The Dragon's Heart (Dragon Lore) (21 page)

17

They were trying to test the edges of his sanity, Daniel knew it. While he’d told them to do what was necessary to convince Shelby she was better off without him, he was no longer sure he’d thought that plan through.

Her emotions were fucking
killing
him.

Ryuu
, he was an idiot. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. She was supposed to be grateful to get rid of him, not sending them on a goddamn rollercoaster of emotions as she fought against what had to be common fucking sense.

Couldn’t she see he was trying to do what was best–what was right for her?

He snorted. Of course she couldn’t. She was Shelby. She never did what he expected.

Crouching down on the mountain peak across from the cave, he braced his forearms against his legs, staring through the space separating them. If he tried hard enough, he could hear her voice through the distance. The soft sound tinkled in the air around him as if crystallizing, becoming solid. Warming him. He threw up his defenses against it, and tried like hell to find enough temper to keep her out of his heart.

He couldn’t get there. He couldn’t make himself be angry. This was how it was supposed to be for her. She should have found someone who had the ability to make her laugh, to bring out the joy inside she kept shoved down deep in an effort to protect herself. She needed someone who knew how to talk to her.

All Daniel managed to do was find new ways to piss her off.

He closed his eyes. Maybe that was what he needed to do. If he pissed her off enough, was a big enough bastard to her, she’d walk away on her own. The bond wouldn’t break, but he could find the right buttons to push with one of the other dragons until they decided to kill him, and put them all out of their misery.

They all had their weak spots. You couldn’t spend two thousand years fighting side by side with someone and not know his or her Achilles Heel.

Hell, it wouldn’t surprise any of them if he ever decided to attack. Part of him was sure they had been preparing for it since he’d broken free of Leanora’s spell, and had a plan in place for when it happened.

As her laugh echoed through the cool, crisp air around him, he let out a low, dark growl. Like the sap he was, he wondered if the Hunter hadn’t shown up that night, if things could have been different. If
he
could have been different.

Over the last eleven months, he’d convinced himself she was just a damn good actress. He’d only been feeling for her exactly what she’d wanted him to feel. He snorted. He was such a jackass. He was as in love with her now as he had been that night. Had the Hunter not shown up, he would have torn the goddamn world apart at the seams to find a way to keep her happy for the rest of their lives.

He wanted to believe it wasn’t too late. That he could tell her how he felt, and she would want him. Determined to start righting all of his wrongs, he straightened as her laugh shimmered in the air again. He shifted into his dragon form and headed for the cave.

When he entered, he wanted to turn tail. He should have stayed the fuck outside. It would have been better for his sanity, and just safer all around when he saw her sitting on the couch, crowded on all sides by the other dragons.

She was in the middle, Broderick and Dallas sprawled on either side of her, Bain perched on the back of the sofa next to her, while Luca sat on the floor in front of her.

Even more brain-twisting, it wasn’t just Shelby laughing–they were
all
doing it as they watched something on the television.

He didn’t pay attention to anyone but her. She looked…happy. Carefree. He had no idea what they were watching, but he’d never seen anyone laugh so hard at a show before.

Though it royally pissed him off the other dragons were sharing the moment with her instead of him, he loved the sound of her laugh too much to be an ass about it.

It occurred to him that if he succeeded in finding a way to break the mating bond, there was a good possibility one of the other dragons in the room would step in to take her as mate. The pain it caused in his chest had him stumbling back a step as rage blurred his vision.

* * * *

“Daniel.” Shelby’s hands shook as she crouched in front of him, gently shaking his shoulder. She didn’t know what happened. One moment everything was normal, and the next, the lights in the cave had started flickering as a low, violent rumbling sound began. By the time they had realized it was coming from Daniel, he’d hit the floor. “Daniel, wake up. You’re scaring me.”

His eyes snapped open, temper already flashing in the silver depths. He reached behind him for his weapon. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head slowly as she wrapped her hand around his wrist to stop him from pulling out his knife. “You passed out.”

His gorgeous face was astonished. “Bullshit.”

“It’s true, we all saw it,” Bain drawled. “We were watching
Parks and Recreation
when you just hit the ground like a pansy. What the hell happened?”

Daniel growled as he got to his feet. He then bent over, hooking his arm around Shelby’s waist, lifting her gently. “Nothing happened.” He turned to the dragons in the room. “I need to talk to my mate. Alone.”

Shelby watched the other dragons study him for a long moment. She scowled at them while moving in closer to Daniel. “It’s okay, you can go. He’s not going to hurt me, and you all know it.”

“Yeah, we know,” Bain drawled. “But we like you, and it’s fun to make Ashborne’s head hurt. Nothing’s ever gotten to him before.”

“Well stop,” she chided, frowning at him. “It’s not nice.”

“Sure it is,” Broderick chimed in. “It’s funny as fuck, too.”

Daniel’s lip lifted in a snarl. “I will start knocking heads together.”

Shelby snorted, expecting them to argue, but to her shock, the threat was enough to get them moving. She frowned as she turned to Daniel. “Are they afraid of you?”

“Yes.” His face went neutral. “They’re never sure if I start pounding on one of them I’ll stop when my point’s made.”

She shook her head, not sure she understood. “Why would you pound on them?”

“We’re dragons,” he said simply, as if it explained it all. “It’s what we do. It releases tension. You don’t get to know someone for countless millennia without getting on each other’s nerves.”

Her head canted as she wondered if she’d ever get used to the dragon way of life. “Do you fight with your friends often?”

“They’re not my friends, and no. Like I said, they don’t trust me.”

Her teeth worried at her bottom lip for a moment. “So how do you release tension?” When he just gave her a bland look, she was sure she was going to be sick. “Never mind. What did you want to talk to me about?” He scooped her up and carried her to the back of the cave, toward the bedroom. She tilted her head back so she could smile at him. “How is it you’ve been outside for hours and you’re still so warm?”

“I’m just hot?”

Shelby went still, the only sound in the cave was her erratic heartbeat. Then a whoop of pure joy escaped her. “Daniel! You made a joke.” She leaned up, cupped his face in her hands, and grinned as she kissed him. “I’m so proud of you.”

He kissed her back, then sat on the edge of the bed and settled her on his lap. Shelby shifted until she straddled him. Looking at him was her favorite thing in the world, next to kissing him.

“Tell me,” he demanded. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned your father to me?” When she dropped her gaze to his chest, he let out a frustrated rumble. “Dallas mentioned it.”

His hands locked around her hips when she tried to scoot off his lap. The determination in his eyes worried her, and she already knew she had no defenses against him. If he wanted something from her, they were both aware he would get it. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He didn’t like hearing that. She felt his fury building, and for a moment, she was sure he was going to tear something apart. “But you will tell the others?” he asked.

“I didn’t tell anyone anything.” She leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know more about me than anyone. That’s the way it should be.”

This time, it was pure arrogance sparking in his eyes. “Yes, it is. So tell me about him.”

She sighed. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Daniel. It’s not open for discussion.” Because she could feel the panic starting to rise in her throat at his resolve to find out every dirty detail of her life, it took everything she had not to shut down and hide her emotions from him. “Please. Just let it go.”

Instead of yelling at her like she’d expected, Daniel wrapped his arms around her waist. He pulled her against his chest, resting his chin against her shoulder. “He hurt you.”

Unwanted tears flooded her eyes. She knew the softness in his tone. When he was angry, he yelled and he snapped and he growled. When he was contemplating killing someone, he turned to ice. He was prepared to kill her father if he’d hurt her. “No, Daniel. He didn’t hurt me. He just didn’t care.”

He slid his hands into her hair and tugged, forcing her to meet his gaze. “How is that not hurting you?”

“He had another family. They were perfect without me. He tried to get me to fit in with them, but I was never able to.” At his confusion, she blew out a breath. “I was the result of a one night stand. He’d cheated on his wife with my mother.”

“What happened to her?”

She shrugged, absently rubbing at the dull ache in the center of her chest. “She died in a car accident. A drunk driver they were never able to find.” When his eyes went dark with sympathy, she forced a smile. “I was little, so I don’t remember much about her. My father took me in afterward, but he traveled a lot, and his wife hated me. When it became too much for them, they shipped me off to other relatives, then eventually to boarding school. After a while, they stopped planning for me to go home for holidays and school breaks. He said it was just too difficult. No matter what I tried, how much I tried to be one of them, I didn’t fit in. I made everyone uncomfortable. Luckily, I’d joined the drama club in seventh grade, and I found people I understood and liked. I learned that I could be anyone I wanted to be. I was
good,
so good the drama teacher started taking me to auditions.” Because he was back to his furious pissed-off dragon state, elongated pupils and all, she forced a smile for him. “At my first audition, they hired me on the spot. They said they’d never seen anyone so adaptable and capable of becoming someone else.”

His brows drew together over his eyes. “It bothers you.”

She tried to shrug it off, and gave him a dazzling smile. “It makes me a good actress.”

“Shelby.”

She winced at the anger in his words. She pushed at his shoulders, needing to be off his lap, but he tightened his arms around her waist before she could climb down. She gritted her teeth at that damnable raised-brow look he was giving her. “What?”

“What do you mean? You could be anyone you wanted to be?”

“I spent my childhood trying to fit in, to be who my father wanted me to be so he would keep me. I tried so many different personalities, tried to be so many different people.” She shrugged and made a face, though her voice was quieter than she’d wanted it to be. She hated herself for it. “It didn’t work.”

“Your father is an idiot, princess.” Even as her mouth dropped open, he shot his hand into her hair, tangling his fingers at the nape of her neck. He rested his forehead against hers. “What happened when the paparazzi found him?”

Her fingers played with the ends of his beautiful hair. It hurt to go back and think about it, but she realized being close to Daniel made it better. He always made the bad things better. “Nothing. Well, he, my step mother and their girls couldn’t wait to reconnect with me. They were on the first flight out.”

He dropped his chin on the top of her head. “What happened?”

“They missed me.” Because she couldn’t get what Daniel had said about her sister out of her head, she now doubted everything. “They were sorry, and they wanted to make it up to me for the way they’d treated me.” She shrugged, the ball of shame she’d always lived with settling in her belly again. “It didn’t take long for them to realize I hadn’t changed, and for their act to start to slip. They were convinced if
I
could act and become famous, my sisters would be even better. So I set up an audition for Alicia that didn’t go well. It was my fault, of course. I’d sabotaged it somehow, to get back at them for being mean to me when I was a kid.”