Page 53 of Zachary

I don’t bother to tell him there’s been no fucking. It’s not his business. I’m happy to take things as slow as Ronan needs—what’s between us is more than just a hookup. “It’s nothing, really. I shouldn’t even be asking. I’m not sure if I want to know.”

“I’m hanging up,” he threatens.

“He said… He said some things about his childhood. And that he couldn’t say more. It seemed painful for him, so I didn’t want to push. But it’s been stuck in my head all day, the way he said ‘Ican’t talk about it.’ And I started thinking… did he mean he can’t, as in he signed an NDA or something?”

Gideon’s silence is terrifying. “Are you asking me to look into his background?” he asks finally.

“No.” The answer tumbles from me before I even form the thought. “No, he trusts me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Zac.” He pauses. “I barely know Ronan. I know Steffen a little more, but Ronan’s practically a stranger to me, and I’m not going to lie: I never wanted to change that. When I met him, I didn’t like him. That said, Ronan’s childhood—both those twins’—was fucked-up. The man who raised them, he was… Let’s just say he didn’t give a shit about them or anyone else. When Ronan says he can’t tell you, he didn’t just sign an NDA. This is classified in two governments at the highest level. I shouldn’t even be telling you this much. Hecannottalk about it, not ever, not to anyone who doesn’t already know. But he’s been through the kind of shit that nobody should ever have to go through. So if you can’t cope with not knowing, then walk away now before you hurt him even more. Because even though I don’t like him, he doesn’t deserve that.”

Fuck. My breath feels frozen in my lungs, but I suck in enough oxygen to say, “Tell me one thing. Is he safe from it all now?”

“Yes. Those involved are dead.”

“Then you and I never discussed this.”

“Good. Now I’m going to pull my boyfriend away from work so we can spend a damn hour together on what’s supposed to be our day off.”

“Okay. Hey, Gideon?”

“What?”

“You didn’t like the old Ronan, but I think you’ll like the real Ronan.” I can’t hold back my smirk as I add, “He lookedGrandmother right in the eye and told her he’d destroy her for my sake.”

He snorts again. “You might be right. Wish I’d seen that.” The line goes dead.

I toss my phone on the bed and exhale deeply. Annoyed, grumpy Gideon, I’m used to. The Gideon I just spoke to? That’s not my cousin. That’s the CSG agent who’s considered one of the most elite and deadly operatives in the world. Whatever Ronan’s life was before, he wants to be free of it now; wants to be his real self. And I’ll do whatever he needs for that to happen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ronan

I’ve never beenthis happy before. It’s uncanny. If someone had asked me in the past if I was happy, I would have said yes. Of course. But now that I’m actually happy, I know that wasn’t true. Because these past five weeks have been so wonderful, I’m half afraid I’ve dreamed it all.

It helps that I love the work I’m doing. Now that I no longer feel like an imposter and have accepted that I’m still a dragon, even though my culture was stolen from me, I can see what I’m doing with new eyes. I still want to know everything about every piece I discover and catalogue, but now it’s becauseIwant to know, not because I need to prove something.

It’s made work so much more fun, especially because the more knowledgeable I get, the more exciting each new find is. I decided to stop just reading notes and reports and to start actively asking questions, and now I’m connected with a network of experts across the world who are excited about this project and happy to talk about it. Some of them might even become friends, eventually. Fabian keeps texting to tell me how proud of me he is.

I’m proud of me too. Aside from working on something that’s changing the modern perception of this world and its history,I’m helping to build a future for this village. I’m becoming part of the community and making friends and putting down roots. Because this is where I’m going to stay.

Things with Zac are new, and maybe they won’t work out, but this is still going to be home for me, this place where people now smile when they see me and call out greetings and ask if I’m coming to karaoke or trivia night or if I’ll be on their team for the snowball fight. Where Arne at the pub remembers my preferred drink, and Griff at the grocery store offered to order me specialty baking supplies from a wholesaler as long as I don’t open a bakery to compete with Greta. Greta, on the other hand, turned up on my doorstep one evening to say she’d heard about my pastries, and was I interested in making some occasional money on the side? We now have an agreement that when she gets a big special order or has an event to bake for, I’ll help out. She also hinted that when my work cataloguing the vault is done and we start seeing an influx of visitors, there might be a more regular job for me. Garrett pouted for an hour when he heard, then told me he was working on a “competitive offer” to keep me at the museum.

And then there’s Zac. He’s filled my every spare minute this past month, and I don’t want it any other way. Just having himthere, lying on the kitchen sofa reading a journal, or watching TV in the living room while I experiment with baking something new, is so comfortable and amazing. He’s my most eager taste-tester, and when I over-kneaded the scones because I was distracted and they turned out hard as rocks, he teased me out of my sulk, then went and got some resin so we could turn them into something useful. I now have scone bookends, paperweights, and, my personal favorite, the scone pyramid doorstop.

He took me camping in the snow, and we lay under the stars for hours, just staring up at the constellations and talking in softmurmurs about little things. Then we burrowed into our snow cave and slept tangled together in our own cozy little world.

I took him flying. We left in the stillness of predawn, dragging Zoe out of bed to help with the harness, then watched the sun rise as we banked over a glacier. With his directions, we saw some of the most beautiful, remote places in the Alps, just the two of us.

And when we got back to Hortplatz, just before lunch, there was a crowd assembled to watch us land. I stayed in dragon form and let the children swarm me under Zac’s watchful eye while Zoe and Micah took care of the harness.

Garrett tells me that I’m now the official school mascot, and I took a day off from working in the cave to go to the school and talk about being a dragon. Isaac, Micah’s little brother, widened his big brown eyes at me and asked if I could please shift for them again, and that’s how I spent an hour one afternoon in my dragon form with a dozen or so children strewn over me, napping and talking quietly about all the adventures they plan to go on. It was… humbling. It made me sad that for all the luxury of my own childhood, I never had that sense of absolute security and freedom. But knowing I can be part of that for other children, maybe even children of my own one day… that’s enough to soothe any of my old scars. I talked about it with Steffen that night, and he understood.

We’re closer now, he and I. He told me he ran a background check on Zac and approves of him as my boyfriend, and I yelled at him about prying into my life without permission, even though I love that he wants to. I love it even more that I knew I could yell at him and he’d still be there for me.

So… I’m happy. I have friends, here and elsewhere. I have hobbies and work I love.

I have Zac. Quiet moments alone, talking or watching TV. Time together with friends. Hot, impassioned kissing, our handssliding all over each other, building the burning need between us, teasing something more.

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