However, he wanted Emily to relax a wee bit more before reminding her of what she had to do to stay on Seahaven. So he went back to the stove, turned it on, and said, “I was eight years old the last time I lost to a wall. We still lived on Lochguard back then, and me and my friends had this brilliant idea of sledding down the staircase that leads to the rooms beneath the great hall.”
“Sledding down stairs? How do you even do that?”
He smiled at the memory. “It’s not very difficult. We found some extra-large cardboard boxes and flattened them. Then, after you climb on, you pull up and hold on to the front part, and off you go. However, being eight, we didn’t understand momentum well, and the staircase to the underground rooms is really long. I went first, and by the time I reached the bottom, I was flying. Unfortunately, that meant I hit the wall at a rather impressive speed.”
“Oh, no! And there probably wasn’t any sort of protective foam mat there or anything, either.”
“There is now, courtesy of yours truly breaking his arm.”
“Well, if you look at the positive side, you helped prevent future injuries?”
He snorted. “Young me didn’t care about that. However, once my arm was set in a cast, I got to eat loads of ice cream. My mum never stays mad long, you see, and wanted to make me feel better. My poor dad was always the one who had to enforce rules and punishments long-term. But my parents balance each other out, which is probably why their mating works.”
She sipped her wine, her smile gone, and she played with the glass as she murmured, “I suppose.”
Warning bells went off inside his head. He’d read something about her parents moving to Australia, and maybe talking about them was painful.
He wanted to ask if she missed them, but Emily spoke before he could. “Well, I’m glad it was only a broken arm and not a broken head.”
“Aye, well, my mum was convinced that I’d hit my head since I got into trouble again as soon as I could sneak out. But the doctor assured her my head was fine, that I was just a young lad who took risks to figure out boundaries. She still asks about my head on occasion.”
She giggled, and he frowned. “What?”
“Sorry, it’s the way you say head.”
“Head?”
“It sounds more like ‘heid’ to me.”
“Aye, that’s how you’re supposed to say it. You’re the one with the strange accent.”
“Most everyone on Stonefire said the same thing. Although, to be fair, there are so many accents on Stonefire now because of all the recent human mates that I don’t stand out much anymore.”
“That’s still strange to me.”
“What is?”
“That Stonefire so easily accepts human mates now.”
“Things have changed a lot over the last five or six years. Mostly for the better, I think.” She sipped her wine and then added, “Everyone on Seahaven was ahead of their time.”
He grimaced. “Aye, but it was still painful to be called traitors to dragonkind. Or, to have all of our human relatives be labeled as rubbish and tainted.”
She searched his face. “Was that really how it was?”
He turned away and focused on stirring the sauce for nearly a minute, debating how much to tell her.
His dragon spoke up.She’ll eventually find out, and it’s better that she hears it from us than from pieced-together rumors and gossip.
Cam turned and finally replied to Emily, “Aye, it was that bad and worse from a certain faction inside the clan—most of whom have now been banished from Lochguard.”
“Oh, that’s right, I remember hearing about Finn Stewart sending away those who wouldn’t accept humans.”
“Aye, and I know Finn is trying to change things. But those of us on Seahaven had our whole lives upended, and it’s still painful. The rift between our clans might never heal.”
She paused and then asked softly, “What finally drove you all off Lochguard? I’ve always wondered.”
He checked his sauce and the almost-boiling pot of water on the stove before replying, “My parents said the anti-human sentiment started when I was a bairn, but I only really noticed the change in my teen years. That’s when the clan leader began preaching at every gathering about how dragon-shifters should only mate with other dragon-shifters. It was the natural way of things, and human blood diluted the beauty of our dragon forms.”
