Or a mate, his dragon grumbled.
It was true. One of the things holding him back from chasing after Andi endlessly like they belonged together—because no matter her recent opinion on the matter, they did, he felt it in his soul—was the knowledge that rifts were unpredictable. As it was his job to close them, he might be putting her in harm’s way.
But if Jamison had good news for him now—if his science was reliable—Damian could spend today filling his car full of dresses and arrive at Andi’s apartment the moment she woke up, to make her try on each and every one of them for him until he couldn’t control himself any longer. He’d made the mistake of being an asshole to her once, yes, but he had both the will and means to make it up to her.
Zach got up to join Austin in his pacing. Grimalkin expanded the size of the room to accommodate both of them, and Damian tore his thoughts away from Andi, refocusing on the men. “We need to have a little talk with whoever you slept with. Innocent or not, she’s our only lead to figuring out what the fuck is going on here. If it’s from the Realms, we’ve got to nip it in the bud.” Assorted Realms weren’t just populated by chaotic monsters looking to wreak havoc on Earth. Damian had left behind his kingdom, his family, and his father’s throne—not everyone was happy about that. “And if she has information regarding the return of Hunters, I want to know that, too.”
A door that didn’t exist prior appeared in the room’s far wall, and Jamison walked through it, dressed casually in flip-flops, ratty jeans that let the black of his skin show through, and a Super Mario tank top that framed both his metallic shoulder and cyborg arm.
“D…about that text…wait! Zach! You’re back!” Jamison’s face showed elated surprise at seeing Zach in human form again. “I was starting to get worried about you!”
Zach grinned back at Jamison. “At least someone’s happy I’m alive.”
“These guys giving you problems? You just let me know if you need me to go all Terminator,” Jamison said, giving Zach a thumbs-up with his metal hand.
“Nah,” Zach said, clapping him on the back. “Can’t keep a good wolf down.”
“Or his dick,” Austin added, rolling his eyes.
Jamison looked between the two of them and then laughed. “I get the feeling there’s more to this story…. But first things first, where’s my sample?” He held out his hand expectantly, where Zach looked at it blankly.
“What?” he asked.
“My…sample?” Jamison asked, looking around at the rest of them. “You know. The silver thing you told me about,” he went on, turning toward Damian.
“Oh, fuck me,” Damian cursed. After Andi had told him she didn’t want to see him again—despite both of them clearly having had the best sex of their lives—he’d come home pissed, and may or may not have explained things thoroughly to Jamison, what with him fighting his dragon down, so it didn’t rip the roof off his castle and fly back to her.
“It’s not…here? You didn’t like spit it out when you woke up?” Jamison asked, then leaned forward. “Should I have scanned you when you were a wolf? Austin said you’d be okay.”
“God-fucking-dammit,” Damian kept cursing as the burden of realization sank in. “No. I put it in my coat pocket.”
The same coat he’d gone and given to Andi. He wasn’t even near her, and he was putting her in danger again.
He pulled out his cell phone and sent her a fast text: I need my coat back.
There was no response, not that there would be immediately—but knowing that didn’t stop him from staring at his phone for a moment too long, hoping he’d be proven wrong. When he wasn’t, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and looked back at the men. “I’ll get it from her later. Now…about the rifts….”
Jamison winced. “About that.” Everything in Jamison’s bearing turned apologetic as he began to speak quickly. “We predicted the gate within five miles accuracy—which is a new record! But…it didn’t work.”
“I thought you said you sealed it?” Damian frowned, remembering the text Jamison had sent.
“I know. I got ahead of myself. The gate we thought we sealed reopened. It might’ve been just a matter of using enough juice; maybe we underestimated it, and it takes more power to seal a rift that hasn’t opened yet? But then another one opened nearby that my algorithms didn’t predict, so maybe if you keep one closed, the power surges somewhere else nearby?—and some octos started pushing through. Don’t worry, though; Max and Mills went to handle them.”
Damian’s phone beeped with a text alert—Andi. He ignored Jamison as he went on, pulling his phone back out again.
No.
And whatever cool he had possessed earlier was not enough. Damian pulled in on himself like a collapsing star, and Jamison’s words were drowned out by the static of blood in his own ears.
No isn’t just my name.
It was one of the last things Andi’d said to him—because he’d hurt her. He’d done it intentionally—when he’d been trying to save her from himself, but that was no excuse. Without thinking, Damian whirled, picked up the couch that none of them were sitting on and hurled it into the fireplace. Grimalkin, perhaps knowing what he needed, chose not to disappear it, instead letting the thing shatter and catch aflame.
“Whoa, man!” Jamison said, jumping back. “Max and Mills are fine; they already radioed in!”
Damian turned and saw the three other men gawking at him. He was in no mood to explain the last conversation he’d had with Andi to them, least of all when her walking away from him was his own damn fault.
“I hated that couch,” said Damian, striding out of the room. “Let’s figure out where your magic portal injection girl is.”
Chapter 3
Sleep did not restore Andi. As a nightshift nurse, she considered herself a connoisseur of sleep—a sleep sommelier. She knew precisely the right drugs to take, the right temperature to keep her room, and the right weight of blinds and blindfolds—all the better to help her rest, but for the past week, everything in her dreams had been betraying her. She kept running down long hallways chased by something she couldn’t understand, and that was bad enough, but worse than that…she was painfully alone. In her dreams, there was no one coming to save her—only more nightmares hunting her down.
She got a glimpse of the thing chasing her once. It looked like a skinless dog, all glistening muscles and white bone. It was huge like Damian’s wolf friends had been, only her skinless-dream-one seemed endlessly cruel. Her dream-self was smart enough to realize that there was no true way she could ever outrun it, that it had to be just fucking with her, but it wouldn’t stop, and she was still too scared to turn around. She woke up before her alarm at six p.m., gasping for air, all of her penguin-covered cotton sheets kicked to the floor.
It…this…wasn’t like her. She sat up in bed, panting like she’d run a marathon.
What the hell was wrong?
Andi looked at herself in the narrow, full-length mirror balanced against her wall. All the bruises from her wild night with Damian had faded—which was good. She did not want to explain anything remotely like that to her uncle. But there was still the slightly darker welt beneath her left breast, from where a monster’s Unearthly blood had burned her, and she thought that it might scar. Between that and the bruises she had on the inside…she shook her head. It wasn’t every day you were almost killed repeatedly, witnessed the utter destruction and then magical renewal of your workplace, and had the best sex of your life before having to dump the dragon responsible for it all before he could dump you…again. What it was, was whiplash, and maybe all of her crazy dreams were like an emotional concussion.
She got out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Maybe she should try to take some time off and be nicer to herself. After all, as a nurse, she could make a very convincing sick call. And then she could try and relax and eat too much ice cream, watching Netflix with Sammy.
But she was too used to working nights, and Sammy had a day job
at a garage—which meant that come three a.m., she’d be alone again.
Just like she was every day—or night, rather—and just like she was in her dreams.
Andi frowned and turned the shower on.
Andi talked herself through the rest of her “morning”—everyone else’s evening time—until she emerged from her room looking like someone who you might entrust with your loved one’s well-being on a nightshift, as long as you didn’t know that they thought that dragons were real because they’d seen one.
“Hot date?” Sammy teased from her position on the couch. Her red curls were sproinged every which way, and she was kicked back with a bag of chips, watching yet another true-crime documentary. Andi’d had to tell her some of what’d happened to her last week, minus the monsters and bloodshed. Sammy’d been faintly horrified that they’d had sex inside of a Pagani, and when she’d told Andi how expensive a car it was, Andi’d been horrified too. And while Sammy didn’t understand exactly why Andi wouldn’t keep seeing a billionaire who drove one—more enthused about the car than the man, of course—she was always team Andi, no matter what.
“What? No. Oh, no.” Andi spread her hands down the relatively nice blouse she’d put on for dinner tonight. It wasn’t the dress her uncle had sent her to wear, but that dress had gone home in Damian’s car, which was just as well—she was absolutely sure there’d be no saving the silk after everything they’d done. “Just my uncle.”
As she said it, the door to the apartment rang, and her stomach fluttered. Sammy bounced for the door before she could move—frozen to the spot—and she was both relieved and disappointed to see the man in a driver’s livery standing outside. Definitely not…anyone else who might want to take her somewhere in a fancy car.
She followed the much shorter, much rounder, and very much more human man downstairs and let him open the door up to his car for her before sliding inside.
It felt strange to be driven somewhere again without an app involved. She was sure her uncle’s current accommodations would be nice. She’d never known him to scrimp on himself, but she couldn’t help but feel the same hackles rise as she’d felt being driven by Damian. Who got to live like this? Who just sent people cars…and dresses!...and why? She wanted to believe that her uncle was motivated by love, and Lord knew he’d supported her and Danny enough in all sorts of ways through her childhood, but he was like a bad cat—he never came when you called him. So Andi had gotten used to not calling.
But thinking of calls, her phone beeped. She pulled it out as the driver swept onto the highway, and she saw Damian’s last name flash on the screen. Her traitorous heart skipped a beat, and she thought about asking the driver to go somewhere else entirely—to a castle, where a dragon lived—when she opened her phone, and the message came through.
I need my coat back.
Andi blinked.
Of course, he’d just messaged her a demand. Not even a “hey” or “how’s it going” or a “yo.”
Damian could buy a hundred million coats if he wanted them. So why on earth would he need the specific one he’d given her? And that she’d then bartered to Julian? She frowned at the phone as her stomach churned; she had the familiar feeling that she’d done something wrong. But because she couldn’t put her finger on precisely what it’d been, she swallowed her anxiety down and concentrated on being pissed at Damian.
“Warm enough, miss?” the driver asked, looking back in the rearview mirror, smiling at her with a gap-toothed grin.
Andi sank back into the car, gripping on to the phone. “Yeah. Thanks. I’m fine,” she said.
She turned the phone over and stared at his message. He didn’t deserve a response, but she was going to give him one.
She typed back a single word: No.
Andi frowned deeply at the phone. Why was every man in her life an asshole? She was smart enough to know about lowest common denominators, but she’d never gotten to pick her relatives—so that part, at least, wasn’t her fault.
But Damian had been. A mistake—such a mistake!—and his rude text to her only proved it.
Andi bit her lips and looked outside. He’d looked so…so…anguished when she’d left him. Like she was truly hurting him—a dragon! And she’d spent this intervening week feeling bad about that, because if there was something going on in her life that she possibly could feel bad about, her subconscious was on it, going after her with an internal microphone, shouting, “Remember that time when?” at the least opportune moments.
Now though, after his text—Andi glanced down at her phone again—why had she even bothered? He clearly hadn’t been worried about her in the least.
Chapter 4
Damian watched Jamison work while feeling his phone burn a hole in his pocket.
Could she not just listen to him for once? Why was she always so goddamned obstinate?
Because of you, his dragon said, accusingly. He was currently on his dragon’s shit list since he’d been the one in charge of chasing Andi off. He’d had his worst week with the beast inside him yet, and any opportunity his dragon had found to hurt him, he had done so. If he thought his dragon was pissed off about bringing him to Earth and leaving the Realms, it turned out that was nothing compared to making the dragon leave the woman it thought was their destiny.
It was for her own good at the time, he reminded himself and his dragon.
His dragon made a dismissive rumbling sound to tell him what he thought of that.
“Got it!” Jamison said, pointing with his human hand at a string of coordinates on his screen, saving Damian from additional internal arguments. The only information he’d had to work with was the phone number the girl had given Zach. It’d been a burner, of course, and Zach had paid for their food and hotel that night, so there was nothing else to go on. Jamison had figured out which store the burner came from, and while it hadn’t had a security camera indoors, the liquor store next door that she’d visited to buy a soda had. Once Zach confirmed the woman’s face, it’d just been a matter of letting Jamison’s machines around them commune with assorted databases, searching for other locations where she’d been.
“This is the place she’s been spotted near the most,” Jamison went on, making his computer replace the numbers with a map. “Starview Apartments.”
“Starview, huh? Starry Sky, Starview…ironic, no?” Austin stated, twisting to glare at his brother.
Zach growled in response.
“Boys,” Damian tsked, inspecting the stills of the woman on the screen, entering and exiting the apartment from thirty different angles. She was blonde and slight, the kind of woman you could knock over with a stiff breeze. Maybe Zach was right, and someone had put her up to tagging him? Because she didn’t appear Machiavellian in the least.
“I’m cross-referencing, hold tight.” Jamison stared off into the distance. His metal hand was detached, and his wrist was plugged into the machine via a socket. Damian wasn’t rightly sure how everything with Jamison worked, even though he’d funded it personally. The screen began to fill with assorted driver’s license photos and leasing paperwork.
Damian leaned forward to watch the man in action. “Have I mentioned lately I’m glad you’re on our side?”
“Have cyborg arm, will travel the digital highway,” Jamison said, grinning, bringing up three final photos, then dissolving two away so that only one was left. “That’s her, right?”
Zach pushed his brother out of the way, inspecting the screen for far longer than it should’ve taken. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Kit Johnson, apartment 3C,” Jamison pronounced.
“Booyah!” Austin shouted, clapping Damian’s arm. “When do we ride?”
Damian took his hand off his phone, where it’d been lightly resting the entire time. “Now,” he said. “We ride now. Grab guns, get ready.”
Austin whooped. “See you at the tour bus in fifteen!” he shouted and ran for the door, while Zach clenched his jaw.
“I want you to driv
e and be our eyes, Jamison. And tell Max to be ready to ride clean-up crew,” Damian said, standing.
“She told me her name was Stella,” Zach said to himself. Damian put a sympathetic hand briefly on Zach’s arm before walking out.
Going to meet this were-woman was good, Damian supposed, because it stopped him from going to Andi’s hospital and wrestling his coat off of her.
That did assume that she was wearing it though, and hadn’t…what…thrown it away? Consigned it? Frozen it in carbonite? He snorted and stalked back to his bedroom so he could change clothes. He didn’t need a tactical suit like Zach and Austin would likely put on, but he probably ought to wear black for the occasion.
He closed his door and had his clothes half off when he heard a knock. “Boss?” asked a feminine voice from the other side.
Millicent, aka Mills, his resident witch and secretary. “Hang on,” he said and finished changing as quickly as possible. “Come in.”
Mills was mid-forties with salt-and-pepper brunette hair she’d never cut according to her coven’s principles. It would wind down to the floor, and then some, if she didn’t keep it up in an ornate bun. She had devoted her life to her magical arts, and Damian reaped the rewards of her vast knowledge, due to the fact that they respected one another—and her curse. When Millicent was sixteen, an older and more powerful rival for her boyfriend “blessed” her so that she could never tell a lie. As lies were the grease of human society, it behooved her to run with a slightly-less-than-human crowd.
Dragon Destined: Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 4