6. Corin
6
Corin
He had almost kissed her.
Even now, he couldn’t blink without seeing the stars that had filled her eyes as she stared up at him. Her lips parted and soft. An invitation in mile-high letters.
He shifted into dragon form and chased the dying sunlight over the water, as though putting distance between himself and Maya would help.
Her words echoed in his mind, mocking and tempting.
Try to behave?
He’d tried to behave since the first time he set eyes on her, god damn it. Him trying to behave had gotten them both into this hell of a situation.
One more unwary moment, and he would have had her in his arms.
And from there, it would be all too small a step to taking everything he wanted. Bestowing upon her all the jewels that were already hers in his heart; decorating her, worshipping her, and claiming her as his true mate.
Shadows burned along his dragon’s outstretched wings. He hissed a curse and swung higher over the cove.
He should not have even thought of kissing her. He should have kept his focus where it belonged: on protecting her.
She was frightened. She’d done a good job playing it off, but the flashes of vulnerability he’d glimpsed during their conversation dug deep into his heart and stuck there. She was frightened, and that meant he was failing her.
His dragon hissed, chasing away the thought before it could cut as deeply as her expression had. He held onto it.
His only purpose was to protect her. If he couldn’t do that, what was the point of any of this? If she was hurt because of him—
His dragon hissed, and an image flared in his mind: Maya, as he pulled away from kissing her and away from the brink of disaster. Her eyes had widened; her mouth, already slightly open, had dropped, then pinched tight…
And she’d hidden the pain and disappointment so quickly it needed his dragon to remind him of it.
He was already hurting her. A different sort of pain to the one he’d sworn to keep her safe from—but pain, nonetheless.
He gritted his teeth.
He’d hurt her—and if he followed the clues to find the thief who’d broken into his family vault, he would hurt her more.
She had accused his people, and he accepted there might be a mole within his organization. But there was another option. One she had shied away from acknowledging as though the thought burned her.
Another dragon who would have an interest in Maya Flores, and her child.
Tomás’s father.
But that was a subject they had never spoken about. And he might be an asshole, but he wasn’t an idiot. Whoever Tomás’s father was, he’d abandoned Maya and the child both. Bringing him up would hurt her.
And he didn’t want to see her in pain ever again.
Far below, childish voices rose in excitement. He might not have noticed except that the voices were joined by the sizzle of telepathic shouts.
* There! See! I told you!*
*Another dragon, huh?*
The second voice was adult—male, calm, and deliberately sent up into the clouds for Corin to hear. He looked down.
The man had dark tousled hair and sun-burnished skin from which his eyes shone unexpectedly bright blue. There were two children walking with him, a boy who was bouncing with excitement and a younger girl.
The man’s voice was patient, with a hint of warning for the strange dragon flying overhead. * Don’t worry. Pol wouldn’t have let him into the town if he was going to cause trouble like the last one.*
* I’m not scared! We’re gonna get them this time!*
The boy leaped in the air. The girl followed suit, but must have got too excited, and shifted mid-jump. She would have landed on the concrete in her seal form, but the man walking with them scooped her out of the air in time.
The mention of the other dragon made Corin frown.
Long before Maya had made this town her home, Corin had reason to do business in Hideaway Cove. He knew of the town as a sanctuary for shifters, and had purchased property here in case that sanctuary might become useful to one of his own people. Through a number of shell companies, of course, lest other dragon clans catch on and try to do the same.
Like Montfort had. And failed, spectacularly.
And now he had another reason to keep his foothold in this town: to protect Maya. He located the house he was looking for from the air and landed in the front drive.
Dissatisfaction itched beneath his scales even after he shifted back into human form. Maya’s little annex was chaotic perfection; his own property was perfectly maintained, modernized, luxuriously styled sterility.
Tomorrow, that would change. He had people coming to deal with everything the place needed to become livable, rather than a catalog feature. They would be there in the morning.
For now, he was alone.
With his thoughts, his dragon, and the memory of the pain in Maya’s eyes.
Bitterness rose in his throat. He had never asked her about Tomás’s father. When he’d first met, she was already pregnant, and he had used that as another reason not to pursue her: she was already some other man’s beloved. He had stumbled into the middle of a love story already well underway. His dragon had been distraught—the greatest treasure of his life, stolen before he even knew who she was.
Not stolen. The woman who ought to have been his mate had chosen someone else, and there was no stealing her back.
By the time he figured out the truth, it was too late.
And it wouldn’t have changed anything, anyway. His power was still too dangerous.
He ate a meal he couldn’t have described if threatened at gunpoint, and showered, memories still plucking at his mind.
I wasn’t ready then.
Was he ready now?
She should be yours! Tell her! His dragon’s frustration made his eye twitch. In the bathroom mirror, gleaming oil-shadows rolled over his irises. He let out a slow breath. Not a snarl. Barely even a sneer. A slow, long, in-control breath.
We both know I cannot do that.
His dragon didn’t speak, but the memories it spat at him spoke for it: Maya’s shock as he pulled away. The blossoming hope he hadn’t seen on her face until it shattered.
And older memories. Pieced together as though his dragon had been working on this argument a long time. He hadn’t known what Maya looked like when she was afraid until that fateful day she brought Tomás to the office and the boy stole his watch. She held herself in such clipped control, he hadn’t recognized the signs for what they were until he’d followed her to Hideaway Cove, meaning to protect her, and all her armor had crumbled around her.
She had been scared before, and he hadn’t seen it. Moments of silence quickly filled when her colleagues asked about her pregnancy or her relationship. A smile too wide and too laughing when she talked about her little baby starting to crawl, to babble, to do the hundred other things babies did. He’d been too busy nursing his own grief that he wasn’t the child’s other parent experiencing those things with her, and now he understood all too well what her forced laughter had been hiding. A child who transformed into a creature that shouldn’t exist; a magic that turned her world to splinters around her.
He had never protected her. He had so entirely failed at protecting her that at the very moment he could have saved her, when her child stole the first piece of his hoard from beneath Corin’s very eyes, she’d instead run from him.
Why was he here? Why did he think he could help now, when he never had before?
He could not even conquer his own power.
He splashed water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. His dragon stared back. Possessive. Relentless.
And with a magic that could destroy his mate’s life even more than he had already.
His heart had almost stopped when Maya mentioned his ‘shadowy’ magic. There was no way she could know the truth about it. And if he had it his way, she never would.
Duskfire. That was what it was called, the shadows she had seen without knowing their danger. And why he had never dared claim her.
He was always in control of it. Except when it came to Maya.
He gripped the edges of the sink, concentrating.
The duskfire was his magic. Since his first shift, he had trained himself to bring it under his full control. He was head of the Blackburn clan; the duskfire was the symbol of his power and authority. It spread from his shoulders in shadowy wings outlined with glimmering shards of lightning. He used it as Blackburns always did: to control his clan. To stop his cousins from fucking things up worse than they inevitably had already by the time he caught up with them. To make it clear to other dragons that he would not let any threat to him or his people stand unpunished.
His reflection darkened as his wings unfurled like storm clouds behind him. They were a ghostly, demonic version of his dragon’s wings, but made of pure magic. Every Blackburn had duskfire magic, but his was the most powerful. The most dangerous.
If he could not control it, he could never help Maya.
His dragon nudged at him, trying to tell him that they would never hurt her. But all his magic did was hurt. It was what it was made for.
What he was made for.
With his wings unfurled, he closed his eyes and thought of Maya. His mate. The woman who’d lit his life with a light that hurt to look at and know he couldn’t touch.
Who’d leaned into his touch, her lips open to kiss him.
He wanted more than a kiss. He wanted all of her, and he wanted her to be his . He wanted to see her in the heart of his hoard—gold reflected in her dark eyes and looped around her body as he claimed her completely.
Magic seared through the air all around him. His vision shook. Just visible in the mirror, the bathroom walls began to splinter and crumble.
A mirthless grin twisted his face. However sterile this house was now, it must once have been old, and broken. The duskfire revealed all. For buildings, it returned them to their previous, damaged state.
For people, it called up old injuries.
Stop , he commanded his magic, as the memory of Maya’s starry eyes hummed against his skin. His mind leaped forward, winding chains of glittering diamonds around his mate’s arms and legs, a crown of gold and ruby on her head. The shadows around him deepened. He held onto the memory and flexed his grasp on his magic, willing it to obey him. If he could not stop his magic from burning everything just from thinking about her, then she would never be safe with him.
She was his mate . He focused on that. His—if not to claim, then to dedicate his life to protecting.
Not claimed. Not his by ancient ritual, bound to him forever. No jewels. No gold.
Only the two of them.
The edges of his wings frayed. Then, slowly, inch by inch, they peeled back inside him.
The duskfire’s damage was done. The walls behind him were scratched and splintered, and the air smelled of old smoke. All the hurts this house had ever sustained, everything that had been plastered and painted over, broken pieces replaced and long forgotten—they were all laid bare. A reminder of what he risked.
He let out a shuddering breath.
Maya would never be his. But perhaps he could still protect her.
The first of the tradesmen’s trucks began to arrive before breakfast the next morning. The sight of them strengthened his resolve. With the house refitted to his liking, it would feel more like his own lair.
He exchanged a few words with the foreman and his good mood improved further as another van appeared at the end of the road. Avi, his personal chef.
* Liaise with the builders about what you need in the kitchen.*
* Builders? You got it, boss, but…* Avi’s psychic voice was uncertain. * This place, it’s…*
* Everyone’s a shifter here. You’ll blend right in.*
Corin chuckled as the chef’s surprise echoed in his mind. Avi was a raccoon shifter. Back in the city, he didn’t have many opportunities to spend time in his animal form outdoors. At least, not without risking being chased by animal services or kids trying to take videos of the ‘cute trash panda’. Ordinarily, a raccoon wouldn’t be anything unusual even in the city, but Avi had a habit of keeping his phone on him at all times even in animal form. He was, as he’d discovered to his chagrin, prime meme material.
Here in Hideaway he would be able to relax.
Hopefully that would make up for Corin dragging him halfway across the state on less than an hour’s notice.
The renovators were all shifters, as well. Most of his contractors were anyway, but he’d been careful when selecting staff for this job. Hideaway was a sanctuary for their kind, and although Corin now considered himself to be on amicable terms with Apollo and Felicity—despite their threats, they had not, after all, exiled him from the town—it was politic not to endanger the town’s safety by bringing in human strangers.
His dragon muttered wordlessly. Corin checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Breakfast had passed without him noticing. No need to distract Avi from his work—Corin ate a meal bar and followed his dragon’s increasingly urgent directions down to the waterfront.
Hideaway Cove glittered like a jewel in the morning light. Corin was no longer surprised that Apollo had claimed it for his unusual hoard. And the idea that he was strolling around inside another dragon’s hoard made his own dragon feel sufficiently smug that he could almost forget he was here on sufferance.
All he had to do to avoid being magically thrown out of town was not hurt Maya any more than he already had.
His chest panged. All I have to do is achieve the impossible.