by Jill Haven
“Your mother, as far as I know, was half Cloud dragon.” He looked at Jade. She was still staring away from us but nodded. This was so not like her. “Your mother’s mother would have been a Cloud dragon, I expect. You’re part dragon. From what I’ve been led to believe, it’s very rare for the children of a human dragon couple to then go on and have their own children. If they do, usually both mother and child dies. And you smell like dragon. You smell very good to me.” He cleared his throat and his face tinged peachy-pink high on his cheeks. I melted a little at how cute it was.
“What do I smell like?”
“Vanilla, roses, bergamot—”
“Baby powder,” Jade said quickly, locking eyes with Carlisle again, but this time she smiled at him.
“You smell like an omega,” he said, and reached out to touch me, but I shuffled away along the wall. I wasn’t ready for him to lay a hand on me yet.
“Okay, now what’s that?” I sighed, getting tired of all the cloak and dagger stuff. I wanted them to just tell me.
“Our species—”
“Dragons?”
“Yes. We have females, males, and omegas—males who can conceive and carry children.” He smiled at me and I saw his gaze dip down my body. I clutched a hand to my stomach.
“No way. Me?”
He nodded seriously, but I was having trouble with this and nearly stopped breathing. “And,” he said, “you’re one of those rare omegas who survived a birth via a human woman. You’re considered to be blessed. Divine. We call them Divine Omegas in our mythology, and it’s said that your kind are hearty in every way, since you survived what is typically a death sentence.”
“Good breeders,” Jade murmured darkly from across the room. “It’s one of those things that skips a couple generations like weird toes, or when red hair pops up out of nowhere on a baby. It’s probably just a mix of good genes that kept you alive, but to the old ones it seemed like magic.”
“A blessing,” I murmured.
She nodded.
I flicked my gaze to my stomach and wanted to laugh, but Jade was still staring at me with those eyes that weren’t human at all, and I’d seen Carlisle earlier.
“Congratulations, you’re a living legend, in more ways than one.” Carlisle twisted up the corner of his mouth into half a smile.
This could not be happening. I pressed my hand to my stomach and imagined it full of… what? An egg? A baby? I breathed hard and fought not to do what I’d done earlier—pass the hell out. My mind spun.
15
Carlisle
Haiden’s teeth were bared and his eyes were wide. The lamp light flashed gold on his glasses, and he looked even more fragile than he had when I walked in and discovered him on the floor, because at least then I hadn’t been able to see this pure chaos that raged through him. He seemed by turns scared and furious. He clutched his stomach, fingers dug against his own body until it seemed like he should hurt. He shook his head.
“I—I need you both to leave. Right now,” he said so softly that if I weren’t a dragon, I wouldn’t have heard him at all.
“I’d rather not,” I replied. Jade widened her eyes at me, raising her small hands to ask what I was doing, which Haiden caught. He showed us his teeth even more, a distinct dragon aggression trait that both thrilled and pained me to see on his face.
“Leave. Both of you.”
“I—”
“Come on,” Jade said fast, hooking her hand around my elbow and pulling me away. She heaved her body weight into the move and threw me off balance enough that I turned with her. I could barely stand to leave him there, given everything.
“What are you doing? He collapsed twice tonight,” I growled at her. “He needs me.”
Haiden let out his own displeased snarl in our direction.
She scowled. “What he needs is time to process. If we don’t give it to him, this will be ten times worse later.” She brushed her hair behind her ear and turned to give Haiden a long searching look. He didn’t acknowledge her, simply stared at the floor.
“Call me, sweetie. We’re going.”
He nodded but didn’t look up. I opened the door to go down the staircase to the outside door, but rather than follow her down, I stopped halfway. The stale-aired gloom after the warmth and hominess of being in an area that was so full of Haiden’s light, sweet scent was like a fist to my solar plexus, right in the spot that ached when I was apart from him.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to be here if he needs me.”
“Your funeral if he catches you.” She stomped down the steps the rest of the way, making a racket, and slammed the front door shut behind her. Let it never be said that a Cloud dragon wasn’t smart. I settled down onto the wooden steps and rested my elbows on my knees, allowing myself to huddle there and hurt for Haiden.
This was a nightmare.
Not long after Jade’s car roared to life outside, I heard sniffles loud and clear upstairs. I couldn’t miss them. They probably weren’t very loud by human standards, but to me they were deafening, or maybe I couldn’t help but be tuned into Haiden and what he was doing. The small, sad whimpers flowed into noisy broken sobs, and my heart began to buckle. My chest ached and burned, and pain pulled at me somewhere deep inside my body. I wanted to race back to his side, but he’d specifically asked me not to do that.
“I’m a fucking freak, just like Dad always said. I can’t even do gay right. I’m able to have babies. He would kill me if he knew. Fuck.” Haiden sounded so sure of his words, and then the sobbing grew louder.
What horrors had Haiden lived through? I knew he’d had trouble, so much about him telegraphed that he’d been mistreated. But to hear an admonition of that directly from his mouth? Abhorrent.
All I wanted to do was help him see how wonderful he was, how important, how sweet. I needed to make him realize he was an omega worth so much more than those vile words his father had laid on him. I cupped my hands over my face and vibrated with the effort it took to stay in one spot and let him ache all alone. Sweat broke out on my body and my stomach turned. This isn’t right.
Eventually he wound down and I didn’t hear him crying anymore. I snuck back upstairs to check on him, and he was asleep again, with his arm slung over his face. His chest rose and fell softly, and his pretty lips were turned down. I hated to leave him uncovered the way he was, and the dishes on the floor, and the lights on, but I made myself let it all go. I did lock the front door behind me on the way out, for all the good that might do against what I was really afraid of bursting inside, that dragon I’d seen lurking the other night.
For a long while I sat in my car and watched Haiden’s apartment, clenching and unclenching my fists around the steering wheel. What had he been through? How could I help? The urge to rip open his father and feast on his beating heart settled into me once again, and since I wouldn’t let myself do that for so many reasons, I tried to shake off the malaise I was feeling. Sighing, I turned the car toward the motel.
When I got there, I found Jade wearing a path in front of the door to the room I was sharing. I wasn’t certain where Mason had gotten off to, but he wasn’t outside. I hurried out of my car to her.
“What’s wrong? Has something else happened?”
“No, I just wanted to make sure he’s okay. Did he realize you were still there?”
Deflating, I rubbed my thumb across my forehead and gathered my thoughts. “No. He cried himself to sleep. He’s… not fine, but he’s not distressed at the moment, either.”
“This is a fucking wreck.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and had the audacity to glare as if she wanted me to take the blame.
“Come inside,” I demanded.
Jade narrowed her eyes but followed after me when I shoved the door to the room open. Mason wasn’t in here, either, and I briefly wondered where he was off to, but not enough to call him. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. Today had been long and unpleasant. I rubbed at the ach
e in my chest.
“What’s on your mind?” A disturbing level of politeness had entered Jade’s voice and when I turned toward her, she had her hands clasped in front of her, much the same way anyone who visited me on clan business might. Surprised, I wasn’t sure what I’d done to trigger the difference, but I was glad because there was only so much more I could take tonight without snapping on someone.
“What do you know about Haiden’s bloodline? I don’t want any more surprises. If he’s a member of the Cloud dragon clan, who was his grandmother? I should know her, at least in passing.”
“Seren Rees.”
The name was like a cold bucket of water over my head and had me moving out of my own misery back into the land of facts and figures. I’d helped her sort out her clan finances before I was the head of the entire region.
“Oh, yes. She could have taken over as Princeps Draco for the Northeast and chose not to, citing family obligations. I asked her for advice a few times. She was always very patient. If I remember correctly, Seren disappeared sometime in, what, the nineties? Rumors said she might have been killed, but no one knew of any reason why. With no body and no clan petition, there wasn’t an investigation mounted.”
“Oh, I can think of a few reasons. The Cloud Clan has had its spats.” Jade smiled, and the expression she wore was one you didn’t often see on young people—hardened and tired.
“How do you fit into this?”
She shrugged a shoulder and flopped down onto my bed hard, not catching herself at all. She bounced and smiled at me. “I was Haiden’s mother Bree’s best friend. She grew up with the dragons. She was more human than shifter, couldn’t change at all. Seren loved a man and had to watch him age and die. It was clan drama for years. Bree aged slower than a human but was still aging. She fell in love with a man, and so it went.” Jade ducked her face so that her long hair fell in a curtain in front of it, and I got the impression it wasn’t an accident.
That all made sense to me. Why be with a dragon when you couldn’t shift and fully be their mate? But then, I wanted Haiden, and as far as I knew he couldn’t shift, either. “And so, Haiden came into the world. But why… I mean, he survived. I’m not wrong, am I? I’ve been told that mostly babes die from those sorts of unions. I’m surprised that she even bothered to try to birth him.”
Jade smiled sadly. “You know how we dragons are. We’re always sniffing out our own. Turned out the man she fell for had dragon blood himself. Far enough back that he didn’t know, and we’re not certain what clan, but she couldn’t have Haiden in a hospital. He was a dragon in the womb. We had a hell of a time covering that one up.”
“Really? He can shift?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never seen any indications he could as an adult, but when he was born, at home—” She cringed and stared at the wall. “There’s a reason we don’t do things that way is all I’ll say. Bree didn’t realize her husband had dragon blood. Haiden came out of his mother’s womb like he was trying to crack free of an egg, claws and teeth and all. She bled out almost instantly. There was nothing to be done for it. Her husband went nuts with the grief. He threatened to murder us all because it was a dragon that took her away from him. He loved her. He was a good man when they were together. Doting. Protective. All the best of our dragon instincts, and losing her….” Jade shook her head. “It was a horror.”
“Dreadful.”
She snorted. “Yeah, anyway, so it was real shitty for a while.” Her tone snapped back to one I was more familiar with. Arrogant, like a teenager. “Touch and go with him because he kept saying he wanted to kill the baby.”
“And by law—dragon and human—he had rights to the child, to Haiden.”
She nodded and stared at me. “What I’m about to tell you could get me put up on charges with the Enforcement Council. Swear you’ll keep it a secret.”
We stared at each other and she set her jaw.
“I swear.”
“You can see why I didn’t say any of this shit in front of Haiden.”
“Yes, just go on.”
“We manipulated his father’s mind. The magic held firm at first. We allowed him to remember his wife and grieve her loss because obviously there was a baby to consider, but slowly over time the magic we used… sort of fell apart. Poole still doesn’t remember Haiden’s birth, other than that his wife died, or much about Bree beyond the fact that he loved her. It’s old magic I didn’t know how to wield well, and it began to fade when Seren died because she laid it on him with my help.” Jade’s face pinched into a mask of shame. “Bree had asked me to watch over Haiden before anything went wrong. Seren and I had him as much as we could when he was young, but then his father decided we were the enemy. I think that’s when the magic began to crack a bit. Over the years I watched Poole descend into what he’s become, but without Seren to guide me, and without access to some books that our clan lost over the years…” She shrugged and stared at me. “I couldn’t rebuild the broken magic or restore his mind. I couldn’t exactly reach out for help, either, because we shouldn’t have been messing around with the human to begin with, even if he did have dragon blood in him.”
“I can’t say what I would have done at that time if you’d brought this to me.”
She nodded.
“I remember hearing about the death of Seren’s daughter, now that I’m thinking about it. I relied heavily on self-reporting from the clans. I’m beginning to realize now that I’ve been mishandling a lot of my duties as the regional clan leader.”
She had nothing to say to that.
I sat heavily beside her on the bed. Somehow, my legs had gone hollow. “I believe I was informed that Bree and the baby both died. Not uncommon. I don’t think I thought too much about it. I’m sorry.” She didn’t say a word. “He wanted to kill Haiden?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can’t quibble. This secret stays with me.”
She smiled then and rested her head on my shoulder briefly. “It was a no-brainer when Seren asked me to protect Haiden. He was such a cute, happy hatchling. Baby. Whatever. I transformed myself and have been carefully keeping company with him ever since. Guarding him.”
“So, no one alive, other than the handful of us here, knows about Haiden?”
“When he was young, there were a few kidnapping attempts.”
I jerked around to face her, but she was as unruffled as ever. “Really? What happened?”
“The perpetrators didn’t survive the attempts.” She grinned and I caught the gleam of her sharp fangs in the low lamplight. I couldn’t help but laugh. I was beginning to like Jade in spite of myself, and whether or not it was advisable. “I won’t lie. It worries me that there have been dragons in the area again. I don’t think they know what Haiden is, but it’s a concern.”
“What should I do now? I can’t leave Haiden here alone. I won’t. Even if I didn’t feel drawn to him, it would be a horrible thing to do as regional leader. He’s potentially in danger. He should be moved even if he doesn’t want to be with me.” I drew a deep breath to continue, but she cut me off.
“Just give him some time, Carlisle. We dumped a lot on him tonight. Like, a ton. Right on top of his head. You told him he can fucking have kids, for fuck’s sake. I might have saved that one for a different night, maybe when you had your knot in his ass to distract him.” She rolled her eyes, and I coughed on the air.
“I miss him,” I grumbled, and she laughed. “I think he’s the one. My mate. A true mate.”
She didn’t argue with me on that, thankfully. “You’ve been looking for a mate how long?”
“Oh, about three hundred years, give or take.”
“What’s a few more days then?” She seemed genuinely amused and it grated on my raw nerves.
“Torture.”
She laughed and hopped up from the bed, and she giggled the whole way out of the room. I wasn’t sure if she was going back to watch over Haiden, or if she was going to hunt the dragons in the area,
or if she was going home to do her nails. I had no clue what drove the wretched she-dragon. Groaning, I lay back on the bed and rubbed at my aching chest, wishing I could be wrapped around Haiden where I knew he’d be safe.
16
Haiden
Because of Carlisle, my fridge was completely stocked and there were things in the cupboards, like cans of soup, that I would have never splurged on. If Carlisle hadn’t been so nice, I probably wouldn’t have been able to convince myself to call off work every day for an entire week. Hunger would have driven me out sooner. The first few days that I called off, Eric was sympathetic, but it was Thursday, the start of our weekend rush, and Eric had been doing all the cooking while I was gone.
“You need to get your butt in here, kid.” His booming voice was cheerful as ever. “Don’t you have bills to pay?”
Rolling my head back to stare at the ceiling, I nodded for a second and then said, “Yeah. Tomorrow, though. Please?” My savings would be gone because of this. I couldn’t bring myself to care much, though. It wasn’t every day someone told you that you could have a baby. I still wasn’t sure why I believed Carlisle and Jade, but the news felt true, almost like they were reminding me of something I already knew, deep down inside.
“All right. One more day, and then whatever the hell you’ve got going on has to be done, understood? I need you here. You’re the best, kid. You’re awesome. No replacement could do what you do.” Eric’s tone was a peculiar mix of exasperated and sincere, and he had me grinning.
“Understood, boss,” I said as strongly as I could. He grunted out a goodbye, obviously distracted by something on his end, and the line disconnected.
I sat down on my futon. I had the blinds cracked and stared out the window. More leaves were gone from the trees, victims of a windy thunderstorm last night. The gray sky, trembling branches, and fog around the edges of the window let me know it was much colder out there than I probably wanted to deal with. Was Carlisle still in town? My heart twinged. I thought he was, or at the very least I’d convinced myself that I could feel him on the other side of a twisty long connection that flowed from my chest. The strange fluttering sensation had started up while I’d been hiding out here at home, and I knew I was maybe crazy, but it seemed like an invisible string stretched between us. I just knew he was there on the other end. But I wasn’t sure in any way that counted, like seeing him with my own eyes. And I still had so many questions.