Dragon had come.
He’d known she was in trouble, and he’d come.
Killed for her.
As badly as Cassandra wanted to believe that meant something, she knew the man standing before her, his back to her, breathing heavily, would kill to save any innocent person. Especially if that person was part of the Prey family.
It didn't mean that he cared about her.
Didn't mean he respected her.
Certainly, didn't mean he was interested in any sort of … anything … with her.
Yet she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off his tall frame even as the pain from her wounds began to seep back into her conscious mind. What would it be like to have someone who did kill for her because they cared so deeply about her, the thought of losing her wrecked them?
Expecting Dragon to come to her, kneel beside her, and check her wounds, when instead he headed away from her, across the room and back toward her front door, Cassandra’s heart dropped.
Okay, so he didn't care about her the way she cared about him, but he wasn't seriously just going to leave her bleeding all over her living room floor while he went back to his car, was he?
“You're leaving?” she cried out at the same moment he flicked the light switch on, illuminating the room.
“What the hell, Cassandra?” he snapped as he finally turned around to face her. “Why would you ask that? You really think that little of me, that I'm that much of a monster, that I wouldn't even perform first aid and call the cops before walking away and leaving you all alone after you were almost killed?”
Remorse immediately had her cheeks heating. That wasn't how she saw Dragon. Not really. Not when she was thinking clearly. When she wasn't terrified out of her mind, she knew there wasn't a chance in hell he would leave her after what had just happened.
Because when she wasn't scared senseless or fixated on anger at being dismissed so easily, she knew the truth.
Dragon felt the same way about her as she did about him, he was just too scared to admit it.
“S-sorry,” she mumbled as tremors began to wreck her body, making her teeth chatter. Suddenly, it felt like the temperature in the room had dropped about twenty degrees, and she knew it had little to do with the fact that she no longer had a front door. “I j-just p-panicked for a m-moment.”
Those unusual eyes of his softened slightly, and he snatched a blanket from the back of her couch and a couple of throw pillows as he hurried back to her side. “You're bleeding,” he said softly, but there was no way he couldn’t have known that. Her attacker had inflicted the second wound right in front of him.
“G-got me as I c-came through th-the d-door,” she told him as he slipped one of the pillows under her head, his large hand cradling her for a moment before he lowered her head down to rest on the pillow. “G-got him t-too though.”
Despite the pain, the fear, the confusion, Cassandra was proud she’d fought back. Of all seven siblings, she was the only one who hadn't chosen a career in the military or some other agency like their parents had. It had been another mark against her, another way she was different than the rest of them, but it had always been the right choice for her.
She wasn't as strong and tough as the rest of them, and it showed in how she was handling the recent revelations about her conception.
“Course you did, little rabbit.” There was definite pride in Dragon’s voice as he knelt at her side and draped the blanket over most of her body, leaving the wound on her leg and the one on her arm exposed.
A tiny bit of warmth infused itself into her ice-cold body at hearing Dragon was proud of her. It shouldn’t matter what he thought, it hadn't mattered to him what she had to say about his plans, but it did.
“This one doesn’t look too deep,” Dragon told her as he examined her arm, and she followed his gaze to look at the gash about five inches long in the side of her bicep.
“H-heard him a m-moment before h-he a-acted,” she explained, the way her body trembled against the hard floorboards making her ache all over.
“You have good instincts. You need to learn to listen to your gut more often.”
If she’d listened to her instincts, she wouldn't have stayed there tonight. She would have gone to her brother Cade’s house with the intent of helping out with her five-year-old nieceEsther, so she didn't feel completely useless as her oldest brother played bodyguard.
Doing that wouldn't have just put the little girl in danger, but her soon-to-be sister-in-law as well. Gabriella was four months pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy. The former nanny to little Essie had never made it this far in a pregnancy, suffering miscarriage after miscarriage, and the whole family was praying with everything they had that this time she was able to carry to term and give birth to a healthy little boy or girl.
That all could have ended if she’d been stubborn and decided not to let Dragon watch over her from his car on the street. She could have been responsible for another death, and she was pretty sure it would have sealed in Gabriella’s mind that she wasn't to have biological children, and she wouldn't have tried again. That would have deprived the couple of more kids, Essie of siblings, and caused two people who had already been through so much to suffer all over again.
Maybe listening to her instincts wasn't such a good idea after all.
Maybe hers were broken.
