Chapter 4
Jaceon
My dragon was high in the sky. I spotted her standing there waving, and then I flew down. I shifted into my human form before I hit the ground. I shook my head at the feel of the solid ground beneath me.
“Jaceon, for a dragon, you sure do like your dramatics.” She smiled as she walked over to me.
I tilted my head. I couldn't believe that she wasn't afraid of me. She was an older woman. She should have been running away, terrified, but Gladys had never done that.
I walked over and handed her the gold watch I had been clenching. She sighed when she saw it.
“Did he have a family?” I asked.
She nodded her head. “Yes. He had a wife and a son.”
“How on earth did he end up in the mountains?”
She sighed and looked down at the watch.
“He watched some videos online about Ashwagandha and decided to come out here and reconnect with himself in the woods. Didn’t make it back.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I hated the fact that I felt a way about these things, but I would be a liar to say that they didn't affect me.
That man had a family, a whole life to live, and it had been taken away because he wanted to do what?
Better himself? Maybe heal some trauma? And the mountain had stolen any chance of a better tomorrow.
I blinked my eyes and tried to push the thoughts away.
She looked up at me and smiled.
“So, tell me, Jaceon. Are you eating enough? You look smaller than the last time I saw you.”
I grumbled a little bit. I was a dragon, not some human man who needed small talk. But that had never stopped Gladys. She had always treated me kindly. I wasn't mad at her about it, but I still hadn't adjusted.
“I’m fine,” I said. It came out gruffer than I intended, but she acted like she hadn't noticed.
“Mm-hmm. I told you, you can stop by and have dinner with me anytime.”
I had no intentions of taking her up on that offer, but I still appreciated the invitation.
“Walk with me,” she said as we walked over to her truck.
“Jaceon, I know you have been up in that mountain now for what, one or two years? You don’t get lonely up there by yourself?”
“No. The hoard keeps me company.”
She sighed and put her hands on her hips.
“I understand this whole broody dragon thing, but you gotta get out here with the living. Nothing good comes from sitting with those ghosts all the time.”
I looked at her.
“No, I'm serious, Jaceon. Shadow Wolf Creek is a damn good place. You should come to town sometimes. The shifters are always doing something. There are even these two guys. The gossip is that they are Santa and Krampus. They run a farm. There are festivals.”
I scoffed. These things didn't interest me.
“You might even find a mate,” she said.
I didn't feel anything when she said the word mate.
Gladys was familiar with the shifters. She knew wolves and bears and apparently monsters, and, yes, dragons had mates.
But what Gladys didn't know was that I wasn't from a regular clan.
I was an enforcer. I came from a world that thrived on pain, and I had more than a little blood on my hands. I wasn't meant to be a family man.
I lived on the mountain alone, and maybe some part of me was trying to atone for my pain.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a tin.
“Here, I made you these.”
I opened it. It was packed with cookies. They were golden brown and shaped like little coins.
“What are these?”
“Tokens.” She smiled. “I got the mold from a leprechaun baking set. I want you to have a happy hoard, Jaceon. Not just this sad business.”
I looked at the cookies and chuckled.
“Are you going to ride with me this time?”
I shook my head no.
“Alright then. I’ll see you next time.”
She got in her truck and shut the door.
I turned to walk away.
“Jaceon.”
She called out. I turned around.
“I forgot. I made this for you.”
I walked back toward her to see what she was holding out the window. It looked like a thick blanket. I held it up.
She was smiling proudly.
“It's a sweater, but I didn't know how to tailor it for your wings, so I guess you can just wrap it around you.”
I looked at the blanket and then back at her. She confused me. Why was she so insistent on trying to do these nice things for me even though I tried my best to keep her at a distance?
I squinted at it.
“I’m a dragon. I don’t get cold.”
She waved me off.
“You never know. Those caves are drafty.”
I watched as she walked back to her pickup and climbed in. It started with a loud grumble. She hit the gas and tore off down the road. She was seventy years old and drove like a bat out of hell.
I shifted into my dragon and took to the sky, following from above. One claw clutching a tin of cookies and a lumpy sweater against my chest. This was the damnedest thing. How was I supposed to fly and hold trinkets?
Gladys didn’t know it, but I always followed her to the drop-off points. I needed to make sure that she made it there okay. She was full of grit and strong as hell, and as much as I hated to admit it, she was important to me.
I had known Gladys for two years. She was the only person that I knew in Shadow Wolf Creek.
When I had first gotten to the mountain, I had been miserable and in pain, struggling with the fact that I had been kicked out of my clan.
I had been flying around when I saw the thick gray scarf snagged on a branch.
It had a name stitched on the inside of it and an address tag, and I don’t know what came over me, but I felt the immediate need to take it back there.
I had gone to the little house and knocked on the door.
I didn’t have a plan or any idea of what I was going to say, but as soon as she opened the door and saw what I was holding, she dropped to her knees.
I had helped her up, and she wrapped her arms around me, and then she told me how her husband and son had died in those mountains.
After we talked for a while, she told me that it would be helpful if other families could have that closure too, and that's how our partnership started.
I took to the sky and flew around looking for things.
And Gladys would take it to the rangers, and they would give her the information.
Our mission was to bring closure to the grieving families, and the stuff we couldn't find the families for became my hoard.
When I was living with Valentino as his enforcer, my hoard had been bodies.
Here it was the same thing, I guess. They just weren't killed by me.
Gladys pulled into a parking lot. I dropped to the ground and shifted.
I watched as Gladys cradled the watch. She had put it in a little case.
I knew it had his name tag on it. If it had debris, she had cleaned it.
She wanted to bring closure, not more grief.
She stood on the porch and dropped her head.
I knew she was saying a prayer. Then she stood up and knocked on the door.
A boy shot out—couldn’t have been more than four.
Right behind him was a young woman with dark brown skin.
She was wearing a brown dress. There was a towel slung across her shoulders like she had been washing the dishes, and I felt it, a pit in the middle of my chest. She had been in there doing something mundane, and now we were here about to either bless or short-circuit her day.
She grabbed the little boy and ushered him back inside the house.
Gladys said something and handed her the box.
The woman lifted the lid. Her hand went across her mouth.
She dropped to her knees right there on the porch, clutching the watch to her chest.
I shifted and took off into the sky before she could scream.
I had enough of that in my dreams.
An hour later
I was walking back inside the cave. I walked inside and looked over at the hoard.
It was only a few things. A white banner with the word brIDE on it. I remembered that one. It had been all over the news. A last-minute camping trip. Bachelorette party. They hadn’t gotten the alerts about the temperatures dropping. By the time search and rescue got up there, it was too late.
In the corner was a teddy bear and a pink backpack.
I laid the sweater across it.
I walked over to the far wall and set the cookie tin down. I sat down on the ground and put my head in my hands.
That’s when the cramp hit.
I thought I’d pulled something on the flight back. Shifted wrong, maybe.
Then the heat rolled through me like wildfire, starting in my belly and spreading out until my skin felt tight. My dick was hard before I could think straight.
This wasn’t happening. I was on suppressants. Had been my whole life. The clan made sure of it—enforcers didn’t get ruts.
But another cramp almost brought me to my knees.
“Fuck,” I said as I balled my hands into tight fists. I tried to breathe through it, but it wasn't helping. My dick was swollen. I could feel it through my pants. I gritted my teeth and unbuttoned my pants. It was harder than it had ever been.
I wrapped my hand around myself and stroked it once. The pain that shot through me was blinding.
I threw myself against the cave wall. The impact jarred my bones. It healed in seconds.
I slid down the wall and sat on the cold stone floor, chest heaving. My claws pushed through my fingertips.
The dragon stirred.
Mate.
What in the hell was wrong with me? I knew there was no mate for me.
Enforcers were weapons, not husbands. The clan kept us sharp by keeping us alone, and I’d been fine with that. Attachments made you weak when you had a mate you hated shit to lose, and that made men hesitate.
The only thing I’d ever been good at was hurting people. I showed up when it was time to handle shit, and I never flinched.
“You say it like you are proud.”
My dragon said. I did my best to ignore him, but he was right.
So, fuck love. If the ones you shed blood for didn’t respect you, then no so-called mate ever would. So, I didn’t need a mate. I was going to just ignore this rut. That’s what I thought right before another wave hit.
My dick jerked, and my hips bucked. The muscles in my thighs cramped, and my stomach clenched.
When the wave passed, I was shaking.
I got to my feet.
The dragon pushed at me. It wanted out.
Maybe flying would help.
I walked to the mouth of the cave and jumped off the edge of the cliff, and the dragon burst through.
Then the sweet smell of musk slammed into me so hard I nearly dropped out of the sky.
MATE. I followed my nose, and then—
I dropped down low to the ground, scanning for her, and there, squatting behind a tree with her pants around her thighs, was a woman.
She had beautiful dark skin and braids woven into a bun. When she saw me, she pulled her pants up and ran.
Her foot caught a root, and she went tumbling down.
I snatched her before she hit the ground.