Wyatt wished this was another elevator situation. It had been easy compared to this, to finding the right words to convince his mate that his heart only belonged to her. He could use his hands, his strength, but his tongue failed him. When words refused to come to him, he stepped into the room and sat across from Kennedy.
She turned away from him. Outside the window, all of Grove was visible. The bare trees revealed every hidden alley and framed every church bell tower. It was the kind of place that begged for cozy furniture and thick blankets to cuddle under as they watched the snow fall.
Kennedy had picked this out for them, he realized. From these wide windows, he could see the open skies over Grove and whatever dragons dared fly overhead. Like a certain unruly gold dragon.
“This place is incredible,” he finally muttered.
Kennedy snatched the nearly empty bottle off the floor and threw back a swig. Wyatt scowled and reached to take it from her. She let it slide from her fingers. He set it behind him, where she couldn’t take it back. Soon, he would dump it, fill the bottle with water, and try to get her to sip it to get the alcohol out of her system.
He looked around, taking in the rest of the place. It was much bigger than he would have thought, looking at the outside. Now that he was here, sitting on the floor, the ceilings felt impossibly high. The open kitchen made the living room stretch. Massive windows that took up the far wall gave the illusion of even more space. His beast was comfortable in this huge space. He felt like the apartment had been made for him.
Of course, it hadn’t. He was only imagining it, comfortable in this space.
“Were you planning on living here by yourself? In this huge apartment?” He meant it only as a joke, but Kennedy’s glare slid to him and punched him in the gut with the emotion behind it. He pressed his lips together in fear of what else he might say.
Silence filled the cold space between them, the space that Wyatt so desperately wanted to close. He wanted to pull Kennedy into his arms, whisper that he would never hurt her like that again. It was clear she would allow no such thing. Whatever part of her that was capable of loving him had been turned off, most likely to protect herself.
He needed to convince her, to prove to her that she was all he would ever want.
That she was the only thing that mattered in his life.
He nodded and got to his feet, a plan slowly taking form in his mind. It was a messy plan, barely put together and completely incapable of standing on its own, but it was better than the vast nothingness that they currently had.
“I’ll be back,” he informed her. “You can lock the door, but if you do, I can’t promise that you’ll be able to get out again.”
Kennedy’s brows furrowed, but he didn’t stop to explain. He had calls to make and a project to start. He would fill the space between them, one piece at a time. First, he dumped the rest of her alcohol and filled the bottle with water, setting it beside her. She didn’t even protest.
When that was done and he knew her hangover would be minimal, he set out.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
Chapter Seventeen
Wyatt didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to be in the same room as Nicole ever again. Now that he knew what she was up to, he wished he could send her back to the other side of the country.
Instead, he was knocking on her hotel room door in the middle of the night. He shifted from foot to foot, trying to summon the right words. He was not a wordsmith. If anything, Wyatt was better with his hands. He could make things, build things, save people.
The door swung open. Nicole didn’t look groggy. If anything, she looked as though she hadn’t even slept yet, even though it was nearing one in the morning. He spared a moment to wonder where she’d been, but it was no longer his concern.
“Darling,” she purred, voice rising in mock surprise as she reached for his shirt.
He sidestepped her so that her fingers grasped nothing but empty air. He pulled the magazine from his back pocket and slapped it into her hand. She stared down at it, blinking.
“You and I were never good together,” Wyatt began. “I imagine we would be much worse if you were with me just for my money.”
Her fingers closed around the magazine. He watched her jaw tighten, the lines at the corners of her eyes deepening. “You never told me your family owned a bank.”
“I have nothing to do with the bank,” he informed her. “I made no money from it until I moved back home to help out my family. Whatever money you and this magazine think I have, I can assure you doesn’t exist.”
Wyatt wasn’t about to tell her how much he’d made in the short time he’d been home. The bank had been failing, but Jasper and Ashton were turning it around, meaning they could afford to pay Jasper’s knights. He didn’t tell Nicole because he didn’t want her to cling to him. Money could make a relationship easier, mitigating financial stress, but one founded on a partner’s worth was asking for disaster.
“You should leave Grove,” he told her. It was not a threat, but a warning. “You’re going to find that you hate it here. It can snow up to three feet in a night and there are things that live here that you’ve never imagined.”
Nicole looked up at him like he’d lost his mind. That was alright. If she thought he was crazy, then she would leave him alone. At least, that was the hope.
“I came all this way for you to tell me to leave?”
Wyatt nodded. He had no more words for her. They’d been doomed from day one and done since she threw his ring back in his face and ran off. Wyatt was no longer looking in all the wrong places for love, an ideal he’d had all wrong anyway. He knew what it meant to be loved now.
“I’m not ready to give up on us,” Nicole pleaded. Her lower lip quivered, and her eyes became glassy with the threat of tears. When he made no move to console her, the tears vanished. Her lips curled in anger.
He didn’t have all day to deal with Nicole. There were other things that needed to be done. He went back down to the hotel lobby, leaving Nicole to process what he’d told her, and asked to use the phone. He regretted throwing his own into the lake, but calling from an unfamiliar number meant his cousins would pick up.
***
Kennedy didn’t understand. She didn’t know why Wyatt had hunted her down, why he’d sat on the floor with her, or why he had that gleam in his eyes. Last she knew, his ex-girlfriend had come crawling back. From what she’d seen, he’d accepted her back with open arms.
If he wanted to remain friends, well, Kennedy wasn’t sure her heart could stand it. She couldn’t sit back and watch him slide a ring onto that woman’s finger and let her take the place Kennedy had thought was hers.
She was a fool, because she truly thought she was Wyatt’s mate. The thought had filled her with hope and happiness. What she’d thought was the bond forming between them had just been a knot in her stomach, one that shattered the moment she saw Wyatt with his ex-girlfriend.
It’d kept her from going back to the hotel at all. After the bar, she’d gotten halfway to the hotel and turned around. The only other place she could think of was the apartment. She didn’t dare go to Jasper’s where she would see all the other dragon shifters, where she would run into Ashton and Makenna. She didn’t want to see their happiness.
Eventually, she fell asleep in the apartment. She woke with a screaming muscle in her neck and someone knocking on the door. Before she could get her aching body off the floor, it swung open. Wyatt marched through, furniture in his hands.
He barely acknowledged her presence. Behind him came three more dragon shifters, each carrying another piece of unrecognizable furniture. She blinked a few times to clear her head. In moments, a bed formed in the bedroom. It wasn’t made, there were no sheets or blankets to cover it, but Wyatt came and scooped her off the floor to set her on it.
She opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but he disappeared once more. She could only
sit and listen to the thumping footsteps running up and down the stairs. More furniture appeared. One by one, it filled the apartment. While it wasn’t enough to crowd the apartment, it was enough to make the place look lived-in, like a home she could settle into.
Tears prickled her eyes and tightened her throat.
Kennedy didn’t understand what was going on. Jasper paused, in view of the bedroom door. He looked to her with a sidelong glance, his eyes flashing yellow.
“I’ll have you know Wyatt kept us up all night, looking for furniture.” He pushed his hair back, eyes dimming to honey brown again. “The showroom employees seemed more than happy after he signed the check, but I expect you to take over cooking on Ashton’s family days.”
Kennedy scowled. She didn’t understand why they would invite her back. She wasn’t family. She was just a girl who happened to know their secret, like half of town. If it was part of Wyatt’s attempt to make amends and keep her as a friend, then she would have to return everything.
When she stepped into the living room and saw the furniture he’d bought, a round reading chair that looked big enough to sleep in, a deep-set couch that looked like the perfect place to cuddle, her heart clenched. Everywhere she turned, she could envision Wyatt. The life they could have had was written all over the things he’d bought her.
It felt…wrong. And, yet, so right.
She collapsed on the couch and buried her face in her hands. Nothing was fair. She never felt more alone, despite the people crowding around her. It wasn’t the number of people moving in and out of the room, but the knowledge that they didn’t really care about her. She could up and leave once again, and no one would bother to find her.
Just like everyone else.
“Do you think that bed is big enough?” Wyatt asked.
She drew her hands away from her face to find him standing before her, hands on his hips and eyes on the bedroom doorway. The question made no sense. She wasn’t a big woman. A bed was a bed.
Then, he looked to her, and her stomach flipped. Everything that had once been numb suddenly thawed. It felt like an iceberg breaking and crashing into an ocean of emotions. It dragged her deep into everything she’d tried not to feel in the past twenty-four hours. Or more, as she realized she had no idea how much time had passed since she saw Wyatt with his ex-girlfriend.
He belonged to the other woman now.
Why was he standing in her apartment and asking her if the bed was large enough?
Ashton, Griffin, and Jasper left without saying good-bye, though Ashton did wink and salute her. Kennedy found herself scowling in confusion again, a look that had become a permanent fixture on her face.
Then, Wyatt dropped to one knee.
Her heart slammed into her throat while her stomach dropped to the floor. She eyed him warily, unsure of what he was trying to do. There was no ring box in his hands, no diamond anywhere she could see.
“I want to apologize to you,” he began.
She held up a hand to cut him off. “All you needed to say was sorry. You didn’t have to buy me anything. You didn’t even have to come back. You could have texted me.”
Kennedy couldn’t let him stay in her life. She looked at his lips and felt hunger gnawing at her stomach. His eyes, flashing with he beast inside him, drew her in and begged to swallow her whole. There was no denying the way he called to her. Kennedy knew that looking at him and knowing he would never be hers would hurt more than losing him completely.
“You’re not listening to me,” he said, gently. “I want to apologize for Nicole’s behavior. For letting her know where I am and letting her come between us. Kennedy Mortenson, you are my mate and I am never going to look at another woman the way I look at you.”
She couldn’t help the choked sob that rose out of her. The word “what?” came out as a strangled gurgle. Second by second, she pulled herself together. Her mind tumbled back, to the magazine at the convenience store, the one Makenna had rolled up and shouted over.
“Oh, my god,” Kennedy managed to say past her tears.
Wyatt laughed. He dropped to the floor and leaned back against the chair, laughter now bubbling out of him.
“She came back because she thought you were a millionaire!” Kennedy began putting the pieces back together. “I can’t believe her. I mean, I have to because I saw her with my own two eyes, but it still boggles my mind.”
“I would have said Nicole was the greatest mistake I ever made,” Wyatt began, suddenly somber, “but now I know letting you run out of there was my biggest mistake. Because I didn’t stop you and tell you what you meant to me right then and there, you suffered. For that, I’m sorry.
“I will tell you now that she tried to pull some shifty shit on me after you left. Once Nicole realized I wasn’t going to fall back into her arms, she acted like I’d hit her. She tried to convince everyone in the hotel lobby that I was hurting her, just so she’d have a lawsuit against me. I got lucky—no, that’s not right. Here, in Grove, I am loved. The town loves me, and they want to protect me as much as I protect them.”
Kennedy knew she shouldn’t laugh, but she did as she slid to the floor across from Wyatt. “You and I attract the worst kind of people. How did we ever find each other?”
She thought of the creepy dragon shifter who aggressively hit on her when she’d first arrived in Grove. The man had been no better than Nicole, a woman scheming for the most money.
Suddenly, Kennedy felt like she’d been hit with lightning. Her mind backtracked through everything Wyatt said in the past few minutes, back to the beginning. There, she found the word she’d been avoiding. The one that meant more than just lovers, more than just dating.
“You called me your mate!”
His grin split wide. “Yes. I did.”
“So…so, it’s true? We’re mated? Mates?” Kennedy was still processing what that meant. Its definition was infinite, so deep she didn’t know if she would ever find the root of it.
All she knew was the tug in her stomach, the knots that released and bound her to him. To Wyatt.
“I couldn’t let my mate sleep in an unfurnished apartment. Could I?” He lifted himself from the floor and drew her up by her hand.
The home around them coalesced into something more. It was theirs. It was a space meant for the two of them, where the feeling of home that was inside them could spill out. Kennedy had never known the sensation before. Warmth surrounded her, filled her. When Wyatt pulled her into him, it flared hot.
“Oh! I forgot.” He scrambled off the floor, leaping to his feet and dashing to the kitchen. When he returned there was a donut box in his hands. “This is what I left for that morning. I planned on surprising you with donuts, but then Jasper had to do what Jasper does best.”
Kennedy recalled what Makenna told her at the karaoke bar. “Jasper hurt you. Didn’t he? More than he did the first time.”
Wyatt paused. “My wings…” he choked. “Jasper ripped my wings the day you found me in the woods. I hadn’t shifted since then, so they never fully healed. It…my wings…”
Kennedy inched closer to him, to her mate. She set a hand on his leg. His pain was not something she could ever fully understand. The best she could do was remind him that she was there, the same way he’d come back to her when she’d been in pain.
Wyatt pressed his eyes closed. For a long moment, he was silent. Then, when he spoke, his voice had strength again. “They will heal in time. I feel useless, but they’ll heal.”
She snuggled into him, wishing she could offer a bit of herself to help speed up the process. She couldn’t wait to see him take to the skies again, see his body catch the light of the sun and cast blinding rays upon the earth. Watching him fly would be like listening to a symphony.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “I forgot something.” He pushed up from where he was sitting and reached for a bag left forgotten on the floor.
“What’s this?” She sniffed the ai
r, but it didn’t smell like food. There was something slightly chemical about the scent coming from the bag. It was then she noticed how strong her sense of smell had become. “Omg, I can smell everything. Is this normal? I know I’m not pregnant.”
Though, for a second, she panicked. There was a possibility, or so she thought until Wyatt chuckled. She narrowed her eyes at him and his laughter.
“I’ve heard about human mates picking up some dragon traits, but I’d never seen it before.” He shrugged. “Not that seeing the sense of smell is all that easy. It seems that some of what makes me…well, me has bled into you. Is that alright?”
Kennedy thought it through, trying to pick out the cons of the situation. “I’m probably going to have to shower more often, but I guess it’s okay. What else do you think will happen?”
He shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, we have to unwrap our gifts to each other.”
At first, Kennedy was confused. She didn’t remember swapping gifts with Wyatt, but as she backtracked through the past week, she recalled the day they’d spent painting in the craft shop. Wyatt must have gone back and picked up the mugs once they were finished firing.
Her heart leapt excitedly, and she sat up straighter. Wyatt pulled out the first paper wrapped mug and handed it to her. She glanced to him before peeling back the paper, seeing her happiness reflected in his eyes.
The mug was a pale lavender color, a stark contrast against her dark hand. The more paper she peeled away, the more she revealed. And the more confused she became.
“I can’t believe you took the time to paint… what is this?” She couldn’t help the giggles that burst out of her. She was looking at the shapes of animals painted all around the cup, but they were either pink or white and studded with rainbow dots. Then it dawned on her. “They’re iced animal crackers!”
Aurum Court Dragons: Boxset Books 1-5 Page 26
