Me being one of them.
I was what one would call a retro cognitive. Or, in layman’s terms, I was able to see things that happened after they happened.
I received that gift, as well as the gift of healing, from my dragon, Mace.
Mace was my bonded dragon and had been since I was nineteen.
Being thirty-six now, I’d had Mace for seventeen years and would hopefully have him for many years to come.
But the fact is, there were times that I wanted to kill him just for the fact that he liked to mess with me.
He liked to make my life harder than it needed to be and, at times, it went overboard before he realized he’d gone too far.
Like now, for instance.
I was ready to go, and he was nowhere in sight.
He knew I wanted to leave.
Knew I needed to leave. Yet he wasn’t here.
“Mace,” I said through gritted teeth. “Where are you?”
If I didn’t leave soon, I’d likely lose whatever patience I had left and go back up the stairs, ruining what I’d put in place by taking the woman who had made my dick stir for the first time in well over a year.
Which was why I started walking instead of staying there any longer, waiting for my wayward dragon who thought he was being funny when he wasn’t.
I was about a mile away when I heard the flapping of Mace’s wings from behind me.
He landed just long enough for me to sweep myself gracefully onto his back before he was up and away, heading straight for my house.
The house that, incidentally, was the same house that Wink cleaned three times a week.
I smelled her the minute I walked in the door to my domain.
She smelled sweet with a hint of flowers. Honeysuckle and vanilla to be specific.
And it was everywhere.
Before it’d just been a simple indulgence on my part.
I’d wanted her here, in my domain. I wanted her smell to permeate everything around me, stuff that I made a part of my home just to see if she’d like it.
And mostly, she did.
When I’d get home from work, I’d go over the video footage of her day. I watched her clean. Watched her sweat. Watched her cheeks become pink.
Sometimes I purposefully made my place dirtier just to see her work a little bit harder than normal.
And she always did.
My favorite days were Wednesdays because that’s when she got down on her knees and scrubbed my kitchen and bathroom floors.
It was a tossup with Mondays because that is when Wink changed the sheets on my bed.
Having her scent on my sheets made me happy. Well as happy as I could be without actually having the object of that happiness in the bed with me.
I’d just slipped off of Mace, my feet meeting the spongy grass that surrounded the outside of my home, when I heard a voice that grated on my nerves.
“Where have you been?”
I swallowed hard, trying to keep my temper in check, and turned.
“Cleaning up your mess.”
“Seems like you were making a bigger one rather than cleaning one up,” Keifer snapped. “Why were you there?”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Your brother was there, and you asked me to keep tabs on him and his whereabouts, remember?” I said calmly, even though what I was feeling was definitely anything but calm.
“I wish you’d move in with the rest of us,” Keifer, the King of Dragons, growled in frustration as he took a look around my house.
I didn’t bother to answer him.
It was a constant battle with Keifer and me.
He wanted me to live at the sanctuary with the rest of them, but I couldn’t do that.
“You know why I can’t,” I said.
He nodded.
“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t change the fact that I would like you to stay there. We’re safer in numbers.”
I just stared at him, and he sighed.
“Shouldn’t you be with your wife and children?” I asked, hoping that’d get him to leave.
My hopes were dashed when he shook his head.
“They’re at home,” he said. “But my brother’s not.”
I nodded.
“Understandable,” I said. “You know what happened?”
He nodded.
“Listened to the police scanners, and Johnson kept me updated,” Keifer said. “Wanted to hear from you exactly what happened, though.”
I sighed and recounted how I’d walked in on his brother, who’d been hovering over the dead girl’s body.
“How did you know it wasn’t him?” he questioned.
“A trail of DNA that led from the body into the apartment across the hall from hers, where the tweaker who used to call the cops on the two of them all the time lives,” I explained.
Keifer’s eyes narrowed.
“And the girl?” he asked.
“Which girl?” I hesitated.
There were two, after all.
“The one who got dead,” Keifer said slowly, rolling his eyes like he was trying hard to contain his annoyance.
I shrugged.
“She’s dead. What more do you want to know?” I asked.