by T. S. Joyce
“You can’t just make that decision without considering the consequences. For me and for your kind.” Father’s words came out low, and a soft hissing sound emanated from his throat.
“I can, and I did. My fucking body, my fucking choice.”
“No, it’s not your choice! You’re my daughter. Mine! You have a duty to me and to your people. Make the sacrifice and die honorably to continue our race!” Father curled forward, his eyes melting to a steely silver color as his pupils elongated. “You’ll bear a child and be grateful for the honor!” His face was a mask of red as he snapped backward.
“Get back!” she cried as the sound of clanking armor-like scales sounded.
Father morphed and grew, his face turning monstrous as his teeth formed white daggers. Long whiskers trailed down his face as his body grew longer. Sharp claws clutched mounds of earth, digging craters into the landing as a bellowing, ear-shattering roar burst forth from his long, scaly neck. He shone in the dim light, blue and pearlescent white, a perfect specimen of what a warrior dragon should look like.
The dragon rose high above her, eyes wild and furious.
“No!” Bruiser yelled from behind her.
Horror filled her chest as she looked back to see a giant, dark-furred grizzly rip out of the man she loved. He charged, and behind him, the Ashe Crew exploded into raging, roaring bears.
Bruiser skidded to a stop in front of her, then shoved her backward step by step with his massive weight.
“Stop! He’ll kill you,” she screamed.
No, no, no, this couldn’t happen now. Father didn’t have his complete mind when he was a dragon.
The earth shook as Father approached, eyes emotionless like an apex predator focused on the hunt. More bears circled her, hiding her, snarling and pacing as she was herded backward. The Ashe Crew was trying to save her, but what they didn’t know was going to get them killed.
“Father, please!” she pleaded. “It’s Tagan and Kellen. Denison and Brighton. You’ve looked after the Ashe Crew for years. They help you protect your treasure!”
Bruiser grunted and looked back at her, confusion swimming in the gold depths of his feral eyes.
A clicking noise echoed from above, sparks igniting in the gasses that dwelled deep in Father’s throat. That sound meant death and destruction. It was too late. Too late to reach Father. Too late to save herself, but dammit, she could try to save her friends.
“Bruiser,” she said around a sob, “I love you.” Her face crumpled, and her voice dipped to nothing. “You can’t say it back, but I know you love me, too.”
Then she threw her head back and let the dragon out.
Chapter Twelve
Bruiser froze as Diem arched backward, breaking bones cracking against the sound of the monster above them. She fell forward with a cry, her fingers elongating into blade-like claws as her body swelled with power and sprouted scales to cover her thinning human skin.
Power blasted against him, buckling his legs in the moment of her Change. Forest green scales shone in the muted light like gunmetal, and her belly was bright gold. She was stunning as she leapt over him and curled her body around the Ashe Crew.
Much smaller than her father, Diem’s dragon was no match for the titan bearing down on them now. Still, she cuddled them under her outstretched wing, and her yellow eyes met his the moment before heat blasted from somewhere above. Flames licked the sides of her wing, and she hunched around them tighter. A cry of agony wrenched from her throat in a high-pitched, prehistoric screech of pain.
Bruiser roared for her to let him go—struggled against Drew’s body as he suffocated along with the rest of the crew, who were gasping for breath and space as he was. The heat was too much, torching him from the outside in, until he thought he’d die from the burn.
When the flames stopped, the relief was instant. Diem, his beautiful, brave mate had put herself in between her father’s flames and the Ashe Crew, but her body buckled with the disappearance of the hellfire blaze.
Her eyes, yellow with veins of shining gold and dark, diamond-shaped pupils, were full of sadness and pain. She turned her head toward the dragon towering over her. Bruiser didn’t know what passed between them, but Diem retracted her wing and bunched her muscles. With a blast of wind that made Bruiser have to dig in his claws to stay upright, Diem flapped her wings and lifted into the sky. Without a backward glance, she struggled toward the trailer park.
Black smoke billowed from her side, and her wing was riddled with singed holes, making her flight look unbalanced and painful.
Damon shrank back into his human skin and sagged to his knees. “What have I done?” he whispered, silver eyes devastated as he watched his daughter disappear over the next mountain.
Red rage boiled in Bruiser’s blood, building until all he felt was hatred. He charged Damon, slapping him down with his claws and piercing his shoulder with his canines. He wanted to fucking kill the man for what he’d done to Diem.
Something hard hit him from the side, but he smelled blood. Tasted it. Wanted more until Damon was pale as a ghost and lifeless in the mud where he belonged.
“Bruiser,” a voice murmured over the roaring in his ears. A roaring he came to realize was coming from him. “Bruiser!” the voice said again, louder and more demanding. Tagan.
“Stop! That’s an order.”
Bruiser froze, his muscles tightening and refusing his brain’s order to murder.
“Change back. Now!” Tagan yelled, the crackle of power thick in the air.
With a pained sound in his throat, Bruiser shrank back into his human form. It hurt, because he wasn’t ready, and he sure as shit didn’t want to do it. Tagan was in control now, though.
Damon was on his knees, clutching his crimson-streaming shoulder. “I have to make sure she’s okay.”
“No you fucking don’t,” Bruiser yelled. “That job belongs to someone who actually cares about her. She isn’t yours Damon. She isn’t anyone’s.” He lurched for him again, but Drew and Brighton held him back. “You’ll go to your house, and you’ll wait for me to bring you word. And if she dies, well then you fucking die, too.”
Bruiser shoved off Drew and strode for his truck. God, please let her be okay. He turned the engine and spun out of the lot, spewing gravel as he went.
The trip down the mountain toward the trailer park was hell. He sped around slick corners and switchbacks, reckless on the cliff edge. He didn’t slow until he reached the dirt road that ran down the center of the Asheland Mobile Park. The truck skidded through the dirt just as the first raindrops splatted across his windshield.
“Diem!” he shouted, slamming the door.
He searched his house first, but she wasn’t there. But the second he crossed the threshold of 1010, he knew he’d found her. The soft crying gave her away. Fuck. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for the worst, and made his way into the bathroom.
The lights were off, and she lay naked in the empty tub, knees drawn up like a shield and her arms wrapped around her legs. Her long, dark hair hung in tangles around her shoulders.
“Don’t,” she said in a hoarse voice as he reached for the light switch.
“Okay,” he murmured, dropping down beside the tub. “Can I see?”
“It’s best if you don’t.”
“Diem, I—”
“I’ll live, Bruiser.” Diem sniffled and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
He waited, heart constricting with the waves of sadness that pulsed from her.
“He doesn’t care about me at all,” she whispered at last. “He only cares about what I could do for him.”
Bruiser knew exactly how she felt, orphaned and abandoned. Uncared for. If he could, he would’ve given his bones so she didn’t feel this way.
“He seemed regretful.”
“Don’t defend him.”
“What did you mean about treasure? When you were trying to talk him down, you said the Ashe Crew was helping him protect his treasure.”<
br />
“Don’t you know anything about dragons? We covet treasure and protect it all our lives. It’s not like legends say, though. It’s rarely precious gems and bricks of gold hidden in some cave somewhere. It’s something we attach to. Something we grow to adore in our lifetime. For my father, these mountains are his treasure. It’s why he has bear shifter crews up here clearing out the beetle-rotted trees. It’s why he hired Danielle to study the impact on the ecosystem here. These mountains are his to protect for always.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What is your treasure?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked in a broken voice. “It’s the thing I can’t help but protect with my life. My treasure is you, Bruiser. You and the Ashe Crew.”
Bruiser’s throat thickened until he couldn’t speak without his voice cracking. Gently, he hooked his finger under her chin and turned her face out of the shadows into the muted light. The skin on her cheek was red and painful looking, and as he dragged his gaze down her body, her entire left side matched in intensity.
“Will it scar?”
Diem sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve never been burned by dragon’s fire before. It’s one of the only things that can penetrate my scales. Yet another reason our kind was doomed from the beginning. Our females didn’t survive their breeding years, and our males burned each other to ash fighting.”
Bruiser brushed the backs of his knuckles down her uninjured cheek. “You protected us today. Saved us, my brave, strong mate. Even if you scar, you will be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
A single, shining tear slipped down her cheek as she laid her face against his opening palm.
“What do you need?” he whispered, desperate to ease her pain.
“A poultice. Danielle would know where to find the herbs I need.”
“Okay.” He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I’ll go get her. Diem?”
She turned her head, exposing the angry burns down her face. Burns she’d taken to protect him. “Yes?”
“I love you, too.”
A smile took her face. It was small, here one moment, gone the next, but it counted. It was the first sign that Damon hadn’t broken his warm mate.
She squeezed Bruiser’s hand and murmured, “I know.”
****
Bruiser sat in his truck in front of Damon’s house, weary to the bone. Rain pattered against the windshield, the wipers wicking it away in a never-ending cycle.
He’d wanted to storm Damon’s castle guns blazing after what he’d done to Diem, but that wouldn’t solve the hurt that had been done today.
Gritting his teeth to stifle a growl, Bruiser slid from the car and slammed the door, then jogged up the rain-soaked flagstone steps that led to Damon’s house. The mansion was austere and dark, etched into the stony surface of the cliff behind. Windows covered every wall of the modern architecture, but from here, it didn’t look like any lights were on. He thought of Diem, sitting in the dim bathroom, burning. Perhaps dragons dealt with pain better in the dark.
And Damon was in pain. As the door creaked open, the stink of acrid agony assaulted Bruiser’s sensitive nostrils.
Damon’s driver stood by the door with the saddest expression in his eyes. “Diem?”
“She’ll live. Where is he?”
Mason shut the door behind him with a click and nodded his chin. “This way. I’ll take you to him.
The house was a maze of minimally furnished living spaces, oversize bathrooms with gold fixtures and dark wallpapers. Great hanging chandeliers remained unlit in every room, and Bruiser’s soggy work boots squeaked across pristine white marble floors. At a double doorway at the end of a wide hall, Mason stopped and gestured, palm open.
Bruiser nodded his thanks, then pushed open the heavy mahogany. Damon Daye stood facing a wall of windows with his back to Bruiser. His hands were clasped behind him, and the lights were off. Rain pattered against the glass, making the soft hum of the storm the only sound.
Bruiser approached and stood beside him, staring down at his truck.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever come in,” Damon said quietly. “Then I thought it was bad news that kept you in your truck, and I believed the worst.”
“She lives.”
“But she’s marked?”
Bruiser swallowed hard at the image of the red burns that stretched across half of her body. He nodded.
Damon inhaled deeply and released the breath. “Have you come here to try and kill me, anyway?”
“No. I came here to try to fix this.”
Damon’s silver gaze jerked to his, and his dark eyebrow arched high. “You’ve surprised me.”
“To be honest, I’ve surprised myself. You don’t deserve for me to champion you, but Diem deserves a better father than the one you’ve been.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Bruiser asked, rounding on him. “Because it seems to me you’ve gone so deep into your own head and your own traditions that you’ve become calloused to what bearing children really does. It will actually kill her, Damon, your only daughter. You didn’t marry her off to see her happy. You sentenced her to die. To die.”
“I studied genetics and each generation. I chose breeders who would give the next generation the best chance of survival. Diem’s odds of living through childbirth are better than her ancestors.”
Bruiser closed his eyes against the urge to take an ax to the man’s jugular. “And how good a chance do you calculate for your daughter?”
“Twenty percent chance of survival.”
Bruiser huffed a humorless laugh. “And that’s good enough for you?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then please, Damon. Please help me to understand.”
“I’m not like you,” Damon gritted out, eyes blaring. “I’ve lived hundreds of years, and I’ve stopped aging. Immortality sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? Live forever and never age again. Except it’s not. Immortality means you watch everyone you love die. I buried my first human wife when she was eighty-four. My second one at seventy-six. My third lasted a little longer, but my fourth took her own life at barely thirty years old. She said she couldn’t stand aging while I stayed the same. Every dragon woman I’ve had a child with died. The line became diluted, and immortality ended with me. I buried my children, one by one. My friends, family. Everyone I loved found the sweet solace of death, leaving me here alone until I couldn’t feel anymore. Everyone dies in the blink of an eye, Bruiser. At least to someone like me. I’ve grown cold over time, convincing myself that I don’t feel anything anymore. I don’t grow attached to mortals because they will wither away, and my heart is already too heavy with the pain of loss to bear the burden of another passed soul I’ll never meet in the afterlife.”
“But can’t you see? One life is all your daughter has to live.”
“But if there are no more dragon children, I’m the last of us. For the rest of eternity, there will be no connection between me and the rest of the world. My sons have only had bear shifter children. There is too much grizzly in their lineage. Diem is different.”
“But you can’t sentence her to death for your own gains. That’s not what a father does.”
“I know.” Damon’s voice hitched, and he winced. “I just got so focused on the end result that I lost sight of what was right in front of me.”
“Your daughter is special, Damon. She’s amazing, and you’ve failed to really see her. She isn’t bearing children. That’s not to say we won’t adopt or search for a human surrogate to carry our child in the future, but she will never, ever carry a baby at the cost of her own life.”
Damon’s nostrils flared as he sighed a defeated sound. “I thought I’d made a mistake giving her to you.” Damon’s Adam’s apple dipped low as he swallowed. “But it seems I gave her to the right man. To someone who could make her feel loved and protect her where I fell
short.”
“It’s not too late.”
“It is, and you know it. I’ve burned my own daughter. I showed her I’d rather her die and give me a grandchild than to live and be happy.”
Bruiser mirrored Damon, hands behind his back as he stared at the churning rainclouds over the evergreen woods. “She convinced me to fix things with my real family. And when she talked to me about mending my own relationships, she said if her father tried at all, she’d be thankful. It wouldn’t be easy, and I can’t promise she’ll ever forgive you, but if you’re lucky, you have another seventy years to be the father to her you should’ve been all along.” Bruiser turned a serious gaze on Damon. “Don’t waste them.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Beaver Dean,” Denison guessed.
“Man, is it possible you’re getting worse at guessing?” Drew asked, plucking a toothpick from his mouth and tossing it into the ash-filled fire pit.
“I like that name. It’s like on the TV show.”
“He’s been watching reruns,” Danielle said, leaning on her mate’s shoulders.
“Tagan’s not going to name his baby Beaver Dean you dumbass,” Drew said louder than necessary.
Diem snorted, and beside her, Everly coughed to cover a laugh. Everly looked pointedly at Drew and said, “Y’all boys are so testy today.”
“Not testy,” Haydan said as he leaned forward in his chair. “Anxious. How long does it take to push a kid out?”
“It’s Brooke’s first baby,” Everly said, spreading two fingers of the creamy burn balm Danielle had whipped up across Diem’s arm.
The burns had faded to a soft pink, but the skin on that side of her body was peeling in sheets. She looked like a snake.
“You’re pouting,” Bruiser mused as he pulled her flip-flop clad feet into his lap and rubbed her arches.
“Am not. I’m just tired of shedding my skin.”
“That’s what you get for being a dragon,” Denison muttered.