by Chant, Zoe
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Malachi.
Hayley smiled tentatively. “Okay,” she said, and then more assertively. “Okay. Yes. Mate. Baby. I approve of this.”
“Oh, good,” said Malachi, pretending exaggerating relief. “I needed that.”
“Don’t lie, you totally actually needed that,” Hayley said, grinning.
He dropped the act. “I did. I’m really glad you’re okay with this, kiddo. And if you ever have any issues, if you ever need any time just the two of us, you just say so, okay?”
“I will,” Hayley said seriously.
Malachi hugged her tightly. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Dad,” she said, and hugged him back.
And somehow, Malachi felt sure that it was, actually, all going to be okay.
Chapter 15: Elizabeth
Elizabeth waited until she’d heard the front door open and shut once—Hayley, going to school—and twice—Malachi, going to work—before she ventured out of the guest room.
She didn’t know why she was so wound up, so drawn in, tight and anxious like this.
Neither did her lioness. Mate, she exulted, in Elizabeth’s chest. Our mate! We found him! Be happy! Shift and run and tell everyone!
But Elizabeth couldn’t. She was filled with this crazy, overwhelming sense of dread. It was at war with the golden light of the mate-bond that pulsed in her chest.
That light kept trying to drive the dread away, expand and fill her whole body and leave her joyful and content.
But the dread knew better than to let it. Because if she let it, if she was just happy and content like that? That was just asking for something to come in and smack her down into despair.
She cupped her hands over the small swell of her stomach. I want you to be okay, baby, she thought. I don’t want any bad surprises. I want to be sure that you’re safe and happy.
Logic dictated that she had that now, didn’t it? A mate, a house, a safe place for the baby to be born and grow up.
So why did she still feel like the ground was shaky underneath her feet? Like anything could come and yank all of this away at a moment’s notice? That wasn’t how the mate-bond worked. It was permanent.
But some part of her just couldn’t seem to believe that.
Mechanically, she showered, got dressed, and somewhat-guiltily raided the kitchen for cereal.
Except she shouldn’t feel guilty anymore, maybe? Because she wasn’t just a guest taking something she hadn’t been offered; she was Malachi’s mate now. That was essentially marriage, in shifter culture.
What’s yours is mine. Malachi was definitely getting the short end of the stick on that deal, she thought, looking around at the cozy, solid little house with its comfy couches and nice curtains.
At least she was most of the way through paying off her student loans. Even if it meant she had no money, property, or safety net, she wouldn’t be saddling Malachi with tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
Hooray for her. She looked glumly down at her cereal. Her newly-found appetite seemed to have deserted her again.
There was a knock at the door. Must be Dr. Reid, come to see if she was still fainting onto a couch, or if she could stand on her own two feet once again.
Elizabeth sighed. Sarcasm wasn’t going to help anyone, not even just inside her own head. She stood up and went to the front door.
Before she got there, though, there was another knock. A loud one.
She paused. Reid had been a courteous, careful man. Not weak by any means, but extremely polite and...controlled. He wasn’t the type to pound on a door if it wasn’t opened right away, she didn’t think.
Cautiously, she sniffed the air. Hard to scent in human form through a closed door, but underneath the spicy dragon-smell that permeated the entire house, she thought she caught a hint of the earthy smell of...male lion?
The window shattered.
Elizabeth jerked back at the sound, fumbling for her phone. No, it was upstairs, dammit.
She was thinking like a human. As Nevin reached in to open the window, Elizabeth bolted for the back door, threw it open, and shifted.
She thanked her lucky stars she wasn’t any further along. The ability to shift lessened during pregnancy, until the third trimester, when it was impossible—too much strain on the body, or something.
For now, though, she could still become a lioness, and run.
Running through the woods would be stupid, because she didn’t know the territory and Nevin could track her by scent without a problem. So she circled around the side of the house—she could hear Nevin inside, crashing through the downstairs in lion form, and winced internally for all of the nice, cozy furniture—and raced through the front yard into the street.
She burst out onto the road, aware that for the first time in her life, she was in her lion form while on a human street, surrounded by houses and yards and sidewalks. The asphalt was hard underneath her paws.
Nevin was behind her, and gaining. He was bigger and faster than she was, and she needed to get away now, or—
There was a car. There was a car that was screeching to a halt, and the driver’s side door was opening, and Dr. Reid MacAllister stepped out, thank God.
“Get behind me,” he told her without hesitating, and stepped forward—in human form!—and stood stock-still in the road, staring at Nevin.
And as Elizabeth watched, Nevin came to a halt. And shifted.
“Move, dragon,” he snarled at Reid.
Elizabeth quickly shifted as well. Now they were just three people standing in the middle of the street, which calmed down her instincts a tiny bit. Her lioness was still howling, Get to safety! Protect the cub! inside her chest, though.
“No,” Reid said calmly. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and there was something held between two of his fingers. His phone.
Elizabeth came up to stand immediately behind him, and took the phone from his hands. Obscured by Reid’s body, as though she were pressed up behind him for safety, she found Malachi’s number, and texted him, Lions in the street come quick
She put the phone back in Reid’s hand as Nevin said, “You hiding behind a dragon now, Elizabeth? Are you sleeping with him, too? There’s a lot of dragon men in this town, you could make your way through all of them if you wanted—”
Elizabeth stepped out from behind Reid to look Nevin in the eye. “I don’t care what you think of me, Nevin,” she snapped.
And it was true. It was strange—she could remember just a couple of days ago, being hurt to the bone at Nevin’s awful words, at the way he’d looked at her, coming out of the DA’s office. Wanting to explain to him, to make him understand why she’d done what she did. Get him to come over to her side.
Because if he did, then she hadn’t thrown everything in her life away when she put Victor in jail.
She felt like she was finally able to open her eyes and see the truth. Yes, things would be better if Nevin could see what was wrong with the pack, if he could understand why Elizabeth had done what she did. Yes, it was a shame that he was a violent, angry man.
But it didn’t change her worth one bit, up or down, whether he understood what she’d done or not.
“I don’t think you care what anyone thinks of you, Elizabeth,” Nevin said. His face was twisted into an ugly sneer, all the force of his furious hatred coming to the surface.
All Elizabeth could feel, though, was a sort of compassion. Nevin didn’t have the capacity to understand her...and that was too bad. For him.
“Is that what you are now? A feral shifter, alone, no pack to run to anymore?” Nevin continued, clearly trying to hit her where it hurt.
“No, Nevin,” she said gently. “I have a pack. It’s here.”
He didn’t understand her at first. Then he looked at Reid, his eyes widening into a parody of comprehension. “You mean, you’re going to try to join up with a pack of dragons? That ain’t gonna work, Elizabeth. Two types of shifters don
’t blend like that. You think the dragons are just going to let you in? You don’t have wings. You aren’t some fancy magic beast. You’re gonna be a second-class citizen with them, forever and ever. Worthless.”
“That’s how Victor thought about it,” Elizabeth said, still feeling somehow endlessly calm and patient, like she could stand here forever, and no matter what Nevin said, it wouldn’t touch her. “That’s how you think about it. But that isn’t how everyone thinks, Nevin. The world is bigger than you.”
Nevin snarled again, his fingernails starting to lengthen, his body looking furrier as it blurred with the transformation. She could feel Reid starting to tense next to her, and she murmured, “No need. Wait.”
Because she could feel something in her chest. She knew what was coming. And it was getting closer and closer by the second.
Nevin finished shifting—now he was a full-grown male lion in his prime, brindled brown-and-gold, with a wild mane and huge teeth. He reared back on his hind legs, preparing himself to pounce—
And an enormous black dragon dropped from the sky right on top of him.
Beside her, Reid startled, but Elizabeth didn’t flinch. She’d felt Malachi’s approach, she’d known when he was right above them, and she’d felt the swooping sensation of his dive in her own chest, as though she were riding on his back when he hit.
Nevin dropped like a sack of potatoes. Malachi stayed on top of him for a long moment, careful in case he was playing dead, but although his chest still rose and fell, his face was slack and he didn’t twitch once, and after a minute the black dragon took to the air again.
He circled around above them—looking for backup, Elizabeth guessed—and then glided down, alighting right next to her and shifting back to human.
“Are you all right?” he asked her immediately.
“Fine,” Elizabeth assured him. “Just fine.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he said. “I should’ve made sure Reid was at the house before I left for work. I’m sorry.”
“No, no—” Elizabeth protested. “No. I shouldn’t have—” She looked at Reid, and stopped talking.
Reid looked back and forth between them, raising an eyebrow. “Perhaps I’ll do a quick wider patrol,” he said after a second. “Make sure there’s no one else lurking in the greater area. Excuse me.”
He shifted and disappeared into the air before either of them could say anything.
There was a long pause, and then Malachi said ruefully, “Reid has a well-known distaste for any kind of drama or messy feelings. He’s very good at avoiding them when they arise. I’m not used to being part of the thing he’s avoiding.”
“Whoops,” Elizabeth said.
Malachi shook his head, looking back at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Positive. He didn’t touch me. It’s okay.”
“But you have to be—I mean, that’s the father of your child, and he tried to—”
She shook her head, still wondering a little. “It’s funny. Just a few days ago, I wanted so badly for him to come around, for him to be—a better man than he is. It was so hard, watching him be petty and small-minded and dangerous.”
She looked down at the figure in the road—shifted back to human, now that he was unconscious—and opened her hands. “But he’s never going to be a better man, and I can...let that go, now.” She lifted her eyes to meet Malachi’s, which were tight with concern. “I have something else. I don’t need him.”
Something relaxed in Malachi’s expression. He took one of her hands, twining their fingers together. “I wasn’t sure, this morning,” he said quietly, “how you felt about all of this. You seemed like you didn’t want to talk about it, so I left well enough alone, but Elizabeth—”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a rush. “I’m so sorry, Malachi, I know that I wasn’t being...open. Like I should have been. I was too afraid to believe it was real.”
His mouth made a silent oh.
“I thought—none of this could really be mine. You, and Hayley, and how you two are together—I’ve been watching you since we met, and I’ve wanted to be a part of that so badly, that family. And to have that with the baby, someday. And I was sure it couldn’t happen for me. And then you—you’re like—” She waved her free hand, and couldn’t come up with the words to describe what she meant. “Well. I guess you’re like Santa Claus read my Christmas letter and showed up with the perfect man for me, designed from the ground up to be exactly what I needed.”
A smile broke through Malachi’s serious expression, and then a laugh. “Santa Claus? Really?”
“Really. That’s how perfect you are. So you see—that was how real it seemed. Like someone had just popped up and told me, hey, Santa Claus is real, here’s a pony and a new bicycle and front-row tickets to see Lady Gaga at Madison Square Garden, enjoy! There was no way I could just believe it.”
“You want to go see Lady Gaga?” Malachi asked. “I bet Hayley would like that, too...”
“That is beside the point,” Elizabeth said, half-laughing. “Also, exactly my point. Not a lot of men would want to take me to see Lady Gaga.”
“A lot of men are idiots,” Malachi said. “But—are you saying that you believe it now? That we’re mates, and it’s not going away?”
He was so concerned. It broke Elizabeth’s heart a little, to see how concerned he was. Because he would have been well within his rights to be angry with her for putting him off instead of talking, or hurt that she couldn’t believe him when he said that he was her mate and he’d always be there for her from now on.
But instead he was worried about her.
“I’m starting to believe it,” she said quietly. “It’s hard. I never—my parents—”
She hadn’t talked to him about her parents, about the pack where she’d grown up. Which made perfect sense for a man she’d only known a couple of days, but was probably important information to share with her mate.
God. It still didn’t sound quite real.
“My dad was kind of a deadbeat,” she said, forcing a smile. “Our pack wasn’t really—it didn’t really deserve the name. It was just a little, loose collection of shifters who liked to hang out around the same bar, and occasionally get into fights, and owe each other money, and so on. I didn’t know anyone who was real, actual mates with another person, growing up. And when I tried to find something better, somewhere where people could really depend on each other, and the pack bonds were close and real...”
“You ended up with Victor,” Malachi finished.
“Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” Elizabeth said with a not-funny laugh. “So it’s just—it’s just hard. To believe. That there really is something better out there. That people really can depend on each other. I’m not used to that. It’s always seemed like everyone has to look out for themselves, because other people will always let them down.”
Malachi pulled her into a hug. Elizabeth relaxed into it, trying to absorb all of Malachi’s strength and constancy, so that she could really know that they were there, and they weren’t going to leave.
“But standing there looking at Nevin,” she continued, voice now muffled a little by his shoulder, “I felt like I could see clearly for the first time. How different you are from those other people. How different this place is from everywhere else I’ve lived. And I knew that I belonged here, with you. Not there, with him. It was so clear, I felt like an idiot for not seeing it before.”
Malachi huffed a little laugh. “You do belong with me,” he said, heartfelt. “Just like I belong with you. And I promise to stick around until there’s no room to think I could ever leave you, okay?”
Elizabeth hugged back just as tightly. “And I promise to be honest about being scared from now on, instead of pulling back. Okay?”
“Deal.” Malachi kissed the top of her head. He’d done that a few times, and Elizabeth was already starting to be addicted to the little burst of warmth she felt in
her chest whenever he did.
They separated at the sound of a groan from the road next to them.
“Stay back,” Malachi warned Elizabeth, and went over to take a look at Nevin, who was rubbing his head.
“You’re going to pay for this,” Nevin growled, when Malachi came into view.
“Am I?” Malachi asked mildly. “It looks like you’re the one who’s paying. And you’re going to keep paying, because I’m bringing you to the station once you’ve been checked out by the doctor. You’ll be facing charges.”
“You’ll be facing worse than charges,” Nevin spat back. “You little namby-pamby peaceful dragons aren’t going to be able to stand up to what’s coming for a goddamn second. You think you’re dragons? Wait till you see what’s after you.”
Malachi regarded him for a long second, head tilted. “I suppose we’ll see who comes out on top,” he said finally, “but as far as you’re concerned...it’s not going to be you.”
There was the sound of wingbeats, and Elizabeth looked up to see another dragon silhouetted against the sun. It landed on the pavement, and proved to be Reid, back from his escape/patrol. He shifted to human and came over to Nevin. “He need medical attention?”
“He does,” Malachi said grimly, “but you’ll be providing it while he’s in custody. Did you see Flynn up there?”
Reid nodded. “He’s on his way. We can get him taken care of, the three of us.”
Malachi looked over at Elizabeth. “You can—”
“I can come with you,” Elizabeth said firmly. “He’s not getting away from three dragons, and I want to see him put away myself.”
A long moment, and finally Malachi nodded. “You’ve earned it today, facing him down like that,” he said with a little smile.
“Hey, I’m no fainting flower,” said Elizabeth. “Despite the evidence of the last few days.”
“Never once did I think you were a fainting flower,” Malachi said warmly, and Elizabeth let his voice, his words, and the deep warmth in his eyes settle into her bones, shoring up her new belief: this man was hers, and that wasn’t going to change.