by Zoe Chant
There must be some other reason she was refusing his hoard, but it was of no consequence. He was a dragon, and she was his mate. He would make her the prize of his nest; she would be his finest treasure. There would be no more running from him.
If he had the air to spare, he would have roared, because there, half-buried in shifting sand, was Saina’s suitcase, its lurid color washed away by the murkiness of the depths.
He put a claw around the handle and kicked off from the floor of the ocean, making a swift, determined beeline for the surface.
He was not built for water liftoffs; he needed to kick off with his strong hindlegs from something solid to get enough lift to get him into the air, but knowing that he’d never been able to before didn’t stop Bastian from believing he could now as a strange resolution crept over him.
He darted for the surface, and just as he broke through it, spread his wings and gave a tremendously powerful beat that took him into the air.
A triumphant laugh turned into a roar of celebratory fire as he escaped the distasteful draw of the saltwater and returned to the air where he belonged, his prize safe in his claws.
He soared through the salty air, snapping at seabirds who dared get in his way, and flew back to Shifting Sands with sure, strong wing strokes.
He circled the resort twice, gratified when the people sunbathing below looked up to admire his big, gleaming body. Then he landed at the back entrance to the kitchen, closest to where he sensed his mate.
Saina! he roared, calling her.
Saina! I have your tribute! You will be mine!
Obediently, as she should, Saina came to the door, Breck and Chef right behind her, staring curiously. Chef was holding a wicked knife, and Breck had a dish towel. Neither of them was any threat.
Bastian dropped the sodden suitcase at his mate’s feet. I have won you, he snarled.
Her spoken voice was sharp and unexpectedly clear. “You have done nothing of the sort, you idiot.”
He opened his jaws and roared flame into the air.
Chapter 17
Chef proved to be a large older man with a twinkle in his bright eyes, a white mustache, and biceps the size of winebarrels. He welcomed Saina into his kitchen domain with the open-hearted kindness that she was beginning to accept was a genuine part of this odd resort and showed her the tasks that needed attention.
“Are you sure you are up to this?” he asked sincerely.
Saina rolled her shoulder, turning her head to look at the fading puckered scab. “It’s almost all healed,” she promised before diving into a soapy sink of dirty dishes.
He continued to regularly check in with her as he moved around the kitchen with busy authority, praising her attention to detail and generally encouraging her in an unexpected way. He sang as he worked, and it was surprising to Saina because it was without method or motive, just for the joy of it.
She joined him, because his pleasure in it was so addictive. She was careful to keep her magic dampened, and to keep her grief from coloring the counterparts she sang. It helped that Chef seemed to like happier tunes, skipping from Italian arias to folk songs as the mood struck him. Most of them weren’t songs that Saina knew, but she could improvise a harmony to almost anything, and after a few choruses could usually pick up on lyrics. Breck joined them for a few lines, as he moved in and out of the kitchen bussing tables and restocking and refreshing the buffet.
She was chopping tomatoes for that night’s dinner, singing the soprano to “Tonight” from West Side Story and forgetting for a while that she would be leaving very soon, when Bastian broke through her reverie.
Saina! He called her. Saina! I have your tribute! You will be mine!
Saina dropped the knife, snatching her hands out of the way in time to avoid disaster, and left it on the counter to answer the call. Judging by the way that Chef and Breck also startled, they’d heard Bastian’s imperious words, and they were at her heels when she came out of the back kitchen door to find a gigantic green dragon perched at the retaining wall.
Her pink rolling carry-on case fell with a sodden thump at her feet.
I have won you, Bastian said, and his golden eyes were shot with glowing red.
Goldshot.
“You have done nothing of the sort, you idiot,” Saina could not stop herself from saying, and she saw Bastian flinch and then rear his head back in anger to flame into the air.
She recognized his irrational anger and the unnatural glow to his eyes and scales. She didn’t for a moment fear for her own self, but she knew that Bastian would lose his real self if she didn’t do anything, and she cast desperately for something she could do to free him as she opened her mouth.
Her grandmother’s words came back to her, and she drew power not from her belly, but from her heart. She focused all of her unpredictable magic into the idea of leaching the personality-altering drug from his system. She had to draw out the poison, sing it from his very veins. Not sure it would work, she poured her magic into her song.
Let it go,
Let it die,
Let it out,
Let it fly…
When the last note died away, Saina waited to see if it had worked.
Bastian remained perched on the retaining wall, swaying slightly, and she panted, every muscle in her body aching from the effort.
Chef and Breck looked from one of them to the other, baffled.
Bastian shook his big head and just as Saina was drawing in breath to try another song, he blinked and the remaining red in his eyes faded away. He seemed to draw into himself, suddenly much smaller and less glittery, but there was only a brief moment to observe his dragon before he shifted into a man. Then he was Bastian, vaulting down from the retaining wall to kneel at her feet.
“Saina,” he said. “I… don’t understand what happened. I’m so sorry.”
“You should be,” Saina said furiously. “You don’t own me and you never will, but more than that, you are an utter fool.”
He looked up at her in consternation.
“Do you have any idea what is in that suitcase?” she demanded.
He started to reach for it, and she quickly said, “No, don’t touch it!” She crouched next to it and unzipped it, flinging the lid back to reveal a sodden, dissolved gray mass in a slurry of half-empty plastic wrappers. “This is goldshot.”
Bastian, poor sweet, innocent Bastian, looked across the luggage at her with no understanding at all.
“Goldshot is what got that French dragon eliminated from the World Mr. Shifter contest,” Breck supplied, snapping his fingers with the memory.
“It’s a drug,” Saina added. “A terrible, expensive designer drug that only works on dragons. You probably absorbed several doses of it getting that close to the stuff dissolving underwater.”
“I was a real dragon,” he said achingly, standing up and wrapping arms around himself. “For a little while I was a real dragon. A dragon of fire and strength.”
“You are a real dragon,” Saina told him firmly, standing to face him. “And I love you just the way you are, the way you really are, not the trumped up ball of muscle and ego that the goldshot makes you.”
He squinted at her, like he was struggling through the worst hangover of his life. He probably was.
“You love me?” he said plaintively.
Saina sighed. “Yes, dammit.” It hurt to admit, and felt good at the same time, like pulling off an old scab.
Bastian grinned at her lopsidedly through his pain. “You are my mate.”
“I’m not,” she insisted, but weakly. She wasn’t entirely sure of anything anymore. “You shouldn’t trust your feelings for me.”
“This is not a spell,” Bastian insisted. “I know what false confidence feels like now, and that is not what I feel for you.”
“I should have brought popcorn,” Breck told Chef. “This is better than the Spanish soaps!”
“That’s only because you don’t speak Spanish,” Chef hissed back.
“And you’re too lazy to read the subtitles.”
“What would convince you?” Bastian asked, ignoring them.
His question was meant seriously, Saina realized, he wasn’t just speaking metaphorically about having her set an impossible quest for him to complete.
“Time,” she said thoughtfully. “Time away. My magic wears off if I don’t renew it. But…” she swallowed. “I don’t trust myself not to cast again, without meaning to. I have never loved anyone before. I don’t know how to do it without magic.”
Chef and Breck both made suspicious sniffling noises, and Saina glared in their direction.
Chapter 18
Bastian would have preferred to have this conversation without an audience, and without a headache so terrible it seemed to sink into his very bones. But fate seemed determined to cross him.
“I was curious as to why I didn’t have a lifeguard on duty, and I also believe there were promises about this not happening again if you were to stay here, Saina,” a new voice cut in.
Scarlet’s arms were crossed and she was standing by the gate to the kitchen garden, looking as if she’d been there for some time.
“The plot thickens,” Breck said in a stage-whisper to Chef.
Scarlet turned her icy stare to him. “I believe you have somewhere else to be,” she suggested.
Chef helpfully took the head waiter's elbow and dragged him back into the kitchen, shutting the door firmly behind them. Bastian almost laughed, picturing them leaning with their ears against the other side of it. Almost laughing made his head hurt worse.
“I’m sorry,” Saina said in small voice.
“It was my fault,” Bastian added quickly.
“I’m sure it was,” Scarlet said without quarter, looking down at the seeping suitcase. “I want this removed before it gets into the soil,” she said in disgust.
Bastian automatically bent to pick it up and Saina swiftly said, “No! Don’t touch it again!”
She knelt beside the bag and zipped it up, at least slowing the leaks. “I will leave,” she said in a small, brave voice. “I am sorry for the trouble I’ve been.”
“No,” Bastian said. “You stay here. I have… business I need to attend to.” He turned to face Scarlet’s wrath. “I need five days off.”
Scarlet’s face grew chillier. “You realize that we have a new batch of guests and no other lifeguard on staff.”
“I can certify Saina,” Bastian said swiftly. “Like I did with Neal a few months back. It’s just a swimming test I know she can pass, and a few safety and first aid lectures I can pack into an afternoon.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Saina said.
“He might,” Scarlet countered dryly.
Bastian turned to Saina. “You told me you need time. Time away from me.” The idea of it hurt to his already aching bones. “I’ll give you that time.”
To Scarlet, he said firmly. “I’m sorry not to give more warning, but this isn’t optional.”
Scarlet met his gaze without wavering. “How do I know she can control her magic?” she asked, as if Saina wasn’t standing right beside them. “I can’t have our guests accidentally enspelled because a little girl gets emotional about some setback or imagined slight.”
Bastian bristled, wanting to snarl at her for the insult but at the last moment recognized it as bait.
“I can’t promise it won’t happen again,” Saina said calmly in reply. “But I can promise that I mean you, your guests, and this place no harm, and I will see that none comes to it while you employ me. I am happy to work here in whatever capacity I can until Bastian returns.”
“And then?” Scarlet prodded.
Saina drew in a breath. “I don’t know. If he still thinks I’m his mate, I… would like to stay. If he doesn’t, you’ll be rid of me.”
Scarlet considered this for a long moment while Bastian watched Saina’s carefully serene face.
“I am satisfied with this,” Scarlet finally said. “Bastian, I hope you find what you need. If there is any change to this arrangement, I expect to be notified. I am attempting to run a professional establishment here and I need to be able to rely on my staff.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he and Saina said together.
Scarlet gave a harrumph in reply and stalked back the way she had come, muttering about dating services and schedules.
Chapter 19
Saina watched Scarlet go with a sigh of relief. The woman made her uneasy, raising the hair at the back of Saina’s neck. The power that seemed to bleed out from her was something she had never felt before and the air was easier to breathe with her gone.
“So, I guess you’ve volunteered to teach me to be a lifeguard,” she said, turning to Bastian. “Can you really do that? Legally, I mean?”
Bastian, still looking like he had a terrific headache, shrugged and gave a lopsided grin. “I'm certified to train lifeguards. I know you can swim, I just have to quiz you on first aid and ocean safety, which I’m also sure you won’t have any trouble with, and there’s a temporary certificate I sign and a form I mail in to the Civil Guard for the permanent certification.”
“Let’s go make me a lifeguard,” Saina said, and she took Bastian’s offered arm and dragged the luggage that had changed her life so drastically behind her.
She dropped the bag at her cottage, wrapped in a garbage bag to keep the ooze from spreading, while Bastian got his lifeguard manuals from his room. They flipped through them together at the pool. “You know CPR?” he asked
“Sure,” Saina said.
Bastian flipped a few more pages. “Name the first three things you do with a drowning victim.”
“On land or in the water?”
“Assume you’ve gotten them back to land.”
“If they aren’t breathing, turn their head to the side so the water drains out, start mouth-to-mouth, and steal their wallet.”
Bastian chuckled. “Close enough. Describe two kinds of drowning behavior.”
“Well, there’s the struggling sort, and the bobbing sort. Plus the being dragged under by tentacles sort, but you hardly ever see that this close to shore.”
“What would you do with a hysterical swimmer in the water?”
“Sing them to calmness before I even attempted to get close.”
Bastian flipped a few more page. “We can skip that part, then. And the bit about how long you can hold your breath and dive.”
“Do we get to practice the mouth-to-mouth?” Saina asked, feeling suddenly mischievous.
She regretted the joke as tasteless as Bastian looked up too quickly and then winced as his head caught up with the motion.
“You need an aspirin,” Saina told him.
“About seven of them,” Bastian agreed. “But let’s get this finished.”
Together, they flipped through the rest of the manual, and Saina convinced him that she knew the material well enough.
She demonstrated basic swimming strokes in the pool and showed him rescue carries with a floating mattress.
“You’re qualified,” Bastian said at last, closing the book and flinching at the sound of it. “I’ll sign for it.”
Saina dried herself off with one of the fluffy pool towels and frowned at him.
“Let’s go get you that aspirin,” she said.
She led him down the path to the staff house, where the sign on the door had been further annotated “House of Hooligans” and “Stud House.” Both were crossed out.
By the time Saina got Bastian up the stairs, he was staggering badly.
“You poor thing,” she said as he fumbled with the lock. “Let’s get you into bed.”
“I like that idea,” he said in a low rumble.
Saina paused in the doorway. “I… I can help you,” she offered. “But only if you want me to.”
“How do you mean?” Bastian asked sensibly.
“I can rub your shoulders,” Saina said hesitantly. Could she really do that without wanting to touch more?
“And I can try to sing more of the goldshot from you.”
“I’d like that,” Bastian said gravely.
Saina made him take four aspirin with an entire glass of water, drew him down onto the bed and kissed his forehead, then took his shirt off carefully.
It was hard not to linger over the muscles of his arms, she wanted nothing more than to kiss down his chest, but Saina made herself stay to her goal. She sat chastely behind him on the bed and began kneading the knots from his shoulders and neck.
He groaned in pleasure as Saina found all the tightest places and applied siren-strong fingers to unwinding them. She hummed as she worked, cautiously letting her magic loosen all the tension from his body and leach what she could of the remaining poison from his blood.
When she was done, he turned abruptly and gathered her into his arms.
“You’re supposed to be relaxed now,” Saina protested with a squeak.
“You missed a spot,” Bastian murmured near her ear. “But my headache is gone.”
Saina could not keep her hands from continuing to stroke the tanned lines of his shoulders. “What if… what if you’re wrong?” she asked quietly. “What if this is just enchantment, like I said?” She didn’t want to stop touching him, she wanted his skin against every inch of hers. It didn’t feel like song-fantasy. It was so beautiful and right-feeling, just being with him, held in his strong arms.
Bastian put a hand at her chin and gently tipped her head back so he could look into her eyes. His eyes were all gold now, glimmering like distant treasure. “I will take a moment of enchantment with you over a lifetime without you.”
But it wasn’t her magic looking back at her, it was Bastian. Not Bastian-on-goldshot, not Bastian-entwined-in-her-spell, just Bastian.
Bastian, who loved her without magic.
Bastian, who wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Saina opened her mouth, and it wasn’t to sing.
Chapter 20
Bastian hadn’t been honest about his headache; it still lurked behind his eyes and in the pit of his stomach.