Chapter 6
Heston
The cat and its mistress are staring at me. Not looking, not watching. Staring. Serious and intense.
The fire around her face moves with her. It curls, dances, and breathes like a living thing.
My entire life, I have trained myself to understand fire. Fire has patterns and behavior. It tells you what it needs.
But this fire doesn’t want anything. Except her.
And for some impossible reason it feels like it knows me.
My chest tightens and I take a step back, but this feels right.
“Heston?”
Tristan’s voice pulls me back.
I look at him. “What?”
“You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I didn’t.”
Lachlan is watching me now too. Of course he is. Lachlan notices everything.
Sequoia looks between us, and the cat moves toward me.
I immediately tense. “No.”
Everyone looks at me, and I clear my throat. “I mean…”
The ember lynx reaches me and stops but doesn’t attack. It simply sits there, looking up at me with dark, surprisingly intelligent eyes, waiting.
Then it presses its head against my hand, and heat spreads through my palm, and my entire world fractures in an instant.
I am back somewhere else. Not here, in an alcove of a crowded ballroom surrounded by my friends, a strange woman, and her demon cat.
Instead, I’m surrounded by smoke and intense heat. There’s a loud scream, one I barely remember from a memory I had buried so deeply that I’d convinced myself it was gone.
Fire. The kind that nobody teaches you how to fight, that doesn’t behave like anything you know. The kind that took everything from me.
Dragon fire rises around me.
I pull away. Fast. My breathing changes and my instincts scream, but the memory is already gone. The ballroom returns, the music and lights filling my senses. Then I see Sequoia standing before me, her eyes searching.
I expect confusion, indignation, or even revulsion; anything but concern. She’s watching me intently, trembling slightly, like she felt something happen.
That scares me more than anything, because dragons are supposed to be dangerous. I have spent years telling myself that.
But she doesn’t look dangerous. She looks like someone who understands. And I don’t want anyone to understand.
The fire around her face flickers, and for one impossible second, it moves toward me. Like a hand reaching out, the silver and lavender flames stretch between us.
Then they stop and the room becomes silent, and we are no longer invisible.
Older dragons nearby turn to watch, their expressions changing from curiosity to recognition and shock.
I don’t like it.
“What just happened?” Tristan whispers softly, but I’m sure it can now easily be heard across the ballroom.
Nobody answers, and Sequoia looks as confused as I feel, which is somehow reassuring.
She doesn’t know. This isn’t some dragon trick.
The ember lynx makes a pleased sound, and I look down and see that he is practically glowing.
“Your cat is weird,” I say dryly.
Sequoia actually smiles. When it reaches her eyes, something inside me twists, because I want to see it again. Immediately. And that thought makes me angry. I’m not a man who wants things. Things become weaknesses. That lesson has kept me alive.
Tristan is staring between us with a look I know all too well. He is putting pieces together like he always does. “Heston,” he says softly.
I only glare at him in response. He holds his hands up defensively and takes a step back.
Lachlan looks at me, concern evident. “You okay?”
I almost say yes. It’s automatic. The easy response for everyone. The one everyone expects. But for some reason, I look at Sequoia and the dragon fire that doesn’t scare me now and say the only honest thing I can.
“I don’t know.”
I feel untethered now, uncertain because I have always known. When to run, when to fight, when to move, and when to stay.
But tonight a dragon walked into my life, and her magical cat chose me. The worst part is that somewhere deep inside me, in a place I thought was gone a long time ago, something answered.
Something warm and impossible. Something that feels dangerously close to hope.
And I have no idea what scares me more: the fact that it exists or the fact that I don’t want it to go away.