Page 40 of The Heart of the Dragon

"Good thing you've ended up in my house, then. I am all about rare ingredients. The harder to find the better. I mean, what fun would life be if it was easy all the time? Am I right?"

Isaac scoffed. "I could go for some easy right about now."

"What do you need?" I asked, almost certain I wasn't going to like the answer. Rose might see this new development as a challenge, but when it came to the fae, I knew there would be nothing easy about any of this.

My luck, they'd need some sort of sacrifice or my left testicle. Neither of which I was willing to give.

"First, I'm going to need some dreamroot, faewort, and?—"

"Wait. Let me get a pad of paper and pen so you don't have to keep repeating yourself. I tend to have the memory of a gnat when I get nervous, and if this doesn't qualify then I don't know what does." Rose ran from the room like her mission to find these ingredients might be the most important of her life. Why that seemed to rub my scales in the wrong direction, I couldn't say.

"I'll go with her. If she's serious and can help that's going to save us a lot of time and trouble. Will the two of you play nice if I leave you alone?"

I didn't bother to dignify Kitra's question with an answer. I hated to tell her, but I didn't think there was a nice bone in either ofour bodies. If we were all lucky, no one would get killed and that would have to do.

"Go. We'll be fine," Isaac sighed and waved her off, but not before she leaned in, and he bent down to press his lips to hers. It was nothing more than a chaste kiss goodbye and I still wanted to hurl.

The minute Kitra disappeared and the sounds of her and Rose talking to each other had faded into the other side of the house, Isaac clapped me on the back.

"Touch me again and you won't have anything left of that limb to wrap around your mate."

"At least I don't deny I have one."

I bristled. I wasn't about to split hairs with him over the difference of opinion between me and the eternally pissed off dragon that refused to listen to reason. Last night I'd been still partially impaired and yet I'd known something more was off and chose to deny it. The desire flowing between Rose and I had been too intense. It was more than two beings coming together for pleasure...

"Maybe you should shut your mouth," I warned.

"She's cute."

I jerked around and found smoke coming out of my mouth when I tried to yell at him.

"Easy. I think you've done enough damage for one day."

"You shouldn't have come here." I pushed out the words, but most of them came out on a fire-laced roar that caught the bottom of her curtains on fire.

"Fuck. Enough asshole." Isaac rushed to the window and patted at the flames until they went out. "Burning down her house isn't going to help matters. You've already got more shit coming down than she can handle."

"I've got good news and bad ne— What happened?" Kitra whisper yelled when she looked up to find Isaac frantically batting at the now charred curtains.

"What do you think happened? Dragon asshole number one and his shitty attitude."

"And least he acknowledges I'm number one."

She whipped around to me. "Could you just stop for two damned seconds and think about someone other than yourself? This is ridiculous. Hell, it's so beyond ridiculous I don't even know what to call it anymore."

"Insanity," Isaac offered, stepping up to her side.

"Not helping," she hissed.

I blinked in surprise as some of the red haze of rage disappeared from my vision.Whoa. Apparently, the dragon suddenly found them amusing. "You have good news and bad news?" I didn't like the sound of that, and looking over her shoulder. "Where is Rose?"

"In her bedroom crying."

"What?" My head swiveled as a fresh wave of red-hot rage flooded through me. "What did you do to her?"

"Me?" She kicked out her leg and slammed her tiny fae foot into my shin. "Ididn't do anything. One minute we were gathering up ingredients from the debris of her greenhouse and the next shewas on her knees howling about some piece of furniture. I mean I don't get it. You tore the entire backside of her house open, but she's freaking out about a couch? I couldn't even console her. She said we all had to get out."

In that moment the dragon chose to let me in, and my senses flooded me with everything Rose in the cottage. But it was the anguish coming from the human that nearly overwhelmed us both.

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