by Abigail Owen
“Fair enough,” she mumbled.
He opened the door and waved her inside. Delaney paused inside, looking around. The front room held a long conference table to the left and a sort of recreational area to the right with a leather couch and a foosball table. This was a training space?
“Follow me.” He led her past a series of rooms, each with a large window facing out, but most with the blinds drawn, into a massive hanger-like room filled with weights and benches. In one corner was what appeared to be a workbench with tools. Along the back wall were a series of lockers painted like they were on fire. And at either side were large garage doors currently open, allowing the pleasant early fall breeze to waft through.
“Where is everyone?” she asked. She hadn’t seen them outside, but inside was empty.
“They’re around.”
Another door seemed to lead to more space behind the lockers, so maybe they were back there? Finn took her into one of the rooms. His office, she guessed. A metal desk that reminded her of desks elementary teachers used sat off to one side, while a small oval conference table that would seat six took up the other half of the room.
He waved at the conference table. “Take a seat.”
Then he disappeared without a word, leaving her there on her own.
Really? Was it smart to stash a possible suspect in your office and leave them alone? Those computers and paperwork could be tempting. However, she wasn’t an actual criminal. At least she hoped she wasn’t, so she had no interest in their paperwork. They wouldn’t have any on her yet anyway. Besides which, she wouldn’t put it past him to have a camera hidden in here, spying on her to see what she did.
Delaney glanced around the corners of the room. She didn’t see a lens or a telltale red light, but that didn’t mean anything. So she folded her hands in her lap and waited.
Five minutes later, Finn returned, and she had to hold back a grunt of reaction. He’d changed from his gear into well-worn jeans that hung low on his hips and a navy long-sleeved shirt that strained around the breadth of his chest and the muscles of his arms. The blue only enhanced his eyes.
Damn. Couldn’t he have been hiding a potbelly or something under all that gear?
Without a word, he took the seat opposite her and plunked down a first aid kit. “Let me see that scratch.”
Before she could stop him, he snagged her by the wrist and drew her arm across the table. She didn’t want to look like an idiot, so she sat very still, trying to wrestle with the fact that, like before, his touch both soothed and agitated her. After a few uncomfortable minutes while he cleaned up the scratch from the cat and bandaged her up, Delaney raised her eyebrows. “Are we going to get started?”
“I’m waiting on Levi and Aidan.” He finished applying the bandage.
That’s right. Interrogation by committee. “Terrific.”
Finn narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything. Still, Delaney vowed that was the last semisarcastic comment that was going to pass her lips today. She had to get a handle on this. If they liked her, found her cooperative, they’d be more likely to believe her. Help her.
She hoped.
The door opened, admitting Aidan and Levi who’d also changed into casual clothes. Aidan’s sky-blue eyes settled on her, but his handsome face was unreadable. Were all these guys uber serious?
Levi came in right behind him. He reminded her of a Viking warrior in modern clothing. Taller and broader than Finn and Aidan, the man was huge, but she could tell not an ounce of him was fat. Pure muscle. Not someone she’d want to encounter in a dark alley. Except the crinkles at the corners of his golden eyes told her he was a smiler.
Aidan and Levi both joined Finn across from her, giving her an “us versus you” vibe that didn’t help her nerves any. Aidan had a laptop with him, which he sat on the table and opened. After a few keystrokes, he looked over the top at her. “This is just for notes.”
He glanced at his boss and nodded. “Ready.”
Finn sat forward, staring her square in the eyes. Why did she suddenly get the impression that a gulf had just opened between them?
“Okay, Ms. Hamilton.” His gaze darkened, turning stern, and that chasm of invisible space widened between them. “What did you want to tell me?”
Despite her sinking heart, Delaney straightened in her seat. She wouldn’t run anymore. Whether or not she’d been smart to pick Finn as her confessor didn’t matter now. The time had come. Fate would figure things out from here.
Chapter Five
Delaney’s stubborn chin tipped up in a gesture he was already beginning to recognize as a front. Act brave so no one suspects you’re scared shitless. Except he’d felt the tremble in her hands when he’d been patching her up.
Finn sat back, holding her gaze. She returned his stare steadily for a moment, then flicked a glance at Levi and Aidan before returning to Finn. The pink tip of her tongue swiped over her lips, a sure sign of her nerves.
“Delaney?” he prompted.
He didn’t miss the rise and fall of her generous breasts as Delaney took a deep breath. Her heart took off, thundering so loud, Finn could hear it, and so could Levi and Aidan. Resignation filled the gray-blue depths of her eyes, along with fear that made her lips tremble. An odd combination of regret for pushing her and a need to help her punched through Finn.
All wrong. She’d come to him, and he was doing his damn job. That was it.
“This isn’t the first weird fire that’s happened around me.” She said the words so quietly, he would’ve missed them if he hadn’t had the abilities he did.
The vibration in the air was the only indication that Levi and Aidan tensed at the same time as Finn.
Did she just say she’d set the fire?
“What do you mean?” Finn asked slowly.
Delaney leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, facing them all square-on, face pale but jaw set, as if they were her demons and she was determined to face them down.
Pure courage. He had no idea how he recognized the steely strength underlying vulnerability, but he had to respect her for it. The question was, could he trust it? Or was she playing them?
“It started two years ago. Four random fires. One about every six months,” she said.
All three of them tensed at that, but Finn forced himself to relax. He already knew it couldn’t mean what they thought—that she was something way more significant to his kind than a troublemaking human.
Starting fires was dragon sign, one of several different indications that a human female could be turned into a dragon shifter and mated. But she’d have shown other signs, too. More common signs. Which was a relief. If she were a dragon mate, she’d be precious. Something every dragon yearned for.
He glanced at the scar on her neck. Had her family been a victim of one of those blazes? Delaney must have caught the direction of his glance because she gave a subtle shake of her head.
His shoulders dropped a hair. Though, why he was relieved that the accident that took them from her wasn’t part of this, he didn’t know. “You set the fires?” Finn asked, forcing himself to stay on topic.
“No.” She paused then shook her head. “Actually, I’m not so sure.” Her hands clenched into fists on the table.
His gut twisted up at the sight, and a wave of protectiveness toward her…for her…pushed through him. Before he could tame the instinct to comfort her, Finn sat forward and covered her hands with his. “Take your time.”
Shit. What the fuck am I doing?
Delaney blinked at the show of compassion. So did Levi and Aidan. He ignored his men and the voice in his head telling him his reaction to this woman was as bad as it could get. Because right then her hands stopped trembling beneath his. She didn’t pull away and she kept her gaze on his.
Trust me.
She spoke directly to him, her gaze unwavering. “I thought the fires were caused by this guy…Graff. I have a restraining order against him in Vermont, where I lived until six months
ago.”
“Why the restraining order?”
“He just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Cold fury slashed through Finn. Way more than what was warranted after having known this woman only a couple of hours. He needed to get a grip. Hell, his emotions were swinging on a pendulum. But stalkers were one of the lowest forms of asshole, in his opinion.
“I moved to get away from him and the fires I thought he was causing.” She shrugged. “As far as I know, he’s still back there.”
“What’s Graff’s last name?” Aidan asked.
She didn’t pull her gaze from Finn to answer. “Hughes.”
Why did that sound familiar? Finn flicked Levi a look, receiving a nod in return. His Beta would check into the guy.
“Was Graff around for the previous fires?” Finn asked.
“Not that I ever saw directly, but it seemed the most likely explanation. At least until today. But if he’s not here, then the only common denominator is…me.”
Finn frowned. He had to be missing something. “Wouldn’t you know if you set the fires?”
Another deep breath. “I have epilepsy. Four years ago, I was in a car wreck…” Absently, she lifted her hand to the scar on her neck, telling Finn everything he needed to know. The accident that killed her family.
The words tumbled out of her now. “I suffered a brain injury which now triggers these blackouts. It’s controlled with medication…most of the time. The problem is…” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Sometimes I come out of it somewhere different than where I started.”
One hand, still under his, started to shake again. “Every one of those fires, I would wake up in the middle of things.”
Those incredible eyes darkened with unmistakable dread as she fell silent, waiting for their reaction.
Well…fuck.
“Fuck me,” Levi muttered, echoing Finn’s thoughts.
Delaney’s lips kicked up in a crooked half smile, though her eyes remained shadowed. “Exactly. Either I’m insane, I’m a pyro, or my stalker is responsible. I was really, really hoping for door number three.”
“Have you ever seen another person around during these fires?” Finn asked.
She shook her head. “No. I’m always alone, and they’re always big enough that I can’t put them out on my own.”
“I imagine investigations were conducted on all the other fires?” he asked.
Another nod.
“And they cleared you?” No way would he have if the same person showed up at multiple fires.
Delaney tugged her hand away, putting a distance between them that he didn’t like. “Yes, they cleared me,” she said in a flat voice.
“Did they determine the fires were similar?” Levi asked.
“Sort of,” Delaney said. “They never could identify the accelerant or the source in any of them.”
Levi’s eyebrows winged up. “Spontaneous combustion?”
This sounded more and more like a dragon mate.
“They couldn’t say that because each was so different. One was in a storage room in the office where I worked. One was a tree in the park where I ran every morning. One was at a local coffee shop I frequented. The last one was in my…home.”
Finn had no fucking clue what to think. He passed a hand over his face, buying time to think through it.
“How’d you meet this Graff guy?”
She scrunched up her nose. “I managed a winery, and he was a frequent customer there. Lived locally. I thought him charming at first. We went on a couple dates. But then he got weird…jealous, possessive, demanding.”
“Were you, by chance anywhere near Pyramid Falls a few months ago?” Aidan asked.
Delaney’s eyes went wide. “I went hiking up there. How’d you know?”
“We dealt with a fire there about that time. There were…similarities to the fire at the winery.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
This was getting worse by the second. Finn glanced at Levi and Aidan and canted his head toward the door.
“Excuse us a second.” He couldn’t help the way Delaney paled, because pulling her into his arms was the last thing he could ever let himself do. He’d already allowed himself too much, especially if she was what he was beginning to suspect. Regret dragging at his heels, he followed the other two men out into the hallway.
As soon as they closed the door behind them, Levi spun to face him. “Do you think she’s a potential mate? Doing it without knowing?”
I hope not. “No.”
Aidan frowned. “Why not?”
Because I’m up shit creek if she is. He folded his arms across his chest. “Her hair is pulled back. I saw her neck when I carried her out of the building. No marks showed.” No glowing brand that only came alive with dragon fire—the definitive proof that a human woman could be mated. And the fire in that barn had most definitely been dragon fire.
“Doesn’t dragon fire have to be applied directly to her neck for the marks to show?” Aidan asked.
Levi and Finn exchanged a look. Potential dragon mates were rare, even more so in the last couple hundred years it seemed, and Finn had only come across a handful in his lifetime, but this he knew.
“To see the marks in detail, yes,” Levi said. “But that close to the fire, something should’ve shown up, even faintly.”
Aidan shook his head. “But you weren’t looking for the marks. Are you sure?”
Finn didn’t blame the younger shifter for the question. There was a time he’d been eager to discover a dragon mate himself. Before he killed Phoebe. “We’ll double check.”
Levi hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, thinking. “So, assuming she’s not a dragon mate, we have fires caused by a dragon—we definitely identified that fire as dragon caused—and a woman with a stalker and random fires she may or may not be setting. Do you think her stalker is a dragon?”
Every instinct Finn had screamed that she couldn’t be the one doing this, but he already didn’t trust his instincts where Delaney was concerned. “I don’t know. But the dragon involvement keeps this in our jurisdiction until we figure it out. Levi…”
“Yeah. I got this Graff guy.”
“What if she starts another fire while we’re figuring it out?” Aidan asked.
A low rumble of warning shot out of Finn’s throat, and Aidan stepped back, hands up. “Or another fire starts around her,” he corrected quickly.
Finn ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Fuck. Sorry, man. I didn’t mean that.”
He hadn’t growled at one of his men in decades, and today he’d done it twice.
Levi crossed his arms, studying Finn closely, then glanced at the door behind which Delaney sat. “Like that, is it?”
“No,” Finn brusquely denied. “It is not like that.”
Levi grinned anyway, an expression Finn would have gladly wiped from his face if it wouldn’t add to the impression his Beta had going.
“If it’s not her,” Levi said, “then something has you on edge. Better to deal with it than let it fester.”
Finn clenched his jaw around a harsh comeback. “Thanks, Yoda.”
Levi ignored the sarcasm. “We should help her.”
Good. Finn had come to the same conclusion, but it helped to have his Beta on his side.
“But first, we should double check that mark,” Levi added.
Finn held back another growl, one of reluctance this time. The process involved blowing fire across her neck, which would scare the hell out of her. They’d need to wipe her memory afterward, of course.
“I can do it,” Levi offered.
No fucking way, was Finn’s first knee-jerk reaction. His Beta wouldn’t be able to back off if he was the one to reveal a dragon mark, and Finn would not handle that…well.
Which was exactly why he should let Levi deal with this. Already he was too close to this situation. He should let his friend take this one. Instead, he growled. Again. “No. Just…give me a minute.”
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Levi and Aidan didn’t object, though Levi clamped his lips shut before he nodded. Once he had his shit under control, Finn stalked back into the room, leaving them out in the hall.
Before Delaney could open her mouth, Finn dragged a chair around to her side and sat directly in front of her, needing to be close to do this. Her big eyes looked to him with a desperation that stirred the guilt in his gut.
“It’ll be all right,” he assured her.
Delaney nodded.
Taking a deep breath, Finn leaned forward, staring into her eyes intently. All humans tended to respond like prey this close to dragons, freezing and honing in, going into a sort of trance. Delaney blinked, seeming to resist that pull, then settled.
“Boss?” Levi called through the door. “Did you do it?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Delaney blinked again. “Do what?”
Finn recaptured that gaze. “Nothing.”
“Boss?” Levi called.
“I’ll do it when I’m good and ready!” he snapped.
Silence behind the door, only now Delaney was frowning. “Do what?”
“Ignore him.” Finn refocused his gaze and after a small frown, Delaney settled, staring back, passive.
Deliberately, he allowed the flames to enter his eyes. Her pupils dilated, and her shoulders dropped, her body relaxing into the thrall a dragon’s deliberate stare triggered. She swayed toward him, lips parting, and Finn clenched his fists against the sudden urge to claim her.
He moved over her instead, gently sweeping back her hair to expose the sweet spot on the back of her neck. The back of a woman’s neck was sacred to dragons, and the feeling of his own coming to life scared the shit out of him more than his human reactions had so far.
She tried to lift her head. “What are you doing?”
Finn sat again, reclaiming that gaze and drawing her back into his thrall. He swept his hands down her arms to gentle her and smiled. “I’ll never hurt you. I just need to see something.”
She didn’t protest when he moved back to her neck. He stirred the fire inside himself, his beast uncoiling in eager anticipation. Pursing his lips, he blew a stream of dark blue fire over that spot, controlling the flames so she didn’t burn. If anything, she’d feel a comforting warmth. Delaney let loose a small moan, one echoing his own need, which he managed to control. Barely. After counting to ten, he stopped and looked.
