Page 9 of Kenna's Dragon

With her long black hair and her crooked smile, with the sense of adventure that made her more than willing to hop aboard a pirate’s ship and sail into a new life with a dragon she barely knew.

Before I met her, Elias and I had spent decades of our lives marauding, untethered, sailing to distant shores and co-captaining a crew of monsters. Both young and arrogant, cocky and flush with the confidence that comes with being at the beginning of a centuries-long life.

There had been nothing, absolutely nothing that could have prepared me for the instantaneous reorientation of my life when I met her on that fateful day in port.

And Lizzy, for her part, had taken it all in stride. She’d been fearless, right up until the day her choice to be with me got her killed.

When we were attacked by two French ships, we were outnumbered, out-gunned, and when Lizzy fell, the entire world seemed to fall apart with her.

In the aftermath, my dragon had full reign. Ships burned and vengeance was won. And even all these years later, I can’t say I regret allowing it.

What I do regret is everything that came before. All my sins and all the irreparable harm I caused. The price Lizzy had to pay for my mistakes.

Like it always does, time has stolen away the finer details. When I think of her now, it’s more tattered emotion than actual memories that fill my heart and soul.

I know Lizzy’s smile was quick to appear and filled with mirth, but I can’t remember the shape of her lips or the sound of her laugh. I know her eyes were blue, but whether they were closer in hue to the sky or the sea I can’t say.

Even the grief of losing her has become blunted by the unstoppable corrosion of the centuries I’ve lived without her. An ache, rather than a stabbing pain, a well filled with guilt and regret rather than acute heartbreak. That forgetting, too, feels like a betrayal. Another sin added to the long list I’m sure the gods will have me answer for one day, if indeed they do exist.

It’s too much to contemplate right now, and feels entirely too discordant and shameful to be thinking of Lizzy when Kenna just walked out of here.

I don’t do this. I don’t lose control. I don’t give into the baser parts of myself and let them steal my reason.

Still, the memories of the last half-hour hang heavy in the air, along with the last traces of Kenna’s scent. Seeing the tentative hope on her pretty face, the way her eyes lit up when she started talking about Nora and her friends and the way she’s seen them find mates, it puts a strange, leaden weight into the bottom of my stomach.

Perhaps Kenna does have a mate out there somewhere. I wouldn’t doubt it. With that open, honest air about her, the way she wears her heart on her sleeve, if anyone would be the perfect candidate to be a monster’s mate, it would be her.

I won’t acknowledge the fact that the idea of it bothers me, not when I’m the one who shut down her questions with such finality.

I can’t acknowledge any of it. Not here, not now, not when I barely have the mental faculties to keep a handle on myself, much less dive into introspection and soul searching.

A soft knock on my door draws my attention back to the present, and I gather just enough composure to clear my throat and call out to whoever’s on the other side.

“Come in.”

It’s Ruthie, and as she pokes her head around the door, her face falls with concern. “I have HHS on the phone for you. Line three.”

“Thank you, Ruthie,” I say, irritated at having to speak to anyone from the department, but happy enough for the distraction. “I’ll take the call shortly.”

She nods, lingers in the doorway for a moment, no doubt full to the brim with questions, but leaves with a soft snick of the door behind her.

Taking a few last moments at the window to compose myself, I breathe deep and shove all of that misplaced instinct back to the far corners of my lizard brain, where it belongs.

5

Kenna

The rest of my first week at the Bureau goes off without a hitch.

I don’t see Blair again, and none of my coworkers bring up the awkwardness from the all-hands meeting. By the time Friday rolls around, I’m feeling almost as confident as I was at the beginning of the week that the Bureau really is the place for me.

All in all, I could have had a worst first week.

The work they have me doing is right up my alley, even if it doesn’t push me all that far out of the box creatively. Flyers and posters for Bureau events, graphics for digital campaigns and the website, internal publications about the work and initiatives going on this quarter. Easy peasy.

I’ve still got a couple of side-hustles on the back burner, and plenty that I want to achieve with my art, but it’s pretty damn nice to finally have a steady, healthy paycheck coming in.

When I first enrolled in college at eighteen, I was a visual arts major, with a concentration in illustration and digital design. I’d had it in the back of my head that I was going to grow up and illustrate childrens’ books, comics, art for video games. As it turns out, though, that kind of work is scarce and opportunities don’t just fall out of trees and land at your feet.

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