Page 55 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

For a dragon, making room in a hoard is no small thing. Somehow, I'd done it for Margot before I'd even admitted I wanted her here.

The thought brings something old and unpleasant with it, a certainty I haven't heard this clearly since I left my clan. They would understand this perfectly. They would look at the empty drawer, the pressed flowers and the robe I couldn't bring myself to wash, and tell me this is precisely what comes of mistaking care for strength.

I pick up the hair tie.

It would be easy to undo all of it. Put the robe back with the laundry, throw away the flowers, fill the drawer and call Gael tomorrow morning. Tell her to forget the transfers and reopen my calendar. I know how to be that version of myself. I was him for centuries, and until Margot walked through my door, I'd been perfectly content to remain him.

My hand closes around the hair tie.

I don't throw it away.

The robe is easier. I move it from the bed to the chair, then take the pressed peonies from beside the lamp and set them near the door. The empty drawer slides shut with barely a sound.

My dragon has been restless since she left, straining toward the gates long after she disappeared, but as I put away the last evidence that I expected her to come back, something inside me changes.

My dragon goes quiet.

Not peaceful. Not accepting.

Just the old, familiar silence of an instinct that has learned there is no point asking for what it wants.

I stay in my rooms for two days.

Food appears outside the door. Evander, obviously. Nobody else in this house considers feeding six people's worth of food to one depressed dragon a reasonable response to heartbreak. There are no notes and no attempts to make me come downstairs, only plates that disappear when I'm finished with them and return full several hours later.

By the second morning, even I'm tired of myself.

When I finally walk into the kitchen, everyone is there, which would be less suspicious if half of them had any reason to be awake this early.

Grath takes one look at me and pushes a plate across the counter. I sit and eat because, as far as Grath is concerned, refusing food he's personally put in front of you is a grave personal insult, and I'm not in the mood to add an offended orc to my list of problems.

Ronan watches me over his coffee. "She'll come back, mate."

"Maybe," Corvin says from the other end of the table. "Maybe not."

Ronan glares at him. "Real helpful, asshole."

"He knows lying won't make it true."

"I'm sitting right here," I remind them.

"We know," Mikael says. "It's the first time in two days."

I keep eating.

He lets me get through another mouthful before adding, "You're taking the nest apart."

My fork stops.

Mikael leans back against the counter. "What have you done with your nest?"

I keep eating. "Nothing that concerns you."

"That bad, then."

"I said nothing."

He studies me for a moment. "You've spent two days locked in your rooms, and I know you well enough to know you're not up there clutching her robe and composing tragic poetry."