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That got my attention.

He pulled his jeans the rest of the way on, using the ordinary movement to buy himself time, but it didn’t work because I was watching him too closely now.

“Max.”

He finally met my gaze. “Dragons aren’t all exactly the same. There are differences between bloodlines, elements and abilities, and occasionally something much rarer appears. In my case, I’m lifebound.”

The word meant nothing to me, but something in his expression told me the explanation was going to.

“Which means?”

His jaw tightened. “People can react to me differently than they would to someone else. Attraction can become stronger around me, and sometimes it turns into fascination or attachment.”

Something unpleasant shifted in my stomach. “What kind of attachment?”

“It varies.”

I waited, and when he didn’t immediately continue, I folded my arms. “Max.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try faster.”

His mouth tightened, but he nodded and told me about the women.

Not every detail, because there probably wasn’t enough time left in the weekend for that, but enough for me to understand what he meant. Women who’d become attached too quickly. People who wanted his attention far beyond anything their actual relationship justified. Melanie breaking into his apartment.

Things I’d already seen and assumed were the inevitable result of Max looking like Max and being captain of an NHL team.

Except apparently there had always been something else.

Then he told me about his mother.

I knew she’d killed herself because he’d told me that much, but I hadn’t known what had happened before, or what his father had done to Max afterward.

“She became increasingly attached to me toward the end,” he explained. “She worried constantly when I wasn’t home and hated when I left for hockey. At the time, I thought she was struggling with me growing up and being away more often.”

His voice had changed as he spoke, growing quieter and somehow younger, and I didn’t interrupt.

“The last time I saw her, I was leaving for training camp. She begged me not to go.” He swallowed before the words came in French. “Ne pars pas. Maxim, s’il te plaît, ne pars pas.”

I didn’t need him to translate.

“She died two days later. Afterward, my father told me he’d suspected for a while that I was lifebound. He said my mother might have been unusually vulnerable to the effect and that her attachment to me could have become stronger because of what I was.”

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. “Your father told you that after she’d killed herself?”

“He thought I needed to understand what could happen.”

My heart beat way too fucking fast. “He made you think it was your fault.”

“My father never actually said I caused her death.”

“He didn’t fucking have to, Max. He told a seventeen-year-old kid that his mother might have been unnaturally attached to him because of something he couldn’t control, immediately after she killed herself. What the fuck did he think you were going to do with that?”

Something moved across his face, pain mixed with a recognition that made my chest hurt.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I could see exactly what his father had done to him while it had taken me more than twenty years to understand what mine had done to me, and maybe someday there would be something funny about that.