by Eva Chase
No. She leaned into me, pressing her mouth harder against mine. The heat I’d felt before flared through me.
This was her. My dragon, my mate. I hadn’t known for sure I’d ever get the chance to meet her, let alone get this close to her. Every inch of me, including the length hardening in my pants, clamored to make that true in every meaning of the word.
I tugged her a little closer, angling my lips in a way that drew a gasp from hers. I wasn’t going to make a spectacle of us here on Marco’s lawn, even though we were alone for the moment, but I wasn’t going to let the other three get in the way of this partnership either. They could grumble or preen or hang back in chivalry all they wanted. Serenity needed a mate who was here for her right now, in every way she needed.
I’d never wanted anything more than to be that man.
Apparently I was making a spectacle of us despite my best intentions. The back door whispered open. Before I’d found the will to draw back from the kiss, Marco’s familiar chuckle carried across the lawn.
“I’m thinking we need a recap on the differences between training and making out.”
I eased away, tipping my forehead against Serenity’s just for a moment. She sighed with what sounded like regret. We both looked up to see the other three alphas standing in a line.
“Sometimes a little of the latter can help guide the former,” I said lightly, standing up.
Ren
I pushed myself onto my feet and gazed back at the assembled alphas. This time, only a flicker of embarrassment warmed my cheeks.
Why shouldn’t I be kissing Aaron? Why shouldn’t the rest of them see it? I was supposed to be kissing all of them at some point or another, from what he’d said. It was practically fated.
Apparently all I needed was one tiny excuse and I turned into a total exhibitionist. Who would have guessed? Not any of my ex-attempted-flings, that was for sure.
“If you’ve got some better idea for unlocking the dragon in there,” I said, tapping my head, “I’m all ears.”
Nate cocked his head, his expression pensive. I couldn’t look at him without picturing the huge bear that had stood in his place for a little while yesterday. His chestnut hair gleamed exactly the same shade. But the way he’d behaved toward me so far had been more teddy bear than predator.
“If Aaron’s strategies aren’t working, I’m not sure any of us could come up with something better,” he said. “But if there’s anything you need me to do, just say so.”
“Maybe we should leave the shifting aside for now and find out where we can get with the powers she’s already showing,” West said, with a skeptical glance over my body. “I’d like to see what she can do.”
And what I couldn’t, his tone implied.
I raised my chin. “Fine by me. Where do we start?”
“What were those qualities you mentioned?” West said, glancing at Aaron. “Speed, agility, and strength? Speed seems like an easy place to start.”
“She’s not really dressed for working out,” Nate said.
“She’s not going to get to call a time-out and go change every time she has to act.”
I brushed my hands over the silky violet shirt. I’d worn jeans through most of my exploits in the city. They felt perfectly comfortable. The blouse was light and flexible enough, just fancier than I usually bothered with. “As long as Marco doesn’t mind me possibly ruining his nice clothes, I’m good to go.”
Marco smirked. “There’s plenty to go around. I’m looking forward to seeing you in action, princess.”
“We can start simple,” West said, as if I needed coddling. “How fast can you run from one side of the yard to the other?”
“Faster than you, maybe,” I said, but he glowered at me rather than responding to the challenge. I shrugged and ambled over to the line of trees that bordered the yard.
“You don’t have to go along with this,” Nate said.
“It’s fine.” I smiled at them all, with a little extra sharpness for West. “If it shuts him up for a few minutes, it’s a win all around.”
Marco raised his hand to his mouth as if trying to hold in his snicker—and failing. West turned his glare on the jaguar shifter. Marco just raised an eyebrow. “You asked for this.”
“It would probably be useful for us to know exactly where your abilities are at,” Aaron said calmly. “Are you ready?”
“On your marks, get set, go,” I said, and pushed my feet off the lawn’s spongy ground. I dashed for the stretch of trees across from me, pushing all my energy into my legs, as if there was a police officer chasing after me. Or a mark who’d caught on to a theft. Or some guy who really didn’t want to take no as an answer.
All situations I’d experienced at least once.
My feet pounded the grass. The warming air rushed past me. I burst past the first few trees and caught myself, spinning around. A grin split my face. That had been kind of fun.
I walked back to the edge of the lawn, wiping my hands together. “All right, what’ve you got next?”
I must have done all right. Marco, Aaron, and Nate all looked pleased in their own ways. And West looked pissed, which meant I’d performed better than he liked. I gave him a pointed glance. I hadn’t even broken a sweat yet.
“How long can you keep that up for?” he said. “A thirty-foot dash is nothing. You need endurance too.”
“Do you have a longer track for me to take on?” I said. “Or are you suggesting I just run back and forth like a crazy person?”
He gave me a thin smile. “You’d better make do with what we have.”
Oh, he’d like it if I backed down, wouldn’t he? As if I hadn’t been in situations ten times more humiliating than this in the last seven years. He had no idea what “endurance” meant. I wasn’t going to let his arrogance get to me.
“No problem,” I said, keeping my tone breezy. “I wouldn’t mind giving my legs a good stretch anyway.”
I took off without any preamble this time. I raced across the lawn to my starting point, pivoted on my feet, and zipped back the way I’d come. Once I fell into the rhythm of the thump of my feet and the heave of my breaths, the growing burn in my muscles was almost pleasant. I gave myself over to the sensation, not bothering to count repetitions. Just flying back and forth over the yard as if, if I pushed myself a tiny bit farther, I might actually leave the ground.
I had worked up a bit of a sweat, slick under the silky shirt, when West leapt forward in the middle of one of my dashes. He swung out his foot as if to trip me. But my instincts had taken over the second I’d seen him moving. I was already dodging out of the way. I slowed and swiveled, folding my arms over my chest.
“Really?”
“We’re supposed to be testing agility too,” he said, looking not even slightly guilty.
“And she’s having no problem showing you up in that area too,” Marco said.
“We’re not done yet.” West pointed to one of the tallest trees at the back of the yard. “How high can you climb?”
His smirk had come back. Probably thinking that in the city I hadn’t gotten much experience with trees. And maybe I hadn’t, but there’d been plenty of fences and buildings to clamber up.
“Would the top work for you?” I asked.
I marched over to the tree without waiting for an answer. All I got was an inarticulate mutter anyway.
The pine’s lowest branches jutted from its narrow trunk about a foot over my head. Low enough that I could still reach them with my arms extended, but I bent my knees and sprang up so I could hook my elbow right over one. Hugging it, I walked my feet up the trunk until I could swing my legs over the branch too. Then I scrambled up and reached for the next one.
Once I was in the tree, climbing was way easier than West must have realized. The branches were spaced so close together it was more like hefting myself up a ladder than any real challenge. I pulled myself along as quickly as I could without completely losing my breath. Sap was smearing the violet
fabric of the shirt, but Marco had said not to worry about that. The pungent pine smell filled my nose. I drank it in with another grin.
As I got higher up, the branches grew thinner. So did the trunk. A hot breeze whipped past me, making the upper half of the tree sway. I gripped the rough bark tighter and kept going.
When my climbing material had pretty much run out, several feet from the tree’s peak, I wrapped one arm around the trunk and glanced down. I’d come a little higher than the roof of Marco’s house. In the yard below, Nate raised his hand to give me a thumbs-up. I couldn’t see West’s expression, but I’d bet it was even grouchier than usual.
And I could make him even more peeved. My grin widened as the urge came over me. The fall was twice my leap from the bedroom window yesterday, but a little extra risk just made it more exhilarating.
I stepped forward on the branch and jumped.
The air whistled past my ears. The blouse’s sleeves billowed around my arms. For a second, I could imagine the wind catching them, lifting me up to soar toward the sky. My breath caught with a knot of longing beneath my sternum.
Someone let out a worried shout. Then I was hitting the ground, balls of my feet first. Pushing off them, I bent my knees into a roll. I tumbled over on my shoulder and flipped back onto my feet, straightening up in one smooth motion. My feet stung a little and my breath was still ragged, but damn, that had been a delicious sensation.
Aaron was giving me his usual quiet smile. “It looks to me like agility isn’t a concern. And I think between all those tests, we’ve also covered strength pretty well.”
West’s jaw had clenched. Something flickered in his eyes, an emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on until he opened his mouth.
“In the real world, we don’t pull stupid stunts like that unless our lives depend on it.”
His tone was snarky, but my ears picked up a faint tremor underneath. I paused with a retort on my tongue.
He’d been a little scared for me, despite himself. And he hated that, didn’t he? Hated it so much he needed me to snark back at him so he could go back to being pissed off with me.
Too bad. I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. I’d give him the exact opposite.
“I’m not going to argue with you about it,” I said, keeping my voice soft and even. “You’ve got to trust I don’t take risks without knowing what I can handle. And if you need to find some new reason to be angry with me, you’ll have to come up with it on your own instead of trying to pick a fight.”
West’s lean body tensed. “Don’t start thinking you can read people’s minds, Sparks,” he said, but he looked more unsettled than angry.
Nate rested his large hand on my shoulder. “Dragons see more than any of the rest of us can,” he said approvingly.
I rubbed the back of my neck. I’d enjoyed the physical exertion while I was in the middle of it, but the effort was starting to catch up with me. Especially after all those failed attempts at shifting beforehand.
Sure I was quick and strong, and I could take a stab at people’s emotions when I needed to. What good was any of that to the alphas if I couldn’t make the full transformation into a dragon? I still didn’t have a clue what Mom had been trying to tell me with the symbol in my locket.
How long would these guys stick with me before they gave up and—
A jolt of panic shot through me. I clamped down on that thought before my mind could finish it and pushed it away.
“I think our Princess of Flames has more than proven herself for the morning,” Marco’s smooth voice broke in. “As host to this party, I say we give her a break.” He held out his hand to me with his crooked smile. Even with me tired and uncertain, it still provoked a flutter of attraction in my chest.
“There are a few parts of this house you haven’t seen yet,” he said. “One in particular I think you’ll appreciate. Are you up for a quick tour?”
CHAPTER 10
Ren
AS SOON AS I stepped into the house with just Marco beside me, a weight seemed to lift off my shoulders. All the pressure of having the four guys watching me, thinking about me... and me thinking about them. Some part of me might like the idea that they were all meant to be with me, but the feeling was still overwhelming sometimes.
How had Mom gone from that to having no male companionship at all for all those years, without ever showing she missed it? She must have. Maybe she’d just been too good at hiding it for me to notice.
Leonard was in the main hall, dusting the frame of an oil painting hanging on the wall. So Marco really had put his lieutenant on cleaning duty. Marco shooed him away, I guessed realizing I still might not be feeling super friendly toward the guy who’d grabbed me in the bar. That was fine with me.
“So what’s this part of the house you’re so eager to show off?” I asked Marco.
“You’ll see.” He guided me past the kitchen and down a hall toward the south side of the house with a hand on my back. The light contact sent a pulse of heat over my skin. My thoughts slipped back to yesterday. To that kiss in the bedroom. Just remembering it made my entire body flush.
Was the pull between us always going to feel this intense? Or did it ease off a little once the guys and I were officially mates? I had no idea how a relationship like that worked. But asking Marco directly felt way too awkward. He could probably already tell how much his presence affected me. The last thing I wanted to discuss with him was my out-of-control horniness.
“Here we are.” He pushed open a door and ushered me through. The second I stepped inside, my jaw dropped. All thoughts of horniness went temporarily out the window.
Or windows, maybe would be more accurate. The room we’d stepped into was walled on three sides by enormous panes, like a massive greenhouse attached to the side of the house. The late morning sunlight streamed in from between the trees outside, warming the place with a comfortable glow. The floor space wasn’t huge, maybe ten feet by ten, but the walls rose at least two stories into the air. Ledges and outcroppings in the shape of thick branches protruded from the walls at varying intervals. It was like looking up into a tiered jungle canopy.
“This house is a way station for any of my kin traveling through these parts,” Marco said, looking pleased with my awed reaction. “There’s not much room to run around in shifted form outside. This gives us a place to exercise our feline selves in privacy.”
It was easy to imagine tigers and leopards—and jaguars—leaping from branch to branch or sunning themselves on one of those ledges. But all those windows... The trees didn’t appear to provide total shelter. “Aren’t you worried about someone wandering by and seeing you?”
Marco motioned to the walls. “That’s one-way glass. On the outside, it’s blank. We can see out, but no one can see in. We can get up to whatever we want without worrying about prying eyes.” He arched a teasing eyebrow at me. The one with the scar through it.
How had he gotten that wound? A scuffle with another shifter? Or some other conflict I wouldn’t have understood yet?
“Is it normal for shifters to live this close to a big city like New York?” I asked. “You must have to be really careful, even with a house like this.”
Marco shook his head. “Maybe it’s feline obstinacy, but my kin don’t play so well by the rules. In theory, most of the country is divided up between the dominant supernatural groups. The cities are vampire territory, because they find it easiest to blend in—and they need a large supply of people to pick from for feeding.” He grimaced. “Shifters mostly stick to small towns and countryside, the middle-ground between civilization and wilderness. But my kin’s alphas have always liked to keep an eye on what’s going on even in the places we’re not supposed to be.”
My eyes had widened. “Wait. There are vampires too? Living in New York?”
“Not a lot of them,” Marco said, but his tone had turned more serious. “They like to keep their community rather... exclusive. But there are still more than enough of
the bloodsuckers. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to deal with them.” He shuddered, and then gave me a more typical smile. “So let’s not spend any more time talking about them. How would you like a proper climb?”
Now that I’d accepted the existence of shifters, my brain had obviously recalibrated its threshold for belief. If werewolves—and werebears and werejaguars and so on—existed, why the hell not vampires?
I looked up at the jungle gym above me, and my earlier fatigue fell away. Oh, yes. This was exactly what I needed.
I clambered up a protrusion shaped like a jutting rock. From there, it was only a bit of a stretch to jump onto one of the thick manmade branches. Marco followed me as I roamed higher, staying in human form himself. Maybe he thought it’d be impolite to shift when I couldn’t? I was too busy exploring to care.
Here and there between the branches and ledges, objects like huge bowls were wedged, stuffed full of plush cushions. I poked at one of the pillows as I climbed past one. “Cat beds?” I said, shooting Marco an amused look.
He laughed. “Basically. We do enjoy our sleep.”
He stopped on a ledge about halfway up the second story, watching me as I finished my ascent to the very top. The highest branch veered on an angle all the way to the vaulted glass roof. I scrambled up it and crouched where it bowed to take in my surroundings.
I could see over the roof of the rest of the house from here, to the tops of the pines on the other side. To the south, the suburban road was visible between the trees, stretching off into the distance. A car puttered by below me, the driver completely unaware of me perched there watching him. The view of the long drop to the ground below made my pulse thump faster.
If this was how cat shifters did things, I had to say I completely approved.
I couldn’t jump through the window, but there were all sorts of possibilities for leaping my way down in here. I turned my gaze to the room beneath me. The shape and placement of the various protrusions made for their own sort of challenge. I fixed my gaze on a branch ahead of me and several feet below, bunched my muscles, and launched myself toward it.
