Page 26 of The Goblin in the Sink Drain
“I can’t believe my…” My chin hit my chest. “I don’t know what to call him.”
“I call him an enemy.”
The harshness in his voice drew my eyes to his bright ones, and I saw any leniency he had shown Dad on my account had ended the moment he put his hands—and teeth—on me.
“I knew it wouldn’t go smoothly, but I didn’t expect this.” I thanked him when he passed me a glass of ice water and coughed as the cold hit my parched throat. “I didn’t think he would take it so far.”
“There are reasons why dragons prefer to mate their own kind. Preservation of the species is beyond our grasp. We might give our people another generation or two, but our end is coming. The true threat to our kind is fixation.” He must have read my confusion. “We live among other shifters, hide ourselves among them too. Usually, it’s not a problem, but there are those whose greed drives them to pursue us for their own ends.” He exhaled. “We’re only ever safe with each other, and even then there are complications.”
“Like my…” I caught the slip and tried again. “Like Carmichael?”
Sartorihurt too much to think, let alone say, but Carmichael was a name I had never called…him.
“Yes.” He took my glass and set it aside. “Your father wasvergoldet, a golden. His scales were solid gold, making him invaluable. But your mother was a different breed entirely. She wasglücklich, a luck dragon. Just one of her scales could grant almost any wish, but luck dragons don’t regrow them. They have a set number of scales, so a finite number of wishes. Since adeadglücklichheld the same value as a live one, they were killed rather than captured to make harvesting their scales easier.”
Bile rose up the back of my throat, and fresh understanding of why so few dragons remained soured my stomach. “That’s horrific.”
“Yes,” he agreed softly. “That was the fate awaiting you if you had shifted at puberty.”
Unable to hold down my water, I vomited over the edge of the bed, but Rían didn’t fuss. He only wiped my mouth with a cloth he must have been using to cool my forehead then set about cleaning my mess.
With supplies in easy reach, it took him only a minute, and I spent that time cataloguing details of the room that must be part of the Brentwood Urgent Care building. “Did Carmichael love Liesel?”
“He didn’t know her. Barely spoke to her a handful of times. He was obsessed with her power, with what he could do with all those wishes. He stalked her. Hunted her. She spent the last two years of her life looking over her shoulder and never leaving the safety of the clan home without Dietrich by her side.”
“I was his consolation prize.”
“You were a golden opportunity no matter which of your parents’ magics you inherited.”
Though, in one case, that gold would have been quite literal.
“You don’t know what I am?” I wet my cracked lips. “Do you think I’ll be like her?”
“Your parents feared it enough to arrange our betrothal, but it’s only a guess until you fledge.”
“You never said.” I recalled his gargantuan beast. “What kind of dragon are you?”
“As you saw last night, I’m agigant.”
“Gigantas in giant?”
“Both my parents weregigants, so they knew what to expect with me. That was why your parents felt safe entrusting you to me. They knew I would mature into a titan, another name for my breed, who could protect his mate. Gold or wish affinity, it never mattered to me. I only wanted to find you and honor the vow my parents made yours. Even if you don’t care for me in that way, I still want you to know you’ve got a place with us here. Sloane too, of course. We have seven wolves in the clan, so she wouldn’t be alone.”
“Thank you.” I couldn’t hold his gaze. “I always wanted to be free of the pack, to live my life on my own terms, but I never expected it would happen. Certainly not like this.” I twisted the thin sheet between my fingers. “When can I see Sloane?”
“Not for a while yet.” His lips twitched. “Burdock gave me an earful for the condition I brought you both home in last night. He won’t let Sloane out of bed for several more days, but I can probably ask him?—”
“No,” an accented voice sliced through the room ahead of a short man with a round face and kind eyes. “Your charms are wasted on me.” He wore faded jeans and a plaid button-down shirt with a red stethoscope coiled around his neck. “Your tricks too.”
Cheeks flush, he dipped his chin. “Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean Liam?” I smiled in welcome. “I hearcharmandtricks, and that’s where my mind goes.”
“That’s only because you don’t know this one well yet.” Burdock scoffed at Rían’s show of contrition. “Did he tell you about the trouble he had learning to fly?”
“Some of it, yes.”
Small wonder he struggled with a body as massive as his must have been, even at a young age. He was too hard on himself, but the adult perspective he had gained wouldn’t soothe those childhood wounds to his pride. The fact he kept his dragoncaged due to its sheer size, always afraid of slipping and hurting someone by accident, would only continue to isolate him among his peers, a feeling I knew all too well.
