Chapter Nine
Morgan felt panic grip her heart. Kenji was walking away from her and her only instinct was to run after him.
“Hold the phone,” she shouted at his form, ankle deep in the lake. He slowly turned to look at her, finding her on the shore with hands on her hips. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. All Morgan knew in that moment was she didn’t want him to leave. Not yet.
So, she scrambled to find anything, anything she could say to make him stay. “How do you think you’re getting back through those walls? Do you think they’re going to let you just waltz back through? I mean, hell, do you even want to get back inside?”
Could he see through her? Could he see how badly she wanted him to remain in her presence? She had no job to go back to. That she was almost certain of. There was no way to check her missed calls anymore. Her phone was absolutely water logged. Besides, they all thought she was a dragon lover anyway.
Was that so bad, she reasoned? Was it so horrible to befriend a dragon?
Kenji looked at her with confused, puppy dog eyes. It brought a laugh out of her, a bubbling thing that escaped into the world and earned her a dagger like glare. She couldn’t help it. He’d looked so silly standing in the water and pouting. Morgan approached him, offering her hand.
“I didn’t plan on asking. The wall needs to come down.”
Morgan was about to nod in agreement, when they heard shouts. The agents arrived, crashing through the brush with their weapons in hand. There was no time to think, no time to act as the agents shouted to one another in search of her and Kenji. She reached forward, grabbed his hand, and pulled him from the water.
She knew how to slip through the woods, knew the paths the townsfolk had cut into the landscape. The agents, on the other hand, did not. Behind them, the agents fumbled over fallen trees and tripped on thick brush. It gave them the time they needed to get away, even if the agents could hear the squishing sound of Kenji’s wet shoes for miles.
Morgan knew she was insane. She was throwing away her life in town, but what kind of life had it been to begin with? Perhaps, she’d only been half living, sheltering herself beneath the idea that dragons were bad and humans were the only ones you could trust. She was sure there were bad dragons in the world, like the ones who preferred to take what they needed from those who had it instead of living on the Territory as a community, yet she knew there were bad humans as well. Like the ones who’d trashed her apartment and threatened her life.
The world was a mix of good and bad, usually straddling the line of gray just to survive. Morgan was fine with that. She’d come to see it and she knew where she stood.
The trail she’d followed led into a narrow alley between two brick buildings. They emerged onto the street and Morgan could see the aftermath of the dragon’s meltdown and her joyride all around them. The old Cadillac had been towed, but there were still glass glittering on the ground and broken windows in shop fronts. Morgan felt her stomach churn.
She’d seen GOE’s unreasonable actions first hand, experienced their unnecessary violence. Convincing her town of GOE’s culpability was going to be difficult. They were bound to believe the worst, especially after the dragon’s melt down. It’d simply been a panic attack. It was not the dragon’s fault he could do more damage during his panic attack than a human. She’d seen the news, seen how much damage human could do on their own.
Her view of the world had shifted as they felt from the sky, as Kenji twisted himself to save her from the impact of the water. No longer would she hide her head in the sand and believe what GOE wanted her to believe.
“How do you think GOE won the trial?” Morgan mused as they made their way up the street, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. “I mean they’re clearly doing some shady business. The organization must have had that wall planned for years. The recent trial win must have been the catalyst to make them decide to put it into place.”
Kenji’s jaw tensed. She could see the muscles in it working and reached to hold his hand. It was an instinctual thing, to touch him when he looked upset. Morgan tried not to pay it any mind, told herself she was only trying to comfort him. Even when a voice in the back of her mind whispered something else.
“We don’t know,” Kenji managed to say.
“Do you think…?” Morgan paused, not sure if she should voice such a thing while in the center of town. Every set of eyes she passed were almost accusing, calling her a traitor. She tried to tell herself no one actually thought that as she passed by. Still, she lowered her voice to a whisper “Do you think they paid off the jury?”
Kenji’s gait slowed, his feet tripping over one another. He cast wide eyes down at her, lips slightly parted. “Why haven’t we thought of that?”
Immediately, he shoved his hand in his pocket. He came up with his phone, how he’d managed to keep the device between forms was mindboggling, but magic had not saved it. His phone was just as water logged as hers had been. The dip in the lake had fried both of them, no matter how many times he tried to turn the device on and off again.
He growled with frustration, clenching the device in his hand until she could hear it groaning. Destroying the device would do them no favors. She reached out and laid a hand over his, her mind working. She didn’t have a landline in her apartment, no one did anymore. And she didn’t particularly want to go back there anyway.
“I know where we can go.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and tugged him forward. Elshaw was a small town which meant getting anywhere on foot only took a matter of minutes.
But, it also meant there were few places to hide when the GOE truck rounded a corner in front of them. Morgan swore she felt her heart stop. Could she master her face? Could she keep her shock and fear hidden?
The truck slowly rolled past them, the agent behind the wheel surveying the sidewalks around them. Morgan’s hand clenched Kenji’s. Another GOE truck entered the intersection and Morgan held in her curse. It seemed the organization was taking the wall and dragon containment very seriously. She had no way of knowing if they were looking for her and Kenji, but she wasn’t about to risk it with a dragon man standing beside her.
Her thumb rubbed the tip of a scar as she held his hand. A sensation of fierce protectiveness hit her. She would not let them take Kenji back. No one deserved the things GOE did to dragons. That’s what she told herself. This wasn’t personal. This was just her realizing how the world actually worked and the desire to rebel against it.
The sensation had nothing to do with the sweet and sexy dragon man beside her.
The GOE truck across from them stopped and the door flung open. An agent swaggered out and Morgan felt panic surge before he turned toward the sidewalk opposite them. The man he approached, a bronze skinned young man, looked at the agent with wide eyes, surprise as he pointed at his own chest. Morgan wished she could hear what was going on, what was said, but she didn’t dare step any closer.
The agent yanked his cuffs from his wrist and slapped them over the man’s wrists before tugging him toward the truck. Morgan looked away, pretending she was invisible while Kenji’s hand tightened on hers.
“That guy isn’t a dragon, is he?” Morgan whispered to the ground.
“Not that I know of.” Kenji’s jaw tightened. His eyes focused on the agent now behind the wheel again, like a laser that could strike him down with the force of his wrath alone. “But, the guy looked a lot like the Avila twins.”
She’d seen the men on TV during the trial, identical twins with bronze skin and honest voices. “The guy kind of looked like the Avila twins,” Morgan corrected, noticing the big discrepancies.
Kenji nodded, a curt movement. They had to keep walking. Kenji had been on the TV, too, during the trial. It felt like only a matter of time before a truck passed them and an agent caught sight of him. Morgan couldn’t let that happen. Kenji had done nothing wrong.
There was a small building ahead, a place she rented to throw clay a
nd fire her creations. Luckily, she’d had the building rented out for the weekend. It meant the place would be blissfully empty while they accessed the phone inside.
Past the doors, Morgan breathed a sigh of relief before more worry crept in. Had anyone seen them? She wouldn’t put it past the townsfolk to catch sight of her and call GOE. If she’d been gone this long, rumor had to have gotten around that she was sleeping with the dragons. It was only a matter of time and she’d let a bit of it pass. Kenji grabbing her after helping him with the agents in town probably didn’t help her situation.
The smell of unworked clay ticked her nose and pulled her forward, slowly calming the worry and fear gnawing on her. It felt more like returning home than going back to her apartment ever had. There was a shelf on the far wall that still held a number of her creations, round bellied mugs with creeping flowers carved into them, wide bowls with curving swirls on the inside.
Morgan pointed Kenji toward the phone hanging from the wall and turned to let herself gravitate toward her shelf. She’d lost so much work time in the past few days, but she glanced over her shoulder and wondered what she’d gained. Kenji seemed like a good man, dragon or human. She wasn’t sure she was quite ready to let him go back to his own life and leave hers completely.
The taste of the kiss they shared still lingered on her lips like the sensation of their limbs intertwined when they’d woke that morning. He was a ghost that clung to her, that teased all of her senses, even when he wasn’t around. The need for his presence had made her panic earlier. She found she did not want him to leave; watching him turn away had sent a pain through her chest.
But, what kind of life would she live if she held onto this man? The dream of a brick and mortar shop had always been in her mind, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the intricacies of the world wide web might give her everything she wanted. An online shop would help her distance herself form those who might slander her for having dragon friends.
Or, dragon lovers, she thought as her eyes wandered up Kenji’s backside. She couldn’t help but linger on the roundness that was his ass beneath his jeans. What would it feel like? She hadn’t had the mind to check last time they were tangled in one another. Would it be firm to the touch? Her core warmed at the thought.
***
Kenji cursed into the phone. He could barely remember phone numbers. There wasn’t much need when all one had to do was program a number once and a cell phone remembered it. He was lazy. At least, he’d gotten that way since joining the other dragon family. He used to be on alert at all times, protecting his family.
Without that duty, he’d let his guard down. He’d let everything fall slack. As he punched in what he thought to be Liana’s number for what felt like the hundredth time, he was ready to slam the receiver back onto the mount. It rang, but there had been a few numbers before this that’d rang only to find the wrong person on the other end.
He hoped it was the right number. That was all he could do as he leaned into the wall, fingers digging into the plaster.
“Liana Taniff, Ambassador of the American Dragon Embassy.” Liana’s voice was hesitant, the number he was calling from unrecognized. They must have missed him for her to be answering unrecognized numbers.
He told her it was him and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Some of the dragons saw you get hit by a bloody tank. We ran for the wall, but there was no damned way to go out and find you.”
“It’s alright. I was hit with a stun shot and managed to hit water instead of ground.” He heard her cringe on the other end. Hitting water and ground felt much the same once a dragon reached a certain height. “We would have called sooner, but the phones didn’t survive. I’m sure the stun shot fried them before the water did the rest.”
“As long as you and Morgan are alright. Please tell me the human survived.”
Kenji laughed. “She’s damned resilient and dragged my ass out of the water for me. But, that’s not what I’m calling about. She had an epiphany on our way back into town. Is there any chance the Guardians would have paid off the jurors at the trial?”
“Those sons of….” Liana cut herself off. She must have realized there was a child present on her end and corrected her language by omitting the word completely. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“How would you prove the jurors were paid?”
There was a tapping sound on the other end, nails against granite countertops while Liana’s brain worked. Kenji knew little about investigation or the processes of law. They’d never been a concern in his life. Now, he felt like he was wading neck deep through it all and it was thicker than shit.
“Quinn might have connections,” Kenji offered. The woman could weasel her way into anything if she wanted. “Call her and see who she can call. If the jurors were paid, would that give us a mistrial?”
“It would, but a mistrial means having to go through this process all over again.”
“I’m fine with that. I’m sure the others would be, too. We can’t live trapped behind a wall like animals in a zoo. Not even animals deserve that kind of treatment.”
“You’re right,” Liana breathed. He could hear weight hitting her, the pressure of another trial if Morgan was right.
“Look, I’m sorry…”
She cut him off. “No, you’re right. It’s better to expose the truth than brush it under the rug.”
He promised her they would be alright before hanging up the phone. Morgan, his mate, his savior, leaned against a shelf like she had no idea what to do with herself. Her fingers fidgeted with a piece of clay, simply working it back and forth.
“You’ve saved my life twice now. What made you do it?”
Morgan sucked in a breath and held it. That was the question she’d been asking herself for a while. It wasn’t enough to say this man was a panty dropper and the world would be a little bit darker without him in it. No, there was more to it than that and Morgan couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of the emotion inside of her.
The best she could offer was a shrug of her shoulders. Her fingers plucked another unbaked piece of clay from the shelf. This one was a shallow dish with a small tree growing out of the center, meant to hang wedding rings upon once it was baked. She pressed a leaf between her thumb and forefinger, leaving behind the impression of her fingerprint.
“What do you want to hear?” she asked. “Do you want to hear about how I realized dragons aren’t all that bad? Do you want to hear about the revelation I had as we plummeted to what should have been my death?”
Kenji stalked closer, closing the space between them until she could feel the heat of him, even from a few feet away. Why did her body react to him like that? It frustrated her, the reaction and the not knowing. Morgan wanted to get her life back in line. She wanted to make sure she was on track again, but it seemed this man would forever derail her.
Yet, she wasn’t ready to let him go. In fact, Morgan wanted nothing more than to cling to him and feel her soul settle in his aura.
Kenji smiled. It was a knowing smile, like he held the keys to the secrets she was searching for and it made her a little angry. The clay gave beneath her clenching fingers. She didn’t realize what she’d done to her work until it was too late. She let out a cry of anger.
“Look what you made me do!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Kenji informed her as he let himself fall atop a metal stool. “You did that all by yourself.”
She huffed and threw the clay back onto the counter. She could fix it, she told herself. It wouldn’t take long to recreate the little ring stand, but it was just another example of her setback.
“By the way, where are we?”
“This is my studio. Well, I rent the studio. I don’t own it.”
“Call me an uncultured fool, but what do you do here? It seems like a mess to me.”
Morgan glanced around, trying to see it from a fresh perspective. There were traces of clay on just about every surface in the room. S
omeone had left a mound of clay on the throwing wheel, an unshaped mess. Bits of paint were splashed here and there, careless swipes of brushes held between teeth or fingers.
“I wanted to start my own business,” Morgan confessed, her back still pressed against the shelf. “Throwing clay was really meditative for me. I could shut my mind off and just work my hands. It helped keep my mind off the things that hurt. It didn’t take long for me to realize I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”
Kenji nodded like he understood. He still surveyed the room around him, eyes dancing along everything until he saw the shelf behind her.
“You make those?”
“Yeah. Lat week, I think. I guess no one got around to firing them.”
“Firing?”
She laughed. “Do you know anything about making ceramics? You sure do ask a lot of questions. And, yeah, the clay needs to be baked in a really hot oven for the form to become something usable.”
“Well, I know about kintsugi.” He leaned forward and grabbed a broken bowl from a nearby table. The two pieces in his hands fit together perfectly, but would fall apart the moment he removed his grasp. “It’s a Japanese technique. My mother told me about it once, when I was a kind and needed a bit of a philosophical education so I could see the world differently. It helped me get through…” He looked down at the scars on his arms, the clay in his hands falling away to let his fingers rise to his chest.
Morgan’s chest ached as she looked upon him. He seemed to be pained, his eyes going distant and cloudy. Her body pushed her to close the space between them. She wanted to stay where she was, but found herself in a compromise. She claimed the stool opposite him and kept her space.
“Tell me more,” she said, even if she already knew the technique he was talking about. She just wanted to hear him go on.
He pulled in a slow breath, coming back to the present. “My mother taught me that when a bowl or a cup was broken, it could be repaired with gold. I think it was a bonding agent mixed with gold dust, but that’s kind of beside the point. She taught me even if a thing had been broken, it could be repaired and all the more beautiful for it.”
The Dragon's Charm Page 9