Page 33 of Dragon's Honor

“What on earth are you doing in Miami?”

“When my clan fell apart, this was the closet refuge. My siblings have scattered since we first arrived. It’s just me and Henrik here. We’re trying to get to the bottom of the Dragon Fire issue. It’s being imported into Miami and then shipped across the country and into Canada and Mexico.”

“Are you like DEA or something?”

“I do not belong to any government enforcement agency. This drug is rather personal to me and my people.”

“How so?”

Ash shook his head. “There’s a lot to explain and I’m sure we’ll get to it all, but I was enjoying walking with you. Could we do more of that for a while?”

He thought for sure she wouldn’t give it a rest.

She gave a small nod and then they started walking again.

After a few minutes, she murmured, “I’m so sorry about your parents.”

He looked down at her empty swinging hand and reached for it without another thought. She didn’t pull away. They walked hand in hand until they were right by his home. He pulled her to a stop.

Finley turned toward the ocean and she scanned the horizon. It was far today, with a clear sky, and the water at low tide, making everything seem to stretch forever. Ash wanted to pull her closer, to wrap his arms around her. To never let her go.

She looked down at her feet as she wedged them deeper into the sand.

“I think this was almost exactly the spot where I took the picture.”

Ash didn’t understand how any of this was possible. How had she been so close and so far away? If she’d held out that night and waited, he would’ve flown right over her to the balcony behind them. She’d been right there. There was no doubt in his mind that the dragon from her photo was him.

So often he felt invisible. Labeled by his title. Designated by his birth order. Looked upon because of the chair he sat on.

The truth Ash knew better than anything was that he didn’t matter. His presence did nothing to strengthen or even weaken the clan. He was nothing. He was a figurehead, a person to praise in times of prosperity, and a scapegoat to blame when the world crumbled around them.

The only way he could think to matter was to find who did this to his family and to seek retribution or at least justice. He didn’t even know how to go about that. There was so much he didn’t understand about what happened to his family and how it connected to the bigger problems. The issues that were going to create havoc on all of them.

“Why did you stay in the storm that night?” he asked quietly.

Finley pushed all the air out of her lungs and held it for a moment. When she finally started breathing again, she said, “My boyfriend and I broke up. He’d said some truly awful things. When I got home the walls felt like they were closing in around me. I grabbed my camera and headed out. I didn’t know it was going to storm, but when I got the beach everyone was clearing out. I just kept walking. I took pictures of the impending doom. The clouds had never looked more sinister to me. It echoed everything that was going on inside of me. The sick thing was I wasn’t heartbroken over the guy. I was devastated that I’d chosen to tie myself to someone so clearly undeserving.

“Epic love isn’t something I fantasize about. My parents’ divorce was the result of my father cheating on my mother with Olivia’s mother. My father tried to make up for the shattering of our family by welcoming me into his second family. He’s a good dad. Olivia is the best thing in my life. I wouldn’t ask for a different life, but I don’t feel capable of love.”

Ash moved to stand right behind her. He wanted to reach out to her. Wrap his arms around her. It would’ve been so easy to surround her, to breathe in her scent, and keep her here, near his home, where no others could hurt her.

“Why not?”

Her head dropped forward, her shoulders hunched, and he wondered if she would cry. Part of him wanted her to. If she cried in front of him, there was something more between them than a hunk of glowing rock and his cock. There was something more.

Ash stepped closer and tentatively slipped his hands onto her waist.

“I don’t want to hurt like that. I watched my mother wither when my father told her he didn’t love her anymore. When my boyfriend broke up with me, he said all kinds of nasty stuff. How do you talk to someone like that after you tell them you love them? Why do you hurt them more? That’s not love. That’s evil. I can’t take it. I always feel like if my parents hadn’t had me, then maybe things wouldn’t have been so screwed up. A child is binding.”

“Not every relationship is like that,” he murmured. “My parents loved each other very much. They would go to the ends of the earth for each other and had. They survived a lot to stay together.” He hadn’t let himself think about them, let himself remember them. As he did, his chest ached.

Finley leaned back into him, her hands sliding over his and then moving away. “I don’t like the way I feel around you,” she said.

Her words hurt, but he understood them because he didn’t like the way he burned for her either. “Come on, Sawyer. Let me make you some food.”

He grabbed her hand and they walked up to the white gate of his property. He opened the door and she blinked at it.

“What’s going on?”

---