Her Dragon Daddy, page 2
part #1 of Black Claw Dragons Series
In reality, I stopped to let the memories flood in, to remind me of the only person I’d ever loved.
If a new family had moved in, I wouldn’t be able to do that any longer—it would be an invasion of privacy. Plus, the house would change. New lawn decor. New curtains. Nothing would be like it was when she was here.
Damn it.
I let my dragon take slight control, enough to use the advanced hearing. Filtering out the sounds of the forest—a feat that had taken me years to accomplish, selective hearing—I focused on the home.
A small child, a girl, asked for Chinese food. A male voice, deep, but somehow immature sounding, interrupted her and said there was still pizza in the kitchen. I didn’t recognize either of them.
Two other masculine voices overlapped, talking about the boxes in the truck.
“You can put them in the kitchen, please.”
My breath caught in my throat like a rock. It couldn’t be. I was certain she’d sold the house. My dragon growled.
“Oh, sorry, I thought that was a kitchen box. Can you put that one in the downstairs bathroom?” Her laugh tinkled through my eardrums like butterflies had miniscule jackhammers. Soft and sweet, but also jarring, knocking my breath from me. Pull in. Go there. Now!
I grunted, barely able to process the sound of her voice. My dragon insisted I go to her immediately, but I had to think more rationally. I shushed him and listened closer.
“Mom!” the deep but immature voice yelled. So, she had a son. An older teen by the sound of it. Had she met someone immediately after I left? We’d been separated almost eighteen years. “Hailey is going to starve to death, I guess.”
“There’s pizza in the kitchen.”
Her voice. Holy shit. We must go to her. She belongs to us.
I threw the car in reverse and turned in my seat to back away down the rutted driveway before my dragon’s urges overcame my good sense.
Rocks flew everywhere, dinging off the underside of the cruiser as I roared onto the main road, slammed on the brakes, and threw it into drive. I had to get home and control my shift. If I turned into my dragon, he’d go find her right away. That would be the worst idea. He’d scare the shit out of her.
After driving around the house, I slammed on my brakes and left my car by the back door. I needed to be around my family, especially my dad and brothers. Their dragons would have a calming effect on mine. Once he was calm, I’d try to reason with him.
My mom jumped as I burst through the back door.
“Maver—”
“Did you know?”
She froze mid-stir as steam floated up from the pot on the stovetop. “Know what?”
“That Ava is back?”
Her jaw dropped and eyes widened. “What?” My mom knew what Ava meant to me. She knew what it did to me to leave her and then how hard it was to force myself not to find her. It was torture and something I’d never recovered from. “No,” she whispered.
“Yes. She’s there, right now. In the cabin, with what sounded like a teenage son and a young daughter.”
She shook her head in amazement and went back to stirring our dinner. “And a husband?”
“I don’t know. I heard men, but I think they were the people unloading their moving truck.”
My father walked into the room. His dragon, though he was beta to my own, made mine feel like a blanket of comfort had been draped over him. Dragons thrived in nests, and a lone dragon was prone to fits of rage and eventual insanity as it gave itself over to wildness.
Our family kept us sane. Whole.
“Dad—”
“I heard.” He walked over and put his arms around me. The touch and contact soothed me. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
When he released me, I looked at Mom as she wiped tears from her eyes. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I heard her voice. I’m positive it’s her.”
She straightened her apron and patted her hair. “Then we’ll figure it out. You’re not sure if she has a mate with her?”
“The only voices I heard belonged to someone who called her mom, and two men who asked where to put boxes. I think they were with the moving company. She didn’t speak to them in a familiar way.”
My older brother, Axel, walked in. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a husband.” He must’ve heard our conversation. That was a common thing in this house. “Just that he didn’t speak while you were listening.”
I nodded. “I know.” The thought of Ava with another man made my dragon want to rage, but having my brother there helped more than just dad. “What else should I expect? I abandoned her eighteen years ago.”
“I tried to find her,” Mom whispered.
“What?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “When?”
“When we moved back.” She sighed and turned off the stove. “This is ready when you guys are hungry.” She moved to sit at the table, and I followed.
She took my hand and continued her explanation. “I fought the idea of contacting her from the moment you took control again. Once you were back to yourself, fully, I argued with myself day and night. Then, you seemed to do okay.”
I hadn’t done okay, not at all, but I’d hidden it well.
“After a few years, when you showed no interest in finding a mate, the idea kept popping into my head, but I put it off. Then, when we moved back and I saw the house was empty, I had to try.”
“What did you do?” My dad set a bowl of meaty stew in front of me. I ignored it, my stomach in knots.
“I pretended to be interested in buying the cabin. I contacted the county registrar, the tax office, anyone I could think of. I did internet searches of her name. Heck, I even uploaded an old picture and tried to do a reverse image search.”
My eyebrows flew up. She paused and took a bite of the stew my father had dished out and put in front of her. “Needs pepper,” she murmured.
Axel jumped up to get it for her. Mom took care of us, good care of us, but we also tried to return the favor at any opportunity. It was the only way to treat the person who gave us life and sustenance.
“Mom,” I urged.
“Sorry, right. I couldn’t find anything. Nothing. It’s like she never existed.”
I blew through my nose, and a teeny bit of smoke came out. Shit.
Axel and Dad noticed and stood, walking around the table to put their hands on my back.
The touch helped. “Thanks,” I said. “I need this.”
“If you need a hug, just stand up.”
When I’d been ready for my first change, in the days before, the agitation and anger was so bad they had to sleep in bed with me. It was weird at first, but it was a familial love and comfort. The awkwardness passed quickly.
I breathed deep and the itchiness under my skin faded but didn’t disappear. “I think I’m okay.”
Mom squeezed my hand. “If I’d known she was moving back, I would’ve told you. I only found out today that someone was moving in the cabin, but I assumed she finally sold the place.”
I nodded. “Me too. I saw the cleaning service there last week, but never in a million years imagined she’d come back after this long.”
“We all felt the pain of losing Ava,” Axel said. “She was like the sister we never had. I know Jury would’ve felt the same way.”
Our younger brother had been an infant when we left. He was eighteen now and had just gone through his shift. As a beta, his first shift hadn’t been as bad as my own.
My mother chuckled. “It was like I’d lost a daughter.”
Dad squeezed my shoulder in agreement. “Yep.”
“So, now what?” I asked. “What do I do?” I knew I sounded like a whining child but fighting my dragon’s urge was taking all of my willpower.
“I don’t know,” Mom whispered. “I could go down? Take a pie?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“If she’s moved on, you’ll have to respect that.” Mom looked worried at the prospect.
“I will. But it won’t be easy.”
Go to her now.
I ignored my dragon instead of engaging him. Sometimes that was the best tactic, blocking him out.
Axel let go of my shoulder and returned to his food. Dad stayed in place.
“Brother, give it a week. Keep your distance. Let them settle in, then you can go by and see how she is.”
No.
“Plus,” Axel continued. “That’ll give your dragon some time to calm down and come to terms with it. I can sense his agitation.”
He roared in my head and I winced. “Stop it,” I chided him out loud.
He grumbled but settled.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m going to need your help.”
“Eat,” Mom commanded. “Then we can watch a movie.”
It was a good idea. I knew I was waylaying their evening plans but sitting between my dad and brothers on the couch while I forced my mind to focus on mindless entertainment would go a long way to soothing my beast. When he was in a better frame of mind, I’d lay down the law.
He grunted. He didn’t like the idea, but too bad. He was going along with it.
I’d never been a patient man, by any means. But I’d waited eighteen years for her. Another week wouldn’t kill me.
3
Ava
“If we keep ordering delivery, I’m going to gain a hundred pounds.” I scrutinized my ankles. “I think all the sodium is making my ankles swell.”
Maddox rolled his eyes. “Okay, Mom, whatever.”
“Get ready, both of you. We’re going grocery shopping.” They both complained and sighed but climbed off the couch and went toward their rooms. “I want you showered, and your teeth brushed,” I called.
We’d been in Black Claw a week. I’d told the kids they had that long to settle in, rest and relax, then it would be back to school. The one time we’d ventured out of the house was to go to the school and register both of them.
The town was small enough that it had one school, with classes from pre-K through high school. The building was enormous, and I had my concerns about that many ages under one roof, but the principal assured me they were kept separate, with the three-story building running almost as if they had three separate schools. They even had two different cafeterias.
Maddox had been ogled by a handful of teenage girls on the way in, and he’d noticed, so his hesitancy about going to a new school had diminished. Now we just had to make sure he kept his temper in check.
Hailey hadn’t seen any younger kids while we were there. The administration office was on the third floor and not close to the younger grades.
It was their last day of break, and I knew they’d hoped to spend it with their heads buried in their various electronic devices, but I was serious about the food situation. It was dire. We’d stopped at a gas station on the way back from the school early in the week, but the milk and sodas we’d bought there were long gone. We’d been surviving on takeout and tap water.
I dug my purse out of the massive mess in the living room. “You ready to get warmed up?” I asked it. “We’ll be putting a dent in you.”
My ex-husband and I had split everything in the divorce. After everything that happened, I offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse—to sign over his rights to Hailey and let us disappear. No doubt he could figure out where we were if he wanted to. He knew I had this cabin, but I doubted he’d try. He’d checked out of our marriage years before.
His wandering eye had almost cost him his life and my son his freedom, in the end.
After sniffing a pair of socks which I found halfway under my bed, I decided they’d do and pulled them on. I hadn’t put on makeup all week. I wasn’t sure where it was. My bedroom and bathroom were mostly unpacked, but my toiletries box had been mixed up somewhere. I suspected it was in the living room disaster.
All the boxes we weren’t sure what to do with yet had ended up in the large living room. Slowly, I’d been working my way through them, but my break was over tomorrow, too. I had to start working and keep up a steady schedule.
Even with the sweet settlement I’d given Cade, I had a nice nest egg. It didn’t matter, though. I didn’t want to touch it. I’d calculated how much money I’d made from website design over the past year and pulled that out to live on until my freelance money started rolling in. The rest of the settlement money went into a savings account. When I was more secure with my current income, I’d roll it over into a college fund for Hailey.
“Ready,” Hailey chirped. Her chestnut brown hair was soaking wet and dripping onto her shirt.
I grabbed the blanket draped over the back of the couch. “Turn,” I commanded.
She whirled around and let me blot some of the excess water from her hair.
Maddox’s smell announced him well before I heard or saw him coming. “Madd!” I yelled up the stairs. “Don’t bathe in your cologne!”
He came down with a red face. “I just used one squirt,” he insisted, as he always did. “It’s just strong at first.”
I grunted and picked my purse up again. “Let’s go.”
Halfway to the car, I threw Maddox the keys. “You wanna drive?”
He grinned. “Hell, yes.”
“Mouth, Madd,” I chastised him.
At least he had the decency to look sheepish. “Sorry.”
He did a good job driving us. He’d had his license in New Mexico for a year, and his permit for a year before that. We’d have to get to the DMV soon and update everything.
I directed him to town, but once we got onto Main Street, I realized everything had changed from my memories. “Wow,” I whispered. “It’s so different.”
“Where do I go, Mom?” Maddox prompted me.
“Well, there used to be a grocery store right over there.” I pointed to the biggest corner of Main, but what used to be a mom and pop grocery was gone. “What is that place?”
I squinted at the sign and its fancy letters. “Does that say ax throwing?” I asked. “Surely not.”
Maddox grinned. “It does, and I want to go.”
With a snort, I shut that down. “Not happening.” I looked at the stores along Main. “I forgot that a lot of places stay closed on Sundays here. They don’t have enough employees to stay open all seven days of the week.”
“Mom,” Hailey said. “What is there to do in this town?”
I grinned. This was why I’d brought them here. “Connect with nature. Meet friends and spend time with them. Have a more wholesome life.”
Maddox scoffed. “Okay.”
“You laugh, but you’ll see. It’s great living in a small town.”
He’d come around. I was sure of that. “Oh,” I exclaimed. “There’s a grocery store.” The Hoggly Woggly. Okay, then.
I pointed to the left, and Maddox turned on his blinker. The traffic was nil, nobody to even tell he was turning, but I was glad he did anyway. “You’re a considerate, careful driver, Madd. I’m proud of you.”
He beamed as he pulled into a parking spot.
Only three other cars were in the lot. We’d have our run of the store. I’d heard of the grocery store before. It wasn’t a big national chain, but it also wasn’t a mom and pop. I hated to see that the old one was gone. I’d have to ask around at some point and see why it left.
The kids beat me out of the car. “Grab a cart from here.” I pointed at the cart return, which had two carts in it. “Keep the cart pushers from having to bring these two in.”
They nodded and filed between the metal bars to get the cart. After checking for cars, they raced toward the front doors. “Keep it under twenty!” I called to their backs. “Madd, watch Hailey!” He waved in acknowledgment. As if he wouldn’t have. They were so far apart in age that he’d been old enough to babysit for short spurts by the time I was ready for her to need a babysitter. Mostly while I showered or made dinner if her father wasn’t home. He’d held her, rocked her, fed her. More like an uncle than a brother. Whatever it was, they got along ninety percent of the time.
They loved doing their own food shopping. Of course, neither of them ever got anything healthy. I put a limit on how much they could spend. They also knew they had a limit on how much junk they could eat in a day.
I grabbed a cart inside the door and looked around, taking in the layout of the store. I preferred to get my cold and frozen stuff last, so I headed to the opposite side of the store, to the produce.
As I felt up some zucchini—I always felt like a pervert when picking out green zucchini—someone whispered my name, and a tingle of awareness went up my spine.
I knew that voice, even at a whisper. I didn’t want to turn around. My emotions roiled inside me, confused. Delight warred with anger and fear.
“Ava,” he said louder. “Is that you?”
He knew damn well it was me. I didn’t believe for a second he wouldn’t recognize me as easily as I would him.
I turned to face him, but at the last second lowered my eyes. I was a total coward, but it only took two seconds to find my backbone. Sucking in a deep breath, I lifted them to see Maverick fucking Kingston staring at me over a huge pile of baking potatoes. I blinked a couple of times to clear my eyes and head. It was him.
How in the world could it have been him? After all my searching and all the times I’d tried to find him, here he was in Black Claw, standing in front of me behind some damn potatoes.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice hard.
He chuckled. “Just some shopping. Picking up a few things for Mom.”
My heart clenched at his casual mention of his mother. Losing her and the rest of his family had hurt almost as much as losing him. I sucked in a deep breath and set my jaw. Cuss words filled my mind and threatened to spill out of my mouth. The hurt I’d felt when he abandoned me had never gone away, even through my falling in and out of love with Cade. After birthing two children and eighteen years apart, the pain ripped through me like it had happened two weeks before instead of two decades.
