Feeling and caring were agony for a shifter like him because like all the rest, his friends would age, wither, and die. And he would bury them one by one and break all over again. Weak. He was weak to let mortals affect him, and yet he couldn’t tame his attachment to them. Not anymore.
“Can I tell you something and you forget it in the morning?” Clara asked so low he almost missed it.
He nodded once, curiosity piqued.
“I like your smile. You seem like a man who doesn’t give it often, and I felt special tonight that you gave it to me.”
Damon inhaled deeply. Fuck.
“I’m not a good man to get attached to, Ms. Sutterfield.” God he hated uttering her surname. He had to distance himself, but really he wanted to put his mouth around her real name. Clara. Beautiful, wild, strong Clara. Dangerous Clara.
Her face fell, and she looked out her window, hiding those vivid eyes from him. Pain slashed through his middle. He would have to hurt her a lot more if she didn’t stop knocking on the stony walls of his heart. The game she played could kill everything he’d built.
“Do you know what the tattoo on your shoulder blade symbolizes?” Of course, she did. It was the perfect replica of the Blackwing’s crest, down to the most minute detail and line work. She’d researched her lineage.
“No. It’s just a picture I get in my head.” She was still hiding her gaze, staring at the passing evergreens as they bumped and bounced up the dirt road toward his home.
Damon frowned. “Where have you seen it before?” Perhaps there were scrolls from her genealogy that she’d found.
She swung her gaze to him, and he could see it now. Honesty pooling deep in her eyes. “I told you I see it in my head. I get these headaches, and then I get these flashes of…something.” Her voice dipped to a wisp of breath. “Teeth and fire and wings.”
A seer then. A true seer, not the untalented psychic she fancied herself. Clara was housing great power to draw on images that far past.
“What do you see?”
“I-I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Why wouldn’t she tell him? What was she hiding?
“Can’t. I don’t understand the images. They’re just these insane pictures that make no sense. Like a mash-up. A collage of unrelated instances that don’t tell any story. I’m going mad.” Clara gasped. “I didn’t mean to say that last part.”
“Explain it now.”
“Do you always get what you want? A simple please would get you a long way.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I always get what I want. And please, explain it now.”
When Clara narrowed her eyes to dangerous-looking slits, chills blasted up his arms. Little mortal hellion. She would’ve made an intimidating adversary in the dragon wars.
“My grandma went crazy with what she called the sight. Dreams and headaches and visions of awful things. She was stark raving mad by the time she passed. Clawing at the walls of a padded room and screaming about monsters that had eaten each other up. I’m the same as her. I’ll have the same fate. I already feel myself slipping into these visions. They feel so real I think I have some kind of connection to a different dimension or something. That’s how it starts, you know? Thinking your hallucinations are real. I even bought into my own hype so much that I sank all of my savings into a crappy store in a shopping center where I read palms and tarot cards. I even have a crystal ball. Pretty lame, huh?”
“Mmm,” he said noncommittally. If she didn’t know her own power, he wasn’t going to enlighten her on how dangerous she could be.
His response had been wrong because Clara’s shoulders slumped, and she leaned against the door, far away from him. Before he could change his mind, he asked, “Why did you hug me?”
“Because it felt right.” Her answer was quick and honest.
“Why?”
“Because you feel safe. Stupid, right? More proof I’m broken and so are my instincts. You’re a dragon, and yet I haven’t felt so comfortable since…”
“Since what? Finish it. Please.”
“Since my crew.” When she looked at him, her eyes were filled with such sadness, he had to look away. He’d read her file and knew the bare bones of what she’d been through. She’d been an alpha once.
Damon wanted to hold her hand. He wanted to touch her. Kiss her until she forgot all about the sadness. He knew about losing someone. He knew all about insides being ripped up. He couldn’t do anything to save the people he had loved over the centuries. With just a despairing look at him, she’d reminded him how heavy the burden of loneliness could be. Dangerous Clara. Clenching his hands against the urge to pull her against his side, he did the only thing he knew how. He pushed her away. “You’re right, Ms. Sutterfield. Your instincts are broken.”