15. Dominik

Adoor clicks behind me as the sun edges up a dusky blue-gray sky.

The small sound briefly distracts a small red fox at the bottom of the garden.

I keep my eyes trained on the fox pissing on a tree. The fox finishes and looks up at the house before it darts away, leaves rustling until it disappears from view.

“I’m curious about your reason for watching us last night.” There’s a growl in Shep’s voice when he speaks. I assume he’s growling at me until he mutters, “Fox did that on purpose.”

Is there some kind of territorial fight going on here I neither understand nor care about? Shep is in a pair of shorts, bare chest, no shoes, and his shoulder-length blond hair is sleep rumpled as he glares at the bottom of the garden.

And he smells like Jade.

Jade, who is mine.

She defended the vampire for feeding on her, something I should have killed him for, and she chose the wolf as a lover when she has me.

She has me.

Yet she still chose the wolf.

How do I convince her that she wants me and only me?

I look away from Shep to the sun illuminating more of the garden. “You are mistaken.”

Lies.

Jade is everything I craved all this time. Not just a firedrake, but a beautiful mate. The mother of my child. Family. To keep her, do I have to share her with men who are beneath her?

Shep crosses his arms, his gaze boring into the side of my face. “You must have known what we were doing, yet you hung around. I smelled you.”

“She is not yours.” Words I hadn’t intended to utter slip out. Hard-bitten, and in a tone that lets him know exactly what I think of him. Not good enough.

Not deserving of Jade and not deserving of my time.

“Perhaps not,” Shep surprises me by agreeing. “But she’s not yours in the way you seem to think she is.”

I turn to go inside before the taste of smoke and fire in my mouth grows stronger.

And before I can give into this urge to kill him.

Footsteps thump down the stairs and a voice yells. “Shep? Where the fuck are?—”

Dom turns away from me, the door swings open, and I come face to face with the demon who’s been salivating in his smugness when.

Fully dressed, he either slept in his clothes or he was up earlier than I was. He glares at me. “Oh. You.”

“Don’t, Patten,” Shep warns.

“Move,” I order him.

He stays right where he is, blocking my way.

My vision flickers: red and orange.

A slow smile stretches his lips. “Go ahead, dragon guy. Give Jade another reason to hate you.”

“You think I won’t?”

He steps up to me, his smile sliding off his face. “What I think is irrelevant. Jade wants you gone.” His eyes sweep over me. “You know it. I know it. Do everyone a favor and leave.”

It would be the easiest thing in the world to reduce him to a pile of ash and bone.

I hold back for the same reason that I didn’t incinerate the wolf when I could have so easily.

Jade.

She would know it was me, and I would lose her forever.

I step around him.

“You’re dead, you know that, right?” Patten calls out in a singsong voice. “It’s only a matter of time before one of us does it.”

I push my way inside.

He grips my shoulder.

I look at his hand and then up at his face. “Take your hand off me.”

His grip tightens.

Before I can remove it, Shep grasps Patten’s wrist and pulls. “Let him go, Patten.”

Patten doesn’t immediately release me. “She isn’t yours.”

I step into the living room. “That’s where you’re wrong. Jade is mine. I am the father of her child. You can’t compete with that and you can’t get rid of me.”

Patten’s voice trails me through the living room and to the staircase. “I don’t give a fuck who you are, that you can breathe fire or whatever the fuck else you can do. Hurt Jade again and I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

I’m at the bottom of the staircase when Shep’s soft voice stops me.

“She went back to save you. She pushed and pushed to rescue you. Even knowing it was dangerous, she refused to leave you behind. And instead of helping her dad, you kidnapped her. Have you even apologized?”

I walk up the stairs.

I’ve just reached the top when Jade steps onto the landing.

“Shep? Is that…” Her eyes connect with mine as her voice trails off.

She’s wearing Shep’s T-shirt and her hair is as sleep-tousled as Shep’s was.

I recall the moans she was making last night in the kitchen.

It should have been me. With her. It should have been me.

Twenty years I was locked up in a cell. Before that, I was alone. No family left, nothing but an impossible hope I might eventually find another of my kind. And I found her in the most unexpected place, my neighboring cell.

But she isn’t free.

“I can give you more than they can,” I tell her.

“You see,” she says quietly, “I don’t think you can.”

Then she steps back inside the room and closes the door.