Dragon's Omega Bride (Shifter Marriage Service 3)
He looked down into his glass. It seemed a pensive moment for him and she wasn’t certain if he would answer, decline to discuss it or merely change the subject. Instead, she found him being quite frank about his reasons.
“I didn’t grow up in a very warm household. You met my parents. The way they were at my party is the way they have always been about everything. They stopped by my football games. They dropped in on my dragon training and awards. Strangers taught me how to fly and how to blend in with humans. In short, I wasn’t hugged enough as a child,” he said, then seemed to just stop.
It was if he suddenly caught himself, realizing that he was being a bit more open with her than he probably intended. For the first time since they had met, Aileen found herself wanting to reach out to him.
“I can relate,” she replied.
“Can you? How so?”
“Don’t get me wrong. My parents were great when I was younger. We had a great family, but then my father made a mistake and we all paid the price for it. My father was sent away and my mother turned on him. She left with my siblings, but I refused to go. I was certain my father would come back for me. He never did.”
“How old were you when you were left behind?”
“I was eleven.”
“Did you have other relatives to turn to, to stay with?”
“No. They put me with a family that was willing to take me in until I was old enough to get out on my own. At sixteen, I was accepted into a job training program and put into the customer service pool of the crown. They gave me a small studio apartment, and eventually, a one bedroom that came available. When I quit my job, I was served an eviction notice.”
“From the apartment or the clan?”
“Both, really. The notice was for the apartment, but they wouldn’t have let me continue to live there. They had tolerated me as a child and mostly looked the other way once I was an adult, but I was never truly accepted by them.”
“What did your father do?”
She looked down at her hands for a moment and then took a drink of her wine, finishing off the glass. Yakov leaned forward to retrieve and refill it, giving her time to gather her thoughts.
“Thank you,” she said as he handed back her glass and began topping up his own.
Aileen began to tell him her story.CHAPTER ELEVEN“My father never got heavily involved in clan business. He was an accountant, a very good one. After years of working for himself, he accepted a job with the crown. It was supposed to be a good move for the family. Mom could stop work and stay home with us kids with the large increase in his salary and benefits that would come with it,” she began.
“The leader had been pushing some local politicians to create a bypass around our area. The traffic was getting heavier with tourists on their way through to the mountain resorts that had gone up nearby and it had been proposed by others that a bypass be built. There was only one problem. A nearby village, small little place with only a few hundred residents - humans - refused to get on board.”
He nodded, but said nothing, letting her finish her story.
“Anyway, my father overheard the clan leader talking to a couple of his top men about some night operation he needed them for and promising them extra payment for it, but he never came in and asked my father about procuring the funds from the treasury. The next day, it was all over the news. An inexplicable fire had burned down the entire town of people who had rallied against the bypass.”
“Harlow,” Yakov said in that low voice of a person remembering events they had heard about from someone else and were now surprised to find out the truth behind.
“Yes, the town of Harlow. No accelerant, no evidence of any type of arson at all. They said it was some sort of freak accident, that something set off the gas mains in the town.”
“Your father said otherwise?”
“Not at first. He didn’t put two and two together. It never dawned on him that the clan leader would do such a horrible thing. It wasn’t until several days later, that he made the connection. He was working late when the two men returned to see the clan leader. My father wasn’t supposed to be there, but he was in his office, quietly going over some invoices. He heard them talking, laughing about the people running and screaming as fire ripped through the town. They said they were flying low and people saw them, so they made sure no one escaped alive.”