Griffin Drake

by Emilia Hartley

  None of them seemed to take the time he’d already paid into account. They never once stopped to ask him if he was falling apart. He pulled his spine straight because he had to, kept moving forward because he had to.

  Chapter Four

  Lilah woke with a start. She panicked and reached for her phone, only to remember that she hadn’t set an alarm because she no longer had a job. The phone slipped from her fingers to fall on her chest. She lay there and stared at the ceiling for a long while.

  While she tried to gather her options, one she thought had been thoroughly dismissed returned to the forefront. Before she could think long about Griffin’s offer, her phone vibrated on her chest. Dread curled in her stomach. It was probably her sister, looking for a place to crash once more. Vivi probably wanted more money and was lurking to see if she could root through Lilah’s drawers for a hidden stash.

  But the message wasn’t from her sister.

  It was from her service provider. The bill was too long overdue, and her service had been shut off. Lilah threw the phone across the room and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes to stem the flow of hot tears. She hadn’t even known the bill was late. It came in the mail like clockwork, which she always paid moments after opening. Everything seemed to be falling apart all at once, and she didn’t know how to keep it together.

  Her job was gone. She was being evicted from her apartment. To add to that, her phone was now shut off. Even if she wanted to call Griffin and accept his weird offer to be his stand-in girlfriend, she couldn’t. The only thing that could make her situation any worse was if her car broke down. She prayed her thoughts wouldn’t come true.

  Bumble gracefully stomped across the bed in a way that only a cat could and stopped just short of her face to yowl for food. The cat’s hot and fishy breath propelled her out of bed once and for all. Lilah knew her life wouldn’t stop just because she wanted to stay in bed all day. The world would keep spinning.

  She needed to start applying for new jobs and find someplace to live until she could save for another security deposit. But she had no one to turn to. Of course, she had a few friends in Grove. Many were old coworkers. Most of them were allergic to cats or had dogs that wouldn’t get along with Bumble.

  She dumped half a tin of wet food into Bumble’s dish. Her best friend was a fuzzy, black and orange feline. No matter what position she was in, she wouldn’t get rid of him. She would just have to find a way to buy a little time.

  Collapsing into a kitchen chair with a cup of black coffee, she watched Bumble pull his wet food out of the dish and eat it over the floor. It brought a resigned sigh to her lips, and she let her head fall into her hand. When the cat was done, he leapt atop the table even though she’d worked hard to teach him he didn’t belong there. Bumble pressed his head into her cheek.

  His little chirpy sounds twisted her heart. She pulled him into her arms and held him like a stuffed animal. He’d let her do this a few times before, always when she felt her lowest. Bumble always seemed to know. His purr rumbled through her chest and slowly eased the ache that had been building there.

  Little by little, reality came crashing in. Her shoulders dropped. She fingered her phone, a useless hunk of technology, and realized she couldn’t log into her bank account to see how much Vivi had taken from her. She couldn’t even call her bank to cancel her cards. Sighing, she dropped her face into her hands.

  She didn’t even know how her phone service got turned off!

  “Should I call the dragon man?” she asked her cat.

  The feline didn’t speak, just kept on purring.

  “You’re right,” she told the cat. “It’s such a weird offer. Who asks someone to pretend to be their girlfriend?”

  She set the cat down on the floor and left her coffee. Lilah had no time to waste. She needed to be on the street, filling out applications and speaking to managers. If she could leave a good impression, then there was a chance she could have a job by the end of the day. After that, she could look into new apartments.

  On her way into the bedroom, she paused near her tipped purse. It looked like Bumble had tried to get into it at some point. The cat had pulled Griffin’s business card out and chewed on the corner, if the tiny teeth holes were any indication. While the number on the white card briefly made her reconsider her decision, she realized she had no way of getting ahold of him.

  Her phone had been disconnected.

  Unless she wanted to hunt down a dragon man, his offer was no longer valid. While Lilah told herself she wouldn’t know where to begin searching for him, everyone in Grove knew where the dragons could be found. The massive cabin-inspired manor on the side of the mountain was the home of the gold dragons, a popular place for the others to convene.

  Lilah remembered little of the current metallic dragons from her days in high school. She’d done her best to fly under the radar and stay far, far away from them. There had been fearless girls, like Makenna, who flocked to the dragon shifters, but Lilah was not one of them.

  Not with the curse that hovered over her head.

  It was said that ages ago, one of the James women crossed a witch. When Lilah’s ancestor unwittingly stole a suitor from the witch, a curse was placed on the entire family. This curse was to blame for the string of bad luck that followed Lilah and Vivi everywhere they went, from Vivi’s failed business ventures and unfaithful lovers to Lilah’s complete inability to hold down any kind of job. The curse was also the reason their parents had been taken away from them in a car accident.

  Lilah couldn’t imagine what kind of havoc the curse would cause if it got tangled with a dragon shifter. Just the thought of fire made her swallow the lump building in her throat. Lilah refused to be caught up in that kind of horror. She would keep to herself and keep her sister at bay. Maybe then she would be able to build a stable life.

  Dressed as if she already had an interview, Lilah stepped outside. The air was beginning to warm. It still held a chill if the wind blew too hard, but the snow was melting under the intense rays of the bright sun overhead. The change of seasons breathed hope into Lilah. It was the start of something new.

  Taking the first step forward, she paused when her neighbor appeared with a stack of letters. The guy looked positively guilty, his brows pressed into one line and his shoulders pulled tight.

  “Good morning, Morty,” Lilah said.

  “Ah, yeah. I, uh, have been out of state for a while. Mom was sick and needed help.” He went on with unnecessary details about his mother’s illness before finally thrusting the stack of letters toward her. “It seems that I was getting your mail for a while. I’m sorry I couldn’t get it to you before now.”

  Lilah stared dumbfounded at the stack in her hands, while a red-faced Morty retreated to his house. Flipping through them, she saw a familiar logo on many of them. She counted five bills from her service provider and one angry letter from her landlord, among various other things. The sound that should have been a groan turned into a roar of frustration.

  Her cell phone bill hadn’t been paid because she hadn’t been getting it. With her sister constantly in and out of the house, Lilah hadn’t noticed. She’d been too wrapped up in putting Vivienne back together and helping her onto her feet.

  Lilah hadn’t thought about herself. The curse hadn’t let her, so that it could do its work. Lilah pressed her eyes shut and put the issue to the back of her mind. She wasn’t going to get anywhere if she let the curse constantly prod her. She wouldn’t fall to pieces.

  She wouldn’t.

  Yet, when she turned the key in her car, the engine made no sound. It didn’t even try to turn over. The bright feeling of hope she’d tried to regain crumbled once more and left Lilah bemoaning the curse. She punched the roof of her car and left her knuckles throbbing. She hunched over the pain, fighting back tears.

  It wasn’t like her life had been all that great to begin with. She hadn’t been on high and this was a sudden fall. If anything, Lilah felt like sh
e’d just learned to stand when a rug was yanked out from under her feet to reveal a bottomless pit underneath. What could she do other than fall?

  She stared out the car window. The walk into town wasn’t long. She could make it just fine if she changed her shoes and threw on an extra jacket. The wind would muss her hair, for sure. No matter what she did, she would look a mess if she walked, but if she didn’t walk there would be no job opportunities at all.

  She couldn’t even call a taxi.

  Each passing moment made Griffin’s offer even sweeter, but Lilah refused to give in. She wouldn’t step into his world to play the besotted lover. Not when her curse could make things so much worse if it could get its claws into a dragon man.

  ***

  Griffin watched Jasper pace the room for what had to be the thousandth time that morning. The sun was reaching high in the sky, perhaps nearing its peak, but Griffin wanted nothing more than to crawl beneath the sheets of any bed. Hell, he’d settle for resting his head on the unused piano he sat beside. Not even the rattle of the keys would wake him once he fell asleep.

  “How can you be so calm?” Jasper asked his cousin.

  Griffin had no answer. Jasper wouldn’t have liked Griffin’s response anyway. The only reason he was so calm was because he didn’t have the energy to care about anything. Jasper paced because his mate was still missing. The woman the unfamiliar dragon shifters wanted was still hiding somewhere in Jasper’s mountains.

  It clearly bothered Jasper that the woman was too afraid to step forward. Even if Jasper was her mate, she kept a wide berth around them all. Griffin didn’t blame her. The theatrics of Jasper’s unrest in the past months made him seem dangerous and unstable. Which was another truth Jasper would not want to hear.

  Griffin had learned to keep his opinions to himself long ago. No matter how Jasper valued what his cousin had to say, Jasper would always do what he wanted in the end anyway. It often left Griffin feeling useless.

  There was a clatter down the hall and both dragon shifters startled, turning toward the source of the sound.

  “Everything’s fine!” Ashton called.

  He and Makenna were finally moving out. Their house had been built and was ready to be lived in. Any help Jasper needed in running Aurum Bank could be done remotely, or Ashton could visit. It wasn’t like he was leaving them altogether.

  Yet, the change still felt awkward. The timing was all wrong. They should have been banding together, and yet it felt like they were drifting apart. The court wasn’t unifying to deal with the issue of the dragons crouching on their border or the war that Jasper had declared. It was as if they went about their days in blissful ignorance, willfully turning away from what happened only a short while ago.

  Griffin wondered if it was all in his head. He didn’t have the daily distractions that the others now had, no women tugging at his sleeves and begging for a moment of his time. Nor did he have Jasper’s unrelenting hunt for a woman trying to avoid him.

  All he had was a bottle of whiskey and a desire to sleep away the hours until someone woke him for war. The last battle showed the unfamiliar dragons that despite their youth, Jasper and his family were not pushovers. The only beast that sustained any injuries in the fight had been Mina. Ryker had taken on three of the enemy dragons on his own and come out victorious.

  Jasper stomped toward a decanter, pulling Griffin back to the present. Instead of pouring a drink, Jasper snatched the decanter off the counter and hurled it at the nearby fireplace. It burst in a ball of heat and glittering glass. Griffin sighed and looked back to his cousin, wondering if that expended any of the pent-up energy that was coursing through his muscles.

  The hurried rise and fall of Jasper’s chest told Griffin that it’d accomplished nothing. Jasper’s bright golden eyes moved to the nearby door, grave silence settling over the room, and Griffin realized his king was going to bolt. Griffin leapt from the chair, but Jasper was faster.

  No, the beast was faster.

  It had overtaken Jasper’s mind once again. No one quite understood how their relationship worked. While Griffin had only a small voice that was mostly comprised of instinct, it seemed like Jasper carried an entire entity inside himself. The beast was intelligent; it carried its own desires.

  Griffin was too damn tired of this. Too tired for this. With a snarl on his lips, he chased after his cousin. He found Jasper outside, only a second away from the change. The air around him rippled with magic, a shadow of his massive form rising to consume his body. Griffin wasn’t about to shift and chase his cousin through the skies.

  Not today.

  He pounced on his cousin like a linebacker. They crashed to the ground together. Before they could stop rolling, Jasper’s claws sunk into Griffin’s back. He swallowed a hiss and bore the pain, twisting to pin Jasper’s upper arms to the ground. Bringing a knee between them, he pressed it to Jasper’s chest.

  Years of fighting, wrestling, and chasing after one another made Griffin adept at quickly detaining Jasper. Those same years gave Jasper time to memorize all of Griffin’s techniques. Though he was pinned to the ground, Jasper bucked and sent Griffin flying. He landed on his shoulder and bounced into a tree.

  Bone scraped bone in the socket. His scapula snapped against the tree trunk, a sensation he felt through his entire chest. He shoved the pain back and staggered to his feet to face his cousin, but Jasper was already running away.

  If he let Jasper get too far, another fight could break out. They were outnumbered while the other metallic dragons were cavorting with their mates, and now Griffin was too injured to provide any support. Even if they didn’t run into the enemy dragons, there was a chance a tourist in Grove would capture a photo of dragons and their secret would be released into the world.

  Griffin felt the weight of responsibility trying to drive him into the earth. It pressed on his shoulders like two strong and determined hands. Each step after Jasper was a trial by itself. Yet, he managed to run after his cousin. He managed to dredge his beast from the depths inside him and shift as he lunged into the air.

  If he didn’t do this, then no one would. It was always up to Griffin to be the one to fix these situations. It was always up to Griffin to make sure everything stayed as it should. He was sick of it. He was half tempted to let Jasper ruin their perfect hiding place, just to teach him a lesson.

  He latched onto Jasper. Griffin pulled his wings tight to his body and provided a dead weight to drag them both back to the ground below. Jasper growled, flames in his muzzle. All Griffin could do was bury his head in the space beneath Jasper’s wing and let the fire flow over him. It seared his scales but didn’t wound him.

  When this was over, Griffin was going to sleep for twelve hours. But even as he craved sleep, his thoughts turned to Lilah. He wanted to prowl the streets to see if he could happen upon her once again. He longed to see her face in the bright light, to memorize the subtle shapes of it as he asked her if things had gotten any better over the night.

  Griffin and Jasper touched the ground. Jasper thrashed and bucked in Griffin’s grasp, but Griffin managed to hold on until the beast gave up. No matter what the creature inside Jasper wanted, Griffin wasn’t going to allow it today.

  Finally, the gold drained from Jasper’s eyes and he shrank back to his human form. Griffin watched for a long while, still in his dragon form in case Jasper was toying with him, but his cousin made no move to return to the skies. Instead, Jasper trudged back to the house in defeat, his slow steps betraying his exhaustion.

  As much as Griffin tried to think of Jasper as his king, he was still just the cousin he’d grown up alongside. They were just two young men trying to figure themselves out while the world put demands on their shoulders. Over the years, the two had leapt off cliffs together. They’d fought and partied and crashed.

  Things had changed. Jasper was no longer his brother figure. He was supposed to be a king, but his mind had allowed a beast to grow inside him. This beast was a force of it
s own, one that they had to constantly chase.

  It was only because of Griffin that their secret was still safe, that the shifters could look to Jasper as a king and not a monster. All the hard work had been done by Griffin, who was forced to stand by and watch this change overtake his closest friend and pull him further away.

  It took a long while for Griffin to realize that Jasper had gone back inside. When he glanced up at the sky, he noticed that the sun had sunk lower. Without realizing it, Griffin had fallen asleep. He didn’t know how much time he’d lost, only that the others would have words for him if they caught him sleeping on the job.

  He shifted back to his human form and retreated to the house. Passing his own door filled him with a sharp longing, mostly for his own bed, but partly for a warm face waiting to greet him. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine Lilah waiting inside. He shook his head and told himself that his infatuation was nothing more than a desire to fill an empty space.

  He knew nothing about the woman. All he had was a face and a name. They’d shared a drink on a quiet night and lamented their immediate problems, but the conversation had not dipped any deeper than that. Griffin had to remind himself that one night of drinks was not the beginning of a mate bond.

  Unable to deal with his own mind, Griffin went inside to throw on some clothes. Before Jasper could even try apologizing, before Ashton could come out and ask him what he was doing, Griffin started his truck and sped away from the house. He couldn’t take another moment of this.

  He fled the weight of responsibility, the bitterness trying to overwhelm him, and the annoyance that his close relationship with Jasper had become. Griffin debated, for a short while, rummaging through the forest to find Jasper’s hidden mate. If he brought the woman back and forced them to deal with their mate bond, then perhaps there was a chance things would change.