I lose track of how long we sit here, just lost in our own thoughts. Nobody comes knocking on the door to check on us, despite the way we rushed off. Kahl and Kaiden never call or storm in here either, and I’m not quite sure how to feel about that fact. With the way we can typically sense her presence, I would have imagined that our mate being in such distress would have called to them. Which of course just makes me worry that if somethingwereto happen, we wouldn’t know until it was too late.
“What if we get some sort of leverage on Ben?” she muses aloud. “We could break into his house and look for some sort of dirt, and lord it over him in exchange for his silence.”
Chuckling, I kiss the top of her head before pulling back to look at her face. “Blackmail, the sexiest of all the mails. Much better than bills. I like the way you think.”
Her lip twitches as she starts to stand up, promptly falling back down and gripping her leg. She beats me to the punch before I can start freaking out, rubbing her leg and cutting me off. “Leg is just asleep, don’t panic.”
Flopping onto my back on the hard tile, I throw an arm over my eyes, groaning. “You’re going to shave a few years off my life before today is over, aren’t you?”
Crawling on top of me, I peek beneath my arm as she folds hers on my chest, resting her chin on them. “I don’t say it often enough, but I really appreciate you.”
“It’s not a burden to take care of you, you know.”
She shakes her head slightly, giving me a sad smile. “I just meant you as a person. You make things not seem so bad.”
Threading my fingers through her hair, I gently scratch her head. “Glad I don’t suck,” I tease, tempted to just stay here for the rest of the day and keep her all to myself away from the world.
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.” Looking repentant, she adds, “I might have gotten carried away with Kaiden earlier. I think I was just caught off guard by his hostile reaction and lashed out without really meaning to.”
“Eh, when you’ve got someone up your butt all day and night, you’re bound to get on each other’s nerves from time to time. Bright side, now that it’s over, you get to kiss and make up. But between you and me, I’d make him grovel a bit before caving.”
Scooting back so that I can rest my back against the wall, we just stay on the floor for a while, hiding from the world and stretching out the reprieve. My shredded knuckles burn and blood still coats my hand, but I can’t tell if it’s hers or mine at this point.
Hesitantly, she leans back and lifts the hem of her shirt slightly, glancing nervously at her stomach. We always try to avert our eyes since she seems to be self-conscious about all of the scarring from whatever the hell those monsters did to her, but I can’t bring myself to look away right now.
She has to peel her shirt away from her flesh, and I get my first solid look at the extent of the damage. There are a few upraised scars, but most are faded and hardly noticeable. All of which are overshadowed by the smeared blood and cracked skin as it becomes clear just how close she came to literally breaking.
If it wasn’t just her arms, her torso beginning to split apart as well, I imagine the same damage extends down the length of her legs, but can’t bring myself to ask. Subtly, I try to see if the soft cotton of her pajama pants cling to her skin, but it’s impossible to tell from this position.
“Think I would have actually shifted if you didn’t snap me out of it?” she asks quietly, gently tracing her fingertip across the fractured marks on her stomach.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I start beating myself up for potentially sabotaging her. But everything inside of me was screaming to find a way to end her suffering, to do literally anything to help her in the moment. I doubt my instincts would have gone against something that would have helped set her free when that seems to be our dragons’ entire goal.
“Honest answer? As much as that would have been amazing, I don’t think so.” Hesitantly to see if she’s going to stop me or flinch away, I tug the bottom of her shirt up a bit more to follow a particularly deep groove around her side that’s still weeping. “You’re not ready to hatch yet.” I mean it to come across as teasing, but with the way she’s looking right now, it’s hard not to honestly think that she’s just being used as a shell while her dragon grows and then cast aside when she’s outserved her usefulness.
She nods to herself more than me with a distant look on her face, accepting the words as truth. “Makes you wonder if I’ll ever be able to shift back after it eventually happens or if you’ll just have a fully-fledged dragon on the loose you’ll have to throw a leash on. It seems more and more likely that we aren’t the same being flipping back and forth like the rest of you.”
“No.” Her eyes flit up at the severity of my tone, eyes widening in surprise. “We wrestled with our instincts long before we ever met you, beautiful. We’re just more dominant than our other half and have control that you don’t yet, I think. You’re locked in a battle of wills with someone throwing a tantrum, and as someone that survived Ezra’s flaming, terrible twos, I can only imagine the hell you’re dealing with in your head. But don’t let her walk all over you. This isyourbody.Yourdragon. Own that instead of giving her the reins.”
I’m not sure where the sentiment even came from, just words formed in the heat of the moment, but now that they’re out there, they feel right. Possibly way off base, but I’d like to cling to my hopes and dreams for a little longer, anything that convinces me there’s a way out of this without losing my mate or ourselves.
The devil on my shoulder just decided to shack up in my head to get out of the rain. No wonder I get bored so easily and keep messing with people; my dragon ate my conscience.
“This sucks,” she groans, dropping her shirt and resting her head on my chest, burrowing her face against my neck. Her breath skates across my heated skin and my mouth waters, imagining her teeth sinking into my flesh and staking her claim for others to see.
Apparently, I’ve been reading too many vampire novels and have started to develop a fetish.
“You’re not wrong, but one step at a time. At least now we’ve figured out we can snap you out of it if it happens again.”
She reaches up to trace the mark on her neck again as she pulls away to sit beside me and lean her back against the wall. My cock jerks in response, loving the sight of it far too much. Sure, it’ll fade in a few days, but it makes all of this feel far more real.
“It fucking hurt, but honestly?” She averts her eyes, gazing at the wall across from us instead of my face as she shifts nervously. “I kind of want you to do it again.”
She’s trying to make me embarrass myself again here, isn’t she? Who needs a hand job with words like that?
“Maybe somewhere a little nicer than a public bathroom’s floor next time.” My awkward chuckle tapers off with a hiss as I adjust myself, just that small pressure enough to nearly make me excuse myself into one of the stalls for a minute.
“Yeah, we should probably get home so I can dunk myself in a vat of antibiotic cream.” She sighs, though she doesn’t look in pain despite all of the wounds so much as annoyed. “I’m a little surprised the others didn’t show up,” she admits, frowning as I help her to her feet. “Even if they couldn’t sense what was going on, I’d imaginesomeonefrom that crowd would have called one of them when Nate was being a tool. Thank god most of them are apparently loyal to you three, because they’re a bunch of narcs at the first whiff of trouble.”
