Chapter Twenty-four
DOMINIC
Branches whipped wetly against my face as I shoved through the wood, leaves slick beneath my boots and my clothes heavy with rain. The words echoed in my brain, over and over. Emotional instability. Assessment ongoing.
I reached the stone wall at the edge of the wood and vaulted it, breath tearing raggedly through my chest. My dragon wanted out.
He was close beneath my skin in the ugly, restless way I hadn’t felt in years.
We’d finally found a balance, and now he didn’t come out without my agreement.
But right now, I wasn’t sure I could stop him. Wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I stumbled slightly in the darkness and swore viciously. Rainwater dripped cold from my hair into my eyes, and somewhere far behind me, Dragon’s Ending sat hidden among the trees.
I couldn’t bear the thought of it. That room. Those records. Those fucking reports.
Progress inconsistent. Assessment ongoing.
I doubled forward, hands braced against my knees as nausea rolled violently through me again.
The memories came back in broken flashes.
The farmhouse kitchen warm with baking bread.
Mrs Vaughan talking quietly to me late at night when I’d cried myself sick after another nightmare.
Mr Vaughan sitting silently at the scarred wooden table every Sunday evening writing emails.
Only, they hadn’t been emails. They’d been reports.
Something twisted viciously in my chest.
I straightened abruptly and stripped my clothes off with shaking hands. The shift hit hard, dragon form tearing through me almost painfully.
I flung myself into the sky, and I flew.
Nothing like last night with Ben laughing beside me beneath the moon.
This was brute force and fury, each beat of my wings jarring through my body hard enough to hurt.
I flew too low through the valley, too fast over black water and rain-dark trees, close enough that branches whipped beneath me.
Part of me wanted to keep going, to follow the river until I reached the sea. To disappear into the dark and never come back.
Then somewhere behind me came the unmistakable beat of another dragon’s wings.
BEN
It hadn’t taken me long to realise I didn’t have a clue where Dominic had gone. The only thing I was sure of was that he wouldn’t have stayed in the house.
I went up to the castle, wind driving the cold rain into my face. I even called his name, however futile I knew it to be. He could have headed across the fields, the open hillside, or even the woods—I had no idea. I just knew I couldn’t leave him alone, that I had to try to find him.
What kind of family did that to a grieving child?
Yeah, it took dragonets years to learn how to balance the two parts of themselves and to exert full control, and it sounded as if the impact of Dominic’s loss had undone whatever learning he’d done.
But the answer was to teach him again, simply keeping a fire extinguisher handy in case of accidents.
Not to declare him out of control, as if he were a threat to his own family, and send him away.
A seven-year-old boy who’d just lost his mother.
I dashed a hand across my eyes, wiping away the rain so I could see better in the beam of light from my phone.
I didn’t know how to find him. Perhaps if I shifted, my dragon’s keen senses would be able to scent him, or hear him.
And suddenly I knew—if Dominic were anywhere out here, he’d have shifted already.
His dragon was always swift to show, much more so than any other dragon I’d known. I’d noticed that during our first days together, but hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Now, maybe it made sense. Or maybe I was judging him just like his fucking family had.
I shoved those thoughts aside and headed down the hill to shift. Better to do so somewhere that wasn’t contested ground. The last thing either of us needed tonight was me accidentally starting an inter-family incident with the Gruffydds.
I found him within minutes of lifting into the sky, although it took me a moment to be sure the dark figure in the wet night really was Dominic.
There was nothing of the sleek, savage joy of flight he usually had.
This dragon looked as if he were lumbering through the air, each beat of his wings full of effort.
I swooped in beside him carefully, giving him enough space to turn away if he didn’t want me there, and within a minute, he headed down to the ground. As if my being there had given him permission to give up on something that looked actually painful.
We landed badly on a rough stretch of hillside above the river, wet grass flattening beneath us as we shifted back in drifting rain.
When my human eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw Dominic was sitting hunched forward a few feet away, forearms braced on his knees, breathing hard. I didn’t move closer immediately. His body language seemed designed to repel.
Eventually, quietly, I said, “I read it.”
His laugh was short and ugly. “Congratulations.”
“Dominic—”
“It doesn’t change anything.” He said it quickly, harshly, as though he needed the words out before I could contradict him. “It’s not like I didn’t know why I was sent away.”
But his hands were shaking.
And finally I understood why Dominic touched me so much. Why he gravitated constantly towards warmth and contact and closeness like he was terrified it might vanish if he let go for even a second. He’d spent eleven years being observed instead of held.
“For what it’s worth, your family fucking sucks,” I told him, sitting down close beside him, leaning in until our shoulders and arms were pressed together.
He huffed a wreck of a laugh. “I mean, yeah, but…” he shrugged. “They weren’t wrong. I couldn’t control my dragon. I was a mess.”
I stroked wet hair back from his face. “Dominic, you were a child. You’d just lost your mum. Of course you were a mess. They were supposed to help you through it, not send you away.”
He buried his face in his arms, and I put my arms around him and pulled him in against me.
God knew how long we sat there like that. I said nothing further, because I honestly didn’t know what to say, and Dominic wasn’t talking.
I couldn’t understand this family. Not a bit.
Evelyn had told me Rhodri had defied his entire family to marry Mari, so I didn’t want to imagine what kind of a state he must have been in after her death.
But to send their son away? No matter how many times I tried to wrap my mind around it, I couldn’t.
Maybe, had it been just for a few weeks, I’d have put it down to Rhodri losing his mind through grief, but to keep him away for eleven years? It was unfathomable.
And the boy who’d been so appallingly treated didn’t give a sign of it normally. He swaggered through life as if nothing could touch him. He was a million miles away from the man I was now sitting next to, tucked up into himself and shivering.
As he said, he’d known the facts, but there was all the difference in the world between knowing and seeing it laid out like that.
Not a hint of nuance or understanding. Just judgement, masquerading as record keeping.
Future generations would inherit that judgement as if it were fact.
Except the real shame wasn’t Dominic’s—it was the people who’d done this to a devastated child.
The rain was still coming down and it was freezing out here, but I didn’t want to suggest going back to the house—Rhodri’s house—and there was nowhere else for us to go.
Dominic stayed curled forward, rain dripping steadily from his hair. Then suddenly he swore softly under his breath.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re shivering.”
I opened my mouth to deny it just as my teeth chattered, which rather ruined the effect.
Dominic huffed what might almost have been a laugh and pushed himself upright with visible effort. “Come on,” he muttered. “Before you freeze to death and I have to explain to your head of family how I killed you by emotional breakdown.”
Despite everything, a startled laugh escaped me.
Moving seemed to help him somehow. Or perhaps it was just having something practical to do that seemed to bring him back to himself.
We found our clothes in separate piles in the wet grass, stumbling around barefoot through darkness while rain drifted steadily down around us.
At one point Dominic silently handed me my shirt where it had apparently landed halfway across the hillside.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah.” His voice still sounded wrong. Like all the texture had been sanded away and what was left was dull with exhaustion.
By the time we finally started back towards the house, I wondered why we’d even bothered dressing. Our clothes had been soaked through before we put them on, and wet wool and soggy denim weren’t exactly keeping me any warmer.
Dominic walked close beside me without seeming aware of it, his shoulder brushing mine every few steps. It hurt to think of why he did that, but I made sure to stay close enough that we kept touching.
The house loomed out of the darkness eventually, bright windows promising warmth and dryness. Dominic slowed as we approached it, tension drawing through his shoulders again.
After a moment, he puffed out a short, sharp breath and headed for the back door without a word.
Inside, the sudden warmth felt almost unreal, and the squelching sounds we made as we climbed the back stairs might at another time have been funny.
We were halfway up the stairs when Dominic glanced over at me and frowned. “You’re still shivering.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look hypothermic.”
“That’s a bit dramatic,” I said.
“Says the man who’s visibly shaking,” Dominic retorted.
I could have hugged him for that attempt at humour. He was still Dominic, even if I was only now beginning to understand why he was the way he was. Because if showing pain was what got a frightened little boy sent away, no wonder the man he'd become hid it behind swagger and attitude.
We headed for the shower, shedding our sodden clothing and leaving it in a heap on the bathroom floor.
The shower turned out to be every bit as impractical for two grown men as it had the first time we’d tried.
We ended up elbowing one another, and having to stand far too close to make soaping up easy.
But there was no way I was leaving him alone in here.
He washed me gently in blissfully hot water as steam curled through the bathroom. I returned the favour as carefully as I could, fingers sliding through dark hair while he stood uncharacteristically still beneath my hands.
We eventually made it back to his room, wrapped in towels and finally warm. Dominic climbed into bed beside me, and we lay there for a moment, watching one another in the low light from the bedside lamp.
Then, quietly, he asked, “You really think they were wrong?”
I moved closer immediately and wrapped my arms around him beneath the covers, pulling him tightly against me.
“Yes,” I said fiercely into damp hair. “I really fucking do.”
For a second he stayed tense against me. Then, slowly, he folded in close, arms sliding around me.
The last thing I felt before sleep finally dragged me under was Dominic pressing his face into the hollow of my throat, as though reassuring himself I was still there.