Devoted to the Dragon (The Last Shifters #1)

34. Randi

Chapter 34

Randi

I wake up in the tent, Knox’s arm snaked around me, fingers brushing through my hair. My muscles freeze, reality slamming down with blinding clarity.

His rattling purr deepens, trying to soothe the cloying mint that chokes the air. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”

I’m up, blanket around me, fumbling on the raft in search of my clothes. “This didn’t mean anything,” I hiss.

“I know,” he says softly, voice laced with the bitterness of regret.

“I still don’t trust you.”

“I know,” he says again.

Where the fuck is my dress? I’m exposed, the hairs on my body standing on end, my scales rippling across my skin.

I riffle through the nest bedding, destroying the mounds in search of my clothes. I can’t find my dress, but that isn’t what makes me keep going. I rage with uncertainty and unfairness. I tear at the blankets and pillows as if that will give me back what I’ve lost—what he has taken from me.

There is cramping in my stomach. A ripped and bleeding space in my heart. It matches the scream that pierces through the dark night. My claws shred. The raft shakes with my rage. Water seeps in at the edges.

I tear it down. All of it. Because he’s making good on his promise to steal my heart.

I don’t stop until the nest is bare. Until it looks like my insides feel. Jagged and broken wide open. My screams are shrill, angry warnings. Spikes ripple along my back. My throat burns with fire.

When I open my mouth, a sob spills out instead. Knox curls around my back and holds me through the violent sadness of grief. His deep voice soothes me, but I can’t understand the words. They’re lost to the pit beneath all that fiery rage. The pit of loss feels like a dark, bottomless canyon that will swallow me whole.

Why Knox? Why did a serpent come to steal my heart when they have already taken every dragon's but mine? And why is he being so good to me now? So understanding?

“I know it hurts. Let it out. It’s all right,” he murmurs.

His strength cages me in and becomes a harbor for my violent storm as he rocks us through the worst. I cry until I’m wrung out and limp, sitting in a ball of wet bedding and feathers, the tent singed and falling.

I try closing my eyes, but I see his memories. Opening my eyes is no better. He’s everywhere. He’s there in the old, shredded quilts and mismatched pillows spilling their stuffing into the smokey air. His thoughtfulness is in every wooden plank of this once-beautiful nest. And I destroyed it .

My voice is distorted, wobbly, and trapped behind a cotton barrier in my ears. “Why were you in the forest?” I don’t know why that’s my first question, but it falls out, landing among the rubble.

“That night?” he asks. His voice is raw too, but I’m afraid to turn around and see his face.

“No. That night you were there to capture me.” It’s a fact, stripped of its emotions.

I hear him take a deep breath. “I was. I can’t change that. I’m sorry.”

Do I accept his apologies? Had I already accepted them?

I don’t know, but I do know he means it. “I mean in the memory stones. Why were you in the forest?” I need to know. I have to know.

“You.” His arms tighten around me.

I stare at the black, scrawling serpent winding up his arm. It's a crest of some kind—probably his family’s. But the black gleaming serpent is chasing a half moon, and is in a different style than the other rune tattoos that cover his upper half.

“Bullshit.” I twist in his arms, finally facing him.

He’s a beautiful mess. Hair askew. Tear tracks on his cheeks leaking down past a red scar.

His throat bobs. “No bullshit. I just didn’t know it was you. Not then. Not until our night in the forest.” I open my mouth to protest, but he covers my mouth with his hand, shaking his head. “It’s my turn.”

My teeth nip his fingertips, and he chuckles. The sound dies out and loses all its playfulness as he looks at the mess around us.

The way he’s looking at the destruction of his gift hurts me. His expression is full of remorse and sadness, as though he’s sorry for my meltdown. And maybe I thought he was or should be, but looking at the devastation on his face makes that hard to reconcile.

He sighs in defeat. “I’m a fuckboy, Randi. The baby of a ruling family. I’ve spent my life making messes. I didn’t care.

“The only things I’ve ever been good at are shadow-walking and making rooms full of people want to fuck. That’s it. I didn’t give a shit about anything much. My sister and my mother. But that was never enough to anchor me. I was restless. I had everything, and it didn’t matter, because I knew something was missing. I told myself I was okay with it.

“But it was a lie. Those memories? That was me searching for something that would make me feel alive, make it feel like any of this shit had meaning.”

“What does that have to do with the forest?” I whisper. I think I know. I think I’ve known and chosen not to see.

His violet eyes hold me in place. “Do you know where those woods are?”

“No.” The word is shaky, standing on rumbling ground.

He looks at me as though I’m the center of his orbit—as though I'm the sun. “It’s the territory line. A human campground in the forest. Until the Alpha King let us in, I couldn’t get past it, even though I thought I was going crazy because I kept hearing things others couldn’t. And when my family needed a volunteer to go into wolf country, I went even though I handle sex and never politics or trade. I went because I wanted to know what was on the other side. But it wasn’t the wolves calling. It was you, wasn’t it?”

My nose burns again, though there aren’t any more tears. The irony that I crafted the spell with Vandera that called him here is too much. I don’t know whether to laugh or scream or cry. I’ve already done the other two, so I’m not surprised when the bubble of hysterics pops free.

He pulls me into his lap, wraps his arms around my back, and holds my face inches from his. “I’ve fucked up a lot. I’m snarky. Petty. Vain. I never cared. Not really. But you’re the only thing that’s ever mattered enough. I want to be good enough for you.”

His thumb rubs my cheek, his voice turning soft and supple, full of adoration. “I crave you. And I know I fucked this up too, but I swear that I’m not here to do some political bullshit. I killed the Alpha King because he was after you. No other reason. If another comes for you, I’ll do the same. But I’m not here for money, magic, weapons, or whatever else you think. I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else. I’m here because your soul called to mine long before our night in the woods.”

I tear my gaze from his and flee, wrapped in the blanket, to the edge of the waterlogged raft, staring into the breaking dawn on the still lake.

Knox’s heat settles at my back. He brushes his lips along the column of my neck. “Take your time. Punish me until you’re satisfied. Kill me if you must. But I’m not leaving. You’re my omega, and I will take care of you however you let me.”

“I’m not ready,” I whisper.

“You don’t have to be. I’ll be here waiting when you are. This time with a better nest.” He clasps my hand and slips something hard covered in paper into my palm. “Go home to your wolves. Let them soothe the ache I can’t. I promise it’s okay.”

That does it. I bite my lip, but another tear breaks free. The blanket hits the dock, and I leap into the air as I shift. The wards taste bitter when my dragon flies through them. She blasts her fire, sad and desperate to bring him to her nest.

But she doesn’t. She flies where I lead.