by Sadie Sears
I ran inside, which hadn’t fared any better than the outside. The walls, the ones I’d painted in that soothing Serenity, had lines spray-painted from corner to corner, top to bottom. A pentagram had been colored onto the hardwood. The boxes of towels that had come in wrong were open and the terrycloth fabrics shredded. The mosaic I’d designed and had inlaid in emeralds and jades was dayglo orange now. And the smell was overwhelming where, in addition to the paint, bleach had been dumped all over the bamboo flooring.
Nothing was untouched or had managed to escape without total destruction.
“Oh, God, Lila.” Sophie hugged herself while fat tears streamed down her normally porcelain and now splotchy red cheeks.
I wanted to hug her, comfort her, but then who was going to comfort me?
“You should call Leath. We’re going to need all the help we can get.” When I didn’t pull out my cell phone—not because I was being stubborn, but because I couldn’t move—she called him, mumbled a few words, then hung up.
In all the time between Sophie’s call and Leath’s arrival, I didn’t move. Couldn’t do more than stare at the devastation. He bypassed some fallen drywall debris and came at me, arms open, then his warmth surrounded me. But I was cold from the inside, and it was going to take more than a hug from a guy who wanted to change me before I would ever feel warm or safe or protected again.
“Are you okay?”
I aspired to be okay, but it was but a far-off pipe dream of days gone by. “No.” But damn it. I did want his help.
“You’re shaking.”
Of course I was. Someone had broken into a place I loved, smashed it to pieces and stolen my dream. I felt violated and scared. “I want to go home.”
Sam and Theo moved through the room salvaging what they could, which wasn’t much, while Dominic, the clan’s fire dragon, kept the phone pressed to his ear, no doubt calling for more help. I let Leath hold me, and then lead me to his truck.
“Come on. Up you go.” He helped me into the cab then walked around and climbed in behind the wheel. As he drove toward my house, he held my hand, gave it a reassuring squeeze every few minutes. “I’m going to get this all cleaned up, Lila. I promise, it’s going to be ready, just as beautiful as it was.”
I nodded because my doubts wouldn’t do either of us any good.
“But I need to know what’s going on with you.” He quickly stared me up and down. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”
I didn’t tell him that depression and mood changes in response to all the physical symptoms were just another part of my illness. I didn’t make excuses. This time, I told the truth because, you know, warts and all. “I think I’m at the beginning of a relapse, and it’s the last thing I need right now, so I’ve been irritable.”
And those words might’ve been my biggest ever understatement. But it didn’t excuse him. It didn’t make up for the question he’d asked that proved that the only reason he wanted to bite me was to heal me, which was literally the only time he ever brought it up. Sure, it was a fantastic perk, and if I got away without the terrifying mental illness, my life would be fine and dandy. But I would still be tied to a guy who had only ever tried to push for the bite to heal me.
“Lila, I could help you if you let me. I could make all of this go away. Won’t you at least consider the claiming bite?”
And he had the nerve to ask again right now, of all times. I shook my head. “Don’t you get it? I’m not looking for a way out.”
Irrational as it sounded, it was all I had to explain my moods and the way I was treating him. Of course I wanted to be well and healthy. Who wouldn’t? But I wanted him not to care so much about that part. For once, I wanted to hear him say that he wanted to do it because he loved me and wanted to be with me. I didn’t want to feel like he was doing me this huge favor, and I would owe him with the rest of my apparently long life.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I stared out the window as the familiar trees passed by and my driveway came into view. Thank God. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Today tested every one of my emotional limits.
“I love you, Lila. No matter what.”
I ignored the ache in his voice. Nothing he said, no matter how he said it, would make those words—no matter what—true. “Really? Then why do you only bring up that fucking bite when we’re talking about my MS?” I wasn’t quite shouting, but the decibel level of the truck engine rivaled the radio at high volume.
He whipped the truck into the driveway, and I yanked my hand away from his. He jammed the brake and we slid to a stop about a foot from the porch. I climbed out because I had nothing left to say to him. But I was too slow to make it all the way inside before he wrapped his fingers around my forearm and stopped me just after I reached for the door.
“Please, wait.” He let go of my arm but didn’t move away from me, nor did he try to touch me. “I’m so sorry, Lila. So sorry. I’m an idiot. And it’s not that I don’t spend every minute of every day wanting to claim you, wanting so powerfully—” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t mean to bring it up only when we talk about your illness. This particular topic is just when I feel the most uncontrollable urge to help you, to protect you from pain and suffering any way I can, knowing that I can give that to you.”
Nice time for pretty words, but it didn’t change what he wanted and the only reason he kept giving me over and over for wanting it. “Just go away and leave me alone.”
“Lila, please.” When he held out his hand, I backed away, and he pulled it back to his side, staring at his fingers before he curled them into a fist. “I want to be here for you. Take care of you. And there’s no doubt you’re in danger. Look what happened at the studio. None of that was an accident.”
“Neither does it mean I’m the target.” Everyone assumed it was me. Why? “Maybe Sophie has made an enemy or two. Frank aside, there’s certainly as much chance—probably more—that Sophie has attracted some freak show into her life. A bad reading. Some stalker of her own. She’s blonde, built, and has a killer personality and a smile that could bring men to their knees.”
“Please let me help you.” His soft voice had no effect on my anger.
“You mean, please let you stay and try to convince me I’ll be able to take care of myself and my daughter if I let you gnaw a scar onto me.” I shook my head. That wasn’t happening. He had a better chance of winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning twice in the same day.
“You’ll never even see it. You’ll heal.” He shook his head. “Please, Lila. Just let me stay, and I won’t mention it anymore. Let me help you.”
My anger boiled over until I clenched my teeth. “You know what I think? I think there’s a difference between real love and whatever supernatural bullshit that’s about.”
I walked inside without giving him a chance to speak. And before I could change my mind and beg him to stay, I slammed the door on the only man I’d ever loved.
17
Leath
She was in danger. I knew it. The guys knew it. Sophie knew it. Only Lila didn’t know. If she did, she didn’t care. Not enough to let me stick around and protect her. Not enough to even admit someone could be after her. But if my being around made her feel worse, I had to go.
Before I left though, I called Theo. If I couldn’t be here, I would make damn sure that someone I trusted was. Someone who would die before he let anything happen to the woman I loved, to the one I was supposed to spend the rest of my life loving.
When he pulled in a mile or so down the mountain from her driveway, where I’d pulled in to wait, I got out of my truck and gave him a half-handshake, half-hug. “Thanks, man.”
“It’s cool. Nothing is going to happen to your mate while I’m around.”
I asked for Theo because I needed Cam to help me get everything in line for the studio to replace the things that had been destroyed, but I still wanted an ether dragon to watch over Lila. If danger came knocking on her door, he would
feel it. He had the kaleidoscopic eyes of an ether dragon, and hell, maybe they helped him see things in ways I couldn’t. Plus, I trusted him. And while I would’ve preferred to be the one watching over her, I couldn’t. Not if it would hurt her or cause more stress, which would end up adding to her relapsing again. So, calling Theo made sense.
“Did they pick up the scent?”
Theo shook his head. “Between the bleach and the spray paint, they couldn't pick up anything.” He studied me for a moment. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Just take care of her, okay?” I asked. There was a certain desperation in my voice, but if he noticed, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he nodded and laid a hand on my shoulder for a squeeze.
“Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll watch out for her.”
And there wasn’t much else left to say, so I drove back to the studio. If I couldn’t be the one protecting her and taking care of her, the least I could do was help her fix what some maniac had broken.
Not that she would appreciate it. Not that she even bothered to try considering how I wanted to help her before she threw all my care and concern, even my own words, back in my face. Even though she’d acted the way she had, I wanted nothing more than to make her happy. She was going through something enormous, something I couldn’t ever understand.
When I walked into the studio through the broken door, Sophie stood among the rubble talking to a police officer. She must’ve sent Dominic and Sam and Theo away. She probably didn’t want their help any more than Lila wanted mine.
But despite my intentions, I couldn’t stand to be there in the place where Lila had figured out we loved each other, even if it wasn’t the place where we said it. There was too much emotion, too much pain in not being able to be with her, helping her through this tragedy.
I drove home instead. Walked into the house and down the hall feeling exhausted and drained. But as I passed the spare room where Zoe and Lila had slept that first night, when she’d worn my shirt to sleep in, when she woke up in the middle of the night to raid my freezer, I yanked the door shut and stomped to my bedroom. Not my most shining moment.
I threw myself onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. I really had no one to blame but myself. I’d pushed her too hard. Demanded too much of her. Maybe she was right. Maybe I hadn’t accepted her, hadn’t said what she needed to hear. It fell in line with almost every other interaction between us. My mouth either spit out the stupidest things around her or didn’t say anything at all when it needed to be said.
Shit.
I spent two hours lying around moping before I gave up. I couldn’t think about anything other than Lila. I couldn’t see beyond my mind’s eye picture of her.
But maybe it was time to stop lying in bed acting like a spoiled baby who’d lost his pacifier. I had to fix this, fix what that son of a bitch broke for Lila, anyway.
I called Cameron, and he called everyone else to meet me at the studio. By the time I pulled in front of the building, Sophie and the cop had gone, which didn’t really matter since I had a key, which also didn’t matter since the door was dangling, the wood smashed, and the windows shattered. And because there was something to immerse myself in, I switched off my brain and started sweeping up the glass and broken pieces of wood, drywall, and tiles. When Cam arrived with a mop for the bleach-soaked flooring, which was virtually destroyed now, I stepped outside for a minute to take a breath then dove back in as Ben and Taurus arrived with Dominic, Vincent, and Sam.
I cleaned and repaired, scrubbed away paint and brushed walls until I was only a little more than a walking dead man. The guys stood around the counter, beers flowing, and relaxation and bantering started.
Cam looked up at me. “Nothing magical happened here. This was all human.” His news wasn’t the headline he probably thought it would be. “Probably just vandals.” He took a long sip of beer, swiped his mouth with his hand then looked at me. “What about her stalker?”
“Frank?” He’d been up and around, pretty quick actually, at the grocery store, but there was no way. “The wooden part of the door alone weighed eighty pounds with two hundred-pound rated hinges.” No way he’d ripped it off the frame and left it dangling, or smashed the drywall, or broken the tiles. “It couldn’t have been. A strong wind could take that guy down.” And if the wind couldn’t, Frank already knew I would. He wouldn’t take a stupid chance like this one. I crossed Fragile Frank off the list.
Of course, I didn’t have anyone else to add to the list or go after, so I spent the next four days putting the space back in order. Repairing, painting and scrubbing. All the while, my dragon burned his anger through my chest and demanded I act. He needed to see Lila. Holding him back took more and more of my energy every day we were apart.
“If you don’t stop looking like that, all scowly and like you’re ready to cry, your face is going to freeze that way.” Ben stood in front of me, arms crossed, feet apart. Battle pose. Good thing, too, because when I kicked his ass, I didn’t want him to be able to claim he wasn’t ready.
“Leave him alone, Benny, or he’s going to end up in a dark room writing bad poetry and listening to Alanis Morrissette.” As if I wouldn’t beat his ass too, Sam added, “Again.”
“It wasn’t Alanis Morrissette. That was…” Ben sang a few lines, pretended like he was crying, and I smacked the back of his head.
“Fuck you.”
And though we’d finished picking up all the trash and debris and somehow managed most of the repairs we could, the place was a shell of what it had been with all of Lila’s little touches, all of the flourishes she added with nothing more than a touch or a smile. Without her, they were missing, and the place felt empty, like me.
Sam handed me a bottle of some craft brew he’d discovered, then sat back in the chair and kicked his feet up on the counter. “I’m worried about you, buddy. You look like shit, and if you snap at Vincent one more time, he might never bounce back from it.”
Vincent would be fine, and if not, I had problems of my own. “This is what heartbreak looks like, Einstein.” And I was the poster boy.
Sam shook his head. “This is a roadblock. It doesn’t count as heartbreak until there isn’t hope of going around it.”
“Well, aren’t you wise, oh, winged one?” He wasn’t, and the bite to my tone said so. “But I’m not going back so she can trample all over me again.” I’d had enough of being her doormat for a while.
“She’s your destiny. Go ahead and try to stay away.” The smirk was overkill, but the words were nothing I didn’t know already. Being apart from Lila was killing my dragon and me. And I didn’t know how to fix it. Because the man and the pride inside me couldn’t risk the heartache.
“She called the destined pull ‘supernatural bullshit’ and suggested it wasn’t true love.” I stood, not waiting for their sympathetic reactions. “I gotta go.” Not because I had a reason like someone waiting for me who wanted to see me. But I couldn’t stay there anymore. There was too much Lila and not nearly enough.
I drove toward home by way of the grocery store and pulled into a space in the parking lot. I didn’t notice anyone in particular walking out when I almost passed her, but her voice, so much like Lila’s when she said my name, shot a bolt of pain straight through my heart and into my gut.
“Gretta.” I wasn’t going to ask. But where Lila was concerned, it was rare that I was in charge of my own choices or what my mouth ended up saying. “How’s she doing?”
She pursed her lips and shifted the bags of groceries so she could cock her hip. “She’s sick. Worse than I’ve ever seen her.” This wasn’t matter-of-fact information. It was laced with blame and anger. “Sophie’s been keeping Zoe, and I’ve been taking care of Lila.” She shook her head. “I thought you cared about her.”
How dare she imply otherwise? I wasn’t the one who asked to leave. “I do.” And I withered under her scowl.
She pulled her head back, widened her eyes and narrowed her forehead. “Really? Beca
use it should be you there with her, Mr. Destined Mate. Or does being destined not mean the same for every dragon? Is the urge to be with her and around her and beside her not so great for you? Because I’m new at this, but I can’t stop wishing and wanting and needing to be around Sam, every minute of every day.”
Of course, it was the same for me, but that didn’t matter to Lila. She didn’t give a shit if being away from her tore me apart. She only cared that I stayed away. “She made it pretty damn clear she doesn’t want me around.”
Gretta nodded. “She’s an idiot sometimes. I would think you’d be sympathetic to that.”
Her backhanded way of calling me an idiot wasn’t at all hurtful. Except it was. Because it was honest. Still, fruitless to agree. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t much else for me to do but give her the key to Sacred Spaces so she could give it back to Lila. Then, I would have no reason to go back. No reason to see her. Every reason to accept destiny had fucked this one up. Lila has made her decision, and I had to learn how to deal with it.
18
Lila
Gretta was hovering. Fluttering around the room, folding and refolding blankets. Straightening the trinkets and treasures I kept on top of my dresser. Watching me sleep and eat and helping me to the bathroom when I didn’t think I could make it on my own.
I would’ve asked her to stop, but I could hardly form a thought on my own outside of the fatigue. But I opened my eyes and watched her. This time when I woke, she sat in the chair beside my bed reading her copy of my medical records. She’d been busy working on her proposal for Cameron and was using my case as a basis for the research team she wanted to start.
“You know, if I take the claiming bite, you won’t have anything to research.”
I was trying to lighten her mood. But she frowned and her tone was surprisingly sharp. “You’re not the only one with a degenerative disease, Lila.”