Page 47 of Cowboy Dragon's Rose

Kian blinks. “Wait—what? You haven’t?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?!”

I shoot him a glare, and for once, he backs off. Just a little.

“I’m older than all of you,” I say quietly. “Not just by a decade. I’ll be a hundred and thirty-two next spring.”

He goes still.

“I came from a different time. A different place.” My voice roughens. “We weren’t like this. My old Clan was hard and cold, Kian. This here? What we’ve built on the Motley Crewd Ranch? The way we care for each other, the way you and Emmet, Dante, and Max treat your mates? It’s fucking alien to me. I didn’t have that growing up.”

“Neither did I. So what?”

“So, it was bad,” I whisper, afraid to bring attention to the past.

“How bad, man? What did you have?”

I laugh. Bitter. Cold.

“Secrecy. Greed. Infighting. My Clan warred among themselves over gold and power while our women were locked away—hoarded like property, bred until there were no more. Until the magic started to rot.”

Kian says nothing. Just listens.

“I swore I’d never become that. Never take what wasn’t freely given. Never repeat their mistakes.”

He tilts his head. “So you think claiming Casey is what? Stealing?”

“I think it’s damning her,” I rasp. “Binding her to me before she even knows what I am? That’s a sin where I come from.”

Kian leans forward, face uncharacteristically serious.

“Zeke, I ain’t gonna lie. That sounds fucked up. But,” he says, hopping down and walking towards me, “you’re not your past. You’re not your Clan. You’re not that darkness.”

He rests a hand on my shoulder, firm and grounding.

“You said your old people rotted from the inside out. You think that’s what’ll happen to you if you don’t claim her?”

I look at him, and I don’t have to say it.

He already knows.

“Then don’t let the fear win,” he says. “Casey’s not your cage. She’s your salvation. All our mates are.”

My throat tightens.

“She makes you better. I’ve seen it. Hell, she makes you smile, which I didn’t know was physically possible.”

I huff.

“It hurts.”

He grins. “Yeah, I bet. See, that’s your soul stretching. You’ll get used to it.”

My phone buzzes, and I nearly leap for it.

It’s a text.

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