Page 50 of Silent Jay

What is your cosmic balance, Jay?

Ha. I’m probably Jar Jar Binks, bumbling around with more ability than sense, pissing off most of the universe while still being just helpful enough not to write off.

Ohh! Do you think Rehan or Tyson would binge Star Wars with you?

Focus, brain! We need off the island, not to plan dates.

Right, magic, casters, blah blah blah.

I know I like to toot my horn, mainly because no one will ever do it for me, but I’m incredibly powerful. Like, blow up the entire planet powerful. It was a huge part of why I went into hiding when the non-magical part of the population invented weapons of mass destruction. I did not want any part of that escalating cycle.

And that is how the world works. If someone does something big, someone else rises to the challenge and makes something bigger. It’s the nature of evolution.

Now someone had come out of the woodwork powerful enough to put me down, even though I’d not done a bloody fucking thing with my life in the last hundred years.

I didn’t have a clue who that was, but I was starting to get an idea of how they’d done it.

Cutting off an all-powerful immortal’s magic is impossible, but you can wrap it in layers of conditions and rules equally powerful. In short, the curse on me could only be unlocked by something as powerful as me.

You want an excuse to get closer to Rehan.

I really don’t. He’s not powerful enough to break the curse. Neither of these dragons’ obsessions with me is natural.

You don’t know that.

I do.

I bet Tyson and Rehan together would be close to powerful enough.

I stumbled.

Two mate marks. Why not three or four?

See, you should listen to me more often.

A wall of conditions lay between me and my power. Whoever did this to me didn’t just understand magic. They were intimately aware of the details of dragon shifter culture. Dragons didn’t share, and clearly, neither did their shifter brethren. Even taking out the intimacy, bringing together four elemental dragons who hated each other based on their scale color would be an impossible task. Someone wanted me out of the picture.

Jay, girl, they might understand you really well too. This task is extra hard, as you’ve got the emotional availability of a deadlog.

I do not!

The sound of Rehan’s bare human feet landed in the doorway. “Are you thinking about Tyson?” He asked, his voice even.

I wrinkled my nose.

The water dragon had thrown on a pair of solid powder blue board shorts, and his long hair tumbled over his shoulders. He looked stunning, resting his muscled arms above the door frame with the afternoon light filtering past him into the main room. Only the tense set of his shoulders clued me into his agitated state of mind.

“Did Tyson bathe you?” He swallowed hard. “Did you sleep in his arms?”

I stepped to the conversation pit and sat, shoving a pillow onto my lap before resting the laptop on it. My chat didn’t work. Frustrated, I looked for my phone, but I’d left it in the kitchen.

Rehan raised an eyebrow, but I couldn’t communicate. I slammed down the laptop lid. On an off chance he knew sign language, I flashed some hand symbols.

“Stop.” He stalked toward me before sliding into the pit. “I need to know. You’re my mate, yet I slept out here last night andleft you alone in my bed.” He sat in front of me but didn’t touch me. “My dragon doesn’t want me to stop touching you, but I’ve held back out of respect.” He swallowed again. “Did Tyson?”

Guilt burned in my gut.

The corner of his phone peeked out of a pocket in his shorts, and I pulled it out. After typing and erasing twice, he took the phone from me and read what I’d written on my third attempt. “You were drawn to him. He didn’t ask, but you didn’t say no. And you were pretending to be Betty.”

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