Page 43 of Rejected By Dragons

"So how's our guest settling in?" Freya asks that night. As she sweeps in the back door, she presents Rhiannon with a bottle of wine before pressing a kiss to her cheek.

She and Jett apparently come over for dinner at least once a week, so their decision to drop by today isn't anything out of the ordinary. I can't help feeling like they're checking up on me, though.

They have good reason to, of course. I'm an outsider, and while Amy and Rhiannon have welcomed me in with open arms, the leaders of the town are well within their rights to want to keep an eye on me.

"So far, so good," Rhiannon assures Freya.

"For certain definitions of 'settled,'" Amy scoffs, pointedly snagging the basket of bread I was taking to the table. "Considering she basically passed out for sixteen hours, then spent the entire day slaving away in the back room of the store and then trying to cook us all dinner."

She's...not wrong, I guess.

The day has been a whirlwind. Sorting through the specialty shipments Rhiannon had gotten in was a challenge, but one I was delighted to tackle. I may have impressed her with my rudimentary understanding of ancient Fire and Stone Kingdom symbology, but I wasn't lying when I told her my skills were rusty. I dusted them off the best I could, though, and made a decent dent in cataloguing the backlogged inventory. The pieces I couldn't identify and the texts I couldn't decipher I put aside, so I can consult with Rhiannon about them tomorrow. I'll have to ask Amy if I can borrow a notebook, or if maybe she can point me at a store in town where I can buy one so I can jot things down. I'm sure I have a lot to learn.

I never put this much effort into my coursework for my degree. But obscure dragon languages are way, way more interesting than accounting, so who can blame me?

Eventually, Rhiannon shooed me out of the store, though. I found Amy here, starting dinner, and despite her protests, I insisted on rolling up my sleeves. Cooking for Aunt Helena was a chore, and I always appreciated Brynn stepping in to lend me a hand.

Cooking today with Amy was straight-up fun. She had a plan, and I let her be in charge, but I found ways to help. We fell into a rhythm, prepping ingredients while chatting and messing around.

"I'm used to pitching in," I insist, ceding the bread but heading to the silverware drawer to start setting the table.

"Clearly," Amy agrees. She shoos me away with force this time, pressing a glass of wine into my hands and pointing me at the table. "What you need"--she points at me with a butter knife--"is practice letting other people take care of you."

My throat suddenly goes tight. A tender achiness squeezes my ribs as I think back to those nights I spent preparing meals at my aunt's house. She taunted me and put me down, calling me lazy while reclining in her chair.

No one's taken care of me in a long, long time. Brynn did, here and there. When she could. Storm did, in his own way, too.

Not that I want to go getting sentimental about that jerk.

I haven't had time to think about him since I arrived, but the wound he left with his rejection is just something I have to live with now. It's always there, slowly healing, but still raw.

Giving in to Amy's badgering, I retire to the table, pulling out a seat beside Jett, who's already helped himself to a beer. He angles it toward me, and I clink my glass against the bottle.

"There's no sense arguing with them."

Amy narrows her eyes at him from across the room. "You could actually stand to argue a little more."

"Shit," he mutters, pretending to hide behind his beer.

"Go grab the plates for your sister," Rhiannon orders him.

He gets up, holding his hands in front of his chest as if to profess his innocence. "I was just trying to stay out of the way."

"He's good at that," Freya says, stealing his chair. She has a glass of wine, too, but it's in a tumbler instead of stemware, which seems appropriate somehow.

It's funny, how regal and imposing these people all seemed yesterday. They're still impressive, of course. Beautiful and fierce and--especially in Freya and Jett's cases, where they're visibly armed and rippling with muscle--dangerous.

But they're a whole lot less intimidating when they're teasing each other and dancing around the kitchen, working to get a home-cooked meal on the table.

The overwhelming sense of family presses in on my ribs again. Memories of my own parents flood my mind. Is this what our life could have been like? Is this what I've been missing out on?

"They're really something, aren't they?" Freya muses, her tone low and confidential and clearly directed just at me.

"Yeah." I swallow, my throat going tight as I watch the loving, happy chaos. "It's nice."

Freya hums, inviting me to elaborate.

I shrug. "Where I was staying--with my aunt. Before. It was never like this."

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