Emerald Gryphon: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (Gryphons vs Dragons Book 1)

by Ruby Ryan

  I checked my phone: 6:35am. I could get into the office before anyone, grab my stuff, and return in time to jump back under the covers.

  As I tried to pull away, Ethan groaned and reached back to grab me.

  "No leave," he muttered. "Stay. Warm body. Sexy body."

  I leaned into him and kissed his shoulder. "I'm gunna grab something I left at the office. And snag breakfast on the way home. Donuts?"

  "I don't want donuts, I want you." But then he paused, and opened one eye. "Actually, donuts sound amazing."

  "I thought so." I kissed him again and said, "I'll be back soon, and then you can have both."

  "Chocolate glaze," he said as I pulled clothes from my dresser. "No sprinkles."

  I felt more excited than I ever had in my life as I drove to the office in the early morning twilight. The city was calm and quiet around me, and I had three days alone with Ethan. A mini-vacation with my beast of a man, and all the while I'd be getting paid for it.

  After the hell of the last week, there was nothing I wanted more.

  I wondered what his plan was. I didn't know about him, but I had a little money saved up. We could pick a direction at random and just start driving, staying at cheap motels and eating greasy diner food like outlaws on the run. And if we managed to fuck like rabbits every step of the way, well, then I suppose that would have to do.

  I mean, it was the only way Ethan could regenerate his shifting ability. I had a responsibility.

  I giggled to myself as I pulled into the parking lot.

  Before I got out of the car, I stopped myself. The totem weighed heavy in my pocket; I'd brought it along out of habit, a compulsion rather than thought. The bond I had with it, and Ethan, demanded I keep it close.

  I eyed the building. The office was on the twelfth floor, directly in front of the parking lot. Maybe two hundred feet in a straight line. Curiosity growing, I pulled it from my pocket and put it in the glove compartment. I could still feel it pulsing there, a heartbeat without a heart. It didn't want me to leave.

  Taking deliberate steps, I left the car, hearing the soft beep beep of the locks engaging as I walked away.

  I could feel the tug from it as I entered the building. The discomfort tingled in my head, like the pressure of slowly descending in the deep end of the swimming pool. It was insistent, and uncomfortable, but not impossible.

  Focusing on the growing sensation, I took the elevator to our floor.

  As I exited the elevator and walked toward our offices, and toward the direction of the parking lot, I could feel the pressure continuing to build. That surprised me; since I was drawing closer to the totem, I'd expected the feeling to dim.

  A panicked thought hit me: what if someone took it?

  I speed-walked down the hall, past Ethan's office and my desk, until I reached the glass windows in the far wall. My car sat alone in the parking lot below, unmolested that I could see. And I could sense the totem there, pulsing inside the car.

  Yet the pressure was higher here than before.

  Most people would have been bored with such things, but it fascinated me! Somehow it knew that even though I was technically closer, the route I would need to take to return to it was longer. Not for the first time, I wondered where it had come from. What kind of power was held within.

  I turned back toward my desk, lost in thought, when a voice called out.

  "Jessica? Is that you?"

  It was Mrs. Arnold in her office; I'd walked right across her view to get to the window. I hadn't expected her to be here so early. Shit.

  I reached for the hair clip in my watch band, but stopped myself from the nervous tick. Well, there was no use avoiding her now. I sighed and said, "Yep, it's me. I just--"

  "Jessica, come here please."

  Her voice sounded strained. Upset. As I took slow steps toward her office I wondered if she knew we weren't going to the datacenter today. It was ridiculous--how would she know?--but the fear persisted nonetheless.

  I wasn't a good liar. I was a terrible liar, to be more honest. I got sweaty, and mumbled, and practically trembled while trying to tell a lie. Even something innocent, like convincing my mom I'd only had three pieces of Halloween candy instead of four. It was always obvious on my face.

  Where did Ethan say the datacenter was? Frisco, or McKinney? No, stop it Jessica. All I had to do was defer to Ethan. Insist I didn't know anything, except that he said we had a side project to work on involving the cloud. I had a free pass to act like the ditsy temp she thought I was.

  I walked into Mrs. Arnold's office, and froze.

  She was standing behind her desk, eyes wide and round with fear. I had only enough time to open my mouth to ask her what was wrong before I felt it.

  Before I felt him.

  The Emerald Dragon stepped from behind the door and reached for me, but I was already darting toward the desk. I grabbed the first thing that my fingers touched--a stapler--and swung blindly with all my strength. The metal hit flesh, and the dragon grunted in surprise, but then his hand snatched my wrist and grabbed my other arm and held me in place.

  He moved both of my wrists to one of his hands, pinning them together like I was a child. His presence was so strong, so overpowering, that all I could do was stand there while he patted me down. I trembled as his hands moved up my legs, but his touch was all business, searching for something.

  His green gaze returned to me. I would have found him handsome, if he weren't, you know, threatening my life. And Ethan's.

  "Where. Is. It."

  I could smell his foul breath through his clenched teeth, like woodsmoke mixed with sulfur. Fire and brimstone, part of my mind thought. For the fires he breathes as a dragon.

  "Where's what?" I managed to stutter.

  The dragon let go of me and grabbed a chair, hurling it across the room with the ease of a hurricane tossing a plastic trash can cover. It crashed into the wall and brought down two decorative shelves in a cacophony of shattering glass.

  "You know what," he said, rounding on me again.

  "I don't have it." I shook my head a millimeter. "I didn't bring it with me."

  It wasn't a lie, not exactly, which I hoped made it more convincing.

  He put his face very close to mine, noses almost touching. The stench from his breath was so strong I thought I might pass out. He sniffed me, like a dog sniffing something new and exotic.

  And his eyes softened with acceptance.

  "Why?" he whispered. "The gryphon's mate is the guardian of his totem!"

  "I... I wanted to test something," I stammered. My mind screamed IT'S IN THE CAR OUTSIDE, but I ignored it. "The totem, it tries to stop me from leaving it, right? Well, that's new to me. I wanted to see how far I could travel from it."

  He considered my words, and then realized they were the truth.

  Then his wrath took over.

  He roared a dragon's roar and shoved me to the side--I hit my hip hard into the desk before falling to the ground. He grabbed the wood with both hands, and I rolled sideways just in time. He flipped the desk into the air, over Mrs. Arnold's screaming shape, crashing into the cabinets behind her in a flurry of paper. He stepped forward with the motion, and I cried out as he began to strike her, but she fainted into a puddle before he could.

  I trembled on the ground, wishing I could do the same, as he turned his fury to me.

  I almost told him. Right then, shaking like a terrified animal, I almost screamed that the totem was in the car outside. It would have saved me, turned his energy elsewhere. It would have made him go away.

  But my love for Ethan was stronger. It blossomed inside me as if he were there too, holding my hand before this terrible foe. The love strengthened my resolve and filled me with resistance.

  "You can kill me," I said expecting them to be my last words, "but you'll never find him."

  And then the dragon shocked me by roaring... with laughter.

  He fell apart into hysterics, a machine-gun of quick laughs
that were completely at odds with his powerful physical presence. He strode around the room while holding his chest, spreading his laughter in a circle. He was crazy in that moment, legitimately nuts, and that terrified me more than his previous fury.

  "You truly know nothing," he finally said, red-faced and tears streaming down his cheeks. "I need not find him."

  He took a moment to collect himself, then loomed over me like some terrible beast.

  "If Emerald chooses to run, then I will bring him to me."

  It took me a moment to realize what he meant, and then the dragon man was carrying me out of the building kicking and screaming, and there was nobody around to stop him.

  18

  ETHAN

  I dreamed of flying high above the Dallas skyline, soaring between the skyscrapers wonderfully fast.

  Oh, it would be incredible to do that! Like a helicopter tour on steroids. And hell, forget Dallas. We could go anywhere, see anything. There were parts of Hawaii that were remote, like the waterfall from Jurassic Park. Pack a picnic, shift into a creature of claw and wing, and fly us over there.

  Yeah. That sounded nice.

  Nevermind the fact that I'd just burned all of my vacation hours. I had what, fourteen days of sick time? I never took a sick day; yesterday was literally the first in over two years. And as much of a hard ass as Mrs. Arnold was, she had a soft spot for me. If I told her I had the flu I could probably get away with that.

  I ached for Jessica after she left.

  It was a strange, incredible feeling. I wasn't the type of guy to get attached like this. I dated, and occasionally hit up Tinder, but nothing ever seemed to last more than a few weeks. I liked to be alone; I was an introvert, and recharged my batteries with quiet solitude. Beyond that, I got bored of women. And I always knew it within the first day or two, an impending expiration date that all the clocks were counting down to.

  But not Jessica.

  Forget that we had this weird supernatural bond through the totem. Jessica was awesome all by herself. Gorgeous body, fun personality. Smart as hell. I wanted to be around her every moment of the day. She'd been gone three minutes and it felt like three days. And I knew she felt the same way, knew it with the certainty of feeling her own emotions trickling into mine.

  Like me, she didn't know what was going to happen. But she was excited to figure it out with me.

  I stretched on Jessica's empty bed, inhaling her lingering smell.

  Now if only we could get rid of the big fat problem.

  I had a plan of what to do, but it was rough. Mostly it involved driving somewhere. Getting in the car and driving until we felt safe, whether north or east or west. Or south, if we wanted to go to Mexico, but America felt safer right now.

  The cops and crowd had stopped the dragon from shifting. That was important. Either he needed to keep his shifting somewhat secretive, or he got stage fright in front of so many people. Somehow I doubted it was the latter. So did that mean city centers were safer? Places crowded with people at all times? If we drove to New York and parked ourselves down with two folding chairs in Times Square would we be immune from him?

  My old work buddy was a doomsday prepper, I suddenly remembered. He owned forty acres in Oklahoma, booby trapped with explosives and land mines and machine guns for when "Big Government" finally came for him. That was another appealing option, if we could convince him we weren't brainwashed to infiltrate his facility.

  Hell, I bet he even had a rocket launcher. I'd love to see one of those smash into a dragon, knocking it from the sky like a fly swatter.

  But as good as that sounded, deep down in my gryphon self I knew it wasn't an option. I needed to kill the Emerald Dragon myself, as a gryphon, without modern weaponry. How I would do that was another question entirely, but there it was.

  I could still feel his presence, somewhere vague and distant. Like if I turned around quick enough I'd spot him peeking in the window. I wished that feeling was more accurate, the way it had been right after he was about to shift in Fort Worth. It'd be awfully handy to be able to see him coming from a mile away. But the other side of that coin was we needed to be careful when we chose to shapeshift. We couldn't just do it whenever we wanted for fun, or it would draw him to us like moths to a candle.

  As I stretched in bed, I remembered something else he'd said: brothers. Not just his, but mine. I had an older sister, but that's not what he meant. He made it seem like there were more of me.

  Were there other totems out there, and other gryphons? It'd be awfully nice to have a posse instead of doing all this on my own. Because as comforting as it was to have Jessica here to share in the totally-fucked-up experience that this was, she was mostly a passenger along for the ride. If I had to fight the dragon she'd be a helpless spectator on the ground.

  Still, having here there when the time came was the kind of comforting--

  PAIN.

  White-hot pain lanced through my entire body, violently arching my back and knocking away the sheets. I clenched my teeth and held back a scream, and then the pain was gone.

  It came from my bond.

  And as I sat up in bed panting, every nerve in my body trembling in the terrible afterglow of agony, I felt more coming through my bond with Jessica.

  Shock, then anger, then fear.

  Fear most of all, gushing into my brain like a fire hose. And as the dread rose up in my gut, I knew exactly why.

  The Emerald Dragon was here.

  I leaped out of bed and threw on my clothes, panicked motions which took twice as long than if I were calm. My focus narrowed. Jessica was going to work, then to get donuts. Two places to search. I had to get there quickly. Somehow, I had the awareness to grab her set of spare keys in case I needed to come back here. Thank God I'd moved my car from my apartment to here yesterday, or I probably would have tried to sprint the six miles to the office.

  I never knew what the phrase "bat out of hell" meant until that morning, driving through downtown Dallas.

  Four police cruisers were parked outside our building when I arrived, all of them with lights blazing in the morning twilight. I felt a familiar pulsing as I parked but ignored it, and sprinted into the building and took the elevator to the right floor. The entire office was ransacked. Cubicles and chairs overturned, paper everywhere. The cops were huddled around Mrs. Arnold's office at the end, one of whom broke away to head me off.

  "Excuse me, sir?" she said.

  "I work here," I said, striding forward. "Jessica? Jessica!"

  I heard Mrs. Arnold's voice. The cop allowed me to come forward.

  Mrs. Arnold sat in a chair in her office, a blanket wrapped around her body. One officer crouched next to her, and another stood to the side with a notepad.

  "He just... came in here," she said, incredulous. "He asked me so many questions, but I didn't know anything. And when Jessica appeared..."

  "Did he give any clues as to where he might have taken her?" the crouching officer asked. "A place he might have mentioned?"

  "Nothing like that. He just took her. He was laughing, like a madman..."

  I saw red.

  Before I knew what was happening I was taking the stairwell, my rage too demanding to allow me to wait for the elevator.

  He had Jessica.

  The pulsing returned in the parking lot, familiar and insistent. It came from a car parked in the corner: Jessica's car, I realized. I rushed to it, hoping against hope that I might find her inside, that she would be lying down in the backseat and that this was all some cruel joke.

  But as I neared the car, I realized what the pulsing was. I pulled the spare keys from my pocket, threw open the passenger door, and pulled down the glove compartment.

  Jessica's fear seemed to spill out of the compartment, a rotten smell given off by the totem. I grabbed it to feel her, to seem closer to her, and strangely enough... I was.

  I could feel Jessica traveling east, away from the city. In a car, I thought, not flying. Because the drago
n would be saving himself for me.

  Suddenly, I could feel him there too. His presence overwhelmed and blocked out Jessica's, full of steam and smoke. And I could hear him laughing, a constant sound of hysterics, the certainty that he had gotten the better of me.

  Like hell he would.

  I checked the gas in my car; the tank was mostly full. I started driving, keeping the totem in my right hand to guide my way. East we went, away from the city, following the beacon of feeling coming from the totem. Toward what felt like danger.

  But I didn't care. Danger to my person meant nothing in that moment; all I could think about was Jessica, and the need to reach her. I was heading toward a trap, doing what the dragon wanted, but I didn't care at all.

  I'm coming, I thought, the only thing my brain would accept. I'm coming, Jessica.

  19

  JESSICA

  I'm coming.

  I felt the emotion from Ethan as if he'd whispered it in my ear, as if he were there with me in the dragon's truck. And although it was momentarily comforting, it quickly filled me with dread.

  No, I tried to say back. Don't come. He wants you to.

  But I couldn't stop him. I could feel him following, a steady beacon of warmth tingling in the back of my head.

  Overwhelming that was pain. Pain which grew the farther we drove, an increasing pressure in my ears and head as we increased our distance from the totem. I clenched my eyes shut and waited for the pressure to end, my bond with the totem to be severed like a rubber band stretched too far, but it never did. Soon I was in constant agony, so strong it was difficult to think.

  I glanced at him. The Emerald Dragon wore the same dress clothes as the other night, a pale green button-down tucked into black dress pants. His sleeves weren't unrolled now, and I could see the edge of a flame tattoo peeking out on his right hand on the steering wheel. His eyes were as green as Ethan's but behind a harder face, with eyebrows as sharp as talons. He was the kind of bad boy women probably gushed over.