Jasper Drake

by Emilia Hartley

  Dragons collected. They gathered the richest jewels, the most sought-after tech, the things everyone wanted. Cora was just another item in that long list. There would never be a dragon who did not want her for its treasure trove. The instinct was undeniable.

  “Have it your way,” the demon grumbled. “You will find out soon enough.”

  She regarded the demon for a long while. A thought occurred to her, that this was a dream and dreams could be shaped. She and the demon were not the only participants in the dream. The demon was a part of Jasper. This was, in a way, Jasper’s dream, too.

  “Can you let me speak to him?”

  The demon’s eyes snapped to her. There was a moment when she thought it wasn’t going to let her, that it was going to covet its time with her. Then, the great dragon melted away and left a man in its place.

  Jasper blew out a breath. A small cloud of smoke drifted away from his lips. This was her first time in the same room as him, if a dream counted as a room. His hair was nearly as gold as his scales, curling over his forehead. Amber eyes were serious, nearly emotionless. Then, they began to warm. The heat in them melted her.

  She wanted to close the space between them, to get a better look at his face and memorize the way his lips moved. Yet, she stood her ground. Even if this was a dream, she had to guard herself. The demon made it clear that the veil between their thoughts was thinner here. If she was going to keep her secrets hidden from Jasper, she needed to be very careful about it.

  “I never thought the beast would let me into one of these dreams,” Jasper told her.

  She offered a small smile.

  “Do you need a door? Would that make talking to me easier? I’m sure we could conjure one somehow and put it between us.”

  “You think you’re funny,” she teased, finding a tiny spark of joy dancing in her chest.

  “I don’t often get the chance to joke. I have to be all business with my court. That, or the beast is rampaging off into the distance and I’m locked inside it.”

  She found herself pitying him. Being trapped in his own body couldn’t have been comfortable. How much had he been forced to live through? What things had his demon done that he would have stopped if he could?

  A better man would have the power to stop himself, Cora thought.

  She was not bound to a better man. Instead, she was bound to this excuse of a king. He was a man fumbling through a strange world, trying to make up rules as he went along.

  “Are you okay? With this arrangement, I mean.” Jasper scratched the back of his head. “Is the guest house alright? If you need anything, just ask. I’ll have it sent over. Pots and pans, furniture. I hear cats can make great company.”

  “Are you offering to buy me a pet?” Cora nearly laughed.

  He held out his hands, palms up. “If that’s what you want. It seems lonely over there. I don’t want you to feel trapped.”

  Cora was trapped, though. She’d done it to herself, but the walls were a prison, nonetheless. If she left, she would either run into Jasper or find herself in Cal’s clutches again.

  She shuddered. She didn’t want to think of Cal. She would escape him someday. She would run far away, so far that he could never follow her. Perhaps she would disappear into Morocco or lose herself in Tibet.

  The idea was freeing, but she knew she’d never make it. The man across from her would see to that. His demon would hunt her down. It would not rest until Cora had been found and was returned to these mountains.

  “I don’t need a cat, but it is kind of boring,” Cora confessed.

  Jasper approached but didn’t close the distance between them. He lowered himself to the ground and crossed his legs, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Cora was grateful for the small bit of space between them. It was like his every move was calculated in terms of her comfort.

  He never tried to touch her, not even in the dream. He didn’t try to convince her that he was right for her. They chatted about everything and nothing, avoiding all the hot-button issues that still lingered between them. She was grateful for the chatter. It didn’t matter that it was Jasper on the listening end, not right then.

  She was just grateful to have someone to talk to.

  Chapter Three

  Cora heard a knock at the front door.

  She waited, listening for the telltale sounds of someone on the other side. When she did not hear shuffling or breathing, she slowly approached. It could have been a trap. Perhaps one of Calvin’s beasts had crept onto Jasper’s territory. It would have been easier now that the metallic dragons had spread out over the mountains.

  Feeling a small surge of bravery, she whipped the door open. No one stood on the other side, but there was a stack of boxes. One was massive, long and tall. She pushed aside a couple of other boxes to find that it was a television. Her brows rose and she scanned the courtyard, searching for the visitor that had left the gifts.

  Cora half-expected them to be little Trojan horses. Once she dragged them all inside, they would break open and dragon shifters would roll out to kidnap her. The rest were too small to hide actual people. Once she was certain the biggest box couldn’t hide a person either, she dragged them all inside.

  Setting up the television took the better part of the morning while she crunched on dry cereal. How long had it been since she watched television? Cora couldn’t remember. Her last few months among her old clan had been filled with fear and duty. Once she escaped, she’d been in the wilderness, away from civilization.

  Blasting day-time TV programs filled the house with sound. It comforted her, easing away some of her anxieties while people argued over petty things on reality court shows. In another box, she found a coffee maker. There were cooking utensils and tools, too.

  She hated to tell Jasper, but she couldn’t cook. It made her an awful dragon-wife, but that was Cora’s reality. Everything about her made her an awful dragon-wife. She didn’t want to be locked inside, didn’t want to wait for her husband to come home and demand dinner. Cora wanted to have a life of her own.

  She paused near a window and stared at the open sky. A sharp longing to spread her wings and fly filled her. Cora felt like she was finally stretching after months of being cramped in a box. The last step was to open her wings, but she couldn’t. Not while there were so many other dragons around. Once they saw her scales, they would know. Then she’d never be able to escape.

  She pressed her knuckles to her chest and apologized to her beast. They could not fly today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.

  The beast mourned but did not fight her.

  Cora could do nothing more than collapse onto the futon she’d dragged out of the bedroom and lose her hours to reality TV. It was a small reprieve from the truth that hung over her head.

  Prisoner.

  Always a prisoner.

  ***

  Jasper paced the floor. The other clan had sent him another message. He crumpled it in his hand, feeling flames lick the inside of his mouth. Instead of igniting the scrap of paper, he slapped it onto the desk and flattened it back out.

  He’d woken early that morning and called Wyatt. His bronze dragon lived in town and could quickly deliver all the things he thought Cora would need in the guest house. While Wyatt hadn’t been all too happy to do Jasper’s bidding, he’d gone through with it because they both knew Jasper wasn’t going to leave Cora’s side.

  She might not want to face him yet, and that was okay, but he would not abandon her.

  Not while the other clan fought tooth and nail to take her back. He wondered what it was about her that made the other clan want her. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth her misery. Jasper could see the way the months had weighed on her. She watched every shadow with open suspicion. He wished he could tell her no one would get past him but promises couldn’t always be kept.

  The beast inside him growled defiantly. It would keep the promise until its last breath. He gave his noble beast a nod of acknowledgement. He only wished
that the creature would see reason. People were not perfect. Jasper was supposed to be a great king and lead his people toward peace and happiness, but he couldn’t even do that.

  Not while the creature inside him stirred a war. When this was over, what would his beast do next? Jasper worried that he wouldn’t be the man everyone expected him to be. He didn’t even know how to be himself.

  Cora sat with her back against the front door once again. It was warm from the body sitting on the other side. Cora told herself she wasn’t drawn to the warmth, that she didn’t crave his scent, but here she was anyway.

  Jasper did not growl. He did not bang his fists against the door. He didn’t even try to break through the walls. Instead, he sat outside the door as if he was happy just being near her. Hours slipped by while he regaled her with stories of his childhood. She didn’t want to lean into them and hang onto every word, but she found herself falling into the tales anyway.

  He told her about the time he and Griffin had leapt off a cliff face to see if they could shift before they hit the ground. There was a scar to prove it, he assured her. She could see it when she finally decided to open the door.

  Cora didn’t want to like Jasper. She wanted to hold onto the idea that he was a monster, just like every other alpha dragon. The title of king was handed down from father to son without regard for who the son had become. She’d noticed that the son could be a spoiled brat. If he knew the title was his and that no one could take it, power went to his head.

  Her mate spoke of days when he acted like that kind of brat, but she didn’t see it in him anymore. Cora didn’t know what had changed him. She didn’t think it was herself. They’d barely interacted. She’d done her best to avoid being anywhere near him until this point.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Jasper asked.

  The smell of whiskey drifted in the air. She tried to imagine him outside, with his knees bent and a hand dangling over one, a glass of amber colored liquid swirling inside.

  Cora didn’t want to talk about herself. Looking back never felt good. It stung, like a wasp in her heart.

  “Why are you drinking?” She checked the time. “It’s barely ten in the morning.”

  His laugh was a barely audible chuff of air. “Whiskey is the only thing that quiets my beast.”

  “The demon,” she breathed.

  “Yeah, you could call it that.”

  Her cheeks flamed. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. His response was gentler than she’d expected. There was no sign of his beast or the heat of his anger. If anything, Cora thought she heard a small laugh.

  “Tell me about your camping experience then,” he pressed, clearly not willing to talk about the creature inside him.

  She didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to talk about it either. Not when she knew both man and demon were mated to her for the rest of her life. The thought quaked her heart and stole her breath.

  “Camping was… dirty. It was kind of lonely.” She let her head fall against the door. Hiding in the mountains had not been a fun experience. The umbrella of Jasper’s reign had protected her, but she’d done her best to avoid him, too. It led to some long nights. “I had a run-in with a bear. At first, I thought it was one of your shifters. I tried talking to it, asking it not to tell you where I was. It took me ten minutes to realize I wasn’t talking to a shifter but an actual animal. The thing almost bit my hand off.”

  She played with the fraying hole in her jeans while listening to the sound of Jasper’s breathing on the other side of the door. It was soothing, in its own way. She shouldn’t have thought so, but the longer she stayed in the guest house, the more he became just a man.

  A man with a demon.

  “The funny thing is,” she went on, “I’m not even an outdoorsy kind of girl. I don’t mind hiking or day trips, but I definitely prefer showers to open streams. It’s been too long since I’ve had pizza. Like, good pizza.”

  “What qualifies as good pizza? Everyone has their own version of what constitutes good pizza.”

  How was this conversation so…normal? Cora felt like they should have been discussing the war falling around their heads or the price she would pay for the pain his shifters had endured. Instead, he spoke to her like she was just another person. Like it wasn’t her fault that his clan was hurting.

  Cora cleared her throat, trying to dislodge the lump brought on by incoming tears.

  “I’m more of a New York pizza kind of person,” Jasper said while she was getting herself under control.

  If he knew she was close to crying, he didn’t show it. Maybe that was his gift to her. Jasper allowed things to be normal. Even if they were in the middle of chaos, he allowed her a small space to just be Cora. It was not a thing she’d experienced in a long while.

  For the past years, she’d been the crystal dragon. Coveted. Controlled.

  Here, she was just Cora.

  “I agree,” she managed to say. “New York style pizza is my favorite. None of the chain restaurants make it right. Every place outside of New York that claims to make it has disappointed me.”

  The conversation went on for a while, about the weirdest places they’d found New York style pizza, about their favorite toppings, and the best way to eat it. Even though they liked the same pizza, they disagreed on everything else. It made her laugh and nearly forget the door between them.

  Then, she heard a shuffling sound. There was a clink of glass on concrete before the door handle wiggled. Her heart leapt into her throat. She scrambled off the floor and away from the door.

  “Can we stop this charade?” Jasper asked. “You don’t have to hide from me. Come on out.”

  Cora wrestled her racing heart. She shook her head before realizing he couldn’t see her. “I’m not…I’m not ready.”

  His response was a low growl. She felt it across her skin, raising every hair on her arms until it reached the back of her neck. The tiny, animal part of her brain told her to run. Cora knew better. They’d been talking about pizza, about childhood stories. That was not a precursor to any of the things she feared.

  Cal had never bothered with small talk.

  Talking herself down took a long while, but she managed to find a semblance of calm. It wasn’t perfect, but it allowed her to explain herself.

  “We might know each other’s pizza preferences, but we don’t know anything else about one another.” She wrapped her arms around herself. Cora was the only one who could look out for her. She couldn’t rely on anyone else to keep her safe. “Don’t mistake my goodwill for trust. I only came here to keep your demon from rampaging all over the mountains. I didn’t come to explore whatever feelings we could have.”

  The demon growled. She knew it was the beast, though she couldn’t tell why. Maybe it was the obnoxious sound of it. The demon that lived in Jasper truly believed it was king of everything. Any disobedience was a rebellion against its rule.

  The demon wouldn’t punish her, but it would hound her. It wouldn’t leave her alone until it bent her to its will. Just like Cal.

  The thought turned her spine to steel. She straightened and raised her chin. She wouldn’t be bullied by a beast. There was no way she would let it control her.

  Finished with this conversation, she spun on her heel, grabbed the noisiest food she could find—the puff cereal—and turned the tv’s volume to an almost unbearable level. Dramatic reality TV blared through every inch of the house. Even though the sound consumed her, she could still hear Jasper’s furious breathing outside.

  And a small part of her felt bad.

  ***

  Jasper wanted to break the door down. He wanted to feel his fist punch through the wood and the splinters that would drag along his skin. Every day he woke with her next door was unbearable. The flimsy walls that separated them drove him mad. He wanted to hold her to see her face. He wanted to be near her, but there was always something in the way.

  Cora probably didn’t feel the same. She stayed away from him. Sh
e made every line between them painfully apparent.

  All he wanted was a bit of trust from her. If she could put her faith in him, then there was a chance they could find happiness. He wasn’t going to sweep her off her feet and whisk her away to a tower where no one would ever see her again. Jasper didn’t want to always be the monster of his own story.

  The thought that she saw him as such filled him with pain. He snatched his whiskey glass from the ground, threw back the last dregs of liquor, and chucked the glass into the distance. There was a soft sound of it shattering a ways away. He was surprised it didn’t hit another shifter.

  His court was always nearby. Since Ashton had returned to Grove, Jasper had both the copper and silver dragon on his heels. He’d grown accustomed to their proximity, then they’d all found women who dragged his cousins away. They were now spread out over Grove. Ashton and Makenna were toiling away in her new recording studio. Ryker and Mina were probably there, causing trouble.

  He missed Griffin most of all. The silver dragon was like a brother to him. Jasper had been able to visit the guest house and get a bit of wisdom or a good punch in the face from Griffin. Now, Jasper looked to the guest house and worried that he would never be the man everyone needed him to be.

  He would never be the kind of man Cora could trust. She’d called his beast a demon. There was no doubt that she feared the creature. Not even Jasper fully understood it. Only when he was full of liquor could he think without the beast rampaging through his mind.

  He knew that his beast would invade her mind while they slept again. He paused and glanced back at the door, the one that would lead him to his mate, and wondered what bound them so tightly. No other set of mates had such a strong bond. He’d never heard of any entering each other’s dreams at night.