Page 66 of Destiny of the Dragons

Smoke gave him another look. Jesse wasn’t properly intimated. He just laughed and left the office.

He was getting soft. If the breaking of his heart was any indication, he needed to be harder to survive life.

He’s been hard once, hard enough to survive horrors that would have broken most people, but something about his time with Mia and Jace made him softer.

Too soft, if this is what heartbreak felt like.

Being summoned to his mother’s office was never a good sign.

It had been true when he was a small dragon, barely out of the whelp stage, and it was true now.

He’d fought to prove himself. He came back to the clan ten months ago a rich dragon, owed a favor by a powerful magician.

But even now as he made his way down the long hallway leading to his mother’s office, his stomach clenched at the thought of the woman waiting for him at the end of the hall.

The carpet swallowed the sounds of his footsteps. The wallpaper was gold filigree with marble columns spread out every few feet, each one displaying a treasure more priceless than the last. Fine art hung on the walls, and the ceiling was painted with enchanted paint, warding the place while also advertising their luxury.

Jace sighed at the waste of it. This amount of excessive luxury was too on the nose for his taste.

Black lacquered double doors waited for him at the end of the hall. He paused. How many times had he stood on the other side of this door, never feeling worthy enough to touch the solid wood?

When he told his mother he was ready to rejoin the clan as a full member, and she accepted him, Jace was sure the feeling would go away.

But it was back. Worse, because he gave up everything for his clan. Mia and Smoke refused to come with him.

Feeling his stomach clench at the thought of facing his mother, he couldn’t blame them.

He put that out of his mind. He couldn’t afford any weakness. He opened the door and smiled. “Here for our meeting.”

Mother sat behind a large desk. The office was huge, easily half the size of the floor.

Priceless magical artifacts sat in a custom built cabinet that ran the length of one wall. More paintings, more marble columns showcasing one of kind antiques.

She had an array of wealth in her office, but no Marvelouso paintings. Jace took pleasure in that, the petty spite curling inside him. Marvelouso took his early artwork back, but gifted him a small painting of a red dragon in flight. Jace hung it in his office for all to see, so they would remember where he came from.

Mother didn’t look up from her paperwork. Another power play. Jace sat in a plush chair in front of her.

The old him would have asked for her attention or waited for her to acknowledge him.

But sleepless nights reaching for lovers that were no longer there had him spent. Jace picked up his phone and started scheduling more meetings with clients. He was ready to run one of the casinos and the sooner Mother realized it, the more money he could make their clan.

A younger dragon was running Lucky Seven, more like into the ground than turning a profit.

The older dragons bemoaned the lack of powerful dragons to keep the clans strong.

Jace had pointed out that tossing their youngest dragons onto the streets to live or die hardly seemed the best way to keep their clan membership strong, but he was laughed off.

His mother shifted through papers, making one last note. She looked up at him, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised. “You’re late.”

“I’m right on time,” he said. More tactics.

“My calendar has you down for eleven-thirty.” Mother leveled a stare at him. He would have broken down into apologies as a younger dragon.

Now he just cocked his head. “You might want to get your calendar fixed, make sure none of your other meetings are wrong.”

Mother did a slow blink. “Where are you with the Jennings account?”

He was waiting for her to switch subjects though and just gave a cocky shrug. “I closed this morning. Aaron Jennings was just a smokescreen. The older sister Sandra is the real power. Jennings will use our real estate firm for all their future dealings.”

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