Chapter Seven
DOMINIC
I hadn’t meant to come this way. The back staircase led almost directly to the back door, to the outside where I could do something that didn’t involve shaking Ben Berstow until he lost his damn composure. But habit had been too strong and I found myself descending the main stairs to the hall.
“Dominic!” Josh was heading towards me, grinning widely, Dafydd and Rhys in his wake.
“You disappeared after breakfast,” Rhys said. “We thought you’d gone out.”
“I did,” I said.
“No, you know what I mean—out for the day. But you’re here.”
Yes, I was here. I leaned back against the wall and folded my arms, waiting to see what they wanted. Right now, I wasn't in the mood for company, and it had something to do with that dragon in the records room.
“So, anything worthwhile in this week’s Airbnb guests?” Dafydd asked, obviously assuming I’d spent the morning in the village.
“Like he’d tell us before he’s sussed out the hottest guy,” Josh said with a grin that faded as the moments passed and I said nothing.
My silence seemed to be unnerving them for some reason.
Usually, I was already halfway to the village before they caught up with me.
I'd have had some ridiculous idea, or found some entertainment, and they'd happily come along for the ride.
I didn't have it in me today. Not after yesterday. Because if I wasn’t allowed to act as the heir, what did that leave me?
I shoved off from the wall. “I’ll see you later,” I said, and it wasn’t only dismissal—it was also a reminder. Tonight. My dragon stirred, excited at the prospect, and I saw the same anticipation dawn on their faces.
The front door closed behind me, and I took a moment on the steps, breathing in the quiet. Looking down the driveway to the gates and wondering what would happen if I just walked through them and kept going. Didn’t look back.
I already knew, and that was why I was still here. Dragons needed to be around their own kind. And without the might of a family behind them, they were easy pickings for other dragons. Even if that hadn’t been a problem, I was going to lead this family one day. I couldn’t walk away from that.
I made my way around the side of the house, heading for the woods. I’d be unlikely to meet anyone there, unless it was Teddy hunting pine cones.
As I walked, I found myself casting a quick glance up at the window of the records room before I knew I was doing it. Ben Berstow probably had his nose buried deep in our family history once more, unaware of anything going on around him.
So I didn’t know why, each time I felt that itch under my skin, I was sure that he was somehow responsible.
* * *
Rhodri hadn’t returned by suppertime, which made the evening meal more relaxed than usual.
Relatively speaking, of course. It was still the same formality, just without the undertone of unease my father caused.
I wasn’t even sure why. He wasn’t physically violent.
It was more the way he used the power of his position to control everything.
To dampen the life in people around him, smothering them until their flame was at risk of going out.
I declined coffee and shoved my chair back. Dafydd and Rhys were instantly on their feet too, and Ben Berstow noticed. I could see his gaze tracking over them in turn, undoubtedly noting the eagerness they were unable to hide completely, and then his eyes reached me.
I raised a questioning eyebrow, and he gave the merest suggestion of a shrug and turned to talk to Phoebe again.
He’d been making conversation with those around him all mealtime, seemingly unaware that he was a stranger and not a particularly welcome one.
He probably wouldn’t notice the world ending around him.
Or he’d just think things were a little noisy.
I checked the front of the house before leading the way out of the back door, nodding to Glenys, Rhi and Toby, who were having their own meal in the kitchen.
Rhodri’s Aston Martin was still missing, and he never let anyone else drive it, so that was good to know.
Wherever he’d gone, none of the roads back to the house passed near where we were headed. The castle.
We’d been fighting the Gruffydds over it as long as anyone could remember.
Dragons had died contesting its ownership.
It wasn’t so much the castle, which was a broken down heap of crumbling stone, as the land it stood on.
It was ours, but the Gruffydds didn’t agree.
Human records backed us, but that meant nothing.
It was only after both families lost so many of their young dragons in the first world war that they agreed to a ceasefire. It was now neutral ground, and we both had the right to the airspace. Which was just as well, given how we were using it tonight.
I drew in a breath sharply enough to catch Josh’s attention, where he was walking beside me through wet grass up the hillside. He raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
That would explain Ben Berstow’s inexplicable arrival—he was searching back through our records looking for proof of ownership of the castle and its land.
Though why Rhodri would have trusted an outsider to do so…
Oh. The very fact he was an outsider would mean the Gruffs would see him as neutral.
They’d be more likely to trust anything he found.
I was glad to have solved the mystery of Berstow’s presence. It should have put the whole thing to rest, but something was still itching at the back of my brain, and I didn’t know why. Probably just thinking of that maddeningly impassive dragon was enough to do it.
I concentrated on the rough path to the castle, scarcely needing the light from my phone to guide me.
This place felt more like home than anywhere else I knew.
One of my first nights back here, I’d flown over it, and something about it had called to me.
I’d dropped out of the sky and perched on the crumbling masonry that was all that was left of an old tower.
I’d known then, somewhere reason couldn’t touch, that this place was ours.
But there was no way of explaining a feeling to a Gruff.
Anyway, I kept flying there. One night, Heath Gruffydd and one of his brothers dropped out of the clouds, necks snaking, teeth bared, and tried to force me down to the ground.
For a split second, warmth had blossomed in my belly as my fire built—and then I saw how they were moving. They could have finished me with their first dive, but they weren’t closing with me. This was warning, not execution.
So I didn’t flame, but I met them head on. The impact knocked the air out of me, sending me spiralling until I controlled it.
The next pass, I got one of them off balance and sent him dropping fast and hard.
They forced me down in the end, two against one. We hit the ground hard enough to jar through bone, and they shifted almost immediately. I followed, breath still rough in my chest, and it nearly turned into a fight on foot as well. They had no right to be there.
Neither did I, according to them.
I went back the next night. And the next. And each time, they were there, waiting for me. Our fights were still serious, still meant, but attacks were always pulled at the last possible instant. No fire, no bites, no real injuries.
Until the night I misjudged. I came in too fast and caught Heath’s foreleg with my claws.
He hit the ground and shifted, and I followed, already swearing.
“Fuck.” I dragged a hand through my hair. “That—”
I stopped. Couldn’t say I hadn’t meant it. I had. Just not—not that.
He’d shrugged as he held his hand to his steadily bleeding arm. And I knew he understood. That it could just as easily have been me. We were two of a kind in some ways, me and Heath.
That was when we declared a kind of truce, if arranging to fight on a more organised basis counted as a truce.
The Gruffydd family were known to be aggressive and swift to anger.
I wasn’t sure what my family’s reputation was.
All I knew was that those aerial battles had made me feel something.
I was doing something. I was in control, and the risk of it all, the fury that would rain down on us from both our families if they knew what we were doing…
That edge of danger we were playing with felt good.
Over time, Heath invited some more dragons, ones he could trust to keep this secret, and I recruited Dafydd and Rhys, and then a couple more.
And now there were ten of us, and we drew lots to see who would face one another.
We didn’t meet regularly, but every so often, either Heath or I would send a text, and we were on.
It had to be a cloudy night each time, to reduce the risk of discovery. The castle was about a mile from Dragon’s Ending, with enough trees between the two to screen any view from the house. The Gruffs' main house was three miles in the opposite direction.
As our numbers increased, meaning the fighting went on for longer, we’d taken to posting sentries to warn us if anyone else had decided to fly and was anywhere near.
We were cautious in our recklessness. No sounds, and definitely no flaming, which would not only be tough to explain away if someone came back burned, but would be visible for miles around in the dark sky.
Josh hissed out a breath as he heard what I did—dragon wings beating the sky. He scanned the darkness to try and see better, while I simply listened to the sounds, and counted six before Josh turned to me. “I think they’ve brought someone new.”
“Sounds like it,” I said, and glanced back over my dragons.
Josh, Rhys, Dafydd and Megan. All of them had leapt at the opportunity to be part of this, though sometimes I thought the fighting didn’t mean to them what it did to me.
I found a kind of freedom in it. For them, it was more like they wanted to be part of something, and it didn’t really matter what that something was.
That didn’t stop them fighting well, though.
I had nothing to be ashamed of in my choices.
“That cheeky bastard,” Dafydd muttered, and I looked up to see what he was glaring at in the fleeting moonlight. A big dragon was perched on top of the ruined tower, watching us. Like he owned the place.
That tower had puzzled me when I’d first come back.
In my memories, there’d been two towers, and the walls of the castle had been higher, less tumbledown.
I put it down to the passage of time and childhood memories making things seem bigger than they were, until Dafydd had found me staring at it one day.
“Your dad kind of lost it after, you know.” He didn’t say Mum’s name. No one ever did. “Came up here and took it out on a poor defenceless castle, until Dylan and the others managed to persuade him away. Or that’s what everyone says, anyway.”
I didn’t remember that. But then, I didn’t remember much of that time.
Those months were a blur of hushed voices, of people looking at me with soft faces in a way I hated, and the knowledge that nothing would ever be right again.
My father could probably have destroyed the house around me without me noticing. Maybe he did.
The beat of huge wings cut across the memory, and I looked up to find Heath had dropped off the tower and was circling, a shadowed creature big enough to feel like he blotted out the sky. Slow and deliberate, taunting me.
Fuck drawing lots—we both knew we were the only ones who ever offered a challenge. A real fight.
My dragon surged, and my fingers were clumsy with haste as I stripped out of my clothes. “Same rules as always,” I warned them all.
And then I was in the night sky, breathing deeply of the cold, damp air, wings outstretched. For once, nothing cramped them. There was nothing to restrain me.
Heath hit me mid-ascent. The impact sent breath juddering from my lungs as my wings fought for purchase, and I righted myself again.
He came at me again, faster this time. I banked, felt the rush of air as he missed me by inches, then turned into him, slamming shoulder to shoulder. Pain flared. It felt good. This was what I needed.
He clipped my wing and I dropped, heart kicking hard as the ground rushed up. I corrected at the last second, dragging myself back into the air on a bellow that I didn’t let out of my throat.
He’d forced me low, so I used it, came up underneath him, and this time when I hit him, he didn’t regain his balance cleanly.
He fell. Not far, but he didn’t have enough sky left to recover.
We landed hard, shifting almost in the same breath, both of us breathing like we’d run miles.
For a second, neither of us moved. Then Heath laughed, low and rough. “Better.”
Yeah, better. My shoulders felt loose for the first time all day, and my dragon settled, satisfied.
It didn’t last, though. By the time the others had taken their turns and we were returning to the house, that familiar tightness cramping my lungs had come back. It always did.