Page 11 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

“The month I scented Brandy,” he says, “I bought the building she worked in.”

I sit up straight. “You did not.”

“Cash.” He leans against the dresser. “Fastest closing of my life. Then her elevator stalled with her in it, and I pried the doors apart in front of her whole office. Brandy still calls me elevator man when she wants to win an argument.”

I laugh, and it surprises both of us.

“What’s running through you right now is the same thing that had me buying real estate like a crazy man,” he says. “It doesn’t stay this loud. It settles, and you’ll carry it fine. You have my word.”

He puts his hand on the back of my neck, the grip he’s used on me since I was small enough to ride his back. My fire banks under it, the same as it always has.

“Thanks, Mal.” I mean it bigger than it sounds, and he’d wave it off if I said more.

He picks his bag up off the floor and swings it onto his shoulder. “Well.” He looks sideways at me. “I can’t take you home now. You wouldn’t leave without her anyway.”

“There’s something else.” This part I haven’t said out loud to anyone.

He stops with his hand on the doorknob and waits.

“Stillwater Solutions,” I say.

Malachi frowns. “The company the Creek contracts with. Cleaning, supplies, soaps.” He sets the bag back down. “What about them?”

I get up and push his door shut. “I’ve been investigating them since they picked up the Shadow Suds contract. Back around when the gargoyles moved to town.”

Malachi crosses his arms. “Why?”

“You remember when Tolin Ironwood found his mate.” I pace his room again. “She worked for Shadow Suds, the cleaning service. He stood next to that woman I don’t know how many times and couldn’t smell what she was to him.”

“Yes, I remember the couple.” His frown deepens. “I don’t follow.”

“There’s something in the cleaning solution.” I check the window latch before I say the next part. “It doesn’t just cover scent. It covers the one scent that matters.”

I walk him through the rest with the door shut: the robberies back home, the ghouls that ran them, and Delilah, the witch whose trail ended at a product label.

Malachi takes it in without a word. His water glass sits forgotten on the dresser.

“Zuri works in that building,” I say. “I bumped into her in their lobby yesterday and smelled nothing. After the workday wore off her, something told me to follow her, and when her scent finally came through, I knew.” I stop pacing and face him. “They’re suppressing the fated scent, Mal. On purpose, at scale. And I don’t understand why yet.”

The temperature in the room climbs. My brother comes off the dresser with his arms uncrossing.

“You knew all of this,” he says, and the air over him wavers with heat, “and you didn’t tell me? You let this clan do business next door to it and said nothing to your Alpha?”

“I had a hunch, not a case.” I stay where I’m standing. “It didn’t start coming together until this week. That’s why I snuck off yesterday while you talked numbers. I wanted to see what I could find.”

I spread my hands. “I went in looking for a story. I found so much more.”

Malachi pinches the bridge of his nose and curses under his breath. “Damn you, Jalen. I need to get back to Brandy. My dragon is about to lose it being away from her this long.”

“So go,” I say. “Brandy needs you more than I do.”

“No.” He drops his hand and levels me with the full Alpha stare. “I’m not abandoning you when you need me the most. I never have, and I never will.”

I smile at my brother, and the heat in my chest banks down to something warm. Then I sneeze, and Malachi fans the smoke away with the guest binder off the dresser.

“First we approach your Zuri,” he says. “We talk to her. We tell her what’s going on.”

“And what about Stillwater?” I ask.