“Would you feel better if I said no?”
His jaw tightened.
“Well, what did you expect? I’m not allowed to have a life. No friends, no dates—”
“So you chose a shifter?”
“You know not all shifters are bad.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s a supernatural. Have I taught you nothing? All shifters are connected, and so is anyone in the magical community. By being with him, you put us at risk. And him, for that matter.”
“He doesn’t know anything about the Dragonwatch. I saw inside his head.” And yet panic tightened my throat as I imagined the Dragonwatch Guard storming through our door, as they had four years ago.
“Did you see that black wolf again? After you used your magic?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? It’s dark, and there’s a lot of forest around here.”
“Yes.” I wasn’t about to tell him so, but that I hadn’t seen the wolf with the red eyes that night provided little reassurance now.
Dad stormed into his bedroom. I followed behind him, but hit what felt like that imaginary wall again when I reached his door. Where was that Tether thing? Left to stand in the hall, I saw him yank a suitcase from under the bed and start filling it.
Watching him pack made my stomach clench. If I knew my dad, we’d be on the road in an hour, far from a life I had finally started to build. I’d never see Hunter again. Maddie, the tattoo shop, I was going to lose it all.
“What are you doing?” I slammed my fist into the unseen barrier. “We don’t have to move again. Dad, he was cool with my magic. He won’t tell anyone.”
He made a derisive noise. “I trusted you, Helena. I let you have that job, something I knew was dangerous, because I wanted you to have some independence, and you betrayed me.”
“Betrayed you.” I gave a bitter laugh. “Do you want me to always be alone? You want me to stay a little girl forever?”
“If you don’t want to be treated like a child, start acting like a responsible adult.” He tossed the last of his shirts into his suitcase and then marched past me into the kitchen, grabbing a box. He started packing our small collection of dishes.
“I guess this is a bad time to tell you he’s going into the police academy next year,” I goaded.
“A cop.” My father put his head back, letting out a humorless laugh. “Did you deliberately pick him just to piss me off?”
“Of course not. He came into the shop—”
“What did I tell you about cops?”
“I told you, he doesn’t know anything about the Dragonwatch.”
“Pack your suitcase. We’re leaving in an hour.”
“We’re not leaving again. I’m not starting over just because you’re afraid.”
“I am not—” His shoulders tensed. One deep breath. “Fine. You don’t want to pack, I’ll pack for you, but we’re leaving, and when we hole up somewhere, I’m locking you in a room with those damn cuffs until you’re old and grey. You brought this on yourself.”
How the argument ended, I never remembered, but we were on the road in under an hour, as promised. I sat next to my dad in the Blazer, hatred for him burning hot, mixing with the heartbreak of knowing I would never again see Hunter, the only person I’d ever really let get close to me.
He still had my ring. Would he keep it? Would he think of me when he looked at it, or would weeks and then months pass, and he’d forget about me? The thought made my chest grow tight and stoked the caustic dislike for my father churning in my gut.
Somehow, I must have drifted off, because when I woke, twilight was just turning the sky to a dull grey. Half-darkness reduced the forest line and the snow-covered fields to either side of us to black shadows. No streetlights lined the winding, paved road, and only the occasional vehicle whizzed past us.
After we’d packed, he’d taken the cuffs off and stowed them in the back cargo hold where he kept his weapons stash. I had the feeling that if he could have kept them on without risking anyone seeing them, he would have. The last thing I remembered before drifting off was passing the sign that marked the edge of Springfield, Massachusetts.
“Where are we?” I mumbled, wiping sleep from my eyes. I saw no signs or landmarks that indicated where we were.
“Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
I looked around in surprise. “How long have I been asleep?”
“About five hours. You fell asleep just outside Springfield.”
I glanced around again. Despite the darkness, my enhanced eyesight allowed me to easily make out a farmhouse or barn here and there. The landscape reminded me of the farm he’d bought when I was twelve. When he’d lost his eye.
Wanting to say something but unable to think of anything appropriate, I put my head back. He didn’t seem angry now, only resigned. Determined. Protective.
“Where are we going to stay?” I mumbled. The further we drove, the further I could feel myself getting away from what I’d lost. From the boy I’d made the mistake of involving in my messed-up life. The thought left a hole in my heart.
“I don’t know yet.” Did I imagine a bite of resentment there? “We’re going to one of my containment cells for now.”
“Why? Can’t we just find a motel somewhere? Some place that doesn’t ask for identification?”
“Just go back to sleep, Helena.”
I knew that tone. There was no point pressing him.
Another half-hour passed before we pulled up to a small cabin set miles from the nearest road, deep in a thick forest. I was half asleep again by the time Dad shut the truck off.
We hid the Blazer under thick leaves and branches, then lit a fire in the cabin’s hearth, keeping the fire low.
The cabin had only two rooms, half of one taken up by a large cage for containing any manner of beastie, with a dusty window to let in sunlight on one wall. Chains hung from the left wall, a bed with a broken headboard pushed against the right. Cans of food lined the walls, along with shelves of books. A couch stood in the middle of a living room area, in front of a rough-hewn fireplace, where fire burned weakly on what little wood we could find that wasn’t wet with snow and ice.
“It won’t be the warmest night, but it’ll have to do.” My father nodded to a room off to the left as he stoked the pitiful fire. “Take the bedroom, I’ll take the couch.”
Again, I didn’t know what to say. The distance between us felt wide and empty, but thinking of what he’d taken from me, I couldn’t apologize. Doing so implied he was right. I turned and stalked to the other room, a small bedroom with a bed little better than the one in the cage. I tossed my suitcase and a bag full of books onto the mattress.
“When was the last time you ate?” Dad asked from the other room.
“I had dinner before we left.” With Hunter, my mind finished sadly. The image of his warm, lopsided smile from across the restaurant table made my throat tighten. I’d never felt so normal, so safe and alive as I did with him.
“Make up the bed while I put together some breakfast,” Dad said. “You need to eat before you get some more sleep.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Too bad.”
I rolled my eyes. “What are we having?”
“Canned beans.”
I shuddered. “I hate those.”
“Tough.”
We ate in silence, that chasm between us seeming to grow ever larger. Then my father looked up from his bowl and his good eye squinted. “Where’s the ring I gave you?”
Oh, shit. I buried my hand in my thick hoodie. “I gave it to Hunter.”
His jaw tightened, but he put his head down, silent. Something else seemed to pound off him, but I couldn’t put a name to it. His shoulders were too tight, his focus on his bowl too intense.
“Helena, you can’t do that again,” he said quietly.
“Do what? Have a life?”
His grip on his bowl tightened. “You violated a lot of rules yesterday. Going off with him, usi
ng your magic.” He got up and took my empty bowl. “You want more?”
“No.”
“Then get some sleep.” He went to the fireplace and filled his bowl from a pot that hung over the fire.
“I’m not tired.” I was.
“Now, Helena.”
I scrunched my brows. There was an urgency in him I didn’t understand. Tension rippled in his shoulders and back through his faded gray sweater.
Everything in me wanted to fight him, if for no other reason than to buck his control over me, but anything I did would only have seemed petty and childish. In the back of my mind, guilt ate at me for uprooting us, but I let my anger burn it away. My life had to be more than just him. More than this.
With nothing else I could say, I shuffled toward the bedroom.
“Here. Take this.”
I turned. Dad held out a thick blanket from the couch, the only one I saw in the room.
‘What about you? There’s blankets on the bed in there.” I gestured to the bedroom.
“Yeah, but they’re paper thin. You need this more than me.”
Gratitude and love for him tried to pierce my anger. He’d have given up everything to keep me warm even if he had to freeze his ass off. Why couldn’t he just let me hate him? I snatched the blanket from him, then stomped off.
“Good night, Helena. I love you.”
“Whatever.”
I slammed the lopsided door.
While sunlight brightened the room, I lay awake, snuggled under the blankets. Silence lay over the cabin, broken only by the occasional coyote howling in the distance, or the pop of the fire in the hearth.
Thoughts of Hunter, of Maddie, swirled through my mind, loneliness mixing with hopelessness I was sure had no end. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t my father see, he was condemning me to a life without companionship, without love or friends?
For the first time, I seriously considered grabbing a bag, slipping through the small bedroom window, and vanishing into the forest that surrounded this place. I’d learned from the best how to disappear, how to survive.
Yeah, right. Where would I go? With no money and no transportation, how far would I get without him? I punched my pillow.
I got up, meaning to grab a book from my bag by the window, since sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon. Just as I was pulling the book out, a loud crack in the distance, like a gunshot, made me freeze. I looked out the window at the forest line a hundred feet away in time to see a flash of light that burned so bright it glowed above the trees before it shrank back and was gone.
“What the…”
In the living room, I expected to hear my father get up, but there was nothing from him. He had to have heard the sound; it had carried through the still morning air like rifle fire.
For a long time, I stood by the window, watching. What I expected to see, I didn’t know, but that light...
Eventually I crawled back into bed and tried to lose myself in my book. Minutes passed, and I must have read the same page a half-dozen times, but I had no idea what it said. Something made me restless, like an itch just beneath my skin, thoughts that wouldn’t settle.
Next thing I knew, I was jerking awake, the book lying open on my chest. What had woken me? Then I heard it; a soft, deep voice rumbled from the living room. A man’s voice, hushed and deep.
Familiarity drove away all thoughts of sleep. That voice. It was deeper than it had been back in that hospital what seemed like a thousand years ago, but I knew it all the same. Safety and warmth wrapped around me, settling in my belly.
“Kyas…”
Magic that wasn’t mine hammered against my thoughts, unnatural, primal. Dragon’s magic. It hummed under my skin, filling my blood. Throat going dry, I licked my lips. He’d said I shouldn’t trust his people, and everything I’d learned about Dragonlords since told me he was right. I held my breath, frozen where I lay.
“What happened this time, Adam?” Kyas demanded.
Even with the hint of anger in his voice, pleasure unfurled in me, so intense that, with what I knew of his people, it couldn’t be normal. I sat up slowly.
“I made a mistake,” my father said, sounding resigned. “I tried to give her more, Kyas. I shouldn’t have.”
“More? What do you mean?”
“I mean, more than this life. A sixteen-year-old girl needs more than her father.”
A long sigh left Kyas, vibrating with something more than a boy’s voice. Something deeper, animal, growling from within. The couch creaked. “What did you do, human?”
I crawled quietly from the bed and tip-toed to the closed door. Dad had told me Suvia Kyans heard many times more acutely than humans.
“Calm down, Kyas. She’ll hear you.”
“What. Did. You. Do?” he gritted out.
“I got her a job. But she—”
“She works?” Kyas thundered. There was a loud crash and a thud. Something had hit the wall. I jerked my hand back from the doorknob, startled. Was it just me, or was there something much darker under his anger? Something more than protection?
Kyas let out a string of odd words, Suvia Kyan curses, I guessed.
The couch creaked again when my father stood up. “I realize the idea of a woman working grates against those Suvia Kyan ideals of yours,” he snapped. “But she is not—”
I didn’t catch the rest of what my dad said, as I focused on slowly cracking open the door just enough to look through with one eye. Whatever he’d said only seemed to piss Kyas off more. Through the crack, I saw the thick, red cape he wore swirl around him as he rounded on my father from the hearth.
A splash of cold fear hit me. That was the same kind of cape those two men who’d attacked us at the farm had worn.
He was a member of the fucking Dragonwatch Guard. Dad had told me about them. They were the same people Cron had said would use me as a weapon. Mistrust bolted through me, hot and caustic.
“Adam! Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Kyas.”
“This again?” He sounded bored.
“Do you have kids, Dragonlord?”
Kyas snorted. “Never.”
“Then you can’t possibly understand what this is like.”
“What I understand is that you let your emotions for the girl cloud your judgment.” Kyas shook his fist. A silvery gauntlet gleamed on his wrist, emblazoned with a golden dragon, like the one I’d seen on his forehead. A rampant blue and gold lion gleamed on the polished breastplate that covered his chest, the firelight casting it in an orange glow.
“Cloud my judgment? Kyas, I’m her father. What do you expect? I can’t shut her away from the world.”
“You may have to, for a while. Adam, you’ve got to stop thinking like a father where her safety is concerned.”
“And exactly what should I think like? A prison guard?”
Kyas stepped closer to him until their noses almost touched. I saw enough of that gorgeous face of his—those high cheekbones, the hint of stubble on his jaw and chin—to see that he still looked only about two years older than me, eighteen at most, while wisdom and experience dripped from his voice, which had lowered to a dangerous rumble. God, he was more beautiful than ever, painfully so.
“You should think like a protector. One who puts her safety above all else.”
“I do protect her!”
“Not well enough.”
“Why, because I don’t lock her in a tower somewhere? I had to do something. She was lonely. It’s not right for a girl her age to be—”
“You’re not list…” Kyas cut off, then cocked his head. “She’s lonely?”
What I heard in his voice I didn’t know. Concern? Surprise? Empathy?
“Yes.” My father sounded urgent. “What would you have me do?”
Kyas let out a long sigh that rumbled with something I didn’t understand. He dropped his arms and swept back to the fireplace, shoulders heavy. “Damn. I wish I could make things better for her.�
�
What?
“What?” My father sounded confused.
Kyas shook his head, then turned, shoulders squaring. His beautiful face was like stone now. “I mean, I wish I could make things easier. For both of you.”
A soft whickering from outside the window made me turn, stealing my focus for an instant. It sounded like a… But it couldn’t be. I leaned sideways to see out the window.
My eyes widened. A huge black horse tossed its head and stomped the ground.
Kyas’s animal. He rode a horse here? The mount swished its long dark tail, sunlight gleaming off his powerful flanks. The last time Dragonlords had showed up with transportation, they’d driven an SUV. The horse seemed far more fitting to their medieval appearances. Did Kyas not know how to drive? Somehow, that thought made me laugh, and I covered the sound with my hand.
Kyas’s voice drew my attention back. “Adam, you can’t let this happen again. Helena cannot have a life, not like she wants. She’s a magical being with powers my people would kill her for, and worse. With time, her magic will grow stronger, more dangerous. The more you try to treat her like an ordinary human, the more danger you and she will both be in.”
“I realize that now. But there’s more.” My dad sat back down on the couch when Kyas whipped his head around to him.
My breath caught. Worry for Hunter pricked at me. Would he tell Kyas about him now?
“Her magic,” my dad said. “It’s getting stronger.”
“How much stronger?” The slight tightness in his voice made my muscles tense.
“Enough that she’s having trouble controlling it. Especially when she’s angry or scared.” He looked up at the Dragonlord. “I already had to use the dragonsteel cuffs twice.”
Kyas’s brows went up. “Things are progressing faster than I expected.” He ran a hand down his face. “All right. We can’t interfere this soon, but there may be another way to help.”
We can’t interfere? My blood turned to ice.
“Which is?
Kyas lowered himself onto the couch beside my father so that all I could see was the back of his shoulders and head above the couch. “There is a woman I know. She may be able to teach Helena enough control over her powers that she won’t be a danger.”
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