Dragon's Guard

by Eva Chase

  He sounded sincere. I didn’t sense any emotions in his stance other than concern and a little frustration, which I guessed was understandable. But he’d still told me barely anything.

  “Why don’t you—” I started.

  Marco’s head twitched to the side as if he’d heard a sound. A second later, it reached my ears too: the faint rumble of a car engine. He strode to the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your friend is only the first of the guests coming to see you today. You’re a popular girl.”

  He winked at me and slipped out into the hall.

  Chapter 4

  Ren

  “You know this situation is totally wacko, right?” Kylie said, leaning back in the settee. She popped a folded piece of toast into her mouth and chewed vigorously. I’d never figured out how she could eat to rival a linebacker and keep that wiry frame.

  “Yeah, that had occurred to me a few hundred times.” I rubbed my forehead. “I’m so sorry I got you mixed up in it, Ky.”

  She gave me a gentle kick to the knee. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m glad I’m here. I can help you get out if things turn even more wacko. And I am kind of curious to find out the big mystery about your mom too.”

  “If Marco actually does know anything about her.” It was starting to sound as if he hadn’t seen her in even longer than I had. But the way he’d talked to me—the way he’d looked at me... There was something he knew, something big, that he hadn’t told me yet.

  Was that why my body was responding to his presence so enthusiastically? I’d never had such an intense reaction to a guy before. Of course, I couldn’t say I’d ever met a guy half that gorgeous before...

  As if reading my mind, Kylie arched her eyebrows. “I’ve got to say, you have amazing luck in mysterious sort-of kidnappers. That guy is smokin’.”

  I had to laugh, even as my cheeks flushed. “Yeah, I noticed that too.”

  “Ooh.” Kylie gave me another nudge with her foot. “Maybe Ren has ulterior motives for sticking around. I’m shocked. You never go gaga over guys.”

  “I’ve never seen a guy like that,” I muttered.

  On the other side of the house, the front door thumped shut. I strained my ears to make out Marco’s voice or our new arrival’s, but I couldn’t hear either. What had he meant when he’d said people were coming to see me? How did these other “guests” fit in with whatever secret he hadn’t spilled yet?

  The uncertainty overwhelmed my hunger. I’d cleared half the plate anyway. I set it down on the coffee table. The growl of another car engine carried through the walls, stopping outside. I shifted on the seat. What were they talking about out there?

  My hand rose to my locket. It’d been my touchstone for comfort over the last seven years. All those years of waiting until I was allowed to open it.

  I’d opened it... and before the end of the day, Marco’s assistant had shown up. I peered at the etched gold oval. That connection hadn’t occurred to me before. But how could my opening the locket have brought Marco, or anyone else, my way?

  I clicked it open and looked at the symbol inside. What were you trying to tell me, Mom? Why did you make me wait to see this? I don’t understand anything.

  “You opened it!” Kylie said, sitting up. Right. I hadn’t seen her since I first had. She leaned over, and I held it up for her to inspect.

  “I don’t suppose that picture means anything to you,” I said.

  “Nope. Should it?”

  “I don’t know.” Just one question on my rapidly growing list.

  The necklace wasn’t giving me any reassurance now. I reached to my pocket instead, feeling the hard circle of the mirror I’d pocketed upstairs. I pulled it out and ran my thumb over the cool, polished surface. My nerves settled a little.

  I didn’t like to think about all the minor thefts I’d carried out when I was younger, but being able to just take what I wanted, when I wanted, still gave me a sense of control. And I needed that sense badly right now.

  A third car pulled up outside. My shoulders tensed. How many people were coming? When was Marco going to bring me into this gathering that was apparently all about me?

  “You don’t think this is some kind of organized crime thing, do you?” Kylie asked. “Did your mom ever seem like she was into anything shady?”

  My stomach twisted at the thought. “I guess she could have been,” I said. “We were almost always together, but she did take those trips, and she could have arranged jobs over the phone.” She had always seemed tense, and a little sad, when she got back from the trips. More so with every one. “She was always super-careful about us keeping a low profile. Not doing anything that might attract attention. But she acted like she was more worried about me than herself.”

  And from what I could remember, she hadn’t given off that jaded vibe I’d gotten from every criminal I’d ever met. The one I probably gave off at least a little now, even though I’d left that part of my life behind.

  Voices filtered through the sitting room door. I stuffed the mirror back into my pocket. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but at the same time the thrum of anticipation I’d felt when I’d first seen Marco raced through me, even stronger than before.

  It was time. It was finally time. For what, I couldn’t have said. But that was what my body believed.

  Marco opened the door. He dipped his head with a smile that looked apologetically self-deprecating. “The gang’s all here.” Then he stepped inside, leaving the door open for his guests to follow him in.

  Just a few minutes ago I’d been commenting to Kylie that I’d never seen a guy as hot as Marco before. Now, suddenly, I was faced with four stunningly gorgeous men.

  Marco ambled across the room and stopped behind an armchair, resting his muscular forearms on its arched back. The guy who came in after him was even more buff, with broad, well-built shoulders and a brawny chest that filled out his towering frame. His dark brown eyes were even more intense than the rich chestnut of his hair.

  Mr. Buff’s gaze shot straight to me, and a warm smile curled his lips. An electric tingle raced over my skin. He crossed the room in a few deliberate, powerful strides and stopped a few feet from Marco, his eyes still trained on me.

  The next guy walked in at a faster clip. He was stockier, but with equally broad shoulders and a devastatingly strong jaw. The regal grace of his strides made him seem just as tall as the others. The sunlight streaming through the window made his pale hair gleam gold as a Disney prince’s. He stopped in the middle of the room, fixing me with a crystal-clear blue gaze that felt hopeful and searching at the same time.

  The last guy stalked in with a wary air that drew my eyes to him. What did he have to be worried about? He halted just inside and propped himself against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his leanly muscled chest. Even though he didn’t look any older than the others, mid-to-late twenties at most, strands of silver streaked his light auburn hair, which fell to just below his earlobes. They gave a slightly mystical quality to his otherwise gritty good looks. When he finally looked at me, his forest-green eyes were so penetrating I felt pinned in place.

  My heart beat even faster. They were here. I didn’t know why that mattered, but every nerve in my body was jittering with exhilaration. I could hardly catch my breath.

  Kylie shot me a glance that said, Can you believe these guys?

  No. No, I couldn’t. But here they were.

  And they were mine.

  Where had that bizarre thought come from? I frowned, but before I could sort out the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions rushing through me, Marco straightened up. He gave me a knowing look, as if he could tell exactly what was going through my head.

  “Here we are,” he said in his languid drawl. “Happy, Dopey, Doc, and Grumpy, at your service.”

  The wary guy by the door—who looked like he fit the title “Grumpy” just fine—turned his head to glare at Marco. Our host grinned back. “Excuse me. You already know my na
me, Ren. Let me introduce you to Nate, Aaron, and West.”

  “‘Ren’?” Grumpy-West repeated in an incredulous tone. Even so, my name in his low, throaty voice sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

  “As she would prefer to be called,” Marco said.

  Dopey-Nate nodded. “If that’s what she wants to go by, that’s what we’ll call her.” His deep baritone was just as warm as his smile. Which he aimed at me again. Damn. My chest was going all fluttery. All this hotness in one room was putting me on hormonal overload.

  My Disney prince, Aaron, took a careful step toward me. I wasn’t sure why Marco had assigned him Doc. Maybe because his bright blue gaze was so thoughtful I almost felt as if he was considering me through a pair of glasses.

  “From what Marco’s told us, there’s a lot you’re unsure of,” he said. His voice was even and faintly but pleasantly raspy. “Maybe you could start by telling us what you do know. What has your life been like? What have you been doing with it?”

  “I can think of a lot of things I’d like to know about now,” Kylie mumbled. But somehow having the four guys in the room made me feel more at ease instead of less. I didn’t know them—they were total strangers. Why did I feel as if there wasn’t anywhere safer in the world I could be than right here with them?

  That weird sense of belonging loosened my tongue.

  “I’ve been living here—in New York, I mean—since I was five,” I said. “Mostly... Mostly with my mother. It was really just the two of us. She home-schooled me, and we’d go out around the city, but we never really talked to anyone else.”

  “So you just ate, slept, learned, had a little fun here and there—nothing all that unusual?” Aaron said.

  He was fishing for something specific, but I had no idea what. “Nothing except the whole keeping to ourselves part. At least not that I can think of.”

  “Don’t worry about it then.” He motioned for me to continue. “But at some point, that changed?”

  “Well, like I told Marco, my mom took trips every now and then. When I was fourteen, she left on one, and she didn’t come back.”

  I hesitated, my throat constricting. I’d had seven years to get over that loss, but it still stabbed just as deep. I didn’t even know whether to be furious with Mom or to grieve. Had she abandoned me by choice, or had something happened to her out there, wherever she’d gone?

  “You’ve been your own for seven years?” Nate said. He shook his head. “That must have been tough.”

  I had the urge to go to him and let him wrap those brawny arms around me. But how had he known it’d been seven years since I was fourteen? Had Marco’s assistant heard the twenty-first birthday talk in the bar?

  “It was okay at first,” I said, feeling the need to defend Mom, even though no one had criticized her directly. “My mother owned the apartment we lived in. We had a joint bank account with plenty of savings to cover food and the bills. I could handle myself. But then—the superintendent realized I was living there on my own. He called Child Services and the police. I couldn’t stay. They started tracking the bank account, so I had to stop using it.”

  My voice faded. I looked down at my lap. I didn’t want to talk about the rest of it. About the time on the streets, about the allegiances I’d had to form to stay alive. “That was tough. That’s all you really need to know. But I found my way out. Kylie and I got an apartment of our own last month. I work in a warehouse. I’m good.”

  My hand had leapt to my necklace of its own accord. My thumb worried the latch, flicking the locket open and closed.

  West’s jaw twitched. Aaron’s gaze jerked to my hand. “That necklace,” he said. “Your mother gave that to you?”

  “She did. Right before the last time she left.” The strangest feeling crept up over me, that I didn’t need to tell him I hadn’t opened it until yesterday. Something about it—they all already knew.

  “Aaron’s a bit of a magpie,” Marco teased. “An eye for the shinies.”

  Aaron ignored him. He took another step forward, as if to ask to see it. My fingers closed around the locket. Kylie grasped my other hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

  “What I’d like to know,” West said, his eyes still narrowed, “is what you remember from before you came to New York City.”

  Before. My pulse lurched, and my mouth went dry. I didn’t know why. There was nothing so terrifying about it. Because the truth was: “I don’t remember anything.” My voice quavered. I paused to steady myself. “I know we moved here from someplace else, but... Everything before is a blank. My mom and I never talked about it.”

  I’d tried to ask, once, when I was ten. Mom’s mouth had gone so tight and tense I’d been ashamed before the question had even finished coming out.

  You don’t need to think about that, she’d said. Not for a long, long time.

  “So you haven’t got the slightest clue,” West started up. Before he could finish his thought, Nate swung around toward him.

  “Leave her alone,” he growled. “I know you can feel she’s telling the truth just as well as I can. Do you really think it’s fair to dump everything on her all at once?”

  West shut up, but that didn’t stop him from glowering at the beefier guy. Marco chuckled, as if he found their squabbling amusing.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, sitting up a little straighter. “You keep talking as if you know more about this—about me, and my mom—than I do. What’s really going on here? Why are you all even here?”

  And why do you make me feel like I want to somehow jump all of you simultaneously? Yeah, I’d keep that question to myself.

  Aaron’s tone stayed calm and even. “We knew you a long time ago,” he said. “Before you came to the city, when we were all children. The fact that you don’t remember... My best guess is that your mother suppressed those memories to make it easier for you not to give yourself away.”

  “Give what away? And what do you mean, ‘suppressed’? You’re talking like she put a magic spell on me or something.”

  I laughed a little, but the guys didn’t take it as a joke. They exchanged a glance. Aaron ran his hand over his golden-blond hair. “That is one way of putting it.”

  “Let’s just say there’s a lot your mother didn’t tell you.” Marco piped up.

  Nate shifted toward me. The strong, protective energy of his presence washed over my body, settling my nerves. “There’s something you need to know about what we are, and what you are,” he said.

  “Hold on,” West interrupted. “If we have to handle her with kid gloves, fine. But that one doesn’t need to hear this. She’s got no place in this conversation.” He pointed at Kylie.

  My fingers tightened around Kylie’s. “My best friend stays. That’s non-negotiable.”

  “I don’t think you’ll get very far arguing the point,” Marco said. “I already tried once.”

  “Yep,” Kylie said. “I’m un-budge-able.”

  West grimaced, but Nate held up his hand. “If Ren trusts her, then we can trust her too. Ren’s memory has nothing to do with her emotional awareness.”

  “It’s against policy to break silence with non-kin,” Aaron put in. “But I think just this once, we can make a reasonable exception.”

  “Would you all please stop talking about whether you can say it and get on with it?” I burst out. “What’s the big secret? What are ‘non-kin’? What the hell—”

  I fell silent when Nate moved closer. He sat down on the chair Marco was standing by, kitty-corner around the coffee table from me. The closer he came, the closer I wanted to be to him, but I stayed frozen in place on the settee. His voice came out as warm as before, but his deep brown eyes were so solemn.

  “Ren, your mother let you believe that the two of you were just ordinary people. But you’re not. And neither are we. We’re not human at all. We’re shifters.”

  Chapter 5

  Ren

  For the first few seconds after Nate spoke, I could only gape at him. Fina
lly, I relocated my tongue. “Shifters,” I said. “What does that even mean? How am I not human? How are you not human? Look at us!”

  “That’s kind of the point, princess,” Marco said lightly. “We look human, but when we’re in the mood, we can shift. Into something else.”

  “Something like what?”

  “Whatever animal essence is tied to your spirit,” Aaron said. “It’s different for each of us here. But our nature comes with additional powers even when we’re in human form. I’m sure you’ll have noticed you’re stronger, faster, more agile than anyone else in comparable shape, for example.”

  My heart skipped. I’d become Fisher’s best thief because my sticky fingers could snatch a valuable off a person so quickly they’d never notice. The warehouse manager had stared at me when I’d shown him how easily I could handle the heavy boxes. How did Aaron know?

  Oh. Because if what he was saying was true, he and the other three guys before me were the exact same way.

  “Oh my God!” Kylie said, cocking her head at me. “He’s totally right. I know pro athletes who can’t move like you do. I always thought it was just cool. But supernatural powers—that totally makes sense.” An undercurrent of laughter ran through her words. She didn’t totally believe it. She turned to Aaron, her gray eyes sparkling. “Is she supposed to be psychic too? I swear sometimes she knows things about people there’s no way she should.”

  “Ky,” I protested, but it was true. I’d known just what soft spot to hit to make that guy in the bar back off. I picked up on the flavor of people’s emotions all the time.

  “That’ll be part of your animal side too,” Nate said, but I was too keyed up for even his rich rumble of a voice to be soothing.

  Aaron nodded. “Instincts for reading body language, pheromones in the air—our senses extend beyond what any ordinary human would pick up on. And we’d expect you to be particularly sensitive.”