by Zoe Chant
“Shiloh's a chip off the old block,” Ronan said sourly.
Athena nodded. “I've never found that reasoning works with him, either. He's well on his way to following in Jeremiah's footsteps.”
“And that's his only other child?” Santos asked.
“Well...” Ronan said.
“There's Sage,” said Athena. “His daughter. But she's—well, she's not much of a contender. Not with Shiloh around.”
“Could we change that?” Santos asked. “Suggest to her that she could step forward, like you wanted Ronan to do? Could she fight Jeremiah and win?”
Athena shook her head. “Absolutely not. She’s spent her entire life being cowed by her father.”
Santos subsided, but he was still thinking about it. If Jeremiah was the main problem, and Shiloh was another problem, but there was a third option—he’d have to think about it.
Then Lachlan appeared, asking them about food, and politics were set aside for a moment while they ordered.
“Do you have any more of those biscuits?” Athena asked tentatively, when it was her turn. “I liked those.”
Lachlan smiled one of his sparkling grins. “Of course.”
Santos’ heart swelled in his chest. Seeing Athena slowly get more comfortable with Oak Ridge was nourishing him in a way he hadn’t even known he needed.
Athena followed up by once again ordering the same thing Santos had—soup and a sandwich. Then, while Malachi and Elizabeth were focused on Lachlan, she confessed to Santos in a low voice, “We don’t eat at human restaurants—very often—back home.”
Santos mentally translated very often to not at all, and had to breathe carefully to keep from getting angry all over again at Jeremiah and his ilk. “I hope you’re enjoying it, then.”
She nodded, looking almost shy. “The food is the best I’ve ever had. And—it’s nice not to have to cook.”
“And if you want someone to cook for you, Lachlan’s the best choice available,” Santos said.
She nodded fervently, and then paused and said, “Your sandwiches were very good too, though.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to stroke my ego. I know Lachlan’s a better cook than I am.”
“I’m not a very good cook,” she said with the air of someone confessing a dark secret. “Alaric’s better than I am, because he had to learn how when we were kids.”
“Where was your father?” Santos asked, frowning. He remembered that she’d said her mother had been killed, but—
“Killed in fights when we were young, both of them,” she said frankly. “So it was just the two of us, mostly, unless we could get some other adult to give us something.”
Santos felt a deep rage rising in him once again, and he had to breathe and calm it down. It took longer this time. “No one else in the clan took you in? Even though you were orphans?”
“Alaric was twelve,” she said. “That was old enough to make it. You start fighting when you’re thirteen, and Alaric was always ahead of the curve.”
“How old were you?” Santos asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
“Eight,” she said. Malachi and Elizabeth had finished ordering, so she turned back to them while Santos processed this.
Twelve and eight, and fending for themselves. The other adults in the clan not bothering to take care of them. Cooking their own meals. Good God. No wonder she was so fierce, so quick to think about defending herself, about fighting for what she needed. She’d had to since she was a little kid.
His phone buzzed. It was his mother, asking about dinner plans with him and that interesting young woman with the baby.
Inspiration struck him, and he texted back with a question. Athena might not be up for this, but he wanted to see.
***
The food was amazing as always, and Santos was finding that he really, deeply enjoyed watching Athena eat. Lachlan had brought a high chair for Olivia, but she was squirming and fussing, uninterested in being so far removed from the action, so Santos offered to take her, and ate one-handed with his plate pushed far enough away that the baby couldn't reach it. It was no hardship, because that way Athena got to dig in with no difficulty. Seeing how much she enjoyed the ham-and-chutney sandwich and French onion soup was a delight.
“Lachlan's a wizard, isn't he?” Elizabeth said in a confiding tone to Athena when she tasted her soup for the first time and her eyes went wide. “I never imagined I'd eat better in a small-town diner than I did in the big city, but I guess that just goes to show what assumptions will do for you.”
Athena nodded slowly. “I've never had food like this,” she said, after a long hesitation. “What we eat back home is a lot—simpler. Spaghetti and things like that. Well, a ham sandwich would be pretty normal, I guess, but not one like this.”
“My daughter is getting really into cooking,” Malachi said, “and she's a teenager, so she thinks it's funny to cook things we've never even seen before and weird us out. I think she's in cahoots with Lachlan, because otherwise I don't know where she's getting squid ink pasta and tongue and whatever else she's planning right now.”
“It's always good, though,” Elizabeth pointed out.
Athena was mouthing squid ink to herself. Santos grinned. He could get used to this.
He really, really hoped that he'd have the opportunity to do so.
After the meal, Elizabeth and Malachi went off, probably to strategize some more. Athena looked around the diner. “I guess I should go talk to Ronan again,” she said. She sounded tired.
Santos couldn't blame her. After the events of today, he was tired, and he hadn't had nearly as a hard a week as Athena had. “I have a better idea,” he said. “If you're interested.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes were so clear, it was like they were made of green glass. He felt like he could look at them forever. “I might be,” she said, with a little quirk of her mouth.
He loved her cautious little smiles, even as he ached to make her smile big and unafraid. “I texted my mom while we were eating,” he said. “Would you be willing to let her watch Olivia for an hour or so, so we could go flying?”
Her eyes went wide. “Why?”
“Just as a break,” he said. “No strategic purposes. Because it's been a long day and there's a lot of hard stuff going on, and I think we could both use a breath of fresh air.”
Her face was suffused with longing. He wondered how often she had a chance to leave her baby with someone and take some time to fly. Probably not very often. Maybe even never.
“I suppose your mom must be trustworthy,” she said slowly. “She did an okay job with you.”
“Just okay?” he asked, pretending to be insulted.
There was a real smile. “I guess maybe a little better than okay.”
“She’s trustworthy,” Santos promised. “She babysits Noah all the time, when Katie’s at work and Ronan’s doing handywork around my parents’ cabins.”
Athena bit her lip. “Could she—could she come over to your place? I know it isn’t logical, really, but I’d rather Olivia stay somewhere I know, rather than sending her out to a place I’ve never been.”
“Absolutely,” Santos said immediately. “I already asked her if she’d be willing to come over, and she said, Try and stop me.”
Athena giggled, an incongruous noise from such a fierce woman. “She did not.”
Santos pulled out his phone and found the text thread to show her.
Athena laughed out loud. “Okay. Sure. Yes.”
Santos tickled Olivia’s side to make her laugh too. “Thank you.”
Athena shook her head, her eyes bright. “Thank you.”
***
His mom showed up in an impressively short amount of time, making Santos wonder if she’d been lurking at Katie’s shop or something, ready to descend on the adorable baby the moment she had an invitation.
“She’s getting sleepy,” Athena told Rita, handing Olivia over with only a little bit of hesitation. “S
he might nap again pretty soon.”
“I’ll be prepared for a tired baby, then,” Rita said, taking her and settling her comfortably on one hip. “What a beautiful girl she is. You two take your time; Olivia and I will just get to know each other.”
Santos kept an eye on Athena, trying to see if she was very anxious about leaving her baby, but she seemed calm enough, and he couldn’t sense any real distress through the mate-bond.
Still, as they closed the door behind them, heading back outside, he murmured, “Okay?”
She nodded, looking thoughtful. “It’s strange. Back home, I never let anyone be alone with her, because I was too afraid of what would happen. But here...it’s just not dangerous here like it is there. And of course, we’ll be flying, so if danger does appear, we’ll be there between it and Olivia. I don’t think it would have been as easy if we were...going for a drive or something.”
Santos supposed that was true—if any hostile shifters appeared in town, he and Athena would be right there to defend it.
He sure hoped that didn’t happen, though, because he really just wanted to give his mate a break.
And see her shift. He wanted that a lot, and so did his dragon, who was poking its head up with interest at the possibility.
“Come on,” he said. “We don’t shift in the streets unless there’s real and immediate danger, just in case anyone happens to be passing through the town who doesn’t already know about shifters.”
Athena nodded and followed him out behind the shop. As with most places in Oak Ridge, even here on Main Street, it was only a short walk into the trees, and just a few yards more until no one would be able to see them with a casual glance.
Santos paused in a little clearing. “Here should be good.”
“Good.” Athena let out her breath, her entire body seeming to relax for just a moment before it started to flicker out of existence, shimmering away as her shifted form took its place.
And as it slowly formed, Santos had to resist the urge to whistle. She was magnificent.
She was almost as large as he was, powerfully built, with deep, dark red scales that glimmered in the late afternoon light. Her tail was long and sinuous, with sharp spines on the end that he could easily imagine cutting into an enemy—if there were any who would be dumb enough to try and challenge her in this form.
Her eyes were the same clear green. Looking into them, Santos could see only Athena, no matter what form she was in.
Crouching—as he always did when he shifted, just out of instinct to try and keep from accidentally hitting anything when he took his other form—he let his dragon rise up and overtake him as well.
His own dragon form was nothing much out of the ordinary, except for its size—he’d been forever bumping into things when he first began to shift in his teens, unaware of how much space he really took up. He’d inherited his mother’s coloring, a sort of deep brownish-gold that he liked just fine, and he had as many claws and teeth as the next dragon.
Athena watched him, though, her green eyes traveling over his crest, his scales, his tail, like he was something to behold.
He let her look her fill, and then when she turned her eyes upward, he leapt into the air.
Flying, in Oak Ridge, was always an exhilarating pleasure. The mountain air was cold and crisp even in the summer; at this time of year, they found themselves in an icy gust almost immediately. Santos looked over at Athena, but she was riding it like a pro, of course, eyes half-lidded in pleasure.
He smiled to himself, and took off for the mountain, with full confidence that she’d be right behind him.
Chapter 15: Athena
Athena hadn’t flown like this in months.
She shifted occasionally, went for a quick turn around her home while Olivia was napping and Alaric was home, but only for just a minute or two. She trusted Alaric to come get her if anything happened...but she still didn’t want to leave Olivia to his care for too long. He’d be the first to admit that he didn’t know a thing about babies.
A little voice in the back of her mind pointed out, He could’ve taken the time to learn...like Santos has.
She shook it away. She didn’t want to think about home right now. She wanted to think about the glorious stretch of mountains and trees around her, the bright blue sky above, the rush of cold, pure air around her body. Her wings beat powerfully, stretching out muscles that had gotten hardly any use over the last few months.
And Santos glowed like a bronze lamp in the air before her, the sunlight gleaming off of his scales. Like he was a precious-metal sculpture of a dragon—but warm and alive.
And hers.
He swooped down suddenly, into an unexpected dive, and she followed him without hesitation, diving with him down, down—until he leveled out right by the mountain’s peak, banking to arc around the snowy cap with her circling behind him. It felt like they were the only two creatures in existence, playing around an ancient stone crag, alone in the winter air.
Santos turned around—on a dime, too quick for her to follow, and if she hadn’t seen it she would’ve doubted that a dragon his size could manage it—and came up to her, hovering almost in place. She waited, uncertain of what he wanted.
Slowly, he came just a bit closer—a bit more—and then he reached out and tapped her shoulder delicately with one claw.
Then he took off, flying away as fast as he could, and Athena understood. Tag.
Oh, you’re not getting away that easily, she thought, delighted and determined, and took off after him.
Santos knew the air currents in this area better than she did, of course, and he had a bit of a head start, but she was full of pent-up energy, and she was on fire with determination. She was going to tag him back.
They darted back and forth around the mountain’s peak, Santos’ scales flashing in the sunlight, the wind whistling past her ears, her breath quick and her pulse pounding. She wanted to catch him so bad—
Then he seemed to disappear. She looked around for a long moment, trying to find that metallic gleam...and nothing.
But she had an advantage that she thought he hadn’t counted on. Because when she reached deep into her chest, thinking, Where’s my mate?—an answer came back to her. That way.
She followed what felt like an invisible golden thread, drawing her closer and closer to where she knew Santos had to be—
And she found a hidden cave in the rock, an overhang that led into a deep recess in the side of the mountain. And inside of it, the gleam of a bronze scale.
She pounced. Inside the cave in whirl of scales and claws, she alit beside him and touched her nose to his broad flank. Tag.
Dragons didn’t have facial expressions like humans did, but she thought she could feel him grin.
And get ready to pounce back.
So she pushed off the rock, hurtling herself out into the air, and straight into a dive, trusting her own skill to level herself out at exactly the right moment.
And if she had had a human expression, she would’ve been laughing.
***
They played tag for what felt like hours, although the sun still hadn’t set when Santos finally turned them back towards the clearing where they’d first shifted. Athena almost wanted to protest, but she could feel her wings getting tired. She was really out of practice if an hour or two of horsing around in the sky could tire her out so much, but...maybe she’d have more opportunities to fly, now that she and Santos were mates.
Maybe—maybe—
Maybe she really could stay in Oak Ridge with Olivia, and she could stay in that beautiful apartment over the furniture store. The guest room could become Olivia’s room. Santos could help her with the baby, and they could have dinner with the grandparents once a week. Go flying together while Rita watched the baby. Make love in that huge bed every single night.
Maybe they could sort this dumb war all out, get Jeremiah’s interest turned in some other direction, on some other target.
Maybe.
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They settled back down in the clearing where they’d begun, and Santos shifted back to human with a puff of air. Athena followed suit, and then let her instincts just carry her forward and into his arms.
“That was fantastic,” she said into his chest. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he murmured against her hair. “You’re magnificent in the air, you know.”
Was she blushing? Well, he couldn’t see it, at least, not with her face hidden against his shirt. “Thanks,” she mumbled. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Now that they were mates, she thought she should start working on her skills at complimenting people. If Santos was just going to come out with something like magnificent on a moment’s notice, Athena was going to have to step it up.
Santos took her hand. “Let’s go rescue Olivia from all the grandmotherly spoiling that’s happening right now,” he said. “And break the news to my mom, I guess. She still doesn’t know how much of a grandmother she really is.”
That was right. They hadn’t told Rita about being mates. Although Athena had noticed a suspicious gleam in Rita’s eye when they’d dropped Olivia off with her, and she thought it might not be so much of a surprise.
It was only several yards from the forest into the town, and the furniture shop was just a couple of blocks beyond, but before they arrived, Santos waved at someone, and tugged Athena’s hand. “Come on, I want you to meet someone,” he said.
The someone was another man, walking down the street towards them, giving Athena the familiar-by-now look of I don’t recognize you, who could you be? But as usual in this town, it was curious rather than hostile, or even really suspicious.
“This is Reid MacAllister,” Santos said as they drew close. “His mother’s the mayor here, and he’s our doctor.”
Athena had been holding out her hand to shake, but at that last word, she turned to Santos in amazement. “You have a doctor? For shifters?”
There was a moment’s pause, another thing she was starting to recognize. It meant that something she thought was normal was very weird in Oak Ridge, and also probably vice versa.
