by Haley Ryan
“Your brothers seem to have decided to trust me, for which I’m grateful. But I cannot imagine Lady Tairen would show me anything other than the door.”
“And how is that different from what she wanted to do before today?” In my frustration, I shifted off my seat and floated towards him, willing him to stay. To hear me. To give whatever he felt a chance. “This isn’t about my mother, Draven. It’s about you. And about me. About whatever is happening between us. Ryker said it had to do with you being a gryphon. About me being…”
I couldn’t even say the words out loud, but as I drifted closer, unable to deny the pull I felt, he said them for me.
“Yes. Gryphons traditionally only behave that way when their mates are endangered.”
“But?” I was close enough now to touch him. And I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to know what it would feel like—to brush my fingers across his cheek. Touch the delicately rounded point of his ear. Run my palm across the firm expanse of his chest and feel the heat of his skin on mine.
But I also needed to know that he wanted me in the same way. And as we hovered there, so close to touching, little between us but the night air, I felt anything but sure.
He’d never really said it. Never given anything but hints. There had been light touches. Oblique words. One hug that might as well have been from a brother.
Maybe he just wasn’t attracted to me in that way. Which, I acknowledged, was by far the most likely of interpretations. He was older than me. More experienced. He’d met thousands of women, and spent time at the Fae Court, where beauty was everyone’s birthright. The mate thing might be a simple matter of chemicals and proximity. Nothing to do with how he felt about me as a person.
Maybe he was trying to let me down gently. To tell me that my crush was a little embarrassing and that he hoped we could just be friends.
Humiliated and crushed by his silence, I pulled away from him, determined to put some distance between us.
As if he’d felt me move, his eyes flashed open. Only inches from mine, they ignited almost instantly. Lightning sparked furiously across his silver irises, flaring in wild recognition as though something within me had called it out and given it life.
Maybe I should have kept retreating, but I couldn’t look away. Those silver gryphon eyes held me mesmerized by their beauty and the emotion that crackled beneath the lighting, fueling it and spilling over until I could no longer deny what I’d seen.
Desire. My core began to tremble with that glimpse of his barely leashed wanting.
Longing. He’d held this inside for far longer than I could possibly have guessed.
But also doubt, and fear. A vast, dark, aching bruise that left him no peace, and drove him to deny everything he felt.
Here under the stars, even with the steam clouding the chill night air, I could finally see the war he fought with himself.
So yes, I still wanted him. I wanted to close that last small distance and wrap myself around him, feel the heat rising between us, skin on skin. Wanted to finally feel his lips crash against mine, and lose myself in the oblivion of his kiss.
But I needed him to make the first move. Needed to know that whatever doubts and fears he harbored weren’t about me. I’d always thought it would be enough if I liked a person, and they liked me back, but as it turned out, love really wasn’t that easy in the end.
Attraction? We had that. I knew it now, beyond a doubt. But it wasn’t enough. He still had to choose me, and for some reason, he couldn’t.
I couldn’t stay that close and not touch him. I was about to return to my own side of the tub, when he reached out, lifted a strand of hair that had plastered itself to my face, and tucked it back behind my ear, all with only the barest whisper of his skin against my cheek.
Then, almost as if it were against his will, he took my hand, lifted it up, and turned my palm towards him. Placed his palm against mine. Laced our fingers together ever so carefully. I could feel the echo of my pulse between our hands, thudding furiously in confusion.
The lights in his eyes faded, and when he spoke, his voice was painfully gentle.
“My mother fell in love with a fae prince,” he said softly. “Dathair was her mate. The only one she would ever love. She gave him everything she was, had his child, and he left her to marry someone who would stab him in the back in a moment if he were ever fool enough to leave his back unguarded.”
I’d known the story, but not all the facts. Knowing what I did now…
“It broke her,” Draven said, and I could tell that the pain and the betrayal of Dathair’s choice had never faded. “Even aside from the mate bond, which is deeper than any outsiders understand, his abandonment broke my mother’s ability to see herself. To value herself. No matter what I did, she would always feel as though she could never be enough. Her mate threw away her love, her life, even the son that shared her blood, to marry a high-born fae witch with a heart of ice. Because that’s what his position demanded, and he was unwilling to fight for her.”
He’d watched his mother die, cast aside by a fae prince who had probably never intended anything more than dalliance. Who had toyed with her heart and dropped it when he was finished.
“I won’t be my mother, Kira.”
My eyes flew wide, and I jerked away from him. If he’d taken one of his daggers and cut my heart out, it might have hurt less.
“You think I would…”
He was convinced I would break his heart. Because I was no longer just Kira Everleigh, bookstore owner and slightly quirky dragon shifter. I was a princess. Future Queen of the Dragons. My family would expect me to marry a dragon and produce little dragon babies to carry on the family line, and he could never be a part of that.
My brothers had probably told him as much.
And fool that I was, I’d told him that I felt like I belonged here, with my new family. All he’d probably heard me saying was that I belonged with other dragons.
So when the gryphon mating bond became an issue, all he could see was his parents. The pain his mother had endured.
“When it became obvious my father wasn’t willing to stay, my mother just let him walk away. But I couldn’t. I would fight. And I would wind up fighting everyone you loved. Eventually, you would lose someone, and everything we felt for each other would be destroyed.”
“You’ve looked an awfully long way into the future,” I told him, struggling to remain calm. “Predicted a lot of things we can’t possibly know for sure.”
But he wouldn’t bend. “I know the courts, Kira. I know shapeshifters, and I’ve seen what happens when they feud. I won’t put either of us through that, not if there’s any way to prevent it.”
“So you plan to prevent it by just walking away?”
He didn’t even flinch. “Yes.”
I wanted to fight him. To beg, to explain, to argue. But I wouldn’t. I respected myself more than that, and in the end, this wasn’t a battle that could be fought with words.
Draven’s scars were real, and while I wanted to be angry with him for giving up, I couldn’t blame him for his fear. After all, he wanted the same thing I did—to know that the other person was just as committed, just as willing to fight for this as he was.
He should have known me better—did know me better than that. He’d said as much, weeks ago in my room, when he said I would take down an army for someone I loved.
But family? Neither of us had ever really had one, so was it any wonder that family was what stood between us now?
“Okay,” I said, unable to speak without tears roughening my voice. “I won’t beg you, Draven. And I won’t make promises, because you wouldn’t believe them anyway. If you don’t feel like you can trust me, nothing would ever have worked out between us, no matter how badly we wanted it to. Maybe you’re right, and it’s better if we don’t bother to try.”
And that was as far as determination and maturity could get me. I jumped out of the tub, grabbed my towel, and ran for the house before I los
t it completely.
Fourteen
I thought I knew what awkwardness was, but nothing I’d ever experienced could compare to how I felt for the next two weeks, as tensions heightened, tempers flared, and Draven remained present but distant.
We pretended everything was fine—I wasn’t keen on admitting to my brothers that the two of us had shared a steamy yet ultimately disappointing moment in the hot tub—but in reality, nothing was fine. Draven still came with us to the training grounds, but was careful not to touch me, and would leave whenever Ryker and I sparred.
After all those weeks of work, I was stronger and faster than I’d ever been, but still not strong or fast enough.
And as for my opponent? He spent most of his time doing what amounted to campaigning—talking to anyone who would listen about how disrespectful and ignorant of tradition I was, and how he was doing all dragons a favor by removing me from the line of succession.
I would have thought it was the perfect time for Lady Tairen to step up and do whatever it was that a queen did, but she remained silent, at least in public. And the few times we were together, she was cordial, yet somehow closed-off, as though already preparing herself to lose me.
Callum buried himself in work, as though he could uncover the identity of our attackers by sheer will. Declan… I could tell things were hard on him. He left me in no doubt that he loved and supported me, but he also wasn’t around as much, and I didn’t blame him. The tension in the air had to be exhausting for an empath.
Ryker, of all of them, seemed to handle things the best, but he was struggling too. He doubled down on my training and was constantly dragging me over to his house for dinner, card games, or informal hangouts with friends, none of whom seemed to know quite what to do with me.
So, yeah. Awkward pretty much summed it all up.
The only person who wasn’t awkward was Skye. So when it came down to the last night before the challenge, it was Skye that I texted and invited to hang out for the evening.
I wanted to forget about what would happen the next day. I wanted to laugh until I cried, drink copious amounts of tea, and eat my weight in barbecue.
Fortunately, Skye was completely down with this plan, and by the time we’d driven into Bend and devoured three—yes, three—full racks of ribs, my mood was definitely looking up. After that, we went to a movie, then stopped by a store for snacks, and ended up back in my room with enough chips, ice cream, and sweet tea to feed an entire sorority house.
The snacks got us through an entire season of sitcom episodes, which ended near midnight. At that point, both of us were in a bit of an ice-cream-induced stupor, so we jumped and shrieked a little when someone knocked on my door.
Probably one of my brothers demanding that I go to sleep. I grunted and pulled a pillow over my head, but Skye jumped up and went to answer it.
“It’s for you, Kira.” She sounded a little hostile, so I peeked out from under the pillow.
Draven stood in the doorway.
With a bag over his shoulder and goodbye on his face.
I almost put the pillow back over my head and told him where he could shove his stupid goodbyes, but a girl has to grow up eventually, so I did the mature thing and got up.
Skye shot him one last glare before she stepped back into my room. I moved past her out into the hall and shut the door.
“What’s up?” I stared at the carpet to keep myself from dwelling on the reality that Draven was about to leave, and I didn’t know if I would ever see him again.
“I’ve been recalled.”
That yanked my eyes off the floor. “Back to court? Any idea why?”
He jerked his head in a negative, seeming even more on edge than usual. “No, but it’s urgent. I have to head back tonight.”
“But the council hasn’t given you an answer yet.”
“It may not matter anymore.”
Well, that wasn’t ominous or anything. But then again, maybe it was good. Maybe it meant the fae had discovered new evidence that cleared Morghaine of wrongdoing. I could always hope.
“Kira.” He paused, and I saw his knuckles go white where they gripped the strap of his bag. “I intended to stay until after the challenge. No matter where we left things the other night, I never meant to abandon you to do this alone, and I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. I hope you can believe that.”
“No, I get it.” I folded my arms. “You have a family too, and they need you.”
He jerked as if I’d kicked him.
“That’s not—”
“Don’t feel like you have to explain yourself,” I interrupted. “I don’t need any more explanations. The truth is, you’ve done far more for me than I had any right to expect. You advocated for me when everyone else would have written me off. You could’ve left me to rot in Idria, but you came after me. And you could’ve run away the moment you found out about my family, but you didn’t, and I will always owe you.”
It was true, but apart from what I owed Draven, I decided I owed myself one last thing. I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around his waist, and hugged him, breathing in cedar and chocolate along with the pain of his leaving.
He stood there, stiff, but unresisting, either unable or unwilling to hug me in return, so I pulled back and smiled right through the hurt.
“Goodbye, Draven. Tell Rath and Wynter hi for me if you see them.”
I wrenched myself away and headed back into my room, but he stopped me cold, with my hand still on the doorknob.
“You owe me nothing, Kira.” He spoke formally, but I knew he meant every word. “Not now, not ever. Whatever you may think of me, your friendship alone is an honor I could never deserve.”
I’d never asked him to deserve it. All I’d asked for was his trust, and it turned out to be the one thing he could never give.
And because I had no response that didn’t involve tears, I didn’t even turn around, just opened the door, went inside, and shut it firmly behind me.
Then my resolve ran out. I set my back to the door, slid to the floor, and began to sob.
“I can see,” Skye said, “that we’re going to need more chocolate. And a long explanation.”
I told her everything. Even about the hot tub. And when I’d finished, she flopped back on my bed with a long whistle.
“That’s epic,” she announced. “At least Auntie didn’t find out, because she would have flipped.”
“I know.”
“Can I ask you something?”
I blotted my face with my sleeves and grimaced. “Sure, why not.”
“Do you want to be queen?”
She sounded genuinely curious rather than calculating, so I decided to be honest. “I don’t know. Everyone seems to be assuming that I either do want to, or I should want to, or maybe just that I don’t really have a choice. No one seems to be asking themselves why they should even consider me.”
Skye chuckled. “You’re thinking like an American. Where things like ‘why’ matter. The tradition of a generational monarchy is still deeply engrained in most dragons, which is one of the reasons they work so hard to keep us separate from humans. They don’t want modern ideas to corrupt the young.”
“But I like being corrupted by modern ideas. Like phones and grocery delivery and the internet.”
“I think it’s actually why my mother left,” Skye admitted candidly. “For most of the first twenty to thirty years since dragons came to this world, she was seen first and foremost as the queen’s sister. And that was all she could ever be—she was never just Jaida. Never a unique individual with ideas and dreams and talents. She was expected to play the part of unacknowledged queen-in-waiting, with no idea how long she might have to wait.”
That did seem like an oppressive way to live.
“So, she just decided to quit?”
“She never said.” Skye sat up and crossed her legs. “I think she was waiting for me to be of age, and then one day she just couldn’t do it any longer. She would c
ome back to visit from time to time, but never for more than a day or two, and she always seemed distant. Like she had a lot of other things on her mind.”
“That had to hurt,” I said bluntly. “Even if you are a perfectly gorgeous blonde model who doesn’t act like she wants sympathy from anyone.”
She bared her teeth and threw a pillow at my face. “Never give a girl a break, do you?”
I shrugged a little, but not in apology. A little plain-speaking was probably good for her soul.
“Sure, it hurt. It hurt to realize that she probably adopted me for that reason in the first place—to take the pressure off of her, in a sense. And it worked—some people started looking at me like I was supposed to take her place. Like they expected me to step into a role with no name, no rules, and no future, only a set of expectations that no one ever talked about.”
“Then you were actually a little relieved when I showed up?”
“Hah.” She pointed one manicured finger at me. “Don’t flatter yourself, Tiny. Like I told you before, I might not always approve of how they do things, but this community matters to me. More than I ever realized. Not until you came back from the dead. Even if Lady Tairen would never consider me a potential heir, I wasn’t about to stand by while someone else burned it all to the ground out of hubris or ignorance.”
“So you pulled a classic ‘mean girl’ to find out what I was made of.”
She grinned, completely unrepentant. “I’m a green dragon, like my mother. We’re the chameleons of dragons, and a lot of people think that means we’re automatically sneaky or untrustworthy. But I prefer to think it makes me flexible. That it helps me understand others because it’s easier for me to get inside their heads.”
“Don’t even think about getting anywhere near the inside of my head,” I said sternly.
I wondered if that was what made Morghaine such a perfect choice for my guardian—that as a green dragon, she could take on different roles with ease. Draven had once told me they could even wear different faces. Was it possible that she’d used that ability to hide from us after leaving Idria?