“What’s wrong?”
She waved him off. “Nothing. You can shower first. That’s fine.”
He sighed. He knew the words Nothing and Fine usually meant something else in the language of women. Not always, but usually.
“I assumed we would shower together,” Kenji admitted.
Her head shot up and her face reddened.
“Is sit really that big of a deal? I was just inside you.”
Morgan stepped back. How had they gone from such intimate love making to this? He could feel his heart beginning to crack and his eyes darken. She had no intention of finding out what could be between them. She only wanted to indulge in him long enough to find satisfaction. Kenji found that it hurt, a feeling men weren’t said to know.
He shook his head, trying to paste a cheery expression on his face. “You can jump in first.”
Morgan’s face looked pained. Was she struggling between what she felt and what she thought? Kenji decided he didn’t care. He turned away from her, his chest aching. He’d made a foolish mistake. Kenji might forever know what it was like to lay with his mate, but he could tell from the way she acted that it was the first and last time.
She hadn’t felt their souls touch one another, she hadn’t felt the bond tie them together. All Kenji could do was fall to the stool and wonder why he’d been dealt this hand in life. He’d screwed up with one woman, cornering her into something she didn’t feel. He’d been head over heels in love with the wild storm that was Quinn. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been what his life promised.
Instead, the universe promised him a woman who would forever run from his advances. He could hear the water turn on in the small shower room and debated leaving her alone. He could walk out and leave her alone in there, but a part of him kept his feet rooted to the floor.
He’d known her intimately, and now did not want to leave her side.
Instead, his feet led him toward the shelf where her forms waited for baking. He studied them, trying to find her in their shapes and design. There were mugs with shapes carved into their surface, flowers, vines, leaves, and bugs. Each deign was earthy and natural. Was this the woman behind what she showed the world?
He paused by a pitcher, a series of ravens flying around the wide belly of the container. When would he meet the person she really was? He didn’t think he ever would. The woman he’d met, the angry and denying person, was all Kenji would get to know.
He sighed. All he could do was hope someone else got to know her, to know the real woman inside her, and loved her the way she needed.
“I’m—I’m done.” Her voice stuttered behind him.
He turned to find her wearing the clothes they’d shunned only moments ago. Evidence of what they’d done was littered across her shirt. The lines his fingers had traced, up her waist and beneath her breasts, were a reminder of what he would never do again.
It made his jaw tight as he nodded and pushed past her. She seemed to notice his growing frustration and she jumped out of his way, her head dropped. He paused, stuck. Kenji did not want her to feel shame for feeling the way she does, for wanting what she did.
His hand rose, hovering over her shoulder as if he could comfort her, when he was the one who needed comfort. But, he let it fall. There was nothing in him that he could say in that moment that would not have been begging and pleading. His heart could not take it if those words happened to fall upon deaf ears.
When he emerged from the shower, she was setting up a row of paint bottles and had pulled one of her creations off the shelf. Kenji didn’t say anything. He sat across from her and watched her work. The tension between them, over the course of watching her paint, melted away. It was forgotten while he watched her gaze focus in on the small details of her creations.
The phone rang. Morgan jumped in fear, letting out a short shriek. Kenji laughed as she glared at the device on the wall. He knew who would be on the other end, even if Morgan feared the worst. They were covered in clay, but Kenji still leaned forward and stole a quick kiss before jumping to grab the phone.
There was a chance, perhaps, that his future might not be as empty as he feared. Morgan seemed as unable to keep her hands to herself as he was. Kenji could only hope that desire would become linked to her heart because he was not sure he could bear it if she turned away from him.
Kenji answered the phone, not bothering to indicate the phone belonged to the studio. “Dragon man at your service.”
The person on the other end paused. The silence stretched out. Kenji called out Liana’s name a few times and fear rose inside of him. Had GOE moved past the walls? Were the other dragons freaking out over its rise? He feared the worst, but he didn’t foresee who was on the other end.
“How are you in my studio?” a shrill voice asked. There was fear in her voice that made him jump back. Panicked, he handed the phone out to Morgan. His heart raced. What had he done?
It’s not Liana, he mouthed to Morgan. Realization slowly dawned on her face and he watched the color fade from her skin. She jumped and tripped over the stools around her seat before snatching the phone from his grip.
“Hello?” she croaked into the phone, panic making her own throat tight, it seemed.
He watched Morgan nod a few times, her face growing more and more pale by the moment. “Yes... Yes, I understand. I’m sorry, but… Oh, I… I understand.”
Morgan slammed the phone down on the receiver and Kenji could see the shake of her hands.
“What is it?”
Morgan picked up the nearest thing and threw it across the room. An unbaked form hit the wall and made an ungraceful splat sound. Her body trembled with anger. Kenji didn’t dare move toward her until she let it all out. He knew he’d screwed up. He shouldn’t have assumed anything. He most certainly shouldn’t have announced what he was, not while the world was crumbling around his kind.
A small joke had destroyed another part of Morgan’s life. What did she have left of her life? She’d already confessed to losing her job. Now, Kenji might have smashed a small part of her dreams. The unbaked forms on the shelf might remain unbaked because of his dumb joke.
He watched her run both hands through her hair and suck in a breath before she turned toward him. The anger he’d seen on her face only a moment ago was gone. He felt oddly lost, caught between the desire he’d had only moments ago to comfort her and the confusion that slapped him in the face. What had changed?
“Is there anywhere else you can think of laying low?”
As if in answer, the phone rang again. Kenji stepped away from it, not wanting to fall for the same trap again. Morgan, a weight on her shoulders, stepped forward and plucked the device from the wall. After a moment, she nodded and handed it off to him. Relief was a cold bath as Liana’s voice finally greeted him.
“Hey, Nessie. How’s the real world?” He felt his shoulders drop at the sound of her voice.
“What do you want now?” There was more humor than annoyance in his voice now. Was the dragon woman growing on him? “You couldn’t have gotten an answer already. There’s no way even Quinn could work that fast.”
“Actually,” Liana said, drawing out the word. “The universe works in odd ways. As soon as I got off the phone with you, I got a call from Quinn. She’d been approached by a few of the jurors hoping to get fame in a big story. Turns out you were right. I’m having our lawyers take the confessions to the judge to get it declared a mistrial.”
Kenji wanted to congratulate her on the news, but he knew there were other things afoot. This small victory was nothing in the face of what was happening around them.
“We watched a GOE agent detain a young man who looked a bit like the Avila boys. It’s looking like the organization is cracking down on the number of dragons off the Territory as well, even people they suspect to be dragons.”
Liana cursed on the other end. “What is so damned wrong with the world that they need to take measures like that? I can hardly believe it.”
&nb
sp; Kenji had words he wanted to say, all of them bitter and useless in the situation. Instead, he tried to turn towards something useful. “Since I’m outside the walls, I could go to the Embassy. It is, even by the government’s standards, a neutral space. The agents couldn’t walk in and take anyone against their will without adding to the charges we already have against them. I could go there and wait for other dragons, offer them a kind of sanctuary if they want to escape this madness.”
“That sounds like a very good idea. Let’s just pretend it was my idea for now.” She rattled off the security code and he motioned for Morgan to bring him a pen so he could jot it down on the inside of his arm.
He glanced up at his mate, still angry over what happened over the phone earlier, and wondered if she might come with him. He needed to stop. She would not be a part of his life forever. At some point, he needed to let her go her own away, like she would do eventually. It hurt to think of it, but he had to realize the truth of things. He couldn’t live in a dream and bear the ache of heart break.
“What do you propose we do about the wall situation?” Kenji asked the phone, trying to turn away from the woman in front of him, no matter how much it hurt.
Chapter Ten
Morgan watched Kenji leave. He didn’t ask her to go with him, but she could see the request to follow in his eyes. As much as she wanted to, Morgan knew there was something she had to do first. She suspected the separation bothered them both just about the same as she turned toward the center of town.
When Kenji asked Liana what she thought they could do about the wall and even Dane, the leader of the American Dragon Territory, chimed in, they’d found nothing that would work. Everything they could have done was too risky. It would put dragons at risk and their reputation in the trash. No one wanted to move forward. The wall would stand around them until the second trial was finished.
Morgan didn’t like that answer. She’d felt the pain the wall and the precautions GOE took to guard it firsthand, and she knew it needed to come down. The wall and everything humanity felt about their dragon neighbors needed to come to an end. Morgan knew she was only one person against the wave of hatred and fear, but even one voice could cause a ripple.
Besides, she thought as she walked down the street with her head high, what else did she have to lose? She’d lost her job, was afraid to go back to her apartment, and had been formally kicked out of the ceramics studio she’d already paid rent for. Everything, even her dream, was smashed to bits.
But, like Kenji had described, she could pick up those little bits and start to glue them back together again. She had a feeling that Kenji would find his way into the new life she built from the scraps and it filled her with an odd excitement. She didn’t know how to tell him, yet. Morgan hadn’t found the courage to tell him before he turned and left her to walk alone toward the Embassy.
All she could do was hope GOE didn’t find him before he reached the Embassy, hope GOE didn’t break the law and storm the building. Emotions, a mix of fear and hope and a number of other things, crashed like waves against rock. They beat at her until she was unsure of her mission.
The door to the diner loomed ahead, the neon sign above it blinking irritatingly. Through the windows she could see the regulars, like Jack and Vic. She could see her shift manager struggling to pick up the slack Morgan’s absence had created. She felt bad, but only barely.
The woman who’d worked there only days ago had been naive about the ways of the world. She’d been caught in her own bubble, thinking that nothing happening around her would affect in in any way. The old Morgan had been foolish. Perhaps her father wasn’t so crazy after all, sneaking off into the desert to feel closer to his dead wife. Morgan could feel herself changing because of the dragon man in her life and it wasn’t all that bad of a thing.
Was she about to do this? Could she even do this?
Morgan knew it was now or never and surged forward, through the doors. The dining room grew silent and still as all head turned to stare at her. Briefly, her eyes met Vic’s. The old man’s lips were pressed into a thin line at the sight of her. He could deal with whatever he thought of her.
The shift manager cried out when Morgan set her boot clad foot on the stool and hoisted herself up onto the counter. She turned to face the room and felt her stomach do a series of flips. Her voice caught in her throat for a brief moment. Vic took the chance to stand.
“Get your filthy ass off that counter,” he barked at her.
She resisted the urge to flip him the bird, but the desire to do so helped embolden her. She turned toward the rest of the crowd.
“Did any of you realize GOE put a wall around the dragon territory?”
Vic butted in. “Good. It’s about time.”
She turned a burning glare toward the man as she towered over him. It was amazing he’d ever had children.
“A wall is one thing, but they’re putting weapons outside the walls to keep the dragons inside. They shot me with one of those weapons today. I’m a human, but they still shot me. Earlier, I saw an agent cuff a man just because he looked a bit similar to a couple of the dragons who live on the territory.
“Is that how you want to live your lives? Afraid a GOE agent could mistake you for a dragon and shoot you? Afraid they’ll mistake you for a dragon and take you into custody with no real way to prove you aren’t a dragon?” That doesn’t sound like a great way to live to me, but it’s the way the dragons have to live all the time.
“Do you see what it means to be like them now? Are you afraid to go outside now? Because you should be. Because GOE isn’t going to stop until someone pushes back and it isn’t going to be the dragons who push back. They could have. The dragons could have fought back and destroyed the wall, but they aren’t as violent as you would think they are.”
The room was strangely quiet. Not even the sound of slurping coffee or forks on plates could be heard. All eyes were on her. Some glared. Some twinkled with hope. But, everyone stayed quiet.
Morgan could feel her spirits sinking like low tide and it stunk. What else could she yell at these fools to make them listen? What else could she say to convince them? Days ago, if someone had told her she’d be fighting for dragon rights, Morgan would have shaken her head and blew the person off. Now, she was screaming it to the rooftops.
This time it was Jack’s turn to open his mouth, but before he could say anything, his wife stood up and promptly told him to stuff it. Morgan thought the room was more surprised at Kelly’s response to her husband than they were that Morgan climbed the counter top and started preaching. But, that was what Morgan needed. More people started to stand with Kelly. Voices rose in a din, all of them agreeing with Morgan.
Her heart thumped inside her chest. This was only the start, she reminded herself. This was only one small fraction of the town. Not only did Morgan need Elshaw on her side, she needed towns all around the Territory to agree with her.
Vic stood up and turned to storm toward the door. Morgan was okay with watching her leave, but another figure stood up from Vic’s table and marched toward her. She looked down to find one of the boys who’d cornered her in the Embassy parking lot standing before her. His face was scrunched up in anger.
She waited for him to speak, to say anything. Instead, his hands shot up and caught her by the front of her shirt. Morgan tumbled forward, feet flying. Her shoulder hit the ground and the impact vibrated through her. The pain was nowhere near what she’d experienced in the air. It made her laugh as she stood back up.
“Do you feel so insecure in your world that you have to beat up women?” She asked right before her own fist flew.
It collided with the guy’s jaw and he stumbled back. Her knuckles throbbed, but the cook appeared at her side, a bag of frozen peas at the ready and a sharp look for the guy in front of them.
Morgan felt victorious. She felt like the world was conquerable.
Then, she happened to glance at the doors and saw the wave of GOE agents
marching toward the diner. Her stomach sank through the floor. At the lead was a familiar, grizzled face.
“You’re a piece of work, Vic,” Morgan mumbled to herself.
***
The Embassy was filled to the brim with dragons and even a couple of dragon mates. The Avila twins had shown up shortly after Kenji, relieved that the two hadn’t been found by the GOE agents on a hunt for them. Anya and Noelle were right behind them, Anya looking pensive and Noelle looking like her usual brand of pissed off.
Kenji was glad Luc’s mate was there just in case any agents or media came knocking. Anya went to school for that kind of crap and it would save him from an exhausting exercise in civility that he was certainly not up to. Not with Morgan out of his sight.
Not long after they opened the doors, there were dragons ready to get inside. Noelle actually grabbed one and pulled him into a tight hug before calling him every name in the book plus a few in rusty Mandarin. The rail thin dragon who looked like he should have belonged to Kenji’s old family lingered nearby while others filtered into the Embassy.
There were raider dragons who held their arms across their chests in defiance as well as a number of families who thought the Territory wasn’t big enough for them to join, but were equally afraid of GOE’s plans.
Kenji felt like he was finally doing something to help, but he couldn’t stop his mind from wondering back to the woman he’d walked away from. Would that be the rest of his life? Would he always wonder where Morgan was, what she was doing? He only hoped she’d made it back to wherever she’d been going. His mate had been seen with him on a few occasions. It made it hard for him to focus on the task at hand while his mind fed him images of her being picked up by the GOE agents.
The twins must have picked up on the tension in Kenji’s shoulders. Or, maybe they heard the shortness in his voice. Either way, the dark-haired dragon boys approached him. Kenji didn’t want to have a conversation with them. He didn’t want to become their friends.
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