Page 20 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

I shoot him a glare. He doesn’t even try to look sorry.

He stops at a set of double doors. “Here. I’m not about to force you to sleep with me or anything. It’s clear you don’t feel the pull toward me yet.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Kind of hurts my dragon a little, but?—“

The sneeze cuts him off, and smoke rolls out of his nose and both ears, and I smile at him. I can’t help it.

“Maybe you should be the one getting some rest,” I say.

He pushes the double doors open, and I follow him in.

“I’m just a few doors down if you need me,” he says.

“Whoa,” I say to no one in particular.

The bed could sleep four, carved from the same dark wood as everything downstairs and stacked with quilts and pillows in deep golds and greens. A cushioned nook sits under a tall slot of window with the valley framed in it, and a doorway past the bed shows the corner of a bathtub I could swim laps in.

I cross to the bed and set my bag down on it.

“I’ll let you rest,” he says from the doors. “When my sisters get home, I’ll have them bring you some clean clothes.”

I sit down on the edge of the bed and kick my flats off at last.

“You’re beautiful, Zuri.” He says it plain. “I hope that when you’re ready, you’ll open up to me.”

He’s adorable and he’s a kidnapper. I sigh at him.

He bows his head to me. Then he steps out and pulls the doors shut behind him, and I’m alone.

I fall back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling, carved in wide spirals overhead.

What the hell just happened?

I’d swear I was dreaming. But dreams don’t leave your face sore.

9

JALEN

Ahot shower and my own closet put me halfway back together. My room is exactly the mess I left, and I’ve never been gladder to see my piles. The shirt with the bullet holes goes in my trash, and I dress in clean everything before I head up to face my brother.

Malachi’s office is what my room would be if I were a tidier dragon. It takes up a whole corner of the top floor, with its own glass wall and the town laid out small and bright below it. Bookshelves stand in ranks along one side. His desk is a slab of dark wood with nothing on it but the work in front of him, and past the leather sofa and the wall screen, a pool table sits at the far end with space left over.

He’s going through a stack of paperwork when I come in. He doesn’t say hello. He picks his phone up off the desk and tosses it to me.

I catch it and look at the screen.

It’s a press photo with a caption under it: STILLWATER SOLUTIONS CHIEF EXECUTIVE, D. HALE. The woman in it is young and polished, braids over one shoulder, and her eyes are a blue that doesn’t happen to people.

I’ve never stood in a room with the witch. But I keep every description this valley ever gave me, plus one blurry picture from a festival booth, and I know this face.

“Delilah,” I say.

“Chief executive,” Malachi says. He leans back in his chair. “The whole company is hers.”

Heat climbs my back. I set the phone down on his desk before I crack it in my hand.

“I knew it.” I brace both hands on the wood. “The damn witch is Zuri’s boss. Well. Ex-boss. She’s not going back to that sleazy company.”

“Think back.” Malachi squares his paperwork stack. “Did you have any interaction with her that Delilah could have seen?”