For now, she had to protect him. After what felt like an eternity, Brennan finally said he had to go. Fallon called on every one of her Fae abilities and made herself appear normal. As a shifter, he’d easily hear a thundering heartbeat or a racing pulse.
With Rowan clinging to his back, Brennan hugged her tightly. “I’m going to miss you too,” he said.
She swallowed hard. “I’ll miss you as well.” And she would. Despite her own terror at losing her son to this shifter, she cared for Brennan. If circumstances were different, she’d have trouble saying goodbye to him.
“If I bought you plane tickets, would you be willing to bring Rowan to visit?”
“That sounds great,” she said. Thanks to the projections Fae could cast, her voice did not waver.
“Do you have to work today?” Brennan asked. She did. She always had to work. “I can watch him if you need to go.”
No. That wasn’t happening. “I’m going to call in.”
It wouldn’t matter, anyway. She was leaving this town for good. If she left as soon as Brennan went to sleep, she could cast an illusion that she was still there. Then she’d have several hours to get to the port and get to Cuba.
She let Brennan take the lead with Rowan. She was nearby, so she could give them this day.
Even without the shifter connection, she’d heard of too many biological parents—humans—taking their children and running. Brennan had the shifter instinct that would drive him to act and not leave his offspring in a faraway place.
She could not make love to Brennan that night. There was no way. But he accepted her excuses and lay down with her in her bed. She’d been so eager to have him there the previous night, so it would have been odd for her to kick him out and force him back to his hotel.
As soon as Brennan was asleep, she rose, stuffed her bag in her car, and picked Rowan up from his bed. Then she drove.
Rowan woke up a few times, and each time, he asked, “Momma, where are we going?”
“Not too far,” she said.
“Where’s Mr. Brennan?”
“He’s at our house, sleeping.”
That had seemed to satisfy Rowan, and he’d fallen back asleep.
She clutched the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles were white for the entire eight hours it took for her to drive to the southern part of the Florida peninsula. She was going to steer clear of any official ferries. At the far end of the marina, she found a guy cleaning his boat.
“How much for a ride to Cuba?” she asked. Once again, she used her Fae abilities to make him not ask any questions. She couldn’t really influence people to do something they didn’t want, and she followed her own code of ethics, but influencing this man to not ask questions wouldn’t harm him in any way.
“Four hundred dollars.”
That was only a hundred more than the cost of the commercial ferry. They’d be the only passengers. She could perceive that the captain of the boat meant them no harm. She could defend herself against a human, but she’d rather not subdue someone in front of Rowan.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “How long until we can leave?”
“We can leave right now,” the man said.
“I’ll take it,” she said again. She was going to leave the country and go hide on an island to protect her son. She couldn’t lose him, not even to his own father.
9
Brennan
The second that Brennan woke up, he knew that both Fallon and Rowan were gone. The connection he shared with his son had gone from a bright glowing light to a faint whisper. At least he knew that Rowan was alive. He just wasn’t anywhere near Rosemary Beach. Brennan wasn’t even sure that Rowan was still in the state. Holy shit, had Fallon left the country? And why?
And the bigger question was, how the hell had he slept through them leaving? It wasn’t possible to drug him, not with anything a human would have on hand.
No, they hadn’t left the country. They were still in Florida, but they were hours away. They must not have flown. Fallon must have driven him away in her car. He ran to the carport and checked. Yep. Her car was gone.
How could she have done this to him? Hell, how could she have done this to their child? It wasn’t right.
He grabbed his keys and his wallet. He locked Fallon’s door behind him, and he hopped in his Jeep. He started driving. He had to call his brothers and let them know—something. If he left town without telling them, they’d eventually notice his absence.
Kellan answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”
“How did you know something was wrong?
“Because as soon as we woke up, all three of us noticed that you weren’t back yet. We also noticed that you feel upset. Or angry? Or maybe both.”
Brennan yanked the wheel to the left and got on the freeway, headed south to Miami. He was going to find his son. He’d spent four years without him, and he wasn’t going to make Rowan spend another day without a father.
Fuck this. He didn’t have eight hours to waste. He was going to get on a plane and fly to Miami. He didn’t have the patience to deal with the bullshit of the airport or a commercial plane. Kellan was still talking, but Brennan had tuned him out. Now Brennan needed his help. He cut his brother off, mid-sentence. “Kellan. I need a favor.”
“Of course, whatever you need.”
“I need a private plane. Right now. And I need you to tell me how to get to wherever it is.”
“Give me a few minutes,” Kellan said. “I’ll find a pilot who can leave now. Where do you need to go?
“Miami area.”
“Okay, I’ll call you back.”
“Kellan. Thank you.”
Having a billionaire brother really came in handy sometimes, but Kellan would have been a great brother even without his money. Brennan was grateful that he had all of his brothers. He knew he could count on all three of them to be there for him. And they’d be there for Rowan too.
Brennan just needed to make Fallon understand what she was taking from their child if she tried to deprive him of Brennan and his brothers.
Fifteen minutes later, Kellan was calling him back. “I found you a pilot. He’s already been paid for the round trip. All you need to do is show up. I’m going to send the GPS location to your phone now. It’s about twenty minutes south of where you are.”
“I owe you.”
“You can repay me by telling me what’s going on.”
“I found the shifter,” Brennan said.
“I figured you did. Are you going to tell me anything about him or her?”
“I need to tell you all. I’d prefer to do it in person, not over the phone.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not ominous. It’s actually really good. I’m still kind of stunned.”
“Okay, now I’m really curious.”
“The dragon shifter is a little boy. He’s four years old, and his name is Rowan.” Kellan would just have to be the first person Brennan told because it seemed that telling them all in person was not as feasible as what he had hoped. He looked forward to saying the words aloud. “Rowan is my son.”
Silence greeted him on the other end of the line. The news was surprising. Brennan would have been equally surprised if one of his brothers found a biological child while on vacation. It had been odd enough for Liam to find his mate in Colorado.
Kellan cleared his throat. “Wow, Brennan. That’s amazing. I’m really glad you found him. I can’t wait to meet him. I know everyone else will feel the same way.”
Yeah, and that was part of the problem. Brennan by himself had somehow spooked Fallon enough for her to run away. If he managed to get Rowan back, he definitely did not want to send Fallon heading for the hills again because his family was overwhelming.
Brennan’s restless energy threatened to overtake him. His dragon was very near the surface, demanding to transform and fly the distance required to find his hatchling. He was driven only by instinct.
H
atchling. She took him.
Shifting and flying to Miami as a dragon was not an option. Besides, the small plane Kellan had hired would go faster. His dragon needed to take action. Sitting still, trapped inside a small metal container in the air, wasn’t going to help him calm down any.
Soon, he was in the plane on the way to Rowan and Fallon. Even up in the air, thousands of feet above the ground, Brennan could still feel Rowan’s presence. It was faint, but it was there. He got up from his chair again, but there was nowhere to go. There was a single pilot up front, but he was occupied. He had to figure out how the hell Fallon kept him from waking up. Had he just felt so secure in her house that he slept that deeply? It made no sense.
The plane was small, so the flight took two hours. He’d never been so glad to get off a plane in his life. He was closer to Rowan now. He could feel that Rowan was off the coast of Miami. Fallon must be on a boat or a ship of some kind. He wasn’t going to waste time. This time, he could shift.
He hailed a taxi. “Take me to the most secluded beach you know of,” he told the driver. Thirty minutes later, he put his wallet in a bag and strapped it to the necklace he wore, then dove into the ocean. He swam as a human for the first mile, and then when the ocean floor dropped off, he dove deeper and shifted.
Finally, his dragon was free. He picked up speed. He was gaining on whatever boat Rowan was on. He sliced through the water, and with each mile, his connection with his son grew stronger. He was almost there. He got close enough to the surface to look, and sure enough, he saw a small ferry.
Rowan and Fallon were both on board. Rowan was sitting on his knees on a bench at the helm of the boat. His little hands held onto the railing. His face was lit up with pure joy as the wind whipped through his hair. Fallon sat next to him with one hand on his ankle. She was staring straight ahead with a blank face.
The boat began to slow down, and Brennan noticed a landmass ahead. They were almost to Havana, Cuba. She had kidnapped his son and was going to hide him in a foreign country.
Brennan shifted back in the human form. He swam closer to the shore. When he was about twenty feet away from the beach, he dug his shorts out of the bag around his neck and pulled them on. Soon enough, he was wading onto the shore.
Fallon had chosen a pretty nice place to hide from him. He didn’t give a fuck about the scenery right then, but he couldn’t help but notice how the sparkling white sand contrasted with the vibrant aqua water. A few bright sailboats dotted the shore, and palm trees lined the beach. Not too far away, a cluster of people was playing volleyball, but by the time he came out of the water, no one was looking in his direction. He pulled his soggy shirt on over his head but left his flip flops in the bag.
He wasn’t far from Havana. The ferry must have docked there. In the distance, he heard the sounds of a bustling city. Fallon and Rowan were no longer on the move. It was only a matter of time before Brennan found them.
He was going to have to make sure that she never took his son from him again.
10
Fallon
Leaving Florida—and Brennan—was so fucking unfair to her son, and she knew that. It wasn’t fair that she’d disrupted Rowan’s life. She’d worked so hard to make it a good life, one that worked for both of them. For four years, she’d done her best. Now it was all for nothing because she’d slept with a damned shifter five years ago.
Not one bit of it was fair.
She had the rest of the day to find them a place to stay. She didn’t want to pay rent for longer than a day because she might decide to move on. She was going to have to sleep soon. Her Fae blood meant that she could easily miss one night of sleep, but now that she was well into the day, she was getting tired.
She didn’t want to waste money on a taxi, so she and Rowan walked inland, into the main part of town, while she kept an eye out for vacancies. In Havana, her cash would stretch further than it did in the States. She found a hotel about a mile from the coast. It was yellow stucco with pink flowers that covered a wooden trellis over the archway. The sign said she could get a room for just thirty dollars a night.
She had just stepped forward to open the door to the lobby when a strong hand grabbed her arm. Surely, she wasn’t going to be mugged. She would have to remember to temper her strength if someone was going to try and steal from her. She also needed to look scared. She whipped her head around and froze.
Now she had a reason to panic. It wasn’t a mugger who wanted her purse.
It was Brennan.
She screamed at the top of her lungs. He’d found her. And he looked pissed.
She’d just gotten here, even after driving all night and riding a ferry all day. He must have flown. Of course he had. Now he was going to be angry and have even more reason to try to take Rowan from her.
Her heart sped up. She clutched Rowan’s hand tighter. She swung him up into her arms, and she ran. She dodged people on bicycles and vendors selling food and flowers. She ducked into an alley and dropped down low to the ground, crouching behind a pink car that looked like it was made in 1955.
Rowan tugged on a lock of her hair. “Momma? Why are we hiding from Mr. Brennan? Is it hide and seek?”
Running was futile. He’d hear Rowan’s voice. Hell, he’d hear his heartbeat. That’s how good a dragon shifter’s hearing was. She couldn’t just give up, though. She picked Rowan up again and ran.
Brennan appeared at the other end of the alleyway. He stood casually, with his arms crossed. “Hey. Please don’t run again.”
Rowan shoved himself out of her arms and raced toward his father, leaping as he reached Brennan. “Mr. Brennan! You found us!”
Brennan caught Rowan mid-air and swung him around. “Hey, buddy! I did find you. I missed you.”
Rowan’s arms gripped Brennan tightly. He’d clearly missed his father, even though he barely knew him. Doubt coiled in her stomach. Had she done the wrong thing?
“Why don’t we go find a place to stay?” Brennan asked. “I’ll get us a big one on the beach, overlooking the water.”
Of course he would get them a fancy room. She’d never be able to compete with that. “That’s what I was trying to do,” she said, “when you showed up.”
He ignored her comment. “I’ll get us one with enough space for all three of us.”
Rowan flipped himself upside down, hanging off Brennan’s arm. “You’re staying with us?”
Brennan hoisted Rowan up onto his shoulders. “I sure am.” He picked up his phone. “Give me a minute, and I’ll find us a place.”
The three of them walked the busy streets of Havana. Fallon tried to regulate her breathing by slowing it down and counting—and by trying not to be so fucking angry that she wanted to rip Brennan’s head off.
She concentrated on the upbeat notes of music in the air, the fragrant scents of spicy cooking that floated by, and the shrieks of people body surfing on the edge of the sea. Those normal, happy sounds should make her breathing and heart rate return to normal. So far, it wasn’t working.
Brennan walked without looking up, clicking away on his phone the entire time. It was annoying that he didn’t even bump into a single person. “I didn’t realize dragons had sonar too,” she whispered. She didn’t love how bitter she’d become in just two days, but she couldn’t seem to help it.
When they reached the edge of the city, Brennan looked up from his phone. “I found us a house to rent on the beach.” He pointed to the left. “It’s just over here.”
The house was solid white, and it was flat. It looked like it was designed and built in 1970, but like the hotel that she’d looked at, it was clean.
“Can we go swimming?” Rowan asked Brennan.
To his credit, Brennan did not answer. He merely looked at Fallon and waited until she nodded before he said, “Yes. We can go swimming. The property manager will have to bring us a key. They don’t have key pads installed here. She says there are towels and sand toys on the back porch. We can go ahead and go through
the gate.”
Brennan opened the wrought-iron gate for them, and they went to the back porch. A swimming pool was gleaming in the backyard. The house was on the beach, but it had its own pool, surrounded by manicured shrubs and white chaise lounges. It could have been a movie set from forty years ago.
Rowan went straight to the bucket of sand toys. “I can use these?” He hefted them into the air.
“Yes, you can use those.” Brennan grabbed three beach towels from a cabinet and flung them over his shoulder. “Do you need anything?” he asked Fallon.
“No, I don’t need anything.” What she needed was for her life to go back to the way it had been. Not that that would ever happen. Rowan skipped along down the short path to the beach, Brennan trailing along behind him, whistling.
Rowan immediately set to work digging a hole with a spade from the toy basket, and Fallon sat down to sit under a palm tree. Having a shifter child was far easier than having a human child. She didn’t have to worry about him drowning in the ocean. Little shifters didn’t drown, and they were excellent swimmers.
She hoped Brennan would go swim in the ocean and leave her alone. She did not get what she wanted. He plopped down next to her in the sand and did not bother to use a towel.
“Why did you run away?”
She watched the waves roll in. It was a familiar sight, and yet, they looked different here than they did in Rosemary Beach. She turned and looked into his eyes. They looked kind and full of compassion. At that moment, she didn’t want to lie to him. “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing Rowan.”
“You thought I’d take him.”
“Yes.”
“What the hell made you think that?” he asked.
“I heard you talking to him about your life in Texas. About how he’d get to meet uncles, aunts, and cousins. I was struck with the realization that you might not want to split custody. That you might want him full time.”
Sheriff Dragon's Secret Baby (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 4) Page 5