GWEN

The swelling in my arms goes away after two days, and after four, I’m almost back to normal. I can grip things without feeling like I want to amputate both arms, and with a wrist-brace on each arm, I’m practically back to my old self.

That means Vaan doesn’t have to be my shadow twenty-four seven. It means he doesn’t have to help me to the bathroom or feed me and give me water. It means he doesn’t have to fix my clothing for me or tuck me into my blankets at night. He no longer has to play nursemaid. After five days of it, I’m sure he’s ready to leave my side for a few minutes.

As for me, well…I’m not entirely sure how I feel. I should be relieved I’m no longer reliant on him, but it sounds a little crazy (even to me) to realize that I actually liked being pampered and cosseted for a few days. Vaan is first-class when it comes to taking care of me. I’ve never been treated so well. He never leaves my side, makes sure my “blankets” are tucked tight, and tries to anticipate my every need as if his life depends on it. Of course, the fact that he’s a big, handsome man intent on pleasing me doesn’t hurt matters.

I thought I’d be sick of his company after a few days but…I’m not in the slightest.

“Eat,” Vaan tells me, pushing a bit of cooked meat toward my mouth.

I take the bite—you don’t waste food, not in the After—and shake my head at him. “I just had breakfast. I’m not hungry anymore.”

Vaan doesn’t grasp enough English yet to make that out, though. He picks another chunk off of the chicken he’s roasted and offers it to me. “Eat.”

“Starting to wish you hadn’t learned any words,” I mutter as I take the second bite in my mouth. When I try to pick up a bottle of water, he growls and gives me a warning look. “Fine, you do it,” I tell him with exasperation, and he does just that, twisting off the top and feeding it to my lips. He doesn’t want me to push my wrists at all…or maybe he just likes babying me.

Either way, it’s both exasperating and wonderful. I’m getting a little tired of roasted chicken, though. The only thing Vaan has ventured out to hunt for have been chickens. There is a small flock of wild ones that wanders up and down the highway near here and that’s about as far as Vaan will venture from my side.

So I have chicken for breakfast, chicken for lunch, and chicken for dinner. It was heaven on the first day, but by day five, I’m ready to eat something different. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that, but I think whoever coined that phrase didn’t eat unseasoned chicken for three meals a day, five days in a row.

“Eat,” Vaan says again.

“No.” I wrinkle my nose, turning my head. I couldn’t possibly eat another bite. Luckily, “no” is one of the words that’s in Vaan’s English vocabulary, so he shrugs and eats the rest himself, crunching into the chicken carcass, bones and all.

I try not to watch him eat, because it’s not his fault I find bone-eating weird. It’s perfectly normal for him and I don’t want to judge, even when the bones crack and make grisly noises between his sharp teeth. Instead, I think about how far Vaan has come in the last few days. After we kissed, I lay in bed, pretending to sleep and realizing that I was an idiot. Of course Vaan can speak English. Just because he wasn’t born with it in his head doesn’t mean he’s less intelligent. He knows my name, and we’re able to gesture back and forth, but how nice would it be to be able to truly talk to him? The moment he repeated “kiss me,” I realized that it was possible for him to learn more of my language and for us to speak.

The next morning, I wasted no time, determined to teach him some basic words. “Yes” and “no” he’d already grasped. After that, we went to “eat” and “drink” and “bathroom” and “sleep” and have continued expanding on the basics. He knows maybe a handful of words now, and some of them I have to teach him over and over again. Like my name, things don’t stick when he gets in one of his dragonish “moods,” and then I have to remind him.

Even so, being able to tell him when I need to use the bathroom and without having to do a jillion gestures? It helps.

In the five days we’ve spent glued to each other’s sides, he hasn’t asked to kiss again, though. Either he doesn’t remember or won’t ask, but it hasn’t come up. It’d make me wonder why, except that he constantly watches me with that hot, hungry look in his eyes. I know that all I need to do is snap my fingers and he’d be on me in an instant, all devouring mouth and roaming hands.

I…think about snapping my fingers a lot.

All the time, actually.

Is this how Amy felt, I wonder? She’d told me it was like being caught up on the edge of a hurricane centered around a dragon, and she’s right. Vaan’s made it clear that I’m the center of his world, and it’s a sensation that’s far too easy to get comfortable with. I originally wondered why Andrea was so fascinated with the thought of a dragon for a lover-slash-mate. I’m not wondering anymore. I totally get it. I remind myself that it’s because of Vaan that I’m taken away from Fort Shreveport, and I should resent him. That they might need me and I’m not there. I should be mad.

But I’m not.

It’s that hungry, lonely core inside him that calls out to me. That broken part deep inside that speaks to all my broken parts hidden below the surface. I know what it’s like to have the world change on you, to be forced to survive any way you can, and he looks at me as if I’m the one hope he has, the only light shining in the darkness. It’s the way he watches me so desperately, as if his entire being might shatter into a thousand pieces if something were to happen to me. I feel his need and it calls to me.

I wouldn’t say that I’m in love—that’s something that comes with time—but I understand Vaan, and I don’t hate or fear him anymore.

But if Vaan and I are going to be friends—or more—we have to come to an agreement of some kind about how we’re going to proceed. That conversation’s been put on hold while I’ve been utterly dependent on him, but now that my wrists are improving, it should come up soon. If I don’t want to be his mate, I need to let him go so he’ll be free to find someone else.

I just haven’t decided what I want yet. There’s a part of me that thinks it’s smartest to tell him no once and for all, to go back to Fort Shreveport and do what I can to help Amy fix the mess I’ve created, to be there for Daniela and help her recover from her ordeal. To be a team player. Not the captain of the football team, just a good team player…and then there’s the dark, selfish part of me that makes me want to say “fuck it” to all the responsibility. To listen to the knot of dread in my belly whenever I think of Fort Shreveport and all the responsibility that comes with it, and run away with the dragon to live a wild and free life full of awkward but intense kisses and chicken for breakfast.

I hate that the second option’s so damn appealing. I should want the first one. It should be obvious…and yet, I keep thinking about what it’d be like to be truly mated with Vaan. To share that bond that Amy shares with Rast.

It’s a hell of a temptation.

I must be frowning, because Vaan finishes off his chicken and puts a hand in my hair, stroking it hard. I endure the petting with an awkward smile. What’s a little chicken grease in hair that’s already dirty and snarled, right? He watches my face, peering at my eyes as he pets me.

It’s a strange ritual he’s taken up, and one that he does several times a day to the point that I feel like I’m going to go bald if it continues, but it makes him happy, so I endure it.

“Gwen,” he rumbles in that almost-purr.

“We should talk about what comes next,” I tell him, even as he pets my hair again. Pet pet pet pet pet. I do my best not to wince and continue. “Like, are we going to go back to Fort Shreveport? Or are we going to stay here? Because if we’re going to stay here for a while, we’re going to need more bedding, or someplace to take a bath.”

“Bath?” He cocks his head and gets to his feet, hauling me to mine. “Bath-room? Yes?”

“Er, not quite. That’s my fault. There’s a big difference between the two.” I pat his shoulder awkwardly. “Bath is wash.” I gesture at scrubbing my hair, then my arms. “Wash. And more clothes. Really, we need a lot of things. This is okay for now, but it’s not a good long-term shelter.”

He pauses, studying my face. “Gwen, speak.” He taps his mouth and shakes his head. “No.”

I know what that means. I’m giving him too much at once. He doesn’t understand it. I rub his arm again, because touching him’s pleasant. I find myself touching him a lot, actually. Any excuse to do it, and I’ll touch him, several times a day. I know I’m doing it, and I should stop, but…I don’t. Flustered at the realization, I pull back. “Sorry. You’re doing the best you can and I’m throwing the kitchen sink at you. Let’s start smaller.”

“Gwen, no bath-room?”

“No.” I grimace, because I’m the world’s worst teacher. “I—”

I break off because Vaan’s eyes immediately flare to black, a signal that his mood’s changed and something’s wrong. I’m learning that black eyes are bad, gold eyes are happy, and deep amber means frisky-times. They swirl between colors usually when he’s moody and are harder to interpret then, but black is bad, bad, bad. He stiffens a split second later, his fangs bared, and then Vaan’s enormous golden body explodes into the room. Shelves go flying, I skid backwards, and then the roof collapses as my dragon flings himself straight up out of the building.

The roof crumbles around me, pieces of plaster and ceiling tile falling down amidst the wreckage of the shelves. I cough, waving a hand in front of my face and wincing at the flare of pain that returns. “Vaan?”

There’s no answer. The dragon’s gone. I peer up at the now-broken roof, waiting to see if he’s going to return, but it’s quiet.

Well…shit. What the hell happened just now? I push my way through the rubble, a little surprised none of it crashed onto me and flattened me. Maybe the force of Vaan’s momentum made it fly out instead of inward. I glance around me at the destruction, and as I do, a broken sheet of drywall topples down to the ground. Maybe not. I give my hair a shake to free it from the worst of the dust and then head outside. A breeze wafts over me, cooling my skin as I glance around, looking for a huge golden body in the air.

Vaan isn’t hard to find, though he’s not in the air. He’s on the ground, a few parking lots over, his attention focused on something brown thrashing on the pavement. As I watch, he pins it with one big clawed foreleg, regards it, and then leans down and snaps it into his jaws.

I wince. I think I’m seeing dinner caught in action. It’s not the hunting that bothers me as much as the realization that Vaan’s not getting less crazy with the time that passes. He just destroyed our shelter because of an impulsive hunt, and now we’re going to have to find somewhere else to stay. More than that, his actions make me realize that I can’t go back to Fort Shreveport. Not with him. Not when he could go nuts at the flip of a switch and destroy a building—or people—without even meaning to.

He just doesn’t remember anything. Nothing sticks.

I knew this, and yet…I’m surprised at how achingly hollow it makes me feel. It’s not Vaan’s fault. He is who he is. I just wish…

I bury those thoughts as he lifts his head, the brown form hanging from his jaws. A deer, maybe? He half flutters, half strides back to me, crossing the distance of two parking lots in a matter of moments. Then he lowers his head and spits the food on the ground in front of me. He rubs his jaw with one leg as if offended, then steps back, watching me.

It takes a moment for it to sink in that he’s brought it to me.

It takes a moment more for it to sink in that it’s not a deer.

The lump on the ground in front of me is wet with dragon drool from being in Vaan’s mouth, but I don’t see spindly deer legs and hide. I see brown fabric and skin so dirty it’s lost all color except the color of dirt. I see filthy hair and an arm, bruised and covered with old scars.

It’s Mara.

“Oh god,” I whisper aloud. She didn’t go to Fort Shreveport after all. She came back and Vaan ate her. I press my fingers to my mouth, fighting back bile. When his eyes went black, I never imagined…

The dragon shifts on his feet, moving closer. He lifts one foreleg, and for a moment, I think he’s going to grab me. Instead, one scaly, massive paw gently strokes my hair. Petting me. The claws practically curl around my entire face, but he never touches me with them. He just carefully strokes my hair and watches my face, his eyes whirling with emotion. It’s like he’s waiting for something.

When the dirty, slobber-covered mound whimpers, I realize what he’s waiting for.

Mara’s alive…and he’s brought her to me.