Bound By Fire And Fated By Blood

Chapter Two

Eight Hundred Years of Quiet

Cain

The city below me does not sleep and neither do I.

I stand on the rooftop of Drake Holdings and look down at the streets I have protected for a hundred and fifty years. The buildings glow and the traffic moves in rivers of white and red and the people down there are so small and so brief, and they do not know that a dragon watches over them. They do not know that the building they walk past every day is owned by something ancient, and they do not know that the man who signs the deeds is older than the country they live in.

I am eight hundred years old, and I am tired.

Not physically. Physically I am strong. My body does not fail me. It heals and endures and carries me through centuries the way it was designed to. The tiredness is deeper than muscle and bone. It sits in the center of my chest like a stone that grows heavier with every decade and I have carried it so long that I have forgotten what it felt like to stand upright without it.

The wind up here is cold, and I let it hit me because the cold is honest. It does not pretend. It is what it is. I appreciate that. I have spent centuries surrounded by politics and deception and the careful lies that dragons tell each other while smiling and I have come to value simple things. Cold wind. Hard ground. The truth.

The door behind me opens, and I do not turn because I know who it is. I can feel them. My brothers. The bond between us is older than any mate bond, and it runs deep and sure, and I know their footsteps and their heartbeats and their moods the way I know my own.

Silas steps onto the roof first. He is wearing a suit because Silas is always wearing a suit. Even now, at eleven at night on a rooftop, he looks like he is about to walk into a boardroom. His tie is loosened, and his glasses are on, and I know he has been working because when Silas works he forgets to eat and sleep and be a person and the glasses go on, and the world narrows to whatever problem he is solving.

Max follows. Max is wearing jeans and a Henley with the sleeves pushed up, and his hair is doing that thing where it looks like he just rolled out of bed, and he probably did because Max lives his life like a man who is always five minutes behind schedule and does not care. He has a bottle of beer in his hand, and he drops onto the bench near the edge of the roof and props his feet on the railing and looks out at the city with an expression that is half contentment and half restlessness.

"You called a meeting," Silas says. He stands beside me and his hands are in his pockets, and he is watching me with those green eyes that see everything. "I assume it is important."

"It is business," I say.

"It is always business with you."

"Business is what keeps this territory ours."

Silas does not argue because he knows I am right. He knows the cost of what we have built because he helped build it. Drake Holdings is a real estate and investment empire worth billions, and it exists because three dragons spent a century and a half constructing it from nothing. We own buildings and properties and investments across the city and the country and the money funds our operations and our hoard and our security and without it, we are just three ancient creatures sitting on a pile of gold with no infrastructure.

Max takes a drink of his beer. "Can we make this quick? I have plans."

"What plans?" Silas asks.

"I am going to find a restaurant that serves breakfast at midnight because I want pancakes."

"You are a child," Silas says.

"I am seven hundred years old."

"And yet you want midnight pancakes."

"I want midnight pancakes because I am seven hundred years old, and I have earned the right to eat carbohydrates at whatever hour I choose."

I let them bicker because the bickering means they are fine and when they are fine I can focus on the matter at hand. I wait for a break in their noise and then I speak.

"Thompson Gallery is hosting an event on Thursday. The owner wants to discuss a property development in Chelsea. He needs investors and he came to us."

Silas nods. "I pulled the financials. The development has potential. The location is strong, and the gallery owner has connections in the city that could be useful. It is worth a conversation."

"I agree. We all attend. Suits. Professional. We listen to the pitch and we decide."

Max groans. "Do I have to?"

"Yes."

"Gallery events are insufferable. People talk about art like it is a commodity, and they drink wine they cannot pronounce, and they look at me like I am a piece of meat."

"You are a piece of meat," Silas says. "A particularly vain piece of meat."

"Thank you for that."

"You will attend, and you will be charming, and you will not cause a scene," I say. I look at Max, and he looks at me and there is a moment where he considers pushing back, and then he does not, because when I use that tone my brothers know it is settled. I do not use it often. I do not need to.

The conversation shifts to other matters. Territory reports. Financial summaries. A dispute between two minor dragon families in the Midwest that Silas is mediating. We discuss and decide and move through the business of being dragons in a modern world with the efficiency of men who have been doing this for centuries.

But underneath the business there is something else. A current that runs beneath every conversation we have and has run beneath every conversation for two hundred years. The silence. The absence. The thing we do not talk about because talking about it makes it real, and we have decided that it is not real and will never be real.

Our mate.

We stopped searching two hundred years ago. I made the call. We had spent six centuries looking and found nothing and the looking was destroying us. Max was becoming reckless, chasing leads across continents that led nowhere. Silas was becoming obsessed, cataloging every reference to fated mates in every text he could find. And I was becoming hard. The hope was calcifying into something bitter, and I could feel it changing me and I did not like what I was becoming, so I ended it.

I told them we were done looking. I told them it was time to accept that we were not meant to find her. I told them it was the practical decision, and I was right, and I knew I was right, and I have spent two hundred years believing that and tonight, standing on this roof, I am not sure if I believe it anymore.

I watch my brothers. Max is finishing his beer and telling Silas about a movie he watched last night and Silas is pretending not to be interested, but he is asking questions which means he is interested. They are beautiful and ancient and strong, and they have given me everything and I have tried to give them everything in return and it is not enough. It has never been enough. There is a hole in the center of us that we have filled with money and territory and duty, and it does not fit because the only thing that fits is her and she does not exist.

I do not say this. I have not said it in two hundred years. I buried it deep and built over it and I told myself the foundation was solid, but some nights, like tonight, I feel it shift.

"Cain." Silas is looking at me. "You are quiet."

"I am always quiet."

"You are more quiet. There is a distinction."

Max sits up straighter. He knows me too. "Something on your mind, brother?"

I look at them and I think about telling them and I do not. What would I say? That I am tired. That the weight of eight hundred years is pressing on my chest. That I made a decision two centuries ago to stop looking for our mate and I have never been sure it was the right one and the uncertainty is eating me alive. That I stand on this roof every night and look at the city and feel the absence of something I have never held and it aches.

I say none of it. I am the eldest. I am the one who holds. I do not crack.

"Thursday," I say instead. "The gallery. Be ready at seven."

Max rolls his eyes. Silas nods. They leave the roof, and I am alone again with the wind and the city and the silence.

I press my hands on the railing and the metal warms under my palms because my body runs hot and sometimes, when I am not careful, things heat around me. I breathe, and the air is cold, and the city is loud, and I am eight hundred years old, and I have everything and I have nothing.

The stone in my chest sits heavy and familiar, and I carry it inside as I go back inside and close the door and leave the roof and the wind and the night behind.

Two hundred years since we stopped looking. Two hundred years of quiet.

I tell myself it was the right call.

I do not entirely believe it.