by Anna Lowe
“Meaning the others don’t?” She thought of Silas with his stern face and Cruz with his wary tiger’s gaze.
“Let’s just say they have their issues with humans.”
“And you don’t?”
He laughed. “Oh, I have issues. Just not with humans.”
She scrutinized him. “So is Silas the owner of the estate?”
He flapped a hand over the steering wheel. “I wish I knew.”
“You don’t know?
He shook his head. “Look, we all have our secrets. Him. You. Me—”
She raised a hand in protest. “I don’t have secrets.”
His gaze dropped to her neck. “You sure about that?”
She furrowed her brow and touched her pendant. What was he talking about?
Before she could ask, he went on. “Listen, you want to know about Silas’s finances, you can ask him. You’d better brace yourself, though, because his people skills are a little lacking. Of course, he is a dragon.” Boone grinned. “Me, last I checked, I had $586 in the bank. But that was a few months ago, so who knows.”
Tessa folded her hands in her lap and looked over the Pacific, glittering under the sun on her right.
“Tell me about dragons,” she said.
He looked at her, letting the car’s speed inch up again. “What do you want to know?”
“Like why Morgan would want a mate.”
Boone sputtered in surprise. “Morgan said that?”
Tessa nodded, watching the wolf closely.
He kept his eyes on the road and grew serious for the first time. “Dragons are like most shifters. They believe in destined mates.”
“Destined mates?” Her pulse quickened as the words zipped around her mind. Why did they sound so familiar?
Boone’s hands opened and closed around the wheel. “Like a soul mate, I guess.” He was trying to sound casual, she could tell, but not really succeeding. “But more, too. Someone you love and protect and cherish forever. The one person in the whole world who really understands you. Someone who—” The words bubbled out of him until he shut his mouth abruptly. “Something like that, anyway.”
Tessa stared. Did Boone have a mate? Had he lost her?
“Forever?” she whispered, thinking of Kai.
Boone gnawed his lip before answering. “A lot of shifters believe that nonsense. That there’s only one person out there for you, and when you find her…”
He let the silence hang for a moment, then cleared his throat.
“First time on Maui?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly.
Tessa studied his profile then gave in.
“First trip to Hawaii.” Would it be her last, too?
She spent the rest of the drive in silence, as did Boone. Tessa’s mind bounced from Kai to Morgan and back again all the way to the airport. Seeing her suitcase gave her a ridiculously giddy rush, and she was tempted to clutch it in her lap the whole way back to Koa Point. That bag was hers. The things in it were hers. The second Boone dropped her off at the guest cottage, she ran inside, opened the suitcase, and started touching her things, reassuring herself, just as Boone had reassured her that it would be better to leave Kai alone for a while longer. She sat on the floor and picked up her favorite blue shirt just because she could. Because she had that little bit of control back. Her best sandals were in there, too, along with her diary and her prize possession — her grandmother’s leather-covered cookbook. She hugged it tightly, then kissed the worn cover and set it aside.
Clean underwear — three whole pairs — were a huge bonus, as was her favorite pair of jeans. When she lifted them out, the brown cardboard corner of a box poked up from the bottom of the suitcase, and she lifted it out. She’d grabbed the mail on her flight from her apartment. Ella had hurried her the whole time, and that little package had been among the bills and letters she’d received.
She sat on the bed and studied the return address.
“Aunt Frieda?”
She’d never been close to that side of the family. In fact, she’d found it hard to feel close to either side of the family after her parents’ bitter, drawn-out divorce when she was a kid. Still, it was nice to hear from someone every once in a while.
It took some work, but she ripped the tape apart and opened the box, where there was a note and a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl that shone in the sun.
Hello Tessa,
I’ve been going through a few last things of your grandmother’s. She wanted you to have this. Hope you’re doing well and that the cooking business is good.
Love, Frieda.
Tessa held the box, wondering what her aunt might say if she wrote an honest reply.
Cooking business was going well until I was attacked by a dragon. Currently in Hawaii. Not sure what I’ll do next…
She sighed and opened the clasp of the box. Funny how the plain rosewood felt a little warm to the touch. Maybe that side of her suitcase had been facing the sun on the drive back from the airport. She held the box up to her nose, sniffed the wood, and smiled, because it smelled like her grandmother’s house. Her refuge — her home away from a confused home throughout high school and college. She’d visited regularly in the six years since, right up until her grandmother’s death six months ago.
Her grandmother had gifted her the cookbook in person, three years earlier, but never mentioned this box. Tessa remembered it vaguely — one of many cluttering the top of her grandmother’s shelves back home. What might be inside?
She popped the top open, spread the silk handkerchief padding the inside, and stared.
Chapter Nine
Kai groaned and turned slowly from his side to his back. He’d been drifting around in the world’s most beautiful dream — a dream of him and Tessa, lying on a sandy beach. Palms swayed overhead, splitting the sun’s rays into a dozen separate streams of light that played over their naked bodies and made Tessa’s pendant glow. She was kissing his chest, and when she looked up at him, her eyes glowed just like a dragon’s. She was a dragon in that dream, and there was no reason why he couldn’t love her.
And the best part of the dream? Time stood still, and they were totally unrushed. Gone was the niggling sense of fate about to dive in and tear his world apart. Gone was the ticking of a clock, counting down to some precipitous event. It was just him and her with nothing between them. Nothing to hold back the burning, desperate need.
Mate, a deep, earthy voice whispered in his mind. She is your mate.
Mate, Tessa echoed. Make me your mate.
But from one second to the next, the dream vanished, and he was awake. Awake and aching from every damn sinew of his body. He blinked and looked around. No Tessa, though he could have sworn she’d been there. No beach. No emerald shining as bright as her eyes. Nothing but the sunlight streaming through the windows of his house.
How he’d even gotten there, he had no clue. The last thing he remembered was squinting through burning pain to find his way home and somehow land without taking out an acre of trees.
He bent his right arm gingerly and grimaced. That was the side that had sustained the worst damage in the fight. His elbow hurt, but he could bend it. His wrist worked, too — more or less. So, really, he’d gotten off okay.
Slowly, he sat up. What time was it? And more importantly, where had those three dragons come from?
We want your treasure. And we want her alive.
Her. Tessa?
He leaned over his knees and took a couple of deep breaths before standing up. None of the dragons who’d attacked him had been his equal, but they’d used their three-to-one advantage well.
Up until the green one made a crucial mistake, his dragon grinned.
That memory, he liked. The green-hued dragon was the smallest and fastest of the three, cutting and wheeling so quickly, Kai could barely keep track of the bastard. The other two blasted away with long bursts of flame, while the smaller one darted between them. But they kept attacking in the
same pattern, and as soon as Kai figured it out, greenie was toast.
Literally.
Kai had waited until the last possible second to fold his wings and dive to one side, which put greenie straight in the line of fire of the big red one. The dragon had careened into the sea with a splash while Kai shot straight back up and caught the red one from behind with a huge burst of flame.
My treasure! he’d roared when the single survivor beat a hasty retreat. Mine!
Tessa was his and his alone. It had been so startlingly clear in the thick of the fight and over the long flight home through the dark. But, shit. Everything was harder to make sense of in the harsh light of day. Tessa was human.
Just like Mom, he reminded his dragon. The closer she stays to us, the more danger she’s in.
Those dragons were hunting her. Demanding her. She’s already in danger, his dragon pointed out.
He scratched his head. Usually, his human side was the logical part. Why was his dragon the one suddenly making sense?
Because you worry too much. You think too much about the past.
Kai pushed to his feet, closing his eyes against the pain.
“What happened?”
Kai looked up to find Silas staring at him from the doorway with an expression as harsh as the tone of his voice. Ah, his dear cousin. So forgiving. So willing to give a guy a break.
Not.
Kai sank back down to sit on the edge of the couch and rolled his head left then right.
“Where’s Tessa? Is she all right?”
Silas nodded, sour as ever. “Her luggage arrived. Boone took her to pick it up.”
“Boone?” Kai jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain knifing through him as he dashed toward the door.
Silas caught his arm, sending fireworks through the right side of his body. “She’ll be fine.”
“Fine? Fine?” Kai sputtered for a while, unable to put his rage into words. He could kill Boone. “That damn wolf has no right going anywhere with my mate.”
“Mate?” Silas retorted, going perfectly still.
Kai went still, too. Had he just said that?
Sure did, his dragon hummed. The moonlight led us to her. Don’t you remember?
He remembered his mind going so hazy that he’d nearly flown into the cliffs of Molokai. And he remembered being so disoriented that he’d nearly let the wind blow him to Lanai instead of Maui. But then the sea had glimmered, and a voice just like his father’s whispered in his head.
The road to heaven. The path to your mate.
And there it was — a silvery highway, leading him home. If he’d had an extra ounce of energy, he would have glanced around for the ghost of his father or the shadow of destiny. But all he could manage at that point was to keep beating his wings until the peaked roof of Tessa’s cottage came into view.
Mate. She is our mate.
He shook Silas off and rushed to grab some clothes. “Damn it, how could you let her leave the estate? She’s in danger.”
“You’re the one who came home covered in blood. What happened?”
“I need to see her.”
“She’ll be fine with Boone,” Silas insisted.
“Fine if a couple of dragons swoop out of nowhere to attack her?” Kai stepped out onto the veranda and scanned the sky.
Silas’s voice dropped an octave. “What dragons? Where?”
Maui was their territory, as was all of Hawaii by extension, because dragons ranged far and wide. Hell, Silas had flipped out two years ago when an aging old dragon petitioned to spend six months a year on the Big Island. If that dragon hadn’t been a distant relative, Silas never would have allowed it.
Of course, Damien Morgan was a distant relative, too. Kai scowled.
“Three of them. They took off from Oahu to attack me in Ka’iwi Channel. Smart enough to keep the fight out of human sight.”
Dumb enough to think they could take me, his dragon huffed.
“Who?”
Kai shrugged — and immediately regretted it. His left side was doing okay. His right side, not so much.
“No one with local knowledge, that’s for sure. They didn’t take the back eddies off the windward side of Oahu into account.”
Silas nodded slowly. “Shifters from the mainland, then.”
Kai considered. “Could be. They’re after Tessa. They said, ‘We want your treasure. And we want her alive.’ Her, Silas. They said her.”
“Who would consider that human a treasure?”
Kai whirled and took three thunderous steps, coming face-to-face with Silas. He almost grabbed his cousin by the front of the shirt and shook him, too.
“Watch what you say.”
Silas didn’t push him back; he just stared into Kai’s eyes. “You really think she’s your mate?”
Kai stepped away, looked over the sea, and whispered, “Yes.”
His soul cried because he should be celebrating and shouting that to the sky. If only it weren’t all so complicated — and so dangerous for Tessa to get involved with him.
Silas’s dark eyes bored into his, unrelenting. But Kai stared right back. Tessa was his mate. Silas needed to accept that. The others would have to, as well. And then… Shit. Somehow, he’d have to explain to Tessa, too.
She feels it, too, his dragon whispered. She wants us the way we want her.
That much was simple — deceptively simple. He doubted Tessa wanted anything to do with the shifter world — especially considering his mother’s fate.
“She might not have a choice,” Silas growled.
Kai looked up quickly, chagrined that he’d let his thoughts slip far enough for Silas to read them. Chagrined and alarmed.
“What do you mean?”
“Obviously, there’s more to her than meets the eye. Why would three dragons be after her, calling her a treasure?”
It sounded like a rhetorical question, but Kai couldn’t puzzle it out. All he could do was gnash his teeth at the thought of that rich bastard, Morgan. “You think Morgan has the resources to send three dragons out after her?”
Silas tilted his head this way and that. “Morgan may or may not have battalions of dragons at his command.” His eyes flashed. “But Drax sure does.”
Kai growled at the thought of their archenemy, and the sound vibrated through his chest. “What would Drax have to do with this?”
“Could be that necklace she wears,” Silas said. “The one that looks just like the Lifestone.”
Kai thought the pendant looked familiar, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it until now.
The Lifestone, Kai’s dragon breathed. One of a group of legendary gems long lost to dragonkind.
He shook his head before his dragon got carried away with the idea. “It only looks like the Lifestone. Look closer, and it’s easy to spot as a fake.”
“Still, that could be what attracted Morgan’s attention. And on the off-chance that Drax is involved…”
“Why would he be interested in a copy of the Lifestone?”
“He wouldn’t be. He’d want the real thing. But maybe the copy is a clue. Maybe it can lead us to the real thing. Did you find out where Tessa got it?”
Kai shrugged. “Her grandmother gave it to her.” He hadn’t just been dreaming about Tessa the previous day, after all. He’d managed to collect a few facts, too.
“Her grandmother?”
Kai frowned. He’d been meaning to research that side of Tessa’s family, but he’d ended up flying all night, trying to cool off his dragon. And damn, he’d accomplished the opposite. His inner beast was hungrier for Tessa than ever. Surer than ever that they could somehow make it work.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t research it yet,” Silas snarled.
Kai scuffed the floor with his shoe. No, he hadn’t. Yet.
Silas shook his head, then gripped Kai’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “There’s another possibility as to why Morgan wants her, and that troubles me even more. She could be a fire maiden.”
Kai went perfectly still. Fire maiden — a human who could bear a dragon shifter’s child. Could Tessa be one of the very few, like his mother had been? He’d love Tessa either way, but to others, the difference was huge.
“Fire maiden,” he whispered, wondering if it could be true. Fire maidens were so rare, they were coveted and revered — if not always for the right reasons.
“Drax would give anything for a woman who could bear him a shifter child. Morgan, too,” Silas said.
His dragon wanted to correct Silas. It would be Tessa’s child. Hers and mine, if we’re that lucky one day.
Kai shook his head. Stupid dragon, getting ahead of himself again.
But now that the thought had arisen, it danced around his head. Him. Tessa. Together, making a family. Dragon numbers were dwindling all over the world. They had been for centuries. Some male dragons were lucky enough to find a woman they loved — shifter or human. Others spent a lifetime wishing — or warring for one of the few who could carry on their dragon line.
His mouth grew hot, the taste sulfurous. No one would take his mate from him. No one.
Silas went on, making Kai’s blood boil. “Drax is on a mission to dominate all dragons, but even he is mortal. And he has no heirs — no shifter heirs, anyway.”
Kai rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to imagine how many women a man like Drax had bedded — but the few humans who became pregnant from a dragon partner bore human offspring — worthless to a man like Drax.
Wouldn’t be worthless to me, Kai’s dragon cried. I’d love any child. I’d protect it to the death.
Sadly, most dragons didn’t see it that way and ignored their human offspring. The ruthless, power hungry dragons. The ones with the resources to hunt down and capture whatever they coveted. Like Tessa.
Whether it was Morgan or Drax who was after Tessa, he didn’t care. He’d protect her with his life. He’d do whatever it took.
“I have to talk to her,” he said, turning for the stairs.
But, shit. What would he say? And how would he explain himself? He’d spent most of the morning recovering from his injuries, not protecting his mate, who’d left the estate with Boone. Boone!