Page 68 of Dragon’s Ending

Dominic took an uneven breath. “This isn’t like last time. It’s not some meaningless hook-up.”

“No?” Rhodri’s voice went colder still. “Then enlighten me. Because from where I’m standing, it appears you have yet again done exactly as you pleased, with no thought for anyone else.”

Hurt flickered across Dominic’s face.

“I love him,” he said.

Disbelieving joy punched through me, and my hand tightened on his side. And then I saw Rhodri’s face, and I let my hand fall away, a kind of grief battling the joy. Those precious words should have been mine, whispered in the dark, not dragged out into anger and conflict as a defence. Yet even that didn’t change the dizzying truth of them. Dominic loved me.

And then Rhodri laughed. Not kindly.

“Oh, excellent,” he said. “Not only have you ignored my direct instruction and compromised relations with yet another family, you’ve decided to do it thoroughly.”

“Nothing’s been compromised,” I began, before I could stop myself.

Rhodri’s attention snapped to me with startling force. “Do you imagine your head of family sent you here hoping you’d end up in my heir’s bed?”

I opened my mouth. Shut it again. Because no. She absolutely had not. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“This is between us,” Dominic said tightly. “Leave Ben out of it.”

“No,” Rhodri said. “It ceased being merely between us the moment you involved another family.”

His gaze raked over Dominic. There was something far worse than simple anger in it. Disappointment. And the worst of it was, I didn’t think it was performative.

“I was beginning,” he said slowly, “to think you had finally developed some judgement.”

Dominic froze. Not enough that anyone who didn’t know him would notice, but I’d grown to know the exact quality of that stillness. The way he locked himself down when something hit too deep.

Rhodri kept going. “I included you in discussions. I trusted you with information I would not previously have shared. And it took you merely days to prove exactly why my trust was misplaced.”

Dominic’s face was pale and expressionless.

“That’s not fair,” I said before I could stop myself.

Rhodri looked at me as if only just remembering I existed.

“You have known him,” he said very quietly, “for less than a month.”

“And you’ve known him his whole life,” I shot back. “Which frankly makes this worse.”

The silence afterwards was terrifying. Then Dominic made a tiny sound under his breath, one that sounded horribly like fear.

Rhodri’s expression hardened even further. “You presume a great deal, Berstow.” His dragon rumbled in his voice, low and threatening.

“With respect,” I said, though my pulse was hammering hard enough to make me nauseous, “sending someone away when they don’t behave how you want is not normal dragon behaviour.”

The cold rage in Rhodri’s face froze me to the spot. Every instinct urged me to apologise, to obey the head of a family. But I refused to submit. I knew I was right.

“You know nothing about what this family required after Mari died,” he said. “Whatever conclusions you’ve reached bear no resemblance to reality, to what was necessary to keep him and everyone around him safe.”

I couldn’t help but notice he’d stopped calling Dominic his heir. Or even his son.

Dominic laughed suddenly beside me. A short, exhausted sound entirely devoid of humour.

“You really can reduce anything to necessity, can’t you?” he said quietly.

Rhodri’s gaze snapped back to him. “You think this is a game?” he demanded. “You think leadership allows the luxury of impulsive selfishness? I’ve spent years trying to determine whether I could trust you, and each time I begin to believe you may finally have matured, you pull something like this. You are utterly irresponsible.”