Page 12 of Dragon Keeper
“Where are we supposed to stay? It’s not like there’s room for us here permanently.”
Sloan shook his head. “Tyr says we can stay with him.”
“In what? A beekeeper cottage? Is that a thing now? The beekeeper cottage?” Riley was getting strident.
“It’s summertime; maybe we can find your own space. You know you might like it. And I know that Puck and the others said we can always come and stay with them. They’ve got a whole system set up where they can play video games together.” Sloan was trying to be patient, so hard.
“But if we go, we never ever get to come back.” Riley shook his head. “What if you go down there and you realize you don’t really like this guy? What if you try to have sex with him, and you can’t get it up?”
“Don’t be nasty,” Sloan snapped. That wasn’t going to be an issue. In fact, Sloan could unequivocally make that kind of decision right now. “Not an issue.”
“Can’t you just try to?—”
“No, I can’t. I don’t want to lose him. He needs me. You don’t have to come. You can stay here.”
“I’m going,” Brayden repeated, “I love you, like with all my heart, but I want to fly. I don’t want to hide anymore. I want to be able to do this.” Brayden waved a hand toward the dragon side of the house. “Just be a dragon out there doing dragon things. I’ll explore something new. I want to learn and meet people and watch little dragons grow up. Maybe have a mate ofmy own one day. Maybe have kids of my own. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to want.”
“You’re not scared?”
“Of course I’m scared, Ri, but that’s part of living. I know how to be scared.”
Sloan nodded to Brayden, following right along. “I was scared the first time I saw a vampire. The first time I fought one. There have been hundreds of times in my life where I’ve been terrified. That’s okay. Because sometimes I want to be totally overjoyed too, like totally in it. Did you ever want that? Just be able to get out of your own head?”
Riley shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know if I want it every day.”
“You can stay here. I mean, you’re welcome here. You’re welcome to leave.” He hated this whole thing. He didn’t want any of this to happen. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
“Okay. Can you give me just a little bit more time? A month?”
He found himself nodding, even though he knew he would regret it. Because he’d asked for that himself, hadn’t he? “All right, but if you don’t come on then, I’m going with you or without you.”
“Deal.” Riley held out his hand.
“Deal.”
Tyr headed up to the mountain, flying as fast and as hard as he could.
It was early in the morning, just barely breaking dawn, but his beehives had come to him in a panic. He had lost two queens in the last two weeks, and his scales were beginning to shatter and flake off.
He wasn’t going to have this.
He flew straight up to the conservatory and started banging hard on the window, making it rattle. “Sloan! I need you! I need you now. Come to the door.”
The place woke up, buzzing and furious, but then Sloan was there, looking sleepy and dazed.
“You have to come. You have to come now. We’re killing the bees.”
“What?”
He showed a couple of bad spots, the sores that were forming on his hands and his feet. “My scales are coming off. The bees are dying. I need my mate, and if you can’t come then… you have to. You have to come.”
Everyone stared, and for a horrifying moment, he realized that maybe this was over, that Sloan would say no.
Maybe he was going to die.
Him and his bees. His poor beloved bees. Because he wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t…mateenough for Sloan to convince his brothers to come with him and make a home in Tyr’s village and for Sloan to choose him and?—
Sloan looked just as bad, he realized. Those beautiful two-color eyes were dull, his dark red hair limp and flat, his skin almost gray.
