Last Immortal Dragon (Gray Back Bears #6)

Last Immortal Dragon (Gray Back Bears #6)

by T.S. Joyce



Chapter One

I’ll find you again.

Damon Daye sat straight up in bed and gasped. His lungs burned as if he’d been holding his breath for too long, and deep within his chest, the clicking of his firestarter sounded. Shit. He bolted for the miniature fridge near his bed and threw it open, then chugged two bottled waters without halting.

That’s just what he needed—to burn his entire lair down because of one dream. With a shaky sigh, he slid to the floor, back against the cold plastic of the fridge. What in the hell had brought that dream about? He hadn’t thought of Feyadine in years.

He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to banish the remnant memories of the dream. It was the one that used to torture him. The one of her final breaths.

“You were screaming,” Mason said from the chair in the corner.

Damon startled and stifled the low rumble in his throat. With a sigh, he said, “Careful not to get yourself burned alive, old friend. You shouldn’t come in here when I’m slumbering. Not ever.”

“Slumbering,” Mason repeated with a grin. He did that a lot, repeated the antiquated words Damon sometimes used when he wasn’t fully awake yet.

Damon stood, sauntered over to his wall of windows, and hit the switch that retracted the blackout panels. He slept best in rooms that resembled caves. Gray, early morning light streamed under the panels as they lifted, and Damon ran his hands through his disheveled hair. It used to bother him that Mason saw him like this, in the vulnerable moments after waking, but he’d been his assistant and driver for so long now, he trusted him wholly.

“This is your intervention,” Mason murmured.

Damon shot him a glare over his shoulder. Mason was sitting in an old velvet chair with his hands clasped over his knees, leaning forward with his eyes blazing the bright blue color of his boar shifter people. Ah. Damon’s inner dragon had riled Mason up more than his steady voice let on.

“Intervention for what? I don’t host any addictions.”

“I’ve watched you spiral lately. I’ve kept quiet about it, but you need a change.”

Damon clasped his hands behind his back and stared out the window at his mountains. Mason always saw too much of his unrest. He wasn’t wrong. Damon had been fighting crippling loneliness, which was only getting worse if that dream was anything to go by. “What kind of change?”

“A mate.”

Damon snorted. “Be serious.”

“I am. I’ve never seen you attach to anyone, not in all the years I’ve served you.”

“I’ve bred females.”

“Bred females,” Mason repeated.

Damon narrowed his eyes at a flock of birds that lifted from the canopy below his mansion. He really hated when Mason mimicked him.

He slid his driver a dangerous, slit-eyed glare. “Don’t mention a mate to me again.”

“Fine, then I think it’s time for you to raise another child. Male dragons require that, and you haven’t raised one since Diem.”

“And we both know how good I was at fathering her,” he said darkly, regretting all the things he’d done to hurt her. He’d thought he’d been a good father throughout the millennia, but it turned out he’d been shit at nurturing. He’d made strides to mend the fences between he and Diem, and they were good now, but he still harbored deep regrets about her upbringing.

“You could do it differently this time. I see a difference in you. The Ashe Crew and Gray Backs…hell, even Kong has softened you.”

“Dragons don’t go soft, Mason, and I can’t do a mate. Watching her age and die would destroy me. I can’t do it again.”

“Then we’ll track down a breeder. We’ll conduct the interviews and sign a contract and you can settle your dragon with offspring. You always do best when you are caring for a female and raising a child. You do.”

Another rumble rattled Damon’s chest. He didn’t like being told when he should cover a woman. That was a choice his dragon made, and right now, his inner monster was freefalling.

Softening? Mason was right, though Damon would never admit it out loud. After centuries of feeling nothing, he’d been letting the bear shifter crews in, little by little. His stony heart was cracking and breaking apart. Tiny earthquakes were busting him up from the middle out because he had grown attached to the shifters in his mountains.

No, allowing anyone else into his life right now was a repulsive idea.

Not until he could find a way to stop feeling again.

****

“Ow,” Clara Sutterfield groaned, holding her forehead where the teenager in seat 14B had just whacked her with his carry-on bag.

“My bad,” he murmured as he made his way out into the center aisle.

Clara glared. She hated flying. Loathed it. Abhorred everything about it. The lines to get into the airport, the astronomical fees to keep her old Honda in the parking garage, stripping down to her bare essentials at the security checks, that machine that had probably x-rayed her down to her hoo-hah flaps, and she definitely despised the TSA agent who was grinning at her when he picked her out of the crowd to step into the contraption. She was wearing a tank top and cut-off shorts. What could she have possibly been hiding? They’d even dusted her fingers for powder residue. She got it. She really did. Safety first and all, but she was pretty sure she was picked on because she was a registered shifter.