Bloodrunner Dragon (Harper's Mountains Book 1) (10 page)

Alpha
. Wyatt had lost his damned mind.

Harper shook her head for the hundredth time since he’d aimed that ridiculous word at her. Dragons weren’t alphas. They thrived alone, bonded to one mate, and females like her died off young. Other than the dragon wars in ancient times, that little genetic anomaly was the biggest reason for the near extinction of her kind.

Bears, wolves, big cats, and other apex predators made good alphas for crews, but only if they were dominant and healthy, both physically and mentally. She was none of those things.

Harper snapped the lock on the gate and tossed the mangled metal to the side, then pulled the wadded-up shirt back to her bleeding nose.

She’d tried to leave, really she had, but she’d been thirty minutes outside of Bryson City when the biggest, longest seizure of her life had taken her. She’d nearly died on the side of the road, unable to escape her seatbelt, trying desperately to keep her foot on the brake so she wouldn’t go careening off the old bridge in front of her and into the river. And when she’d recovered enough to drive again, her dragon had balked and wouldn’t let her take her foot off the brake until she threw the car in reverse.

Okay then, she wasn’t headed for the airport tonight, but with a little luck, she would feel better tomorrow morning and start making her way back to Saratoga. So she could die alone.

She grimaced and shoved the gate open. No, not alone. She had the boys. They would visit like they always did, and call her. Her cell phone lit up with a message, asking for a video chat. Wyatt’s number flashed on the screen. Nope. She rejected the request and shoved the phone into her back pocket. She wasn’t ready to make apologies or have him see how badly her nose was bleeding. She just wanted one night to mull over everything that had happened today without Wyatt or the boys in her head. And Martin’s vacant property was the best place to do that.

She drove through the open gate, left it swung wide, and made her way down the muddy road to the clearing where cabin 1010 sat.

The problem lay in the moments following Wyatt’s declaration she should be alpha. It was the look of a lightbulb going off over Ryder’s head, the slow grin on Aaron’s lips, and the baffled there-it-is expression on Weston’s face. It was the hope in Wyatt’s eyes.

She was going to fail them. The last thing she wanted on this earth was to throw them into chaos before The Unrest took her. And it wasn’t a crew of strangers who had been recruited either. It was the people she loved the most, her best friends, the ones who had kept her propped up with their strength when The Unrest began. She couldn’t do that to them.

Harper got out of her car and pulled her bag from the back seat, then made her way up to the dark cabin.

It should be creepy, being in these unfamiliar woods so late at night and in the pitch darkness, but such a feeling of safety washed over her skin that she paused right before the porch steps and closed her eyes, breathed in the crisp mountain air. It smelled different here than back home. Home. Was Saratoga home? Now she didn’t know. Her feelings were mixed, and she frowned as she realized home wasn’t really a place for her anymore. It was Wyatt. Maybe it had been him all along, and that’s why things had gotten so messed up. Her dragon chose a lair that didn’t stay in one place. A lair with the ability to leave, while she stayed stagnant and pining for something she couldn’t force to be hers.

A sigh of relief expelled from her lungs as she stepped into the cabin and turned on the light. The dusty old house was her sanctuary tonight, and when she drew the shirt away from her nose and pressed her fingertip there, she was baffled to find it had suddenly stopped bleeding. Maybe it was coincidence. It had been going for half an hour now and had to stop at some point. It was probably the applied pressure that had staunched it.

There wasn’t anywhere clean to sit down, much less sleep, so Harper dropped her bag and the bloody rag and made her way into the small kitchen. One peek under the sink, and her face was consumed with an unexpected smile. Martin’s late wife must’ve been a thorough cleaner because it was chock full of supplies. And in the closet was a good broom and dustpan.

So as Harper’s mind swirled round and round all that had happened over the last couple of days, she worked. Dragons were tidy by nature, and she had always relieved stress by cleaning. This was different, though. With every sweep of her broom, she adored the rich color of the floorboards a little more. With every wipe of the rag over the countertop, she admired the craftsmanship and smoothness. She even memorized the little cuts in the natural sealed wood where people had dinged the surface over the years. With every scrubbing motion in the sink, she admired the shine. Hours passed like minutes. And when she dumped the final dustpan of dirt off the front porch and turned to the open doorway of 1010, with its warm glow spilling over the sagging but swept front porch, such a strange sensation buzzed through her chest. At first, she feared it was another seizure come to take her too soon, but as the seconds ticked by and she didn’t double over in pain, she pressed her open palm gently over her chest.

It wasn’t the humming of The Unrest. It was a content sound her dragon hadn’t made since she was a child. It was a sound she’d assumed she had outgrown.

The porch floor boards groaned under her feet, and behind her, the crickets chirped. The breeze made rustling music with the creaking tree branches. She couldn’t take her eyes off the polished wood floors through the open doorway. 1010 was beautiful, despite the cracks in the windows and the age of the cabin.

Stunned, Harper took a step backward and rested her hips against the porch railing. Crossing her arms over her chest, she canted her head and squinted at the doorframe thoughtfully. She’d been living in Pop-Pop’s cliff mansion in a room dug deep into the cave walls. She’d slept to the
drip-drip
of water falling from the stone wall behind her bed and thrived with the dank, cool air against her skin. Her room at her grandfather’s house had been built for dragons like her, so why was this place singing to her? It was the opposite of what she was supposed to covet. Why was this old, hole-infested cabin drawing the constant, happy vibration from her inner dragon?

The sound of Wyatt’s truck engine sounded up the road, and Harper’s lips curved in a smile that felt good. He’d found her. Of course, he had. They were bound by their souls, by their destinies. Of course, he would know her heart.

Three hours ago, she would’ve been prepared to tell him she needed space and time, but now she didn’t want to experience this happy, elated moment alone. She wanted to spend it with him.

The sound of the door shut, but Harper was too afraid to turn around in case the happy noise ceased in her chest.

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt murmured from behind her.

At the tone of his voice, the sound in her chest rattled louder. “Come here,” she whispered as tears prickled her eyes.

The
creak creak
of the porch stairs sounded, and then he was there. Her Wyatt. He was tall and strong, and his eyes churned with intensity as he searched her face. He lifted his fingertips to her cheek and then stroked a strand of hair, tucked it behind her ear. “Are you okay?”

She laughed thickly and pulled his hand to her chest, pressed it over her heart.

He froze, his eyebrows lifted, his lips slightly parted. They stood like that for the span of three heartbeats, connected by that simple touch. And then Wyatt whispered, “I remember this. I lived for this sound once.”

Harper bit her trembling lip and admitted, “I never thought I would hear it again.”

When Wyatt dragged her against his hard torso, his body melted against hers like a second skin. He swayed them gently from side to side and then lowered his lips to her ear. “I don’t want you to run. I want you to stay here and fight. I want you to spend every minute you can with me. Not because I deserve the second chance, but because I love you so much I can’t imagine being apart again. Forget what I said about alpha. I know I put pressure on you in front of everyone, and I’m sorry. You don’t have to be anything other than who you are, right now. It’s more than enough for me.”

A sob wrenched up her throat, and she clung to him tighter. “I wasn’t scared before, but then I came here and felt so deeply again because of you. And now I want more time. I’m afraid I won’t find my place before the end.”

“Your place is with me, here or in Saratoga or wherever makes you happiest. I’ll be there for you. And no more talk of the end.”

“Wyatt—”

He eased back and cupped her cheeks gently. His eyes were full of promise as he murmured, “If I have one day with you, or twenty, or a year…we won’t waste another moment running. Not a single moment, okay? I’m yours. I’ve always been yours.”

A soft, shuddering whimper of relief was all she was able to manage before he kissed her. This moment, this instant, eclipsed all others. Standing here in the warm glow of 1010, she melted against the man who held her heart. Who had always held her heart.

Forget what they’d gone through to get to this moment. It had all been worth it to feel the depth of this happiness. Of this joy. Wyatt brushed his tongue against the closed seam of her lips, and she parted for him with a relaxed sigh. Too soon, Wyatt eased back and rested his forehead against hers.

“Harper?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to stay here tonight?”

With a mushy smile, she nodded.

“Okay, wait right here. I brought you something.” Wyatt grinned and then jogged off the porch to the back of his truck. And then he reappeared lugging a queen-size mattress like it weighed nothing.

A shocked laugh bubbled up her throat as he maneuvered it into the cabin. “How did you know I would be here?”

Wyatt let the mattress fall onto the floor. “Beaston told me. Kind of.”

With a squeak, she ran, then spun in the air and landed on the soft cushion of the mattress and stared up at the rafters with a grin plastered to her lips. Wyatt disappeared outside again and then returned with a pair of pillows and an armload of the blankets from his bed.

“Remember the first time we snuck out to that tree house we used to all play in?” Harper asked him. God, she hoped he remembered because it was one of her brightest memories. It had been the day everything changed for them. It was the day she’d wiggled her way out of the friend zone.

He chuckled as he straightened the covers over her. “How could I forget. You stuck your hand down the front of my pants up there.” He flipped off the light switch. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more shocked,” he said in the dark, amid the rustle of fabric.

“Okay, but I’d liked you for years, and I had been holding back for so long, thinking about you, wishing you would kiss me, wishing you would touch me and just give me a clue that you liked me back as more than a friend. I saw you flirting at lunch with a couple of human girls the day before, and I just knew I had to make my move.”

“You could’ve said, ‘Wyatt, I like you,’ at any time.” He let off a laugh and flopped down on the bed next to her. “I take that back. The way you told me was perfect. I’d always thought you were pretty, but I just never thought I had a chance with you.” He rested his arm under her head and drew her close, kissed her forehead. “You were this tough, mature dragon-girl. You were always out of my league, so I didn’t even think about going after you until you let me know I had a shot.”

“Coward,” she teased, nuzzling her cheek against his chest.

“Hell, yeah. You had the fire, Harper. Everyone was a coward around you.”

She giggled and traced his puckered nipple. He’d taken his shirt off, and his skin was so warm. She’d always run hot, but Wyatt almost matched her heat—more proof he was her match. Her skin didn’t burn him. He was strong enough for her.

His voice dipped low and serious. “That night in the tree house, I knew I was done for. I remember walking you back home before dawn, and we’d just kissed for the first time. You’d touched me, and I couldn’t leave you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I sat under your window until it was time to get up for school because my bear wouldn’t let me leave you.”

She frowned and rested her chin on his chest, stared at him to make sure he wasn’t teasing. “You only lived a few trailers away from me.”

He huffed a quiet breath. “It was still too far, Harper. After that, I
lived
for when you asked me to meet you at the treehouse because it meant I would get to hold you and feel okay without the guys giving me shit, or your parents giving me those worried looks because we were so young to be forming a bond, you know?”

“Yeah,” she murmured as flashes of memories ran through her mind. She had so many good ones that involved Wyatt. “Do you remember when my dad caught us sneaking back into my trailer when we were seventeen?”

“Oh, God,” he said in that sexy, deep timbre of his. “Bruiser was terrifying, and your mom is a freaking dragon shifter. Then I had your birth mom lecturing me, and Drew threatened to maul me. You weren’t an easy girl to date, you know. I thought Bruiser was gonna pummel me when we got busted, but I understood. He was just lookin’ out for you.”

“He took you out in the woods the next morning…”

“Yeah for the most uncomfortable sex talk ever. It included death threats. And when I got home, my dad gave me the same one and begged me to leave you alone. Your dad’s bear was on a tear for a while after that, and my dad was trying to be an understanding alpha.”