“Tawk,” Tammy said, breath rushed. “What just happened?”
He cracked his knuckles and made his way to the broken car door, still sitting in the road. He grabbed it and strode for his rental house, pushed open the door and set it inside.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Garret wouldn’t like you going in his house!”
“It’s mine for now,” he gritted out. He grabbed a broom from the garage and a bucket and strode past her, mind racing. That was so fucking disturbing that Jess could control him like that.
“Okay, so you…you…moved in here?” she asked, following him to the street.
In a rush, he swept at the broken glass. His skin was on fire right now. “I need to Change.”
“Okay…okay! Let me do this. You do the dragon thing.”
She sounded angry, and he rounded on her. “Tammy—”
“No, it’s fine. This is shifter shit right? Don’t tell the human. Don’t worry, I’m not offended, Tawk. I’m just your neighbor.” She spat the last part out at him, and yanked the broom from hishand, then angrily began sweeping up broken glass. “I can clean up the mess.”
He couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think straight. Wreck was scary enough, and so were the shifters under him. He knew what they were…but Jess? Jess had the power to make him believe Connor and Samuel and Misty were burning and he’d prepared to eat their ashes without any control over his own dragon.
He was disturbed down to his bones right now.
Tammy’s shotgun was lying in the middle of her yard, the street was littered in sparkling broken glass, Tammy still smelled faintly of fear.
She broke the illusion.
He needed to thank Tammy for whatever she’d done to bring him back to himself, but right now, he just needed to be in the air with the wind against his scales so he could bring all of his racing thoughts into focus.
“I’ll come back,” he promised, backing toward the trees.
“Do whatever you want,” she murmured, but he could hear it—the hurt in her voice. He could see it in the rim of moisture that sat in her eyes that she was trying to hide from him.
Fuck. His chest was aching with every step he backed away from her, but he had to go. He had to get himself together and the only way to do that was to stop fighting the dragon.
He’d just fed.
It was a huge feed. Perhaps the biggest he’d ever had, and he was tingling with power.
In this moment as he turned around and shook his head, regretting so much, for the first time in his life, he wished he wasn’t this. He wished he wasn’t a Sentry Dragon. He wished he didn’t have this power. Wished he didn’t need to be tethered to a witch for purpose and for food.
He wished he didn’t have to leave the woman who was dragging at his heart right in this moment, when she was confused and scared and cleaning up his fucking mess.
He wished he was normal.
She broke the illusion. Jess had said that with surprise in her voice.
Yeah. Tammy was breaking the illusion he had of himself too.
Chapter Ten
Right on the edge of the tree line of the empty lot across the street, Tawk gripped the back of his hair and yelled an agonized, and terrifying sound that shook the woods, and then he bunched his muscles and catapulted into the air. He was human, and then he wasn’t.
A wave of power nearly knocked Tammy backward as an enormous dragon with bronze scales exploded from him. Time slowed as he beat his wings. The wind from it knocked her backward a few feet, and she struggled to stay upright.
A gasp escaped from her as she stared at the mythical creature that Tawk really was. He wasn’t just a man. He wasn’t just some interesting, hot guy she had a crush on.
He was a monster, capable of monstrous things.
She’d witnessed him brawl with that terrifying polar bear that had ripped from that guy. And when the bear had gone still under him, she’d tried to stop Tawk. He wasn’t in his right mind. She couldn’t watch him murder someone, no matter what they’d done!
