He cocks his head. Purply black strands stroke his shoulders. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
he asks.
“I don’t know why you had to try.”
“Don’t you?”
“Why couldn’t you just forget—”
“I can’t do that.”
“Because your daddy said so,” I hiss, thinking of his father.
Charcoal black flashes beneath the olive hue of Cassian’s skin, his draki flesh ready to burst free. “I’m not here for my father or the pride.”
As his purple-black eyes bore into me, I feel this truth. Know what he’s really saying.
He’s here for himself.
I cock my head. “News flash, Cassian. I’m not looking to go home.” At least not like this.
Not with him dragging me back.
He responds to this in typical male draki fashion. His face tightens into stark lines, his nose broadening with several sharp ridges, his skin flashing, blurring in and out. Black dragon skin one moment, human flesh the next.
I brace myself, flex my toes inside my shoes. Steam puffs from my nose like warm breath on a wintry day. “Your macho display doesn’t intimidate me.” A lie. “I’ll fight you,” I warn.
He may be stronger, but I’m not defenseless. He knows that, of course. That’s why he’s here. He wants me for what I can do after all.
He studies me, considering.
“Are you up for that?” I challenge.
“Are you?” he counters.
Am I ready to incinerate him with a single breath? For all his glowering looks, he’s a part of my past, one of my kind, the legacy Mom would pack away and sell like old baby clothes.
After a moment, he answers. “You can’t fight the entire pride.”
I arch a brow with a mildness I don’t feel. “Oh, you’re bringing the pride into this? I thought you were here on your own behalf.”
“I am, but they were going to send someone after you. I volunteered, but if I go back empty-handed, they’ll just send someone else. Probably Corbin.”
I try not to shiver. Corbin. Jabel’s son and Cassian’s cousin. He and Cassian never got along. They didn’t even bother trying.
“Come home with me, Jacinda. It’s inevitable.”
My hands curl into a fist, nails slicing into my palms. “Is that what you want? For me to go with you and hate you for the rest of my days because you gave me no choice?”
“You’ll get over—”
“No, I won’t.”
He looks surprised for a moment, then a little sad. His eyes narrow as though seeing me for the first time. Or a new side of me, anyway. “You could return,” I say, seizing the opening. “Plant false leads. Tell them you couldn’t find—”
“I can’t do that.”
“You think I’ll just wake up one day and think, gee, I want to be property of the pride again, a tool to be used for breeding.” I cross my arms. “I won’t go back.”
He stares at me for a long moment. My belly quivers beneath that stare and for an instant I totally get the effect he has on so many girls. On my sister and every other female of the pride. “Very well. You can’t like it here. You can’t want to stay. You’re not bred for this misery. No matter what you say, what you think now, you’ll tire of the human world.
This heat must be hell on your draki. Really blistering it. I’ll wait. Check back in on you in about—” He tilts his head back as though calculating just how long I could make it here. “Five weeks,” he announces.
Five weeks, huh. I’m almost surprised he would grant me that much time.
“Oh, my mother will just love you popping in. She’ll probably cook a pot roast.”
“She doesn’t need to know I’ve found you…or that I’ll be around.” His lips twist. “Don’t want her to take you and run again.” And she would. He was right about that.
His eyes bore inside me and I feel a surge of the familiar unease. But something else, too.
Something I never felt before with Cassian. A strange sense of longing. I tell myself it’s just for my pride, my own kind. That makes sense. It’s not him specifically. It’s what he is. What he represents. I can almost smell the mountains and mists rolling off him. It takes every bit of will not to step forward and inhale, press my nose against his warm, fragrant flesh.
“I can be patient,” he adds.
I don’t say anything. Simply return his gaze, feeling a little dizzy as I look into the flat pools of purple-black and refrain from stepping closer.
I would never have described him as patient before. He was the kind of guy that took without asking because it was his birthright. The great draki prince. Like any other draki female, I’m supposed to fall at his feet in blissful subjugation. What could have changed him?
I prop a hand on my hip. “Patient? You? Really?”
He sighs and steps closer. I move, back up until I can go no farther, the hard alley wall at my back.
“I’m not going to deny that I hope for something more between us, Jacinda. Something real and lasting.” He must see something on my face, for he quickly stresses, “Hope.
Never force.”
“And if I don’t want that? Ever?”
He presses his lips into a firm line, like he’s rolling the taste of that around in his mouth.
And not liking it.
“Then I would respect your wishes.” He spits the words out, like it hurts to keep them inside. His expression of distaste is almost laughable. The notion that I wouldn’t ever bond with him, mate, and produce a slew of little fire-breathers doesn’t sit well. Whether he sees it or not, he already looks at things like an alpha. King of the pride, looking out for the future of our race. At the expense of any one soul. He claimed he was here for himself. Only he doesn’t realize that the pride is part of him. He can never separate the needs and wants of the pride from his own. Therein, lies the danger.
“I need your word. Your promise. You won’t interfere while I’m here, you won’t force me to go back.” Because if he says this, then I’ll believe him. He’s many things to me, but he’s never been a liar.