“Working online, I assume,” Bren said.
“Yes. Jarvis and a few other clan members work in graphic design. Sika does editing and proofing of papers for university students. One of our council elders, Leia, has a surprisingly lucrative business designing and selling cross stitch patterns. Another clan member, Finn, turned his hobby of making leather bracelets and other accessories into a successful small business as well.”
“Interesting,” Bren said.
“Material possessions and wealth matter very little to dragons.”
“So, no hidden stashes of gold under mountains, huh?”
She was extremely relieved to see the small smile on his face as he turned on his side to face her.
“No, dragons liking gold is a myth created by the humans. We live rather simply compared to most shifters and humans.”
“How many dragons are in your clan?” Bren asked.
“We’re a smaller clan with only twenty-five – twenty-six now – members.”
“Are there other clans close to yours?”
“The closest one is about four hours from here. Their high elder is Avena and they have almost seventy-five members.”
“Have you met any of them before?” he asked.
“Yes. Many times. We have celebrations with them and occasionally clan members will live with another clan for a time. Before Sika and Jarvis were mated, Jarvis spent two weeks with the Avena clan. Other times the council members will get together to discuss changes in how the clans are run or for other reasons.”
She suppressed her shudder. The last time Avena’s council had been here, it was to destroy one of their own clan members. A dragon who had been banished, gone insane, and was stalking Bishop’s human mate.
“You okay?” Bren asked.
She nodded, a little thrown by how easily the human could read her emotions.
“So, the clans are basically just big happy families.”
She smiled. “We have our disagreements like all families, but yes it’s an apt description.”
There was silence for a few minutes, the only sound the muted hum of the occasional car driving on the street below them. She was tired and she knew Bren was too, but she enjoyed the warm intimacy of lying in his bed in the dark and talking with him.
“Thank you again for allowing Sika and Jarvis to spend the night,” she said.
“Of course,” he said. “They’re welcome to stay for longer. I’m not sure they should travel even tomorrow.”
“They’ll need to,” Kaida said. “The clan will want to see the hatchling, and we’ll be feeling the pull for our clan by tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“That morning after the love potion mess, when I left so abruptly,” Kaida said, “was not only because I was embarrassed. I needed to be with my clan again. Dragons can only be separated from their clans for so long before they go…”
“Go what?” Bren asked.
“Insane.”
“Are you kidding?”
She shook her head. “I am not. Our dragons will go crazy if we spend too much time away from our clans.”
“How long can you be away from them?”
“It varies from dragon to dragon, but most cannot go more than forty-eight hours. Insanity sets in and we,” she hesitated, knowing how bad it would sound to the human.
“What?” Bren said.
“We kill ourselves.”
“Holy fuck.” He sat up on one elbow and stared directly at her. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“It is our way. We cannot be separated from our clans. Once the love potion was no longer affecting me, I needed to be with my clan again. My embarrassment at what I had done drove my need to be with my clan higher. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” he said. “Now I feel even worse about what happened.”
“Don’t,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He settled back on his side, punching the pillow into a more comfortable position. She studied his mouth and the strong line of his jaw, feeling a warmth and a need pooling in her belly.
Give me the human. Please?
She ignored her dragon’s pleading. She had told Bren she wouldn’t do anything to him, and she intended to keep that promise. It didn’t matter how tempting she found his mouth or his half-naked body.
“Wait,” Bren suddenly said, “you said earlier that Jarvis lived with that other clan for two weeks. How is that possible?”
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be the clan that you grew up with,” Kaida said. “As long as your dragon is happy and feels accepted by the other members of the clan, then being with a new clan is as soothing as your old one. Does that make sense?”
“As much as it can make sense.”
She smiled a little. “Dragon ways are strange, I know.”
“How do you go on vacation?” Bren asked.
Her smile widened. “If a dragon wants to vacation, we go in small groups. Last year, Gram and I went to Hawaii with Jarvis, Sika, Bones and Javee. Gram and I didn’t spend every moment of our vacation with the others, but we had dinner together every evening. Our clan was smaller, but it was still our clan, and our dragons were soothed. Do you understand?”
“Yes. What did you mean when you told Jarvis he would be banished if the others found out he changed to his dragon form?”
She swallowed hard. “It’s getting late, Bren. We should get some sleep.”
“Tell me, Kaida.”
She didn’t want to. Christ, how she didn’t want to, but from the way Bren was looking at her, he wouldn’t be satisfied until she explained it. Her stomach churning, she said, “When a dragon breaks the rules of the clan, they are punished. Sometimes that punishment is banishment from the clan.”
“Banishment from the clan,” Bren repeated.
“Yes. The dragon is driven from the clan and not allowed to return.”
“But you said that if a dragon is away from its clan for more than forty-eight hours, they’ll go crazy and…”
He trailed off before sitting up. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “I know how it sounds, Bren, but -”
“You know how it sounds?” He stared at her. “You banish them knowing that it’s a death sentence.”
“We do,” she said. “The elders of the clans are serious about keeping our existence a secret. Knowing we’ll be banished for breaking that rule, keeps us in line.
He snorted angrily. “I guess it’s not really a big, happy family after all.”
She reached out and took his hand, more thankful than she could say when he didn’t pull away. “It is a barbaric and outdated punishment that some dragons are beginning to question.”
“Oh good,” he said sarcastically, “it’s nice to know that they’re beginning to question it.”
“Banishment doesn’t happen very often,” she said. “And it has never happened in our clan. When Bishop learned of our existence, I should have been banished but wasn’t.”
“You were a kid,” he said.
“I was a yearling and old enough to know better.”
“So why weren’t you banished?”
“Cadmus, the high elder of our clan, is… more lenient than some. It’s why I brought Tyler and Corey back to our clan when the fox was injured. I knew that Cadmus would not banish me for it. I did not expect that he would agree to allow me to train Tyler and Corey.”
“Why did he?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The council voted against it, but Cadmus has the power to overrule their decision and he did.”
“Does he do that often?”
“Only once before that I know of,” she said.
“When you brought Bishop to the clan,” he said.
She looked away. “Yes. The council voted to banish me, Cadmus said no.”
“Jesus.” Bren swiped his free hand through his hair. “Dragon clans are fucked
up.”
“They aren’t,” she said. “We are very protective of each other. Cadmus knows what we’re doing is wrong and he’s been speaking with the other clan councils for years now to try and change their minds. But they’re afraid. If the humans found out we existed, their fear of us could lead to war between us, Bren.”
He didn’t reply and she squeezed his hand. “The humans would not win that war.”
“I know,” he said.
He stared at their clasped hands for almost a minute before lifting his head to study her. A trickle of unease went down her back at the look on his face. “Does Ava know you’re a dragon?”
“Yes, as does Mal and Kat and their mates,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
She looked away. “I spend time with Bishop, it would have been difficult to keep it a secret from his other friends.”
“Is that right?” he said.
“Yes.” Fuck, she hated lying to Bren. It made her feel awful and like she was betraying him somehow.
He let go of her hand and she missed the contact of his warm skin almost immediately. “A year or so ago, I had a murder case. A woman who worked as an emergency nurse was being stalked by one of her patients.”
“Bren -”
“That’s how I met Ava. She was the nurse being stalked. She and her friend were out one night, and they were attacked. The friend – Brody – was killed. Do you know how he died, Kaida?”
He didn’t wait for her reply. “He was burned to a crisp. Nothing but ash and fragments of bone. The medical examiner had never seen anything like it. I never caught the guy who did it. He just… stopped stalking Ava. Seemed a little odd to me, but what could I do? The case went cold and Brody’s murderer was never punished. There was no justice for his death.”
“There was,” she whispered.
He reached out and grasped her chin gently, lifting until she was staring at him. “The stalker that was after Ava. He was a dragon, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. He belonged to Avena’s clan. He believed that a female in the clan was his mate even though she was mated to another. He murdered her mate. Avena and the rest of the council banished him. Only something went wrong. He went mad but he didn’t kill himself. He came to this city, discovered Ava, and decided she was his mate. He went after her a few times but Bishop and Kat and Mal – they stopped him.”
“What happened to him?” Bren asked.
“Once we realized it was a rogue dragon and which clan he belonged to, Avena and the others came to the city to destroy him. Only, he had gone after Ava again and this time he was successful.”
“Holy shit,” Bren said.
“He took her into the woods, tried to hide her, but…” she hesitated, “we can sense the other members of our clan. If we concentrate hard enough, our dragons can find each other. His clan council searched for him. They found him and…”
“And killed him,” he said.
“They had no choice, Bren. He had gone mad. He’d killed a dragon and a human and he would have hurt Ava.”
Bren released her chin and ran both hands through his hair. “Has something like this ever happened before? A dragon going mad but not killing themselves?”
“Never,” she said. “But it has strengthened Cadmus’s belief that banishing dragons from their clan is wrong.”
“You think?” he spat.
She flinched, and he immediately reached out and took her hand again. “I’m sorry. This is a lot to take in and I…”
“I know,” Kaida said. She stared at their clasped hands as silence fell between them. After a few minutes, she said, “We should get some rest.”
“Yeah.” He released her hand and laid down, turning over until his back was facing her.
Her dragon growled unhappily, and she tried to soothe it. Truthfully, she was feeling rather miserable herself. Bren was disgusted by her and her clan and there was nothing she could say or do to fix it. What they did was terrible and there was no justifying it.
You have bigger issues than Bren no longer being into you.
She wanted to keep ignoring her inner voice, but it had been growing steadily louder all evening and it would no longer be ignored.
They will kill Bren when they find out he knows dragons exist. The council will vote, and they will vote to destroy him. It’s bad enough that he’s human but his father…
She laid down, her pulse jumping and thudding and her dragon growling repeatedly. Bren had done them a favour by allowing Sika to give birth in his home. She would explain that to the council and they would see that they owed him a debt. If the hatchling had been born on the side of the road in plain sight of any human driving by…who knew what would have happened.
She would explain that to the council and they would let Bren live. They had to.
And if they don’t? If they vote to burn him alive? Her inner voice whispered.
Her dragon snarled with an intense fury that Kaida had never felt before.
We will burn them alive. We will set them ablaze with our flame if they go anywhere near our mate.
Sick to her stomach, her heart knocking against her ribcage, Kaida stared into the darkness as her dragon growled and hissed.
Chapter Fifteen
“Where is the hatchling?”
Kaida glared at Drago as he pushed past her. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” he growled. “Is the human’s stupidity catching? Is that why you’re acting so fucking brain dead?”
“Watch your mouth.” Bren had joined them in the hallway and Kaida automatically stepped in front of him as Drago bared his teeth at him.
“Stay out of it, human.”
“This is my home and you’ll treat Kaida with respect or you’ll leave,” Bren said.
There was steel in his voice, and Kaida couldn’t help but feel a trickle of pride mixed with lust.
Our mate is brave, her dragon crowed happily.
“You dare to speak to me that way?” Drago said.
“I repeat – my home. Mind your manners or leave,” Bren said.
“Do not test my patience, human. I am in no -”
“Enough, Drago.” Bones pushed past him, and Kaida breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the large dragon. Not even Drago would dare to challenge Bones, no matter how pissed he was. “Hey, Kaida.”
“Hi,” she said.
Bones held his hand out to Bren. “Hello, human. My name is Bones.”
Bren shook his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Bren.”
“Thank you for helping us with the hatchling. We are in your debt.”
“We are not,” Drago snarled. “Do not speak so foolishly.”
“Watch your tongue, Drago,” Bones growled without looking at him.
“Bones!” Jarvis came striding down the hallway and he and the larger man hugged roughly.
“Congratulations, Jarvis,” Bones said.
Jarvis grinned at him. “I have a son.”
“I heard.” Bones clapped him on the back. “May I see the hatchling?”
“Of course.” Jarvis glanced at Drago. “Come, Drago, meet my son.”
Even Drago couldn’t resist the lure of the hatchling. He followed Jarvis and Bones down the hallway. Kaida released her breath in a low rush before leaning against the wall. Bren eyed her carefully. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said. She wasn’t, not by a long run, but she made herself smile at Bren. “You?”
“Was that guy’s name really Drago?”
She nodded, confused when Bren leaned against the wall next to her and laughed. The sound was low and warm, and she felt a pull of longing in her belly as he laughed again. “Seriously? Drago is his name?”
“Yes, why?” She wasn’t sure what was so funny.
“He’s a dragon and his name is Drago. You don’t see why that’s funny?”
“Not really. It’s a family name,” she said.
He laughed again and she couldn’t help but
smile at him. “I like your laugh.”
“Thank you.” He moved closer and pressed a quick kiss against her mouth. Her dragon purred loudly, the sound slipping out of her mouth. He cocked his head at her. “There’s that almost a purr again.”
She cleared her throat. “It’s not purring.”
He traced his finger along her jawline and her dragon purred again, louder and rougher.
“That was definitely a sort of purr,” he said in a low voice. He was staring at her, his light blue eyes dark with need, and she arched her body toward him when he ran his finger down her throat and along the neckline of her shirt.
She absolutely could not do this, not with Drago and Bones in the apartment. So why was she leaning toward him? Why was she parting her lips and pressing them against Bren’s?
He kissed her gently at first, the tip of his tongue sliding across her upper lip. She put her arm around his waist, drawing him up against her as she deepened the kiss. He sucked on her tongue before releasing her mouth. “Do you know how difficult it was to wake up with you in my bed this morning and not touch you?”
She ran her fingers across his broad chest. “I wanted to touch you too.”
“You should have then.”
She wanted to take Bren away from here. Go somewhere that they wouldn’t be interrupted, where her clan mates wouldn’t find her, and she could finally take what she wanted, what she needed.
It’s not that simple.
She sighed inwardly. Her inner voice was right. It wasn’t that simple. As tempting as it was to fantasize that she and Bren could be together, the truth was – Bren was in terrible danger and it was all her fault.
Her lust died immediately, and she stepped away from him, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you or kissed you.”
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I kissed you first.”
She laughed bitterly. “I wanted you to kiss me.”
“Kaida?”
Bones was back and she scrubbed her hand across her mouth guiltily. “Hey. Did you see the hatchling?”
“Yes. He’s beautiful. The clan is anxious to see him.” If Bones could smell hers and Bren’s lust, he didn’t acknowledge it. He checked his phone before sliding it back into the pocket of his jeans. “It’s almost noon. You’ve been away from the clan for nearly twenty-four hours. Do you feel all right?”
The Dragon's Mate (Shifters Series Book 7) Page 17
