouldn’t I?” Fyrestar knows exactly what—who—I’m talking about, even if we’ve never had a single outright conversation about my hopeless fascination with the Dragon King. He knows me too well to have missed the signs, and he understands people better than most.
“That would require him getting over it too.”
My eyes widen, my pulse thumping so hard that the fresh vampire bites throb along with it. “No.” I shake my head. “He’s never said anything.”
“Neither have you.”
Ridiculously hot all of a sudden, my heart knocking at my ribs like an unwanted guest, I roll my lips in and slowly sink down in bed. Between my uncontrollable self and the heat of my birds, I start to sweat. Fyrestar cools his inner warmth in response and moves off my feet. The other two don’t stir at my sides, and I keep an arm around each, two thick bundles of heated feathers that I love more than life itself.
“I can’t do it,” I whisper, suspecting Rim and Sol are now truly asleep. “If things end like they did with Kellan, I don’t think I could stay here. I’d lose our home, the team…Maybe even you birds. You’re as much Bale’s as mine, and your everlife is tied to Drayke Mountain.”
Fyrestar’s golden eyes get brighter as the room dims. “Why would things end?”
“Don’t they always?”
“In your vast experience, yes.”
I huff a dry laugh. “I’m supposed to be the sarcastic one.”
“I learned from the best.”
I can’t help smiling, even though I feel more heartsick than anything else. “I can’t risk it. I won’t. I can’t risk our life here.”
“I don’t think that’s the right outlook. If you never risk anything, are you truly living?” His gaze slides to Rim, and I get the feeling Fyrestar didn’t try to keep him away from the battle outside Draywood. Maybe he even told him to come. “And Bale’s different with you.”
I frown down the bed at him. “Different how?”
“For a self-proclaimed friendless, lone dragon shifter, he sure spends a lot of time with you. Can’t seem to help himself.”
Fyrestar’s seemingly casual words are anything but, and they blaze through me like an inferno that could burn my resistance to ash. “Are you telling me to risk it?”
“I’m telling you to look to the future instead of the past. And problems don’t always repeat themselves.”
“Or they might, and then I could lose everything, including you.”
“That won’t happen,” Fyrestar says evenly.
Fear still churns inside me. “I don’t think you can guarantee that.”
“If you leave, we’ll leave with you. I guarantee it.”
Raw emotion clogs my throat. I don’t think Bale would try to keep the warbirds against their will, but who really knows what someone will do? And if what Fyrestar says is true, then my decisions will have a huge impact on them. They love the life we have here as much as I do. If my actions ruin that for them, I’ll never forgive myself. I don’t want to ruin it for any of us.
I expel a long, heavy breath. “I think I’m a mess right now and shouldn’t make any important decisions.” Fatigue drags at me. I’m also starving.
Where in the stars is my meat soup?
