Chapter Thirty-four
DOMINIC
Dafydd was practically inhaling his after-supper coffee. He looked like shit, as I promptly informed him.
“Sod off, Dominic,” he begged. “We won the match, so…”
So they’d carried on drinking. I guessed that explained why Rhys hadn’t made it to the drawing room.
Probably gone off somewhere to quietly puke up supper.
I gave Dafydd a hearty slap on his back, which made him turn ever paler, before checking in with Megan and Josh.
They appeared to be as ready as I was for this whole formal evening to be over.
I ended up standing next to John, surveying the room.
Mortimer was sitting in one of the armchairs, my father in another beside him.
It was the first concession I’d seen so far to Mortimer’s age, and the effect as the rest of us milled around, trying to be polite but mainly longing to be dismissed, was not unlike a medieval throne room.
Ben would like that. I looked over to where he was making his own rounds of the room.
Last time I’d moved past him, trailing my hand across the small of his back just enough to make him shiver, he’d been quizzing Edna on the age of the house, its architect, and other extremely interesting historian things.
“Teddy too much fun to be invited?” I asked John. “Or did he duck it, worried about Mortimer asset-stripping his pine cone collection?”
John choked on a laugh, swiftly suppressed with a glance at Rhodri and Mortimer. “Let’s just say that Rae and I tossed for who’d stay with Teddy. I lost.”
I laughed, and didn’t bother holding it back.
Then Mortimer set down his empty coffee cup. The room quietened almost immediately.
Beside the fireplace, Rhodri rose to his feet, Mortimer following a moment later with considerably less visible effort than a dragon of his age would usually require.
Every instinct I possessed sharpened. I didn’t know why, only that my dragon had gone utterly still beneath my skin.
Rhodri’s gaze moved briefly across the room before settling on me. “Dominic,” he said.
Before I could be sure what the tone in his voice meant, he added, “And Ben.”
Across the drawing room, Ben looked up sharply from whatever horrifyingly academic conversation he’d cornered Megan into enduring. Our eyes met, and his expression mirrored exactly what I felt. Oh, shit.
We crossed the hall in silence. Behind us, conversation resumed in the drawing room, noticeably louder now both Rhodri and Mortimer were gone. My dragon stayed braced the entire way to the study, insisting that Ben should be somewhere away from Mortimer. I couldn’t argue with the sentiment.
Mortimer moved unhurriedly to the study bookshelves while Rhodri closed the door behind us. The click sounded far too final. Nobody invited us to sit.
Excellent. Fantastic. Very reassuring atmosphere all round.
Mortimer ran a finger lightly along the spine of one of the older books, apparently entirely unconcerned by the silence stretching behind him.
“An interesting range of titles,” he observed.
Ben was very still beside me. To anyone else he probably looked calm enough, but I could feel tension radiating off him in waves. My dragon pressed forward hard beneath my skin in response, still deeply uneasy at Ben being anywhere near Mortimer.
Mortimer finally turned from the shelves, and settled into one of the armchairs beside the fire. Rhodri took the other opposite him.
There was a small sofa against the far wall, small enough that Ben and I would have had to jam in together, sitting shoulder to shoulder on it.
I stayed where I was. Beside me, Ben remained standing as well, after only the briefest hesitation.
Rhodri was very still, which wasn’t unusual. But there was a quality to it now that suggested he wasn’t at ease. I wondered if he had any idea what Mortimer wanted with us.
“Have you found anything of particular interest in the Bedwyr archives, Ben?” Mortimer asked. I noticed for the first time how motionless he was. No picking off a piece of lint, no crossing of his legs. Just the patient stillness of a predator.
Ben blinked, visibly caught off guard. “That depends on what one calls interesting,” he said carefully.
“From what Dominic was saying before supper, I was under the impression you’d uncovered some questions over succession.”
Ben looked like a rabbit in headlights for an instant. “Um, no,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
“Perhaps Dominic has a tendency towards exaggeration,” Mortimer observed mildly.
“Understatement’s overrated,” I informed him.
Mortimer’s lips twitched very slightly.
Oh, fantastic. The terrifying ancient dragon liked me.
“And Dragon’s Ending itself?” Mortimer continued, holding Ben’s gaze. “Has the family made you welcome?”
There was absolutely nothing casual about that question.
“Yes,” Ben said after only the slightest hesitation. “Very welcome.”
“How about your work?” Mortimer continued. “Do you have much more to do here?”
Ben glanced at me instinctively before he could stop himself.
“I’m not entirely sure how long it will take,” he admitted.
“Really.” Mortimer sounded thoughtful. “That surprises me. You strike me as someone rather attached to certainty.”
Ben actually laughed softly at that. “Only historically.”
Silence stretched briefly again, broken only by the crackles and occasional soft pop from the fire in the hearth.
Mortimer was doing this deliberately. Setting the pace and making everyone else wait for him. And the worst part was that he was very, very good at it.
“I understand you have a particular skill at interpreting records,” he said to Ben.
Ben looked faintly wrong-footed again. “Thank you.”
“I believe,” Mortimer continued smoothly, “that I should like you to accompany me back to London.”
Everything inside me stopped. I felt Ben freeze.
Mortimer, meanwhile, simply waited. As though this were the most ordinary request in the world. As though he hadn’t just reached calmly into the centre of my life and closed a fist around it.
“No,” I said.
Mortimer’s gaze settled on me. The power he held was carefully banked. Just enough showed through to remind me of who he was and the dominance he had over us all.
“I wasn’t aware,” he said softly, “that this decision belonged to you.”
My dragon surged hard enough that gold flickered briefly at the edges of my vision, but I controlled him and kept my voice level and matter-of-fact. “Ben is our guest.”
Beside the fire, Rhodri was utterly motionless.
Mortimer regarded me calmly. “And?”
“And guests of this family aren’t removed from the house without the head of family’s consent.”
I did not look at Rhodri. Would not look at Rhodri. Because this wasn’t me asking permission. This was me drawing a line.
Mortimer’s expression didn’t alter, but something in the room sharpened all the same.
The gold threatened again behind my eyes, my dragon pressing forward. Mine. And it wasn’t just Ben. It was this house, this territory, this family. They were all mine to protect. God help me, for the first time in my life, I understood why Rhodri carried himself the way he did.
“You are very young,” Mortimer said. There was no condescension in it, which somehow made it worse.
“Yet you’re still arguing with me instead of taking him.”
Mortimer’s eyes narrowed fractionally, and Rhodri drew in a breath. They both knew what I’d just implied. That he couldn’t take Ben. Not while I stood here and said no.
Mortimer eased himself to his feet. Ben tensed. I didn’t move, and everything in me narrowed to a single, immovable point. No further.
Mortimer stopped, his eyes gripping mine like dragon claws, measuring me. Then he nodded once, as if satisfied by something.
“There you are,” he said.
BEN
“What the actual fuck?” Dominic blurted out.
Which was exactly my question as Mortimer returned to his seat. I’d had my hand glued to the phone in my pocket, ready for an emergency call to Evelyn, but then Dominic… Then Dominic had stood against the most powerful dragon in the country and said no.
And if I weren’t so scared and confused, I’d be turned on as hell right now.
“Well,” Rhodri said at last, “I believe my son has made our family’s position clear.”
“I believe he has,” Mortimer agreed.
I was glad someone was clear about what was going on. Dominic, meanwhile, had shot one startled, almost vulnerable glance at his father, before his expression closed again.
Mortimer settled back into his chair once more.
“Rhodri,” he said pleasantly, “would you and Ben give Dominic and me a few minutes?”
Absolutely not. Every instinct I possessed objected violently to leaving Dominic alone with this man. Dominic’s dragon stirred visibly behind his eyes.
Mortimer noticed that too. “You may trust me not to eat him,” he said dryly.
“I’m not entirely convinced,” I muttered.
To my horror, Rhodri made a sudden choking sound that might conceivably have begun life as laughter. He rose to his feet and attempted to usher me towards the door. I refused to move until Dominic gave me a tiny nod.
I closed the door behind us and leaned against it, determined not to move so much as an inch.
“Well,” Rhodri said beside me. “Well.”
That about covered it. I looked at him and found he appeared more human than at any time since I’d given him that letter. A little confused, a lot concerned, and something else too. Proud, perhaps?
“Do you have any idea what’s going on in there?” I asked. I hoped he was unsettled enough to break the habit of a lifetime and actually share information.
He looked at me, and I saw the moment when he decided not to squash my impertinence.
“Not a clue,” he admitted, and settled against the wall, waiting.