Iszak (The Dragon's Mate Book 2), page 14
“So you’ll stay?”
“I’ll stay. I can’t promise for how long. There is still so much in the air. I have a feeling I know what I’m going to learn in Kevin’s apartment tomorrow, and chances are good that my father is not going to be completely satisfied. I know you said we’d deal with it, but you need to be prepared for the drama that might ensue.”
“We’ll take it slow. One day at a time.” He kissed her softly on the mouth as his phone vibrated on the table beside the bed. “I just want us to have a chance.”
She nodded and snuggled closer to him. He glanced down and saw that she’d closed her eyes. He reached for his phone, and saw that he had a text from Rickman. Relief washed through him when he read it.
Nothing at apartment.
That was one problem taken care of. He knew that there was still the obstacle of the truth about himself, but he could not offer her the whole truth until he knew that it would not send her running back to her dragon hunting father. Telling her too soon would endanger his life and that of his brothers.
He tightened his arms around her and closed his eyes. He’d do what he told her they’d do, take it one day at a time.
13
Julia opened her eyes and felt like she would float away. Last night with Iszak had been like a dream, and the knowledge that it didn’t need to end any time soon made her want to snuggle in closer to him. But unfortunately duty called. Regardless of what she found in Kevin’s apartment, she was more certain than ever that her place was here. For the first time in a long time she was doing something for herself, and she could hardly contain the happiness bubbling inside her.
Her movements must have disturbed Iszak, because he gave a muffled growl and his arms tightened around her. As tempted as she was to settle back against him, she knew that she needed to get the visit to Kevin’s apartment over with. While she hope that her father would accept whatever conclusion she drew from going through Kevin’s place, she knew that it was a false hope. Unless the answer to Kevin’s disappearance was dragons, Gerard would never believe whatever else she told him.
She eased away and Iszak’s eyes drifted open and a smile crossed his lips.
“You aren’t leaving me already? Are you?” He would not let her go and she settled back against him. She kissed him on the lips and thought that perhaps she didn’t need to leave for Kevin’s apartment immediately.
By the time she was dressed and out the door most of the morning was gone. Iszak’s appetite was insatiable. It was as if asking her to stay with him had unlocked something inside him, something that made him want to claim her thoroughly. The wind that cut across the parking lot as she made her way to her car made her regret telling her father that she would go to Kevin’s apartment today.
A day like today would be better spent doing other things, like laying in bed with the man who stirred a longing inside her that she’d never had before. Although they had not known each other long in terms of time, inside her soul she felt a connection to him that ran deeper than time itself. It was like she was connected to him in the most primal way, and while it should have frightened her, it didn’t. She was finally achieving something she’d only dreamed of before, a life of her own with someone she could love beside her.
With a shake of her head, she started the car and headed out toward her brother’s apartment building. She wasn’t going to be able to move forward with her new life unless she dealt with her old one. Hopefully her visit to Kevin’s apartment would settle the question of Kevin’s disappearance once and for all. What her father chose to believe was no longer her problem, and she’d endeavor to deal with any trouble he chose to cause. Eventually he would come to realize the truth.
Her GPS told her that she was at her destination and she pulled into the parking lot alongside the building. She got out of the car and clutched her coat closer to her as an icy finger of foreboding dragged itself down her spine. For a moment she felt stuck on the spot where she stood, as if some part of her knew that she was not going to like what she found in her brother’s apartment. With a shake of her head, she forced her feet forward. There was nothing inside Kevin’s apartment that she needed to be afraid of.
She looked up at the run down building and swallowed down her revulsion. It was evident that her brother didn’t live in the best neighborhood and she was glad that she left the address with Iszak. She doubted anything would happen to her here, but better safe than sorry. She walked into the small vestibule that had a row of mailboxes and a large door. There was no buzzer, which told her that the door going from the vestibule to the stairwell would not be locked. Apparently the residents of this building didn’t have much use for security, and the door to the stairs opened easily when she gave it a tug. She trudged up to Kevin’s third floor apartment, with her heavy boots clomping on the stairs.
The hallway was eerily silent as she stood in front of Kevin’s door, and the uneasy feeling inside her made her stomach tighten for a second.
“Let’s get on with this.” Her muffled order to herself did little to soothe the nerves jumping under the surface of her skin. She was certain that there was nothing to be found in Kevin’s apartment except evidence that he’d blown town, and she shoved aside the feeling that she didn’t want to go in there. Using the key, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Kevin’s apartment was cool and slightly stuffy, which was to be expected since he had been missing for several weeks now. Her gaze swept around what she could see of the small apartment, and it didn’t tell her much. It was neat, which she expected since women weren’t the only thing her brother was obsessed over. As far as Kevin was concerned, everything had a place and he would notice if the tiniest detail was moved.
She went to the small galley kitchen and turned on the light. A frown tugged at her forehead when she saw the single coffee mug in the sink. It wasn’t like Kevin to leave even a single dish unwashed, particularly if he was leaving town. His compulsions would not let him, but maybe something had panicked him when he’d broken into Lyssa’s house. Something urgent must have sent him out the door if he’d forgotten the mug sitting in the sink.
She flicked off the light and turned her attention to the living room. There was nothing here that could tell her anything, and she was surprised by it. There were no stray notes, no news clippings, in fact there was no paper around this part of the apartment at all. She hadn’t expected the place to look like a bomb went off in it, her brother was much too neat for that, but she expected there to be something.
She had half expected Kevin’s living room to look like their father’s study. The last time she’d been sent to look for her brother, his living space had looked very much like her father’s office at home. If Kevin had suspected that his ex girlfriend was dating a dragon, he would have kept some sort of observational notes somewhere.
Their father had taught them all to be meticulous in their evidence collection, because they had to be positive that they weren’t hunting an innocent human being. Thus far in her life she hadn’t found any evidence of dragons at all, but she’d expected to find something to show that her brother had been conducting some sort of investigation.
If Kevin kept some notes or research it wasn’t in the living room. Perhaps he’d had a visitor to his apartment, maybe that druggie neighbor of his and he felt the need to hide what he’d collected. Perhaps it was in his bedroom. She walked down the hall and went into Kevin’s bedroom. It was just as neat and tidy as his living room. There were no pictures, no books, no notes, nothing to indicate that he lived here at all. She went to his dresser, half expecting to find nothing in there. To her surprise, Kevin’s clothing was neatly folded in every drawer.
Her brother had not been much of a clothes horse, and she’d expected that if he left town to skip bail she was certain that the drawers would be mostly empty. Had he been in such a hurry to leave that he hadn’t bothered to take anything with him? Or was there something to her father’s theory that something far more sinister had happened to her brother?
She went over to the closet. Maybe he’d taken the clothes from his closet instead of the dresser. She’d been so sure that her brother had skipped town, but the more she poked around his apartment, the more she began to wonder. Kevin's place didn’t look like that of someone who didn’t expect to come back. And despite her brother’s propensity toward tidiness, it was much too clean.
She was positive that Kevin would have had some sort of research or notes somewhere, but if he did they were very cleverly hidden. There had to be something here that would give her some clue about what her brother had been thinking the last time he was here. He believed that his ex was tangled up with a dragon, his neighbor had confirmed that. So where was the research? Where were the notes?
She pulled open the closet door, and Kevin’s clothes hung neatly on the rack. She cast her eyes up and saw that his duffle bag was sitting on the shelf above where the clothes hung. If her brother had been forced to flee town he hadn’t had the opportunity to pack. She parted the clothes, because her father would ask her if she’d combed every inch of the apartment, even the back of the closets. At the very back of the closet, there looked to be a small hole and she ran her fingers over it. As she ran her fingers over the wall, what appeared to be a seam felt rough under her skin.
“What is this? Are you hiding something in here, Kevin?”
That would be something her paranoid brother would do. Perhaps he did have research in the apartment, carefully hidden research. She tapped the wall and it sounded hollow. It didn’t mean anything, but her curiosity was piqued when she reached into her purse in search of the pen she kept in there. She inserted it into the hole, and tilted it down so that it acted like a handle.
A panel of dry wall popped away from the wall to reveal a crudely made compartment. Inside was a large envelope, and stuck to the front was a folded piece of paper with the word “Dad” scrawled across the front of it. Whatever it was, Kevin had left it for their father but had neglected to tell him about it. She tucked the envelope under her arm and put the piece of wall that her brother used to hide his cubby back in place.
She over to Kevin’s bed and sat down on it. Her hands trembled slightly as she pulled off the piece of paper that was addressed to her father. The more she looked through Kevin’s things, the less convinced she was that her brother had left town to avoid going back to jail. Her brother’s apartment looked like he could walk in the door any second. She took a deep breath and unfolded the note.
Dad,
If you are reading this note, then the worst has happened. I’m dead and it’s at the hands of the dragon that stole my woman from me. I know I should have called you, that I should have waited for you to back me up, but I couldn’t help myself. If all goes well, I will have killed the dragon and you need never read this note. If not, then the information contained in this envelope will be all you need to find the creature who has killed me. Please, do whatever it takes to avenge me.
Your loyal son,
Kevin
Of all the things she expected to read, that certainly was not it. Kevin had truly believed that he was going off to slay a dragon. Could there have been some truth to it? Could all the stories that she’d been raised on, about their family's glory and place within the world, actually be true?
She would never know unless she opened the envelope. She undid the string that was wrapped around the small button on the back and spilled the contents out on her lap. Most of it was scrawled notes, which she didn’t bother reading since they were observations made by her brother and had to be taken with a grain of salt. What drew her attention and made her heart pound were the photographs. While photos could be faked, she didn’t think that Kevin would have left fake photos for her father to find. The one on the top had her blinking her eyes. She looked as closely as possible and would have sworn that it was a picture of a dragon soaring in the sky.
Dragon’s weren’t real, were they? Had her brother actually managed to stumble on a dragon in the twenty-first century and was this dragon the reason that her father had not heard from her brother in weeks? She shuffled through the remaining photographs, until she got to the last one. It was a picture of his brother’s ex girlfriend, but it was the man standing beside her, with her tucked up against his large body that held her attention. She recognized that face, it was the face of a man she met only yesterday. If this man was the dragon that Kevin had been hunting than it meant that not only had she met him, she was also sleeping with his brother.
She bolted for the bathroom and the contents on her lap spilled over onto the floor as the shock of the truth twisted her stomach. She trembled in front of the toilet, unsure for a moment if she could hold back the sickness that invaded every cell of her body.
When it became evident that she was made of stronger stuff than she thought, she cupped her face in her hands as the truth slammed through her. The man she had been developing feelings for, who she thought she could trust, had been hiding a secret from her. Iszak was a dragon, and if his brother had been responsible for Kevin’s death, there was no way that he didn’t know. The question was, what was she going to do about it?
Iszak looked out the coffee shop window as he tried to keep the smile that wanted to cross his face at bay. He’d spent most of the time that Julia had been gone pacing around until he’d decided that he needed to get out for a while. He’d gone to a coffee shop, and muddled through ordering an overpriced drink that wasn’t very good. He sent Rickman a text asking him to dig up what information he could about the local college and what classes they were offering. Julia had mentioned that she wanted to go back to school and what better way to show her that he was supportive of the idea then to give her some information.
With that done, he muscled through his beverage and looked at his watch. He didn’t know how long her search of her brother’s apartment would take, so he didn’t know how long he was going to have to hang around here. He didn’t want to her to come home and find him hovering, as if he was afraid to let her out of his sight. A nervous energy pulsed through him, and the coffee he was drinking certainly wasn’t helping.
With his drink only half done, he decided that he should walk off some of his restlessness while he waited for his woman to come home. It felt right to think of her that way, and once she was finished with her obligations to her father, they could focus on moving forward.
Rickman had assured him that there was nothing to be found in Kevin’s apartment, so she would be forced to come to the conclusion that her brother had left town. He had a feeling that once she learned the truth about him, the truth about what happened to her brother would come out too. But surely if she knew him, if she got to know his brother, she would understand that Andor had had no choice but to do what he’d done. That Kevin had held him at the point of a gun, had been a threat to his mate and that Andor hadn’t been exactly rational when everything had happened.
There was a risk that it would all go horribly wrong, but Iszak knew that he couldn’t let her go. He was certain that she was his chosen mate, and unless he wanted to become a mindless killer and force his brother to kill him, he had to take the risk that she would understand the kind of man he truly was.
He pulled his coat tighter around him as he walked down the sidewalk. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he recognized the number of his brother’s house. Was Rickman getting back to him with the information he wanted already?
“Are you planning to go to school now?” There was a thread of disbelief in Andor’s voice when he came over the line, and Iszak sighed. He should have known that his brother would have gotten an update on what he was doing through their shared minion. “Funny that you haven’t shown any interest in being a scholar for all the centuries you’ve been alive.”
The sarcasm was evident in Andor’s voice and for a second he wished he’d told Rickman to be discreet. He didn’t want to get into this with his brother again, but perhaps he should. He was committed to this course of action with Julia and the sooner his brother accepted that, the better it would be for everyone.
“You know very well that Rickman isn’t making enquiries for me.” The sidewalk he was on was surprisingly busy, so he ducked into an alley that came along to his left. He did know how much about his true nature would be revealed by this phone call, and he didn’t want to be overheard when he had this talk with his brother. “Julia mentioned that she would like to go back to school, so I had Rickman find out some information for me.”
“So you haven’t come to your senses then?”
Iszak gritted his teeth. His brother just wouldn’t quit. “I’ve never been more lucid in my life. As a matter of fact, I asked Julia to stay with me for the foreseeable future.”
“Why? Surely whatever it is about her that has your blood up has passed now that you’ve had her. She’s not the one who's meant for you.”
“And how do you know that? You know nothing about what is between her and I. You don’t know her, you only know her last name and you’ve come to a prejudiced judgment about her.”
“In the event it has escaped you, there is a very good reason for that. Her last name is one that has meant untold doom for dragons over the centuries. How do you know that she isn’t bait, sent here to trap you?”
The notion had crossed his mind when he first met her, but he no longer thought so. Too much would have to have been orchestrated just the right way for that to be possible and he needed to disabuse his brother of the notion right now.
“Wow, according to you she must have the most diabolical mind in the world. We’re all doomed, why couldn’t I have seen it before? Why, she must have the power to control the weather in order to get herself stuck in a ditch, that just happened to be near the isolated cabin I was staying at. Not to mention, she timed it for when I was outside and sure to hear the sounds of her car. And she used her magical powers to make sure that I invited her to stay with me. Not to mention the patience with which she’s been lying in wait this whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Thank God you caught on to her scheme just in time, because I’ve been so mesmerized by her presence that I couldn’t see how wicked she is unless you were able to point it out to me.”
“I’ll stay. I can’t promise for how long. There is still so much in the air. I have a feeling I know what I’m going to learn in Kevin’s apartment tomorrow, and chances are good that my father is not going to be completely satisfied. I know you said we’d deal with it, but you need to be prepared for the drama that might ensue.”
“We’ll take it slow. One day at a time.” He kissed her softly on the mouth as his phone vibrated on the table beside the bed. “I just want us to have a chance.”
She nodded and snuggled closer to him. He glanced down and saw that she’d closed her eyes. He reached for his phone, and saw that he had a text from Rickman. Relief washed through him when he read it.
Nothing at apartment.
That was one problem taken care of. He knew that there was still the obstacle of the truth about himself, but he could not offer her the whole truth until he knew that it would not send her running back to her dragon hunting father. Telling her too soon would endanger his life and that of his brothers.
He tightened his arms around her and closed his eyes. He’d do what he told her they’d do, take it one day at a time.
13
Julia opened her eyes and felt like she would float away. Last night with Iszak had been like a dream, and the knowledge that it didn’t need to end any time soon made her want to snuggle in closer to him. But unfortunately duty called. Regardless of what she found in Kevin’s apartment, she was more certain than ever that her place was here. For the first time in a long time she was doing something for herself, and she could hardly contain the happiness bubbling inside her.
Her movements must have disturbed Iszak, because he gave a muffled growl and his arms tightened around her. As tempted as she was to settle back against him, she knew that she needed to get the visit to Kevin’s apartment over with. While she hope that her father would accept whatever conclusion she drew from going through Kevin’s place, she knew that it was a false hope. Unless the answer to Kevin’s disappearance was dragons, Gerard would never believe whatever else she told him.
She eased away and Iszak’s eyes drifted open and a smile crossed his lips.
“You aren’t leaving me already? Are you?” He would not let her go and she settled back against him. She kissed him on the lips and thought that perhaps she didn’t need to leave for Kevin’s apartment immediately.
By the time she was dressed and out the door most of the morning was gone. Iszak’s appetite was insatiable. It was as if asking her to stay with him had unlocked something inside him, something that made him want to claim her thoroughly. The wind that cut across the parking lot as she made her way to her car made her regret telling her father that she would go to Kevin’s apartment today.
A day like today would be better spent doing other things, like laying in bed with the man who stirred a longing inside her that she’d never had before. Although they had not known each other long in terms of time, inside her soul she felt a connection to him that ran deeper than time itself. It was like she was connected to him in the most primal way, and while it should have frightened her, it didn’t. She was finally achieving something she’d only dreamed of before, a life of her own with someone she could love beside her.
With a shake of her head, she started the car and headed out toward her brother’s apartment building. She wasn’t going to be able to move forward with her new life unless she dealt with her old one. Hopefully her visit to Kevin’s apartment would settle the question of Kevin’s disappearance once and for all. What her father chose to believe was no longer her problem, and she’d endeavor to deal with any trouble he chose to cause. Eventually he would come to realize the truth.
Her GPS told her that she was at her destination and she pulled into the parking lot alongside the building. She got out of the car and clutched her coat closer to her as an icy finger of foreboding dragged itself down her spine. For a moment she felt stuck on the spot where she stood, as if some part of her knew that she was not going to like what she found in her brother’s apartment. With a shake of her head, she forced her feet forward. There was nothing inside Kevin’s apartment that she needed to be afraid of.
She looked up at the run down building and swallowed down her revulsion. It was evident that her brother didn’t live in the best neighborhood and she was glad that she left the address with Iszak. She doubted anything would happen to her here, but better safe than sorry. She walked into the small vestibule that had a row of mailboxes and a large door. There was no buzzer, which told her that the door going from the vestibule to the stairwell would not be locked. Apparently the residents of this building didn’t have much use for security, and the door to the stairs opened easily when she gave it a tug. She trudged up to Kevin’s third floor apartment, with her heavy boots clomping on the stairs.
The hallway was eerily silent as she stood in front of Kevin’s door, and the uneasy feeling inside her made her stomach tighten for a second.
“Let’s get on with this.” Her muffled order to herself did little to soothe the nerves jumping under the surface of her skin. She was certain that there was nothing to be found in Kevin’s apartment except evidence that he’d blown town, and she shoved aside the feeling that she didn’t want to go in there. Using the key, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Kevin’s apartment was cool and slightly stuffy, which was to be expected since he had been missing for several weeks now. Her gaze swept around what she could see of the small apartment, and it didn’t tell her much. It was neat, which she expected since women weren’t the only thing her brother was obsessed over. As far as Kevin was concerned, everything had a place and he would notice if the tiniest detail was moved.
She went to the small galley kitchen and turned on the light. A frown tugged at her forehead when she saw the single coffee mug in the sink. It wasn’t like Kevin to leave even a single dish unwashed, particularly if he was leaving town. His compulsions would not let him, but maybe something had panicked him when he’d broken into Lyssa’s house. Something urgent must have sent him out the door if he’d forgotten the mug sitting in the sink.
She flicked off the light and turned her attention to the living room. There was nothing here that could tell her anything, and she was surprised by it. There were no stray notes, no news clippings, in fact there was no paper around this part of the apartment at all. She hadn’t expected the place to look like a bomb went off in it, her brother was much too neat for that, but she expected there to be something.
She had half expected Kevin’s living room to look like their father’s study. The last time she’d been sent to look for her brother, his living space had looked very much like her father’s office at home. If Kevin had suspected that his ex girlfriend was dating a dragon, he would have kept some sort of observational notes somewhere.
Their father had taught them all to be meticulous in their evidence collection, because they had to be positive that they weren’t hunting an innocent human being. Thus far in her life she hadn’t found any evidence of dragons at all, but she’d expected to find something to show that her brother had been conducting some sort of investigation.
If Kevin kept some notes or research it wasn’t in the living room. Perhaps he’d had a visitor to his apartment, maybe that druggie neighbor of his and he felt the need to hide what he’d collected. Perhaps it was in his bedroom. She walked down the hall and went into Kevin’s bedroom. It was just as neat and tidy as his living room. There were no pictures, no books, no notes, nothing to indicate that he lived here at all. She went to his dresser, half expecting to find nothing in there. To her surprise, Kevin’s clothing was neatly folded in every drawer.
Her brother had not been much of a clothes horse, and she’d expected that if he left town to skip bail she was certain that the drawers would be mostly empty. Had he been in such a hurry to leave that he hadn’t bothered to take anything with him? Or was there something to her father’s theory that something far more sinister had happened to her brother?
She went over to the closet. Maybe he’d taken the clothes from his closet instead of the dresser. She’d been so sure that her brother had skipped town, but the more she poked around his apartment, the more she began to wonder. Kevin's place didn’t look like that of someone who didn’t expect to come back. And despite her brother’s propensity toward tidiness, it was much too clean.
She was positive that Kevin would have had some sort of research or notes somewhere, but if he did they were very cleverly hidden. There had to be something here that would give her some clue about what her brother had been thinking the last time he was here. He believed that his ex was tangled up with a dragon, his neighbor had confirmed that. So where was the research? Where were the notes?
She pulled open the closet door, and Kevin’s clothes hung neatly on the rack. She cast her eyes up and saw that his duffle bag was sitting on the shelf above where the clothes hung. If her brother had been forced to flee town he hadn’t had the opportunity to pack. She parted the clothes, because her father would ask her if she’d combed every inch of the apartment, even the back of the closets. At the very back of the closet, there looked to be a small hole and she ran her fingers over it. As she ran her fingers over the wall, what appeared to be a seam felt rough under her skin.
“What is this? Are you hiding something in here, Kevin?”
That would be something her paranoid brother would do. Perhaps he did have research in the apartment, carefully hidden research. She tapped the wall and it sounded hollow. It didn’t mean anything, but her curiosity was piqued when she reached into her purse in search of the pen she kept in there. She inserted it into the hole, and tilted it down so that it acted like a handle.
A panel of dry wall popped away from the wall to reveal a crudely made compartment. Inside was a large envelope, and stuck to the front was a folded piece of paper with the word “Dad” scrawled across the front of it. Whatever it was, Kevin had left it for their father but had neglected to tell him about it. She tucked the envelope under her arm and put the piece of wall that her brother used to hide his cubby back in place.
She over to Kevin’s bed and sat down on it. Her hands trembled slightly as she pulled off the piece of paper that was addressed to her father. The more she looked through Kevin’s things, the less convinced she was that her brother had left town to avoid going back to jail. Her brother’s apartment looked like he could walk in the door any second. She took a deep breath and unfolded the note.
Dad,
If you are reading this note, then the worst has happened. I’m dead and it’s at the hands of the dragon that stole my woman from me. I know I should have called you, that I should have waited for you to back me up, but I couldn’t help myself. If all goes well, I will have killed the dragon and you need never read this note. If not, then the information contained in this envelope will be all you need to find the creature who has killed me. Please, do whatever it takes to avenge me.
Your loyal son,
Kevin
Of all the things she expected to read, that certainly was not it. Kevin had truly believed that he was going off to slay a dragon. Could there have been some truth to it? Could all the stories that she’d been raised on, about their family's glory and place within the world, actually be true?
She would never know unless she opened the envelope. She undid the string that was wrapped around the small button on the back and spilled the contents out on her lap. Most of it was scrawled notes, which she didn’t bother reading since they were observations made by her brother and had to be taken with a grain of salt. What drew her attention and made her heart pound were the photographs. While photos could be faked, she didn’t think that Kevin would have left fake photos for her father to find. The one on the top had her blinking her eyes. She looked as closely as possible and would have sworn that it was a picture of a dragon soaring in the sky.
Dragon’s weren’t real, were they? Had her brother actually managed to stumble on a dragon in the twenty-first century and was this dragon the reason that her father had not heard from her brother in weeks? She shuffled through the remaining photographs, until she got to the last one. It was a picture of his brother’s ex girlfriend, but it was the man standing beside her, with her tucked up against his large body that held her attention. She recognized that face, it was the face of a man she met only yesterday. If this man was the dragon that Kevin had been hunting than it meant that not only had she met him, she was also sleeping with his brother.
She bolted for the bathroom and the contents on her lap spilled over onto the floor as the shock of the truth twisted her stomach. She trembled in front of the toilet, unsure for a moment if she could hold back the sickness that invaded every cell of her body.
When it became evident that she was made of stronger stuff than she thought, she cupped her face in her hands as the truth slammed through her. The man she had been developing feelings for, who she thought she could trust, had been hiding a secret from her. Iszak was a dragon, and if his brother had been responsible for Kevin’s death, there was no way that he didn’t know. The question was, what was she going to do about it?
Iszak looked out the coffee shop window as he tried to keep the smile that wanted to cross his face at bay. He’d spent most of the time that Julia had been gone pacing around until he’d decided that he needed to get out for a while. He’d gone to a coffee shop, and muddled through ordering an overpriced drink that wasn’t very good. He sent Rickman a text asking him to dig up what information he could about the local college and what classes they were offering. Julia had mentioned that she wanted to go back to school and what better way to show her that he was supportive of the idea then to give her some information.
With that done, he muscled through his beverage and looked at his watch. He didn’t know how long her search of her brother’s apartment would take, so he didn’t know how long he was going to have to hang around here. He didn’t want to her to come home and find him hovering, as if he was afraid to let her out of his sight. A nervous energy pulsed through him, and the coffee he was drinking certainly wasn’t helping.
With his drink only half done, he decided that he should walk off some of his restlessness while he waited for his woman to come home. It felt right to think of her that way, and once she was finished with her obligations to her father, they could focus on moving forward.
Rickman had assured him that there was nothing to be found in Kevin’s apartment, so she would be forced to come to the conclusion that her brother had left town. He had a feeling that once she learned the truth about him, the truth about what happened to her brother would come out too. But surely if she knew him, if she got to know his brother, she would understand that Andor had had no choice but to do what he’d done. That Kevin had held him at the point of a gun, had been a threat to his mate and that Andor hadn’t been exactly rational when everything had happened.
There was a risk that it would all go horribly wrong, but Iszak knew that he couldn’t let her go. He was certain that she was his chosen mate, and unless he wanted to become a mindless killer and force his brother to kill him, he had to take the risk that she would understand the kind of man he truly was.
He pulled his coat tighter around him as he walked down the sidewalk. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he recognized the number of his brother’s house. Was Rickman getting back to him with the information he wanted already?
“Are you planning to go to school now?” There was a thread of disbelief in Andor’s voice when he came over the line, and Iszak sighed. He should have known that his brother would have gotten an update on what he was doing through their shared minion. “Funny that you haven’t shown any interest in being a scholar for all the centuries you’ve been alive.”
The sarcasm was evident in Andor’s voice and for a second he wished he’d told Rickman to be discreet. He didn’t want to get into this with his brother again, but perhaps he should. He was committed to this course of action with Julia and the sooner his brother accepted that, the better it would be for everyone.
“You know very well that Rickman isn’t making enquiries for me.” The sidewalk he was on was surprisingly busy, so he ducked into an alley that came along to his left. He did know how much about his true nature would be revealed by this phone call, and he didn’t want to be overheard when he had this talk with his brother. “Julia mentioned that she would like to go back to school, so I had Rickman find out some information for me.”
“So you haven’t come to your senses then?”
Iszak gritted his teeth. His brother just wouldn’t quit. “I’ve never been more lucid in my life. As a matter of fact, I asked Julia to stay with me for the foreseeable future.”
“Why? Surely whatever it is about her that has your blood up has passed now that you’ve had her. She’s not the one who's meant for you.”
“And how do you know that? You know nothing about what is between her and I. You don’t know her, you only know her last name and you’ve come to a prejudiced judgment about her.”
“In the event it has escaped you, there is a very good reason for that. Her last name is one that has meant untold doom for dragons over the centuries. How do you know that she isn’t bait, sent here to trap you?”
The notion had crossed his mind when he first met her, but he no longer thought so. Too much would have to have been orchestrated just the right way for that to be possible and he needed to disabuse his brother of the notion right now.
“Wow, according to you she must have the most diabolical mind in the world. We’re all doomed, why couldn’t I have seen it before? Why, she must have the power to control the weather in order to get herself stuck in a ditch, that just happened to be near the isolated cabin I was staying at. Not to mention, she timed it for when I was outside and sure to hear the sounds of her car. And she used her magical powers to make sure that I invited her to stay with me. Not to mention the patience with which she’s been lying in wait this whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Thank God you caught on to her scheme just in time, because I’ve been so mesmerized by her presence that I couldn’t see how wicked she is unless you were able to point it out to me.”
