“It stops me from getting bored.”
“I’ll bet it annoyed the hell out of your brother when you were growing up.”
“That was part of the fun of doing it.”
He snorted, then released my fingers and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. Although the action was casual, my reaction was as far from that as you could get. My whole body hummed with anticipation.
“Sometimes it’s a family tradition,” he said eventually. “Sometimes it’s simply talent.”
“What sort of talent?”
“My clique has an innate ability to blend with the shadows. Those who become muerte have a higher degree of this skill than most.”
His fingers were teasing the top of my arm near where the bullet had clipped me, and it was inevitable that he’d eventually touch the patch sodden with half-dried blood. Sudden concern rippled through the air. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been hit?”
“Because it’s barely a scratch, and definitely not worth worrying about.” I shifted my shoulder back a little, forcing his hand to drop closer to my breast. “So which one were you? Tradition or talent?”
“Both. And that wound needs cleaning, even if you do have dragon-fast healing.”
“So we’ll clean it once we find a house for the night,” I said, a touch impatiently. The man wasn’t going to wriggle out of telling me at least something about himself. Not this time. “Your father was a muerte?”
“Yeah. I was his only son, so I’ve basically been trained for the position since I could walk.”
The edge in his voice surprised me. I glanced at him, but his expression was as unreadable as ever. “It almost sounds like it wasn’t something you wanted to be.”
“I love what I do, but that’s not the point. I was never given the choice.”
“And if you had been? Would you have chosen to walk this path or not?”
“I don’t know.” He released me to jump off the marina, then grabbed my waist and lifted me down. We walked in silence through the dark RVs, and it wasn’t until we reached the road on the other side of the park that he added, “There was a time I contemplated a life that was more than shadows. A life filled with warmth and family and children of my own, but that foolishness vanished years ago.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why would you consider wanting love and a family foolishness?”
“Because such things are not for the muerte.”
“Why the hell not? I mean, you exist, so somewhere along the line, love and family must have come into the equation.”
“I come from a long line of muerte who breed for necessity, not for love. My father bred three daughters from different women before he produced me. He had nothing further to do with the mothers of his other children. I became his sole focus.”
We crossed the road and moved through the trees lining the sandy hill. He obviously had a target in mind, even though we’d passed several perfectly good houses. Of course, they could have been occupied—a dragon’s senses were usually keener over long distances than a draman’s.
“Why the hell would your father’s other partners even put up with that?”
His mouth twisted and became a bitter thing. “Because in our clique, it is considered an honor for a woman to bear the chi
ld of a muerte—especially if that child is a male who goes on to become one of the shadow ones.”
“And I thought my clique had attitude problems.” These men were using dragon women as little more than incubators—and had them convinced it was a good thing! “But just because you come from a long line of men who refused to settle down doesn’t mean you’re destined to do the same. You have a choice, you know.”
“A muerte’s life is nomadic. And it is dangerous.”
“So?”
“So,” he said, slanting me a glance that sent a chill down my spine—and not because it was his usual scary, death-in-residence glance, but rather one that was briefly filled with a resigned and aching acceptance of a barren future. It was a familiar feeling—simply because it haunted the darkest of my dreams, too. “There are those who do not like what we do, and there is an active—if underground—plot to erase us. My father was murdered, as was his father. I have no doubt that will be my fate, too.”
“So you live like a monk until then? Why restrict yourself that way?”
His grin was sudden and decidedly wicked. “Oh, monks and I have nothing in common. As you’ll no doubt discover soon enough.”