Last Immortal Dragon(7)

It was right there in her lineage. A long genealogy dating back to a hybrid shifter fathered by Feyadine’s brother, Nall. There was a reason he’d made the rule never to search for Feyadine’s ancestors. One that kept his heart safe from what was happening to him now. He’d spiraled for centuries after he’d lost her, and now it was happening all over again. He rested his back against the wall as he read Clara’s file.

Clara wasn’t just a risk to him.

She was a risk to the whole damned world. The last time he’d suffered the loss of a Blackwing mate, Damon had annihilated the remainder of his species and blackened the earth with dragon’s fire.

“I’ll find you again,” Feyadine had promised.

Perhaps she had.

****

“You let me walk in there thinking I was going to evict ghosts!” she yelled at Mason. “How could you do that? How could you let me go into that mess unprepared?”

“I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know what else to tell you to get you here.”

“What is he, Mason?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Clara slammed her palms against the Towncar and shook her head, so angry she could spit nails. Preferably at Mason’s head.

She wanted to rage and cry all at once, and for what? She didn’t know Damon.

“Take me back to the airport.”

“Clara, if you’ll just give him time—”

“To what? Put a monster baby in me?”

“But you want a child anyway!”

“How do you know? How do you know anything about me?”

“Because I’ve been tracking you for years. I know about your crew. I know about the doctors. I know everything! Now is the time, and I was right, wasn’t I? You felt something when you laid eyes on him for the first time. I saw it on your face. There was something there, hanging in the air between you.”

“Why the fuck does it matter to you?”

“Because he has a chance to be good!” Mason chucked his driver’s hat, and it sailed across the perfectly manicured front lawn. “Godammit, woman. He has a chance to be good. You’re his chance. He’s ready. And don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”

“Take me away from here,” she gritted out, voice quavering. She yanked open the back door and crawled in, then waited for him to finally unhook his hands from his hips and get behind the wheel.

“You’re making a mistake,” he murmured, holding her gaze in the rearview mirror.

“You don’t know me, Mason, and it’s become abundantly clear that no matter what you think, you don’t really know that man in there either. I’m nobody’s chance to be good.”

Clara forced herself not to look out the back window as Mason drove her away. She’d learned long ago that looking back was weakness. To survive, she needed to look ahead. Always. Regret, revisiting the past, pondering what-ifs was a waste of time reserved for people who had lost a lot less than her.

When a flash of the smiling hazel-eyed child from the plane rippled across her mind, she slammed her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. What a cruel twist of fate that she would have a child dangled in front of her, yet again. She pulled her floral duffle to her stomach and clutched it like the comfort blanket she’d had as a kid. Mason kept looking at her in the rearview with an unfathomable expression. Let him. What did she care? Clara looked out the window as the pristine cobblestone driveway morphed into a dirt road beneath the tires.

“This isn’t the way we came up here,” she growled out.

“It’s shorter this way, and besides, I think it would be good for you to see Damon isn’t a monster. He’s done a lot of good for these mountains and the people in them.”

She sighed a put-upon sound and narrowed her eyes at a break in the trees. Through the opening, she could see miles of rolling pine forest. None of this would change her mind, but she was exhausted from whatever had happened between her and Damon, the headache was still lingering, and frankly, she didn’t care how Mason got her out of these mountains and back to the airport, so long as he did. And she definitely wasn’t up for another row with the pig-headed man quietly driving her down a switchback.

The scenery really was breathtaking. Clara leaned against the glass and pressed both hands on the window, just to leave smudges and feel as though she’d won a tiny battle. Outside, evergreens, ferns, wild grasses, brambles, and wildflowers painted a wilderness canvas full of colors too vibrant to be real. It was springtime, and apparently the rains that had been coasting across the country had done this place good.

Mason drove her past a flat cliff ledge where curious, giant machines stood still and abandoned, the arm of one stuck in the air as if its operator had stopped mid-chore when they cut out for the workday.