Page 18 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

Framed photographs line the wall by the hallway. The brothers show up in them at every age, and there are women I haven’t met laughing under strings of festival lights at some fair I don’t recognize. Front and center in every single group shot is the dragon standing quiet behind me.

It looks like a home, and I’m not ready for that. I turn around.

Jalen has stepped back somewhere along my circuit of the room, and he’s kept a step behind me without saying a word.

“How about something to eat?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure,” I say.

He puts his hand at the small of my back to steer me, and I spin around on him instead, looking him up and down.

“Wait a minute.” I step back out of his reach. “You had wings. You were shot.”

I circle him. The back of his shirt is peppered with holes and dried blood, and under the ruin of it, the skin that shows through is smooth. Two long slits run down the back of the fabric.

His wings snap out through the slits, and I jump back with a yelp.

“You mean these?” He grins at me over his shoulder.

“Ohhh.” I put a finger to my lips. The hallway fits them with room to spare.

His wings fold and slide back into him, and the slits lie flat again. The skin underneath doesn’t carry a mark. “I can shift at will.”

“That’s nice.” Nothing in my head is working right yet.

“Follow me,” he says, and he walks ahead of me with my tote still in his hand.

A long island runs down the middle under hanging copper pots, the kind of kitchen I’ve only seen on rich-people reality shows.

He sets my phone and my tote on the island. Then he washes his hands at the deep farmhouse sink, scrubbing to the elbow, and goes to the fridge.

“Do you like pancakes?” he asks into it.

I pull out one of the tall chairs at the island and climb up, and my legs swing free under me.

He pulls eggs, sausage, and milk out of the fridge and lines them up on the counter. Then he adds flour, sugar, and abig bowl. He moves around this kitchen without hunting for anything.

I watch him work, and I’m completely lost. A dragon shifter who took bullets for me this morning is now making me breakfast in his luxury cave. Somewhere between that alley and this chair, I lost the thread of my own life.

“What do you do for a living?” I ask.

He whisks the batter and sets a pan on the stove to warm, and he turns to me with the bowl still in the crook of his arm. “I’m a journalist.”

“Oh.” I touch my cheek and wince.

“I got something for that.” He sets the bowl down and cracks an ice tray into a clean dish towel. He twists it into a cold knot. He comes around the island and eases it against my cheek.

I bring my hand up over the cold bundle, and his fingers slide free of mine. “Thank you.”

He smiles at me. Then he snaps toward the stove. “Oh. My pan’s ready.” He hustles back around the island and pours the first batch.

I almost tell him. I was going to go hunting for a journalist, a Shadow Wolf Creek journalist, with everything in my tote for evidence. I open my mouth. I close it and study the batter bubbling instead.

The zipper pull on my tote still sits at the left corner where I always leave it. He hasn’t been through my bag.

I pat at the edges of my bun and take the kitchen in again.

“Y’all need a place this big?” I ask.