Chapter Twenty-seven
BEN
As the days passed, Dominic seemed to shed any lingering effects from reading those reports. At least, he gave no sign that anything had changed. Perhaps, in one sense, it hadn’t. He’d always known he’d been sent away.
I was different, though. I was blindingly angry at Rhodri.
I didn’t know who’d compiled those reports, but someone had sat down and made notes, year after year.
They’d made a conscious decision to record those words, and then chosen to preserve the record.
I suspected Rhodri’s hand at work, because the lack of mercy was striking.
Something else about that record nagged at me in quiet moments. Assessment ongoing. What did that actually mean? Did it explain why Dominic’s role as heir seemed so limited? It seemed less like an observation and more like a label. A justification for what Rhodri wanted to do.
He was still away on his trip visiting other families, and the house was lighter for it. Nothing fundamental had changed, but conversations over supper were easier and more carefree without his presence at the head of the table.
The days slipped past, my time split between discovering new historical records, flying in the dark sky, and nights in Dominic’s bed.
And through everything, underpinning everything, was Dominic’s presence.
I didn’t know how I’d lived without him.
I wanted him more than I’d ever thought I could want anyone.
Not just sexually—though God, I couldn’t get enough of him that way.
But when we were apart, I missed him. When we were together, I wanted his attention.
I wanted him to touch me. That was never actually a problem, because Dominic seemed physically incapable of not touching me for long, and whenever I looked up from my work, I’d find he was watching me.
Over the week of Rhodri’s absence, we’d formed a routine, which included usually managing to make it to the lunch table. Though if Dominic had been particularly distracting, we still occasionally missed it.
On our way to lunch on Friday, we were intercepted in the hall by a very sticky tornado. Teddy had evidently had his meal early.
“Dominic!” he shouted, and Dominic instantly crouched down to listen seriously to whatever Teddy had to tell him.
God, I loved him. I’d known that for days—I just hadn’t put it in those words.
But as he accepted a handful of suspiciously muddy-looking conkers Teddy had produced from the depths of his pockets, the words felt quietly, undeniably right.
I’d said I love you before. At the time, I’d believed every word.
But until Dominic, I’d never understood quite what love could be.
“Ben.” Teddy was now looking up at me, offering me three little conkers that looked the worse for wear.
“Thank you,” I said gravely, unsure exactly what was expected. “I’ll take very good care of them.”
Dominic grinned at me over Teddy’s head, looking absurdly pleased by my response.
And then Rae appeared from the dining room, muttered to Dominic, “It’s your own fault,” and collected Teddy to sweep him up the stairs in front of her.
I gestured helplessly with the hand that held the conkers. “What exactly am I supposed to do with these?”
Dominic turned and deposited his handful on the mantelpiece of the great fireplace.
“You take very good care of them,” he reminded me, as I followed suit.
“I feel there are probably rules I haven’t been told.”
“There are always rules at Dragon’s Ending. Most of them are nonsensical.”
I laughed at his lazy, subversive certainty, and Dominic’s eyes warmed still further. He stepped forward, caught hold of the front of my jumper, and backed me against the wall beside the fireplace.
“You know,” he murmured, close enough that his breath ghosted warm against my lips, “you’re taking all this surprisingly well.”
“What, the conkers?”
“Those too. But more the fact that I’m a terrible influence.”
I slid my hands up beneath his hoodie, warm skin beneath my palms. “I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully. “I’m beginning to think I may always have secretly wanted to become the sort of person who accepts muddy objects from small children and commits tax fraud.”
He laughed softly against my mouth before he kissed me.
And God, he was so good at that. One of his hands slid into my hair while the other stayed firm at my waist, holding me against the wall as he kissed me deep and slow like he had absolutely nowhere else he needed to be.
Sunlight from the windows spilled gold over us, and Dominic was everything.
His mouth curved slightly against mine when I made a helpless little sound into the kiss, clearly pleased with himself.
Then the front door crashed open, the sound cracking through the hall. Dominic jerked back, every muscle rigid.
I turned to find Rhodri standing in the doorway.
His dragon looked out through his eyes. Smoke drifted from his nostrils with each controlled breath, and the sheer force of his fury seemed to fill the house.
His gaze never left Dominic. “What,” he said very quietly, “the fuck is this?”
Beside me, Dominic had gone utterly still, muscles locked tight beneath the hand I still had pressed against his side.
Rhodri’s gaze cut from Dominic to me and back again, and I shivered at the threat in his eyes.
“Well?” he said.
Dominic straightened, regaining control over whatever instinctive panic Rhodri’s arrival had triggered. “It’s not what you think,” he said, a little too quickly.
“Oh, it’s exactly what I think.” Rhodri stepped fully into the hall, slamming the front door hard enough behind him that the sound echoed through the house.
“I leave for one week and return to find you mauling the representative of yet another dragon family against my wall, like an adolescent incapable of basic self-restraint.”
Heat flooded instantly into my face.
The dining room door opened behind us. One of the younger dragons, who froze at the sight of Rhodri’s expression.
“Out,” Rhodri said without looking away from Dominic.
The door shut again immediately.
Dominic took an uneven breath. “This isn’t like last time. It’s not some meaningless hook-up.”
“No?” Rhodri’s voice went colder still. “Then enlighten me. Because from where I’m standing, it appears you have yet again done exactly as you pleased, with no thought for anyone else.”
Hurt flickered across Dominic’s face.
“I love him,” he said.
Disbelieving joy punched through me, and my hand tightened on his side.
And then I saw Rhodri’s face, and I let my hand fall away, a kind of grief battling the joy.
Those precious words should have been mine, whispered in the dark, not dragged out into anger and conflict as a defence.
Yet even that didn’t change the dizzying truth of them. Dominic loved me.
And then Rhodri laughed. Not kindly.
“Oh, excellent,” he said. “Not only have you ignored my direct instruction and compromised relations with yet another family, you’ve decided to do it thoroughly.”
“Nothing’s been compromised,” I began, before I could stop myself.
Rhodri’s attention snapped to me with startling force. “Do you imagine your head of family sent you here hoping you’d end up in my heir’s bed?”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. Because no. She absolutely had not. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“This is between us,” Dominic said tightly. “Leave Ben out of it.”
“No,” Rhodri said. “It ceased being merely between us the moment you involved another family.”
His gaze raked over Dominic. There was something far worse than simple anger in it. Disappointment. And the worst of it was, I didn’t think it was performative.
“I was beginning,” he said slowly, “to think you had finally developed some judgement.”
Dominic froze. Not enough that anyone who didn’t know him would notice, but I’d grown to know the exact quality of that stillness. The way he locked himself down when something hit too deep.
Rhodri kept going. “I included you in discussions. I trusted you with information I would not previously have shared. And it took you merely days to prove exactly why my trust was misplaced.”
Dominic’s face was pale and expressionless.
“That’s not fair,” I said before I could stop myself.
Rhodri looked at me as if only just remembering I existed.
“You have known him,” he said very quietly, “for less than a month.”
“And you’ve known him his whole life,” I shot back. “Which frankly makes this worse.”
The silence afterwards was terrifying. Then Dominic made a tiny sound under his breath, one that sounded horribly like fear.
Rhodri’s expression hardened even further. “You presume a great deal, Berstow.” His dragon rumbled in his voice, low and threatening.
“With respect,” I said, though my pulse was hammering hard enough to make me nauseous, “sending someone away when they don’t behave how you want is not normal dragon behaviour.”
The cold rage in Rhodri’s face froze me to the spot. Every instinct urged me to apologise, to obey the head of a family. But I refused to submit. I knew I was right.
“You know nothing about what this family required after Mari died,” he said. “Whatever conclusions you’ve reached bear no resemblance to reality, to what was necessary to keep him and everyone around him safe.”
I couldn’t help but notice he’d stopped calling Dominic his heir. Or even his son.
Dominic laughed suddenly beside me. A short, exhausted sound entirely devoid of humour.
“You really can reduce anything to necessity, can’t you?” he said quietly.
Rhodri’s gaze snapped back to him. “You think this is a game?” he demanded.
“You think leadership allows the luxury of impulsive selfishness? I’ve spent years trying to determine whether I could trust you, and each time I begin to believe you may finally have matured, you pull something like this. You are utterly irresponsible.”
“What exactly do you want me to say?” Dominic sounded resigned, like this was the ending he’d expected all along.
“I wanted,” Rhodri said, each word clipped and controlled, “to know whether I could trust you with the future of this family. And now—” He took a breath, sharp with fury. “Now I need time to consider what I do next.”
“Right,” Dominic said, his voice flat and quiet.
Then he turned and walked out of the hall.
After one last look at Rhodri’s face, I went after him.
He was already halfway across the courtyard by the time I caught up with him. “Dominic.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even slow down. He just kept walking, hands in his pockets, shoulders tight.
“Dominic.”
This time he stopped. But he kept his back to me as he breathed hard through his nose like he was trying very carefully not to either scream or shift.
For one terrible moment, I thought he might tell me to leave him alone. Instead, he laughed once under his breath.
“Well,” he said hoarsely, “that could have gone better.”
I moved closer cautiously. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he said. Then he started walking again.
We reached the castle in silence. Dominic dropped down onto the low remains of a wall, forearms braced on his knees and his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the valley.
I stayed standing for a moment because I had too much energy inside me. Anger was bubbling hot and sharp beneath my ribs.
“I cannot believe him,” I said finally.
Dominic huffed faintly. “Honestly, I’d save your outrage for something more surprising.”
“Dominic.”
That finally made him look up at me. The exhaustion in his face hit me harder than Rhodri’s anger had.
“He hasn’t actually thrown me out,” he said. “Not yet.”
Cold slithered in my gut. “Thrown you out? That’s what he meant by considering what to do? He’s threatening to send you away again?”
His gaze dropped away from mine, and I knew I was right.
For a few seconds he said nothing at all, one hand rubbing absently at the back of his neck. Then he laughed quietly without humour.
“The first few months after I came back were…” He shrugged. “Rough.”
I sat down beside him.
“At first I kept trying to work out what he wanted from me,” he said. “Every conversation felt like some kind of test I hadn’t revised for. If I argued, I was volatile. If I disappeared for a while, looking for something to do, I was irresponsible. If I asked questions, I was challenging him.”
The bitterness in his voice hurt to hear.
“I honestly did try,” he said after a moment. “At the start.”
And somehow that was the worst part, because I believed him instantly.
“He’d spent eleven years hearing reports about me,” Dominic continued, staring out across the valley. “I think he expected me to come back half-feral.”
I made an outraged sound despite myself. His mouth twitched faintly.
“Anyway,” he said, “eventually we started having rows spectacular enough to frighten half the household. Which admittedly may not have helped my case.”
“Dominic—”
“No, in fairness, some of them were genuinely impressive.”
I ignored that. “And he threatened to send you away again?”
His silence was answer enough.
Rage hit me so hard I actually had to stand up and pace. “You were eighteen.”
“Technically nineteen by then.”
“That is not better!”
That dragged a sound out of him, brief and startled and almost a laugh. But it vanished quickly.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that was when I realised there wasn’t any point in any of it.”
I turned back towards him. “What do you mean?”
Dominic picked absently at loose stone beneath his hand.
“I stopped pushing about anything that mattered,” he said. “It was easier once I understood the rules.”
A chill ran through me despite the sunlight.
Because suddenly I understood too. That hook-up with the Carlew dragon, which had apparently been par for the course for him.
The recklessness, the endless provoking.
Even moving places at the table had been a middle finger to Rhodri and his way of doing things, though I actually didn’t think he’d meant it that way.
But nothing he did, however provocative, went too far.
Everything was designed to needle Rhodri’s sense of order without triggering catastrophe. Without resulting in abandonment.
Oh, God.
Dominic glanced sideways at me and must have seen something of my horror, because he sighed.
“Ben.”
“No,” I said immediately. “No, absolutely not. You do not get to sound like I’m overreacting here. He threatened to send you away again because you argued with him.”
“He threatened to send me away because he doesn’t think I’m under control.”
“That is not normal.”
“Probably not,” Dominic admitted.
The calmness with which he said it horrified me almost more than anything else, and something in me cracked.
I sat back down beside him and reached for his hand. He held on, tight enough to hurt.