by Zoe Chant
“You’re awake, then,” Keeley said, her voice harsh in the way that voices get when it’s either that or start to cry, and Lance’s protective instincts went into overdrive. The hatchling bounded off the bed and jumped up into her arms.
Lance didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it was clear Keeley hadn’t had a moment’s rest. Her hand shook as she pushed hair off her face.
He cursed himself silently. She had been attacked, discovered the existence of a world that must have sent everything she thought she knew upside-down—and he was lying around in bed. What sort of a protector was he?
Keeley cleared her throat. “Can you hear me?”
Does she think the bullet deafened me, or something? Lance thought. He nodded and swung his legs off the side of the bed with military precision.
And found himself on the floor in a pile of blankets, limbs, and… a tail?
Oh, shit. He was in his snow leopard shape. But—when had he shifted?
I told you I took care of everything, his snow leopard said smugly.
When? he thought, rifling desperately through his memories as he fought his way out of the blankets.
When you were too busy making eyes at our mate to notice you were bleeding out. Idiot human.
Lance shook his head. His legs wobbled a little as he escaped the tangle of blankets, but if he ignored his aching bones and ravening hunger, he was fine. And his snow leopard seemed content to sit back and radiate smug superiority while Lance tried to get its body under control.
Lance swung his head around to find Keeley again. The deep shadows under her eyes had been joined by a small tic at the corner of her mouth.
Time to explain everything, he decided, and concentrated. His body protested, but he focused on his human shape and in a few moments, was standing on two feet.
Keeley gasped, her eyes traveling the length of him. Lance straightened his shoulders. First, to check his human body was healed, too. Second, because of the way his mate’s cheeks went pinker the lower her gaze dropped.
“Keeley?”
Her name came instantly to his lips. The rest of the minutes before he’d lost consciousness might be a blur, but not that.
Keeley. His mate’s name washed over him like a cool breeze, soothing his aching body.
“Yes,” she said, her voice like sandpaper. “And you’re—? Lance—?”
“That’s correct.” Oh, fuck. Lance’s cock twitched at the sound of his name dancing on his mate’s tongue.
He cleared his throat. He was supposed to be a professional, damn it.
“Lance,” Keeley repeated, all the harshness gone from her voice.
Lance bit back a moan. Once had been bad enough, her voice sandpaper-rough and halting. But the second time, his name slid over her lips like softest silk, promising…
Gray shadows gathered at the edges of his vision. Lance was unconscious before he hit the floor.
The next time he woke, it was to the sound of whispered voices. Or rather, one whispering voice and one ear-splitting chirping and trilling.
“No, you can’t jump on his head again. It didn’t work the first time, did it? Leave him alone.”
Chirp, chirp, screech, chirp.
“Oh, for—here, play with this. And no more biting!”
A pleased prrp-prrp, followed by a low, happy growl.
Lance opened his eyes. He was lying on the thick sheepskin rug next to his bed. His mate, Keeley, was sitting a few feet away from him, staring down at the dragon hatchling in her lap with an expression that was half fond, half frustrated. She dangled something shiny in front of the hatchling’s face and laughed softly as it grabbed it.
Lance must have made some sort of noise, because Keeley looked up. A strange expression flashed across her face, and then she smiled uncertainly.
“You’re awake? Again?”
Lance smiled back at her. “Tentatively.” He looked at her carefully. She was still clearly exhausted, but her voice wasn’t cracking with stress anymore.
And she was smiling. That had to be a good sign, right?
“You’re not gonna pass out again?” she asked warily.
“I’m not planning on it, no.”
“Were you planning on it the first time?” she quipped.
Lance groaned and carefully pushed himself upright. He was relieved that his tongue had worked, and that the hands he pushed himself up with were his large, dark-skinned human ones, and not his snow leopard’s heavy paws. He hadn’t shifted again.
“A lot of things have happened tonight that I wasn’t planning on,” he murmured.
“Tell me about it.” Keeley’s voice was hollow, but there was a hint of wonder in it. Lance looked up to find her staring at him.
She quickly looked at the hatchling instead, but that wonder in her voice had definitely been when she’d been looking at him.
Lance’s snow leopard preened.
“I mean. Dragons. That’s a new one for me.” Keeley’s eyes were laser-focused on the hatchling, and her cheeks were going pink. “Never been almost blown up before, either, and I gotta say, it wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.”
“What about meeting a man who can turn into a snow leopard?” Lance’s voice rumbled, a hair’s breadth from being a purr.
Keeley’s eyes shot up. “Yeah. I guess I’m more used to people dying when they get shot, not turning into giant cats.”
Her gaze hardened, as though walls were going up behind her eyes.
“Prr-rrp?”
The hatchling looked back and forth between Lance and Keeley, confusion pouring from her psychic aura.
“Prrp!”
The hatchling darted forward, faster than Lance could react, and bit him on one hand before racing back to perch in Keeley lap. “Prrp!”
“Ow,” Lance said, shaking his hand. The hatchling’s teeth were soft and nubbly, but she’d bitten him hard enough to leave dents in his skin.
“Sorry. She’s a bit bitey,” Keeley said as the hatchling grabbed one of her fingers. Lance couldn’t help but notice that the hatchling was gnawing on her finger a lot more gently than she’d bitten him.
“I think I deserved it,” he said. “She’s very protective of you.”
“Prr-eep!” the hatchling agreed.
Lance leaned back against the bed.
“And very alert. I wouldn’t have guessed she’s less than a day old. Then again, they’ve been in their eggs for a long time. Perhaps dragons’ personalities start to develop before they hatch. That would explain…”
He stopped talking. Keeley’s face had gone frozen, with a side of frazzled. Lance groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose, noting that his glasses were missing.
That wouldn’t be an issue, so long as his snow leopard behaved and kept its short-sighted eyes out of his face. What was an issue, however, was him and his apparently endless ability to ignore what was important.
“Sorry,” he continued. “I don’t imagine you’re in the mood for a lecture on shifter biology. Why don’t we get out of my bedroom, and I’ll find us something to eat?”
“Your—?” Keeley’s eyes widened, and then she sighed and pushed her hair back off her face. “Well, that answers one of my questions. One out of several thousand,” she said at last, staring down at the baby dragon in her lap.
“You must have a lot of questions,” Lance said, and Keeley nodded slowly, her eyes still fixed on the dragonling.
“Oh, yeah. You could say that.” Keeley’s voice was soft with wonder. Lance reached out and brushed the back of his hand along her wrist.
She leaned into his touch so naturally he wasn’t sure she even knew she was doing it.
“Then I have a suggestion. Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make you breakfast, and you can ask me anything you want.”
Keeley turned to him. Her scent danced in Lance’s senses, sweet and salty and infinitely alluring.
She bit her lip. “Okay. But one more thing.”
“Anything.”
Her cheeks darkened. “Put on some pants, first?”
Keeley
Lance did better than put some pants on. He wrapped a blanket around his waist and stood up with easy grace. Every movement he made was strangely compelling.
At least it’s relatively dark, she thought, a second before he reached out and did something to the light switch above the bed. Keeley’s stomach flipped over.
It had taken her what felt like hours of terrified groping around the room to even find the light switch, let alone turn it on. And even then she’d only been able to turn it onto its lowest setting. Just enough that she could see the walls closing in around her.
Her heart started beating faster. Stop that, she ordered herself. Stop it, stop it, calm down—you’ve had all night to get over this, just stop—
She looked around the bedroom, hoping that seeing it properly as a room and not as a shadowy box would help fend off her impending panic attack.
And knowing it was Lance’s, too. For some reason, the thought helped her heart calm down.
The room was gorgeous. Even nicer than the penthouse suites at the hotel. One wall was all gray stone, like the side of a mountain; the others were a cool black and… non-existent?
Keeley gaped at the empty space, which appeared to open out onto a staircase leading out to an even larger room. Damn it! I’ve spent the entire night freaking out about being boxed in an unfamiliar room, and there was all this space only a few feet away this whole time?
“Excuse me.” Keeley almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of Lance’s low, deep voice. “I’ll just wash up before we go down.”
“Um. Sure.” Keeley froze her train of thought in its tracks before it could follow those two words—go down—into the gutter.
She stifled a sigh of relief as he pushed through a door in the stone wall. A moment later, she heard a shower turn on.
Wait. Was that better than having to force her eyes to keep off him, or worse?
He’d left the door open behind him. Worse. Definitely worse.
Keeley turned deliberately away from the bathroom door, with its calming sound of rushing water and the less-calming promise of all that water running over Lance’s naked body.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Last night you were almost killed, you spent the night trying desperately not to have a panic attack, and now you can’t stop thinking about hooking up with some guy you only just met?
Keeley picked Maggie up. The little dragon had gotten herself entirely tangled up in Keeley’s gran’s necklace, and Keeley absently started untangling her limbs as she focused on keeping her back to the bathroom door.
Hooking up. God, she sounded like a teenager. Except teenagers probably didn’t call it that these days, not that she would know. Hell, she didn’t even know what people her own age called it.
She just knew what she wanted to do, regardless of what name you stuck on it. Run her hands over those muscles. Taste his lips, and feel his strong hands on her, wanting her as much as she wanted him. Wrap her legs around—
“Stop,” she burst out, and groaned. “Oh, fuck. What is wrong with me?”
Keeley winced and covered the little dragon’s ears. Or where she thought its ears might be, anyway.
“Sorry, baby,” she muttered.
A soap bubble of happiness burst against the side of her mind and she blinked.
“Shit, that feels weird. Um. Sorry again. And… it’s good-weird, anyway.” She paused. “Definitely a better weird than most of the other sh—stuff that’s been happening to me lately.”
She shivered. Dragons, guys turning into giant cats—that, she could deal with.
It was the sight of the shiny new scar on Lance’s chest that made her soul quake. And the memory of sitting over his unconscious cat-body all night, watching his chest rise and fall and wondering each time if this would be when it stopped moving.
When are you going to learn? You ruin anything you get involved in. And this time, Lance is the one who got hurt.
Her fingers itched with the memory of splinters and broken skin. She rubbed them together absently. Now that she could see the size of the bedroom, and how it was a sort of mezzanine or loft over another enormous room, her chest felt less tight and she could breathe more easily. One less thing to worry about, which frankly, she needed right now.
Yeah, especially when you’re expecting Lance out of the shower any minute. Clean and glistening.
She gritted her teeth and slammed one open palm against the nearest wall. It was cool and smooth, as she discovered as she ran her hand across it.
This feels more like glass than wallpaper or paint, she thought. Maybe it’s some sort of rock, like the other wall?
“Looking for the switch?” Lance’s voice did terrible, terrible things to Keeley’s insides.
She’d been so focused on not listening to the sound of the shower, she hadn’t noticed it turn off.
Oh, God, she thought. What’s gonna be worse—turning around and seeing him fresh from the shower, or staying here staring at the wall and imagining it?
“Uh?” she muttered, because “Isn’t the light already on?” was too many words for her brain to handle, apparently.
“Here.”
Damn it, she could feel how close he was, even if she was still staring at the wall. His voice felt like the softest touch on her skin, making her shiver. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him press his hand against the wall a few feet away.
Light shone from the walls. Keeley jerked back, blinking, and then gasped. The light wasn’t coming from the walls—it was coming from outside. The walls were actually windows, looking out over the city.
Sunlight glittered off a hundred thousand windows and, in the distance, the water.
Keeley whirled around, Maggie chirruping delightedly in her arms. The windows ran the whole length of the walls and up to the ceiling, making the room feel like it was out in the open air. The larger room down the stairs lit up too, as its wall-windows turned transparent. Light filled everywhere that Keeley could see.
She turned back to the window, staring at the city stretched out below.
“It’s like standing on the top of a mountain or something,” she whispered.
“That’s the idea.”
Lance’s voice was warm, and touched with just a hint of smugness. Keeley turned to face him and swallowed hard.
He’d toweled off and pulled on a shirt and pants, but his arms still glistened with a few stray drops of water.
Muscly and glistening. Oh, hell. She was so fucked.
Running off with him last night was one thing. People had been trying to kill her and Maggie, and he was helping her get away. Simple. Mostly because it had all happened so quickly, she hadn’t had time to worry about what happened next.
But then he’d kissed her. He was dying, and he’d kissed her, and then everything had gone white and she’d found herself in a dark room and his whole body had shivered and she’d thought he was about to actually die right in front of her, and instead he’d turned into a fucking giant cat.
And instead of taking the opportunity to run the fuck away and get out of the city before Sean figured out she’d betrayed him, she’d sat next to him. Paralyzed. Unable to tear her eyes away from him as the bleeding stopped and his heartbeat became stronger.
She had no idea what was going on. But two things were for sure. The world was a hell of a lot more complicated than she’d ever thought possible.
And she still couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.
Well, that stopped right now. She might have been too paralyzed with terror before to think about her situation, but her brain was finally starting to unfreeze. And she had far too much shit to deal with right now without adding a pathetic crush into the mix. She needed to tell him, now, that she was leaving. Whatever was happening here with dragons and cats and whatever else, she wanted no part of it.
Lance smiled at her, one eyebrow raised. “Are you
ready to go down?”
Keeley swallowed, hard.
I am so fucked.
“Sure,” she croaked.
Keeley didn’t watch Lance walk down the stairs from the mezzanine bedroom, because even the thought of seeing how his ass fit those pants made her skin fizz embarrassingly. She looked at her own feet and Maggie snuggling in her pocket, and nervously rubbed at her fingertips.
Which meant that when Lance suddenly stopped, she walked straight into him.
She jumped back immediately, her cheeks blazing. Lance smiled at her, apparently not noticing that her entire head might as well have just caught fire, and Keeley looked away quickly. His smile was just as mind-melting as his ass.
“Sorry,” he said. “I should probably grab my phone—you know what? Never mind.”
His green-gray eyes were so warm, it made her feel dizzy. She looked away, gravitating towards the massive windows. It was so light already. She must have been here longer than she’d thought. Hours and hours, watching Lance slowly come back to life.
The space below the bedroom felt like a living room, with a huge leather-covered sofa, rugs, and a drinks cabinet. A row of bookshelves either lined one wall, or was the wall. It was all light and airy, and Keeley couldn’t even imagine how much it cost.
My whole apartment could fit inside the space that sofa takes up, she thought.
“How high up are we here?” she asked out loud.
“Almost high enough.” From the way Lance said it, it was an old joke. Just not one she understood the punchline for.
“Cats like to be up high, huh?” Yeah. Just act casual about all the craziness. Be cool.
She tapped the window, feeling herself relax as she took in the view. I like to be up high, too. Far away from Sean and all his bullshit. She bit her lip, threads of unease winding through her gut.
Poking her head out of Keeley’s pocket, Maggie copied her, her claws scraping at the glass.
Behind her, Lance coughed. “Snow leopards do.”
“What?”
“I’m a snow leopard. Not a giant cat.”
She turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Isn’t a leopard just a sort of giant cat?”
