by T. S. Joyce
“You cut Divar off from the trailer?” Krome asked Nuke.
“It’s Trina’s trailer.” Nuke’s voice didn’t come out with even a hint of human. It was the devil’s voice that said those three words.
“It’s okay,” Trina blurted out. She didn’t belong. She hated this part, where she realized she didn’t belong. It always happened at some point. “It’s fine. Divar can have his den, I need to get going anyway.”
A rumble emanated from Nuke and filled the entire woods. She could feel the vibration from the ground, and lifted her feet slightly so they would stop being tickled.
“I mean I was only supposed to be here until Friday anyway. It’s just two days. It was very nice to meet you all,” she said brightly. Maybe a little too brightly. Why were her eyes stinging?
No one spoke.
“Okay. Okay.” She smiled big and bit back a lip tremble, and stood, dusted off her jeans and turned to go pack.
“What did you mean you aren’t a Pegasus?” Krome asked.
Trina froze. Telling anyone how she came to be was dangerous.
“Uuuuh, I don’t usually talk about that stuff.”
“Clearly,” Bron said. “No one even knew you existed.”
“That’s not entirely true. The wrong people know,” she said, turning toward the Crew, all hanging out on Nuke’s porch or at the edge of the light.
“Manning?” Ren asked.
Trina dropped her gaze and kicked at the edge of the porch. “I never wanted to be stuck in that Murder.”
“Then why were you? How did he find out?” Ren asked.
Trina inhaled deeply. She couldn’t tell them. No…she shouldn’t. Right? She’d been trained to always hide, to always be ashamed, to always be scared. Miserably, she shrugged.
“How?” Nuke asked.
Dominance infiltrated his tone and made her want to answer. “My father is a crow and my mother is a horse shifter.”
“Whooooaaaah,” Amos murmured. “Horse joke. Get it? Whoah?”
Bron shoved him hard in the shoulder, and Amos whispered, “Ow,” as he rubbed his arm.
“Your animal is supposed to choose one or the other,” Krome said, a confused frown drawing his dark eyebrows down low over his black eyes.
“My animal chose both, apparently. I’m not a Pegasus, I don’t think. I’m part crow, and part horse, but my allegiance was always to crows. The only horse shifter I’ve ever known is my mom.” She shrugged up one shoulder. “I grew up in Murders. I was supposed to be mated to a crow.”
“You aren’t supposed to be anything,” Ren said. “That’s the problem with Murders, and being a female crow. Everyone beats it into your brain from birth that you are a treasure to be won, not a person. You’re a person, Trina. Fuck Manning for manipulating you, and fuck anyone who ever made you feel like you were a trophy. I thought you were human this whole time.” A slow grin stretched across her face. “I’m glad I was wrong. Horse-crow, crow-horse, Pegasus, whatever you want to call yourself. You’re a misfit. I think you should stay with the rest of us who don’t make sense anywhere else.”
“I do too,” Cora, Krome’s mate, said.
“I third,” Nuke murmured.
“Of course you third,” Amos scoffed. “You get to bone a mother-freaking-Pegasus.”
“There’s no boning,” Trina rushed out. “No boning…has…occurred.” Her cheeks were on fire. “We’re friends. He sees me as his friend. And we are…” she cleared her throat.
“Just friends?” Bron said through a teasing smile.
Nuke’s dark eyes were trained on her, but for the life of her, Trina couldn’t read his expression.
“Okie dokie, well what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Probably use a condom,” Amos deadpanned. He jammed a finger at Nuke. “You definitely don’t want to mother a baby-Nuke.”
“I meant about the trailer!” she yelped, trying to stop Amos’s stupid words.
Divar sighed. “I can sleep in the woods a couple of nights. Done it before.”
“No, I don’t want that,” Trina said. “I’ll feel awful the whole time.”
“Huh.” Bron nodded thoughtfully. “You really are one of the good ones.”
Nope. She was here spying on them. Guilt wracked her again for them thinking kindly of her. She wasn’t good. She just wasn’t.
“She’ll stay in my trailer as long as she wants,” Nuke growled out. “I’m more comfortable in the woods anyway.” He stood and made his way to the one she’d been staying in.
“I can’t do that,” Trina called behind him. He didn’t answer though, just made his way right into her trailer and returned carrying the recliner she’d been sleeping on. “Nuke. Be serious. I can’t just keep mooching people’s homes.” She grabbed at his arm, but his skin sparked against her hand and she flinched back at the shock of it.
Nuke skidded to a stop and looked down at his arm where she’d touched it. His skin was fiery red in the shape of her hand, like she’d burned him.
“Whoooah,” Amos said.
“Enough with the horse jokes!” Trina snapped.
Amos slurped on a Capri-Sun and stared at her judgmentally, but she wasn’t being ridiculous. He was!
“Did I hurt you?” she asked Nuke as he turned and carried the recliner into his mobile home.
“No one can hurt me,” he grumbled.
“I can’t take your trailer. You’ve already been too nice to me!” Her voice echoed off the mountains.
He turned with that dinosaur growl rattling his chest. “That’s so sad, Trina. Can’t you see how tragic that is? Someone’s offering you a place to sleep, and you think it’s too nice? Who damaged you into thinking you don’t deserve more?”
Manning.
She couldn’t say the word. She couldn’t say his name, but that’s who had done it, and that’s who still controlled her puppet strings. She’d never in her life felt so weak, and so emboldened at the same time. Did she deserve more? She’d never thought so before, but now she was beginning to. It didn’t change anything though. Manning had Tory.
“It doesn’t matter what I deserve,” she whispered, leaning her back against the wall by the front door. “What matters is how deep the hole is that I dug for myself.”
Nuke made his way into his trailer and set the chair down like it didn’t weigh a single pound, and she followed him in.
He hooked his hands on his hips and stared right through her soul. “Explain.”
And she wanted to. He was so dominant that he could command a room easily. He could sure command her.
Tory, Tory, Tory. “I can’t.”
“Secrets, secrets.” Disappointment washed through his dark eyes.
“You of all people know some secrets should stay buried.”
He nodded slowly. “When you’re done running? I’m here.”
And with that, he walked out the front door and left her there wondering what the hell had just happened.
He didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to say ‘I’m here’ as he walked away.
Confusion swirled inside of her as she rushed for the door and yanked it open. The thin door banked against the wall. God, she was so dramatic since she’d come here. With Manning, she’d turned everything off. It was her coping mechanism. Just flip the switch, shut it all off, and do her duty. That’s all Manning was. Ren didn’t understand. She’d escaped the Murder, but she’d never been embedded as deeply as Trina had. She hadn’t been deemed a ‘lifer’ from birth. Ren didn’t understand who her father was, didn’t understand what her destiny was, didn’t even know she had a sister. And now Nuke was dropping bombs saying ‘I’m here’?
“Stop confusing me,” she uttered as she caught up to him.
He weaved through the Crew as they were saying their goodnights.
“Uh oh!” Amos sang out. “First fight as a couple.”
“Shut up,” Trina and Nuke both demanded as they passed.
Nuke lurched at him a
nd slapped the empty foil drink package out of his hand. “Nobody drinks Capri-Suns after the age of thirty.”
“That’s a made-up rule!” Amos yelled.
Cora giggled and covered her mouth when Amos glared at her, and maybe in the wee hours of the night, Trina would wake up and find that funny, but right now? “Look,” she whisper-screamed. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Everything confuses me, and is unfamiliar, and collides with everything I’ve ever been taught. And you…you…”
“I’m what?”
“You’re a dragon, aren’t you?” she asked.
A hissing sound escaped him and he jerked those dark eyes to her. His elongated silver pupils appeared and disappeared, and he shook his head, and continued on to the trailer at the end.
“What’s your real name?” she asked softly.
“What is it you said? Some secrets should stay buried?”
He climbed the stairs and made his way into her old trailer. She followed and paused just inside. “That’s why I can’t stop running.”
Nuke lifted her duffel bag to his shoulder and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You aren’t really here, Nuke. You said empty words, but they are damaging, and here is why. I’m so goddamn hungry to hear words like that because I’ve been through something. Because I’m still going through something. And it feels good to think someone would catch me when I fall, and ooooh I’m going to fall, Nuke. I’ll fall hard. It feels so damn good to think I’m not alone, but it’s not the truth. You can’t share basic parts of yourself with me, and I can’t share basic parts of myself with you, so what kind of friends can we really be?”
He inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring slightly with the movement. His hair hung in his face, and his eyes were as black as the night. His face was twisted into something fearsome that would scare people on the street, but it didn’t scare her. She understood it. There was another half of her too. One she hid.
Nuke adjusted her duffel bag on his shoulder and sauntered to the door.
“I can get my bag,” she murmured.
Nuke paused right beside her, inches away.
She thought he would give her the strap of her duffel bag when he turned to her, but he didn’t. Instead, his eyes drifted to her lips, and there was a charge in the air between them. Electricity, almost. And she did want to give in. She didn’t want to ignore the desire. She wanted him to kiss her. Wanted it so badly because she knew it would wash away the rest of the world for a while.
“You know what I like?” he asked. Nuke lifted his hand and traced the outside of her birthmark. The giant one on her face, the mark she couldn’t ever look in the mirror without seeing. The one she used to get teased for when she was a child, the one that made her feel like she looked plain as an adult. She’d never let anyone touch it before now, but it felt good. It wasn’t burning their skin like before. It just felt warm, and comforting.
She leaned into his hand and shook her head. “What do you like?”
“Your birthmark carries through to your animal. It’s the only thing that stopped me tonight. It’s the only reason this place isn’t in ashes right now.”
Chills, chills, chills as she absorbed the dangerous things he admitted. He was capable of great destruction. But he’d just told her she was capable of stopping his fire. Never in a moment of her life had she felt power before now.
He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, and her body short circuited. She had no control. He was dangerous. He was off-limits. He would bring the wrath of Manning and all of the Crow Blooded, but in this moment, she didn’t care. Right now, she was free. His lips moved against hers, and his hand slipped to her waist. She could feel the pad of his thumb under the hem of her shirt, and it brushed her skin right above her jeans, and oh, she just melted. Right against his chest, she melted. He took up every molecule of space in here. Filled her lungs, filled her chest, filled her mind like a quick shot of good whiskey. His tongue brushed past her lips and she opened wider for him, slipped her hands over his shoulders and held on tight. She didn’t want it to end, and he didn’t rush. Instead, he ran his fingertips down the length of her birthmark, down to her neck to the tip of her collar bone, down her arm. He trailed fire where he touched her, but it wasn’t painful. It felt soooo good.
Nuke eased back from the kiss and searched her eyes. “Tarek Alias Asheater.”
And he walked out with her duffel bag.
He’d given her his name. It was a dragon’s name. Everyone knew the stories of the Asheaters. Legends never died, but the dragons had. They hadn’t been around for a millennium. Humans had killed them off ages ago. At least…that’s what everyone thought.
He’d just given her a secret.
At the bottom of her stairs, he turned and looked back up at her. “You coming?”
With a nod, she murmured, “Yes.”
“Good.” A slow-spreading smile transformed his handsome face, and he offered her a hand down the stairs. “Don’t fall.”
Ha. Silly dragon.
It was already too late for that.
Chapter Eleven
“Trinadel Delilah Hogue.”
“Trinadel,” he repeated. She loved the sound of her name on his lips.
He bent his knee up where he sat against the wall, and rested his arm on it. Trina was lying on her side in the recliner he’d pulled in here for her.
“My mom used to call me her little Del Del. Because it was the end of my first name and the beginning of my middle name. Sometimes she’d call me Del Pickle. You know, like the type of pickles? Because I used to want extra pickles on my sandwiches.”
He cracked a grin. “My dad had nicknames for me and all my brothers.”
“What was yours?”
The smile fell from his face. “He called me Fier. He knew an old language. He never told me whether it meant Fire or Fear, though. When I would ask him, he always told me ‘what does it feel like it means today?’ I was always afraid when I was a kid, so most of the time I was Fear.”
“Afraid of what?”
He waited a few seconds before he answered, “Myself.”
Trina’s heart reached for him. She scooted closer to him on the recliner. “And what does it feel like it means today?”
“Fire. The Fear left years ago.”
Wow. “I want to get to where you are someday. No fear.”
“Mmm. To get rid of fear, you have to become the thing you’re afraid of.” He canted his head and studied her with those dark eyes that never seemed to miss anything. “I don’t wish that on you.”
Movement caught her eye, and she startled at a mouse that trotted across the floor and into the kitchen.
“Little vulture,” Nuke murmured as he tracked the rodent’s movements. “No crumb stands a chance in this house.”
“You can trap him.” She knew it was a him because he was dragging some very large nuggets behind him.
“Nah. He’s not hurting anything. Besides, he’s kind of become my buddy. It’s nice to have something to come home to.”
“Where did you live before?”
“Here and there. I was in Siberia for a long time. The cold was good for me and my family. It quieted the animals and made it feel like we were in control.”
“Why did you come to a warmer climate?”
He shook his head. “The cold reminds me of them.”
“Your family?”
A nod.
“What happened to them?”
“What happened to yours?” he fired back.
He didn’t expect her to answer. She could tell. He’d popped back with the same question to redirect their conversation, but she was getting braver with him. “My mom left when I was twelve. I think she needed to. I think my dad was very good to her for a long time, but then he changed and she was the only one who was trying. And she tried for years, I remember watching her try. She would ask him to be kinder to her, to be more patient, to not be so controlling, but he got worse and worse. So
metimes kids end up with the wrong parent. My dad made sure my sister and I stayed with his Murder, and my mom was pushed out. I reconnected with her as soon as I turned eighteen, and we have a really good relationship. She never meant to leave my sister and I. She just meant to leave my dad.”
“Is your sister a Pegasus too?”
“Winged horse,” she corrected him. “And no. She is Crow Blooded. I’m the only freak in the family.”
“You get along with your sister?”
Just talking about Tory hollowed out her gut. What was happening to her? Where was she right now? “We are very close. We are only two years apart and kind of raised each other. Mom left and took us with her, but Dad and the entire Murder came to take us back. They forced my mom to stay away, and during that time, he wasn’t a caring parent. So, it was just me and Tory, and this idea that you stay with the Murder no matter what.”
“Where’s your dad now?”
She shouldn’t say it. She shouldn’t tell him. She shouldn’t tell anyone in this Crew. It exposed her. But Nuke felt safe. He was a dragon, and how could a dragon who had been hidden all this time not be good with secrets? “He’s a council member for the Crow Blooded.”
“Hoooooly shit,” he rumbled, resting his head back against the wall. His eyes hooded with wariness.
“That’s what I didn’t want,” she said sadly. “I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
“Does he know you’re here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought you were this simple human.”
“And I’m not. I’m complicated instead,” she murmured.
“Why are you here?”
Why did she wish she was here? “For sanctuary.” Why was she really here? To get her sister out from under Manning’s talons.
“I was promised to a King. He isn’t a good king like Krome. He needed status symbols. He needed trophies to show off. For a while, I thought he cared and I let him in. I was a stupid girl.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t call yourself stupid. You aren’t. Trusting someone else is hard, and it is a risk, but it isn’t stupid. It’s on them if they hurt you, but you aren’t a stupid girl.”