Rainey’s eyes immediately glistened with excitement, while Dwayne’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline.
“I’m sorry, but this is not advisable,” Dwayne said. “She doesn’t have enough experience for this. Her boss is on vacation at the moment, but he can be with you immediately upon his return.”
Boreas folded his arms, leaned back, and stared down at the dirt, as if reflecting. “I don’t have time to wait for that. We’ve got an urgent deadline to meet before my own boss comes back.” He paused. “The lumber and the landscaping go hand in hand. Can’t have one without the other. If you aren’t prepared to make both parts work, then I’ll just have to go to MacLaren’s.” He reached for his list.
Dwayne snatched it away from him. “That won’t be necessary. Of course, we can make it work.”
“I don’t mind staying on the island, Dwayne. If it helps,” Rainey offered.
Boreas brought his hands together with a resounding clap. “It would sure help me a lot. Do we have a deal then?”
“Hell, yeah.” Dwayne thrust his hand out again, his smarmy grin not reaching his eyes. “Let’s go back to my office, and we’ll sort out all the paperwork.”
“Sure thing.” Boreas nodded gravely. He cocked a glance at Rainey. “Can you be ready to leave for the island a little after five p.m.? I’ve got some business around here, and I can meet you afterward.”
Rainey nodded eagerly. “Yes, I can, totally. I live in Seven Rivers, so I can meet you there.” She took a small card from a pocket on the inside cover of her notebook and handed it to him. “That’s my address.”
Boreas put the card in his pocket and nodded at her. He followed Dwayne to his office, wondering if his half-baked plan would work or if he’d just gotten himself into a whole lot of trouble.
“You’ve done well, bro,” Notus said, propped on the edge of a heavy wooden desk, his deep indigo eyes full of reassurance. He crossed his heavy arms in front of his chest, his bicep muscles stretching the sleeves of the dark blue shirt he was wearing.
Boreas snorted, tiny puffs of smoke emerging from his nostrils. “I did well not to kill that loser, that’s for sure.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched. The mainland office of their brand-new Dragn Protection agency was spacious, but today it felt cramped and stifling. His dragon needed the sky.
Xephyr, their Alpha, had established the agency to enable them to fulfill their quest to help humans, as decreed by the prophecy of the Oracle. At first they were very new to the human world, and hadn’t exactly known how to help, so they just patrolled the skies and looked for people who were in trouble. They’d rescued people who were lost, attacked by animals, or in danger from natural disasters. Once they’d even saved a bus from plummeting down a cliff. Luckily their saliva had a special serum that causes short-term amnesia in humans, so whenever they needed to take on their dragon forms to help, they’d subsequently erase the humans’ memories of the event.
With time and more experience on earth, they’d come to realize that humans had other problems besides natural threats and a misguided sense of direction, so they’d decided to lease an office building in the town of Deerfield on the mainland, so people could come to them for help as well. They’d picked Deerfield because it was one of the bigger towns in the region and it was on the coast, which was convenient for when they had to access the island by boat, but they’d fly across the entire state on their patrols and often help people from further afield too.
Their patrolling cases were mainly pro bono, while clients who approached them would pay. They’d made a lot of money from selling the gemstone and they could afford to work for free, and most of them were fast jobs anyways and didn’t take up a lot of their time.
“You’ll have a hard time keeping her on the island when she lays eyes on the soil, but you’ll figure something out,” Notus continued. “And the guys will be around to help you.”
Boreas curled his lip in disgust, got up from his chair and threw himself down onto the couch in the opposite corner of the room.
Notus shot him a sideways look, his thick brown eyebrows drawing together. “Dude, if you grind your teeth any harder, you’ll be eating nothing but soup for the rest of your life.”
Boreas grunted. “It makes me sick to put money in the pocket of that asshole.”
“I know. I get that. But it’s all for a good cause, and at least his lumber is the best quality in the area. I’m sure Xephyr will appreciate your efforts in building the new cabins too. He’s been busting a gut over the past months setting up the agency and dealing with all the paperwork for the purchase of the island. It’ll be a great surprise for him and Josie when they come back from their honeymoon.”
“Yeah... Let’s see how that surprise is going to work out.” Boreas frowned and scrubbed at his forehead. “With the three active cases we’ve got here, we’ll have to pretty much work around the clock to finish the cabins in time for their return. And that doesn’t even include the Veitch case, which I hadn’t expected to begin so early.”
The entrance door banged open and Eurus strode in, face taut with worry. His dark brown hair was messier than normal, sticking out in all directions. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a forest green shirt under a light jacket. He was next in command to Boreas, and his second now that Boreas was in charge of the clan while Xephyr was away.
“That’s right. And Caden is on his way to your place now,” Eurus shouted into a small device, running a hand through his stubble. They’d had to buy some of those cellular phones, which humans used to speak to each other from a distance, in order to communicate with their clients. Boreas had learned that you didn’t have to talk loudly for the other side to hear you, but Eurus didn’t seem to know that and he was bellowing every word, while also removing the phone from his ear and placing it in front of his mouth to enhance the volume of his voice.
“He should be with you in the next five minutes or so. Just don’t touch anything before he gets there,” he yelled and then placed the phone back to his ear and listened again. “That’s good. I’m just picking up some stuff from the office, and I’ll be there soon. We’ll get that bastard. I promise you that. Bye.”
He pressed a button on the phone with deep concentration, let out a deep breath and cleared his voice. “That was Megan Garner,” he said in a normal tone, in response to Boreas’s raised eyebrows. “She’s just received another threatening letter. And this time it was on her kitchen counter, so the asshole has been in her apartment.”
“Damn.” Notus pounded his fist on the desk.
“We’ll have to put a person with her twenty-four-seven,” Boreas said. “Get Aquilo to do it. He’s been hopeless on the building site. Almost hammered his hand onto the wall along with a shelf today.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Eurus nodded. “I’ll get over there now. I’ll call him from the car.”
“I have to get going, too.” Boreas looked at his watch and burst from the couch. “I need to meet Rainey Hampton in less than half an hour.” He grabbed his car keys from the table. “Notus will explain!” he shouted over his shoulder as he stormed out.
Chapter 2
Rainey
The tiny, imitation grandfather clock in the kitchen chimed, and Rainey’s head snapped up. Crap! Boreas would be at her front door soon and she hadn’t even finished packing. She grabbed two books on island landscaping from the bookshelf and the portfolio of sketches she’d done for previous clients and stuffed them into a carryall, then she rushed in the direction of the bedroom. Dwayne had kept her so long at the office with his instructions on what to do and what not to do that she’d only gotten home ten minutes ago. She’d planned to do some research and sketch out ideas, but she wouldn’t have the time now.
She was surprised that Dwayne had agreed for her to go to the island. He was always very overprotective, maybe even a little overbearing at times, and he didn’t like it when she was away from him. Actually, she’d barely spent any time alone in the past four
years they’d been together. She used to love having her own space when she was single. She had many interests and hobbies and enjoyed occupying her time with them or meeting up with friends. But after she got together with Dwayne, she had less and less time for both. He had many friends who were all important people for his business, so it was vital that they spent as much time with them as possible. And she couldn’t not attend because that would be very embarrassing for him, so she had stopped seeing her own friends. It wasn’t easy, but you can’t have it all as Dwayne would say. And she understood that love required sacrifice.
“Work shirts. Work trousers. Jeans. Jacket. Sweaters. Shorts. Underwear,” she mumbled to herself as she picked out the clothes and crammed them into her carryall. She had the habit of talking to herself when she was stressed. It made her feel like she was imposing some kind of control over her life. “A couple of nice tops, too? Maybe a dress?” Who knows, she might have to attend some formal dinners with the clients. She had no idea what Fire Island was like and whether there was such a thing as “formal” on the island, but she’d better be prepared. As an afterthought, she packed a nice pair of shoes, too.
She put on a pair of light blue jeans and a fresh burgundy work top that covered her arms all the way to her wrists. Since she’d been with Dwayne and he’d started to get physical with her, all her shirts were long-sleeved. Then she stepped into her favorite pair of dirt boots. They were as old as…well, dirt. But her feet loved them.
There was a knock on her apartment door. She rushed to it and peered through the peephole.
Boreas was standing on her welcome mat, one hand braced against her doorpost, the other dragging through his unruly black hair. A bolt of adrenaline spiked through her as she opened the door. He broke into a smile at the sight of her, his hazel eyes kind beneath his thick eyebrows. He was tall, well over six feet, and his broad shoulders stretched practically from one side of the door frame to the other. He was wearing black jeans and green-blue plaid shirt. He had high cheekbones and a strong jaw covered in two-day stubble, and he smelled of soap and clean clothes. He was a stunningly good-looking man, and she was almost embarrassed to look at him in case it seemed like she was staring.
“Hi. I’m almost ready.” She waved him in. “Just need to grab my jacket and overnight bag.”
“Take your time,” he said calmly in his smooth, baritone voice. “We can fly if we need to.”
Fly? He had put in a very expensive order, but she hadn’t guessed he was so loaded that he might own a private jet.
“Uhm, sure, I’ve always wanted to go on a plane…”
He looked at her in confusion. “What? Oh, no.” He laughed. “I’m a dragon. No cabin pressure required.” He grinned at her.
“A dragon! Wow!” She exclaimed and stared at him in awe. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” He nodded with an appealing hint of self-consciousness.
“That’s, uh, mind-blowing. I would have never guessed. Uh... I mean, I knew that dragons had existed millions of years ago, but I thought you were extinct. Oh, not that you look ancient, not at all,” she shook her head to reassure him. “You look fantastic for your age, in fact. It’s probably impolite to ask you how old you are, really, and you may have a different counting system. Anyways, I definitely prefer a dragon to an eccentric billionaire. I thought you were inviting me on your private jet.” She laughed nervously. What on earth were those random words that had just come out of her mouth? The discovery that he was a dragon had flustered her, and for some reason, in such situations, her brain often resorted to delivering an endless pile of words, as if she was trying to build a wall with them to hide her embarrassment behind. Had she really just called him ancient? How awkward! She took a breath, stared at her feet and tried to calm herself down.
“Sorry, I’m just, uh... I guess I wasn’t expecting to meet a dragon today,” she continued and willed herself to look at him to ascertain how much she’d offended him. But then a sudden thought came to her mind and before she couldn’t stop herself she’d blurted it out. “I don’t need to be scared of you, do I?”
“No, of course not! I’d never do anything to hurt you,” Boreas said firmly, his eyes wide and earnest.
“Okay. Good.” She hustled to her bedroom, leaving Boreas and the serious expression on his face alone for a moment. “Back in a sec,” she called. She had to grab her carryall but she also needed a moment to compose herself. She went into her bathroom and looked herself in the mirror. Her eyes looked a little manic, all wide and bulgy, the white around her irises visible from all angles. She took a few deep breaths.
She was used to having shifters in her life. She shared her bed with one, after all, and she knew a lot of his shifter friends. But she’d been as shocked as hell when she’d first found out about them. But this was on a completely different scale. Dragons. Wow.
She picked up her carryall and slowly returned to the living room.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” Boreas said.
“Not at all. I’m sorry about my reaction,” she was trying to talk slowly in order to control the words that were coming out of her mouth. “You just took me by surprise there,” she explained. “By the way, you do know that you can’t tell everyone that you’re a shifter, don’t you? Dwayne is a wolf shifter, and he says there are a lot of people out there who are very hostile and aggressive toward shifters.”
“Of course. We know that we need to keep it a secret. In my home, we don’t consider this land a very friendly place. We had to evade it centuries ago because humans were jealous of our wealth and tried to kill us,” Boreas said, stepping out of the house. “But I figured it’d be safe to tell you, seeing as your fiancé’s a shifter too.” He gave her a wink.
She shook her head. “God, I’m so dumb. I forgot shifters have extra sensory abilities at spotting other shifter species.”
Boreas froze, and the gaze he turned on her was intense. “You are not dumb, Rainey,” he said, his voice suddenly becoming very serious. “Please don’t ever say that about yourself, even lightheartedly.”
Rainey gulped. “Okay,” she said, too stunned to say anything else. She locked her house and followed Boreas to a beat-up black RAM 1500 pickup truck. She opened the door and climbed in. The interior was clean and smelt of pine.
“What are your dragon characteristics?” she asked as he put the gear selector into reverse.
“My clan is descended from a royal line of sky dragons. We are the chameleid species. Our scales can change color, often reflecting our mood, and also enabling us to disguise ourselves perfectly. We can shift into a human state partially or fully. And we have dark vision. We can fly, of course, and we also breathe fire and smoke.”
“Wow,” Rainey said and stared at him in amazement. “That’s kind of incredible.”
“It’s alright,” Boreas said, flashing her a lazy grin, as he backed out of the driveway. Rainey returned it, liking his laid-back sense of humor.
“I hope you don’t mind me dragging you to the island,” he said.
“I actually really look forward to it. What’s it like there?”
“It’s quiet. Peaceful. I like the remoteness of it, as well as the easy accessibility to the mainland. I don’t like living in cities.”
“Have you lived there for a long time?”
“Not really.” He sighed, and she picked up a sadness in the sound. “My clan and I are from a place called Ethereum. It’s the domain of the skies. But about nine months ago there was a tear in the barrier between our world and this one, and we fell through the ether and landed on Fire Island. You might have heard about our arrival in the news.”
She cocked an eyebrow, uncomprehending.
“A giant gemstone fell along with us. The humans thought it was a meteoroid and went crazy for it.”
“Oh, yeah, I think I do recall, now,” she said slowly. “I try to avoid the news to be honest. Too many sad stories every day. Was it dangerous for you with all the humans there?
”
“Luckily for us, it was merely annoying. For a while there were tourist boats pulling up to the island all day long, floods of people walking around, talking very loudly, grinning at their hands.”
Rainey raised an eyebrow, unsure what he meant by grinning at their hands but he didn’t seem to notice her confusion and she didn’t want to interrupt his story.
“It was disruptive to us, because we needed our own space. Dragons need a lot of space. We’re big. We spent the first three months here looking for a way back home, so we lived mainly in our dragon form and as chameleids it is easy for us to disguise ourselves from humans. We’re masters of camouflage. But it was more difficult for me because something happened when I was a kid and my scales lost the ability to change color, and my dragon has been black ever since. So, I often had to hide in the caves when the humans were around. But then we exchanged the stone for money and luckily all the excitement stopped. Now we live there peacefully.”
“Wow, that’s quite a story. Wasn’t it difficult to sell the stone? You know, because it’s from another planet.”
“We had a friend who helped us. Tamika. She’s a human and she knows a lot about this world. She’s mated to a shifter and she’s been very kind to us. She told us we had to exchange the stone in a special way; in secret, because otherwise your council here, uh... what do you call it—?”
“Our government?” Rainey said.
“Yes, yes. Your government would have had many questions—about us, the stone, its origins, everything really, which may have exposed our true nature and identity. In Ethereum, you can exchange anything you want and no one besides the person you exchange with would have questions. We are still learning about this world,” he said humbly.
Rainey looked at him, full of wonder. She was so shocked by him being an actual dragon and in his human form he was so, uh, human that she hadn’t even thought about the fact that he came from a completely different place. From another planet, really. Where there were no governments and no money, and people didn’t stare at their hands smiling, whatever that meant in human terms. She made a note to ask. Oh, she had so many questions. “Do you miss your home?” she began.
Boreas Reborn Page 2