Chapter 13
Thirteen
Ella
It was too much. Everything was too much. After everything that had happened, for him to now push me away and say I didn’t need him to save me, something inside me snapped.
“Save me?” I repeated as Dirk limped back into the clearing wide-eyed and confused. “I wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t marked me.”
The words were cold and sharp, but I kept my voice controlled. Dirk Dvorak was not going to get the better of me again.
“Ella …”
“This is all your fault, Dirk,” I continued, pushing right past his protest, everything now bubbling to the surface. “I didn’t ask for any of it.”
“I know,” he said gently. “I know. Trust me, I …”
I scoffed. That was rich. “Trust you? Why should I? You haven’t given me a single reason to.
You’ve taken from me, stolen my freedom by putting these stupid marks on me, and now what?
You have regrets? You’ve decided this isn’t for you, that I’m not for you, and that you’re going to just push me away and leave? ”
Dirk stared back at me, impassive and unemotional. I had hit home. I must have. He must have sensed how broken I was, and now he was rejecting me, casting me aside.
Just like any other Elite when they were done with my kind.
“You don’t get to control me,” I told him, my anger at the entire situation spilling out like an avalanche of quiet cold. “Am I clear?”
“Ella. I don’t want to control you.”
“Then how do you explain these?” I hissed, grabbing at my side without lifting my shirt.
No way was I going to give him the satisfaction of seeing his mate marks on me at that moment.
“They look very much like you doing what you wanted to me. And now you’re realizing you don’t actually want the toy, so you’re trying to put it back.
Typical Elite behavior. You do what you want, take what you want from those weaker, and when you’re done, you just cast it aside.
You don’t care at all about the effects of your actions. ”
I cast the words at him, laced with my own insecurities, my own fears that he didn’t want me, not because he was bored but because he knew the truth. That I was broken, unworthy of being the Ice Prince’s mate. To Dirk, the Ice Princess likely had to be someone whole. Someone pure.
Something ugly and dark flickered through Dirk’s eyes as he stared at me, waiting for my icy tirade to die down.
Probably him wishing he’d never come running when I cried out.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Despite the constant reminder you decided to inflict on me, I don’t plan on forcing you to keep me around. You don’t have to worry about that.”
I didn’t want to keep him around, but for once, I wanted it to be my choice. Not his.
“Ella.”
“No,” I said, chopping at the air with my hand. “Just no. You and your dragon can leave, like you were trying to do all along. It seems to be the theme for dragons lately anyway.”
Dirk frowned at me, but he didn’t leave. Why wouldn’t he just go and spare us both? Did I have to be even meaner to him?
“What’s that supposed to mean? Who else left you?”
I looked away, cursing silently. The last thing I had any desire to do was tell Dirk the most recent development of mine. I had enough failures to deal with.
He cleared his throat when I declined to answer. “Ella, I’m sorry about what my dragon did,” he said, speaking slowly while choosing his words carefully. “But you have to know that the marks wouldn’t appear unless your dragon felt the same.”
Eyes and cheeks burning for completely opposite reasons, I glared at him. “Well, you took her from me too, so I can’t yell at her for that. You get the top prize instead.”
In an instant, everything about Dirk changed. His posture relaxed, and his eyes dimmed slightly in the darkness.
“I took your dragon from you?” he asked softly with enough emotion to almost convince me he was concerned. Perhaps that he even cared.
That couldn’t be, though. Elites like him didn’t care about Clippys like me.
Decades of being stalked by Hunters and multiple horrific experiences at the hands of the Elite could not be undone by a few weeks of him and his brother being nice.
The world just didn’t work that way, no matter what they pretended. Right?
Anna seemed convinced they weren’t pretending. That Caz wasn’t, at least. Could the same be said about Dirk? I pushed that thought aside.
“Are you referring to the fact you haven’t been able to shift again?” Dirk asked. “I didn’t do anything to take your dragon away. I don’t think that’s possible.”
He seemed thoroughly worried about me and my claim. Almost like he did care. Or perhaps he was a very good actor.
But why would he bother with acting? He could just leave if that’s what he truly wanted to do, yet he’s still here.
I ground out that thought as well, stomping flat any spark of hope or idea that things between us could go differently. They wouldn’t. And I couldn’t afford to give any life to the idea that they might. I couldn’t let myself be hurt again.
Yet despite my efforts, the idea that maybe he did care managed to worm itself through a crack in my walls I didn’t plug in time and take root. Guiding me to answer. To tell him the truth and expose yet another broken part of me.
“My dragon disappeared while I was flying,” I said, the words short and tight as I waited for him to laugh.
Dirk grunted, shaking his head. “I know. I was there. It’s common for the first shift not to be solid. It can take days or even a few weeks to hold the shift without conscious effort. It’s why all young dragons get it drilled into them to stay on the ground until then.”
I drew up tight at the reminder of a life I didn’t get to have. “Clippys don’t get that sort of education.”
“Sorry,” Dirk said, shaking his head again. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just thought it was … I guess, universal knowledge?”
“When you’re never going to have a dragon, people stop telling you things,” I explained. “And you stop listening anyway. It only makes it hurt worse to know what’s been denied to you.”
Dirk nodded slowly, absorbing that information. “That makes sense. If it’s worth anything, I’m sorry you had to go through that. But you’re not telling me everything. Are you?”
I made a face. Was I that easy to read?
“Why would I? You’re not exactly in my good books.”
“I am well aware of that fact,” he said, perhaps a gentle rebuke of the way I’d been speaking to him. “And I don’t blame you for it one bit. It’s probably where you should keep me.”
Dirk thought it better for me if I kept him at arm’s length? Why would that be the case?
Could he have been meaning to leave … for my sake? Not his?
Too many thoughts. Too many emotions. What did I do? Trust him, that maybe he wanted to help me right now? Or call him out for trying to pretend, to get on my good side for whatever reason he might have?
“It hasn’t come back,” I heard myself say, something inside me making that decision without conscious effort. “At all. It’s quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“Yes,” I said, desperate to know if this was normal too. “I mean it left completely. My head is empty. Like it’s ignoring me.”
Dirk scratched at his chin. He seemed utterly lost. “So you mean, like, before it woke up?”
“No. This is different. Back then, I knew I had a dragon. It was just … quiet. It didn’t do anything.
But it was there. Like hearing someone breathing through a thick wall and nothing more.
” I tossed my hands in the air. “It’s hard to describe to someone who’s never experienced it.
But now? Now it’s like I have nothing at all.
A solid wall, with nobody on the other side. Pure silence.”
Dirk nodded slowly, listening intently and without judgment.
“I assume this is what it’s like to be human.” I licked my lips and asked him my biggest fear. “Am I human now?”
“No,” he said immediately, his eyes bursting back to light as his dragon rose to near the surface once more, glowing silver-blue in the night. “You are definitely not human.”
“Are you sure?” I had to know. To be sure. It would destroy me to have been suddenly granted something I desired so badly, only to have it snatched away.
“I’m positive,” he ground out, his voice thick and heavy.
“I can smell you. Your mate scent is there. With every breath I take, it’s a part of me.
Irresistible. My dragon knows who you are.
It’s … well, I don’t need to go into detail about that.
You don’t need to hear it. Just know that your dragon is in there. ”
My throat dried up at the sudden intensity. He might not have spoken his thoughts, but the tone of his voice had left no surprise. His dragon still wanted me.
I suddenly was drawn back to the sight of Dirk on the landing pad. Naked. Hard. Staring right at me like the only thing he wanted to do was lift me onto the counter and part my legs.
Stop it. It doesn’t matter if he wants to fuck you. It’s not going to happen.
“Also, you healed from the wound. If you were human, you’d still be in bed. Just another bit of proof. Perhaps one more palatable.”
Dirk definitely knew I wasn’t interested in the sexual desires he must be feeling. After all, with my dragon being silent, I felt no pull to him. No screaming desire to be his, as Anna had described it to Milly and me one night.
“So why can’t I hear her or even sense her?”
“Maybe … because you don’t want to?” he suggested.
I shook my head, instantly dismissing the notion.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be a Clippy, Dirk.
After so long without a dragon, to have suffered so needlessly when it could have just come to me then.
No, I would never not want to have it. I could help so many others if I had the strength to. ”
“Maybe it’s not a conscious decision?” He shrugged, tossing his head to one side as he did.
I gestured at him to explain more while definitely not watching the long strands of slivery-blond hair settle back into place around the base of his skull.
“You’re pretty angry. At me. And if you’re honest, probably more than a little scared after what happened. Which is very normal,” he said, pushing on hurriedly. “So maybe you’re blocking out your dragon a bit as a result? The last time you shifted it was … traumatic.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Any suggestions?”
Dirk nodded slowly. “Maybe confronting it will help.”
“Does trying to shift out here not count?”
“What I mean is, maybe you should go back to where you crashed. To where it left you. Did anything happen there, perhaps? I don’t know, I was unconscious, so I’m not much help.”
It wasn’t a terrible idea. In fact, the more I thought it through, the better it seemed.
“If you want, I could take you there,” Dirk said, interrupting my thoughts with an awkward offer. “Tomorrow maybe. Once I’ve had another day to recover better.”
“No,” I said, automatically rejecting the idea. The last thing I wanted was to have the pity of an Elite while I was revisiting trauma caused by a different Elite. “I’ll ask Anna. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you even more.”