by Zoe Chant
Chapter 16: Malachi
Getting Nevin processed and into one of Oak Ridge’s two cells took a little time, and Malachi was worried about Elizabeth getting tired while she waited around for all the paperwork to go through.
But Reid checked her over, once he’d determined that Nevin was in no danger of expiring from any hidden head injuries or anything, and he said with mild surprise, “You’re doing much better than I would’ve expected, from your condition two days ago. Have you been resting?”
Elizabeth had glanced at Malachi, with a little bit of a guilty look, and he had involuntarily flashed back to the not-resting they’d done the previous night. Whoops.
“I rested the first day,” she said, a little shamefaced. “I slept a lot. But then yesterday I felt a lot better, so...”
“Hm.” Reid glanced over to Malachi, and back to Elizabeth. “Well. From what I can tell without a real exam room and equipment—and I want to get you in for an appointment in the next week or so, please—you’re as healthy as can be expected for a shifter woman entering her second trimester.”
“Second trimester,” Elizabeth repeated, looking a little dazed. “I didn’t realize—it’s all been so crazy.”
“Congratulations,” Reid said, with all of his usual emotion—which was to say, extremely dry—and took himself off.
Malachi set his forms down and went over to Elizabeth. “Hey. That’s huge.”
Elizabeth nodded, biting her lip. “Are you really—you really want to be a father to this baby? For real?”
“I really, absolutely do,” he said, putting all of his emotions into his voice. “There is nothing in the entire world that I want more than to parent this kid with you. I can’t wait for them to be born.”
She smiled, tremulous but real, and he hoped that she really was starting to believe that this could happen for them.
Then Flynn called for him, and he had to go back to work.
***
It was a while before he had another break, but when he went to find Elizabeth, worried about how she was doing, he saw her deep in conversation with Reid, taking notes on her phone.
“Hi,” she said, when he approached, a smile blooming on her face. “Reid and I think we need to have a strategy meeting.”
“Hi,” he said, a little taken aback. He’d expected to find her tired, ready to go home. But she was feeling better, Reid had said so—and of course feeling better meant that she wanted to help the situation.
His kind, brave mate. He smiled back at her, proud. “Agreed. Flynn and I need a little while to finish things up here, and then we can all meet at Lachlan’s. Reid, you’ll get in touch with everyone?”
Reid nodded. “In an hour?”
“That works.” Reid retreated with his phone, and Malachi turned to Elizabeth. “You’re feeling all right? Not too tired?”
She shook her head. “It’s the craziest thing. Since last night, I’m full of all of this energy. Something about the second trimester starting, I guess.”
Or... Malachi thought, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know,” he said lightly, “I’m feeling pretty energetic myself. I wonder if it could be something else.”
Elizabeth blinked. “Oh, you mean—you mean, like we’re giving each other energy? What a fascinating idea. I wonder if it could be true.”
“You’ll have to ask Lachlan’s mate, Cam,” he said. “She’s a scientist, and I know Lachlan’s said something or other about how she’s absolutely determined to write a paper on the mate-bond. Not that she could publish it, but he says she doesn’t think that’s as important as the research itself.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved into a smile. “I think I might like Cam.”
“I think you will,” Malachi said, realizing it was true even as he said it. Cam and Elizabeth would probably get on like a house on fire.
The idea warmed him. He wanted Elizabeth to have lots and lots of friends in Oak Ridge.
Not just so that she wouldn’t want to leave. Although he couldn’t deny that that was part of it.
He kissed her smiling mouth. “Back to work. See you in an hour. Don’t go anywhere alone.”
“Promise,” she said solemnly, and waved him off.
Then it was back to work, trying not to think about his beautiful, brave, smiling mate just a few feet away. She and Reid left after a few minutes, which was almost worse—now he was wondering where she was, what she was doing, if Reid was keeping her safe.
But he had a golden light settled into his chest, letting him know that she was safe. There was nothing like the unsettling agitation he’d felt when she’d been facing Nevin, which had had him getting ready to go find her even before he’d gotten her text message. She was safe. There was nothing to worry about.
He still hurried through the last bits of paperwork, heading quickly over to Lachlan’s the moment he felt like he could responsibly do so.
Elizabeth was inside, he could tell before he even got to the doors. He just knew, in the same place in his chest where the mate-bond lived.
Mate, his dragon hissed contentedly. Go find our mate. Wrap ourselves around her, keep her safe. Protect her.
Malachi couldn’t argue with any of that.
He went inside and was greeted by a rush of warmth and food smells. A good portion of the town was gathered in the main dining area, with Reid and his parents—his mother, the mayor, and his father, the town’s lawyer—at the center. Lachlan was just coming out of the kitchen with big plates of appetizers: stuffed mushrooms, cheddar biscuits, vegetables with several different dipping sauces, pastries, and more.
Malachi had to say this about Oak Ridge: he didn’t know a single small town with better catering.
Elizabeth was front-and-center, sitting next to Reid, talking seriously to the mayor. As Malachi approached, he caught the end of what she was saying.
“—presented as this enormous monolith of force, with which Victor could mow down any opposition, but of course that can’t be correct. If nothing else, if that were the case—if the red dragons were aggressively violent and completely unstoppable—they would’ve set themselves up as shifter overlords a long time ago, and we would’ve at least heard of them before now.”
She was confident and eloquent, and Malachi realized that he was seeing Elizabeth The Lawyer, whom he’d barely glimpsed before now. It filled him with a rush of pride, knowing how smart and capable she was...but he was also grateful that this wasn’t the only side of her that he saw, that she’d allowed him to see underneath, to know the kind and vulnerable woman inside.
“That’s what we’re given to understand,” he said, and Elizabeth turned to him with a smile that had an underlying warmth, and—he thought he could see this, or sense it, or something—relief that he was there. Like she’d been holding her own in this group of strangers all right, but she’d been waiting for him to arrive, to be her support.
Which he was more than happy to be. He came up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders, and feeling her relax imperceptibly under his touch.
“Ronan has told us that the red dragons often fight among themselves,” he said. “They wouldn’t be expected to come in force, all as a pack, not unless something has changed in the years since he lived with them.”
That unless was what kept Malachi from being able to relax about the whole thing. A few aggressive individuals they could handle, but if something had changed, and the red dragons were coming in force...
But Elizabeth was saying, “That seems to track with what I learned while I was with Victor. He was frustrated at how difficult it was to get them to commit to an invasion. Their leader was always annoyed at how recalcitrant various members of his clan were—any individual statement didn’t mean much, but if you listened carefully and took them all together, it seemed like they really struggled with unity.”
And of course Elizabeth had listened carefully, and put all her pieces of data together in the end. Malachi would have exp
ected nothing less. He squeezed her shoulders, proud all over again.
The door of the restaurant opened and several more people came in—including, to Malachi’s relief, Ronan, who was the most informed of all of them about the red dragons, being one himself, and having escaped their community a few years back to come settle in Oak Ridge.
“Let’s call this meeting to order,” the mayor said, as the last few people approached the table. “How are we going to address this renewed threat of red dragons? Ideas are welcome.”
Of course everyone tried to talk at once, and Malachi smiled to himself, keeping his position behind Elizabeth and waiting for all the idea-having people to have their say.
Flynn wanted to maximize security, have the town on full alert around the clock until they could address the threat.
Lachlan wanted to try and open negotiations—he pointed out that they’d only even heard about the threat through Victor’s people, never through any communication with the dragons themselves, and perhaps they’d be more open to a treaty-type setup than Victor would have.
Ronan was immensely skeptical about that idea, saying, “If anyone who was in charge a couple of years ago is still around, negotiation is not going to work. Superior force is the only thing that will convince them, and even that will take some time.”
“What about a combination of the two, then?” Elizabeth said, and the table quieted.
“What do you mean?” Mayor MacAllister asked her.
“If the dragons are vulnerable to internal conflict, like they seem to be—” She looked at Ronan, and Ronan nodded decisively. “Well, then why not fight the individuals who show up, and open negotiations with the ones who don’t? Surely there are some red dragons who’d rather not fight with us. Or who would rather enter into an agreement with us in exchange for having their own interests supported against the aggressive parties.”
“You mean,” Malachi said, mostly to interpret Elizabeth’s words from lawyer into more accessible English for everyone else, “figure out who’d rather be in charge, and tell them we’re on their side? So that we’re set up, not Oak Ridge against red dragons, but rather, Oak Ridge and some red dragons against a few angry shifters.”
“Exactly,” Elizabeth confirmed.
That got everyone talking again, but Malachi leaned in to participate this time, because it was the best strategy he’d heard anyone propose so far.
Ronan was cautiously in favor of the idea. “I always regretted just leaving them behind,” he admitted, “rather than trying to help them become something better than they were. But one man couldn’t have made that kind of change, not without fighting and winning against every single dragon who disagreed with him, and that would have gotten any individual person killed. But with a whole group like this—”
It took a while, but eventually the town, as it was represented, was tentatively on board with the idea, and the mayor declared the meeting adjourned.
“Malachi,” she said as people started drifting away, “you and I are going to have a meeting to talk about how we’ll be implementing this idea. Bring your mate.”
Malachi looked over at Elizabeth, who shook her head minutely: No, I didn’t tell her. He looked back at Mayor MacAllister, whose face, as usual, betrayed nothing about how she knew what she knew.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
She turned to talk to someone else who wanted her attention, and Malachi shook his head and took Elizabeth’s hand. “You ready to get out of here?”
She nodded. “That was a lot.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Surreptitiously, Malachi moved his fingers to her inner wrist, checking her pulse. It seemed fairly normal.
“I am,” she confirmed. “Not even that tired, really. I meant more—socially.”
He tugged on her arm, pulling her up to stand, and led her outside into the chilly afternoon. “You really stepped it up, for not knowing most of the people in there.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling a little. “I mean, that’s what you have to do in a courtroom, a lot of the time, but—the stakes are different here. I’m glad that no one seemed to take offense at me just barging in and telling everyone what to do.”
This was the vulnerable side of Elizabeth, underneath the confident woman who seemed like she was absolutely equipped to tell people what to do, if the situation called for that. “You did amazing,” Malachi reassured her. “The mayor likes you already.”
“She’s an impressive woman,” Elizabeth said. “I’m glad you guys have such a strong leader.” She smiled, her blue eyes twinkling a little. “And such a strong sheriff.”
“Pretty strong,” Malachi agreed, and caught her up in his arms, lifting her off the ground.
Elizabeth shrieked and giggled, all of her lawyer gravitas falling away into pure delight, and Malachi settled her into a bridal carry and jogged off, bringing her home, and reveling in the sound of her being so uncomplicatedly happy.
He unlocked the door without putting her down; she helped him by grabbing him around the neck and supporting herself as he dug for the keys. The house was empty, of course—Hayley was still at school. It was amazing that it was only early afternoon, given everything that had happened already today.
Of course, that meant that they had hours still undisturbed. Malachi closed the door behind them with his foot, and made for the stairs.
Elizabeth curled into his embrace, still giggling a little, and said, “Don’t you have to get back to work?”
“Flynn can handle it,” Malachi told her. “I don’t think I’ve skipped a single hour of work since I started at the sheriff’s office fifteen years ago, and I’ve worked plenty of extra time. He can cover this hour.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, her voice dropping into a lower register, “you think this is only going to take an hour?”
Malachi kissed her, laughing, and brought her into his bedroom, setting her gently in the middle of the bed.
“I think I’d be happy for it to take forever,” he said, and came forward to kiss her fiercely, with all the fire and joy he felt for his mate.
Chapter 17: Elizabeth
Malachi, Elizabeth thought a little dizzily, was a man with a plan, and Heaven forfend anyone get in his way.
He’d stripped his clothes off in about 0.4 seconds, and now he was working on hers; Elizabeth lifted her hips to give him room to get her borrowed skirt down, and found that her panties had been caught along with it, so that she was now lying naked in the middle of the bed.
“You’re really feeling okay?” he checked in. “Not too tired? Got enough to eat at the meeting?”
Elizabeth grabbed his face between her two hands, one palm on each cheek, and met his eyes. “I’m. Fine,” she enunciated, hitting every consonant with great emphasis.
He laughed, his eyes sparkling. She loved him so much.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, and was on her like a hungry—well, a hungry dragon.
He devoured her mouth, sending a wash of heat through her body as he nudged his hips between her legs, spreading her open. Elizabeth gasped against him, clutching him tight.
His fingers were on her clit, finding exactly the right spot and rubbing it—not too hard, not too fast, just enough to ratchet her up higher than she would’ve thought possible right away, until she was pushing her hips against his hand and making little whimpering noises.
Meanwhile, he was biting kisses down her throat, teeth on her shoulder, her collarbone, little sparks of pain-pleasure that twisted her up inside, made her yearn for more. His other hand found her breast, caught her nipple between two fingers and squeezed, slowly, gently and then harder, harder, until she couldn’t breathe, focused around that spot, almost forgetting the rest of her body in the face of his knowing, relentless fingers.
Until he let go, and the rush of sensation felt like it spread out from that one tiny spot to her entire body—just as he thrust one finger inside her.
“Oh, God,” Elizabeth managed, dig
ging her fingers into his back. “Malachi, you—”
“I what?” he whispered into her ear.
“You’re so good at this,” she managed, and let her head fall back as she started to laugh.
“What’s funny?” he asked, sounding amused himself. “I didn’t think this was all that funny.” Another finger found its way inside.
“I just—oh—” She moved her hips, looking for that little firework of pleasure that had hit, just for a second—“I spent all these years chasing after bad boys, and part of why I—why I liked them—oh, God, keep doing that—”
“No, no, finish what you’re saying.” He made to pull his fingers out. “I want to hear the end.”
“Don’t do that, you—I just, they were always so overwhelming in bed, you know, just, no limits, no breaks, shaking the rafters, and I thought that that was part of what you got with a bad boy. Should’ve—realized—”
“Realized what?” he said, and pulled his fingers out after all. “That I’d be better than any of them?”
And he thrust his cock into her, and she let out a shriek that must’ve shaken the rafters after all.
“Yes,” she managed finally, when she could form words again.
Then she wrapped her legs around his waist and let go of any control, allowing her body to move how it liked, get what it needed. And Malachi knew what her body needed; his cock was right up against her most sensitive spot, rubbing over and over and over it—
And there was his hand on her clit again, his rough callouses feeling so good against her soft slickness, making her shudder and clench around him, her fingernails digging into his back. “Right there,” she managed, “oh, right there, right exactly there, don’t stop, don’t stop—”
She screamed out loud as she came, wringing wet and spasming, utterly uncontrollable.
And Malachi didn’t stop.
He kept rubbing her clit, kept thrusting into her, kept kissing her deeply, catching her noises with his mouth, biting gently at her lip.
