“Penny?” said Lachlan.
I looked up at him.
“You okay?”
I tried a smile. “I’m fine. I, uh, I need to go now, though.”
“Damn it,” he said. “This upset you. I was debating even bringing it up or showing it to you, but I knew that you’d want to know, so I thought—”
“No, I’m glad you told me.” I wanted to reassure him, so I leaned forward and pecked him on the lips once, quickly, and then pulled back. “It’s fine.”
He caught my arm. “If I had a nickel for every time you said that things were fine—”
“Really, it is fine, though.” I smiled at him. “It’s only that I’m running late. I have a zillion things that I need to be catching up on right now, and I’ve just gotta go.”
He nodded slowly. He let go of my arm.
I stood up. “I’ll talk to you later?”
“You want to do dinner or something?”
“Tonight?”
He nodded. “Sure. Maybe around seven or—”
“I don’t know. Um, can I let you know later?”
He surveyed me. “If something was really wrong, Penny, you’d never tell me in a hundred years, would you?”
I laughed. “Of course I would. Don’t be silly.”
CHAPTER TWO
The truth was that I wasn’t busy at all. Even though the hotel was packed full of guests, I had hired a fabulous staff who did their jobs impeccably, and no one needed me for help with anything. I didn’t even need to watch the front desk, because everyone always showed up for their shifts. On time to boot.
So, when I got back to the hotel, I actually had nothing to do. Which was probably a good thing. I didn’t want to be overly active. Too much strenuous activity would be bad for the pregnancy, and I had grown desperately attached to this very tiny little being growing inside myself, despite my best efforts not to.
I knew it was likely that I’d lose this baby, and it was still so early on. I had made it past the twelve-week mark, which was when most miscarriages happened, but that didn’t mean anything, because I’d miscarried in my seventh month and in my eighth month, so I wouldn’t be able to relax until I was holding the baby in my arms.
I tried to keep myself from thinking about the future or daydreaming about the baby, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Especially since I had so little of anything else to keep my mind off of it. I spent most afternoons lying on my bed watching youtube videos of pregnancy vlogs.
This afternoon turned out to be no different.
I even ended up taking a nap—I was tired all the time these days—and when I woke up, it was getting dark outside.
Damn it. Had I missed a call from Lachlan?
I went to pick up my cell phone, but the screen didn’t show any missed calls.
That was weird. He must have gotten caught up in a case or something at work. He always called me. I looked forward to talking to him on the phone, even if I wouldn’t let myself see him. Seeing him today had been hard. He was so nice to look at, and it was so easy to get lost looking into his eyes or to remember how good it was when his arms were around me. I wanted to touch him again.
But I shouldn’t.
It wasn’t fair to him if I didn’t tell him about the baby. And I couldn’t tell him that. I didn’t want things to change between us.
Of course, they were already changed. I wasn’t so stupid that I couldn’t tell that.
Lachlan thought that I didn’t want to see him because I was frightened of intimacy. He thought that his touch reminded me of Alastair or something. He was wrong. There was nothing about Lachlan that called to my mind the monster of my ex-husband. But I let Lachlan think that. It was easier that way.
I was starved, so I dragged myself out into my kitchen and put some water on to boil. Spaghetti was easy and filling, though I was going to need some protein, and I wasn’t much up for browning meat. I searched the cabinet for a can of lentils. That would do it. I set the lentils and the tomato sauce on the counter and I wandered out into my living room while I waited for the water to get hot enough.
There was a knock on my door. I went over and opened it.
“Hey, Penny,” said Connor Beckett, who was one of my best friends. He was a gargoyle, so he was only awake at night, and it looked like he might have just woken up. He hated summer, because there was less darkness, and his “days” were too short.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door wider to let him in.
“How’s it going?” he asked, sitting himself down on my couch. He was wearing a pair of cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. Connor wasn’t much for clothes. Most of his gray stony skin was on display.
“Oh, you know,” I said. “Fine. And you?” I wasn’t sure if he’d popped up here to chat or what. That wasn’t like him, but he and Felicity were both concerned for me now, what with the pregnancy and all. Felicity was my other best friend. The two of them and my doctor were the only people who knew I was going to have a baby, and I wanted it to stay that way.
“I actually…” He tugged his bare feet up onto the couch and hooked his arms over his knees. “I wanted to ask a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” I peered into the kitchen at the pot of water. I didn’t see any steam rising from it yet.
“Kind of a big one,” he said.”
I sat down on an easy chair opposite him. “Okay. What’s going on?”
“Uh… I have a friend,” he said. “A guy I met at the bar a few weeks ago.”
I groaned. “Are you moving out too?”
“What?” he said.
“Felicity met Jensen and moved in with him and left me high and dry. You’ve got a boyfriend too, now—”
“No, he’s not my boyfriend,” said Connor.
“Oh,” I said. “Just a friend?”
Connor nodded. “Yeah.”
“Is he straight?”
“No,” said Connor.
“So there’s boyfriend potential?”
“Uh… I don’t know. I thought he was cute and funny and everything when I met him. But he’s in so much trouble, and he’s all screwed up over it. And besides, he already has a boyfriend.”
“Connor, getting between a couple—”
“A boyfriend who beats him,” said Connor.
I stopped, stunned. “What did you say?”
“Abuse happens in gay relationships too, you know.”
“No, I’m sure it does. I just wasn’t expecting…” I let out a long, slow breath. “What’s this favor, Connor?”
“I want you to help me get him away from that guy,” said Connor.
“Does he want to leave?” I said.
“The last time I saw him, he was covered in bruises,” said Connor. “I asked him what happened, and he made up some bullshit story, but I pushed, and he told me everything. See, when I met him, his boyfriend was out of town, so that’s when Brian—that’s his name—thought it might be fun to go out with some of his co-workers. His boyfriend never lets him go anywhere, but Brian figured if he never found out, it wouldn’t matter. Except his boyfriend did find out, and he was royally pissed, and he started wailing on Brian, and I can’t leave him there, Penny, I can’t.”
“Does he want to leave?” I said again.
“How could he want to stay when he’s so beat up?”
“Did you ask him if he wanted to leave?”
“Well… no, but he has to want to leave. He can’t want to stay.”
“You’d be surprised,” I muttered.
“Penny—”
“I want to help your friend, Connor, but the truth is, until he asks for help, then there’s not much we can do. I stayed with Alastair for years, you know.”
“Yeah, I know, but no one tried to get you out of there.”
“People tried,” I said. “I had friends from before I got mated who didn’t like him. But I didn’t like hearing what they were saying, so I just stopped talking to them. I even had a woman
recognize the signs of what was going on with me and tell me to get out of there. She had been through something similar, and she told me I had to leave, that I couldn’t stay, that things would never get better. And still. I stayed.”
Connor hugged his knees tighter to his chest. “But Penny—”
“And besides,” I said. “I can’t go up against some crazy abusive bastard right now. I’m pregnant.”
“You breathe fire,” said Connor.
“Is he human?”
“He’s a drake,” Connor said in a small voice.
I sighed. “Seriously?”
Drakes were people who had died with dragon flesh in their system. They woke up dragon-human hybrids with scales and claws and mutated bodies. Most of them got hooked on dragon meat, which was a popular street drug that made people feel invincible. It was very addictive, and drakes tended to want nothing more than to have more of it.
Connor was quiet.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a gentle voice. “But I don’t think your friend is ready to be helped.”
* * *
After eating my spaghetti, I tried to watch TV, but I ended up falling asleep again. When my phone rang, I was lying in a heap on my couch, still in my clothes. I felt sick to my stomach. Ugh. I hated morning sickness. Especially because it wasn’t confined to the morning.
I picked up the phone, groggy. “Hello?”
“Penny, it’s Lachlan.”
“Oh, are you okay? You didn’t call earlier.”
“I’ve got news,” he said.
More news? Was it more like the information he’d given me earlier? “What kind of news?”
“Were you asleep?”
I yawned. “Yeah, I fell asleep on the couch.” I stretched.
“It’s not even 10:30,” he said. “You feeling all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “What’s the news?”
“It’s Alastair,” he said. “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
Lachlan met me at the door to the morgue. “This way. I’ll show you where they’ve got him. He’s in dragon form, so they couldn’t fit him in the body bags.”
I was shaking. I felt cold all over. “They really found him in a big cooler?”
“It was full of dragon bodies,” said Lachlan, heading down the hallway. “Apparently, this guy would keep the bodies on ice until he was ready to dehydrate them to turn them into powder for the pills he sold.”
I felt even sicker to my stomach. I gagged a little as I followed Lachlan down the hallway.
“Oh, sorry,” said Lachlan, noticing. “I mean, it’s awful what these dealers do. This guy was probably supplying the entire east coast, we figure. He was buying the bodies direct from slayers.”
“So, Alastair was killed by a slayer?”
“Maybe.” Lachlan shrugged. “Initially, they’re saying it looks like he was killed with a bow and arrows, which is consistent with a slayer attack.”
“But he was so powerful,” I said. “You tried to shoot him with a gun, and he stopped the bullets.”
“I know. I can hardly believe that someone was able to catch him off guard like that. But if he wasn’t watching, then there’s no reason that he wouldn’t be vulnerable to an arrow.” He stopped next to a door. “He’s in here.”
“It’s not going to be him,” I said.
“It’s him,” said Lachlan. “They ran DNA samples to identify the dragons. I convinced them that they needed to do that to inform the families of the dragons. You would not believe the way these guys were treating those dragon parts. It was like they didn’t belong to people, you know? Sometimes, this whole department just feels us versus them, and I want to strangle—you okay?”
I was shivering. “If it’s him, Lachlan, then…”
“Then what?”
“It’s over,” I whispered. No more waiting for Alastair to appear around the next corner, compelling me to do something horrible. No more wearing a talisman to damper my mating bond, which made me attracted to him, even though he was horrible and cruel.
“It is over, Penny,” he said, and his voice was quiet too. He pushed open the door.
I entered the room.
There were two different dragons lying out on slabs in the middle of the room. One was orange and red—not Alastair.
In dragon form, Alastair was covered in blue-tinged scales that glinted when his body streamed up out of the water. All dragons had to shift in the water, or it would damage our human form. Whenever Alastair shifted, he was breathtaking.
And that was…
Was…
A strangled sob-like noise echoed in the room.
It took me a second to realize I’d made it.
“Penny?”
“It’s him,” I said in a hollow voice.
“Yes, of course, it’s him,” said Lachlan.
I turned to look at Lachlan. Tears were welling up in my eyes. I shook my head. “This can’t…” I was still shaking. “Things like this don’t happen to me. I don’t get lucky like this. I’m the person that gets hunted down by the bad guy and has to fight him to the death. This is a dream.”
He shook his head. “This is real.”
I looked back at Alastair’s lifeless form.
Free, I thought. Completely free. He’s dead, and he can never hurt me again.
Lachlan put a tentative hand on my shoulder. I knew he was afraid to touch me.
I turned and threw my arms around him, laughing. Giggles were welling up in me, and I thought it was horrible to be laughing over a corpse, but the things this man had done to me—
Lachlan hugged me back.
* * *
“You going to eat those?” I snagged Lachlan’s fries off the coffee table in my living room. We’d come back here with fast food—burgers and fries—because I was starving, and I needed to eat something with protein to stave off the nausea.
“Well, I was thinking about it,” he said.
“Sorry.” I shoved several in my mouth and then handed them back to him.
He waved me away. “Please. If you’re hungry, you should go ahead.”
“Thanks,” I said, around a mouthful of fries.
He eyed me, grinning. “I’m glad you’re taking this well.”
I swallowed. “How else would I take it?”
“Well… he was your husband. You might have felt conflicting—”
“Oh, hell, no.” I stuffed more fries in my mouth and chewed. “I hated him. He was a horrible person, and he hurt me, and he hurt you, and Felicity, and Connor and everyone I cared about. No, any residual positive emotions that I had toward him I lost a long time ago.”
“Good,” he said. “I think that’s healthy.”
“I just… the relief.” I ate more fries.
“You’ve been looking over your shoulder the past few months,” he said.
“Haven’t you?”
He considered. “I guess, yeah. But I’m not afraid of him. Wasn’t afraid of him, that is.”
“You saying that I was?”
“You’d have been crazy not to be.”
“But not you?”
“He took more from you than he could ever take from me. And you guys had that mating bond. Maybe you weren’t afraid of him exactly, but things were tense. And now things can go back to normal.”
I stopped eating fries. Things weren’t going to be normal, but he didn’t know that. I should tell him, but I didn’t know how. I set the fries back on the coffee table.
He picked them up. “Did I say something wrong?”
“What? Of course not.”
He plucked out a fry and stared at it. “Because you seem…” He leaned forward. “Listen, if you think that I meant we should be having sex again, I didn’t. I swear I have no interest in pressuring you—”
“Good,” I said, smiling at him, happy that he had given me an excuse, something to blame my reaction on. I yawned. “But you can stay if you want. Do you want to?”
He
put the fry in his mouth. Chewed and then swallowed. “I would love to.”
Later, with Lachlan’s warm, solid body wrapped around mine, I felt a soft longing radiating through my core. It had been so long since we’d been this close, and right now, my entire body seemed so, so sensitive.
I put my lips against his.
And he kissed me slowly, carefully, like he thought I would shatter.
I wanted to wrap my legs around his hips, push his shirt up to bare his flat stomach.
But he kissed me on the forehead and said, “I meant it. I’m tired, anyway.”
So, I rolled over and let him spoon me. I was tired too. In seconds, I was fast asleep and dreaming.
* * *
I had forgotten about the weird pregnancy dreams. Something about all the hormones in a pregnant woman’s body makes her have insanely vivid dreams. That night, I dreamed that I had become the queen dragon in some weird medieval world, only there were cell phones and malls, and my dragon friends and I were alternating war strategies with calling each other and going clothes shopping.
When I woke up, Lachlan was leaving. It was morning, and he had to go to work.
I would have stayed in bed forever, but my stomach started growling, and I got that telltale nauseous feeling that told me I needed some protein stat.
I wandered into the kitchen and got a Greek yogurt out of my refrigerator. Greek yogurt had tons of protein, and it was actually moderately appealing when I felt like vomiting. Moderately.
I gulped it down, forcing myself to swallow, telling myself that once I had something in my stomach, I’d feel better.
My first pregnancy, I hadn’t had any morning sickness at all. But I’d also lost the baby at ten weeks, and I’d come to believe—superstitiously—that morning sickness was a good sign. I’d had it with both of my other pregnancies. Not that it had mattered in the end.
Felicity was convinced that Alastair’s beating me and the constant shifting I’d done from human to dragon form had an adverse affect on my pregnancies. When dragons shifted forms, we healed, so I was always shifting after a bad beating to heal myself up.
Truthfully, she could have been right. I hadn’t really told the doctors about the fact that I was being abused by my husband or about all my shifting. But no dragon doctors had warned me not to shift during pregnancy.
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