“I do,” Asher said, “and that was amazing.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was.”
“So let’s not go too fast. Think of everything we have to look forward to.”
“Patience was never my strength,” Violet said.
And she didn’t say how long she’d been waiting for this. How many time she’d fantasized about it. She’d tell him later, when he was so stuck with her that it would be funny rather than pathetic or clingy.
“Don’t worry,” he said. He checked to see if the beggar was still there, and when he saw it was clear, he said, “I’m not patient either.”
And they kissed again.
CHAPTER 11
ASHER
Asher had his tablet out and was trying to do some basic figure drawing to warm up. He couldn’t draw a straight line still, but luckily the human figure was all curves.
You know who is really all curves? The most biggest, most beautifullest curves? I’ll give you a hint: It was a woman who wanted to mate with you last night, and you was stupid and didn’t mate with her!
“I’m drawing a blank,” Asher said, shading in the figure’s upper torso.
Violet! It’s Violet! How are you so dumb?
“Oh,” Asher said. “Violet.”
It had been so hard to take things slow, but he’d promised himself that when he’d found his mate, he wouldn’t rush into things. And...something was off about Violet. She’d said she had a secret, and she’d acted like it was a joke, but he’d seen in her eyes that she really was keeping something from him.
He didn’t like that.
Maybe she had her reasons, but he’d ask her about it tonight, and if she got dodgy again...he’d have to take a step back from everything. Would his mate really lie to him?
Everyone has secrets! his bear said. You didn’t tell Violet about the thing you wanted to do with her milk bags. The thing where you put your penis between—
Asher scratched wildly at a poorly foreshortened arm and then started a new figure. “Humans don’t just say the first thing that comes to their brain. You don’t tell someone what you want to do with them in bed on the first date, and explaining stuff like that out loud can sound gross. It’s not a secret I’m keeping.”
He heard a loud knock at the door. He put the tablet down and checked the peephole.
Metin. Fuck.
He started to walk away.
“Asher!” Metin shouted. “I saw the shadow, and your bike is outside.”
He flung the door open and said, “I’m done. Out! Do you not fucking understand that?”
“Andrei has—”
“I don’t care. It’s not my problem. I’ve got a job interview to prepare for, and I’m trying to go on dates! And maybe tomorrow I’ll go out into the forest and catch some salmon. That’s what I’ve got on my plate right now. No dragons, no ancient shifter artifacts. Just normal bear-dude stuff.”
“Andrei has attacked a weapons depot. He’s becoming more aggressive and desperate. While there were no civilian casualties, all of the armed guards were killed, and a huge cache of weapons were taken.”
“Great,” Asher said. “And how exactly did Andrei get enough money to have a helicopter and a squad of guys with him willing to choke on cyanide to protect his secrets? Want to tell me that?”
“It’s need to know,” Metin said.
“So you want to use me,” Asher said, “just like you always have. You tell me what you think I need to hear to get me to act, to make me think whatever you’re doing is justified. Then there’s all kinds of other shit going on beneath the surface, and I’m guessing if I knew it all, I’d probably side with Andrei.”
“You’re out of line,” Metin said.
“And you’re...you’re...out of my face!” Asher said, slamming the door.
I don’t get that joke, his bear said.
“It wasn’t a good one,” Asher said. “I was just pissed off. It sounded tougher in my head.”
Shit. He’d mentioned dating to Metin. That had been a mistake. Well, Metin would find out anything he wanted. Asher had been out in public with Violet, so he already knew.
He’d have to warn her about Metin tonight.
CHAPTER 12
VIOLET
The museum had closed for a few days after the hostage situation, but it was open again, and everyone was expected back. The newly installed windows still had bright blue tape on them, and there was some new furniture in the lobby to replace the pieces that had been perforated with bullet.
All these little things that were different made everyone feel uneasy.
“Violet,” Laurence said, “wanna come with me to the ladies’ room?”
“Uh...” Violet said. “That sounds awkward.”
He took her by the wrist and pulled her over to a quiet corner of the ancient pottery exhibit. “I didn’t want to text you this or tell you over the phone...”
“Sounds scary,” Violet said.
“But,” Laurence continued, “I managed to get back in just after they set that tent up outside, and I took this.”
He handed her the label for the tooth.
“Jesus,” she said, quickly pocketing it.
“Don’t ask me why the fuck I’m doing this,” he said, “but the dudes who showed up here combing this place didn’t look like they’d go easy on whoever tampered with the crazy-ass tooth, and I didn’t want you getting, erm, black sited, you know?”
She was breathing fast, and her adrenaline was pulsing through her. “Shit, Laurence. Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said. “Bad news though. Boss was asking when you’d be in, and he looked real nervous about it.”
“Why would he be nervous?”
“It was like he was asking at someone else’s urging, someone he was afraid of.”
Shit.
She managed to get twenty minutes of restoration work done before Sanchez was on her.
“Violet,” he stammered, “can you come with me please?”
“Sure,” she said. “What is it?”
“I—” He let out a huff of air and looked around nervously. “I don’t think I can say. Please just follow me.”
She’d never seen Sanchez this nervous. At least she was unlikely to get fired or in trouble for being slow on the restoration. Small victories.
He pulled her into his office, but it was filled up by a huge military guy, one she remembered seeing walking around in the tent.
“Violet?” he said.
“Yes?”
“I’m General Metin. We noticed from the security footage of the incident that the man who—”
“I know his name is Andrei,” Violet blurted out.
“We noticed that Andrei spoke to you in detail, and from interviewing others, Andrei seemed to think you’d have a certain tooth.”
“Yes,” Violet said. “I don’t know why he thought I’d have it, or why the museum would have it at all. You’d have to ask the paleontologists—”
“We’ve asked everyone everything,” Metin said.
“And?”
“And everyone said that Andrei seemed really certain you knew something.”
“I don’t,” Violet said.
Metin was creeping her out. He looked like one of those guys who was just too clean and too straight. If anyone was that well-polished on the outside, it was because they had something to hide.
“Well,” Metin said, “thank you for your time. And remember, if you find you remember something that you failed to disclose now, it would greatly be in your best interests to contact me as soon as you remember.”
“Why’s that?” Violet asked.
“Because if we find out that you were less than forthright, bad things can happen to you.”
She gulped, nodded, and got out of there like it was on fire.
Fuck! She needed to tell Asher straight away what had happened. Tell him everything. Would he be more pissed at her for taking the tooth in the first place or more p
issed that she’d kept it secret from him?
She had to tell him though. Right now.
“Mr. Sanchez,” she said to him outside, “I’m not feeling so well now. Do you think—”
“Please,” he said, “take the day.” He let out a long sigh, squinted, and looked over both shoulders. He bent down and said in a hushed voice, “I feel the same way about that man. I’d take the day off too if I could. He makes my skin crawl.”
“Thanks,” Violet said.
She caught hold of Laurence, thanked him again, and told him she’d make sure he didn’t get in trouble for anything.
She texted Asher on her way out the door.
i need to see you, can i stop by?
She got on the bus and made her way toward his place before he even answered. She didn’t know the exact address, just the street.
yeah, do you know the address?
He texted her the address, and she was there in twenty minutes.
He opened the door wearing an undershirt and tight corduroys that hugged his powerful legs. His hair was slightly damp, and he smelled fresh and crisp. He must have just showered.
“Been working out?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sort of. I went fishing...with my paws.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’ll have to show me that sometime.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Before she could tell him what she’d rushed over to tell him, his hand was on her waist, pulling her inside. His lips were on her before she could get a word out, and then their tongues were dancing together, and suddenly it didn’t seem so crucial to tell Asher about the tooth right this second. They at least had time to kiss.
But soon she was falling down onto his couch, and the kiss went from horizontal to vertical, which she knew was trouble. Asher was on top of her, and his hands on her waist moved their way up to her sides. God, she loved the feeling of strong hands running gently up her sides.
When they finally stopped kissing—only because Asher’s lips moved down to her neck—she started to get the words out.
“Asher—”
He nibbled on her ear, and she moaned.
“The secret...I have to tell you now.”
“Mm,” he said. “Secrets. So mysterious.”
“Seriously,” she said, but then his hand touched the soft flesh of her breast.
She moaned again, but she knew each new step they took toward sex that happened before she spilled the beans would make it worse when she finally did.
She blurted it out. “I have the crazy magic dragon tooth that Andrei was looking for!”
His hand, which was squeezing her breast, held still and then let go. He jolted upright.
“No,” he said. “You can’t.”
“I can. I do. I have it.”
She reached into her purse, which she’d thrown on the floor, and pulled it out. “Look.”
“Fuck! Dammit, Violet! Why...why would you take it?”
“If I hadn’t taken it, Andrei or that awful general would have it.”
“Shit!” Asher punched the wall, and his fist sank deep into the drywall.
“Who else knows?” Asher asked. His voice was dripping with icy anger.
“A co-worker who covered for me, helped me hide it. That’s it.”
“Who suspects?”
She sighed. “I think Metin does. And...Andrei.”
He punched a new hole in the wall.
“I’ve been thinking about it!” Violet said. “All we need to do is throw it into the river or—”
Asher took hold of it, and his eyes widened. He clenched it in his fist, and she saw sweat dripping down his brow. He lost focus of her and started to shake. She thought she saw a red flare in his eyes.
“Asher? Are you okay?”
He shook his head as if waking up and then said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You felt something when you took it, didn’t you?”
“Take it back,” Asher said.
He handed it to her.
“Go hide it somewhere. Then come get me.”
“Like in the river?”
“No,” he said. “Just go upstairs and hide it in my bedroom.”
He showed her the stairs, and she went up.
Wow, his bedroom. Too bad she wasn’t up here continuing what they had started. No, she was here to play dragon tooth hide-and-seek.
She saw his bed was neatly made—very military—and everything was pretty tidy. She opened his closet and saw a neat rack of ironed shirts and pants hanging on coat hangers. Below that were jeans and T-shirts folded in piles. She lifted the T-shirt pile up and stashed the tooth between a plain yellow V-neck and an Asher Henley.
She walked back downstairs and said, “Okay, it’s hidden. Why are we—”
“Fuck,” he said. “This is bad.”
“What?” she asked.
“We can’t throw it in the river because I was dumb enough to touch it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch,” he said. He walked up the stairs, and she followed, checking out his hot ass as he went. They were getting into some scary stuff, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun.
He walked into the bedroom, opened the dresser, looked down at the shirts, and then opened the pile right up to expose the tooth.
“Uh,” Violet said, “tell me you used some kind of super shifter senses to do that...”
“No,” he said. “As soon as I touched the tooth, I could sense it. We can test a farther distance, but I suspect I’ll always know where it is.”
“So,” Violet said, “we throw it away and deny you ever touched it.”
“Andrei is a master interrogator. And interrogator is a euphemism. We had to do some bleak stuff in Syria, Violet. It’s something I don’t ever want you to have to see, so I need to take this thing to Andrei.”
“What? You can’t. He’s—”
“If I don’t,” Asher said, “he’ll come for me, or worse, for you. If you had just left it where it was...and how could you not have told me right away?”
His fists were balled, and he was pacing back and forth.
“I’m sorry, Asher,” she said. “I was trying to figure out what to do with it.... I thought I could just bury it somewhere and no one would have to know. I didn’t know there was shifter radar attached to it, or that anyone suspected me of having it.”
“No,” Asher said, “you couldn’t have known any of that, but I could have. Now we’re out of time. Metin is onto you, and Andrei must be too.”
“I’m sorry—”
He took her hands. “Just don’t keep secrets from me again. It doesn’t matter the reason, or if you think you’re protecting me.”
“I won’t,” she said. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Asher said, “so I need to go it alone, meet face-to-face with Andrei.... And if I think he can be reasoned with, we might reach a deal. If not, I may need to kill him.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” Violet said.
“It’s all we’ve got, unless a miracle—”
Two loud knocks pounded at the door.
Asher sniffed. “Fuck! It’s SHIFT.”
He tore open a drawer and drew a gun.
CHAPTER 13
ASHER
He sniffed again. Animal odor. Tiger and wolf. If Metin had sent SHIFT to attack him, he’d have masked their scents. Something else was going on.
Asher took a few steps down the stairs and shouted, “What do you want?”
“You can hear through the door from here?” Violet asked.
“Yes,” Asher said.
“Metin’s not with us,” Alex’s voice said.
Alex was there too. And did he smell a dragon? But not Andrei.
“Who the fuck is that?” Asher asked.
“We’ve gone rogue,” Demian said. “Let us in. We’ll explain.”
He kept the gun up and went down the stairs. Then he opened the door
.
He pointed the gun at Alex. “Gone rogue? Why?”
He sniffed at Alex and smelled dragon. He wasn’t a snake. That’s why he hadn’t shifted before.
“Can we come in?” Alex asked. “Or do you want people seeing you holding a gun?”
He took a few steps back so they could enter, and Haller shut the door behind them.
“You can put the gun down,” Alex said.
“After I have a good explanation,” Asher said.
“Fine,” Alex said. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m not a snake. I’m a dragon. I was a double agent in SHIFT, investigating Metin. I found what I needed on him. He let Andrei loose so he’d find the tooth. It amplifies a shifter’s strength tenfold. He wanted to weaponize it.”
“Fuck,” Asher said. “I knew I was right about that guy.”
“We got a good deal from the dragons,” Haller said. “They pay a lot better.”
“Yeah,” Demian said, “and Metin’s an asshole anyway.”
“Wait,” Asher said. “Did you say the tooth amplifies strength?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Why?”
“Violet,” he said, “you can come down.”
“Ah,” Alex said. “I saw the way you looked at her in the museum.”
Violet got down the stairs, and Asher caught Alex checking her out. Asher shoved him.
Alex flew into the wall, slamming against it and sending chunks of drywall to the ground and up into the air as fine powder.
Demian and Haller pulled their guns on him.
“Shit!” Asher said. “It’s the tooth! I was just trying to give him a...friendly shove.”
“You have the tooth?” Alex said, standing as he dusted chipped paint and drywall off his clothes.
“Dude,” Demian said, “we’ve got to see what you can do in bear form!”
“We need to get to the safe house first,” Alex said. “I’ve got a place outside the city that Metin doesn’t know about.”
“What then?” Asher asked.
“My clan elders have tracked down Andrei. We know where his base is. I’ll check in with them, tell them you have the tooth.”
“I don’t want it,” Asher said. “What if I just give it to you, and you take it from here?”
“It’s bound to you,” Alex said.
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