The Dragon’s E-Mail Order Menage

“This about Damon?”

“Of course it is,” his wife practically spat, “what else would it be about?”

“So what did the girl have to say for herself?”

“The girl can speak for herself.”

Maggie had never spoken to her father that way and she felt a wave of nausea at the sound of her own insolence. She half expected him to order her out of his house and she guessed that was what she would have deserved, but he only studied her silently for just long enough to make her uncomfortable before he responded.

“You’re right. So then what do you have to say for yourself, girl?”

“That it was better,” she practically sobbed, “it was better for both of us and he’ll see that someday too, after he’s found the woman who’s actually right for him. Neither one of us want to be tied to a place we don’t want to be.”

“So where is it that you do want to be?”

“I, I found this website. It helps you to meet other shifters.”

“We know all about that site” her papa answered darkly, clearly not impressed with the direction this conversation was taking. “What’s that got to do with you?”

“Well it’s a good opportunity to meet other shifters. To find an adventure. And I met someone. Someone I think I could like. He doesn’t live too far from here, just right outside of Santa Fe. I’m going to go stay with him. I have to see more than just the farm.”

“So you abandon your family? Your brothers and sisters?”

“I’m not abandoning anyone! Papa, I’m not a little girl anymore. It’s normal for people to go off and make a life for themselves away from their families. That’s all I’m trying to do, okay? You two got your adventure. I just want the chance to have my own.”

“And so instead of asking to go off and go to school you do this? You’ll be no better than a girl for hire. Is that what you want for yourself? Is that what you think of as an adventure?”

Her father had never spoken to her that way before and it made her heart seize up with pain.

That was when she fled from their sight, flew up the stairs to gather what few things she would be taking with her so that she could leave this place.

She would stay with a friend before it was time to go to Hudson, she would talk to him about perhaps moving up the date of her arrival. She would do anything that got her out of this house, away from that look in her mother’s eyes and the look on her father’s face that cut her like a knife.

Even thinking about it now, in a different city and what felt like a different world, she felt hot tears begin to well up in her eyes. Stupid. She was being stupid and she knew it. There was no sense in her going over and over that awful interaction in her head, now that the deed was done and she had done the thing they so badly did not want her to do. It didn’t change anything. It only made her feel sad and mopey and discontented, all feelings she had been looking to shed by breaking ties with Damon and moving away from the family.

Besides, if she wanted to really give her new circumstances a chance to work, this was probably not the best way to go about it. She highly doubted that when Hudson and Levi had decided to take to the internet in search of a third party, they had not been in search of a bummed out girl with very recently cultivated daddy issues.

If all she did was wallow in that one bad night, they were likely to grow tired of her and make the decision that the whole thing had been a mistake, and then what would she do? She didn’t really relish the idea of making her way back to Mommy and Daddy with her tail between her legs.

She was a dragon shifter with some of the most impressive blood ever to flow through a being’s veins and there was no way she was going to admit that kind of defeat. She wasn’t going to put herself in the position to experience that kind of defeat. She had all but gotten herself excommunicated over this life choice and she was going to make it work, starting with a serious attitude adjustment.

After all, Hudson and Levi had given her a pretty lengthy grace period. She had already been there for two weeks and they hadn’t pressed her to spend any more time with them than she naturally felt inclined to spend. But how long would that last? She wasn’t just there to be a third roommate, after all. And that wasn’t what she wanted to be, either.

Even though she hadn’t bargained on there being two men in this little adventure, both of them were exceptionally attractive and she wanted them to think the same thing about her. Mopey and sad did not an attractive girl make. It even made her unattractive to herself, and she would never have tolerated it in a man that she was considering in any kind of romantic or physical way. It was time for a change, and that change would start with her getting herself up and out of bed (which was harder than it might have sounded; this was without a doubt the most comfortable bed she had ever slept in in her entire life).

“Right. Time to survey the damage.”

She dragged herself to a bathroom that was just about the same size as the entire second floor of her parents’ house and peered into one of the massive mirrors. She had looked better, but it was definitely possible that she could have looked worse. She hadn’t slept nearly as well as she would have liked to and, being as fair skinned as she was, that kind of thing was always annoyingly obvious with her. It showed in the angry dark circles displaying themselves prominently underneath her eyes.