Well, time to get it over with. I walked across the big, spacious living room and sat between Uncle Perry and Gramps, the couch protesting under our combined weight. “What are you guys doing here?” I asked politely.
“We’re here to check on you,” Perry said. “James has been concerned.”
I looked at James with my eyebrows raised. “He has?”
“I’ve been trying to push you toward finding a job or going to school,” he said. He scratched at his cheek thoughtfully. “But you don’t seem to be taking the bait. My brother and your grandfather decided to fly in so we could talk to you about your options.”
Options? I shifted uncomfortably under the implication. I’d be getting my trust fund soon, then I could do exactly what I wanted to do. Hide away up in the mountains far away from everyone and pretend I didn’t have a mate roaming around the world without me. Being alone was my best chance at staying out of trouble.
“We’d hoped that spending time around your cousins would give you a sense of urgency to settle down,” Grandfather said with a sound of disapproval.
I cringed. Ah, yes. My cousins. They were likable enough, but they had it all figured out. Life, school, mates. I would’ve had it all figured out if I’d lived here, too. They’d had easy lives, for the most part. Not like me.
Maybe I was a little jealous. Who could blame me?
Uncle Perry leaned forward. “It boils down to this, Rico. We’re giving you a six-week trial. You have six weeks to find and keep a job. You have to find it outside of family connections. If you keep it, you’ll still get your inheritance.”
Okay, that didn’t sound so bad. Six weeks would still put me before my twenty-fifth birthday and the release of my inheritance. I was relatively sure I could make that work.
Uncle James held up one finger. “With a caveat.”
Of course. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? I picked at the fashionably worn spot in the knee of my jeans, waiting for him to drop the other shoe.
“You can have the inheritance, but as an allowance only. You must keep a job for six months, and then you’ll get half your trust fund. After a year total, you get the whole fund.”
A year. Another year of being a good little dragon before I could escape. I felt like I was watching a trap close around me. It was suffocating.
“You had a job with Stefan at the body shop,” James said with a severe look in his eyes. “But after you got a couple of paychecks, he said you started calling out or coming up with excuses to miss your shifts.”
James stared at me. As I was an alpha, he shouldn’t have been able to make me feel cowed.
Shouldn’t have didn’t mean shit when my uncle was giving me a look like he was completely disappointed in me. “Yeah, I guess I figured I’d made enough to tide me over until the trust fund kicked in,” I mumbled.
“The more you prove yourself, the better this will go for you,” Perry said. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Kingston dragons don’t shirk their responsibilities. Being a dragon is a great gift. We won’t sit by and let you waste your life.”
Anger began to prick at the back of my neck. What did they even know, anyway? I wasn’t wasting anything. What was the point of being a dragon shifter if we didn’t enjoy life at least a little?
“You can’t take a ‘fake it until you make it’ outlook with this, Rico.” My grandfather stared into my soul. He knew exactly what I’d been thinking. That I could play nice for six weeks, and then six months, and then a year. One year and then I was free. Damn it, I could do this. I needed to.
“Your parents left you a considerable amount of money,” James said. “Part of it is the normal Kingston fund that we all get, but as you know, your mother’s family had old money from finding oil years ago. She left it all to you.”
I didn’t like talking about my parents. “I know,” I said uncomfortably. The anger I’d been feeling grew deep inside. They wanted to order me around, but they’d all grown up with parents, with loving moms and dads. They hadn’t been robbed of their childhoods. Who cared if I wanted to go a little wild now?
When I turned twenty-five in a few months, I was supposed to get my inheritance, then I could be alone and away from everyone’s expectations. Finally.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. I tried to control my voice, but the rage deep inside me tried to bubble out. “So I got into a little trouble? That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve my rightful inheritance. It’s not your money to control.”
Perry and my grandfather exchanged a glance over my head. They’d raised me, along with my grandmother, after my mother and father had died. They hadn’t been bad, but there was no substitution for real parents.
Dragons weren’t supposed to die in car wrecks. But my parents had. It had rained, but only a small bit, just enough to make the roads a little slick. They were on their way home from a date night and the car slid off an embankment. I never knew if my father was drinking and driving or if it had just happened, but the pack had investigated and hadn’t found any sign of foul play.
When they went off the embankment, the fuel line snapped. The car exploded before they could get out of it.
I was told they’d died quickly. I was old enough to carry the memory with me. To this day, I
