Chapter 2 Dray
TWO
DRAY
I wiped sawdust off my hands and stepped back to admire the cabinet doors I’d just hung. The hinges were sturdy and well-aligned. It was a job well done, and Mrs. Arnett would be thrilled when she returned from vacation.
Making my customers happy was obviously a goal for my business, but keeping busy helped with my survival. If I had any downtime, my mind went there.
My dragon opened one eye and huffed. A wave of heat swept over my chest as he told me to be patient.
I’ve been doing that for eight years.
It will happen.
I ignored him. Dragons in the wild lived long lives, so what did a decade or two matter to my beast.
After sweeping up the sawdust, I gathered my tools and hauled everything to the truck. Back inside, I wiped down the kitchen counter, making sure I hadn’t missed a speck of dust. Mrs. Arnett would call me if I left a stray screw in a corner.
We’re still waiting. That’s all we do. I should have dropped the subject, but it was the end of a long day and I was grimy and tired.
My dragon didn’t care about my day-to-day life. As long as he got to take his scales and burn stuff, he was content and patient. But I’d been stuck here in my home town for years, though trapped was a better term, and I’d turned down promising jobs on the coast.
I tried not to resent my beast. He was my other half, or as he said, my better half. But he was the reason I’d been treading water instead of living my life.
I locked up and dropped the key off to a neighbor. As I waited for a passing car, I contemplated turning left to go home and a microwave meal or right to the café.
I turned right.
You’re so predictable, he huffed.
Do you want to choose? The last time he did, he shifted behind the hardware store in the middle of the night and feasted on raw meat.
It was venison. That’s the correct word. A deer died, and I didn’t want it to go to waste.
I knew every stop sign, pothole, and house in town. Most of my high school friends hadn’t returned after college. They’d chased careers in the big city and were now reaping the rewards.
I hadn’t planned on coming back other than to see family.
But the summer I turned eighteen, I was working with my dad.
We’d been building an extension at Mr. Williamson’s place, and I was halfway up a ladder when fire erupted across my shoulder.
I yelped and nearly fell, but when I reached the ground, I wrenched off my T-shirt, convinced I’d been stung by a swarm of wasps.
Instead, red-and-orange flames were embedded into my skin and curling over the top of my arm and shoulder, along with scales on the outer edges of the flames.
My thoughts scrambled. It had to be a prank from my shifter friends. They’d nicknamed me Flames after an incident in high school when I’d set curtains alight.
I gulped as Dad walked over. He placed a hand on my other shoulder and congratulated me. “It doesn’t happen to every shifter, but that tattoo is your mate mark. Someone is out there waiting for you, Son.”
He said it so casually, as though he was commenting on the weather.
But my life had just tilted to one side and turned upside down.
I didn’t want a mate, not yet. I had to finish college and start a career.
The big wide world was waiting for me, and that didn’t include being tied to a person I’d never met.
But my dragon was excited. We have a mate. He purred and blew smoke that made my tummy ache.
“They can wait a lot longer. I have a life to live, and I’m going back to college in the fall.”
We’d argued about it, my dragon and I. He insisted we stayed here. I disagreed. And that led to him shifting, not in the woods, but in town where anyone could have seen him. His scales glittered under the hot summer sun, and I was terrified we’d be discovered and tried to rein him in.
In the end, we reached an agreement. I returned to college after getting assurances from my folks and the shifter community that if a stranger turned up with a flaming scaly tattoo, they’d let me know.
It’d be hard to miss a guy with flames on his shoulder in a small town.
I was a little worried my family might be so enthusiastic they’d lock the guy up but decided it was worth the risk to get a life of my own.
I finished my degree in design, but my dragon was agitated, saying we had to head home. He did a partial shift while I was driving, and I had to explain to a human neighbor I was going to a costume party when a scaly tail draped out the window and curled onto the roof.
We can’t leave. Not again. He might come while we’re gone.
My dragon wouldn’t hear another word on the subject, so I’d taken a gap year and worked with Dad. My beast agreed to the bargain, but one year became two, then three, and finally eight. He got agitated whenever I tried to bring it up, until I realized we weren’t leaving.
But all the waiting might have been for nothing. My mate could be studying penguins in the Antarctic and didn’t believe in fate. After all these years, he might have had the tat removed.
No way would he do that. The bond wouldn’t let him.
My dragon didn’t know that for sure, and while my beast sensed the connection to this person, I felt nothing.
I do know. He was convinced we’d find him.
The café appeared, and there were cars parked in front.
It was Friday night, so it wasn’t surprising no one wanted to cook.
After finding a parking space, I peered through the window.
There was an empty table at the back. Great.
I hoped I could eat in peace without people waiting for my table while glaring at my back.
I pulled open the door and nodded at the familiar faces. But just like the day the tattoo appeared, the world somersaulted and something slammed into my chest. I couldn’t get air into my lungs, and heat erupted under my skin.
Mate!
I grabbed a chair to keep myself upright as my heart thumped hard enough to break my ribs.
“You okay?” The human who was occupying the chair half rose and took my arm.
“Yeah. Low blood sugar,” I managed to get out.
I staggered to the empty table and collapsed in the chair while my beast clawed at my insides, demanding I find our mate. I picked up the laminated menu and peered over the top at the café clientele. The scent hit me again, cutting out the aromas of coffee and brisket and gravy.
It was so clean and new, but it was already fading.
“Dray, what’s wrong?” Arthur, the human café owner, appeared at my elbow. He was rugged up in a thick jacket and scarf because he ran colder than the rest of us and customers complained if he turned up the thermostat.
“Something just happened.”
He frowned and poked his head in the kitchen. “All good in there.”
I was trying to catch my breath while my beast demanded I find our mate.
“Someone was here.” I gripped the menu like my life depended on it. “Just before I came in.”
“It’s Friday. The place is crowded.”
“Someone new to town, I think.”
Arthur’s face brightened. “Oh yes. June’s nephew. Nice guy. She left him the house.”
June Bartholomew. I’d done some work for her last year, and I was sorry when I heard she’d died.
Her nephew was my mate.
We waited eight years, and you missed him.
I know where he lives.
I caught the eye of my cousin, Garrett, across the room, and he headed over.
“What’s up? You look like you’re about to pass out.”
I beckoned him closer and hid our heads behind the menu as though we were kids sharing a secret in a 1950s diner.
“Dragon trouble?” he whispered.
The family had witnessed me and my beast at loggerheads in the years since the tattoo appeared.
“He’s here, or was. My mate.”
“Damn.” Heads swirled, and I hissed at him to be quiet. “Did anyone see his tattoo?”
In this spring weather, I suspected the guy was wearing a sweater.
Oh shoot. There had been a flaw in my college plan. How would my family have spied the tattoo if my mate arrived in winter?
What if he was here years ago and we didn’t know?
He’s here now.
“There’s something else. His scent tells me he’s no dragon shifter.”
Garret shrugged. “That’s no biggie.”
“He’s human.”
There’d be no instant bonding. We wouldn’t meet and mark one another and then spend a week in a love-making frenzy where we claimed one another over and over. We’d have to do it the slow, human way.
“You need a plan.” My cousin was full of great ideas.
But I’d had a plan for eight years. We’d meet, mate, and afterward, I’d have the freedom I’d been denied.
But now I needed a different approach.
I placed a hand over my tattoo, enjoying the warmth. Now I sensed the bond my dragon had when it first appeared, and I was as anxious as he was to meet our fated mate.
Arthur brought me my regular order to go.
He must have sensed I was in no state to stay and eat.
I drove past June Bartholomew’s house and noted a light on the second floor.
My beast was pestering me to go and knock on the door.
But I had to date and court my mate before explaining we were destined for one another.
What if he didn’t fall for me? What then?
I rested my head on the steering wheel, wanting to stay but having no legit “human” reason for stalking the town’s newest resident. After waiting eight years, I couldn’t mess this up. But first, I had to make sure he had the tattoo.
He does and at least it isn’t on his butt.
That would be awkward.