Cruel Daddy Dragon (Candara Dragon Ops #3)

Chapter 9 - Rufus

I stare at the ceiling of my room, hands linked behind my head, on my bed, thinking of our time in the car the night before. It’s hard to even imagine how we got there—it happened so suddenly. One moment, we were arguing back and forth, the next…

Well, those arguments are getting sexier every time we go through it. The way she tosses her glossy blonde ponytail, the way she smirks when she knows she’s got me, the way she puts her hands on her hips… Every mannerism is so familiar to me now. And so hot!

I sigh. It’s a happy sigh.

I truly thought I never wanted to mate-bond—that the potential pain of losing a partner far outweighed anything a mate-bond could give me. But… it’s been so long since I’ve felt so relaxed, or happy, or contented. That my general existence has felt so easy and bright.

And it’s with Sarah of all people… crazy…

After the sex last night, we spent a long time in the car together, and it felt so natural and right—but there were still some people close by, and they came looking for us. We had to hurry out without much of a word, but I know she left with a huge smile on her face.

She’ll be at work by now, and I have to protect her still—Cyrus’s orders. Maybe I should surprise my wife with a coffee at the station. She always goes and gets a very milky coffee from Gunn’s Diner in the mornings, but every time I’ve seen her drinking it, she doesn’t look terribly impressed.

I bet I can make a better one here, with the stuff we have at home. I know how she takes her coffee… even if I’ve never made it for her before.

Yes. I’ll do that.

I open my bedroom door, and almost run into Kaius. He’s in front of me but stops dead in his tracks, preventing me from going anywhere.

“Whoa, hey!” he laughs, “You’re coming down late today!”

“I guess. Get out of my way, Kaius.”

I move to the left. He does, too. I move to the right, and he mirrors that, too.

“Kaius!”

“Hey, what’s the rush?” he asks.

“I just want to get some damn coffee, Kai—get out of my way!”

I start pushing him. He holds onto the walls on either side with both hands and roots his feet in to stop himself from moving.

“Bro, you have got to be kidding! Get out my way!” I snap.

Kaius cackles.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he says, “your wife’s downstairs, and she’s asking for me! ”

“What?! Sarah’s here?! Why?!” The words bark out before I can stop them.

Kaius laughs again.

“Well, maybe it’s because you didn’t text her back this morning, Loverboy,” he says, giving me a knowing look.

I sigh.

“You know about that?” I ask defeatedly.

“No!” Kaius replies, “All I knew was O said she came out to talk to you and you both disappeared for a while last night. But I sure as hell know now! ”

I growl. Kaius cackles like a gremlin and begins hurtling down the stairs before I can punch him. He gets halfway down the stairs before he turns and looks at me:

“Oh, how’s that new pair of sunglasses you bought after Roscoe stole the last one?”

He's got that knowing look again, and I bristle.

“Oh, you horse’s ass, Kaius!” I snarl.

He breaks out into more barking laughter and disappears down the stairs. I spend a second collecting myself.

A part of me thought he would mature a bit if he ever mate-bonded, but he’s as much of a jackass as he always was. On the one hand, I wish he wasn’t so juvenile, but on the other, it’s a little reassuring that the massive transformation I was so scared of might not be as large as I thought.

As in… I’m still me, even if I mate-bonded. Just like Cyrus is still our strong leader, and Kaius is still a horse’s ass.

Voices reach me from downstairs, and my heart clenches: that is Sarah! He wasn’t just messing around, then.

I hover on the stairs, listening to them. Her tone is stern.

“Ah, Kaius,” she says, “Thanks for meeting with me. I need to talk to you about Roscoe.”

“Roscoe? Okay, I guess?” he replies.

“So, we all know that you have a connection with Roscoe,” she says, “I’ve been told that when he steals things, he often gives them to you.”

“Oh… uh… yeah?” he answers warily.

“What kind of things does he give you?” Sarah asks, “A lot of things have gone missing lately.”

“Um… well, this is kind of awkward, but I’ve only trained him to bring me Rufus’s shit,” Kaius answers, “Don’t tell him, but all his missing stuff, Roscoe gives me.”

“Right,” Sarah says grimly, “You trained Roscoe to steal Rufus’s things for you?”

“Yeah?”

“You know that’s stealing, right?”

“What? No! It’s just a joke!” he says, “Besides, Roscoe is the one who’s stealing!”

She has her Sheriff’s tone out in force when she answers back:

“If you have trained him specifically to steal Rufus’s things, then you’re the one responsible for the thefts.”

I can hear Kaius on the back foot when he answers back:

“They’re not even stolen!” he insists hastily, “All Rufus’s shit is in a box under my bed! They’re still here! I mean, sometimes, Roscoe waits a few days before he gives it to me since he knows that he gets a snack when he hands it over, so he sometimes waits until he’s hungry, but I promise, nothing is gone! ”

Oh, that bastard! How many pairs of sunglasses did I buy every time one got stolen?! He has them all under his bed?!

“Well, that still qualifies as stealing since you have dishonestly appropriated his property, regardless of how you did it,” she says, her strong police tone cutting through his explanation, “I’ll let you off this time, but you need to give Rufus his stuff back.”

“Okay…”

Kaius doesn’t say anything, and I can’t fight the grin on my face. It’s so satisfying to hear Kaius put in his goddamn place for once since no one else in Candara will do it.

Sarah, you’re awesome.

“But does he ever bring you anything other than Rufus’s stuff?” she asks, “No other shiny things?”

“No,” Kaius murmurs, “Just Rufus’s stuff.”

“Right,” she says, “And if he’d given you a relic, you would have told everyone, right?”

“ What?! ” Kaius exclaims, “Roscoe’s thieving relics?! Since when?!”

“ Possibly. ” Sarah emphasizes, “I’m not sure yet. So I take it if he had, you would have told everyone?”

“Of course!” Kaius says.

“I see,” she replies, “So if Roscoe didn’t give one of Rufus’s things directly to you, where would he hide it?”

“I don’t know,” Kaius replies.

There’s a moment of quiet. Presumably, Sarah’s writing something down.

“What’s this about, though?” Kaius asks.

“What Roscoe had this morning was a small ring—copper,” Sarah answers, “I remember Lena’s shop was once broken into for copper rings because Eclipse thought they were relics. I just wanted to investigate the matter further.”

“Oh, right,” Kaius says, “Now you mention it, Roscoe did take a ring from Rufus a short while ago, and I haven’t got it back yet.”

“I see,” Sarah replies, “And what did this ring look like?”

“I… don’t remember,” Kaius admits.

“Okay,” Sarah says briskly, “Well, I’ll investigate anyway and let everyone know if it was a relic or not. Can you bring Rufus over? I need to ask him about his ring. Can I rely on you to bring Cyrus up to speed about all of this as well?”

She’s barking orders like a true cop—again, I’m grinning in satisfaction as Kaius comes clumping toward me. When he meets me on the stairs, I must have the biggest shit-eating grin matching his light scowl.

“Your mean wife wants to see you,” he grumbles.

“So I heard,” I reply, “I heard everything! ”

I’m laughing at him now. I pass by him on the stairs and then look over my shoulder at him:

“Oh, and on your way back from updating Cyrus, I want that box of my stuff back.”

Kaius groans.

“Fine…” He groans, “Both of you are such buzzkills, my god! ”

I cackle as I walk down the stairs to meet her. She’s standing there in her full police uniform. The one that grips just enough of her curvaceous body to tantalize but not enough to truly give anything away; it leaves just enough for the imagination.

Well, it would if I hadn’t already seen more than that. I stride over to her with a big grin on my face.

“I liked how you handled Kaius,” I say, “He can be a tough one.”

But she doesn’t smile back at me. Her eyes are stony—not necessarily cold, but not warm either. Why is she looking at me like that?

“So… how are you?” I ask, for lack of anything else to say.

“I’m very well,” she answers, only politely, “I just needed to ask you some questions about this ring that went missing a few days ago.”

I’m oddly numb. She’s talking to me like I’m a stranger…

Maybe she just wants to talk about this first …

“Erm, it was just a regular ring. It was just annoying that Roscoe took it,” I say briefly.

“What did it look like?” she asks, making notes in her little police notepad.

“Er, it was just kind of thick and copperish,” I reply.

“Mmhmm,” she murmurs, “And did it have any gem settings?”

“No. It was just flat all the way around, and it had some kind of Celtic knot on it.”

“I see,” she says, “And was it actually made of copper?”

“I don’t think so,” I reply, “It was just colored like that.”

Sarah nods, making notes as she does. Then, she looks up at me:

“All right,” she says, “I don’t think that was the ring I saw Roscoe with this morning, but I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

Sarah closes her notepad and pockets it.

“Thanks for your help.”

With that, she starts to leave.

“Wait!” I shout suddenly.

She looks over at me.

“Is… is that it?” I ask.

“That’s all the questions I had to ask about the ring,” Sarah replies in a monotone.

“I’m not talking about the ring!” I snap, “I’m talking about last night!”

Sarah just gives me a tight, polite smile.

“I don’t know if it’s professional for me to talk about last night while I’m working,” she answers.

“So, you’re not… we’re not going to talk about it?”

“I’m not talking about that right now,” she replies in that same heartbreakingly cordial tone.

She’s smiling at me, but it feels like a dagger to the heart. I struggle to find the words. I can’t find it in me to beg for her attention when she’s so dispassionately smiling at me like that. I preferred it when she was arguing with me; at least there was some fire there. I just… I didn’t know I could just be brushed aside for professionalism after last night…

I thought it was too special for that… but there’s nothing there from her… like it didn’t even happen, or worse, it didn’t even matter.

Is that how much I’m worth to her?

“Wh—where are you looking? For the relics you talked to Kaius about?” I ask instead, only a stutter revealing the dagger in my heart.

Again, she speaks in pure, heartbreaking professionalism:

“Roscoe seems to have found a small crack into a cave or an abandoned mining shaft, and he’s storing a lot of his stolen goods there,” she says, “It needs spelunking gear, at least. I can’t guarantee that there are any relics there, but I suspect that there might be.”

“Let me come with you,” I say, “Spelunking will be safer with more than one person.”

“No,” she answers blankly, “I’ll be accompanied by locals, and this is a police investigation. You don’t need to come.”

Sarah turns and starts walking away. She pauses for just a moment, then looks over my shoulder with something approximating softness in her eye for the first time since I saw her today.

“You don’t need to worry about me either,” she adds.

With that, she leaves the house. The door clicks closed behind her, and I just stare at it for a moment.

That’s it? But I… I thought that we… that I…

The dagger in my heart turns, and I swallow hard.

“Wow…” Kaius mutters behind me.

I spin on my heel, a prickling shame bursting into rage when I realize that jackass could have been watching the whole time.

“Don’t say a word!” I snarl to Kaius, “Don’t say a fucking word!”

But he holds his hands up, his eyes serious.

“Yeah, Bro, I get you,” he says simply, “Are you okay?”

I swallow hard again but just shrug.

“What’s going on?” Cyrus asks, walking in.

“Nothing,” I answer immediately, shooting a glare at Kaius.

Uncharacteristically, he keeps his mouth shut.

“So, Kaius has explained that Sarah is going off on a lead for a suspected relic,” Cyrus says, staring at me.

“Yes, that’s what she said. Apparently, it might not exactly be a relic, but she thinks it might be,” I answer, “Cyrus, I’m asking for permission to go with her. Obviously, if she ends up finding a relic, it’s important we get to it before Eclipse senses it and tries to take it from her. Not to mention, there might even be more keys down there, too. Even if she doesn’t find a relic, if Roscoe has found another entry into the collapsed mineshaft, that’s valuable info.”

He nods.

“Yes. I agree,” he says, “But after her kidnapping, she’s still a top priority to protect anyway.”

A ghost of a smile flickers across his face.

“You don’t have to justify it so hard,” he adds.

I nod, staring at the floor. I wonder how much the Alpha knows about all this…

Very little passes him by, so…

“Yes, you can go with her,” Cyrus says, “Make sure everything goes smoothly, and I’ll have Milo and Kaius patrolling nearby just in case you run into trouble and need backup for any reason. Call them if you need them.”

“Thanks, Cyrus,” I say, “I appreciate that.”

“Just one thing: you must be back before Evander and I leave for the council meeting,” he says, “No matter the circumstance, I need all my warriors here to protect Lena, Julie, and the map they’re making before we go. That is an order.”

I bow my head to him.

“I will. Thanks.”

“I’ll let the others know,” Cyrus says, “You’d better follow her now.”

He has a knowing look in his eye. I nod one more time before I turn and head after her, barely out the door before I’m taking flight.