“Oh,” she chirps, seeing me. She dabs at her mouth like she’s afraid her lipstick is smeared. Only she’s not wearing lipstick. At least not anymore.
One step behind her, familiar dark eyes settle on me. Apprehension seizes my gut.
I quickly step aside, eager for them to pass.
The girl clings to Xander’s hand, tugging him along like it’s no big deal that she was in the girls’ bathroom with a boy. “C’mon, Xander.” She giggles. “Let’s get back to class.”
“Hey, Jacinda.” He moves past me, slowly. Brushes against me. Air hisses between my teeth.
My throat tightens, my mind leaping to the memory of a shirt stained with my blood in Xander’s hands. He held the proof of what I am and doesn’t even know it.
My nod hello is hard to manage. Fear and panic war inside me. The fear I fight off even as my fingers curl at my sides, ready to defend. Smoke rises in my lungs, eats up my throat, widening my windpipe.
“Come on, Xander.” The girl tugs harder on his hand, turning a savage glare on me, clearly not appreciating losing his attention.
“See you in study hall, Jacinda.” He says my name like he’s tasting it. “You going to sit with us today?”
I shake my head. “I’ll sit with Catherine.”
He laughs. “You too scared to sit with us?”
The girl laughs, too, but I can tell she’s confused, feels left out of the joke.
“I’m not scared of anything,” I snap, the brave words only marginally true.
“No?” He leans close. I resist stepping back, resist the rising burn in the back of my throat, the urge to manifest. Wouldn’t that be just perfect? “Maybe you should be.”
Draping an arm over the girl’s shoulder, he turns and leaves me standing outside the bathroom.
Dull dread eddies through me as I watch him saunter arrogantly down the hall. The memory of my desperate flight through snow-capped mountains flashes through my mind. My muscles burn as I recall the wild, hopeless run through the woods—the stinging panic.
For a moment, I’m there again, hunters in fast pursuit. Wet cold hugs my body. Agony lances my wing, tearing the membrane. It took days for that to heal, for the pain to fade. I drag that memory close, hold it tight, determined to remember. Xander is part of that memory. But then, so is Will.
Maybe that’s something I’ve let myself forget.
I shouldn’t have. I can’t. Even with the taste of him still lingering sweetly on my lips, I vow never to forget again.
In seventh period, I perch on my stool and wait for them to enter the room, bracing myself. Catherine is beside me, talking about a band coming to town next weekend that she and Brendan are going to see and would I like to go with them. I think of the crowds, the overwhelming odors and sounds, and murmur an excuse. After that, I don’t say anything else because I feel Will’s arrival.
He enters the room, sees me. My heart flutters treacherously as he walks straight for my table.
He looks at Catherine, asks kindly, “Mind if I sit with Jacinda?”
“Yes. She does,” I volunteer before Catherine can agree. “We need to study.”
I can read nothing in his eyes. The dark centers are flat, a motionless black as he gazes at me. Then his voice rolls across the air, anything but flat. The rough rumble puckers my skin to gooseflesh. “We’ll talk later,” he says, a promise. A threat.
I smile innocently and hold my breath until he walks away, grateful that I’ve avoided him and any more unanswerable questions. For now anyway.
“What’s up with that?” Catherine’s drawl comforts as she leans sideways into me. Her shoulder brushes mine.
I open a book. “Nothing.”
Lowering my gaze, I pretend to read. Pretend not to care that he wants to talk to me, that we sat together in his car last Friday and kissed so intensely that I began to manifest. That he touched my leg, cared for my wound. That he protected me from his cousin in that nightmarish room where I kissed him again.
I can forget him. Turn off everything I’m feeling. I can. I will. He’s too dangerous for me to be around. I can do this. For Mom and Tamra, I can.
After dinner, I find Mom in her room, kneeling beside her bed, a steel lockbox before her. A car chase blasts on the television in the living room.
From outside the doorway, I watch her unlock the box and open it. Even from where I stand, I feel it. Them. The contents of that box rush over me. My blood pumps with a surge of life. The air changes. A subtle shift. A lilting whisper. To my ears, it seems like countless tiny voices saying my name over and over again. Jacinda. Jacinda. Jacinda.
Unable to stop, I step closer, lean forward, drawn to the beguiling voices, the soft, crooning melody of my name.
To anyone else, gems are cold, lifeless. Noiseless. Only draki can hear their voices, feel their energy. They are our fuel. Our life force.
I’ve searched Mom’s room for the gems since we moved in. With no luck. Eager for anything other than Will that might fortify me and keep my draki going.
Apparently, she hid the lockbox well. Mom lifts a stone in her hand. A piece of amber that barely fits in the pocket of her palm. She brushes her fingers over it. The gesture is almost loving, which seems odd. Wrong coming from her because she shouldn’t be affected.
A glow radiates from the box. Colors the air in shades of red, gold, and green. Calling my draki. These gems are connected to me, to my blood, the blood of all my draki family, as far back as my dragon forefathers.
I sigh, air tremoring from my lips. Mom hears me and looks over her shoulder, snapping the lid shut at the same time.
No sense hiding anymore. I step inside the room. “What are you doing?”
With a tight expression, she locks the box. Slips the key in her pocket. I watch as she rises to her feet and slides open the door to her closet. My heart thumps with need. I stare after the box hungrily as she puts it on the top shelf of her closet, glancing back slyly. And I know instantly. It won’t be there when I look later.
“Nothing,” she replies, removing her work clothes from the closet. “Just getting ready for work.”
She’s going to sell a stone.
My throat tightens, aches with this certainty. Even though I suggested she sell a gem before—as a way for the pride to track us down—I can’t bear the thought now.
“You can’t do it,” I say, watching as she removes her shirt and lifts her sequined halter top off the hanger.
She doesn’t even bother with denial. “We need the money, Jacinda.”
“Those gems are a part of us.”
Her lips pull tight as she dresses. “Not anymore.”
I try a different approach, one that will affect her. “The pride will find us. Track us down. They’ll know the minute—”
“I’m not going to sell them here.”
“Where then?”
She turns to her dresser mirror. Applies lipstick that looks raw and bleeding against her pale face. “I’m going to ask for a few days off. I’ll sell them someplace else. Far from here. We’ll be safe.”
Mom always has the answers, only never the ones I want.
I knot my hands together, trying to still their shaking. “You. Can’t.”
She looks at me then. Faces me with disappointment in her eyes. “Can’t you understand, Jacinda? This is the right thing to do.”
Her steady calm is exasperating…makes me feel even more alone. Sad. Wrong. Like I should be a better daughter. One who understands she’s only trying to help me.
But I’m not. I don’t. I can’t ever be that daughter no matter how hard I try. Not as long as she’s trying to kill a part of my soul.
17
The next evening, Mom doesn’t bring up selling a gem again, and neither do I. Silly, but I feel like maybe not mentioning it will help her forget that she wants to sell one of them.
While she and Tamra wait on our pizza at Chubby’s, reputedly the best pizzeria in Chaparral, I walk three doors down to pi
ck out a movie for the night. Preferably a comedy. Anything to distract me.
It happens on the way back.
Movie in hand, I’m crossing the mouth of the alley right before Chubby’s when I’m yanked off my feet and dragged inside the narrow enclosure, hauled between twin walls of concrete, the odor of the nearby Dumpster ripe in my nostrils.
I fight, hissing and spitting steam, fire eating up my windpipe. Twisting my head, I try to spin around and face my attacker, turn him into a crackling pile of bones and ash.
“Stop!”
I recognize the smoky voice instantly and feel no real surprise. In the back of my mind, I knew if the pride ever tracked me down, found me…he would be the one leading the charge.
He gives me a little shake. “Are you done? I’m not going to turn you around until you promise not to incinerate me.”
I laugh brokenly. “Not sure I can promise you that.”
After a long moment, the large hands on my shoulders relax. I stagger free and spin around.
“Hello, Jacinda,” he says like our meeting here is the most natural thing in the world.
My eyes are slower to process, to accept, what I already know. I stare up at him. The immensity of him, a looming wall. Well over six feet. I forgot about his size. His sheer presence. Somehow, with time and distance, here in the human world, he had shrunk in my mind. Now I get all over again why he’s the leading onyx of my pride. Second only to his father.
“How’d you find us, Cassian?”
He cocks his head. Purply black strands stroke his shoulders. “Did you think I wouldn’t?” he asks.
“I don’t know why you had to try.”
“Don’t you?”
“Why couldn’t you just forget—”
“I can’t do that.”
“Because your daddy said so,” I hiss, thinking of his father.
Charcoal black flashes beneath the olive hue of Cassian’s skin, his draki flesh ready to burst free. “I’m not here for my father or the pride.”
As his purple-black eyes bore into me, I feel this truth. Know what he’s really saying. He’s here for himself.
I cock my head. “News flash, Cassian. I’m not looking to go home.” At least not like this. Not with him dragging me back.
He responds to this in typical male draki fashion. His face tightens into stark lines, his nose broadening with several sharp ridges, his skin flashing, blurring in and out. Black dragon skin one moment, human flesh the next.
I brace myself, flex my toes inside my shoes. Steam puffs from my nose like warm breath on a wintry day. “Your macho display doesn’t intimidate me.” A lie. “I’ll fight you,” I warn.
He may be stronger, but I’m not defenseless. He knows that, of course. That’s why he’s here. He wants me for what I can do after all.
He studies me, considering.
“Are you up for that?” I challenge.
“Are you?” he counters.
Am I ready to incinerate him with a single breath? For all his glowering looks, he’s a part of my past, one of my kind, the legacy Mom would pack away and sell like old baby clothes.
After a moment, he answers. “You can’t fight the entire pride.”
I arch a brow with a mildness I don’t feel. “Oh, you’re bringing the pride into this? I thought you were here on your own behalf.”
“I am, but they were going to send someone after you. I volunteered, but if I go back empty-handed, they’ll just send someone else. Probably Corbin.”
I try not to shiver. Corbin. Jabel’s son and Cassian’s cousin. He and Cassian never got along. They didn’t even bother trying.
“Come home with me, Jacinda. It’s inevitable.”
My hands curl into a fist, nails slicing into my palms. “Is that what you want? For me to go with you and hate you for the rest of my days because you gave me no choice?”
“You’ll get over—”
“No, I won’t.”
He looks surprised for a moment, then a little sad. His eyes narrow as though seeing me for the first time. Or a new side of me, anyway. “You could return,” I say, seizing the opening. “Plant false leads. Tell them you couldn’t find—”
“I can’t do that.”
“You think I’ll just wake up one day and think, gee, I want to be property of the pride again, a tool to be used for breeding.” I cross my arms. “I won’t go back.”
He stares at me for a long moment. My belly quivers beneath that stare and for an instant I totally get the effect he has on so many girls. On my sister and every other female of the pride. “Very well. You can’t like it here. You can’t want to stay. You’re not bred for this misery. No matter what you say, what you think now, you’ll tire of the human world. This heat must be hell on your draki. Really blistering it. I’ll wait. Check back in on you in about—” He tilts his head back as though calculating just how long I could make it here. “Five weeks,” he announces.
Five weeks, huh. I’m almost surprised he would grant me that much time.
“Oh, my mother will just love you popping in. She’ll probably cook a pot roast.”
“She doesn’t need to know I’ve found you…or that I’ll be around.” His lips twist. “Don’t want her to take you and run again.” And she would. He was right about that.
His eyes bore inside me and I feel a surge of the familiar unease. But something else, too. Something I never felt before with Cassian. A strange sense of longing. I tell myself it’s just for my pride, my own kind. That makes sense. It’s not him specifically. It’s what he is. What he represents. I can almost smell the mountains and mists rolling off him. It takes every bit of will not to step forward and inhale, press my nose against his warm, fragrant flesh.
“I can be patient,” he adds.
I don’t say anything. Simply return his gaze, feeling a little dizzy as I look into the flat pools of purple-black and refrain from stepping closer.
I would never have described him as patient before. He was the kind of guy that took without asking because it was his birthright. The great draki prince. Like any other draki female, I’m supposed to fall at his feet in blissful subjugation. What could have changed him?
I prop a hand on my hip. “Patient? You? Really?”
He sighs and steps closer. I move, back up until I can go no farther, the hard alley wall at my back.
“I’m not going to deny that I hope for something more between us, Jacinda. Something real and lasting.” He must see something on my face, for he quickly stresses, “Hope. Never force.”
“And if I don’t want that? Ever?”
He presses his lips into a firm line, like he’s rolling the taste of that around in his mouth. And not liking it.
“Then I would respect your wishes.” He spits the words out, like it hurts to keep them inside. His expression of distaste is almost laughable. The notion that I wouldn’t ever bond with him, mate, and produce a slew of little fire-breathers doesn’t sit well. Whether he sees it or not, he already looks at things like an alpha. King of the pride, looking out for the future of our race. At the expense of any one soul. He claimed he was here for himself. Only he doesn’t realize that the pride is part of him. He can never separate the needs and wants of the pride from his own. Therein, lies the danger.
“I need your word. Your promise. You won’t interfere while I’m here, you won’t force me to go back.” Because if he says this, then I’ll believe him. He’s many things to me, but he’s never been a liar.
His gaze locks hard on mine. “I promise.”
“Okay,” I finally agree, moving past him. “I’ll trust you.” There’s something in his eyes, his face, that makes me believe him. And really, how much of a choice do I have?
“You should,” he murmurs. “You can always trust me.”
Stepping from the alley, I spot Mom and Tamra leaving Chubby’s. A quick glance over my shoulder reveals Cassian gone. A sudden breeze casts my gaze up, to the dark shadow on the air, twisting high
er, vanishing into the black night as quickly as fading mist. Only his voice lingers, whispering through me. You can always trust me.
I hope he’s right.
I jerk as an unexpected bell rings shortly after fifth period begins. Confused, I look around as the entire class vaults from their desks, leaving their belongings behind.
“What’s going on?” I ask a girl next to me.
She rolls her eyes. “Where’ve you been? Haven’t you heard the announcements? Today? All week?”
I shake my head. I’m aware of the principal’s voice ringing out over the intercom every morning with school news, but even now, one month in, it’s not something I pay close attention to.
One month in. I think like a prisoner. An inmate counting down time served.
The memory of Cassian washes over me. I’ve hardly slept a wink with the image of him as he was in that alley. It’s tempting to think he might be close, nearby, ready to take me home should it all become too much. More than I can bear. It feels good to have an exit strategy.
“We have a pep rally,” the girl explains.
“Oh.” I stare down at my desk, wondering if I could stay in the room.
“Attendance is mandatory,” she snaps.
“Oh,” I repeat.
She shoots me a disgusted look. “A little school spirit wouldn’t hurt. Our baseball team made the playoffs.”
I nod, as if I know this. And care that it’s a big deal. Already I’m thinking ahead. Bracing myself for the pep rally. Hopefully it will be outdoors.
My skin shivers at the thought of being stuck indoors, crammed into one space with more than six hundred students. It can’t happen. I couldn’t handle that. PE inside the gym with sixty students has been bad enough. Standing, I follow the students pouring into the halls.
Nothing ever goes my way, I think as the entire school population descends into a gym designed for the smaller student body of seventy years ago.
The deep beating of a drum vibrates along the old wood floor and travels up my legs to the center of my chest, an unwelcome reverberating pulse there.
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