Page 58 of Dragon's Flame
Any uncertainty she’d possessed had been burned away by dragon fire.
“Okay,” Rax said. “We’ll go back to my place and get you two settled. I’ll do damage containment here, and once you’ve gotten yourself back on your feet—” he said, blithely making decisions for all three of them. All four of them, if you counted Rocky, still prancing in happy circles.
“Or . . . we could just stay here?” Kenna interrupted.
Rax’s jaw dropped.
“I’ve still got an apartment, and some really fantastic scholarships that I don’t want to blow. I’ve only missed turning in a little bit of homework—and I’ve got a full bed—which’ll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll manage.”
“However big that is,” Tarian said, staring at her like she was his whole world, “it sounds amazing.”
She beamed up at him—and she didn’t need a bond between them to know he was loving her with his entire heart when he smiled back.
52
TARIAN
Tarian had been fired from almost every coffee shop in town.
It wasn’t that it was so hard to make caffeinated drinks, but his customer service skills left much to be desired.
“You know you don’t have to have a job, right?” Kenna asked him, as they were strolling along the boardwalk one night near sundown, pretending to be tourists. She’d finished her finals last week and now had some time off, which she planned to spend half with him, and half volunteering for her resume, which was growing in a good way, unlike his.
“It’s become a matter of pride,” he complained, holding her hand, while she was licking an ice cream cone, giving him furtively meaningful looks out of the corner of her eye.
Rax had a job, after all. Then again, his brother had had eight centuries to figure out how to coexist with humans, whereas he was going through a rough crash course.
“You’re a good driver? You could always Uber?” Kenna suggested, the wind briefly rushing up behind them and ruffling her short, regrowing hair.
He frowned and snorted. “What if I figured out how to work at one of the shiny buildings? On the other side of the mountains?”
Her expression instantly said “no.”
“That’s too far. The commute would suck—I like my time with you. Also, it’s really not worth it for you to start in on something serious. I only have another year here before I go off to medical school, and you have to come with me.”
“Of course. Anywhere you go, I will always follow.”
“Even someplace it snows?” she teased. “Because it’s killing me, but I’m applying everywhere, just in case.”
“Especially in the snow,” he said, with a laugh. “Remember, I like to keep you warm.”
“I do,” she said, grinning at him, as she finished the last of her ice cream and ate the cone. “I do feel bad, though. I want you to be happy—and I want you to fit in.”
He shrugged. “I’m not exactly worried. No one’s trying to kill me or you, so honestly, everything is looking up.”
“Once I get into a program, you know, you could go to school. If you wanted. I’m sure Rax knows someone who can forge a GED.”
He snorted. “Probably.”
“You could be nicer to him now, you know,” Kenna said, meaningfully. “He took everything he ever said back.”
“Only because he realized he was wrong,” Tarian said with a grunt.
“It’s up to you, of course,” she said, holding out her hands. “But he is family.”
He inhaled to refute her—and then realized she was saying that because she didn’t have her own. After the chaos of saving her, Rax had helped to tease apart what had happened to all the other women who had held a piece of his soul, over allthe intervening years—and she was right, Rax did have vast connections.
But it was while they’d been working on that that she realized why her own family had died—because they were related to her, and that awful group of selfish men wanted to isolate her and keep her alone.
