The Billionaire Dragon Shifter Meets His Match: BBW Paranormal Romance (Gray's Hollow Dragon Shifters Book 6) (14 page)

She hesitated over the choice of jewelry. Her hand went automatically to her Georgian Corps medallion. It was routine for her to at least carry it with her, if she was going to be away from home for a while. On the other hand, she longed to drape herself in gifts from Laurence, a message to him as well as everyone else of where her loyalty lay.

Jane settled on an assortment, eventually, and again she left all the most ostentatious pieces behind, though she ran a regretful touch over the heavy ruby-and-gold necklace she loved best. She slipped her medallion into her pocket, put her hair into a twist secured with gold-tipped hairsticks, and finally headed downstairs to find her mate.

Laurence stood in the kitchen, already dressed in dark jeans and a black shirt. He had his sleeves rolled up, showing the black lines of dragonglass around his wrists and the scars that dragonglass had left on him. He was holding a mug in his hands as he stood by the sink, looking out the kitchen window into the pre-dawn darkness.

It couldn’t have been more obvious that he didn’t want to be argued with, or to hear anything she could say to him about what was going to happen. But he had made an entire pot of coffee, so his brooding here wasn’t entirely pointless. Jane brushed past him to get down a couple of travel mugs.

“I know you’re not going to listen right now,” he said quietly, and Jane actually stopped to stare at him.

“
I’m
not going to listen to
you
?”

Laurence gave a tense little smile, staring down into his mug. “You’re not. You’ve made up your mind, and you’re my mate, and I understand that that’s the way you feel now and you think that nothing will change it. But you’ve never seen me the way you’ll see me today. I’ve never seen
myself
completely out of control, not since I was fourteen years old. So I want you to know that I understand that what I do today, what I become—it may be enough to make you give up on me. You might see that I really am a monster, and choose to side with them, and I...”

He shook his head and carefully set the mug down, bracing his clenched fists against the edge of the counter and dropping his head. “If I were a good man I would say I won’t blame you, I won’t be angry with you for recognizing what I am. But the truth is I’m already angry just thinking about it. You’re my mate. I want to keep you. I want to run off with you. I want to kill everyone who could possibly take your loyalty from me.”

The black medallion was heavy in Jane’s pocket and she was aware of Laurence’s size, his strength. At the same time she was aware that far from threatening her, he wasn’t even looking at her or raising his voice.  He’d forced those dragonglass bracelets back onto his wrists to be sure he couldn’t hurt anyone for these last few hours before he was forced to fight.

“I just have to tell you,” Laurence said quietly. “When you see me for a monster—you won’t be wrong. I am your mate, and I love you, but I am a dragon and a danger. You’ll see.”

Jane shook her head, thinking of everything she’d already seen. “I want you to do something for me.”

He didn’t raise his head, didn’t move or lower the shields that blocked her from reaching him with dragon speech. But she couldn’t let him forget how much she’d already seen of him, and just how much she knew about what he would do when nothing held him back.

“I want you to wear this today.” She set down the crudely shaped gold ring on the counter, right beside his clenched fist. The sign of the apology a child had made to him—a child he had caught and kept from harm when an instant before he had been full of rage.

“I won’t say anything else, I won’t argue. You don’t have to tell me it won’t make a difference, and the challenge won’t be like that. I still want you to wear that, for me, today.”

Laurence looked at the ring, and then looked at her, but kept his eyes down. He was looking directly at her pocket, in fact.

“You wear that, then,” he said, looking down at the ring again. “Actually wear it, where they can see.”

Jane stepped closer. “Only if you put it on me.”

His lips tightened in frustration at the bargaining, and his hands stayed in fists on the counter as the gold chain was tugged out of her pocket, dragging the heavy black medallion with it. He laid it gently around her neck and fused the clasp into a solid bead of gold at the nape of her neck, and never once opened his hands or looked directly at her.

“Laurence,” she said softly. “I love you too. No matter what I see today, what choice I have to make—you’re my mate, and I love you, dragon and danger and all.”

He finally met her eyes, just for a moment, and she saw no flames there. No anger at all.

For the first time it occurred to her that Farrell could hurt, even kill, Laurence. If the only way Laurence knew to control himself was to put
all
his anger aside, and the dragon’s strength with it...

He opened his right hand and offered it to her. Jane picked up the ring from the counter and slid it onto his index finger, where it had settled when his talons had become fingers again the day before. She kissed his knuckle, closing his hand back into a fist between both of hers.

She kept her own eyes closed so Laurence might not see the tears she was holding back.

***

This wasn’t the first time Jane had been to the dueling ground with the dragonglass of her medallion resting heavy on her chest. The Georgian Corps supervised all properly organized challenges, to ensure that disputes were settled properly and without dragging in more participants than absolutely necessary.

And to judge if any of the participants must be outlawed for their conduct during the challenge, of course.

She had always known that that was a possibility. She had braced herself every time to face a situation getting out of control, someone going too far. But she had never known going in that it was the likeliest outcome, and she had never been so unsure of what she would do if it happened.

Knowing in advance ought to have been some kind of advantage, but Jane could do nothing but second-guess herself and her own instincts. She had the whole drive up from Chicago to turn over increasingly awful possibilities in her head, and she still couldn’t come to any conclusions.

Somehow, in all her worrying about what Laurence would do, what
Farrell
would do, what she would do about any of it, Jane had forgotten to think about the fact that
her mother would be there
. She stared, her mind gone completely blank, at the sight of her mother standing next to William and his father, who Jane had called
Uncle K
when she was a little girl, and
sir
after she joined the Corps.

Laurence’s hand found hers and squeezed. Jane dragged her gaze away from the people she might disappoint in the next hour—might
betray
—to meet her mate’s silvery gray eyes. She saw his kindness there, and a last gasp of grim humor, and she loved him all over again for it.

“So,” Laurence said. “Probably not formally introducing me to your family while there’s still a chance one of them will kill me before the day is out?”

Jane shook her head slightly. “We should... save that. But that’s William’s dad, not mine.”

Laurence’s eyes narrowed, still holding her hand as he looked out at the people standing there. “Does that help?”

“He’ll kill you with a sword,” Jane said faintly. “Instead of taking dragon shape and fighting you.”

Laurence tilted his head in acknowledgment of the point. “So I’ll just...”

“I’ll show you where to wait,” Jane agreed, and they hurried out of the car without acknowledging anyone who was waiting, skirting quickly around it and cutting across the grass to where a path entered the trees.

As they walked, she said quietly, “You remember the rules William told you? The challenge is over when he yields or can’t take wing anymore, or when you do.”

Laurence nodded in her peripheral vision, saying nothing more.

She stopped at the edge of the trees. There was a signpost at the start of the path, and a card reading LAWRENCE had been tacked to it with an arrow pointing down the path.

Jane was startled by the informality, and the misspelling, until she remembered that Laurence hadn’t properly identified himself to anyone. None of them knew his last name was Gray, or where he came from, or where he would run to.

Jane turned toward him, meaning to say something about his name being misspelled, but Laurence caught her in his arms and pulled her suddenly close. He kissed her roughly, desperately, holding her against him. Even if she couldn’t hear him in dragon speech, she knew he was as uncertain as she was, turning over questions and possibilities.

She clung to him, kissing him back for all she was worth. This was all she was sure about, and she didn’t want to let go.

Laurence let go of her finally, taking a step back. He held out his hands to her, showing his wrists. He didn’t ask, but Jane knew what had to happen.

She closed her hands around his wrists, brushing her thumbs over the gold beads strung alongside the dragonglass to unfasten them. She kept her hands on Laurence, brushing her thumbs over his scars as she let the bracelets drop to the ground.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“Jane,” Laurence whispered back, his voice shaking. His hands closed into fists again, but he stood still, his head bowed, until Jane opened her hands and released him. He turned away and walked into the trees alone, without looking back.

Jane turned away before he was completely out of sight among the trees, where the pre-dawn darkness was deeper. She glanced down at the dragonglass bracelets and left them there in the grass, hurrying back to where she’d parked.

William and his father had already gone down to the platform hidden by the first stand of trees, which would give a better view of what was about to happen on the dueling ground.

Her mother stood alone by the cars, looking Jane up and down as she walked back. Jane kept her chin up and her shoulders straight, trying to look as sternly and perfectly like a member of the Georgian Corps as her mother would expect.

Her mother sighed. “Oh,
Janie
.”

The tenderness in her mother’s voice cracked Jane’s composure as a lecture couldn’t have. She covered her mouth with one hand, struggling to hold back any reply; she couldn’t have said a word without crying.

Her mother tugged her into a hug, and Jane hid her face against her mother’s hard shoulder, clinging to her. She felt even more like she was going to cry, and even more sure that she didn’t dare start. She didn’t have
time
.

Her mother pulled back while Jane was still struggling to steady her breathing. She tapped her finger against the black medallion Jane wore. “I’m glad to see this, at least.”

The familiar mix of pride and annoyance at her mother’s approval straightened Jane’s spine immediately.

“We should go up,” she said, her own voice sounding almost calm. Her mother nodded and gestured for Jane to lead the way.

The wooden platform that looked out over the cleared ground was officially described as a target-shooting stand. There were rows of hay bales and targets on the dueling ground to complete the effect. They were also useful for gauging the position and distance of the combatants, since they were placed at twenty-yard intervals.

As soon as Jane and her mother were in position on top of the platform, William fired off a green flare into the dark blue sky, barely lightened by the approaching dawn.

From off to her left, she heard a beating of wings as Farrell took to the air, and a roar of challenge. She didn’t look toward him, struggling against her own instinct to take that challenge herself. She stared into the darkness to her right, searching for the first glimpse of Laurence. She just had time to wonder if he would refuse the challenge somehow at the last second—run from the field—and then Farrell’s rise turned to an arcing turn over the dueling field, and a dark red shape rocketed straight toward him.

Laurence was starting the fight like a dragonet, with pure uncalculated fury. Jane realized fully for the first time that he’d never really
fought
another dragon, in play or in earnest.

Farrell, veteran of a dozen challenges that Jane knew of and doubtless at least as many conducted off the books, dodged him easily, sending a scornful snap of fire into Laurence’s face. Dragon fire was harmless to a dragon’s hide and scales, but open eyes and an open mouth could be vulnerable. Jane heard the pain in Laurence’s following roar as he wheeled on Farrell.

More than that, she
felt
it, and realized that the fury that consumed her when her mate was hurt wasn’t only her own. Laurence’s shield against dragon speech had fallen, and his unbounded rage washed over her. She raised a hand to her dragonglass medallion, closing her fist around it so the edges dug into her palm. She had to hold her own against her mate’s wildness.

The fight was hard to follow through all of that—two great dark shapes in the slowly brightening sky, wings beating and talons clashing. But she didn’t need to see what happened when she felt the pain rip up her—Laurence’s—side. Farrell had scored a hit, broken through Laurence’s scales and drawn blood, raking his claws over the same spot where Laurence’s brother had bitten him so many years ago.