My dragon grumbled.
I went inside long enough to shed my clothes then popped out the back door. One of my favorite parts of this property was that I could fly here. As long as I stayed low to the ground, it was pretty great for that. I called forth my scales, my dragon ripping through me and landing on the ground with a thud.
Burn.
You don’t have any fire,I reminded him.
Burn.
I shifted back and, despite the cool breeze on my skin, went about starting a fire in the pit I’d built. To most people, it looked like a random place you’d sit around, have marshmallows, and chat with your friends and family—a place where you could have fun and the mosquitoes weren’t. But, for me, it was how I kept my dragon sated.
It took a while to get it stoked decently. My beast was very particular. Thankfully, he also knew when it was important for us to use his skill at work, and he’d saved more than one person by drawing in some of the flames. As a human, I wasn’t as strong as he was, which was why I used our powers to take from the flame today instead of shifting first. I didn’t want himconsuming it all and then wanting to find multiple places to burn it off. My brother Xavier once asked me to explain how I did this, and I couldn’t. I didn’t understand it myself. It just happened.
When I was nice and warm, almost too warm, I walked away from the fire. “Okay, I’ll let you free,” I said, “but only as long as you stay low and only burn where you know you’re allowed.”
He grumbled, but his grumbling disappeared when I fell back and allowed the shift.
I didn’t love talking to my dragon like he was a child, but he was an ornery and stubborn beast, and it was pretty much the only thing that worked.
Flapping our wings, he took to the air. Flying low, he wove through the trees into the clearing where I’d set up our burn area. If any of the guys at work saw this while hiking, they’d have flipped out. It looked more like a bunch of teenage kids came to have some pyro fun than something designed for safety. I created multiple burn pits for brush and firewood, cardboard, and sometimes trash, if I didn’t think it would get too stinky or make the smoke too discolored and draw attention.
Using my flames in the woods amongst the trees was a big no-go. The risk of a forest fire was too real, but this clearing was safe most days.
He landed on the ground and went from area to area, releasing the fire and burning things to ash. Our flames went down until he had nothing left, but he was content. It got the last of the residuals from the house fire, too.
This was my third shift since then, and expelling all of those toxins for my beast was hard. But when he took in his first breath after the flame went out, I knew we’d finally accomplished the task.
Look at my broken dragon ass. Why would anybody want me, especially somebody as wonderful as Brent?
My dragon ignored my inner turmoil and took to the air, once again.
Chapter Eight
Brent
My confidence had grown with the outline of the tattoo. It was mistaken. I knew it as soon as the shading needles pierced my skin.
“That’s…different,” I said, trying not to show how painful it was. How people got a body full of these things was beyond me.
“I’m sorry it hurts. We can take a break anytime you want. You can walk around or get some fresh air.” He nailed me with a molten stare. “Don’t faint on me, okay?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “You’d have to pick me up off the floor.”
Theo shook his head. “That wouldn’t be a big deal but seeing you pass out, well, I wouldn’t like it one bit.”
It scared me how intense my feelings were for this man. That intensity was the reason I’d bolted weeks ago. It was a mistake. I knew it was.Tell that to my legs and my fluttering heart.My brain automatically assumed the worst, and I did what I had to in order to survive his rejection—I ran.
“Tell me about your day,” I whispered. Theo was behind me. I could feel his warm breaths against my bare skin. I wished he would wrap his arms around my waist and hold me tight, squeeze out all my questioning and trust issues.
“My day?” He wiped off some of the ink and probably some blood. “Came off a forty-eight where we put out a fire for an older woman. I felt so bad for her. Her whole life was in that house and in less than an hour, it was burned down. Memories. Family dinners. Christmases. All those pictures and things that were precious to her, up in smoke.”
“Was she okay?”
He nodded. “Her son came to pick her up from the scene. They are taking her home to live with them, but nothing canreplace her items. Insurance will cover everything, I assume but it was awful.”
“I thought firefighting was all heroics and getting cats down from trees.”
He met my eyes in the mirror in front of me. I fell in love with those golden eyes almost immediately. They sucked me right in and anchored me. “Not all heroics. Sometimes my job is devastating to the victims. There is sometimes death and irreversible events. It weighs on me sometimes.”
