I watch him out of the corner of my eye. “Treating this like nothing has to change doesn’t seem to be working out quite like I’d hoped.”
He rests his forearms on his knees and turns his attention to the sunrise now painting the sky in a myriad of colors, finally releasing me from his fathomless gaze. “From my perspective, you were long overdue for something in your life to change.”
“But was it for the better, or worse? I never had to deal with car bombs until recently.”
“You had to undergo six hours of surgery to save your lifebeforeyou were marked,” he counters. “Meeting us didn’t start you down a dark path, dragonfly. It only ensured you no longer had to walk it alone.”
“Note to self, find a new doctor since Stoneclearlycan’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut.” Blowing out a heavy breath, I buzz my lips. “Like it isn't dangerous enough to be a dragon, let's advertise it to the fucking world with matching tattoos. Of all the possibilities, it had to be a dragon head? Seriously?”
“At least ours are easy to conceal.” His lip twitches before pressing into a thin line. “For what it’s worth, I consider this an honor, Amara. While I hate the circumstances that brought us together, I’m relieved all the same, because I need you.”
My head whips to face him. “I’m sorry, what?”
His jaw ticks, eyes locked on the horizon. “We haven’t seen Stone more than in passing in decades, and Kodiak has been taking more and more risks, pushing himself and my patience to their limits.” He sighs, turning to rest his back against the railing posts and faces me. “And I’ve been using work as an excuse to hide from the fact that my family is falling apart, and I couldn’t figure out a way to fix it, which only exacerbated the problem. We don’t even live together anymore, since the two of them are constantly searching for something that’s always been just out of their reach. Now here you are, and I’ve seen so much of them in the past month, I’m debating why I wanted them back home with me at all.”
The teasing lilt at the end of his speech does little to detract from the rest, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same, even if he wasn’t particularly subtle about it. ‘Running fixes nothing.’ Easy for him to say when stopping brings him closer to his family instead of someone that wants to treat him like a pet.
“And what’s always been out of their reach? Because if you say ‘a mate,’ I’m going to have to call bullshit.”
A quiet laugh shakes his chest. “Those aren’t my secrets to share. But Iwilltell you that all you need to do is spend a little time around them in their natural elements to figure it out; it’s fairly obvious from the outside looking in.”
My small smile falls as quickly as it came. “What am I going to do, Raiden?” I rest my chin on my knees, defeated and exhausted. “Even if I save up some money to start over, I’m trapped in an endless cycle of my life never being my own.”
He rises to his feet, offering his bare hand to help me up like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “How about you start with catching up on sleep, then we can go from there? Things always seem impossible when you’re tired, and you,solas mo shaol, are long overdue for some rest.”
Chapter 17
Stone
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“We should check onher.” Kodi’s knee hasn’t stopped bouncing since dinner came and went without Amara ever emerging from her room the other day. Now that breakfast is beginning to get cold again, his nerves are fraying in double time. It’d be amusing to see him so frazzled in any other situation, but where Amara’s concerned, I’m not faring much better.
What if she attempted to shower before her leg healed and fell, has been lying unconscious in the bathroom all this time?
“Absolutely not.” Raiden takes a bite of his toast, leaning an elbow on the table and casually using the crust to point in the direction of my old bedroom. “She pushed the dresser in front of the door. If that’s not a sign to leave her the hell alone, I don’t know what else will convince you. She finally let her guard down enough to fall into a deep sleep, and we arenotgiving her a single reason to regret giving us that level of trust.”
