Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (75 page)

Sloane wasn’t promising what he couldn’t deliver, and Sam had to respect that.

On the day that they’d parted, she’d hoped he might leave an opening for them to get together again. When he hadn’t, she assumed her feelings weren’t reciprocated.

But that wasn’t it. Not necessarily.

It was honorable of Sloane to decline to deepen the relationship if he feared he couldn’t see it through. She admired him for his restraint and wished she hadn’t spoken to him so harshly. He had helped her to heal, to begin her life again after her complete meltdown, and she owed him more than she’d given him.

Even if they had no real future.

Drake had suggested she watch the video footage of the eclipse over Australia, because he said it showed a
Pyr
experiencing his firestorm. The golden light that burned between the dark dragon and the woman he snatched from the talons of the other dragon was amazing. The image was blurry and taken in poor lighting from a distance. The woman’s features were impossible to see, and Sam wondered whether she might have walked past her in the street.

But the topaz and gold dragon was more than familiar.

As was his ferocity.

Sam watched it repeatedly, unable to deny that the fighting dragons were clearly on two sides. Did she dare to believe that Sloane and his allies, the
Pyr
, hated this gold dragon as much as she did?

Could she and Sloane defeat the plan this dragon had put in motion, if they worked more closely together?

It was more than worth a try.

* * *

Sam felt Sloane come into the kitchen, his presence as evident to her as a crackle of electricity. If this was just sexual attraction to a dragon shifter, the firestorm must be an incredible feeling.

“Planning to get any work done today?” he asked, a thread of impatience in his tone.

She spun to face him, letting him see what was on her laptop screen. “Drake told me about the firestorm.”

Sloane’s lips tightened in disapproval. “Did he?”

Sam knew she deserved his tone, but she wanted to start fresh. “What do you think it’s like?”

“I expect it’s amazing. I’ve only felt it second-hand, and even that’s electrifying.”

Sam watched him pour a cup of coffee. “What will happen to the
Pyr
’s children, if you don’t win?”

Sloane looked bleak. “I’m not sure. The oldest of this generation just turned seven. I doubt he’ll have the chance to come into his powers at puberty, not if all the adult
Pyr
are gone. No
Slayer
would allow that.”

His exhaustion touched her heart. “How old are you?”

Sloane took a slow breath and exhaled, his gaze darting over the kitchen then back to her. “I was born in 1655. My father, unlike many of the
Pyr
, kept precise records.” He lifted a brow. “I’m a Scorpio.”

Sam swallowed a smile. “Life and death, mystery, healing, secrets. I think even I might have guessed that,” she teased and was rewarded with the brief flash of his smile. She sobered as she watched him stir his coffee. “What’s it like, waiting for a firestorm?”

“Lonely,” Sloane said. He lifted his gaze to hers. “What’s it like, being unable to help your son survive?”

Sam’s throat tightened so much that she could scarcely take a breath. “It’s hell,” she admitted. “It casts everything into doubt and leaves you second-guessing every decision.” She turned her mug on the counter. “Did you know about Nathaniel from the very start?”

Sloane leaned his hip against the counter. “I knew you were hurting. When I found the picture, I recognized him. That smile could light the universe.”

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “It lit mine.”

Sloane’s voice softened in a way that made her want to fling herself into his arms. “I’m sorry, Sam. No parent should have to go through that.”

“No, they shouldn’t.”

They stood there for a long moment, and Sam found it hard to take a breath. She ached for the loss of Nathaniel all over again, and for all the other failures of her life. “Wish you were here,” she said, quoting the last note from her son. Her fingers were tangling in the chain of the necklace. “I’m never there, you know.”

“I suspect every working mom says that.”

“No, I’m never there,” Sam corrected, her anger turned on herself now, where it belonged. “I always think I’m making the right choice, and it never quite works out. I’m always sure of how things are, then find out that I’m wrong. I know things are impossible, but then they happen.” She lifted her head to find Sloane watching her closely. “I thought my mom would always be there, and even when she died, I thought my father would always be there. That’s stupid.”

“That’s optimism and trust.”

“It’s illogical.” Sam shook her head with frustration. “It’s about assumptions. I assumed marriage was forever. I assumed people would see their grandchildren born. I assumed children survived their parents. I was wrong.”

“You’re not the only one who has believed in the future and been disappointed.”

“I took things for granted. I took
people
for granted. I thought they’d always be there, waiting for me to finish what I was doing.” Sam lifted her gaze. “But they aren’t. It’s not always their fault, but that doesn’t change the fact that everything can be snatched away in a heartbeat.”

Like Sloane.

Sam caught her breath, realizing that he could be snatched away within months.

She didn’t want to even think about it.

She needed to change, and to change right now.

“It isn’t usually,” Sloane said. He pursed his lips, considering her words, and she liked that the anger was gone from his expression. He was giving her a second chance, just because she was trying again. He really did understand intuitively how to heal, both people and situations, and her heart swelled with something more than admiration.

“I’ve said crappy things to you,” she said. “I’ve made assumptions. I’m sorry.”

“You were hurting.”

“Still.” She swallowed. “I was wrong.”

“Even though I’m a dragon shifter?”

Sam nodded. “Thank you for helping me.”

Sloane held her gaze, that little hum of electricity between them becoming stronger. “I think there’s a balance to be struck, between taking care of what and who you love, and trusting in the future. Taking care of what matters today, so that if tomorrow doesn’t come, you don’t have regrets.”

“Do you know how to do that?”

His smile was rueful. “No, but I keep trying.” Their gazes locked and held for a potent moment.

“What do you regret?” Sam asked on impulse. “Is there anything?”

“Lots of things. I’ve had some time to mess up.”

Sam smiled because she knew he expected it.

“Bad partings. Blunt speech when it was more cruel than honest.”

“Oh good, I’m not the only one.”

Sloane shrugged. “Things I never said aloud to my father. I hope he knew how much I admired him.” He considered his coffee as if it were fascinating. “I was young when he died. We were in the midst of arguing about my future plans.”

“Whether you’d become the Apothecary or not.”

“How I’d become the Apothecary,” Sloane corrected. “The role and the responsibility was mine, but I wanted to do it differently. My father always argued for the power of tradition.”

“You wanted to go to med school, such as it was then.”

“I see now that he was afraid for me. He feared that I’d be revealed.”

“Probably not then, but now you would. Drake’s blood is seriously awesome, and in med school, we did use our own blood for various tests. Now you be outed immediately.”

“My father only saw the risk.” Sloane studied the floor. “There was a time when our kind were nearly hunted to extinction by humans. It was before I was born, but my father remembered the hunts, as does Erik, our leader. It left a scar upon the surviving
Pyr
, an inability to trust the human race as much as they might want to.”

“I’ll guess even you can’t treat that.”

“No. There are injuries that we carry with us to our graves. That’s something that
Pyr
and humans have in common.” His gaze was steady and warmed her. “Maybe those are the injuries that we can only try to move past ourselves, with the power of our minds.”

“Physician, heal thyself?” Sam asked, her tone teasing.

Sloane almost smiled. “Or Apothecary, as the case might be.”

Could she heal her own wounds? Since meeting Sloane, Sam was starting to believe it possible. She stood in his kitchen, which was filled with the scents of warm butter and hot coffee. She watched him, feeling more alive than she had in years even as he was utterly still. The moment could have been frozen in time, potent with possibilities. She sensed the opportunities ahead of her and a vitality that she’d nearly forgotten could exist. She could shape her life. She could change her choices. She could try to heal her own wounds. She could choose differently, change herself, reshape the world.

She was glad that she’d decided to wear Nathaniel’s gift and knew she’d only done it because of Sloane’s gentle persistence.

Her fingers rose to it and tangled in the chain. “My sister adored Nathaniel, you know. He might have been her own son. She always wanted kids, lots of them, and she’d be an awesome mom. She just never seems to meet the right guy. In a way, I felt that I was giving her the chance to live vicariously, to have Nathaniel all to herself.” Sam bit her lip. “Of course, she saw it differently. She thought I was just handing him off because he was inconvenient.”

“That’s hard.”

“We’ve said a lot of hard things to each other over the years. We said more when Nathaniel was infected. I think we both blamed ourselves for his condition, but out loud, we blamed each other. We weren’t even speaking during his illness, although we both visited him.” Sam shook her head at her own pride and stubbornness. “We ensured that we visited at different times. But I didn’t visit nearly enough. It broke my heart to see my son like that, to know that I’d failed him and that I was still failing him, that taking time to visit him was time away from the lab and a possible cure.”

“You must have been exhausted,” Sloane said quietly. “No wonder you burned out.”

“Spun out, burned out, imploded.” Sam grimaced. “All of the above and more. Jac gave me the gift box at the funeral. I guess she’d tried to do it sooner, but I rebuffed her. That note.” She swallowed. “That note just finished me.”

“It would,” Sloane agreed. “Although Nathaniel couldn’t have known the power his words would have, not when he wrote them.”

“Of course not, but right then and right there, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My back. I walked away from all of it, without a backward glance, bought the house in California and wept for a week after I moved in.”

Sloane smiled gently at her. “That was when you decided to read tarot cards?”

“Illogical!” Sam admitted. “Insane maybe. But Jac had said I needed to get in touch with my own feelings and her accusation hit a nerve. All that intuition, emotion and touchy-feely stuff had never been my department. It was hers. I was drawn to the cards in a shop, and for once, I decided to follow my impulse. I thought it would be easy to learn to interpret them.”

“You thought you would apply logic to it and memorize the system.”

“I guess I did.” Sam dared to look at him and liked that he didn’t seem to have judged her and found her wanting. “But there isn’t a system. It’s like they have a life of their own, and their meanings change depending who asks the question and when.”

“Isn’t that impossible?” Sloane asked with a smile.

Sam smiled back at him. “Once I would have said that it was, but I’ve learned that a lot of apparently impossible things are real.”

Sloane chuckled and topped up their coffees. “Maybe the cards called to you, because they knew you needed them.”

Sam shook her head. “No. It was a dark-haired stranger, a Knight of Cups, who came to my door bearing wine who did that.”

Sloane averted his gaze, reminding Sam of what Drake had told her about the firestorm. He wouldn’t promise what he couldn’t deliver. She respected that. It was a sign of a moral code that she admired.

“What if you never have a firestorm?” she asked softly.

“I will,” he replied, with a confidence Sam wished she shared.

Sam swallowed, then admitted something she never would have expected herself to say aloud. “The world is in flux all around me now, for the first time.” It was terrifying to make such a confession, but it also felt right. “It’s unfamiliar and unpredictable, and I feel a bit lost.”

“You’ll find your stride. We all do.”

“Probably. But in a way, I’m jealous of your firestorm. It would be nice to know that
something
was absolutely true and unassailable.”

Sam found Sloane in front of her then, though she hadn’t seen him move. His fingers were under her chin and he bent to kiss away a tear she didn’t even know she’d shed. He felt so good and she couldn’t keep herself from leaning against his warmth and strength.

“Here’s a truth,” he murmured. “You did more for Nathaniel than anyone could have done. You gave your all.”