Page 2 of Tempt the Dragon
He closed the distance between them, clamping his hands tightly on her shoulders and giving her a little shake. “Our job is to stay alive to work the next target. The plan had to be changed, and as your trainerand senior Collector, I changed it. I also gave you a directive that you disobeyed.”
There were no lies in what he’d just said. Aiken was her trainer, he’d taught her everything she knew about being a Collector. He’d patiently showed her how to balance brute strength with intellect to achieve their goals and had never, not once, played the “I’m your boss” card. Until now. But this was no longerabout the job. They’d surpassed that point the moment his eyes had switched to Drakon. Anger radiated from his body in thick waves of heat that attempted to speak to another part of her, a part she detested.
“You don’t control me and neither does that beast buried inside.” It was a defiant statement, one she made with pride.
“That beast is a part of you.”
How many times had he saidthis to her and how many times had she denied it? Apparently, not enough. “It’s not a part I claim, and you know that.”
Still, he looked at her imploringly, asking her to do something she knew she never could. “You can’t continue to hide. You have to be who you are.”
“And what if I don’t, Aiken? What happens if I continue to deny what you believe I should be? Huh? Can you tell me that?”Because she’d been doing just fine living in denial—as he liked to believe—for plenty of years before he came along.
His grip on her shoulders lessened, but he kept his hands on her, the touch a steadying force between them. “I’ve never known of a Drakon who completely denied their heritage. Who kept their dragon half locked away indefinitely. But based on what I know of the beast itself,there’ll come a time when it takes charge, when it will break free whether you want it to or not and if it happens by force, there’s no telling how much damage could be done to those around it.”
Fear circled in the center of her chest, but she wouldn’t let it win. She hadn’t when her parents left her and she wouldn’t now.
“I know you feel it, Mel.” He moved a hand up to cup the back ofher neck. “You feel it inside you, reaching out, trying to claim its mate.”
Again, no lies were spoken. She had felt something easing just beneath her skin. In the hundred and ninety years she’d been alive, she’d never felt this inside her before. Or if she had, ignorance had been her bliss and she’d chalked it up as indigestion or some other ailment. She’d known her parents were preternatural,knew they’d come from the Far Realm where there were others like them, but all she’d learned of this Drakon legend had only come to her through Aiken. The guy who’d waltzed into her life just about two years ago, and who was now insisting that she change everything she thought she was.
“No!” She pulled away from him, stumbling back but still keeping eye contact. “I choose, Aiken. I choosewho and what I am, not you and not any damned animal.”
He blinked fast at her words and his eyes switched back to their solid brown color. “What about me, Mel? Are you choosing me?”
The next question she wanted to scream was, why did whether she chose to be a Drakon matter to whether she loved him and wanted to be with him? Because she did want him, for the first time in her life therewas someone that she liked being with, someone she’d been able to share her thoughts and dreams with. But now, she knew exactly what he was asking her. He’d asked her weeks ago and she’d wished every single night since then that he’d forget the question.
The time they’d been together had been wonderful, romantic and adventurous with them traveling all over the realm in search of their targets.Then, one day, six months into their two-year relationship, that movement beneath her skin had done something odd. It had reached for Aiken, or something like that, because he’d felt it too, and from that point on, he’d begun telling her about the Drakon.
During the next year and a half, they’d been extremely busy with work as an insurgence of preternaturals had arrived on the Human Realm.They’d been at their best during that time, her life had been more enjoyable than she’d ever imagined, working alongside someone so fearless and strong, intelligent and funny. He was everything to her, until he’d asked her to be what he was, to change the life that she’d made for herself to accommodate the legend only he believed. Why couldn’t they just stay the way they were? A part of her had knownthat wasn’t going to happen. Aiken wouldn’t forget something he wanted, and he wouldn’t settle for less. He wasn’t built that way.
“I’m choosing me.” Her voice sounded so small and frail. She hated it. Clearing her throat, she squared her shoulders and tilted her chin. “I’m choosing to live my life, my way. As a human.” Just to be clear, so there were no misunderstandings from here on out.“Wherever I was born or to whichever family on this realm or another, it doesn’t matter. I’m Melody Kane, a Collector.” Clasping her hands together because her fingers dared to shake at this moment, she continued to stare into eyes she loved with every fiber of her being. “Can you love her, Aiken? Can you be content with loving her?”
For a split second he looked wounded, like that one wordand its implications somehow worried him. It was a silly thought, she knew, because Aiken was always talking about the two of them being in love and all he thought that meant.
“It’s not who I am,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m a Drakon. We select our mates. I selected you.”
“And I choose to love you, Aiken. Why can’t that be enough?”
“Choosing to love me is not selecting meto be your mate, Mel, and you know it. Claiming who you are, being what you were born to be, and selecting one who is doing the same, that’s what’s ahead of us, not a life of denial.”
She would never be a Drakon. That race, her parents, they’d all rejected her when she was four years old. They never came for her. Even after her parents died, no Drakon came to save her, to bring her back tothat place she was supposed to consider her home. Nobody bothered to show up to teach her about this so-called heritage, to give her the tools she’d need to be this thing that lived and breathed inside of her. They’d just left her here among the humans, so that’s where she was going to stay. Even if it meant ripping her heart out, because that’s what it felt like. That’s what she knew was going tohappen the moment she said the words.
“I choose me, Aiken.” Shaking her head and daring the tears to fall in front of him. “I’m always going to choose me.”
When she walked away, Aiken didn’t follow or even call after her. Pain and an unfamiliar white-hot heat seared through her chest, burning any and everything there, leaving nothing but a blistering cold in its wake.
