by Maia Starr
I walked over to the safe and gingerly picked up the gun, using the thumb and index finger of my hand. It was small, but it was still pretty heavy. I practiced the grip that Glenn showed me but didn’t put my hand on the trigger. That was a no-no. Even the slightest bit of pressure could set this thing off, which was good if I needed to use it. That was the power of a gun: you didn’t need to be strong to use it. A woman like me could hold her own against a brute like Xavier.
Still, it made me very uncomfortable and I couldn’t keep my hands steady so long as I was holding it, so I put it back down in the safe.
I noticed a manilla folder that the gun was resting on with the Fiery Hearts logo on it. I was curious what they had in the file on me. They pieced it together from my social media account, but what were the pictures they used, and were they able to compile anything else about me from the data?
Sure enough, there were a few pictures of me in the folder, though not my personal favorites. In one, I felt like my face was a little too washed out. In another, I was wearing an unflattering outfit. Overall, though, I must have looked good enough because Glenn picked me.
I also found something else in there: a photocopy of a legal document. I thought it was the contract that Glenn had to sign or something, but it wasn’t. It didn’t even look like it was associated with the Fiery Hearts agency.
And so, in what was certainly a mistake, I read it.
It was the will for Glenn’s father. Most of it was in complicated legalese, but I made it to one part I understood, and I didn’t like what I read.
Upon my death, I bestow the title of Alpha upon my only son, Glenn Carter, along with all of my property and assets, assuming he has taken a wife by that time and, with her, produced an heir.
His father had just died. It wasn’t coincidence that he married me right thereafter and…I looked at my belly, my pregnancy not even showing, but I knew our baby was inside me. What I thought was a love child. But, no, it was just a loophole. A trick in order for Glenn to get his father’s inheritance.
I went back to the couch and finished watching the movie. But for some reason, it just wasn’t making me laugh anymore.
Glen came home, and the door caught on the chain.
“Amelia,” he said. “It’s me.”
I walked up to the door and undid the chain for him.
“I talked to my family lawyer and we’re going to get some bodyguards to keep us safe, okay? You don’t need to worry anymore.”
I wasn’t smiling. I was fuming.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “I promise, it’s going to be all right.”
“I found your father’s will,” I said. “When were you going to tell me?”
He paused in the front entranceway and put his hands out to calm me. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Let’s sit down and talk about this because it’s complicated.”
He reached out to touch me, to move me towards the couch, but I pushed his hand away.
“I’m good standing,” I said.
“Okay, okay, then let’s stand.”
We stood in silence for what felt like forever.
“Well?” I said.
He made a gesture as if to speak, but no words came out. He thought for a little while longer, and the words came out slowly. “Look,” he said, “from my point of view, I’m not sure I see the problem.”
“You don’t?”
“Let me finish,” he said. “You signed up for a job and I signed up for a service. I needed a wife and—”
“That’s not the issue!” I was furious and didn’t have the patience to wait for him to come up with words, none of which even approached “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong.” Why was this so hard for men?
“Then tell me,” he said, “what’s the issue?”
“The issue is that you’re using me as an incubator and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me in advance.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You weren’t on birth control and I wasn’t using a condom. I think you were perfectly aware of what the risks were.”
I could have slapped him right then and there if I had one less ounce of control. “How dare you?” I said. “How dare you try and blame me for this? This is my baby.” I pointed to my stomach. “He’s growing in me, and he belongs to me.”
“She,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“I can smell it. It’s a she.”
“Are you even paying attention? You put this baby in me, and you did it without telling me that’s exactly what you wanted. You used me, Glenn. You used me.”
“Amelia, Amelia,” he said.
“Don’t use my name like you love me. This isn’t how people who love each other treat each other. People who love each other are honest with each other.” I was practically screaming at this point, the words running into each other, all of them trying to come out at once. I had so many things I was angry about and I didn’t even know where to start.
“Amelia,” he said one last time. “I do love you, and you need to pay attention now. Because I have news for you.” He put his hands firmly on my shoulders as he slowed down his words to try and keep me calm.
“What?” I asked.
“If you go through the papers you signed, you’ll see right there in ink that any child we conceive during this marriage, the custody goes to me. That’s a legal document you signed.”
“You’re going to take my baby?”
“No,” he said. “I’m just saying that, legally speaking, I have full rights and custody of her. But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to take your baby from you. I want to raise her together.”
I shook my head and ran to the guest room, packing my things into the bag I came with. Here I was again. Another relationship, another fight, and me running out in exactly the same way.
Nicer apartment, though.
I threw my t-shirts into the bag, not worried if they were clean or dirty. Added some underwear and the two bras that I could find within arm’s reach. I’d made the room something of a mess in the weeks I’d been there.
We’d also bought me new clothes during this time, nicer clothes, but I didn’t want to take them with me. All they’d do is remind me of Glenn and how he tried to buy me and how I should have seen through him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Why was he even asking? Wasn’t it obvious?
“You men are all alike,” I said. “It’s just one lie after another, and it’s all to try and control me. I don’t care what I signed; this baby is mine, and if you want her, you’re going to have to fight me for her.”
He laughed. “I’m not going to fight you, Amelia.”
I threw in my toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. I was about to throw in some tampons before remembering that I wasn’t going to need them anytime soon. I zipped up my bag and ran to the door. He blocked me.
“Amelia, it’s not safe for you.”
“Stop trying to control me, Glenn. I want to leave, and you are not going to hold me back.”
“Calm down,” he said.
“Do not tell me to calm down like I’m crazy!” I said. I pushed past him and out the door. “Do not chase me. Do not follow me. Do not try to find me.”
I slammed the door and ran off down the hall. I heard him calling my name through the door but refused to look back.
I had no idea where I was going to go, nor did I care so long as it was far away from him.
Chapter Thirteen
Glenn
She told me not to chase her. She told me not to control her. And so I didn’t. I let the door she slammed in my face stay closed. She had my phone number; she would call me when she calmed down and we could talk about this like adults.
Because she was the immature one here, right? She was the one who signed the papers without reading them closely. That’s not my fault. I couldn’t be expected to tell her every little detail of my life, especially since this wasn’t even a real marriage. She wasn’t my wife in any
sense other than on paper. And that we shared a bed. And that we loved each other…
But it wasn’t actually a real marriage, and that’s what confused her. She was treating it like a marriage instead of a mutually beneficial business decision.
I turned and saw myself in the mirror right there in the front entranceway. My eyes were glowing. Several deep breaths turned them back to their normal black and centered my mind. I tried putting myself in her shoes and see things from her point of view.
She had our daughter growing inside of her. She loved me, and seeing that document made her think that I didn’t feel the same about her. And when I fell back on the legalese…
Why couldn’t I see things from her point of view just a minute or two earlier? Why did I have to be selfish? Why couldn’t I just have been honest from the get-go?
Because now that she left, I knew that the right response—the only correct response—was, “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I fucked up.”
And now we were both miserable. There was no benefit to the way I responded. There was no upside to me trying to defend myself when I was obviously wrong.
My phone rang, and I answered it before even looking at the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Glenn.” It was a male voice. I was expecting Amelia. I looked at the screen now and saw it was Ryan who was calling.
“Hi, Ryan,” I said.
“Good news. I got you a team of bodyguards who we’re going to station outside your apartment in rotating shifts. And if we treat it as security, we can use the money from the trust to pay for them.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“The first pair is on their way now. Larry and Wes. Good guys. I think you’re going to like them.”
“Wonderful.”
“You don’t sound too excited.”
I paused, maybe they could help. “They still have access to police records and such?”
“Not in any official capacity, but they have connections at the station.”
“Yeah, okay, good.”
Larry and Wes arrived and, frankly, they were pretty much exactly what I expected. Built like gorillas, wearing suits and sunglasses, and blank expressions across their face.
“It’s wonderful to meet you,” Larry said, monotone. He extended his hand.
“Likewise to you both,” I said. I took his hand for the shake and he nearly crushed it with his grip. I cringed and he let go, and I thought I saw the faintest bit of a smile come across his lips.
“Here’s the situation,” I said. “Amelia just ran out, and it’s not safe out there for her. I don’t know where she went, and we need to find her. Are you able to find her?”
Larry and Wes exchanged a look. “We have our ways,” Wes said.
“Do you have a picture we can use?” Larry asked.
I pulled out my phone and found a clear picture of her. Larry grabbed my phone and texted it to Wes and himself.
“You stay here,” Larry said. “I’ll text you my number and have Wes do the same.”
“No,” I said. “She has no idea who you are. We’ll all go together.”
“I’ll stay here in case she comes back,” Larry said.
“Fine,” I said. “Wes and I will go look for her.”
Larry looked towards the kitchen then back at me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever you want. Make yourself at home.”
This time, I did see him crack a smile.
“Do you have an item of hers?” Wes asked. “To track her smell?”
“You’re shifters too?” I asked.
Wes nodded. “Do you think your friend would send anyone but the best?”
“Of course not.” I ran into the guest room as Larry started going through the cabinets of the kitchen. I found a t-shirt of hers and took a whiff of it to make sure it smelled of her. It did, but it triggered a sadness in me, a guilt for having deceived her. Smell is a very emotional sense.
I stayed for a moment with the shirt, whispering under my breath, “I’m sorry. I should have told you,” as if having her scent in the room was the same as having her there. I wiped away a tear and returned to Wes and Larry, handing the shirt to Wes.
“Here,” I said.
He took a quick sniff.
“You got it?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Let’s go.”
We traced the smell down the hallway to the street, where it became much fainter, distilled by all the other smells like a whisper at a rock concert.
“I think I lost it,” Wes said.
I sniffed the air, taking in a deep breath. “I think she went that way,” I said, pointing off to the right.
“How sure are you?”
I sniffed again. “Not especially.”
“Let’s get in the car,” he said.
There was a large luxury sedan parked against the sidewalk in a no parking zone. Wes opened the door and let me in.
“You know the right people in this town and you can park wherever you like, but it’s got other perks, too.”
He started the car and pulled out his phone.
“Who are you calling?”
He winked at me. “Watch this.”
A voice picked up on the other side of the phone. “Hey, Donna, Wes here…Doing great, yourself?...How are the boys?...Wonderful. Listen, I need you to do something for me. I’ve got a picture of a missing woman and I want to know…Yeah, she’s in San Francisco…No, she’s not in any kind of trouble…Right, so I was thinking if I send you her picture, can you run it through the facial recognition software and map her to a location?...Amazing. I’ll send it over.”
He hung up the phone and started to text her.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I asked.
“The city has all these red-light cameras everywhere. If my friend Donna has a picture, she can use those cameras to detect where Amelia was last seen.”
“You can do that?”
“I can’t. I barely know how to use my phone. But she can. She’s unbelievable with this tech stuff.”
“Is it legal?”
Wes lifted his hand in a “sort-of” back and forth gesture. “If she’s out in public, it should be fine, but it’s still kind of a gray zone if law enforcement uses it to track a suspect. Off the record, for personal use, it’s fine so long as nobody finds out about it.”
It took about fifteen minutes for Donna to get back to us and give us a location somewhere in Chinatown. Wes pulled the car out and started heading in that direction.
“She couldn’t have gotten far from there,” he said. “We should be able to find her.”
“Did Ryan let you know what was going on?” I asked.
“He just said you needed protection at your house. He didn’t go into any details, and, frankly, I don’t need to know any.”
“I’m just concerned that she may have been picked up by the guy we’re afraid of.”
He shook his head. “It’s a needle in the haystack type situation. The only reason we even have a chance of finding her is because we have the San Francisco Police and all their information on our side.”
That didn’t give me any sort of reassurance. “The guy we’re worried about works for SFPD.”
“Oh,” Wes said. He accelerated the car. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
I wasn’t convinced.
We arrived at the spot she was last seen and parked the car. “She’s going to be close,” Wes said. “Try and see if you can track her scent while it’s fresh.”
We sniffed around, trying to be as inconspicuous as we could possibly be while moving our heads up in the air, nostrils toward the sky, and wandering around. I kept on thinking I got a faint whiff of her, but the wind would change direction and it would vanish, and I’d wonder if I actually smelled anything at all.
I knew that I had to stay optimistic, but I couldn’t help but wonder if we were too late. Maybe Xavier was one step ahead of us and had already had the facial recogn
ition search run. Maybe he had already intercepted her. Maybe…I didn’t even know what he would do from there. In my world, the worst thing that someone could do was back out of an important business deal. I wasn’t used to dealing with people who would threaten my life. Sure, I had the gun in my apartment, in case of emergencies, but I never thought I’d be in a situation where I’d actually need it.
Now, without fully thinking about it, I was running headfirst into a situation where I might actually be forced to fight. I knew I was strong. My inner dragon was capable of things I didn’t even want to consider, and perhaps that frightened me more than almost anything. The scariest thing, to me, was that something could happen to Amelia. The second scariest is what I might do if something did.
I had been warned about my powers. A dragon is a powerful creature, and I’d never seen what I could do if I had nothing holding me back. From a young age, all of us dragons are taught to control our anger and keep our emotions in check. It’s instilled in us and is treated with utmost importance because even a three-year-old shifter has the potential to kill a human being. Imagine, then, what a full-grown adult can do.
The only thing protecting Xavier was that he was a shifter, too. If we ever had to fight, it was very likely that both of us would end up killed. It’s that mutually assured destruction that kept our factions in check. Dragons don’t typically like wolves very much, and wolves aren’t very fond of dragons, either. But if ever we went to war with each other, there wouldn’t be many of either left.
Just thinking about the possibility of Xavier taking Amelia was filling me with rage. I felt my face grow warm and my teeth clench together. When my claws started to grow out, I had to close my eyes and do my calming exercise.
Breathe in. One.
Breathe out. Two.
Breathe in. Three.
Normally, I only needed to go to five or six before my pulse slowed and I regained my composure. This time, I made it to twenty-five and only stopped because my phone rang.
