Page 80 of Dragon’s Ending

“Course. Soon as we let anyone else in, we had to make sure to keep them safe.”

Again, as soon as the words were out, I heard them. So did Ben, judging by the way his lips tightened.

“I thought they’d be okay if they followed the rules. They always were,” I added.

But now I was wondering. Was that luck as much as judgement? I’d always thought that so long as I was there, if anything looked like going bad, I could stop it. What I’d never expected was that they’d go off and do this without me. They knew better than that.

Except, apparently, they didn’t. Which made no sense because Josh was bloody quick on the uptake. Megan, too. Dafydd sometimes gave a convincing impression of being five minutes behind everyone else, but then, he was always the follower, never the leader.

“Have they done it before?” Ben asked. “I mean, on their own?”

And fuck, that left me winded. Because my first thought had been of course they hadn’t. This time had been because they’d wanted to fight and I hadn’t answered Dafydd’s text, had been too caught up in my own shit with Rhodri to pay them any attention.

But I didn’t know, I realised. Hell, for all I knew, they were out there regularly, putting themselves in danger, and I wouldn’t know. I’d introduced them to this, the thrill of being reckless and risking everything. And I’d never thought that they might not understand the possible cost. That rules weren’t there just because I could put them in place, the way Rhodri did, but because they were necessary.

It'd been as if I'd given Teddy knives, taught him to juggle with them, then left him alone. With the knives.

Fuck.

I flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to follow that thread. Because maybe—maybe—Rhodri’s extensive list of rules wasn’t what I’d thought it was. I’d felt perfectly able to pick and choose which ones to obey and which ones to flout. But maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe some of those rules had reasons behind them that I didn’t understand. Which made it his fault, still, for not explaining.

That thought lingered unpleasantly. Because I hadn’t explained the reasons for the rules to my dragons at the fight club. I’d thought they were so bloody obvious, I didn’t need to.

“God, my family is a bunch of absolute muppets,” I told the ceiling.

Ben leaned over and kissed the tip of my nose. “Not all of them,” he said mildly. “I’m a Berstow. I’d never fall in love with a complete muppet.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I told him, but it worked. I was smiling.

He snuggled down beside me. “So what happens tomorrow?” he asked.

I sighed. I still hadn’t worked that one out. I wanted to ream them out for risking their lives for no reason other than that they were bored, but that wouldn’t tackle what lay underneath. They’d just make sure I never found out in future what they were up to.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Make sure they understand why it was so dangerous, I suppose.”

For years, I'd wanted Rhodri to trust me with responsibility. What nobody had thought to mention was that responsibility meant worrying about what other dragons were getting up to when I wasn’t looking.

And now I’d started worrying, it seemed I couldn’t stop.

Chapter Thirty-one

DOMINIC

Waking up hurt considerably more than I’d expected. For one glorious moment I was still half asleep, warm and comfortable with Ben curled against me beneath the duvet. Then I tried to move and discovered that apparently every part of my body had filed formal complaints overnight.

I made a small noise before I could stop myself.

Ben’s eyes opened instantly, if blearily. “You okay?”

“No,” I said honestly into the pillow. “I feel like I got trampled by a stampede of dragons.”

His lips twitched. “That’s not the correct collective noun.”

“It bloody should be.”

I shifted experimentally and immediately regretted every decision I’d made in the last twenty-four hours.

Ben pushed himself up onto one elbow beside me, hair sticking up wildly and pillow creases across one cheek. It shouldn’t have been possible for anyone to look that attractive while also resembling a startled hedgehog, and yet somehow he managed it.