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Rollo said, “I get that circumstances might not be ideal, but I swear you guys were a good match, a great match. While it lasted at least.”
Dax couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Brother, at this point she practically hates my guts. She thinks we totally abandoned the investigation. That we are sitting on our hands!”
“That doesn’t change the fact that there is something there.”
Dax just shook his head.
“I will take your words under advisement,” he said. “Get home safe.” They fist-bumped and did the traditional half bro-hug as they said goodnight.
* * *
He headedtoward his house through the dark night. It had been a bit of a long day. The shit with Marius was still eating at him. Maybe it was the comment on the “real law”, or maybe it was just the long hours he had been putting in lately.
There were times he went for weeks barely even thinking about his father. How he had just abandoned the pack.
What he had said.“Only a fool would think fae and shifters could ever really get along.”
Like he needed to think about that again. For whatever reason, he felt the pull of his dragon.
Who are you kidding?
His dragon let out a roar of protest. He knew exactly why he had to break loose. All that other stuff was just par for the course in his line of work. And his father had disappeared a good ten years ago.
No. It was her.
Bloom.
This business with Marius had only stirred the pot. And it was a pot he did his best to keep a lid on. Not an easy task in a small town like Fae Crossing.
He did his best to refocus his thoughts.Anything but her.Dammit.
He was just heading into the more mountainous terrain of his home in the high woods. He pulled his truck over. It couldn’t wait. He needed to fly. Not in ten minutes when he got home. Now.
He took off his button down and jeans and left them in a heap on the front seat. His dragon was practically tearing at his skin now.
He let his beast come to the front as he shifted and leaped into the air as his dragon. His powerful wings beat the air as the blood pumped into his scaled arms and legs. The exhilaration of the shift was beyond words. The freedom indescribable.
The turmoil and confusing feelings that Bloom tapped into faded more with every powerful beat of his wings. Each shift was almost like a new birth, especially on days like this where he had held back for so long. He alternately soared and plummeted.
He let the annoyance of dealing with fools like Marius drift to the back of his mind as well. Even thoughts of the council and of the investigation fell off until his daily challenges were just a faint shadow.
It was good to be a dragon. It was a moonless night and he took full advantage, flying high and low over the dark wooded ridges and valleys of the Clouded Woods until late into the night.
CHAPTER3
At the end of the night, she ushered the last of her customers out. In many ways, it had been pretty typical. Every night was different, of course, but it was all more or less variations of a theme, depending on the crowd, and on her mood, and of course, the mood of ‘the bar’ itself.
She was used to the sometimes temperamental ways of “Ash,” as she called it since she had no idea if the ancient fae spirit were male of female. Not that it mattered. Regardless, the bar seemed to do as it wished.
She’d known it to close after only a few hours, based solely on the tension in the air. She had never considered disagreeing or fighting with the bar’s call. That was just part and parcel of living in an enchanted tree. She continued wiping down the bar.
But there had been just something weird with Marius.
Whatever.
Ash had handled it. Like it always did. But something about it had been unsettling.
Thoughts of her father drifted into her mind. She began to scrub at a particularly resistant ketchup stain, as if erasing it would delete the sadness that had risen in her.
