“The only help I can offer is my own,” she said. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to people like yourselves. I can’t become a dragon or work any magic, but I…I’ll find something helpful to do with myself.”
Dillon took her hand in his and squeezed it.
“You should leave,” Gavin said.
Her heart plummeted to the floor. There it was. That was the declaration she’d been dreading.
“Not only are you human, but you’re pregnant,” Gavin said. “You should be far, far away from here when the shit hits the fan. That’s the only way Dillon will be able to focus.”
Isabella had money, and she’d found a few decent studio apartments. She only needed to call the landlords and discuss leasing options, so she could figure out which was the best fit. The cabin had become her home, though. She couldn’t imagine herself anywhere else.
Without saying anything, she stood and headed to her room. The conversation continued without her. The war meeting had to go on, of course.
Evangeline passed her and headed to wherever Casey had gone. Isabella was on her own.
She regarded her bedroom. It was larger than any room she’d ever had to herself before. Her plants had flourished here, growing lush. Persimmon lounged in a strip of sunlight that happened to fall over her cage.
With the door closed behind her, Isabella could pretend that she didn’t have to leave. She could lie down and stay in her own private oasis forever. That was, until a knock sounded behind her, and the door creaked open.
Dillon stepped inside.
“Is Gavin preaching to an audience of one now?” she asked from her bed.
“He’s having a hard time keeping the audience in check now. It’s a riot out there,” Dillon said, a clear attempt at a joke.
She didn’t feel like laughing, though. Her chest felt as though it’d been hollowed out. Gavin had stuck his claws in her heart and scooped out every small success she’d claimed for herself.
“I love it here,” she said, her voice small. “This isn’t my house, but I feel like it is. For once, I found somewhere I could be happy. Now Gavin wants to kick me out. I knew this would happen, but…”
Dillon crawled onto the bed beside her. He gathered her close to his chest and wrapped himself around her. His big arms were heavy yet comforting around her middle.
“Home is where you’re happy,” he whispered. “I think this was the first time you’ve been happy, so now it feels like you’ll lose that joy if you leave.”
She didn’t say anything. His words bounced around the inside of her skull. She tried to hold onto them. She knew they were more than empty reassurances. Dillon only spoke when he wanted to be heard. He didn’t go off just to be the loudest like Erik or Evangeline.
“I don’t know if I’ll be happy anywhere else,” she confessed. “I like being surrounded by life, by everyone’s loud sounds and laughter. When I find my own place, it’s just going to be me. Well, just me until the baby arrives.”
Dillon nipped her shoulder. “I will go anywhere with you.”
Her heart skipped a beat, but she reminded herself that Gavin had told her to leave so Dillon wouldn’t be distracted. She couldn’t take Dillon away from his family. It was only her that had to leave. Soon, Evangeline would be useful. She would be able to fight alongside her mate. And Nellie always had her own power.
Only Isabella had ever been weak. Soft and useless, Isabella was nothing more than a liability to the dragon men.
She had to drive Dillon away. If she didn’t, he would follow her when he was supposed to be with his clan. She swallowed and steeled herself because she truly never wanted this to end, even if the world had other plans for them. Had it not been for this war between Gavin and his father, Isabella would have begged Dillon to be her baby’s father.
She wriggled out of his comfortable embrace. “I can’t stand it when you hold me like that.”
The lie soured on her tongue. She hated herself for what she was saying, and yet she couldn’t stop. Dillon needed to focus on his clan.
Gavin was right. She distracted Dillon, and that had to come to an end. Even if it meant breaking her own heart.
“You…you terrify me, sometimes.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, hating the way her stomach churned. She couldn’t lift her eyes from her bedspread, even when the yellow fabric began to turn grey and lifeless to her. “I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve panicked when you tried to hold me. I just…I can’t…This isn’t going to work.”
This was never the way she wanted to tell Dillon about her panicked reactions to his protective nature. By the time she finished, he would surely hate her. He would never have to think about her again.
She threw her feet to the floor. “Give Evangeline the spa day that you booked. She’s going to need it if she’s going to become a dragon.”
Tears burned her eyes and seared her cheeks as they spilled down her face. She kept her back to him, so he couldn’t see the truth.
He sat up. She waited for him to say something, anything. Somehow, it hurt more to watch him get up and walk away. He didn’t fight to get the truth out of her. He didn’t even try.
He just left.
Chapter Fourteen
Not a moment went by that Isabella didn’t think of Dillon.
It’d been three days since she pushed him away. She hadn’t seen him once in those three days, and that was not for a lack of trying. She searched high and low for him. At night, she pressed her ear to the wall and tried to listen for the sounds of his snoring in the next room.
Nothing.
The whole cabin seemed hollow. Gavin came and went silently. Erik had taken to sleeping until three in the afternoon and then vanishing. Casey and Evangeline had lives of their own away from the cabin.
Isabella should have thrown herself into writing a new series, but her chest ached. She could barely make herself get out her laptop. She’d gotten a taste of the love like in her stories and then thrown it away. The idea of writing it now sickened her.
She glanced around her room. Everything had gone back into boxes. She felt adrift again, just like when she’d first left Tommy. A bit of her future had become clear while living in the cabin. In the space of one afternoon, she’d shattered that future.
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she apologized to her baby.
Isabella stood up, suddenly annoyed. She would fix this. There had to be a way. She couldn’t let the wills of others keep dictating her life. She’d bent to Gavin and what he wanted, but she knew in her heart that she’d taken it too far.
She needed Dillon back. These three days without him had left a dark spot on her soul that she would never be rid of until she fixed what she’d broken.
How she was going to do that…she didn’t quite know.
It had to start with an apology. That was the only thing she really knew for sure. So long as she could clear the air between them and make Dillon understand that he wasn’t to blame for her panic, then she would be able to rest easy.
She told herself this, though she didn’t completely believe it. She didn’t just want forgiveness. For a while, she’d imagined a future with Dillon. Even if they’d only been daydreams, she still yearned for those visions. She wanted to see him every day, to watch him hold their child for the first time and see the love in his eyes.