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Chapter Twenty-Four

" D on't…" Dav starts, but then chokes on whatever it was he was going to say. The smooth lines of his waistcoat are rucked up, golden freckles shining along his hip.

Don't go?

Don't scream?

The scales are softer than I expected, sliding along the skin above my sock.

There's a row of wine-red shark-fin spurs along what I assume is the top of his…

spine? But they're not touching me. The arrow-head spike folds in like an umbrella against my shoe.

It's not at all the hard weapon I expected it to be, when I tried to guess what Dav's other form might look like.

"I don't know if this is the right time to say this," I whisper, staring down at the appendage slowly coiling around my leg, to the same tempo as Dav's anxious hand-wringing. "But your tail?"

He cringes back further. "Yes?"

"It's adorable."

His mouth drops open.

I crouch and get my hand under his tail. It's no wider than my arm, about as long again as Dav is tall, and tapers into a point about the circumference of my little finger. He lets me lift it. It's heavy. And expressive. He curls it around my forearm, the arrowed tip sliding over my palm.

I press my lips against the fire-warm scales.

It smells like Dav, that smoke-and-cologne smell. And carpet dust. Bleh.

"I missed you," Dav hiccups miserably.

"Then why didn't you answer my calls?" The resentment that’s been simmering begins to boil.

His tail drops away, retreating behind him, swaying once, twice, and then is gone between one blink and the next. "At first, I had no phone. And then because…" he smooths his waistcoat nervously. "It's unseemly to have humans in your Nesting Grounds when they are not, ah, yours."

"I'm pretty fucking sure I made it clear I was yours," I snap, and, oops, there's the anger. "Had a few magical nights about it, too."

"Sex doesn't make you mine," Dav says, but the dimple beside his mouth is curling upward. I'm glad he's amused. That makes one of us. "Any more than it makes me yours ."

"I am so fucking angry with you," I tell him.

"I know," he says, but it's not condescending. It's a bland statement of fact. I see you. I acknowledge what you're feeling.

"You walked out the door with them."

"Yes."

"Dav, you—" Something in the fury freezes, cracks. "You left ."

"I had no choice."

The frozen thing shatters. It turns to shards, pierces the knot of anxiety at the top of my stomach, drives into the back of my eyes. I make a noise that I haven't heard come out of my mouth since Dad's funeral.

"You left, " I accuse. "I thought that it was the last time I was ever going to… to touch you. That you were dying somewhere and I wouldn't be able to hold you and—and I can't do that again!"

"I never meant to hurt you," Dav says, all in a rush. "It was better—"

"You don't get to decide what's better for me."

"Colin, please, there's so much you don't understand."

"Because you won't explain it to me!" I thump his chest in frustration. He lets me. "You were gone ."

"I know, and I—"

"You don't know!" I shout, glaring up into his face, not caring that my own is wet with tears and snot.

"My Dad… he was fine, and then he wasn't, and we weren't allowed…

I had to watch through a window. All I could do was press my face against the glass and beg him to breathe, to keep breathing, and then he…

he stopped , and I couldn't… I wasn't even allowed to touch him. He's gone forever … and I wasn't —"

"Colin, shhhh."

Somehow, we're on the floor, now. He's petting my hair, and I'm tumbled into his lap.

"You left on purpose ." Everything inside of me is cracking open, escaping as ugly, horrible sobs. I'm choking back bile and fury, the root of my tongue burns, my heart squeezes, my hands feel numb even as I claw at his sleeves to make sure he can never escape, can never run away from me again.

"I had no choice—"

"You could have fought! There were people with cameras on the sidewalk, they—you could have fought for me!"

"I did," he whispers, cheek against mine. "Believe me, Colin, in all the ways I could, I did."

"What did they do to you?" I ask, trying to pull away, but Dav is strong, holds me in place. I struggle for a second, and then try the opposite tack. I melt into him, tilt my chin up to whisper in his ear. "What happened?"

"Later," he breathes, ruffling my hair. "Let me… I want to… you smell so good, I’ve never explained how much I…" His forked tongue flickers out, touches the skin behind my ear.

I push back enough to frame his face with my hands.

"Were you trying to protect me by staying away?" His gaze drops down to where his hands knead my waist. "Answer."

"I complained about the media. Said it wasn't right, their hounding you, when you and I had never… reached an arrangement. He put a stop to it."

"The paps?"

Dav's eyes rise to meet mine, slow as molasses. "And us."

"Was that the punishment?"

"I explained, before, about draconic instinct?"

"Yeah."

Dav dries my cheeks gently with the silk cuff of his boring shirt. "I want you very badly, Colin." His eyes drop to my mouth, and he licks his lips. "I want to keep you."

"You can," I tell him, leaning forward, offering up that kiss he clearly wants, but he holds me away.

"I can't. That we were, ah, on friendly terms at all was a gross violation of an edict that had been passed on me a hundred years ago. But His Excellency was willing to overlook it. It was fine so long as it wasn't serious . But I had also violated a second rule."

"The beans," I say, desperate to ask him about what he had done that was so bad that it meant he had to be lonely, for a whole century.

"The beans," Dav confirms gravely. "So I was to be kept from you. And you from me."

"For how long?"

He avoids answering by giving me that kiss I wanted.

It's a great kiss. Confident, warm, comfortable.

It's also not an answer.

( Forever , the kiss says. For the rest of your life. )

"Oh Colin," he says gently, when we finally part. He reaches up to rub his thumb over the pin. "You don't know what you've done."

"I never know what I've goddamn done," I snap, weeks worth of panic and fear and hurt bubbling hard in my throat. "That's the problem with you."

Dav flinches again.

I don't feel sorry for it.

I feel a little sorry for it.

I grab his nipple through his waistcoat and twist it.

"Ow, ow!" Dav whines, cringing away. "Colin!"

"That's for saying 'I love you' before I could say it first," I snarl, letting go. "And this," I add, pressing a biting kiss to his mouth. "Is because I love you too, you dumbass."

"Even still?" He asks cautiously, dipping his pinkie fingers into the dimples on either side of my tailbone, where my shirt has ridden up.

"Yeah. I love you—" I let him kiss me again, possessive and hot. "—even though I don't much like you right now."

He wuffs out a laugh, startled. "I more than deserve your ire."

"More than," I agree.

He runs his thumb over the pin again. "You shouldn't have put it on."

"I can take it off. I don't know why everyone's so upset."

"It's too late. You asked me why we're allowed to be together now? It's this." He ducks his head, mouths up my neck from my collar to the base of my ear, wet and wonderful. "I find I'm quite satisfied, though."

I tip my head back, give him room.

No, wait.

I'm mad at him.

"Cut that out when I'm pissed off."

Dav noses up into my hair, presses his thumb against the pin hard enough that the backing is a delicious little point of pain in counterpoint to the pleasure of him reacquainting himself with me.

I twist his other nipple.

He yelps and falls back, catching himself on the bookshelves.

"You have to explain."

"Colin." He straightens, rubbing his chest to soothe the bruises. I wonder what they'll look like. Does he get mottled the way a human would or is there too much scale under his skin? "It's not… I just—"

"Nuh-uh. We’re not playing that game this time. Answers. Clear ones. Now. Or I'm leaving. And I'm staying gone."

His face drains of color. "You wouldn't."

"I would." It's not an empty threat, either. I’m fed up.

"You love me," Dav says, confused and small.

"I do."

"So you won't leave."

"I abso-fucking-lutely will," I correct. " Because I love you. So let's start with this." I tap the pin. "Why did you leave it with me if you didn't want me to wear it?"

"I didn't," Dav says, but I can't figure out who he's trying to convince. He's twitchy all of a sudden. I slide off his lap to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of him. "It fell off. You picked it up. I didn't… it wasn't…"

"Is that what you've been telling Simcoe? That it 'fell off'?"

His eyes cut away. "Yes?"

Coward , I think.

Then I say it out loud: "Coward."

He snaps his gaze back up to mine, mouth dropping open so prettily that I just have to stick my tongue in it. We lose the thread for a few minutes as I crowd him back against the shelf.

"Tell me," I smear into his mouth, and he pants, and whines, and scrunches up his eyes.

"I didn't give it to you because I wasn't allowed to!" Dav blurts. "And even if I wanted to, to, to do it—"

Do what? Just say it!

"—it was too soon. Months. Years!"

"So it means something? Like, really means something?"

"Yes."

"What?"

He whines again, distressed, and I press my cheek to his chest, wrap my arms around him tight, think calming, weighted-blanket thoughts.

"It means you're mine," Dav says, but it’s not romantic, or heartfelt. "… legally ."

"I'm sorry," I say, jerking back and pushing the palm of my hand hard against his forehead to force him to look at me. "Fucking what ?"

"Do you understand?" Dav whispers, distraught. "You're now my property ."

"Kinky," I croak, trying to make a joke even as it feels like the world has dropped out from under me.

Owned, my brain screams. I resist the urge to use the hand already on his forehead to bounce his skull off the shelving behind him and scurry to my feet.

The instinct to flee, run, get away coils like a serpent in my guts, but instead I take a deep breath and try to breathe through the urge, because I already knew this.

This isn't news. Everyone knows what a hoard is.

Everyone knows that dragons own all the land and rule all the people and resources on that land.

This isn't... this isn’t fresh information.

It’s just, ah, more detailed than it was before.

That doesn't make one iota of difference to the small, terrified, snarling bit of me that lives in terror of confinement, who finds uncomfortable situations claustrophobic, and has recurring nightmares about being locked in a glass fishbowl and suffocating under soulless plastic piles of medical tubing.

To the part of me that wanted to shove Dav away and make a run for it, no matter how irrational that was, and how little difference it would make to our situation.

But to hear it put so bluntly...

Hoarded.

The only difference is that I, one specific human, have now—in accordance with draconic law—made myself the chattels of one specific dragon.

Enslaved.

I let Dav go, and try to calm the twanging fear racing across every nerve in my body. My hands are trembling so hard it takes two tries to jam them into my pockets. My chest feels like Dav's wrapped his tail around it and is pulling tight.

I will not have a panic attack about this , I tell myself firmly, huffing on the little distressed sounds that are fighting their way up my throat. Breathe.

"Kinky?" Dav echoes, confused before he catches the look on my face, the cadence of my heartbeat.

"Yeah, it’s—" I start but choke on the joke I’m trying to make.

"Oh, Colin, you needn't attempt to be flippant about it," Dav rushes to assure me, sitting up from where he'd been draped on the shelf. "It's wretched. I didn't even get to ask you."

"Ask me?" I say, grasping for some sort of even footing.

Telegraphing his every gesture, and moving slow enough that I could wave him off or push him away if I wanted to, Dav wraps his hands around my elbows, holding tight to help me stay upright.

"Ask me if I would like to make myself some sort of indentured servant? Jesus fuck ."

"Ask you if you would care to spend the rest of our lives together," Dav corrects, eyes darkening.