Stealing the Snow Leopard's Heart

by Zoe Chant

  Her eyes, stormy blue-gray, fierce with determination.

  And confusion.

  “Okay, what the f—fudge?” his mate demanded. “Are you—what’s going on? Are you alright? He just—you just…”

  Her eyes dropped to the man crumpled at his feet and then shot to his face again, wide as saucers.

  “You’re—from the station!”

  “I—” Lance began, but his mate was still talking. And glaring at him. And pointing a gun at him.

  Two of those things, he could live with. The other one was somewhat worrying.

  Her eyes narrowed, which was even more worrying. “You’re after the dragon, as well!”

  “Yes, but I—”

  “You can’t have her!” The words were almost a shout. She took a step backwards, as though surprised by her own vehemence, and a small golden head wriggled out from under her coat collar.

  The hatchling blinked at Lance with bright, cat-like eyes. It couldn’t be more than a few hours old, but Lance’s skin prickled, like the small creature was doing more than just blinking at him. It was assessing him.

  Its scent was like pepper mixed with fireworks, not the wild, fresh scent of a feline shifter, but Lance’s snow leopard ignored that. It saw the cat-like eyes and small, wriggling shape, and greeted the infant shifter like it would any baby cat—with a playful psychic sniff and nudge.

  The dragonling reared back, outrage in every line of its tiny body. Its eyes narrowed into suspicious slits, and it hissed before diving back under her collar.

  “What did you just do to her—” the woman began, and then swore, her eyes flicking behind Lance. “Oh shit.”

  Lance’s nostrils flared. A slight change in the air brought a familiar scent to his nose. The black-clad, shielded enemy agents from the station, their natural scents overlaid by the thick stench of smoke.

  His snow leopard leapt to the fore, sharpening Lance’s senses as he checked over his shoulder.

  Three of them. Shifters. Predators of some sort, but that was as much as he could tell when they were in human form.

  Lance turned back to his mate and stared into her eyes. His vision fuzzed at first—he was standing close enough to her that his snow leopard’s farsightedness kicked in—but as he pushed his snow leopard’s senses back, he saw her clearly.

  “Did your eyes just change color?” she hissed, and then made a frustrated noise. “Not that that’s the most important thing right now. They were at the station too, weren’t they? Oh, shit.”

  Her pupils darkened as she stared back at him, and he wondered what she was seeing. The silver sheen of his snow leopard’s eyes? His dual nature, the wild animal inside the man?

  Did she feel what he felt?

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  She glared at him. “Is it a choice between you and those assholes at the end of the street?”

  Her expression was fierce, but fear flashed behind her eyes, just for a moment. Lance’s protective instincts surged as he realized how she could recognize the shifter mercs.

  He’d picked her up while they were zeroing in on her. Before he touched her, she would have thought she was alone on that section of the platform. As soon as he put his arms around her, and she came under his shield, she would have seen the six black-clad soldiers suddenly surrounding her.

  “I’ll protect you from them,” he promised her.

  Her jaw clenched. “Fine. And…” Her eyes clouded with a confusion that was more vulnerable than the fear he’d seen in them a moment before. “I do. I do trust you. I don’t know why, but I do.”

  Lance reached out. “Then come with me. I’ll keep you both safe.”

  Shouts rang out behind him, but Lance didn’t bother looking back. His professional, human side told him that the enemy shifters wouldn’t dare shoot and risk hitting the valuable dragonling, and his snow leopard was too exultant to spare them a thought.

  His mate’s hand fit into his like he had been made to hold her. Her fingers were slender, but strong. She smelled like sunlight and the sea and was so close to him he had to force his snow leopard’s eyes back, again, so he could see her clearly.

  Lightning sparked where their skin touched. Lance grinned.

  “Run!”

  Keeley

  Do you trust me?

  And fuck if she knew why, but she did. This strange man who’d knocked out her attacker without breaking a sweat. Who’d pulled her from the station after the explosion and made sure she was safe.

  He towered over her, strength in every inch of his chiseled form, from his broad shoulders to the way his torso tapered to lean hips. He was just so… huge. With anyone else, she would have found his sheer size intimidating, but somehow with him, it made her feel safe.

  She remembered how warm that chest had felt against her side as he held her. Every inch of it was pure muscle, powerful and masculine.

  Keeley’s life had turned upside down. She didn’t know anything about this man, except that he made her skin fizz and her insides melt, and that was hardly enough to base a life-or-death decision on.

  But he had saved her life. Twice. That had to count for something. And given a choice between a group of armed men dressed the same as the asshole who’d tried to crack her skull open, and a hot-as-fuck mysterious stranger who’d saved her life, she knew who she was going to pick.

  Besides. The baby dragon liked him.

  At least, she was pretty sure the dragon had hissed at the shadowy figures that had appeared at the end of the street, and not at him.

  Mostly sure.

  Too late to change your mind now, she reminded herself as they raced around a corner.

  Lance’s grip on her hand was strong and secure, but not crushing, even as they sprinted down the street. He pointed at an alleyway and pulled her into it a moment later.

  Shivers of electricity raced up Keeley’s arm from where they touched. Adrenaline, she told herself. This is definitely adrenaline, and not...

  ...I’m not going with this guy just because he’s hot. Am I? Oh, God, I am.

  I am so going to die.

  In her front pocket, tiny claws scratched at her stomach as the baby dragon clung to her through her apron. Keeley dropped the gun and flung her arm around her front, holding the scared creature tight.

  Don’t worry, she told it silently. I’m not going to die. I have to look after you, don’t I? Can’t do that if I’m dead.

  “This way,” said the man—had he said his name was Lance?—guiding her down a gap between two buildings, barely wide enough to be called an alley.

  “Wait, what?” Keeley had to pause to suck in breath. She knew this street. “No, it’s a dead end!”

  Lance flashed her a reassuring grin. “I know this neighborhood like the back of my hand. Used to run around here as a kid.”

  Keeley yanked her hand out of his. “Well, I live here now, and I’m telling you, there’s no way out!”

  She turned just in time to see three men run into the alley.

  “Great,” Keeley muttered. “Now that way’s blocked, too...”

  Lance grabbed her hand, urging her further down. Brick walls loomed up either side of her, enclosing them. Too close.

  Keeley felt a pressure on her chest. Too close. Too dark. No way out. Her fingertips tingled.

  Her knees hit the ground with a crack. Someone shouted her name, and strong arms picked her up. Cold air blasted her face. They were running.

  But there’s nowhere to go, she wanted to scream through the dizziness enveloping her.

  “See,” Lance murmured in her ear, his breath still even despite running and carrying her. “Just around this corner, there’s—oh, damn.”

  “It’s been there for weeks,” Keeley mumbled, feeling hollow as she stared up at the shipping container that filled the other end of the alleyway, completely blocking off the exit to the street beyond. “Something to do with some construction next door’s doing. My landlord won’t s
hut up about it.”

  She cupped her hands around the tiny, warm lump in her coat where the baby dragon was huddled. “Can we hide her somewhere?”

  “What?” Lance’s green-gray eyes furrowed.

  “They want the dragon, don’t they? If we—I don’t know, throw her, maybe she’ll have a chance to get away, if we slow them down?”

  Maybe she’ll find someone better at keeping her safe.

  Lance’s frown deepened. “The hell with that,” he growled, and the silver glint in his eyes was back. He shifted his grip on her. “Hold tight.”

  Keeley wrapped her arms more tightly around his shoulders. The dragonling peeped softly, cushioned between her stomach and Lance’s chest.

  Strong muscles moved under her fingers as Lance crouched. He can’t be about to jump, she thought, her heartbeat pounding in her ears. There’s no way he’ll make it!

  “Just lift me high enough to—” she began, and then Lance jumped.

  Wind whipped Keeley’s hair against her face. Before she could catch her breath, Lance had landed lightly on top of the shipping container.

  The container was jammed up against the mouth of the alleyway. The street beyond beckoned, fully lit, people hurrying along the sidewalk. The real world, Keeley thought, not this nightmare.

  “My team will be here soon,” Lance whispered, striding to the other end of the container. “We need to get you shielded, and then—”

  Lance grunted, the only warning before he staggered to his knees.

  The container roof clanged as Lance collapsed. Keeley fell from his arms, landing on her hip on the hard metal.

  “Lance—” she cried out, and saw the stain spreading across his chest. Oh, God. He’s been shot.

  She hadn’t even heard it. Lance dropped onto his hands and knees, keeping his body between her and the attackers in the alleyway.

  “Go,” he urged her, fumbling at something on his right arm. “I’ll stay here. Buy you time. Take this—find my team, they’ll help you—”

  “What? No.” Keeley’s fingers felt numb as she took the armband. This couldn’t be happening. “No, you’ve got to come with me. I have no idea where I’m going, I can’t just leave you here.”

  Lance’s wry grin turned into a grimace of pain. “That’s—ugh. I’m sorry. I wish this could have gone differently. But I’m only going to slow you down like this.” He shifted his weight and hissed in a breath. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “It’s Keeley. Keeley B—Smith.”

  Shouted orders echoed out of the alleyway.

  “Keeley.” He said it like a prayer, gazing at her like she was the goddess he was praying to. “I’m sorry it had to end up like this, Keeley. I thought I’d have more time.”

  “More time? For what?” Keeley’s heart hammered in her chest.

  “This.” Lance took her face in his hands and kissed her.

  Keeley had been kissed before. Terrible teenaged crushes. Even worse early-twenties crushes. Nothing like this.

  Lance’s lips were soft. Gentle. If her name on his lips had been a prayer, then this kiss was a sort of worship. Longing shivered across her skin, awakening something inside Keeley she’d thought had died long ago.

  She whimpered as he lifted his head.

  “Now go,” he whispered, his voice firm. Keeley blinked, and then the breath caught in her throat as she looked at him.

  The stain on Lance’s chest was spreading fast, too fast, and his face was going gray.

  “They’re almost here. I’ve told my team to watch for you. Take the hatchling. Be safe. Go.”

  Brakes shrieked on the street beyond. The shipping container shook as something hit it from the side, the same way they’d come up.

  Keeley looked past Lance and saw a hand appear on the edge of the container, only a few feet away. In her apron pocket, the little dragon screeched.

  “You’ve got to get up,” she told Lance. “I can’t do this alone!”

  He shook his head and pressed Keeley’s fingers around the armband and tapped a button on its edge.

  “This is your shield,” he said, and the world around them shimmered.

  Keeley gasped. The container, the walls, the street beyond—everything seemed thin and insubstantial, like they were made of tissue paper. Everything except her, and Lance with his hand on her back to push her away, and the tiny dragon forcing its way out from under her coat.

  Lance’s face was ashen. He frowned, staring at Keeley, then at his own hand.

  “What in the world?” he murmured, and then the first of the attackers pulled themselves onto the container.

  Keeley froze. The man was the size of a barn door. He pointed his gun at a red smear on the container roof—Lance’s blood—and then looked up, straight at Keeley and the others.

  And then he looked away.

  “Where the fuck did they go?” he barked over his shoulder. “I thought you got him?”

  “They’re fucking shielded!” someone called from behind him. The container creaked as someone else began to climb.

  “I’m fucking shielded,” the first man snarled, and turned back around. His brow lowered as he stared at Keeley and Lance. Directly at them. And then past them. “So I’d be able to see them if they were too, fuckwit!”

  The shipping container clanged again. Someone else was climbing up.

  “You know what the contract says,” grunted the man climbing up. “No payload, no pay. Stop wasting time!”

  Keeley grabbed for Maggie as she tried to scramble out of her coat. Maggie swung her head towards the man with the gun and then started to scratch at the armband around Keeley’s wrist, whining unhappily.

  The world started to un-shimmer.

  Oh, shit. “Don’t do that,” Keeley whispered urgently to the little dragon. “Don’t do that, we need to stay hidden—”

  “Wait,” the man said, raising his gun. “There’s something there—”

  Keeley held the baby dragon tight, not daring to breathe. She was about to die. Lance was bleeding out at her feet.

  Dragons weren’t supposed to be real. None of this was supposed to happen. But it was, and oh, God, she wished she was anywhere but here right now. Except her whole body was frozen with fear, because of course it was, because she was as useless at being a thief as she was at being a good person.

  “I shouldn’t have let you go.” Lance’s voice was uneven, and she wasn’t sure he even knew he was talking. His eyes were closed. “I should have stopped you back at the station. Taken you home. Safe… home…”

  Safe. Keeley wasn’t sure she remembered what that was.

  As the gunman’s face lit up and he shouted out that he’d found them, Keeley closed her eyes.

  In her arms, the baby dragon sang.

  Lance

  “Prrp?”

  Lance went from unconscious to wide awake in less than a second. His muscles bunched, ready to spring, as his eyes tried to focus on the thing moving in front of him.

  “Prr-rrp?”

  His eyes weren’t following orders. The prrp-ing creature in front of him coalesced into a fuzzy gold-colored blob, but he couldn’t focus any closer than that.

  The blob jumped closer and batted him on the nose. “Prrp!”

  Lance sniffed. His nose told him what his eyes hadn’t managed. The hatchling. Of course. It was alive, and he was alive, which meant…

  Mission accomplished.

  Something deep inside Lance relaxed. One more win. One more step away from the brink.

  He sank back, letting his senses continue their automatic check of his surroundings. His nose told him where he was at once: his own apartment. To be more precise, his bedroom.

  Strange. He didn’t remember coming home.

  My team must have brought me here, he thought. After…

  Lance shook his head. His skull felt like it had been stuffed with cotton wool and, now that he’d noticed that, the rest of his body chimed in, too. His bones were heavy as conc
rete blocks. Half his torso, from his collarbone in the front to his right shoulder blade, had the itchy, static tingle of fast healing.

  Don’t worry, his snow leopard said lazily. I took care of everything. Since you were too slow to get out of the way of that bullet.

  Lance stretched carefully. His accelerated shifter healing had done the job. He ached all over, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore.

  But he was exhausted. Bone-tired and starving, thanks to the amount of healing his body had done while he was unconscious.

  And something was still niggling at the back of his mind. Something about the lazy purr in his snow leopard’s psychic voice, and where were Yelich and the others, anyway? And—

  He frowned. There’s something I’m missing. Something about the feeling of home…

  “Prrp-eep-eep! Prrrreep!”

  Lance shot upright. His weight felt strange, off-balance, but his senses were sure as he turned to find her.

  Home. He was home. And it wasn’t just the familiar scent of his apartment that told him that.

  It was her. Keeley. His mate.

  The reading light above his bed was on its lowest setting, barely filling the bedroom with a soft, warm glow. It lit up his comfortable bedroom furniture: the pale wooden headboard and dresser, and the plush comforter on his bed and thick rug on the floor. And his mate.

  That explained why he couldn’t sense the rest of his team anywhere nearby. Once they saw that he was healing safely, they must have quietly withdrawn to give him and Keeley some privacy.

  She was standing at the end of the bed. Her coat was gone, and for the first time Lance saw what she was wearing under it. Some sort of uniform, he guessed: a black apron over a white blouse and black trousers.

  She must have just left work when everything went down, Lance thought. His heart went out to her. There was no way she could have expected her night to end up the way it had. Thank God the others were here to explain things to her while I was asleep.

  He raised his eyes to her face and frowned. Whatever the others had explained to her, she was still afraid and exhausted. Deep shadows haunted her eyes, and thick hanks of her dirty blonde hair were hanging around her face.