Page 78 of Dragon’s Ending

“Ah,” Dominic said, and looked just the tiniest bit sheepish. “You didn’t realise? Anyway”—he fixed the dragons with that glare again, the one that made me slightly weak at the knees—“what the fuck were you doing?”

“We thought we’d try fighting in teams. You know, with the Gruffydds not here, it’d make things a bit more interesting,” Megan said.

The Gruffydds? Why should they be here? I had no idea what was going on.

“Teams?” Dominic stared at them as if they’d announced plans to juggle live explosives. “You thought adding more dragons into close-quarters aerial combat was interesting? Oh my God.” He rubbed his hand over his face, a move I’d never seen him make before. “Fuck.”

He drew a deep breath. “You’re all fucking muppets,” he told them. “Heath and I have rules for a reason.”

“Well, you weren’t here, were you?” It was Josh, looking somewhat sulky.

“No,” Dominic snapped. “Which means you shouldn’t have been either.”

Silence followed, broken only by the wavering call of an owl somewhere in the woods. Then Dominic sighed, sounding tired. “Look, we’ll sort this mess out properly tomorrow.”

None of them looked reassured by that. In fact, they looked distinctly nervous.

Dominic breathed out sharply. “For fuck’s sake. Nobody’s being fed to the mountain gods. We’ll talk tomorrow and then go to the pub.”

A visible ripple of relief followed.

“You’re buying, though,” Dominic added.

A few snorts of laughter and rolled eyes, and the last of the tension finally disappeared.

Then Megan spoke hesitantly, gesturing at me. “Why is he white?”

All four of them looked to Dominic for an answer. Not to me, the actual white dragon. And I wondered if Rhodri had any idea how many of his family already followed Dominic.

Dominic glanced sideways at me. “Well,” he said. “That’s because he’s special.”

“Oh my God,” I said, mortified. Shaking my head, I looked back at the four dragons. “Right, will one of you go and get our clothes? We shifted over there”—I pointed in the direction we’d come from—“about a quarter of a mile from the house.”

Then I remembered Dominic’s ring. “Or perhaps we should get them ourselves?” I said to Dominic.

He gave the tiniest nod, letting me know it was okay. “Be careful when you pick them up—my ring’s loose in the pocket of my jeans,” he warned them. “And bring them straight back here.”

All four of them promptly shifted and launched back into the air. For him to entrust them with a piece of his treasure was more reassurance than any words could be. And they knew it.

“I love it when you get all masterful,” Dominic said, shoulder-bumping me.

But it was reflexive—his heart wasn’t in it. Mine wasn’t either. I was still thinking about the way I'd reacted earlier. I'd spent most of my life assuming I knew myself pretty well. Tonight had suggested there were parts of me I’d never met. And that was both disconcerting and somehow exciting.

DOMINIC

The sound of wings approaching overhead broke the silence and made us both look up. Four dragons descended, Josh awkwardly holding a bundle of clothes in his claws. It looked as if my hoodie, which had only just recovered from Teddy, had been sacrificed to wrap around everything else.

The gang of four landed cautiously several yards away, all looking deeply unsure of themselves.

Annoyingly, I suddenly understood how Rhodri must feel—a crushing awareness that younger dragons would absolutely find new and inventive methods of killing themselves if left unsupervised for more than fifteen minutes. Not that I agreed with his methods of trying to keep them in line.

Dafydd approached and handed me the bundle very carefully.

“Thanks,” I said, my fingers finding the ring in my pocket before I was even aware of moving. In letting them so close to my treasure, I’d gone against one instinct to follow another. How could I expect them to trust me if I didn’t trust them? What surprised me most wasn’t that they’d treated it with reverence but that I’d never doubted they would.

He looked as though he wanted to say something else, apology and defensiveness fighting visibly across his face, but in the end he only nodded.

“Tomorrow,” I reminded them all.