Page 7 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

Then I double over with a sneeze, and smoke curls off my ears into the night. I drop below the parapet and wave it apart with both hands. Down on the square, a couple strolls past without looking up, and I start breathing again. A dragon sneezing smoke over an anti-shifter town is a headline I can’t afford. What the hell am I coming down with?

The sun drops, and Stillwater goes dark floor by floor. The loading dock light buzzes on. I’m mapping my route down to it when the front doors open and the woman from the lobby steps out under the streetlight.

Her bun has loosened since this afternoon. She trades her heels for flats out of her bag, right there on the steps, and sets off up the block with somewhere to be.

Every plan I made for tonight goes quiet. Stillwater sits behind her holding every answer I came for, and I choose her without a fight.

I could tell myself I’m following the blank spot in her scent, the one that smells like Stillwater’s product, and it would even be good journalism. That’s not what this is. I want to know where she’s going, and I want it the same hungry way I want a story no one else has.

The rooftops sit close together in this part of town. I take them quiet, gravel to tar to gravel, and keep her in sight below me. She talks to herself as she walks. I like her already.

She turns in under a buzzing neon sign, and I come down a drainpipe into the alley behind the bar. I round the corner to the entrance and give her a head start before I follow.

I am, by any definition I’d print, stalking this woman. I file the complaint against myself and go in anyway.

Inside is wood, low light, and an after-work crowd that doesn’t know me. She peels off toward the restroom, and I take the back booth with a view of the whole room. When the waitress comes by, I order a glass of red I have no intention of drinking. It’s set dressing, so the room reads me as a man waiting on someone.

While she’s gone, I run my own interrogation. Why did I leave the job for her? What exactly am I doing in this booth? Every answer I’ve got is a non-answer. I’d shred a source who talked to me like this.

The restroom door swings, and she comes out, and her scent arrives ahead of her.

It hits me whole: burnt caramel, sugar that’s been through fire. The scrubbed blank from the lobby is gone, and what’s underneath prices out everything I have ever smelled, held, or hidden.

Mate. She’s my mate.

My dragon surges, and the table jumps under my hands hard enough to rattle the glass. I pin the urge down and swallow the smoke that wants up my throat. The couple by the jukebox glances over at the noise. I nod at them and keep both hands flat on the wood.

And my dick stands up so hard that leaving this booth stops being an option. I groan into the wine I’m only pretending to drink and set it back down. My dragon wouldn’t tolerate a real sip, and tonight I agree with him.

She never glances my way. She crosses to the bar, and a woman with braids piled high waves her onto a stool. Her friend flags the bartender, and the two of them fall into easy talk.

I sit in my booth and re-run the math I’ve lived on. The notebooks, the recordings, the receipts on this whole valley. Every piece of the hoard I’ve spent my life stacking reprices while I watch her read a menu. She’s across one barroom, and it’s too far.

I came to this town to steal Stillwater’s biggest secret. She’s sitting at the bar with her hair coming loose.

So I watch her instead of my plan. Her laugh starts small, behind her hand, and by the time the food comes it’s full and loud and worth the trip. I can hear the two of them across the room. Her friend spits out a name, Whitney, and my mate laughs so hard she has to put her drink down.

I wanted the name of whoever’s running her ragged, and the universe provides.

“Zuri,” her friend says, pushing the plate toward her. “Eat.”

Zuri.

While Zuri eats, her friend leans in over the food with a pitch she has clearly made before. She’s applied for a business loan, a spa, her own place, and she wants Zuri in it with her as a partner. She’s got the hand gestures and everything.

Zuri shakes her head over her plate. “I don’t know. I can barely handle my shifts as it is.”

I’ve already started a file on her in my head, and that goes in it. A woman that sharp, talking about herself like that.

The heat surges up my back, and right behind it my nose starts the warning tingle I’ve been cursing all day. A sneeze is coming, and mine come with smoke. I can’t sneeze smoke in a room this human.

I pinch my nose shut and run the room: the bartender is pouring, the couple by the jukebox is deep in their own night, and no one is looking at me yet.

I’m on my feet with the booth scraping loud behind me, and half the bar turns toward the sound. I keep my back to the room and drop cash by the untouched wine. I clamp my hand over my mouth on the walk out.

In the alley, the sneeze finally wins. Smoke rolls off my ears and drifts up the brick, and I stand there watering at the eyes, wondering what the hell a dragon even catches. Then I check the alley mouth, and my wings come out. My wings put me on the roof across the street, and there I wait, folded flat, one more shape against the night sky.

I came to Millbrook for answers. I’m not leaving without her.