Page 90 of Deadwood
“It would be if you’d pay up already,” Perkins huffed, his salt-and-pepper mustache moving as he spoke.
“I’m working on it,” Lander said rather boldly, as if it was some kind of joke.
Another man spoke up across from Perkins. “Care to make up for it in a game, Bular?”
Lander held his arms out. “It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
An unsettling grin spread across the man’s mouth as his gaze moved to me. “And who’s the pretty lady you brought with you today?”
“My fiancée, Auria,” Lander answered.
All eyes in the room faced us—no, facedme—and Perkins stood from his chair, scooting it back to get his belly past the table. “A game in the back, then.”
Lander set a hand on my lower back, guiding me past the tables to follow after Perkins, the man who’d spoken to Lander, and another man with brunet hair. From behind, the latter looked rather fit with a sculpted back and his hair mussed, the top sticking up in odd spots. He shoved his sleeves up to his elbows, revealing a cacophony of black swirls etched into his skin. My movements stiffened at the sight.
He was a thief, just like the rest of them.
As we walked, Lander leaned close to my ear. “That’s Crass,” Lander murmured, nodding in the direction of the man who’d spoken to him. “And Nemin.” He gestured toward the brunet.
“You owe them money?” I asked quietly.
He tossed his head back and forth. “Not exactly.”
Before I could ask what he meant by that, we entered a small, more damp room. The air hung thick, and with the flick of a hand from Perkins, the lanterns hanging from the walls and above the table lit, casting a dim amber glow throughout the room.
With a hard swallow and a deep breath to center myself, I followed them toward the table in the middle of the room.
CHAPTER 29
BOWEN
The day after Paxon’s outburst before breakfast, I decided I couldn’t sit by any longer. With the storm finally ebbing, I had things I needed to attend to.
Things like figuring out why the fuck that bones dragon hit an invisible sort of wall and couldn’t pass through it.
Raiden had given me the rundown on what had happened during breakfast to cause Auria to be standing outside covered in food and, very clearly, upset. Meanwhile, Siara had wanted to find Paxon and rip his dick off—her words, not mine—for shoving Auria. His manhood—again, her words, though I wholly agreed—didn’t deserve to be intact after his elbow made contact with her.
The moment I had seen Auria standing there with her eyes squeezed shut and her body being held up by the wall, I couldn’t have kept going.
No, Auria was the only thing that had mattered in that moment.
“We’re going to the caves,” I said to Vulcan as I rounded his front leg in the meadow and grabbed one of his scales to heft myself up his body.
Is that the brightest idea, given you and the girl were just nearly killed in there?Vulcan asked, judgment blazing in his tone as it rang through my mind.
“I need to figure out why that dragon couldn’t pass through that barrier in the caves.” I settled on his back and adjusted my face covering before he took flight with a huff.
His massive wings beat hard against the calming air, and I squinted my eyes against the onslaught of wind as we took off.
Let me guess, I am to be your test subject, Vulcan said.
“If you can fit in the cave, that’d be helpful.” Despite his clear reluctance at the idea of it, he’d have no choice. I needed to figure this out.
It took longer than usual to reach the mountain due to the random bursts of wind slamming into Vulcan on our way. Once we made it, Vulcan circled before landing on the rockslide, finding a spot right outside the opening of the cave. His talons scrambled for purchase, digging into the loose boulders.
This is not smart, Vulcan chastised, his grip slipping on one of the rocks. Dragons were strong, but their size wasn’t always ideal.
“Scared?” I asked as I descended his muscled leg.
