by Roxie Ray
Rico just shrugged. “I’m too fucked up in the head to worry about women at the moment,” he said. “Even if a mate landed in my lap as they did for you assholes, I’d run for the hills. What the hell would I do with a mate?”
Jury and Stefan laughed. “Yeah, we thought the same thing, bud.” Stefan finished his beer and grabbed another.
“I thought you had to go?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Harley is over at the salon. She’ll drive home.”
I was in no position to judge. I knew he didn’t drink often, anyway.
“What are you going to do about Bethany?” Jury asked. He pulled the pizza box over and grabbed a slice, then held out the carton so I could grab one. I chewed a bite thoughtfully before answering.
“I have no idea.”
Jury scoffed. “You took a long time for that bullshit answer.”
“I don’t know!” I exclaimed. “I barely know her, or even anything about her. I only know what you’ve told me, which is that she’s Abby’s friend and has a kid.”
My mom was a single parent. She’d married a real asshole, too, which made both of us miserable. The only good thing that came of their marriage was my little sister, Hailey. “I’m in no position to be a stepdad. Besides, what would my mom say if she found out?”
Stefan shrugged. “You’re twenty-two.”
“Exactly,” I said flatly. “I’m twenty-two. I’m not even out of school yet. And she has a kid.”
“Age is relative.” Jury nodded as if he was some sort of sage imparter of wisdom. “It’s about maturity, not years.”
“Well, shit. I’m not mature enough to be a dad. Come on.” I gestured to my bare apartment. “I haven’t even decorated.”
If I didn’t stay in Black Claw, and I bonded with Bethany, she’d have to go with me wherever I went. She had a life here. No way she’d move away. The options were bonding with her then leaving her or giving up my dream. Neither option was something I was willing to consider.
“Man, take your time,” Stefan said. “You know where Bethany is when you’re ready. If you’re fated mates, it’ll keep. The bond isn’t going anywhere. If you can stand to be apart, then do what you need to do to grow up, then seek her out.”
He had a point. Dragons enjoyed very long lives. That meant that even if I took a few years to get my head on straight and finish school, Bethany and I would still have decades upon decades together. “What if she finds someone else?” I asked.
He shrugged. “That is a risk, sure. But she doesn’t date much. According to Harley and Abby, that date you interrupted was the first she’d been on since before her daughter was born.”
It wasn’t right for me to be happy to hear that, but I was anyway. Even after nothing more than a few short interactions with Bethany, the thought of her on a date with another man caused Artemis to tense up inside me.
She will not find another man appealing now that she’s met us.
“Artemis says now that she’s met us, no other men will do,” I said. “Is that true?”
All three of them looked pensive. I knew they were consulting with their dragons. Stefan was the first to nod. “Eros agrees.”
“So does Nyx,” Jury said.
“And Valor.” Rico grunted. “Interesting. I never knew that. He says it’s possible but unlikely that she could move on.”
“Look what happened with my mom and dad,” I pointed out.
Jury shook his head. “Yeah, but that was before Maverick had shifted the first time. I don’t think the bond works before the first shift.”
It does not work before the first shift.
“Artemis says you’re right.”
Jury nodded smugly. “See? Stefan’s right. Take your time and do what you need to do.”
We need our mate.
I sighed and ignored him. Even though it’d been several years since I first shifted and met Artemis, it was still really weird to have a voice in my head. It had taken me months to be able to jack off again, and Artemis had basically had to talk me into it.
I knew I should’ve been grateful at how my life had changed over the years. And I was grateful. I had a great life, away from my stepdad, I met and built a relationship with my real dad. Things were amazing here in Black Claw, they really were. But that didn’t mean they weren’t also suffocating.
But sometimes the whole dragon thing was too much. It was overwhelming at best. Some days I felt like I was going to drown in duty.
The rest of the night passed much the same way, going round and round about Bethany. Eventually, Harley called, and we walked Stefan across the street and down the block to the salon, then Rico crashed on my couch.
Jury went back to the house he rented with Abby. They were shacked up like a couple of newlyweds as soon as they decided to move in together.
The next morning, I got up and got ready for work, leaving Rico sawing logs on my couch. He really needed to figure his shit out, too. He was supposed to be in line for alpha, after our uncle Perry. At this rate, Rico would end up dead before he led Grandfather’s territory.
I walked to the station, which was part of the allure of the townhouse. It was one street back from Main, so I walked everywhere. Almost like the benefits of living in the city, even though we were in the smallest town ever.
My dad pulled in as I turned into the parking lot and I met him at his cruiser. He got out of the car with a look on his face that made me groan. “What?” I said and turned away from him.
“Nothing.”
Yeah, right. There was enough innuendo dripping from his voice to make my skin crawl.
“You got something to say?” I shot over my shoulder.
“Of course not,” he replied. Dad put one hand on my shoulder. “Do you have something you’d like to tell me?”
I met his gaze to find his eyebrows lifted high enough to wrinkle his forehead. “I don’t know, Dad, why don’t you tell me when you turned into a gossiping old biddy?”
His face crumpled in mock pain and he clutched his chest. “Direct hit.”
I rolled my eyes and went inside. Dad slung his arm around my neck and pressed a kiss to my hair. “I’m here if you need to talk, my boy.”
Of course, he did this when we were inside the station, which was full. It looked like everyone was on duty.
“Aww,” Axel said. “How sweet. Father and son bonding time.”
I couldn’t help the blush that worked up my neck. All the guys razzed me for a second but mostly went back to what they were doing. I headed toward the desk I shared with Carlos, who usually worked nights.
“Madd,” Dad said.
“Yeah?”
“In all seriousness, come over for dinner and tell your mother before she finds out another way. It’ll break her heart, you know that.”
I sighed. “Yeah, okay.”
My feeling of claustrophobia increased. I didn’t even have time to process this whole thing before most of the town knew. Now I had to worry about my mom finding out.
All I wanted was to become a lawyer. I’d originally planned to go to a school a few towns over, in the city. Not too far from home.
But I’d been feeling so crowded, the letter in my bedside table started to look more and more attractive. A school in California, which I’d applied to on a whim, had accepted me. A very prestigious school with an amazing law program.
The more I considered it and the more this town tried to suffocate me, the better it looked. Nobody knew about the Cali school. Talk about Mom freaking out. If she found out I was considering going to a school several states over and thousands of miles away, the shit would really hit the fan.
I decided to keep it to myself for a while longer. I still had several weeks before the deadline for either school to accept or reject their admittance. I had to figure out if I could physically handle the California school. Was there even anywhere I could get away and shift? If not, the possibility of going out there went to nil. I had to be able to shift.
<
br /> Artemis growled. He wanted me to find Bethany, claim her, and go to school here. Which was probably the smartest thing, considering I was a damn dragon shifter.
But still. I wasn’t throwing out that acceptance letter yet.
3
Bethany
Invoice day was never fun. Thursdays were my office day. I balanced the books for the week, projected numbers for the next week and month, and followed up on miscellaneous office work and emails. It had been a productive day, though I still had a couple of hours before going to get Tiffany at my mom’s. I hoped to finish up a proposal for Kara on a small remodel on one of my rental houses that we hadn’t done much to when we flipped it. I had ideas for making it another Airbnb.
My phone rang, and I knew from the tone who it was. My shoulders sank and my heart pounded. I didn’t know why I was surprised to see the number. A week barely went by without a phone call or sometimes two, and it had been nearly twice as long as normal since the last call. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm my twisted gut. “Hello?”
The drunk voice made me duck my head and put my hands over my eyes. “What reason did you have to turn him down? If you two hadn’t argued...”
“It’s done, Walter. It’s over. There’s no use going over and over what happened,” I said.
The night I got the news was the worst of my entire life. As much as I loved them, it had been even worse than hearing my grandparents had died in a fire. Kyle had been my best friend in the world and the father of my only child. As soon as he’d found out I was pregnant, he’d proposed.
And I’d turned him down. For weeks we’d argued. He wanted us to become a couple, but I argued that the baby wasn’t enough reason to take our relationship somewhere it had never been before. And as much as I loved him, and as happy as I was that we were having a baby together, the one night of sex hadn’t changed my feelings for him. He was still my best friend and nothing more.
We’d had a particularly bad argument the night he died. He’d left my house and had been speeding on the steep, winding mountain roads. He’d lost control of his car and careened off a cliff.
His parents blamed me. They couldn’t move past that initial deep hole of grief, not even for Tiffany. They’d come to the hospital the day she was born, and his mother had said she looked just like Kyle did at birth, broken down in tears, then handed Tiffany back to me and ran from the room.
After that, I never heard a word from them. Not for holidays or birthdays.
Until about a year ago, the phone calls started. And they were always the same. Kyle’s dad, after having one too many, called and reminded me that I was the reason his son was dead. It was my fault.
If only I’d been willing to provide Kyle’s daughter a proper home by marrying Kyle, he never would’ve been angry, never would’ve driven like that.
The worst part about the phone calls was that Walter was right. I blamed myself just as harshly as he blamed me. But the difference was that I never could’ve ignored Tiffany. She was the light of my life and would’ve been the light of Kyle’s. And could’ve been the light of his parents’ lives if they could’ve seen past their pain.
I tried to tune Walter out, but words kept stabbing through my brain. Selfish, irresponsible, dead! Tears welled in my eyes. I dashed them away and sucked in a shaky breath.
“It should’ve been you!”
The line went dead. I wasn’t sure why I took the calls. Guilt, probably. Guilt and grief. A therapist would have probably had a lot to say about it, but it was what it was. Walter needed to take it out on someone, and I was available. I didn’t begrudge him his grief, even almost four years later.
It still hurt me every day. Every time I looked at Tiffany and knew she had to grow up without a father because we’d argued instead of talked. If I could’ve gone back and changed it all, I still would’ve told him no, but I wouldn’t have lost my temper.
That night, I’d yelled. I’d told him he was my friend and that was all it would ever be. I’d cussed and told him to get it through his thick skull.
If I could’ve gone back, that’s what I would’ve changed. The last thing I said to the best friend I’d ever had was, “For fuck’s sake, Kyle! I’m not attracted to you!”
I stared at my phone for several minutes as the last words I’d said to him reverberated in my mind.
I couldn’t remember the last thing he said to me. I’d never been able to remember.
After the phone call, I tried to focus on work, but it wasn’t happening. There was no way I’d be able to get my mojo back. I never could on the days Walter called.
Damn it. I’d been in a great mood, too. Now that was totally ruined. I packed away the invoices and tidied up my workspace. I couldn’t stand to come in the next day to yesterday’s coffee and trash everywhere.
The day was only halfway over. I could’ve gone to get Tiff, but I didn’t want my bad mood to spill over onto my sweet girl.
I ran upstairs to our living space above my office. One of the first things Kyle and I had done was renovate one of the homes so we could live upstairs and have an office downstairs. Now his bedroom was Tiffany’s, but most of the house was the same. Memories of my friend were everywhere in the space.
I put on my hiking boots and pants to protect my legs from rogue roots and bushes, then headed to the car. There was a hiking trail that rarely had anyone else on it. It branched off of the main trail used by tourists going to see a spectacular waterfall, but they never took the path. It was too easy to miss.
It was their loss. There was a smaller but gorgeous waterfall along it as well. I drove straight there and wasted no time getting out of the car and on the trail.
Within a half-mile or so, I’d worked off a lot of my agitation. Sucking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and walked a few feet after checking carefully to make sure the trail was clear ahead of me. Breathing in the forest, I moved slowly and listened to the sounds of the water, faint in the distance, sucked in my breath and enjoyed the scents of the blooming late spring flowers in the brush. I liked trying to connect with nature this way every once in a while. Without sight. Relying on my other senses.
The slightest sound made my eyes fly open. I looked around, but nothing seemed amiss. I kept my eyes open and continued through the forest. The late spring thaw made the air crisp and clean if a little bit chilly. The uphill walk had my blood pumping, so I didn’t mind the slight nip in the air.
Another quarter mile up the trail, the sound of a branch cracking had me on high alert. Big animals tended to avoid these trails frequently walked by humans, but I was on one that was more ignored than others.
What had I been thinking? I hadn’t told anyone where I was headed, and there could’ve been anything stalking me in the woods. We had all sorts of predators in Colorado. Big cats, black bears and grizzlies... Hell, we even had wolverines.
I stepped forward again but only made it about six feet before a larger limb snapped.
Nope. No, uh-uh. I whirled and hurried down the path the way I’d come. I had to get to a more populated place and hope that whatever was hiding from me in the trees would decide it was too dangerous to come after me.
My breath caught in my throat, sharp and panicked. I tried not to completely flip out, but it wasn’t easy. Focusing on my breathing, I sucked air in and out as I watched the path, so I kept my footing.
My heart raced and ears buzzed as my mind filled with unlikely but possible scenarios about being attacked by a cougar and left for dead.
Oh, God. My daughter would’ve been an orphan. Her father already died tragically, that was going to be hard enough to explain the intricacies when she was older, but then my parents would have to tell her all about how her mother disappeared one day, never to be heard from again.
They’d find my car days later, and search the mountains, but the cougar would’ve been too smart. He would’ve dragged me to some unknown—
“Hey!” Maddox stepped out of nowhere, dire
ctly into my path.
As much as I liked to think of myself as not a typical girly girl, my scream belied any of that. I shrieked at the top of my lungs and pumped the brakes, backpedaling and throwing out my arms. My hands slammed into his chest, but he didn’t move an inch. I ended up plowing into him.
It felt like slamming into a brick wall.
“It’s just me,” he cried with his arms around me. When I backed away, he released me immediately, but I couldn’t ignore the heat from his hands as they steadied me, pressed against the small of my back.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“Calm down,” he replied with his hands in the air. “You’re okay.”
“You scared the hell out of me!” I yelled. “Why didn’t you announce yourself? Was that you back there, stepping on branches and shit?” I bent over and put my hands on my knees, trying to stop my pants from turning into hyperventilation.
“Not many people use this trail.” At least he looked chagrined. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I said, still bent over. “That’s why I like it.”
I looked around. The parking lot was just visible. I’d made it to the part of the trail that was more heavily populated without even realizing it. “Did you come from the same direction I did?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, I like to walk in the woods, off the trail. I was heading back this way.” He indicated the parking lot.
My car was the only one in sight. I started that way to see if maybe I was just at a bad angle to see his car. We stepped off the trail onto the asphalt. “Where’s your car?” I asked, shooting Maddox a bit of side-eye. “Did you walk from the park?” The trail continued on, way down the mountain, and ended up in the city park behind Main Street.
He nodded. “Yeah, I enjoy a long walk.”
I raised my eyebrows and moved slowly toward my car. “That’s more than a long walk. Depending on how far you went up that trail, you might’ve walked over ten miles.”
Maddox shrugged. “It helps me clear my head. Plus, it’s good exercise.” He shifted from foot to foot. His body seemed antsy. Was he nervous? This encounter was weird at best. Super-freaky was a better description. “Listen,” he said. His shoulders tensed as he shoved his hands in his pockets.
