Conrad
SEVENTEEN
The apartment had one lamp, and it cast a yellowish light that emphasized how dismal the place was.
It reminded me of the Solari jail cells where I’d deposited more than one offender before Father interrogated them. Not that I should have prettied this place up. This was my bolthole, not a place to spend a lifetime.
I needed to do something, so I busied myself checking the locks and windows, and I stood on the small balcony scanning the sky for shapes that didn't belong there. My dragon was alert like me, scenting the air for any sign of dragons.
I wasn’t used to being on our own, not for extended periods.
I didn't have a security team, cameras, the Wyvern people, or any of the infrastructure I'd built.
I had a bolt lock, a knife from my stash, and a wolf shifter with a healing bullet wound who was sitting on the couch eating food out of a container his Grandpa had given him.
Grandpa. Arnie had told me to call him that as he passed us the bag of food before Ranger growled at us to hurry up. Grandpa. I’d never had a grandfather, or if I did, Father hadn’t mentioned it. But the word didn’t come easily and I still thought of him as Arnie.
The secondhand leather sofa squeaked, and I glanced over my shoulder. Madd was putting the rest of the food into the almost-empty fridge. We’d picked up some basics at a convenience store near the car rental place, but that wouldn’t last more than a couple of days.
“You should sleep,” I told him.
“So should you.”
“I’m keeping watch.”
“Huh?” He pointed outside to the balcony. “If Evander sends dragons, you'll scent them before you see them, and you can do that from the bed.”
“I’ll take the first watch while you rest.” I wasn't going to negotiate.
He said he wasn’t tired, and I pointed out he was shot a few days ago. Or two or maybe it was yesterday. I’d lost all sense of time.
“And I've been running on adrenaline ever since, so my body doesn't know how to stop.” He adjusted his position on the couch and winced, proving my point that he should lie down. “Sit, Conrad. You're making me nervous pacing around like that.”
I sighed, and my dragon gave me a nudge saying I should do as my mate asked. I eased myself into a chair opposite, and rather than staring at my fated mate, I clenched my hands and closed my eyes.
The apartment was quiet and I wasn't used to it. At the Solari compound there had always been noise. Guards were patrolling, and there was the hum of the security system. My father always made his presence felt and his voice carried down corridors. Here there was nothing except the faint sound of traffic from the street below and Madd’s tiny movements as he tried to get comfortable.
I glanced up because maybe it was time to actually look at the man I’d mated. He wasn’t fidgeting or pacing the floor, not that I’d expected him to. Flint must have trained him before he went undercover, so Madd was skilled at covering up his emotions.
“What were you going to do if you'd actually left? Did you have a plan beyond holing up in this place?” he asked.
“Getting out was it.” I’d always assumed the escaping would be a feat, probably an impossible one, and I didn’t think beyond that.
“You didn't have anyone to go to.”
Oh gods, he’d just pointed out how lonely I was. I’d had no one. How different for him who had a large extended family and a pack.
I didn’t answer because the word “No” carried grief.
“You had no friends outside the organization?” Madd leaned forward. I imagined he had no idea what that was like. “There was no one you trusted?”
Trust wasn't something my father encouraged. “Father expected loyalty and obedience. But trust requires —” I couldn’t finish the sentence because I was putting my life under a microscope.
“It requires someone giving a damn about you.”
“Something like that.”
Madd pulled his legs up onto the couch. The shirt he was wearing was mine, the too-small one from the stash, though it had been washed.
I’d only just noticed. Why hadn’t he taken a set of clothes from the apartment?
I didn’t want to imagine that he did it because despite being laundered, it still had a hint of my scent.
“Tell me about your omega dad,” he said.
I flinched and so did my dragon because my life began in agony. “He died when he laid our egg.”
“I know that, but what do you know about him?”
“Almost nothing.” My father didn't talk about him, and there were no photographs in the house. Evander asked about him once when we were seven or eight and Father left the room. “I learned not to bring it up.”
“So you grew up without any sense of him?”
“Everyone, my father, Evander, our nanny, they all blamed me for his death. The nanny shared stories about our dad with my brother. I used to listen at the door, pretending I wasn’t there.”
Madd's eyes shimmered with tears. “You were inside an egg. How was that your fault?”
“It wasn’t. But grief needs something to take hold of, and he was alive before laying the huge egg and died soon after. They said if I’d been in my own egg, our dad would have survived.”
I wasn’t used to anyone talking to me about things that mattered.
Madd sniffed and wiped away a tear. “Evander got the stories, the nanny’s affection, and your father's approval. And he was made the heir.”
And I got this place.
“Conrad. Did Evander ever want for anything? Not material things. But did he ever need something he couldn't get?”
I thought about that. When my twin wanted something, it appeared. He'd never had to fight for anything because it was given to him before he asked.
“Everything came to him.”
“Do you see what I’m getting at?” He came over and squatted in front of me and took both my hands.
“If I wanted something, I went and got it or I didn't have it.” Evander and I had identical DNA and yet completely different lives.
There was a pain in my chest that was more frightening than being shot at or escaping from the compound. It was the beginning of understanding why my life turned out the way it had.
“Evander felt the pull toward you.” I gripped Madd’s hands hard and marveled at how soft they were considering his line of work.
“He felt something, but he didn't need you.
He wanted you because you were offered and because his body recognized something familiar.
But he didn't need you the way —” Now I had to say it.
“The way I did.” I forced myself to finish.
“Our connection, that mate bond, found the one who had room for it and would welcome the connection.”
Madd was chewing his bottom lip, and I’d been with my mate long enough to recognize when he was pondering and wrestling with something.
“Out with it.”
“You don’t suppose Evander knows I’m not really his mate and is doing this as revenge because you upset his carefully planned existence.”
It was a possibility, one I wouldn’t have considered before he killed Father.
“Maybe.” That was the only answer I could give.
Madd got up after we’d been sitting there a while and searched the kitchen cupboards, finding instant coffee that had expired two years ago. He made it anyway and brought me a cup, and our fingers touched.
It was terrible coffee. We drank it, and he talked about how his alpha dad and his uncle didn’t want to be part of a mafia pack and moved away.
“Treyton doesn’t want to live that life, but I had to earn my place in La Luna Noir, even though I’m family.”
We had that in common. Neither of us had been handed what we wanted, but the difference with Madd was no one had expected or wanted him to fail. He’d been loved, supported, and surrounded by family.
It was an obvious parallel, and I hadn't seen it before, but I'd been too busy fighting the bond to notice what it had actually paired me with. Madd wasn’t my opposite. He was my mirror.
“How are you dealing with your father’s murder?”
I turned the cup in my hands. “I don't know how to answer that. He didn't love me, but he was omnipresent. Every decision I've ever made was either for him or against him. Without him there, I’m floundering.”
“I’m here while you figure it out."
Those words curled around my heart and helped fill that empty space inside me. We didn’t know one another well, but I was open to the possibility that we would.
Madd got up and his hand rested on my shoulder as he passed. His fingers touched the place where his wolf's teeth had broken my skin, and both my dragon and I welcomed the connection.
Dawn arrived, and we sat but side by side and our shoulders touched. It was enough for now.