I sat up straighter and felt my back stiffen. I knew I was still crying, but I didn’t care. “Stop it. I do everything I can to take care of you and make sure you have everything you need. You’re acting like a spoiled brat. I’m sorry you don’t get to be rich and live with a dragon, but that’s just the way it is.”
“I’m a spoiled brat? You’re a selfish bitch.”
The urge to slap him rose right up to the surface in me, but I remained in control of myself. We’d had enough of that in our family. I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Go to your room.”
“No. You can’t make me!”
Nick stood up and grabbed Casey by the collar of his shirt. “Just go! Why are you like this? Just go to your room and stop acting like a little asshole! Can’t you see that she’s upset? All you think about it yourself and I’m sick of it! We’re all sick of it!”
Casey stumbled backwards and then swung at Nick. I jumped up from the bed and grabbed him. Walking him out of the room while he screamed and fought to get away, I held on, even as his wild punches and kicks landed on me.
Nick followed us, screaming back at Casey. “You’re terrible! I always go along with you, but I’m done! You make everyone think that I’m the bad one, but I just want to be here and be quiet. I just want to live in one place! You’re going to ruin everything, not Sky. You’re going to make her hate us. She’s going to go away, too. She’s going to leave us, just like everyone else, and it’s all going to be your fault!”
Casey screamed louder. “She’ll leave anyway! Why can’t you see that? She’ll leave, too! We’re always going to be alone!”
I shook him, harder than I probably needed to, my own anger and helplessness coming out in it. “Stop it! Fucking stop it! Both of you!”
When they were both still and quiet, I pushed Casey down on the couch and marched around in front of them. “I am done with this. I’m done. I’m the adult, and I’m not leaving! I’m here. I’m here for both of you and I’m never going anywhere, and I’m never going to hate you. If you both keep this up, though, I am going to lose my mind and then you’re going to be stuck with a lunatic as your aunt.
“Casey, you have to stop. You have to stop acting out and treating everyone around you like they don’t matter. We’re the only family you have here and you need to stop pushing us away. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll keep taking your abuse, but why do you want to put us through that? We love you. Just let us love you and stop hurting us.”
Nick cried from next to me. “I don’t want to fight. I hate the fighting. I hate it. Dad screamed all the time. I don’t want to be like him.”
Casey’s sobs wracked his small body. He curled in on himself and buried his face in his knees. Nick went to him and wrapped his arm around his little brother, holding him while they both cried.
I knelt in front of them, crying just as hard as Casey. I was exhausted. My heart hurt. I was trying to convince the boys that everything was going to be okay, while I felt like everything was falling apart. I wasn’t okay. I had to put up a brave front for them, though.
I wrapped my arms around them both and held them, repeating the message I needed them to hear. “I love you both. I’m not going anywhere.”
When all the tears had been cried, the room turned silent and awkward. Nick pulled away first, sat back and used his shirt to wipe his eyes. Casey sat back and stared at the wall behind me. I sat back on my heels and let my head hang down. I didn’t have anything left in me.
“Sorry.” Casey still didn’t look at me.
Nick sighed. “Me, too.”
I ran my hands through my hair and sighed, too. “Me, too. We’re stuck together, guys. We have to make it work. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we’re family.”
They both shrugged, but I hoped to god that maybe there was some kind of compromise we could all reach. We had to. I loved them both more than they would ever know.
Beast
Flying while drunk was only slightly less dangerous than driving while drunk. I should’ve stayed home and bitched and moaned about everything to the other dragons, but they were hardly sympathetic. I had a mate. They didn’t. It was getting closer to the eclipse and if they didn’t find their mates soon, they would eventually lose their minds. I didn’t have to worry about that. I just had to worry about convincing my mate we belonged together.
I flew too low and hit the swamp behind Sky’s house harder than I meant to. It sent me flipping end over end through the water until I finally stopped rolling and sank to the bottom like a drunken rock. I came up, spitting and sputtering, as a man.
Growling at my clumsiness, I swam over to the dock and pulled myself up on it. I meant to get up right away and stalk over to Sky’s door, but suddenly, the earth felt unsteady under me. I was drunker than I realized.
“Sky!” I bellowed her name out into the night sky and hoped that she’d come to me. I had things to say that she needed to hear. “Sky!”
The other dragons’ words crowded my brain. They thought I was stupid. If Sky just needed me to be less bossy and commanding, then I should be less bossy and demanding. Cezar went on a rant about modern, human Earth women appreciating the right to make their own decisions with their lives. Armand told me how creepy I was for telling her that she was mine for life. I got earfuls of them telling me what a moron I was, how they’d do anything for a mate, how no matter what she needed, they’d provide it.
The thing was, I felt the same. Yet, somehow, I’d messed everything up. It sounded so simple. Just be less demanding. If I could pull that off, would she come back?
“Sky!”
After what felt like a million years, I could smell her coming nearer. I tilted my head back and saw her in a big T-shirt and nothing else. Maybe underwear. If she’d just come closer, I’d be able to tell, but everything was swaying.
“What are you doing here?” She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at me. “Are you drunk? What’s wrong with you?”
“Yes, I’m drunk. My mate left me.” I sighed and let my head fall back onto the dock with a thud. The wood hurt, but I didn’t care. “You’re beautiful. So beautiful.”
“Jesus, Beast. You’re trashed. Why are you here?”
“You left me.”
She sighed. “Yeah.”
“It hurts.”
“Yeah.”
I blinked up at her. “I can change.”
She bit her lip. “Come on, Beast. Go home.”
“No.” I realized what I’d done there and groaned. “I mean, please, no.”
“Go home, Beast.”
“We must talk. Human women like talking, right? Can we talk?” I realized I was begging, and that was fine with me. I would do anything if it meant not losing her.
“If we do talk, it’s not going to be like this. You’re drunk and you’re just saying what you think I want to hear. This isn’t you, anyway. You don’t beg. Go home.” She saw that I was about to argue and held up her hand. “Give me some time and then maybe we’ll talk. I’m not promising anything, Beast.”
I forced myself to sit up and groaned as everything spun. “I will fly home. When this world stops spinning so fast.”
“Son of a bitch.” She ran her fingers through her hair and nodded. “Fine. Get up. Come on. You can sleep here—on the couch. You have to leave in the morning, though.”
I reached for her and felt a shudder go through my body as her mere touch ignited flames of desire inside of me. “With the mutant cat?”
“Don’t call him a mutant.” She wrapped her arm around me. “But, sure. You can sleep with Bax.”
Even when she wanted me to go away from her, she was sweet. That knowledge settled in my sloshing gut as I swayed. If I didn’t fix this, I’d never be okay. She was perfect, sexy, kind, gentle, and wild enough to take me on. She had that stubborn streak, but I was beginning to think it was part of what made her so special. If she just went along with whatever I said, I’d probably be bored. Ma
ybe.
“Cezar told me that human women like to hear their males say certain things.” I looked over at her. “In our world, we didn’t say those things. We knew that if we found our mate, certain things were understood. You didn’t have to say them.”
“Beast…”
“I love you, Sky, forever.” My voice broke and I cleared my throat and repeated myself. “I love you forever, Sky. I would do anything for you. I would die for you. That’s love, right? Knowing that I would give anything and everything for you. You mean that much to me.”
Sky stopped walking and blew out a breath. “Stop talking, Beast.”
“Yes, I will stop talking. That is probably best.”
“Yeah.”
I let her help me to her couch and then I settled onto it as well as I could. “I am old, Sky. I am brutish, I am stubborn and I learned my ways a long time ago, in a very different place. Cezar has been learning to be better all these years. He started out a better dragon than me, though. I was never good. I am going to try to be better for you, though.”
I felt the mutant jump on my chest and sighed. “Cezar said something about teaching a dog tricks. He said I could change.”
Sky laughed gently and pulled a blanket over me. “You can teach an old dog new tricks.”
“I’m the old dog?”
She ran her fingers along my jaw. “I think that’s what he meant, yeah.”
I turned into her touch and then she was gone. I faded into sleep thinking about how I must learn new tricks.
Sky
I slept later than I’d meant to, but we’d all decided that we were spending the next day in bed, anyway. That was before Beast had woken me up in the middle of the night. I hurried out of bed and rushed into the living room, not sure of what I would find, not even sure of what I wanted to find.
Surprisingly, true to his word, Beast was gone. There was a very roughly scribbled note left behind, though.
Forever.
His words replayed in my head: I love you, forever, and I sank onto the couch. He loved me. At least, he thought he did. I clutched the note in my hand and groaned. It didn’t make anything any easier. Just because he thought he loved me and thought he wanted to change didn’t mean that he would change. He could continue to be just as demanding and bossy as ever. Besides, even if he did change, he’d still be a dragon. There was no possible way to have a normal, regular life with a dragon in it. There just wasn’t. It was a fun novelty for a while, some of which left me with a feeling of euphoria, but those types of thing weren’t long lasting. Eventually, real life set in, work, bills, car repairs, the search for colleges for the boys. A person needed to make rational decisions about who to include into their lives. Didn’t they?
I looked down at the note in my hand again. Forever. I wouldn’t age. As long as he lived, I’d live. Forever was a long time.
Lightheaded, I bent forward lowering my head between my knees. Jesus. When you didn’t age, forever was...forever. He was several hundred years old. I would be several hundred years old one day. In several hundred years. Oh, jeez, I’m losing my marbles.
“Sky?” Nick called my name as he came into the room. “What’s wrong?”
I sat up and forced a smile. “Nothing. Everything is okay. I mean great. Everything is great.”
“Really? Because I thought I heard Beast bellowing your name outside last night.”
I groaned. “You hear too much.”
“Yep. So, why isn’t he still here? Where did he go?”
Casey stumbled into the room. “Where’s Beast?”
“Is there anyone in this family who didn’t hear Beast last night?”
The boys answered simultaneously. “No.”
Nick laid his hand on my shoulder. “You aren’t really going to leave him, are you? Come on, Aunt Sky. He’s a great guy.”
My pulse quickened. “Boys, the three of us have a lot of work to do on our family. I’ve been trying so hard to provide you both with something you’ve never had, a nice, normal, stable family. That definition doesn’t include dragons.”
Nick scoffed. “Are you breaking up with him because you think we have a chance at being normal without him? Seriously? Sky, all the rest of our family is either dead, addicted to drugs, or in prison. Our dad, your brother, is in prison for things that we don’t even talk about. We’re never going to be normal. If you’re trying to make us fit that definition, you’re fighting a losing battle.”
“We could be normal.” I looked between the two of them and saw their disbelieving looks. “Shit. Maybe not.”
Casey shoved my shoulder playfully. “We’re just not that kind of family.”
I held his gaze and caught his hand. “But we are a family. Right, Casey?”
He pulled his hand away and made a face, but nodded. “Yeah. We are.”
Nick groaned. “Yeah, we’re family. A weird one.”
Casey piped up, “So, go get Beast back ‘cause he fits right in with us.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“He’s bossy!” I said it and then bit my lip. They were both staring at me like I’d lost my mind. “I don’t want to be bossed around. I want to make my own decisions.”
The boys looked at each other and Nick raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”
I stood up and picked up Bax. He smelled like Beast and before I could help myself, I buried my nose in his fur. “It’s adult stuff, okay?”
Nick shrugged. “All I know is that you were happy with him. I never saw you smile so much as in the past few days.”
“I’m happy with you guys, too.” I was defensive, worried that they saw something that I didn’t. I was happy with them. “And I smile!” I did. And to prove it, I flashed a huge smile at them. Maybe a slightly over exaggerated smile because both boys burst out laughing.
“Not in the same way. You’re all mushy when you look at him. I’ve never seen you laugh like you did when you were flying on his back.” After Nick said that, Casey and Nick exchanged looks and some unspoken communication seemed to pass between them.
“We know you love us, Aunt Sky, and you’re trying. But, it makes us feel good to see you smile like that. It makes our family better when you’re trying less and smiling more. Still weird, but better.”
My eyes teared up. I was momentarily stunned speechless. When did my oldest nephew become so mature and so wise beyond his years?
Nick stood up and walked towards his bedroom. “I’m going back to sleep. I think you should get him back. We really like him. You don’t have to worry about us if you leave, either. I’m going to make sure that we don’t get into any trouble. Right, Casey?”
Casey scowled but shrugged. “Whatever.”
I watched as they both walked back towards their rooms and my heart throbbed. I felt as though we’d turned over a new leaf. Like they trusted me more and I could trust them more, too.
I stood there holding Bax, smelling Beast, and trying to make sense of all the thoughts and emotions swirling around my head. Maybe, I just needed to talk to him. I’d just go over and we could talk and figure out where to go from there.
My mind made up, I headed back to my bedroom to shower and dress. I chose a light sundress and braided my hair to keep it from sticking to me in the heat, then hurried back out of my room.
Nick and Casey were standing in the hallway watching me with grins on their faces.
Nick laughed. “Good choice.”
“I’m just going over to talk to him.” Why I was defending myself to my teenage nephews, I wasn’t sure.
“We’re going to be rich.” Casey high-fived Nick and then they both went back into their rooms.
“That’s a snooty attitude and not a sure thing, at all!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I rolled my eyes and hurried out to the boat. As I navigated through the thick, murky water, tall grass and cattails in the direction of Beast’s house, I tried to remain calm and repeat to myself over
and over that I just wanted to talk.
The closer I got, the more nervous I became. I started questioning myself. Was I doing the right thing? Was I thinking clearly?
When I had just about convinced myself that I needed to turn around and go back home, I heard a faint rustling and flapping sound above and looked up to see five massively giant dragons in the air above me.
“Holy shit.”
Beast’s black and gold dragon wasn’t among them, and as I watched, slightly mesmerized, my boat continued forward. I was a little shaken, and quite frankly awestruck, by the sight I’d just witnessed. It was amazing, really. They moved through the air with such ease, no fear of being seen, yet their kind remained secret. I was curious about that.
When the swamp opened up in front of me, I saw Beast standing on the dock, waiting for me. He was in a pair of low slung jeans that hugged his muscular thighs and a faded T-shirt, stretched taught over his well-built chest and biceps. How he could look so mouth-wateringly handsome in something so simple, was baffling. But, it was too late to turn back after he saw me. I powered the boat over to him and stopped.
He looked down at me, smiling. “I’d ask if you want me to tie you off, but there’s no rope, huh?”
I fought a grin. “Can’t you just pick it up and put it somewhere? You’re strong enough, right?” I winked.
He laughed lightly, his smile so easy and yet so devastating. “Of course.”
I took the hand he held out for me, climbed onto the dock and turned to watch as he effortlessly picked up my boat and set it on the dock behind us.
“Shall we talk on the patio?”
I nodded. I didn’t totally want to talk. I was so nervous, being that close to him, that all I wanted to do was push and shove my boat back into the water and power the hell out of there. What if we couldn’t come to some sort of agreement about the thing between us? Even more frightening, what if we could? I wasn’t sure which scared me more.
He pulled a chair closer to his ergonomic exterior patio lounger and recliner and sat down. “You look like you might want to run.”
Fire Breathing Beast: Dragons of the Bayou Book 1 Page 10
