He looked as though he might say something, but closed his mouth, too. The dragon man still looked angry, but Mina was starting to wonder if that was just how he looked. Each expression was slightly different than the last. Angry with a dash of confusion. Angry with a bit of turmoil. Angry and a touch of embarrassment.
She smiled, despite herself.
“You should go home for the day, Mina. You’ve done a lot of work.”
Surprise lit through her. Her brows rose in shock. “You-you know my name?”
He paused in the doorway. “I made a call to the maid company earlier.”
Oh, she thought. He’d let her finish her day, but she was definitely out of a job. Her disappointment weighed down her shoulders and dragged her chin toward the ground.
“I see,” she said.
The steel dragon turned toward her, mouth open. She didn’t wait for him to explain why. She understood. She pushed past him and grabbed her keys off the table near the front door. His scent chased after her. It wrapped around her and tried to pull her back into the house. Even her beast roused to take in the intoxicating smell.
***
Her car shuddered to a stop in the driveway. She didn’t want to go inside. There were lights on, meaning her uncle was most likely home. Sure enough, she saw a familiar shadow pass from one window to the next. Though he was blood, he was not the nicest person she knew.
Mina sucked in a deep breath and prepared herself. Inside, the house smelled like burnt pizza, which meant she hadn’t prepared anything for dinner before she left that morning. Mina cursed under her breath.
“I know you’re busy with work, but family comes first,” her uncle snarled from the kitchen.
She pressed her lips together, eyeing the nearby staircase and wishing she could dash up it to disappear into her room. He would hunt her down, though. She had to apologize first or else she would find no peace.
Mina approached the kitchen. Her uncle slouched in a chair at the table. The burnt pizza sat in front of him, untouched. Her stomach dropped and she realized he would ask her to make dinner now. Her arms ached from cleaning all day, fingertips throbbing from the number of papercuts she’d healed.
“Are you going to let me starve, Mina?”
Tears prickled the back of her eyelids. All she wanted was to go upstairs, to mourn the gig she’d lost and think of ways to keep her job. Instead, she moved toward the fridge and pulled out a carton of eggs.
It was too late in the day for breakfast, but it was the easiest thing she could think of. Silently, she set about preparing a pair of fried eggs. She turned on the waffle iron and slapped two hash brown patties into it. While the hash browns made the iron greasy, it was also the quickest way to cook them that she could think of.
Twenty minutes later, she slid the meal onto a plate and set it in front of her uncle. Only then did she notice the big box sitting by the kitchen door. Her uncle snorted.
“That came for you,” he grunted. “Don’t tell me you’re wasting your money on frivolous shopping.”
“I-I-I didn’t order anything,” Mina confessed.
The box indeed had her name on it. The thing came up to her hip, not that she was incredibly tall or anything.
“Do you have a secret admirer that I don’t know about?” There was a hint of warning in her uncle’s voice.
“No, I’m not seeing anyone,” she assured him. I can’t escape you, she wanted to add.
Her stomach growled, but she didn’t have the energy left to make anything for herself, so she snatched a bag of popcorn from the cupboard on her way out of the room. She paused by the box, not daring to look back at her uncle. There was no doubt she’d hate the look on his face. She was surprised he hadn’t opened it and kept whatever it was for himself.
It was his right. Her uncle was higher in rank than her. It meant that no matter what she wanted for herself, he was allowed to dictate her life for her. From what car she was allowed to buy, to what jobs she was allowed to work, all of it was her uncle’s decision to make. No part of her life was truly hers.
In the end, she dragged the box upstairs, careful to keep it from slapping each step up and drawing her uncle’s attention once more. Only when she closed her door behind her did she let her curiosity swell. Excitement filled her. Logic told her someone hacked one of her online shopping accounts but hadn’t had the brain cells to change the shipping address.
There was no other reason she would receive anything.
She drew a fingernail over the tape holding it closed and carefully pulled it open, wary of the number of times she’d already been cut by carboard that day. At first, all she saw were big plastic bubbles, the kind that were in all packages these days. She pulled them out, popping them one by one, until she saw what waited inside.
A smile spread over her lips. She reached inside and grabbed the stuffed creature. It had an elegant neck, like a swan. A pair of glittery bat-like wings sprouted from its back and flapped about. It was a giant blue dragon. She set it on the end of her bed and stared in wonder at it before checking the box for a note.
She found nothing in the box, but her phone rang. An unknown number flashed on the screen. Mina stared at it for a long moment, her mind blank. She’d programmed her co-workers’ numbers into the cell phone, as well as any family who might call upon her for unpaid cleaning services.
Stomach fluttering, she pressed the green button on the screen and held it to her ear. Unfortunately, she didn’t know what to say. Words tangled in her mind, held in place by confusion.
“Mina? Are you there?” A male voice rumbled her name and sent a spike of heat through her core.
She made a small noise in surprise.
“I can hear you breathing,” he said. His voice held a hint of…laughter.
“Who is this?” she finally managed to squeak.
He cursed under his breath and she thought she could hear the sound of flesh on flesh, as if he’d palmed his own face. “It’s Ryker. Ryker Drake.”
“I’m afraid I don’t…” Finally, the gears in her mind finally spun into action and began connecting the pieces. “Oh! You. That’s you.”
While Mina was annoyed with her inability to communicate, Ryker was laughing softly. “I think you’re right, but I’m not entirely sure. If it helps, I was the guy you saw destroy a guitar earlier. Um, the dragon…”
She waited for him to say something about his beast. All the metallic dragons had strong beasts. They were powerhouses compared to the chromatic dragons like Mina.
“The blue stuffed one I sent you is my way of apologizing. I never meant to scare you.” Ryker was silent. She listened to him breathe, a ragged sound. “I hope you can come back. The place is an absolute mess and I need help. I mean, the house needs help. Not me.”
“From what I saw, it looks like you need help, too.” Mina slapped her hand over her mouth, cheeks suddenly flaming. She’d never said anything so brazenly stupid in her entire life. She was surely going to lose her job now.
“I think my cousins would agree with you,” Ryker said. There was still humor in his voice. He wasn’t mad at her.
It was incredible. She grabbed the giant, stuffed blue dragon and crawled atop her bed, wrapping herself around it. Mina had to admit that the sound of Ryker’s voice was nice. It was low, making her feel like she was in a car with the bass turned all the way up.
“You saw what I like to do for fun,” Ryker began. “Tell me what you do for fun.”
Mina paused. She rarely had time for herself. She spent nine hours a day cleaning and then came home and usually spent a few more cleaning this house. Any time she had for herself was spent sleeping.
“I don’t really know,” she whispered into the phone.
“What do you mean you don’t know? Alright. Let’s go through some options.” There was a shuffling sound, like Ryker was wading through his sea of boxes. “Do you like skipping stones over the lake? Or throwing stones through windows of people you hate?”<
br />
“That sounds very delinquent.” Though Mina was already imagining throwing a big rock through her uncle’s window. She immediately shook her head to dispel the cruel thought. She didn’t hate her uncle. He was family and no one should hate family.
“Let me try this again.”
She could hear his fingers tapping on a surface while he thought. She imagined him lounging in a chair, feet kicked up on a stack of boxes. Her mind drifted to the holes in the knees of his jeans, and she wanted to feel the exposed skin. The image of herself seated in his lap entered her mind. She pinched herself in the leg to make it go away.
This was a Drake. He belonged to the king’s court. Mina was the lowest of the low, a subservient runt of a dragon who would never mean anything to Ryker. At best, she was an employee, and he was being nice to keep from scaring her away. Truly, his house needed cleaning. He must have been desperate for help if he was smooth talking her and sending her gifts.
“How about this? Do you like long hikes through the woods or sex in the woods?”
She clasped her hand over her mouth, but not before nervous laughter escaped. Her mind responded with another, much lewder, image. This one she could not pinch away. Heat pooled in her core and lingered there, stealing her voice.
“I’m sure you have an answer for that one. It’s not even illegal.”
“Public nudity is a crime,” she managed to squeak.
“Is it? I’ve never been caught, then.”
This time, she broke out in laughter. She buried her face in the stuffed dragon to muffle the sound.
“I like that sound,” Ryker said, almost as if he were surprised. His tone was so light and breathless.
“You should feel honored. I don’t do it often.” Once again, Mina knew she was overstepping boundaries. She had no right to tell him how he should feel.
Ryker didn’t seem to care. “You don’t laugh often? Is your laugh box broken? You should see someone about that. I’m sure I could help. We should start with laughter and then slowly wean you into the illegal things.”
“A laugh box isn’t even a real thing.”
Mina hugged the stuffed dragon closer. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled this much, let alone laughed. For once, she was comfortable. It wasn’t a feeling she experienced very often. Her rank meant she needed to be on alert at all times. She didn’t know who would come for her, who might hurt her.
It wasn’t that the chromatic dragons were cruel. She was simply in the wrong rank. If someone needed help, it was Mina’s job. If someone needed extra cash, it came from Mina’s account. She knew it was her place in life, but it was exhausting.
Footsteps slowly thumped down the hall. She sucked in a breath and held it. On the other end of the call, Ryker growled. The sound intensified the longer she held her breath. She held the phone away from her ear to listen to her uncle’s footsteps. They paused near her door.
She pressed her eyes shut and hoped he would move on. She didn’t want to deal with him tonight. Her phone call with Ryker was too much fun. Yet, the growl on the other end warned her that the conversation was coming to a close. She mourned it but held the few moments they’d had close to her heart.
“Who is hurting you?” Ryker snarled into the phone.
Mina didn’t have the words to explain. Ryker should already know what her life was like. It was his world just as much as it was hers.
“Goodnight, Mr. Drake.”
The anger in his voice faded. It was still there but twisted in a kind of remorseful way that nearly hollowed the sound. “Call me Ryker. Please.”
She couldn’t. It wasn’t her place. Mina hung up. From now on, she would have to keep her head down. She couldn’t afford to let Ryker fixate on her. Their worlds were galaxies apart, it seemed. She thought about asking someone else to trade houses with her, but the idea of letting go of Ryker this soon bothered her more than she wanted to admit.
It was the same part of her that clung to the stuffed animal on her bed and fell asleep with it in her arms.
Chapter Four
Ryker couldn’t get Mina out of his mind. The call had been just to apologize for his idiocy, but he found himself enjoying her attention. She’d been snarky and snapped back at him in a playful way. On tour with the band he worked for, no one had dared look at him, let alone joke with him.
It was different than the way his cousins and their mates teased him. They seemed to look down on him, but Mina acted as if they were equals. It was refreshing, and he found himself craving more and more.
When he heard her breath hitch, the way she held it, his beast had slammed against the barrier between them. The phone had creaked in his hand. He had to force himself to be careful not to break the only connection he had to her.
Ryker stormed outside. He paced the packed earth, tempted to get in his truck and drive to the address he’d gotten earlier just to make sure she was safe. Mina told him she wasn’t in danger, but that hadn’t been comfort he’d heard in her voice.
He regarded the truck for a long time before finally getting inside. He drove down the side of the mountain, windows open while he blasted classic rock tunes. The cold air was a slap in the face, but he welcomed it as it sheared over his shaved scalp. It was like a dip in cool waters. It cleared his head and allowed him to think straight.
Instead of marching into Mina’s home, he drove by. Once or twice. All the lights were off, and no sound came from inside. His beast squirmed uncomfortably. Ryker didn’t want to be the creep that waited outside someone’s door all night, but he didn’t want to leave Mina alone with whatever frightened her, either.
While he warred with himself, he drove to the diner. Its windows glowed, casting rays of light into the dark night. It was nearly empty except for a few bedraggled late-night employees and people who worked overnight shifts in town. He claimed a stool at the counter and plucked a menu from behind it.
The last thing he expected to see was one of his cousins. Worse, even, it was the last cousin he expected. Griffin perched on the stool beside him. His hair was falling out of the tie he kept it in.
“You wouldn’t have that problem if you shaved it,” Ryker suggested.
Griffin’s brows fell flat, but he didn’t say anything.
“Wow. You make for great company,” Ryker said. “It’s no wonder I hopped the first plane out of here.”
His cousins never understood his desire for sound. Silence drove Ryker mad. It left him alone with his thoughts, with the beast that lived inside him. He preferred something boisterous and busy to keep both occupied. Only then could he breathe.
His cousins seemed to love the silence of these mountains. Every one of them thrived in this environment. Last he’d seen Ashton, the copper dragon had a feral gleam in his eyes. Now that he’d returned to Grove and his old flame, Ashton’s beast was better behaved. Ryker wished he knew what made him so different from his family.
The difference made him the black sheep, never able to bridge the gaps between them. So, instead of fighting a useless battle just to be like the other Drakes, he set off and forged his own path in the world. It had been working great, too. Until Jasper’s beast went off the deep end and screwed up Ryker’s life.
“I heard Wyatt and Kennedy used the company money to pay for a maid to clean up your mess,” Griffin said.
“My house was fine. They didn’t like the way I lived, so they took matters into their own hands.” Ryker ordered a coffee and a plate of chicken wings. “What are you doing out and about tonight? Did Jasper escape his cage again?”
Griffin sighed. “No. He’s fine tonight. No sign of the madness.”
The madness. Their king had a few screws loose and no one was doing anything about it. They didn’t think to put him down because he was the last of the gold dragons, the rulers of their mountain and head of the Drake family. But no one else was lifting a finger to figure out where this madness came from.
Perhaps Ryker wasn’t the black sheep
of the family after all. Maybe Jasper needed the sound of a city to calm his beast, too. He’d never been allowed to leave the mountain like the others. His place was here and only here. Any other path of life had been blockaded from the beginning.
“What are we going to do about him?” Ryker lifted his tiny diner coffee mug to his lips. They were always too small. He needed a bowl of coffee to get through life here.
“Are we really going to talk about this in public?”
Ryker raised a brow. “Look around. This place isn’t exactly hopping.”
Griffin’s nostrils flared. He’d been by Jasper’s side the longest. They’d been close, practically raised as brothers since Griffin’s parents died when he was young. Jasper’s madness was taking a toll on Griffin, but Griffin was too stoic to let anyone share the weight. It was a miracle he called the other Drakes home at all.
Griffin surveyed the room, carefully taking in everyone in the diner, before sighing in defeat. “Jasper is going to be fine. All he needs to do is get this out of his system.”
“This isn’t a phase. Jasper isn’t rebelling. He seriously hurt Wyatt. Or did you conveniently forget that part? Wyatt’s wings didn’t fully heal until a week after I moved back here. I think that’s cause for concern.”
Griffin looked like he wanted to argue, but Ryker had laid down the facts.
“When did this start? I know I took my time getting here. I’m a bit behind.”
“It started… around the time his father died. I thought it was grief at first, but he doesn’t even talk about his father. I don’t know what else it could be.”
“Jasper hasn’t actually left the mountain,” Ryker asked. “Has he?”
“Well, no. We stop him before he can get that far.”
If Jasper truly wanted to leave the mountains, it would take all four of the metallic Drake cousins to keep him contained. So far, they’d been successfully working with two or three. Ryker didn’t think Jasper actually wanted to leave the mountains. Whatever Jasper or his beast wanted was right under their noses.
Ryker Drake Page 2