A Song of Destiny (Great Plains Dragon Feud Book 2)

by Emilia Hartley

Normally, Ember loved her work. She loved mixing drinks, hearing people’s stories, and listening to all the musicians who came through. Some people had lofty dreams to pen the next great novel or find a cure for cancer. Ember didn’t aspire to such great heights. She existed to enjoy music, and that was about it.

  Today, the line cook’s insinuations hovered over her head. She felt his gaze on the back of her neck like a vice grip. She had to remind herself that the man was human and couldn’t hurt her. She could defend herself, but that knowledge couldn’t clear the air of the tension crackling around her. It couldn’t stop her from dropping glasses or spilling drinks.

  When the day—or, rather, the evening—finally ended and they closed out the bar, the line cook made a beeline towards her. He must have mustered more courage throughout the day because the look in his eyes made her stomach dip.

  But, then a hand touched her lower back and the line cook stopped dead in his tracks. His dangerous gaze shifted to whoever stood behind her. Face pale, the line cook did an about-face and rejoined the group of co-workers still lingering outside the bar.

  “I told you I’d be in the area,” Cash said, his voice low and husky.

  “Fuck,” she breathed.

  The sound of his voice was like a hand around her heart, one that could have pulled her to her toes so he could kiss her and leave her breathless. Instead, Cash used the hand on her back to direct her away from her co-workers.

  Why couldn’t he just accept that they had something? He needed to claim her already because she couldn’t bear this longing. Her restless beast pranced inside her, all too eager for Cash’s attention. Would he kiss her? Would he hold her? Would tonight be the night where he acknowledged that she was the true author of those letters?

  She had no way of knowing if any of that would come true.

  None of it was likely, but Cash’s presence did surprise her. She looked up at him as they walked. She studied the lines of his face, delighted that she got to see him from this angle. Cash had always been far away, unreachable as he sank into his music.

  He didn’t take her hand, but he also didn’t remove his from her back. That small space ignited with fire, warming her core until it became a molten mess. She swallowed, unsure if she could handle much more of this. Being so close to Cash after so long was a tease. It turned her inside out, filled her with thoughts and desires, and left her with nothing but want.

  “Did that guy bother you anymore?”

  She sighed. “He made a beeline for me right before you showed up.”

  Cash growled something she couldn’t make out. The anger in his voice was unmistakable, though.

  “Aw, it sounds like you might actually care for me.” She bumped her hip into his. “I thought you considered all the Barnes women to be nuisances.”

  “You are. There’s no doubt about that. I can still care about a nuisance, though.” He gave her a sidelong glance, his impossibly long lashes distracting her while his beast swirled across his irises.

  The look made her heart do backflips. She dragged in a shuddering breath.

  “Besides, aren’t we supposed to be friends now? Isn’t that what Gale and Baylee are fighting for? We have to pretend to get along, so they can end the Montoya-Barnes feud once and for all.”

  Her heart fell flat on its imaginary face. An imaginary gymnastics judge raised an imaginary card with a zero on it.

  As badly as Ember wanted to seethe at that comment, all fight drained out of her. This was a step in the right direction. She had to remember that. Without that ideology, she and Cash never would have spoken a word to one another. He would have kept his distance, at best. She’d heard some of the things Reece Montoya liked to say about her family.

  This was…better than nothing.

  Did she have to settle, though? Was this all she would have? Her heart begged for more. She’d been bonded to this man for far too long. She was surprised the distance between them hadn’t unraveled her beast and turned it into a wild creature. She couldn’t bear this kind of longing for another three years.

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” Cash said. He pressed his hand flat to her back, turning the heat inside her all the way up. “Next time I play at your bar, I’ll talk to that man.”

  Ember made a small sound in the back of her throat while she pulled her scrambled brain back into order. “What are you going to say to him?”

  That you belong to me and no one else can touch you. That only I can make you scream. That no one else in this world will ever know you like I do.

  Those were all the things she wanted to hear from Cash that she knew she wasn’t going to hear right now. She ached for validation, to know that there was a slim chance that he would begin to see her the way she’d seen him all this time. Was that too much to ask for?

  Probably.

  “I’m going to tell him he’s a lowly piece of shit who’d be better off without a dick if that’s how he’s going to ask women to touch it.”

  Ember nodded. That was good, too. She liked that.

  “Well, I won’t stop you,” she said.

  Cash grunted. “There’s a reason my family doesn’t let me get very far without a babysitter. I can be…intense.”

  She furrowed her brow. “You’ve been stubborn with me, but not intense. Though, I wouldn’t mind intensity if it came in the right flavor.”

  Did she really just say that out loud?

  Her cheeks heated. She faced forward, hoping that Cash couldn’t see the blush on her pale skin. But his fingers dug into her lower back, almost possessively. The heat in her core sank lower and gathered between her legs. She let out a ragged breath but couldn’t relieve herself of the need that had suddenly invaded her body.

  “You don’t want to see how intense I can be. No one does. It doesn’t matter what flavor the intensity comes in, it will end poorly no matter what.” Cash’s voice sank low with sorrow.

  She spun on him. He ran into her, and she had to grab ahold of him to steady herself as she glared up at him.

  “I highly doubt that,” she growled. She threaded her fingers into his curly hair and took ahold of him. “Don’t treat yourself like there’s something wrong with you when all you need is the right reason to pull yourself together.”

  Cash stared down at her, his lips slightly parted. When his gaze dropped to her lips, Ember thought it would finally happen. She’d said the right thing, and now he loved her the way she loved him. He would kiss her, and they would find their happily ever after.

  She might even find her fire!

  But Cash tore away from her. He shook his head. She wondered if he was trying to shake off the memory of her touch. She pulled her hands back and folded her arms around herself. A hollow ache opened in her chest, right where her heart should have been. Her beast growled, but the hollowness swallowed the sound whole.

  “Goodnight, Ember Barnes.” Cash turned his back to her.

  She watched him disappear. Every step he took away from her felt like an uncrossable infinity. She didn’t know how to catch up to him. As far as she knew, she would always be too far behind him for them to ever be in the same place.

  Once he was gone, she took in her surroundings and realized he’d walked her all the way to her doorstep. Cold and empty, she retreated up the stairs to her apartment where she crashed onto her bed and allowed herself to cry for the first time in years.

  6

  Cash’s thoughts swirled in his head, spinning faster and faster until he could barely register anything. His beast slithered just under his skin. It begged to be unleashed. He could feel the points of its claws digging into his flesh.

  It commanded him to go back to Ember. Just her name set him on fire. The dragon filled him with it. With need and desperation, too.

  Something about her haunted him. He couldn’t shake the feeling of her in his hand. He hadn’t been able to take it off her the entire time they walked together. Now, without her in his palm, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’
d been ripped in half.

  Now, his beast lurked, waiting for the chance to finish him off. It would tear through him and galivant across the Montoya-Barnes territories, heedless of whatever dangers awaited him.

  His best choice of action was to retreat. He headed back to the house where his small clan would be waiting for him. As much as Cash hated to admit it, he wanted to hear Baylee’s voice. He wanted Gale to punch him. He wanted Logan to look at him like he was disappointed, which he always seemed to be.

  Cash needed his clan to keep him present, so the beast wouldn’t take over and push him away. They kept him steady. They made sure Cash didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.

  But when he got home, there was a sleek sedan waiting in the driveway. His lip curled. The beast, snarling and enraged, shoved toward the surface.

  Alice Montoya slid out of the car like liquid fire. Her red hair snaked down her back, undone but not messy. There was never anything messy about Alice Montoya. She was always exactly what she wanted to be at exactly the right moment. When others had died under Quincy Montoya’s heel, she had persisted.

  She would be the ultimate obstacle in ending the Montoya-Barnes feud, but that’s not why she’d come here tonight.

  Cash had stood up for Baylee last time Alice visited. Now, it was time for him to pay the price for that insult.

  “To what do I owe the visit?” Cash asked as if he didn’t already know.

  A slick smile curled across Alice’s red mouth. She snuggled deeper into her coat like the cold could do anything to her at all. “We need to discuss your contracts.”

  He almost gnashed his teeth. The beast’s urges were all consuming, but he managed to keep ahold of his humanity in the face of such a threat. Alice held every musical contract he’d ever signed. He should have known that letting her manage them would bite him in the ass someday, but he’d been young and desperate at the time.

  Music had been the only outlet that silenced his wild beast. He’d needed to play, and Alice had seen an opportunity in that. Since the Montoya mines were all but useless, she’d hooked her claws into Cash and hadn’t let go.

  “What are you going to force me to do now?” he asked dryly.

  “Don’t sulk like that. Consider yourself lucky I’m not sending you off to another dragon clan right now. Your cousin has lost his mind over a woman, and Logan isn’t who he thinks he is. You could lose everything by standing with the two of them.”

  Cash straightened his spine and raised his chin. She had no right to send him anywhere. Her words were empty threats, fired like blanks with the hopes that the sound would scare him. The memory of Ember, holding him by his hair as she poured confidence into him, kept him strong.

  “I came to tell you that I signed a record contract on your behalf.”

  Cash blinked. “What? When did that happen?”

  “Just this evening. I tried to contact you, but you refused to acknowledge my calls. So, I had no choice but to make the decision for you.”

  He frowned, sure that this had to have a caveat. There was no way Alice could have done anything kind for him. Had she signed his profits away, funneling them straight into her bank account? If so, then he didn’t mind. He didn’t do this solely for the money.

  Cash realized that he didn’t want to be taken away from here. He wasn’t finished with all this town had to offer, from its intimate bars to its alluring bartenders. So long as Alice didn’t need him to fly out to Nashville or another far-flung city away from his clan, then he could deal with whatever she threw at him.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  She regarded him for a long moment. The chill in the air warned of early snowfall. That, or he felt Alice’s frigid soul brush against his skin. He still couldn’t believe that she’d given birth to the triplets.

  No, that was a lie. Sometimes Cash could see her in Reece, as much as he hated to admit it.

  “Look, if you’re finished here, I would like to go inside and get something to eat. I would invite you inside, but I think you’d find the atmosphere hostile.” He took a step towards the glowing façade of his home.

  Warmth crept over his skin, chasing away the ominous sensation that Alice had brought along with her.

  She could do it. She could rip him away from here. If she signed a contract that required him to leave, he could face a lawsuit if he broke it. He needed to rescind her power, but she made it hard to do.

  “Ah, yes,” Alice said. “I wouldn’t want to make the little Barnes girl cry, would I?”

  Cash swallowed his sigh. He waited, silent, for Alice to leave. Once her car vanished down the road, Cash stepped inside.

  His clanmates raised cheers at his entrance. Their welcome helped mitigate the worry now taking up residence in the back of his mind. Baylee quickly ran to him with a big bowl of rice, vegetables, and spicy steak strips. His stomach growled greedily.

  Cash’s life could get better. He was seeing the evidence of that. He could have family and friends who kept him from falling into his beast’s feral tendencies. There was a chance he could have the kind of love that Gale had found, too.

  But when Cash thought of love, he usually thought of the letters upstairs in his desk. Now, love made him think of the passionate Barnes woman with her fiery-tipped hair.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stir up more trouble for the two families. They needed to set aside their differences, but that wouldn’t happen through relationships like that. Cash had seen just what happened when a Montoya and a Barnes fell in love.

  Baylee barely spoke to her extended family. Her aunts and uncles and grandparents turned their backs on her. Gale’s family had fractured into rival units, leaving some of them vulnerable.

  If Cash did the same thing, he would only make matters worse.

  7

  Ember went back to the fields on her day off. She stomped through the cornstalks and wished she could set something on fire. Every time she tried to summon the flames in her throat, she felt the sputtering of sparks right before they died.

  She let out a labored sigh and wished she didn’t have to be alone. Looking up, she scanned the cloudy sky for any trace of that smoky dragon she knew to be Cash. The skies remained devoid of dragons, much to her disappointment.

  Tired of her casual destruction, Ember retreated to the backpack she’d brought along. She grabbed it and sat on the cold ground, so she could pull out the notebook she’d brought with her. Since Cash refused to believe that she had written the letters, she decided that she would write another one.

  This time, she would sign her name.

  She couldn’t stand this loneliness anymore. The void growing inside her chest demanded to be filled.

  But shouldn’t she wait? Cash had shown her that he wasn’t always in control of his beast. She’d lived with a man who’d lost that same battle, and it had left emotional scars she hadn’t yet healed. What if she woke in the morning and reached for her mate only to find the bed empty? Could she live with the truth if her love wasn’t enough to keep him from running off?

  Her pen hovered over the notebook. She slipped and a blot of black ink stained the page. Tearing it out, she crumpled it in her hand and desperately wished she could burn it. She tried, more than a few times, to set the paper on fire with the little sparks she could manage.

  Perhaps there was too much moisture in the air. Well, at least that was what she told herself.

  Why couldn’t she be normal? She’d formed a mate bond with a dragon she’d never spoken to up until now. She couldn’t breathe fire. She couldn’t even keep her family from falling apart. If she’d been a better dragon or a better daughter, then maybe things would have been different.

  She wouldn’t have had to write anonymous letters to her mate only to have him refute her claims and keep her at an arm’s length. If she had dragon fire, maybe her father wouldn’t have pulled away from his family. He would have cherished them instead of beating himself up for how broken they were.

/>   Ember pressed the empty notebook to her forehead and groaned. There was no point in writing another letter. Now that Cash had met her, he wouldn’t want to love her. The emotion she’d poured into the letters belonged to someone else, as far as Cash was concerned. He separated that part of Ember from the woman he’d met. All that was left was the failure of a shifter.

  Her phone buzzed. Grumbling, Ember pulled it out and read Baylee’s text message.

  Incoming.

  Perplexed, Ember lifted her head. Baylee was nowhere in sight, but Ember’s eyes fell upon a male figure stalking across the field. She stared, dumbfounded, as Cash approached. He finished zipping his pants and pulled a flannel shirt over his naked shoulders.

  He must have just touched down and shifted back to human. Ember had no idea how Baylee had known to text her at that perfect moment, but damn, Ember appreciated it.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Ember said, nervously.

  Once he was closer, Cash said, “Isn’t it a bit late in the year to be visiting a pumpkin patch?”

  She cocked her head then remembered that there were still pumpkins in the field behind her. Most of them had been shipped off to the local market, but a few remained to either rot back into the earth or grow larger than they should.

  “Oh, that. I come here to trample the corn maze when I’m frustrated. I totally forgot about the pumpkins.” She tucked a loose curl behind her ear.

  His brows furrowed. “What’s making you frustrated? Is it the guy at your job? Because I can go talk to him if you want me to.”

  You, dumbass. You’re the one who’s frustrating me.

  Ember didn’t say that, though. She shrugged instead of offering any kind of explanation. If Cash wanted to believe that her co-worker was still bothering her, then she would let him. She was afraid that if she spoke the truth, he would run off.

  All her life, she’d tried to be a fiery person to make up for the fact that she didn’t have dragon fire. It’d gotten her pretty far. Her relatives didn’t whisper about it behind her back anymore. They made jokes about her personality instead.