by Zoe Chant
"Not like that, you have to support its body so it trusts you." Tessa picked up one of the other kittens. "Like this, see? Mel, c'mon, pay attention, it's not like I haven't shown you a thousand times—"
A sudden knock at the door made both women jump, nearly dropping their kittens. Tessa scowled at her friend. It was all Melody's fault, making her this tense. Probably just a shelter volunteer who forgot their keys, or someone who hadn't read their posted hours.
"I'll get it," Melody said quickly, shoving the kitten at Tessa before fleeing down the hall.
"Hey!"
The fact that Mel was now running off to answer the door with no trace of fear made Tessa think there was definitely something going on other than a mob hit (seriously, what even). A surprise birthday party? No, her birthday was some months off. She sighed and looked down at the double armload of squirming kittens Mel had left her with. From the hallway, she heard friendly-sounding voices, Mel and a man. Mel's mysterious friend, she guessed.
As the voices came down the hall, Tessa turned, juggling her armful of kittens. "Say, Mel, if your friend's here, you don't have to stick—around—"
She had never seen this guy before in her life. She definitely would have remembered.
It was like being punched right in the primitive hindbrain, in a way that completely bypassed her conscious mind and went straight to I would climb that like a tree.
He wasn't enormously over-muscled, but he was built, broad shoulders filling out his charcoal-colored shirt, worn with no tie, with a dark jacket over the top. His black hair showed the faintest trace of silver at the temples—she guessed he was in his late thirties or so—and his eyes were gray, stormcloud eyes focused on her with startled intensity.
Inside her chest, it almost seemed as if something unfurled its wings, an odd little tingling flutter.
And here she was, giving this gorgeous guy his first sight of her with an armful of unruly kittens and her hair dried into spikes from this morning's shower, wearing an oversized T-shirt that said ASK ME ABOUT MY CAT HABIT.
"Tessa!" Mel said, oblivious to all of it. "This is my brother Ben. He's going to be your bodyguard for awhile. Because of the—the mob thing?"
Sudden, massive irritation overwhelmed all the conflicting emotions she was feeling. "What the hell, Melody? You didn't think you should consult me about this?"
Ben cleared his throat. Now that Melody mentioned it, Tessa could see the family resemblance, at least in their general coloring: dark hair, gray eyes, a fine, clear complexion. There was a slight echo of Melody in his chiseled features, though much more masculine and less delicate.
"Ms. Davelos—" he began.
"Stop right there, mister." Though she couldn't help noticing what a nice voice he had, a soft tenor with a slightly gravelly undertone. "I don't want a bodyguard. I don't need a bodyguard. I definitely can't afford a bodyguard—"
"Tessa, you're not listening—" Melody began.
"Ms. Davelos, I'm a police officer—" Ben started to say.
"Oh great, you called the cops! Just—what is wrong with you, Melody?" Tessa set the kittens gently on the nearest cat tree; they at least hadn't done anything to annoy her.
"Tessa, just listen!" Melody's voice was almost a wail, at least as close as she ever got. "You're in danger, terrible danger!"
"From what? You keep telling me that, but you won't explain." She glared between the two of them, all too aware that now Mel's hot brother was getting to see her flushed with fury. "If I'm really in danger for some reason, just tell me."
"Dragons," Mel's brother said succinctly. Mel's mouth dropped open. So did Tessa's. "You're in danger from dragons."
"Ben!" Mel burst out.
"As Dad's fond of reminding me, I'm not bound by your rules. You might not be able to tell her, but I can." Ben turned to face Tessa. "Ms. Davelos, you're being hunted by a dragon."
Tessa finally managed to scrape enough of her wits together to say, "Get. Out."
"This is why we don't tell people," Mel told Ben between her teeth in a loud, angry whisper.
"Out! Both of you!" Tessa's eyes stung. She'd thought Melody was the one person who would never engage in stupid grade-school pranks with Tessa Davelos as the butt of the joke. (What's the matter, Pieface? Why aren't you laughing?) That's what she got for trusting someone. For trusting anyone. "Are you the one who vandalized my doorframe too? What kind of game are you playing? Get out!"
Mel flinched away from her, conflict-avoidant to the last, and some slightly calmer part of Tessa told her, through the hot rage, that none of this made sense. Childish jokes weren't Mel's style, and her fear had seemed to be genuine. Why would Mel make Tessa angry on purpose, when Mel hated people being angry with her? Nothing made sense!
So why won't you tell me the truth? Why these stupid lies about dragons?
She moved forward to push Ben toward the door. Instead he caught her hands. He was shockingly strong, though his grip was gentle.
"I know how you're feeling, Ms. Davelos, but believe me, the threat is real."
"Everyone keeps telling me that, but no one will tell me what this threat actually is!" She wrenched her hands to free herself. Ben was definitely strong enough to have kept holding on, but he let go immediately.
"Can we talk?" He kept his voice calm, his hands out with palms open, eyes on her. "Is there a break room or something similar in here? We could have a cup of coffee and discuss this."
"I'll just be going, then—" Mel began in her whispery voice, starting to duck past her brother into the hallway.
Ben's hand shot out and caught her wrist. "Oh no you don't." He turned to her, and Tessa saw a flash of older-sibling irritation in his gray eyes. "If you and Dad are going to involve me in this, you're gonna stick around to help." He turned back toward Tessa, still holding his sister by the wrist. "Ms. Davelos, none of this is your fault. Just hear me out. Let me explain." With another annoyed glance at Mel: "Both of us will explain."
"An explanation would be very nice, yeah." Tessa tried to stop her voice from shaking. She took a couple of deep breaths and held out her armload of cats. "And if you're going to stay, make yourself useful and pet a kitten. Both of you."
The Keegan siblings stared at her, looking very much alike in that instant. Two pairs of wide, startled gray eyes regarded her in disbelief.
"No kitties," Tessa said, "no talkies."
Melody gave a little huff. "Okay ... fine ..." She took one of the kittens, this time trying to hold it as Tessa had showed her. That didn't help; it still tried to crawl out of her arms as usual.
The other one, though, the one Tessa was still holding ...
To Tessa's surprise, it was struggling in her arms, not to get away, but to go toward Ben. He held out a hand, and the kitten scrambled out of her arms and into Ben's. It snuggled up against his chest and started purring.
"Whoa." She glanced over at the one Melody was holding. It was trying to do the same thing, struggling to get out of Melody's arms and crawl onto Ben. "Are you, uh—some kind of natural cat person or what?"
"Something like that." Ben was holding the kitten absently, not paying much attention to it. It didn't seem to care; it snuggled up against him like it had found a long-lost family member.
The high-pitched yowling of the other kittens caught her attention. They were pawing at the wire mesh of their pen, trying to climb through like they, too, wanted to share in some of the petting. Which they'd never done before. They were friendly enough with the shelter workers they were familiar with, but nothing at all like this.
And then she realized the rest of the cats in the room were acting weird, too.
One reason why she'd noticed the yowling of the kittens was because the rest of the cats had become strangely hushed. Some of the younger and newer ones were acting like the kittens, fawning against the front of their kennels, wanting attention—even a couple of ferals who had never made a move toward human interaction before. But most of the rest had settle
d down cautiously, sitting at the fronts of their kennels, and were staring at Ben.
She'd never seen them react to a new person in the kennel room like this before. The shelter had a couple of volunteers who were especially good with them (and one lady who claimed to be a cat whisperer, although Tessa had never notice any sign that communication was actually taking place). But this was something else. It made the hairs on the back of her arms stand up.
Unlike the cat whisperer, Ben didn't seem to be doing anything to attract the cats' attention. In fact, he looked deeply uncomfortable, like someone who had accidentally wandered onstage and had found themselves the unwilling target of attention from a whole room full of people.
Well ... it would be easier to feed them if they were all calm. Except for the kittens, who were going out of their minds. Tessa opened their kennel door and they spilled out to rub around Ben's ankles.
She might not believe in dragons, but there was still something weird about this guy. Aside from the fact that he was almost supernaturally good-looking. Even covered in kittens. Especially covered in kittens.
"I'm going to go ahead and finish my morning routine before the shelter opens," she said, wrenching her gaze away. "If you two want to talk, follow along and kitten-wrangle. Pick up a can of cat food if you want. But I'm going to be working."
And the mental image of Ben Keegan covered in adorable kittens was definitely not going to be keeping her company while she did that.
Not at all.
Chapter Three
She was his mate. His mate!
He didn't know whether to be thrilled or utterly dismayed. He couldn't tell if she liked him at all. At this of all times, his ability to read people seemed to have completely deserted him. He'd never met anyone as inscrutable as Tessa Davelos.
Surely she must feel what he was feeling, or something like it: the tug in his chest every time he looked at her, as if a fishhook had been set behind his breastbone and was pulling him steadily, inexorably toward her.
Did Dad know?
He couldn't have. Shifters couldn't recognize each other's mates. At least Ben didn't think so. He couldn't. Maybe dragons could. And his dad was definitely the sort who would interfere in his kids' love life ...
But, no. She was his mate. They were fated to meet. If it hadn't been here and now, it would have been somewhere else.
Also, she was marked for death by dragons, and she didn't even believe dragons existed. That was going to put a definite damper on the relationship.
"Please take this," Melody muttered between her teeth, thrusting her unhappy kitten in his direction.
Ben took the kitten absently and let him settle down with the little girl-kitten already snuggled to his chest. His panther purred, contented at both the unexpected presence of his mate and of an armload of cat-children. The kittens purred back.
Apparently dragons were not nearly as much to their liking. He noticed a ripple of discontent among the cats as Melody trailed him, and he followed Tessa, through the room full of cages.
Tessa worked briskly and busily, scooping out catboxes and spooning wet food into bowls. After watching for a minute, Melody picked up a cat litter scoop and went to work. Ben would have liked to, but his arms were full of kittens and every time he tried to put them down, they started crying.
Which probably wasn't helping impress his mate that he was either good mate material or good protector material. He couldn't even boss around a kitten, for pete's sake.
On the other hand, cats were famously hard to give orders to. At the moment, most of the cats in the shelter—aside from the kittens, who apparently had decided he was their new mom—were regarding Ben and his panther with wary respect, shaded with a certain element of "What are you looking at, asshole?"
"I can't believe you just told her," Melody muttered out of the corner of her mouth. "What's wrong with you?"
"What did you tell her?" he whispered back.
"That the mob's after her."
"Oh yeah, that's plausible."
"More plausible than dragons!" she shot back.
"I can hear you whispering over there," Tessa said loudly. She straightened up, bag of cat litter in one plastic-gloved hand and a sack of waste in the other. She was utterly gorgeous, scruffy hair and oversized T-shirt and all. She should be a painting: Woman holding cat litter no. 12. Her skin was a beautiful caramel color, her hair dark mahogany brown. Ben just wanted to rest his eyes on her forever.
Instead he forced himself to look away, gaze drifting to one of the cats, who stared back, unimpressed, as if to say, You're not doing a very good job of this so far, buddy.
"This isn't an easy thing to explain, Ms. Davelos," he said.
Tessa tossed the bag into a bin. "Well, so far, you're not even trying to explain."
She had a point. He looked back at her, meeting her deep chocolate-brown eyes. She looked wary, and he was suddenly aware of how much of her defensiveness was a facade. She was worried, scared, and all he wanted to do was put his arms around her and tell her that everything was going to be all right.
Which was the one thing he couldn't do. She was human; she didn't know about fated mates. She didn't know him. As far as she was concerned, he was some weirdo who showed up out of nowhere and started babbling about dragons.
And how much reassurance could he offer her? He couldn't take on a dragon and win. In a head-to-head fight, a panther was going to lose.
One thing at a time, though. First he had to get her on board with the idea that the threat was real.
"I know it sounds crazy," he said. "All I can tell you is, dragons exist. And that mark on your doorframe—is it just here, or at your home also?" Maybe they weren't after her; maybe the target was someone else at the shelter, a fellow shifter—
"It's at her home too," Melody said. "Beside her apartment door."
"Kids," Tessa said. "Gang symbols."
Ben shook his head. "That's a dragon symbol. They've marked you. But why? The only reason why dragons would come after you like this is if you've trespassed against them. And they wouldn't call out an assassin for a minor offense. It must be something extreme. But from what you've said, you didn't even know that dragons existed until today."
"I still don't know that dragons exist," Tessa said. "You haven't provided a shred of evidence."
Ben glanced at Melody. She gave her head a tiny shake. Great. Not that he'd expected her to agree to shift in front of a human. Dragons were even more secretive than most shifters. Still, it would've been nice to get a little help here.
There was only one other thing to do. It was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. But he had to get her to take the threat seriously. His mate's life was at stake.
"I can give you some evidence," he said. "Not about dragons, exactly. But it ought to help. Are there any cameras in here? Any kind of monitoring?"
Tessa frowned. "That's an ominous question if I ever heard one."
"Just tell him, Tess," Melody said.
"There's a kitten webcam in their cage." Tessa pointed to it. "We're far outside its field of view right now, though, and it doesn't pick up sounds. Look, I'm giving you a lot of trust here, buddy, not to just kick you out the door. The fact that you're Mel's brother is the only reason why you're still in here at all." But there was something odd in her voice, a slight hitch as if some part of her wanted to insist otherwise.
"This'll be quick," Ben said. "I'm going to need to take my clothes off. Are we likely to be interrupted in the next few minutes?"
"... wait, you need to what?"
Ben set down the kittens carefully and began to undress.
***
Tessa stared as Ben shrugged out of his jacket. She darted a quick, baffled glance at Melody, but her best friend merely looked exasperated, as if taking his clothes off in public was something her brother did all the time.
"What are you doing?" Tessa's voice rose to a startled squeak. Under the jacket he was wearing a shoulder holster
, the leather strap cutting a sharp line across pecs that were defined even through his shirt. He carefully unbuckled the holster and hung it on the door of an empty kennel, out of reach of animals or children.
"I could do this without stripping, but I'd ruin my clothes and have nothing to wear afterwards." He unbuttoned his shirt. As Tessa got her first glimpse of his firm, muscular chest, her higher brain functions started to shut down. "You can look away if you want. I wouldn't do this except I really need to convince you, and I can't think of any other way."
Tessa told herself she could stop him. She should stop him. All she had to do was say the word and, she thought, he'd stop. And they were getting closer to the shelter's opening time. Other employees and volunteers would arrive soon. Her supervisor might walk in on this.
He stripped out of his shirt, and at that point, she couldn't have looked away if she'd wanted to. The bag of cat litter in her hand dropped to her feet, all but unnoticed. Oh God, he was built. Not heavy and overmuscled, but she preferred her men a little bit on the lean side anyway, well defined and strong.
Melody turned away with her hands over her face. "We are never talking about this, Ben. Ever."
"Go guard the door, would you?" Ben suggested with a hint of laughter in his voice.
Melody fled the room.
Ben leaned down to untie his shoes, stepping out of them one at a time, and tucking each of his socks into its respective shoe. The precision intrigued her; most men would've just carelessly dropped their socks on the floor. More distracting, however, was the long curve of his spine, the hint of the top of his ass above his waistband when he bent over ...
He dropped his pants and stepped out of them. Tessa's throat was dry as he hooked his fingers into the waistband of his boxers.
"You can look away," he reminded her.
She didn't look away.
The boxers followed the pants, and then he stood naked before her.
He was gorgeous. Now she could see why he moved with such supple grace, with those chiseled muscles and not a speck of extra fat on him anywhere. His chest was lightly furred, dark curls trailing in an enticing line across his flat abdomen, down to the area that she was resolutely not looking at—well, maybe a peek wouldn't hurt—
