If he’d ever had a chance of winning Harper’s heart, that had disappeared the day he sold his soul to the undead. Feeling like his heart was outside of his chest cavity, Wyatt let off a long snarl. He rested his forearms on the floor, buried his face in his hands, and screamed as loud, and as long, as he could.
He couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t risk his bear going on a bender. He was too close to town until he could afford his own territory. Wyatt staggered upward and strode for the bathroom. His reflection sickened him. Pale features, chest heaving, muscles tensed, eyes haunted, blood staining the neck of his shirt. If Harper saw him now, she wouldn’t even recognize him from the boy she used to know. Harper, Harper, Harper. She deserved so much better than what he’d become.
His eyes lightened to an icy blue, the color that said his bear was right there, right under the surface. She can save you, his inner animal growled.
Wyatt slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering it into an intricate spiderweb. Fist throbbing, he turned on the tap as hot as it would go and cupped scalding water against his face and neck over and over to erase the filthy, clammy sensation Arabella’s lips and teeth had left behind.
And when his throat finally stopped bleeding, when red stopped staining the porcelain white of the sink, when he felt like his bear wouldn’t rip out of his skin as punishment for his weakness, Wyatt strode into the kitchen and pulled down the bottle of whisky. This was his “forget her” elixir. It was necessary on nights like this when Harper’s memories were scratching at his mind.
He’d been good once. He’d been worthy of her, and now look at him. Consort to the Queen of the Asheville Coven. Nothing more than a blood-bag for a woman he hated. Wyatt took a long, deep drink of the whiskey and settled onto his couch, clenching and unclenching his cut-up fist.
Harper was suffering with The Unrest, and here he was, doing not-enough.
He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and stared at her number, as he always did when he was struggling to keep from shattering. Perhaps she’d changed it years ago.
Just to see how it felt, Wyatt opened the message screen. He could call her and see her face when she answered before she realized it was him and hung up. Maybe if he just saw her, it would ease this spinning sensation he couldn’t seem to get rid of.
But then she would see him. See how different he looked. She would see his unshaven face, his ruined neck, and his empty eyes, and she would know the boy she loved once was dead.
But it felt so good, sitting here pretending he could talk to her. So before he could change his mind, Wyatt punched in the words he’d wanted to say to her for the last ten years.
I miss you. I miss us. I miss who I was when I was with you.
It’s getting cold outside.
And then, feeling utterly reckless and desperate to connect with something in this world…with someone…he hit send.
Chapter Two
It’s getting cold outside.
Harper had read the last part a hundred times over the last week. If she’d had any doubt who texted her from the unknown number, it had been laid to rest with It’s getting cold outside.
That was the code she and Wyatt had used as kids when they needed to meet up at their secret spot to vent, cry, or later in their teens when they’d fallen hard into love, to hold each other.
But why now? Why had he reached out to her after all this time? Wyatt had done a bang-up job of ignoring her for an entire decade. He barely even talked to her when he came to visit the Ashe Crew for the holidays. In fact, he’d only spent a handful of days there since he’d blown out of town when he was eighteen.
Harper shook her head and frowned out the window of her rental car. Rain was pouring down into the parking lot of the local bar in Bryson City, North Carolina. Who in their right mind named the bar Drat’s Boozehouse?
She sighed, and the sound tapered into a low rumble in her chest. Her dragon didn’t like being cooped up, and sitting on a plane with a bunch of whiney humans all day had her wanting to make some ash. Harper stopped fidgeting with a loose thread on her sweater sleeve and pulled out the brown contact from her left eye. One quick glance in the mirror, and that was better. One brown eye, one blue, and the lighter one had a dragon’s elongated pupil, proof of what dwelled inside of her.
She tracked a pair of bar-goers through the muddy parking lot. The man was holding his jacket over his date’s head, protecting her from the downpour. It was sweet.
God, what was she doing here?
Wyatt had probably meant to send it to someone else. No, she could’ve convinced herself of that if he hadn’t included the last sentence. He’d tacked that on because he’d wanted her to be certain it was him.
He missed her? He missed how he’d been when they were together? Did he even remember that far back? Harper did, but she’d assumed he’d deemed what they had a childhood crush and forgotten all about her.
She lifted her hand, palm flat, and screwed her face up at the shake she witnessed there. She was a motherfuckin’ dragon shifter, and she had the tremors over a message from a man she didn’t know anymore? Wyatt was a stranger who’d probably just got drunk and messaged her as a prank. Perhaps as a way to rip her up even more. As a way to tether her heart to him for another decade. Prick. Another rumble rattled from her chest. Wyatt was about to be a burnt prick.
A sudden urge to turn back around and catch the next flight out of North Carolina froze her against the seat. If she did this, if she tracked him down, she would knowingly put her heart right in front of him to trample again. He wasn’t careful with other people’s feelings. His father, Tagan, had told her time and time again it was because he had a dominant brawler bear inside of him, and he would settle when he was alpha someday. But she didn’t buy it.