Hoarded by the Dragon (Monstrous Matches, #4)(34)

I clear my throat. “Well, this is kind of awkward.”

Kalos huffs a laugh against me. “It is quite different than when you’re asleep.”

I rub a finger over a scale. “Do you ever become completely a dragon?”

Kalos looks thoughtful. “I am always a dragon, even when I’m in this form…”

“But you said you had an inner beast?”

“I didn’t always. It can happen over time with immortals. Maybe it’s from being in human form for too long.” Kalos shrugs and instinctively I know he doesn’t think that’s the case. Somehow I’ve gained a small ability to read this man even though we’ve barely been in the same room during waking hours. “Usually, I take dragon form once every other week. I travel by portal to somewhere remote to stretch my wings.”

I frown. “But you haven’t been?”

He hesitates. “I don’t think it would be good to indulge my dragon right now. He’s been… territorial. He probably would reject being so far away from our young if given the chance.”

His dragon has been territorial because of my presence here? That’s news to me. I decide to skip over that topic for now.

“I’d love to see you as a dragon sometime,” I say, and even I can hear the yearning in my voice.

Instead of laughing at me, Kalos merely smiles. “So you can add me to your sketchbook?”

I blink. “How do you know about my sketchbook?”

“You leave it on your nightstand.” Now he shifts in unease. “I am not always tired when I come to you at night.”

And he what? Flips through my sketches while we cuddle? My cheeks burn, suddenly self-conscious.

“You should have asked. That’s personal,” I say.

He aches his brow at me. “Like my hoard is?”

I scrunch my nose, unwilling to admit that he has a point. “Then we’re even. I only stole from you once.”

He snorts but doesn’t reject that notion.

“You’re a talented artist,” he says. “I especially like the sketches you did of Maggie.”

A rush of pleasure has me blushing. “Thank you. I’ve been drawing since I was young.”

“I’m sure it helps with your work.”

I try not to wince. “Not exactly. It’s a different skill set for me entirely. It made it easier to learn how to make forgeries, and that has contributed the most to being able to restore.”

“Did you make many forgeries?” he asks.

“Some,” I allow, not really wanting to get into it. The pieces I forged and then switched with the real thing on display are what I can never hope to make right. The original works were sold and changed hands so long ago, and the cut I got from the process was too small to ever hope to buy them back.

As if he senses my discomfort, he changes the subject. “Do you like to draw everything?”

“I love portraits but could do without buildings. Sometimes I’ll sketch things from my dreams. It’s why I started to draw in the first place, to capture the images in my head that didn’t make sense.”

Kalos frowns, so I explain.

“I have two skills that are, for the most part, useless. Getting past wards and sometimes I’ll have dreams that come true. There’s no way to change the outcome, and most of the time they are too confusing to make heads or tails of until they happen.” I shrug.

“Prophetic dreams,” Kalos murmurs. “That’s unusual.”

“I don’t think about it much. It hasn’t happened in a while.”

“Those don’t sound like witch talents. True, there are some witch lines that have dreams, but bypassing wards, no.”

“You don’t think I come from witches?” I and everyone around me just assume I’m a witch because my aura apparently feels enough like one. I figured I didn’t have any craft-oriented abilities because I hadn’t been trained. Witches are usually taught how to practice their craft by family, strengthening their natural abilities and branching it with developed skills.

Kalos shrugs. “There is really no way to know unless we were to track down your biological family. It’s possible that you have some fae mixed with a witch line far back in your family tree.”

I frown. “You looked into my background?”

My upbringing hadn’t come up in the short amount of time we’ve spent together.

“Some,” he admits but lacks any guilt. I suppose if I had a thief living with me, I’d do some digging too.

The dragon waits for me to continue the conversation patiently, and I bite my lip before answering his unspoken question about my biological family.

“I don’t want to find them.”

Kalos raises a brow.

I clear my throat. “The baby will be a dragon, right?”

He pauses before nodding. “Most beings will breed true when breeding with witches, and with how hungry for heat this impossibility is, they are definitely a dragon.”

My cheeks heat at the word “breed” even though it lacks the context of lust. “So it wouldn’t really help to know where I come from, would it?”

“Unless you wanted to.”

The silence now is full of expectation. This isn’t a topic I like to discuss, and why am I being so open with this dragon who has ignored me?