Page 39 of Dragon's Midlife Secret Baby
There was plenty to process, but they could only do so much of it at a time. “Do you have him for now? There’s something I need to take care of.”
“Sure.” She turned and walked toward her family.
She was only giving him the space he’d asked her for, yet Beck felt the increasing distance between them like an ache in his bones. Handing Corbin over like that somehow felt like an arrangement between two divorced parents, two people who were committed to their child but no longer tied to each other. His dragon reminded him that the bond to his mate could never be severed thateasily, but Beck hadn’t forgotten the way they’d fought.
Turning away from the pain, he spotted Lilith and Ewan talking quietly. Griffin stood a distance away from them, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Beck headed toward him. “It sounds like you and I need to talk.”
“That’s why I’m still here.” Griffin’s dark eyes flashed up to Beck’s face for a moment before he returned his gaze to the ground.
Beck rubbed his jaw, trying to decide where to start. “First of all, I want to thank you for saving Corbin’s life.”
Griffin snorted. “I don’t think you can really thank me for that when I was the one who put him in danger in the first place.”
The statement hit home for Beck, mostly because he’d blamed Chelsea for putting Corbin at risk. She’d had an unknowing hand in it, but so had Griffin. Hell, he could just as easily blame himself. “As far as I can tell, that wasn’t your intention.”
“Fuck no.” Griffin cast an angry glance toward the singed grass where they’d last seen Sol alive.
“That means you still made the choice to save him. I had no idea you’d regained consciousness or where you were. You could’ve left theisland while the getting was good, but you stuck around and saved Corbin when I couldn’t. Regardless of anything else, I’m grateful to you for that.” He was still reliving, over and over again, the moment when Griffin had snagged Corbin midair. Beck wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to erase that horrible scene from his mind.
“But there’s still the matter of everything else,” Griffin said.
Beck puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath. “That’s true. There’s no getting around that. I’m too tired and worn out to be angry right now, so this would be a good time for you to tell me what that was all about.” When he had energy again, he knew he’d be pissed about it. He’d been betrayed—by his own cousin and clanmate. That wasn’t how things were supposed to be, and it was hard to believe. Still, Beck knew he’d never be able to make peace with it until he knew the full story.
Griffin rubbed the back of his head, where the hairs were so short they barely existed. “I’m not sure it matters. There was no excuse.”
Beck folded his arms in front of his chest and gave him a look. “I didn’t ask for excuses, did I?”
“No.” Griffin turned to look at Ewan and Lilith, but they didn’t come over to offer any help. Knowinghe was in a corner now, Griffin began. “I’ve been unhappy for a long time. Our clan has stuck together, and our numbers keep dwindling. Fewer and fewer of us are in the world, which means we need to fight harder to keep our people alive.”
“I don’t think anyone will argue with you about that,” Beck replied, wondering just where he was going with this.
Griffin didn’t seem to be entirely sure himself. “I can see so much potential for us if we change a few things about the way we live, but sometimes I think Kendrick is stuck in the past. I know he cares a lot about the clan. He treats everyone like family, even if they’re not. But he’s never wanted to listen to anything I had to say about the direction we were heading. I might be third in command, but the title doesn’t seem to be worth shit.”
Beck pursed his lips. It was hard to think about clan politics right now when all he wanted to do was hold his son. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”
“That’s because no one pays attention to me,” Griffin responded quickly, starting to build up some inertia now. “Kendrick is the Alpha, and you’re the next in line. Ewan has a big personality and likes flashy things. Lillith is always taking care of everyone and is the center of our household. Evensome of the other members, ones who haven’t been there for very long, are more important than I am.”
“I can understand why you might feel that way,” Beck said carefully, not wanting to diminish anything Griffin felt about this but not wanting to support it, either. “I don’t think the rest of us feel that way, though.”
Griffin shrugged that off dismissively. “Well, I got tired of feeling like a second-class citizen. I wanted more out of life. I wanted to feel like I was actually doing something and not just existing for hundreds of years for no reason.”
“Mm.” Though Beck didn’t remember ever feeling that much despair about it, he thought he had an inkling of what Griffin meant. You didn’t have a ridiculously long lifespan without a few existential crises here and there.
“I was absolutely lost and spiraling downward fast. I was hanging out with a lot of the wrong kinds of people and avoiding the clan as much as possible,” Griffin went on.
Beck suddenly knew what he was talking about. He’d explored his renewed memories mostly based around himself and Chelsea, but something seemly small like where Griffin was disappearing to on an almost nightly basis hardly seemed relevant. Untilnow. “I remember that. Kendrick and I discussed it a bit, actually. We wondered what you were doing, but we all have a tendency to wander every now and then.”
“Well, I wandered down the wrong path,” he grumbled. “I heard about this guy who could fix all sorts of problems. It was all very secretive, very hush-hush. All kinds of weird shit happens in Salem, so I didn’t think much about that. All I knew was that this guy offered his services as an advisor. He advertised himself as someone who could change a person’s entire life. I took the bait, and I met Sol. He was kind and generous. He made me feel important. He empathized with me when I told him about my own ambitions for climbing up within the clan, and he told me I deserved to be the next Alpha instead of you.”
Beck blinked. “You told him what you really were?”
“Which was one hell of a mistake,” Griffin admitted. “He latched onto my case instantly, although he still insisted on a heavy fee. But that money didn’t mean anything compared to what Sol promised. He would make me someone great and powerful once he got you out of the way.”
“So once he understood that he’dhave a dragon in his grasp, he used the opportunity to try to figure out how to use our power.” Beck’s theory about what Sol had been doing to him had been right. “To what end, though? We can change our forms and live a long time, but it’s not like we have magic the same way the witches do.”
“I don’t really understand it, myself. He didn’t tell me about that part, only that you’d disappear, and Kendrick would have no choice but to take me under his wing and train me to be the next Alpha. In the meantime, Sol was supposed to continue advising me, giving me all the secrets he’d learned about gaining power. I need to sit down.” Griffin moved to a rock formation not far from the cliff edge and sank down on it. “He didn’t do any of that. I might have been an honorary beta, but it still wasn’t the same as actually being you. I wasn’t any different or more respected. Then you miraculously showed up, and lo and behold you had a mate and child. Even while you were being held captive and had no control over your life, you were still ahead of me.”
“Griffin.” It hurt to hear all of this. “Nothing I’ve ever done was an intentional way of keeping you down or ‘getting ahead’ of you. I can’t help what our birth order is, and that’s what has determined the next Alpha for centuries. I’m not going to say that’s aperfect system, but it absolutely boggled my mind when I heard you and Sol talking in the house about what you’d done and how you felt he’d failed you.”
