The DRAGON Gene: A Sensational Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (WereGenes Book 1) Read online

  “Yes.”

  He’d said the word with his gaze on his plate, having already went back to his wings.

  Miles beyond frustrated, I balled up my napkin, threw it on the table, and then sat back in my chair, folding my arms across my chest. “Well, I’m sorry I’m not acting the way you want me to. I know you probably don’t like it. I know you don’t like when Charlie doesn’t act the way you want him to. I expect you’ll probably start calling me mentally challenged, too, any second now.”

  “Please just eat the rest of your wings, Kylie.”

  “Fine. You just eat the rest of yours, then.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  Disgusted, knowing that I probably wasn’t going to get anything else out of Matt, I picked up my knife and fork and angrily began cutting a boneless wing. Matt, like the cold, unfeeling brute I was beginning to think he was, was eating his wings with his hands.

  Having finished their dinner in the kitchen, the dogs had strolled in the dining room a while earlier, with Shadow parking himself by the fireplace and quickly falling asleep. Charlie had taken a seat by my chair, where he’d remained for several minutes now, presumably waiting for a scrap, with strings of drool falling from his mouth.

  Once I’d finished all but one wing on my plate, I cut off a little bite of it, and picked it up, asking Charlie if he was still hungry. I did want to give him a little treat, but even more than that, I just wanted to get Matt to talk to me, even if it was just to tell me not to feed his dog at the table.

  As I’d been hoping he might, Matt looked up right away. “Please don’t. Once you feed a dog at the table, it never ends. It never, ever ends.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

  He sighed, setting half a wing down, and sat back in his chair. “I’m trying to train Charlie out of the habit. I fed him a scrap one time without thinking when he was a puppy, and he’s been a permanent fixture at the table every night since then. He even whines for scraps sometimes, too. So, I haven’t given him any for a few weeks, just trying to teach him that he can’t keep on doing it. Shadow begs sometimes, too, but fortunately, he’s not quite the insatiable food-pit that Charlie is. Not to mention that most of the time, when I tell him to get away from the table, he does.”

  “Well, I agree that Charlie probably shouldn’t whine to get a scrap, but if he can be trained to sit through most of the meal quietly, how he’s been doing, what’s the harm in giving him a little scrap near the end? That way, he knows he has to be quiet and good to earn it.”

  Matt shrugged, picking up his beer bottle. “Give him a scrap if you want to, I guess. I know if I don’t let you, you’ll probably start accusing me of animal abuse.”

  Gratified, I fed Charlie the scrap of wing, and he chewed and swallowed it, pretty much “dancing” in place, seemingly so happy that he just couldn’t keep his little paws still.

  With my heart melting, I pulled off a slice of pepperoni from the last slice of pizza on the table, glancing over at Matt. “Now I’m just going to give him one last pepperoni of the evening, and that’s it. He’s earned it.”

  The moment I’d said pepperoni, Charlie had suddenly whined, with the noise sounding like a half-strangled exclamation of joy.

  I tossed the pepperoni slice to him, and he jumped in the air and caught it in his mouth before chewing and swallowing it with a little more joyful whining. Then, seemingly unable to contain an overflow of excitement about what had just happened, he chased his snow-dampened tail briefly before falling to the hardwood floor to have a good wild roll on his back, whining with joy again. The sounds he was making honestly sounded a little like a happy seal barking.

  With his expression unreadable, Matt just stared at him. “He is so profoundly--”

  “Don’t, Matt. Don’t you even dare say it.”

  “Don’t say, ‘so profoundly addicted to pepperoni’ like I was going to? Okay. I won’t.”

  Feeling a bit sheepish, I apologized. “Thought you were going to say something else.”

  Sitting back with his second beer, Matt sighed with a little twinkle in his eyes. “I won’t say that ‘something else’ in Charlie’s presence ever again, okay? You happy now?”

  I was, and I said so, smiling. Realizing that I should probably pick my battles and savor the small victory I’d just earned, I decided not to revisit the subject of Matt being opposed to falling in love for the time being.

  Charlie soon begged for another piece of pepperoni, but I told him no, wanting to show Matt that I could be firm with him and not “spoil him senseless.” Once Charlie got the message that I wasn’t going to give in, Matt and I cleared the table together, and then, out in the kitchen, he said he’d bring all my moving boxes marked “upstairs” up to one of the guest rooms, then come back down and load the dishwasher himself so that I could unpack.

  Beginning to feel tired even though it was still fairly early in the evening, and possibly wanting to go to bed within the next hour or so, I said this sounded like a plan, and Matt began taking boxes out of the kitchen, carrying three at once.

  Once he’d brought them all upstairs, I went upstairs myself with Charlie at my heels, located the guest room with all my boxes in it, and began unpacking, wondering for the second time that day just how long I’d be staying in that guest room and where I’d be going after, whether to Matt’s bedroom or back home to Moxon.

  All I knew at present was that the guest room certainly wouldn’t be a bad place to stay for the time being. Not only was it spacious and airy, with a partial vaulted ceiling, wide windows, and a massive four-poster bed, it was the first guest room I’d ever been in to have an en suite bathroom, and one featuring a marble-tiled shower stall as well as a marble whirlpool tub, no less.

  I actually left the room briefly and had a peek in the other bedrooms on the floor, just to make sure that Matt hadn’t accidentally put my things in his own master bedroom. He hadn’t, I soon discovered, finding another master bedroom, this one with several t-shirts and a pair of battered jeans slung over a chair identifying it as Matt’s. The room held just a faint trace of his scent, which I’d also caught a trace of while we’d been kissing outside, and I found it heavenly.

  Woodsy, masculine, and just slightly spicy, it was the kind of scent that I knew I wouldn’t mind breathing in for an extended length of time. In fact, I left Matt’s room rather hastily, afraid I might actually be tempted to pick up one of the pillows on his bed just to give it a little sniff.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A short while before ten, I’d just finished unpacking and changing into pajamas when Charlie, who’d been “helping” me the whole time, began issuing a few excited-sounding little woofs. Soon there was a knock on the bedroom door, which was a few inches ajar. When I called out that it was open, Matt came in, saying that he’d come up to collect Charlie, to take him and Shadow outside before he went to bed. Before Matt was even able to fully finish saying this, though, Charlie jumped up on him, wriggling and trying to kiss his face.

  Not seeming as happy as I thought a person should be to have such a loving, joyful dog, Matt allowed Charlie to lick his chin just briefly before gently pushing him off. “Okay, Charlie. Time to go outside.”

  A little put out by what I thought was his chilly treatment of Charlie, I asked Matt if he was annoyed by Charlie or something, pretty sure I already knew the answer. When Matt confirmed my suspicions, saying that he “wasn’t exactly” annoyed by Charlie, but just found him to be “a handful” most of the time, I heaved a sigh, unable to help myself.

  “Well, you had to have known that goldens are an exuberant breed of dog that can act very rambunctious and even a little naughty sometimes; so, why did you even adopt Charlie in the first place if you didn’t want that kind of dog?”

  Now it was Matt’s turn to sigh, which he did leaning against the doorway with his muscular arms folded loosely across his chest. “I don’t think I ever would have adopted a golden, but one day, my f
irst lieutenant, Ryan, and I were visiting another community of USSA dragons in Illinois, during the final year of the war. Long story short, there was a woman in the community who was a dog breeder, and she had a litter of month-old golden pups. All of them were thriving except Charlie. He was sickly and incredibly small, and even his mother had rejected him, not even letting him nurse from her anymore, which he’d never really been able to do successfully anyway. The breeder lady was kind of a nasty woman, frankly, and she told me that Charlie had been nothing but a waste of time and money to her and would probably never be adoptable, even if he somehow lived, which was doubtful because the breeder lady wasn’t going to pay to have the vet treat him anymore. I was kind of afraid that the breeder lady would soon just leave him alone to die. So, being that Ryan couldn’t adopt a dog because his wife has severe allergies, I just decided to take Charlie back home with me, thinking that Shadow probably could use a ‘sibling’ anyway. Then, after a month or two, the vet here in Greenwood was able to nurse Charlie back to health. And then he became the boisterous, troublemaking, pepperoni-crazed dog you see here today.”

  Matt gave me a little smile, and at his feet, Charlie woofed quietly, seemingly pleased at Matt’s retelling of the story of his adoption. I couldn’t smile at either of them, though. I was actually about ready to cry, for a number of different reasons. The first was sadness over what Charlie had been through as a tiny pup; the second was that Matt had adopted him to save his life; and the third was that Charlie currently looked so unbelievably cute sitting next to Matt’s feet with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

  While Matt’s smile faded, probably because he could see tears shining in my eyes, I came over to him and looked deeply into his eyes before speaking in a quiet voice. “You don’t really think Charlie is mentally challenged, do you? You’re just a little put off by him because he has such an ‘in-your-face’ style of love, and for whatever reason, you just don’t feel like you’re capable of returning love at this point in your life.”

  Matt immediately raked a hand through his hair, pulling his gaze away from my face. “For God’s sake, Kylie…Charlie’s a dog.”

  I nodded, wiping a few unshed tears from my eyes. “Yup. You’re right about that. He’s a dog. He’s a beautiful, loving, odds-defying dog who deserves to be fully loved by his human dad, which is you. So, can’t you just try to love him the way he deserves to be loved? And while you’re at it, can you please take a crack at trying to love me, the woman who you’re supposed to be having children with in the future? Or, if you really can’t even make an attempt to fall in love with me, can you please at least explain to me why?”

  Raking a hand through his hair again, frowning and still avoiding my gaze, Matt didn’t respond, and I continued. “Please, just explain to me why. I broke the lease on my apartment, gave away all my furniture, and moved here to Greenwood, and it’s really unfair of you to not even tell me why you can’t even attempt to make our Mating Union a ‘love thing.’”

  As if Matt suddenly realized that he was being very unfair to me, his stony-faced expression softened, and he finally began speaking, although with his gaze downcast, still not looking into my eyes.

  “It’s all nothing very complicated, Kylie. It’s just the time-old tale of ‘everyone I love ends up dying.’ It’s also a tale of ‘I’m just sick of losing people, so I’ve just decided not to love anymore, so that I never have to hurt again.’ That’s all. I’m just tired. And life is simpler this way.”

  Choosing my words carefully, I mirrored his pose, leaning my back against the opposite side of the doorway, facing him, with my arms folded loosely across my chest. “Life the way you’re living it may be simpler, but it sounds a lot lonelier.”

  Matt shrugged, snorting faintly. “Maybe.”

  “Will you tell me about the people you lost? Who they were?”

  Still standing with his gaze downcast, Matt hesitated in responding so long that by the time he finally did, I’d started to think that maybe he wasn’t going to.

  “The first people I lost were my parents and my brother, who was my best friend. They died in a car accident when I was nineteen. They were my last remaining family members since all my grandparents and an aunt had all died of various illnesses or in various freak accidents before my brother and I were old enough to remember them. Just a few months later, my first serious girlfriend, who I’d been dating for two years, was killed by a stray bullet outside a mall in Chicago while on a trip to visit her sister. The next time I was deeply in love, I had only a year with my girlfriend before she was diagnosed with a rare, untreatable blood cancer and died soon after. I was twenty-three then. After that, I took a long break from serious, long-term relationships. When the war started, I finally felt ‘healed’ enough to try again, and I fell in love with a woman named Tara. We’d been together for ten months when the restaurant that she and her friends were eating in was ‘firebombed’ by a group of Bloodborns. No one survived. After that, I lost many, many close friends in rapid succession, with most of them killed in battle. I even lost my dog, an old German Shepherd named Rocky, when the Bloodborns leveled a USSA village in Indiana, where I was living at the time. It was then that I just said, ‘I’m done. My heart can’t do this anymore.’ I knew I had to completely harden my heart if I was going to survive, so I did. I only took in Shadow because he belonged to a good friend who died in battle.”

  When Matt didn’t say anything else for a long moment or two, I spoke in a quiet voice, wishing he’d look at me. “So, by adopting Shadow, and then later Charlie, you proved that you do have a little softness left in your heart, even after losing so many people, and even after resolving to ‘completely harden’ your heart. This makes me think that you are capable of love, Matt.”

  He frowned hard, looking irritated, like I’d caught him telling some sort of a little lie, which I kind of had in a way. Although maybe the “little lie” was one he’d been telling to himself.

  When he responded to what I’d just said, he still didn’t look me in the eyes. “Maybe. But that ‘little softness’ left in my heart is as far as I’m willing to go. I’m just not willing to fully love again. I can’t.”

  “Can’t or are afraid to?”

  Matt suddenly raked his hands over his face, sighing. “Look. I’d better go take the dogs out. The USSA bears in the Upper Peninsula have noticed some unusual Bloodborn activity above Lake Superior lately, and I need to fly up there tomorrow around dawn to check things out. So, I’d better get some sleep.”

  “Okay, but Matt? Just let me say one more thing first.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s that there’s a flaw in your plan…a flaw in your plan to keep your heart hardened for the rest of your life, which is what I’m presuming is your plan, anyway.”

  Frowning, he finally lifted his gaze to my face. “What are you talking about? What’s the ‘flaw?’?”

  “Well, earlier, in the kitchen, you told me that you signed up to participate in the NSMP because you feel duty-bound to have children who will one day grow up and continue to defend the nation from the Bloodborns.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So, are you planning on never fully opening your heart to those children? Never fully loving them? Are you going to basically interact with them how you seem to interact with the dogs, which is to say, pretty perfunctorily, always seeming to be holding back a little?”

  A slight widening of Matt’s eyes told me that the thought of having children without ever opening his heart to them fully had never actually occurred to him.

  With his look of dawning realization quickly becoming replaced by a deep frown, Matt raked a hand through his hair, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Look, I’m starting to rethink this whole thing with the NSMP. Regardless of what you might think, it’s not good for me to love people. Something bad always happens. Always. People are always ripped away from me. It’s like I’m cursed.”

  “But I don’t plan on dying anytime
soon. I’m perfectly healthy, and now that the war is over, I don’t plan on getting hurt in any Bloodborn attacks, so--”

  “But it doesn’t even matter if you don’t get killed. If we were to give this whole Mating Union thing a try, and if we were to fall in love, something would happen to take you away from me. I’m sure of it.”

  “But--”

  “I need to take the dogs out now. Come on, Charlie. Time to get up.”

  Charlie, who’d fallen asleep on the floor nearby, snapped open his eyes, hopped to his feet, and began shaking himself awake upon hearing his name.

  Matt called him over and motioned for him to follow him out of the room, then spoke to me in a businesslike sort of tone. “Goodnight, Kylie. After they come back in, I’ll send the dogs up here to their room, or you can leave your door ajar and they’ll probably come in here. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “They don’t sleep in your room?”

  Matt shook his head. “I don’t like fur all over in my bed, and I like to sprawl out. The dogs have their own bed in one of the guest rooms, and they hop in there and put themselves to sleep every night.”

  I couldn’t say I was incredibly surprised that Matt didn’t like to cuddle up to the dogs at night.

  After I’d given Charlie a few goodnight rubs and pats, telling him to come on into my room if he wanted more snuggles later, I told Matt goodnight as well.

  “Oh, and by the way…when you take the dogs out right now…please don’t drag Charlie in by the collar. Please just say ‘pepperoni time!’ Okay? There are several slices left on the pieces of leftover pizza in the fridge. Maybe even give him a little nibble of sausage, too, if he heads up to the house right away when you call him with ‘pepperoni time!’ Okay? Oh, and make sure to give Shadow a little treat, too, so that he doesn’t feel left out, and so that he gets rewarded for his good behavior, too. Just because he’s pretty well-behaved all the time, that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t get frequent positive reinforcement. Oh, and also…I don’t know if he’ll be too sleepy to at this time of night, but please let Charlie do a couple of snow angels if he’s so inclined. I think it’s probably healthy for him to get a lot of his energy out outdoors. Okay?”