8. Corin

8

Corin

Everything was going to plan. The contractors were all experienced, and had worked for him before—they knew their business, and he could safely leave them to it.

It was time for him to do what he came here for.

He left the house, turning his face to catch the morning sun.

Suddenly, his dragon leaped to attention. He turned in the direction it was prodding him to look in, and—

“Corin!”

She’s here.

The relief that rushed through him made no sense. His dragon sniffed at it. Of course she was still here. Why would she leave?

Other than to get away from me?

Maya was walking between two of the vans parked outside his new property. The morning light was in her hair. She was wearing worn-in jeans that clung to her thighs and a t-shirt just loose enough to let his imagination run wild.

And she did not look happy.

“Good morning, Miss Flores,” he said, silently bracing himself.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You bought a house? ”

“I told you I had my accommodation already organized. Did you think I was planning to sleep in a cave?”

“I thought—I thought…” She pressed her palms against her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Of course you buy a house like it’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. You have whole vacation islands you’ve never even set foot on.”

Because I’m holding them in trust for others in the clan who need them. Younger dragons with less control over the duskfire, who needed a safe place to stay where they wouldn’t risk bringing buildings down on top of everyone around them.

But that couldn’t be what was really worrying her. “You already knew I was planning to stay. I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

“I—” Her mouth snapped shut. Her eyes flicked from side to side, and he shared her sudden, awkward awareness that they weren’t alone in front of his house. Half a dozen of his workers were carefully avoiding eye contact. “Let’s discuss this elsewhere.”

He gestured towards the front door. “Avi can prepare us drinks and a snack.”

“You brought your private chef? Why would you do that?”

“In order to eat.” He raised one quizzical eyebrow. “You’re worried people will gossip about the dragon who refuses to even cook for himself? Let them talk. I’m not here for them.”

“But I have to live here, and it’s hard enough—” She bit her lip. Then her eyes flicked up to his, and she came to a decision. A decision it pained her to go through with, given the way she spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s hard enough everyone knowing you’re the reason I’m here without you turning up and acting like an ass.”

She raised a hand as though she was going to grab his arm, and at the last moment grabbed his sleeve, instead. He followed docile as a lamb as she tugged him away up the street, away from the chaos.

“Ensuring I’m fed, clothed, and housed is acting like an ass?”

“No, but you—this…”

Her thumb beat against her finger like a drumstick.

Corin narrowed his eyes. “You’re worried that if I stalk around like I own the place, it will reflect badly on you ?”

“No—yes. Yes, that’s what I’m worried about.” Her mouth set in an unhappy line. “Everyone has been so nice. Even though I’m not a shifter, and I … and everything else. It still doesn’t feel … real.”

Corin’s conscience itched. “You don’t have anything to fear.”

“I have so much to fear, Corin. You have no idea.”

“I might.”

She didn’t look at him. The angle of her shoulders told him maybe it was that she couldn’t look at him.

He gentled his tone as much as he was capable of. “I promise that if I do anything to make your position here at all precarious, I will take all the blame myself. None of it will fall on you.”

“How can you promise that?”

The strain in her voice made his heart ache. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Well now I’m worried. The last dragon ‘visitor’ to Hideaway took out half the waterfront. Does ‘whatever it takes’ include property damage?”

There was no way she could know what the duskfire was capable of, but her words still cut deep.

“Not if you don’t want it to,” he said, as though they were discussing the weather, or what to wear to dinner, and not the dangerous power that had kept him from claiming her as his own.

“I do not want it to. Please consider property damage among the things I least want to happen as a result of you being here.”

“And what do you want to happen?”

She stopped walking. He stopped a moment too late, and had to turn around to face her again.

Her cheeks were glowing. Her lips were parted a bare fraction of an inch, and she stared up at him with wide eyes filled with too many emotions for him to untangle.

“When did you buy that house?” she demanded.

“Years ago.”

“So you’ve been in Hideaway Cove before?”

“I hadn’t set foot in the town until yesterday.”

“Then you weren’t—” She grimaced and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t?”

“My friend’s kids have been telling stories about seeing dragons sneaking around underwater.”

“Two children saw me flying yesterday—”

“Before then.” She pressed her lips together. “If they’re right—if another dragon has been here…”

Her eyes narrowed, focused on the distant horizon. Some hidden emotion warred behind them. “This is something I’d prefer to discuss more privately,” she said, suddenly all cagey professionalism. “Would you mind coming back to my place?”

Her home, again. The oasis of perfection.

Maya muttered a quick prayer as they crossed the threshold. He thought it sounded something like Please don’t let there be any diapers anywhere they shouldn’t be , and a whole new world of the problems inherent in raising a flying shifter child opened up in his mind.

She didn’t bother asking if he would like a drink this time. She made him a coffee, exactly the way he liked it. Not with the same expensive beans and equipment she used when she worked for him, but—

His heart thudded. The coffee was exactly the way he liked it, because she was the one making it.

She curled up on the armchair opposite him, holding a drink loaded with far more cream and chocolate than anything she’d drunk while she worked for him. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

She took a deep breath. “You told me yesterday that if treasure is given to a hatchling, it’s untouchable. That’s one of your dragon rules?”

“Our dragon rules?” He raised one eyebrow. “Yes.”

“What other rules are there? Around treasure.”

Corin sat back. “All dragons collect their own hoards. Is that what you mean?”

“I know that. But there’s clearly a lot I don’t know. Because the only things I do know are what Apollo told me, and his dragon couldn’t care less about treasure. You have your own hoard and your clan hoard? As separate things?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Our clan hoard is—the clan’s. It’s our power. Our bragging rights,” he admitted, and was rewarded with the curl of her lip into a brief smile.

“And your personal one?”

“Power and bragging, again. And…” He hesitated.

“And?” Her eyes fixed on him.

“And dragons collect treasure in order to gift it to our fated mates, if we are lucky enough to find them.”

Maya’s hands clenched and unclenched around her mug. “I see.”

How much did she see?

She lifted her chin. “And are there any … rules around that?”

“Around gifting treasures to a mate?”

He had nothing he could give her. Nothing appropriate. The Ocean of Stars was in a lockbox in his house on the hill; what he was wearing, rings and cufflinks and tiepin, would be laughable as a first gift to her exquisite beauty.

His dragon nudged him. There was gold thread woven into his clothes; he could wrap his jacket around her, wreathe her in his gold…

He tightened his jaw.

He wasn’t going to do any of that. Gifting treasure was too close to the ritual to claim her, the one that even thinking about made his duskfire flare out of control.

And Maya was still waiting for his answer.

“We give gifts the same way humans do, I suppose.” His voice was rough; he cleared his throat. “Wrapped in shiny paper and ribbons, on special occasions or as a surprise. Sometimes courting dragon shifters will attempt to sneak gifts past their partner—leave them in their pockets or purse, under their pillow—”

He realized too late what he was saying, as Maya’s face paled.

“Oh,” she said blankly. “Or send them in the post?”

He stiffened. “You suspect—”

“Yesterday, we assumed that the only reason I was targeted was to get to you. What if we were wrong?” She was so tense she was almost trembling. “What if the treasures aren’t a threat—they’re a gift?”

“That is one possibility we did not discuss yesterday,” he said carefully. “That the treasures are not a threat.”

He couldn’t believe he was saying this.

“That they are, instead, a gift,” he forced out. “If Tomás’s father—”

“It can’t be him.” Maya went white—with fury or fear, he couldn’t tell. “There’s no—no way. Impossible.”

“I understand you’re no longer together.”

She barked out painful laughter. He moved closer to her automatically, offering comfort that he had no right to give.

“If he has passed away, perhaps a relative of his—”

“If he’s dead?” She shook her head. “I don’t—hell. He might as well be. Either way, there’s no way he would know where I am.”

Corin’s dragon lashed its tail. A protective instinct unlike anything he’d ever known rose up in him. “Did he hurt you?”

“What? No. He just—it didn’t work out.” She opened her mouth, then hesitated as though rethinking what she’d been about to say.

Her shoulders slumped. “The truth is…”

The truth was, he was the one who should have sent Maya gifts. Who should have festooned her in gold, in treasures beyond imagining.

She looked up at him and her eyes went huge. “What is that?” she gasped.

Corin frowned. Then he saw it. The huge wings of shadow that blotted out every light except the eerie green that flashed along its edges.

His wings.

His magic.

Horror seared white-hot through his veins. He hadn’t even noticed the power emerging. With a snarl of effort, he contained them, forcing the magical wings back beneath his skin.

Maya was still blinking at him, her face pale. “What…”

“You shouldn’t have seen that.” Angry guilt made his voice rougher than he’d intended. Her eyes flashed.

“Why not? What was it?”

The reason I can never claim you. He bit his tongue, drawing blood.

Her eyes saw too much. “Tell me,” she insisted.

“No one else would ever send you the gifts a dragon uses to court their mate.” His voice was too harsh.

And he had said too much. After so long saying nothing at all, that one telltale word had slipped out.

“No one else. ” Her expression was frozen. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Was she elated? Afraid?

She licked her lips, and he tracked the movement like a man dying of thirst dreaming of water.

And she saw him do it.

Her breath shook. “You said you don’t care what the people here think, because you’re not here for them. Who are you here for? Why are you really staying? Don’t say it’s to find out more about your stolen treasure. You’re not going to find the thief, or protect your hoard, by loitering around Hideaway. Whoever stole it isn’t here. ” She searched his face. “But I am.”

“Yes.” His voice slid out, all shadows and silk over broken glass. “You are.”