The jokes of their high school days were long-forgotten, though, as Levi frowned over the journals. He flipped pages slowly, and started making a few notes on a small pad of paper that he pulled out of his back pocket. Drake forced himself to be patient and quiet. He didn’t want to break Levi’s concentration.
About ten minutes into the silence, Drake felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen to find that he had a text from Kaiya.
Hey. Haven’t heard from you today. How’s journal reading going?
Drake felt his heart sink. He had promised Kaiya that he would call her today, but he hadn’t so much as texted her yet.
“Shit,” he whispered under his breath. He glanced up at Levi, who was still deeply concentrating and hadn’t even noticed that Drake’s phone had buzzed. Drake quietly left the kitchen and went to his bedroom, closing the door behind him so he could call Kaiya without disturbing Levi’s thought process
“Hey,” Kaiya said when she picked up the call. Her voice sounded neutral, but Levi knew she was upset.
“Hey, Baby. I’m really sorry I haven’t called you. I called an old shifter buddy of mine to come look at the journals, and I lost track of time.”
There was a long moment of silence before Kaiya replied.
“So, you’ll let one of your buddies look at the journals with you, but I’m not even allowed to come over and see you?” she said, a distinct hint of annoyance in her voice.
“I’m sorry,” Drake said. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you. It’s just that these journals are complicated. I couldn’t do it on my own, and this guy is an expert on shifter-human relations. He might actually be able to determine what language the journals are written in.”
Another long pause. Drake knew Kaiya was pissed. He didn’t entirely blame her, either. He had drawn her into the shifter world against her will, and now he was shielding her from the intrigue of the journals. Besides that, he had promised to call, and he had forgotten to do that.
“I’m really sorry, Kaiya,” Drake said. “Please, be patient with me. I’m at a loss myself on how to best handle this situation.”
“Well, one recommendation I could make for handling it is to not completely exclude your girlfriend, then promise to call her, and then not even do that.”
Drake winced. Kaiya’s voice didn’t sound angry so much as it sounded hurt. Drake didn’t know what to do. Kaiya was smart and capable, and she might actually be an asset to the shifter cause if there was trouble coming. But Drake was hesitant to drag her into things. He wanted to protect her, and how could he do that when he didn’t even know yet what he was protecting her from. It was better to wait until he had a clearer picture before making decisions on how to involve Kaiya. Still, he had been a shitty boyfriend. And he cared deeply for Kaiya. His dragon had been pining for her constantly since they had been apart, and he knew he didn’t want to live without her. He had to make sure she knew that he was serious about her. This wasn’t just a game for him.
“Kaiya, I can’t say enough how sorry I am. I messed up. Let me make it up to you with dinner tonight? Anywhere you want. And I promise I’ll tell you whatever information I have about the journals. Although honestly at this point it’s looking like I might not have much information at all.”
There was a small sigh on the other side of the phone.
“Fine,” Kaiya said. “We can do dinner tonight. But I hope you figure out these journals soon. I really like you, Drake, but I have to say this has been the most bizarre start to a relationship I’ve ever had.”
“I know,” Drake said. “I’ll do my best to be better about keeping you informed, okay?”
“Okay,” Kaiya said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Drake let out an exasperated sigh as he heard the line go silent on Kaiya’s end. He hoped he would have more answers before tonight, but when he got back out to the kitchen, Levi’s furrowed brow didn’t look too promising.
“Trouble in paradise?” Levi asked without looking up.
“Something like that,” Drake muttered. “She’s mostly mad because she wants to come over and help with the journals, but I don’t really want her to.”
Levi looked up for the first time since he’d entered the kitchen. An expression of surprise was on his face. “Why not? I would think you’d be thrilled to find a human girl who actually cares about shifter matters.”
Drake’s frown deepened. “It’s complicated,” he said.
“Is it?” Levi asked. “Seems pretty straightforward to me. If a girl wants to be with you, and you want to be with her, you should respect her enough to let her in on all the details of your life, shifter or otherwise. Holding back on who you really are will eventually cause a relationship to implode.”
Drake rolled his eyes. “Am I really standing here listening to relationship advice from a single guy?”
“Single by choice,” Levi said. “I’ve had plenty of girls interested. I just haven’t met the right one yet.”
Drake resisted the urge to roll his eyes again. He thought Levi was full of shit, but he needed his help right now and couldn’t afford to piss him off.
“Let’s stick to the journals and leave my love life out of this,” Drake said. “Do you think you can translate them?”
“No,” Levi said. “I know enough to recognize that this is a very old dialect, but I’m not sure exactly which one. It would probably take me years to work through translating all of it. It’s very ancient and very complicated, and I’m actually pretty impressed that your dad was able to write in it. I would have thought only the unicorn shifters would be well-versed enough in ancient shifter languages to use that dialect.”
“Yeah, my dad was obsessed with the ancient languages,” Drake said. “But since my dad is gone, that doesn’t help us much. And the unicorns are virtually impossible to track down unless they want to be found. Something tells me they don’t want to be found right now. So are we at another dead end? I don’t want to wait years to have these journals translated.”
“There is one other person who might be able to read and understand this dialect,” Levi said.
Drake felt a spark of hope in his chest. “Really? Who?” he asked.
“Griffin,” Levi said, watching Drake’s eyes carefully.
“Griffin?” Drake said, feeling the hope dissipate in his chest as quickly as it had arrived. “He’s shot anyone who came onto his property without permission ever since his dad died alongside mine.”
“I know,” Levi said. “But we aren’t just ‘anyone.’ We’re shifters who knew his family. He might listen to us, and he’s our only chance of figuring this all out. We have to go talk to him, and we have to tell your brothers and convince them to come with us. It wouldn’t hurt to bring along Max, too.”
Drake let his head fall into his hands on the counter. The frustration washed over him in waves. Griffin was a mountain lion shifter who lived alone in Texas Hill Country. His father had been friends with Drake’s dad before both of the older shifters had died. Drake had met Griffin as a young boy, but he couldn’t remember him anymore. Drake had always figured that if Griffin wanted to spend his days stewing in his own bitterness, then there was no point in trying to stop him. But now, Drake had a reason for visiting the reclusive Griffin. If Levi thought that Griffin could decode the ancient dragon dialect, he was probably right.
Drake glanced at the stack of old journals sitting on his kitchen counter. He was beginning to feel more and more like he was in way over his head right now. He’d come this far, though. There was nothing to do but keep moving forward.
* * *
Kaiya did her best to keep a pleasant expression on her face as the Sunday afternoon customers filtered in and out of her bookstore. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had been in this foul of a mood.
Her mind would not be quiet. She was alternating between being unbelievably angry at Drake for excluding her, and between thinking maybe she should
just leave him and the whole shifter world alone. The whole situation was so bizarre. Maybe it was better to turn around and pretend that nothing had ever happened between Drake and her. She could chalk up her time with Drake as just another bad romantic decision on her part and forget that she’d ever been told that shifters existed.
Except she knew she could never actually forget.
How could she? She had been in the same room as a real, live dragon. She had seen his giant wings folded against his body, and watched smoke curl upward from his nostrils. She had seen things she could never unsee.
And, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t actually want to forget. Rather, she wanted to know more. She wanted to understand better how the shifter phenomenon was even possible. She wanted to hear about how Drake and his brothers had handled growing up as dragons among humans. She wanted to know why the unicorns had magical powers. She couldn’t keep from wondering whether it was possible for her to ever become a shifter, too.
She had so many questions, but Drake didn’t want to give her answers. He wanted to shelter her from his world instead of pulling her into it with him. Kaiya knew he was trying in some strange way to protect her. But this only made her angrier. She wasn’t some damsel in distress who needed protection. She was a grown ass woman who could make her own decisions about what kind of danger she was willing to face.
The bell above the store’s front door jingled again, and Kaiya forced herself to smooth the scowl off her face. A tall, skinny man with beady, dark brown eyes had just walked in. Kaiya had never seen him in town before. For a moment, she wanted to tell him off, and say that if he was some sort of shifter delivering some sort of package for her to pass on to Drake, she wasn’t interested. But then Kaiya realized how absurd that would sound to anyone other than an actual shifter. This man was probably just someone passing through town or something. He didn’t have iridescent skin or sparkling eyes like the other stranger had. No, this was just a normal human stopping in to look at Kaiya’s books. The last thing she needed to do was accuse a human of being a shifter, and have the whole town hear about it. They would all think she was off her rocker, and probably stop shopping at her store. And Kaiya needed the income from her store. She took care of herself, thank you very much. No need for a man to pay her bills for her.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” the man said. His voice sounded oddly flat and cold, and Kaiya felt a shiver run through her body. Something wasn’t right about this man. She casually glanced at the skin on his arms again, but there was no shimmer or iridescence. Telling herself to calm down, she smiled as convincingly as she could.
“Thanks. I must say I’m pretty proud of the place. Took me a while to get the store off the ground, but now it’s where most of the locals buy their books.”
“Is that right?” the man asked, making his way up to the front counter, which Kaiya had been leaning against. He leaned against the counter, too, until his face was only inches away from hers. Kaiya shivered again, an involuntary shudder running through her body. Something about this man wasn’t right. He made her feel oddly cold.
“And tell me, dear, what about the non-locals? Do you get many out of town visitors in here?”
Kaiya suddenly felt very afraid. The man’s voice almost hissed as he spoke, and she suddenly suspected that he somehow knew Pierce, and knew that Pierce had visited to drop off the journals.
“Uh, we get a few here and there,” she said as she backed away from the counter so that the man’s face was no longer in her face. She glanced at the clock. It was still fifteen minutes until five, but she was ready to close up shop and be done with work for the day. This guy was creeping her out.
“Was there anything in particular I could help you find?” she asked weakly. “I was actually just getting ready to start closing up the store.”
“Oh, were you now?” the man said, his eyes turning even colder. “Well, let me help you then.”
The man turned and marched toward the front door, locking the deadbolt with one swift movement. Then he reached for the window shades and pulled them down so that no one outside on the street could see into the store. Kaiya felt her heart pounding as the man fixed his beady little eyes on her. His beady animal eyes.
Her initial gut instinct had been right. This man was a shifter. And not a very nice one from the looks of it.
“Now tell me,” he said, crossing his long, skinny arms. “Who visited you and what did they say?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaiya said. She was trying to sound brave, but her voice had taken on an unnaturally high pitch. The man sneered in her direction.
“I think you do know. And you’re going to tell me, willingly or not.”
A sudden rush of energy filled the store, knocking Kaiya backward and knocking several books off the shelves as well. When she managed to regain her balance and stand, horror filled her at the sight in front of her. Where the strange man had been standing only moments before, a snake bigger than a grown man had appeared. Its long tail was curled underneath it, and its neck rose high into the air, ending in a frighteningly large snakehead. The snake flicked its tongue at her and bared its fangs, and Kaiya stared at in shock for a few moments, unable to think or move.
And then, she screamed. The sound was loud, long, and terrified, and it echoed off the high walls of the dark bookstore as Kaiya stumbled backward in a clumsy attempt to escape. The snake, completely unfazed by her screaming, lunged forward to chase after her as she scrambled away.
Chapter Nine
Drake felt a cold chill pass through his body the moment before he heard the scream. He stopped midsentence and spun around in a frantic circle, looking for Kaiya. But the only person he could see in the room was Levi, who was looking at him as though he had lost his mind.
“Dude, is everything okay?” Levi asked.
“Did you not hear that?” Drake replied, his heart pounding wildly. He already knew the answer. Levi hadn’t heard the scream. If he had, he wouldn’t have been acting so calm.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Levi said, looking confused.
That was all the confirmation Drake needed. He took off at a run toward his front door.
“Kaiya’s in danger,” he yelled over his shoulder. “I just heard her scream in my head. I have to go help her.”
Levi instantly understood. “I’m coming with you!” he yelled.
Flashes of powerful energy shook the tree in Drake’s front yard as he and Levi both shifted. Where two men had been moments before, a dragon and panther now appeared. Drake knew it was incredibly risky to shift in his front yard in the middle of the day, but he didn’t have time to worry about the neighbors right now. Kaiya needed him, and the quickest way to get to her was in dragon form. He flapped his wings, rising high into the sky and turning to head toward Main Street, where her bookstore was located. Below him, he could see Levi’s panther streaking through the streets so quickly that he looked like a blur of black smoke. Levi probably didn’t know exactly where the store was, but he would follow Drake’s dragon.
Drake could feel his dragon heart pounding in his chest as a mixture of fear and anger rose within him. The scream he had heard had been a result of the lifemate bond that he now knew for certain had formed between Kaiya and him. He had suspected it already, but this had been confirmation. She was his lifemate, and he was bound to her for life. Whenever a shifter’s lifemate was in mortal danger, the lifemate bond would trigger a warning reaction. Only the shifter’s actual lifemate could hear or feel the warning, but it was such a powerful warning that the shifter who was being warned usually thought their lifemate was right there in the room with them, even if they weren’t. That’s what had happened to Drake. He had heard her scream, and thought she was right there in the room. Levi hadn’t heard anything, but as soon as Drake had explained the scream, Levi had understood—and had not hesitated to run toward the danger with his dear friend. Now, dragon and panther were racing together
to save Kaiya. Drake only hoped they weren’t too late. He had never felt a deep, gut-wrenching fear like this before. All he could think about was the fact that he couldn’t bear to lose Kaiya.
“Hang on, Love. I’m coming for you,” his heart whispered. He hoped her heart could hear him, and that she knew he was on his way.
Less than two minutes later, Drake’s dragon came to a rapid, tumbling landing in the middle of Main Street. Thankfully, it was after five p.m., so the street was all but deserted. Drake was sure someone would see him out here in the middle of the day, but all he could do for now was hope that whoever might see him would be willing to listen to reason and not blast out to the whole town the fact that there were shifters living in Persimmon Springs.
The front door to the bookstore was closed, and Drake was sure it was locked. The shades were pulled down over the windows, too. But Drake knew Kaiya was still in there. He had seen her car in the back alley as he flew in. She was trapped in there with some sort of evil, and he didn’t have a moment to waste. He took a deep breath in, and then let out a long stream of fire, aimed directly at the front door handle. It melted away almost instantly. He was sorry to cause damage to Kaiya’s store, but it couldn’t be helped. Her life was more important than a door.
Lone Star Secret (Shifters in the Heart of Texas Book 4) Page 6
