by Sadie Sears
I nodded. I didn’t give a shit what excuse Frank had. I didn’t care if his mom locked him in the closet and every bully from kindergarten to college made him their bitch. He messed with my woman, threatened her livelihood, then her life. Locking him up for all of eternity wasn’t long enough for me.
But neither did I want to talk about it. I had another reason for seeking them out, away from Lila. “I was wondering if we could talk for a minute, privately.” I cleared my throat. When Donna nodded and Carl looked up at me, my stomach churned. If the answer didn’t go the way I wanted, I had no plan but to pretend I didn’t know. “What if Lila never has another flare-up? Would that make her incompetent or ineffective as your teacher?”
Donna laughed. “God, no. MS is unpredictable. She could go years without a flare-up. It wouldn’t change anything. Hell, a cure wouldn’t change anything other than we would be happy for her. Thrilled, actually, that she never has to suffer again.” She patted my arm. “She’s a part of our community. Always. I, for one, would be ecstatic to see her more regularly. It breaks my heart for her when she has to cancel.”
Relief surged through my gut into my chest. “Maybe you guys could mention it to her? I know she’d love to hear it.”
Donna grinned at me. “You two are so cute together. All worried about each other’s feelings.”
Of course we were. That was what being destined meant. But her gushing made my skin burn and a need to get away more than a little urgent. I managed to extricate myself from the squishy hug she came in for at just the moment Lila joined us.
I stood placidly and let them chat, smiling when I heard Donna reassure Lila about her place with them. There were more cookies and chips to be served and more appointments to pencil into the book for Lila to add to the computer later on. She liked doing it herself.
By the time the studio emptied, and all the mats were rerolled, and the tarot cards slipped back into their little satin bag, Lila came and wrapped her arms around me as we stood at the almost empty snack table. Theo was packing up some of the empty champagne bottles back into their boxes for disposal, and Taurus was making one last sweep of the outside—“just in case”—and everyone else had pitched in to clean up, but Lila took a moment for me. A perfect, quiet moment.
“Hey, Mom. Can I stay at Shae’s one last time before school starts?”
Lila breathed in deep and then out slowly then looked up at me. “What do you think?”
“Uh, what do—what do I think?” I thought it was amazing to be such a part of their family that I would be consulted. “Yeah. I think it’s great. Sure.” I shrugged like I was the coolest guy in the room, but my heart was pounding, and the memory of what it was to be a part of a family lived inside me. I wanted to pull them both into my arms and never let them go.
Zoe and Shae clasped hands and giggled like preteen girls did. Apparently. And then they were off, and I was semi-alone with Lila again. “Was that okay?”
“Of course. You’re an adult in an adult relationship that involves a child. A young lady.” She amended her words. “And sometimes, I’ll be the one who decides things and sometimes you’ll be the one who decides things.” She winked up at me. “Get used to it, big boy. You’re not just destined to me now. It’s a family thing.”
I loved her smile, her tone, the meaning behind every word she spoke. I had a family, a daughter. A destiny beyond the life I’d dreamed for myself because God knew I’d never imagined finding my destined mate since it happened so seldom.
I thought back to the beginning of summer when I’d taken the assignment to guard Lila from her stalker. There’d been so many changes since then. And now, I had a family outside the one I’d found with the guys. Now I had two families, each one different and special in its own way. And I couldn’t stop smiling. Not when I carried the leftovers out to the truck or when I waited for Lila to lock up since Sophie had already left with the girls. And not when I said bye to the guys who’d stuck around until the last minute to make sure Lila was safe. For me. Hell, I was probably never going to stop smiling.
“Come on, beautiful.” I helped her into the truck—not that she needed it anymore, but I loved touching her. Then I brought her knuckles to my lips and pressed a kiss against them before I released her. “I love you.” I shut the door. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to hear her answer but because if I did, I would have to take her in my arms and bring her body against mine, and then it would be a public scene in front of the studio. I walked around the truck instead.
We were driving up the mountain when she laid her hand on my arm. “Thank you for today. So much.” I smiled over at her, but she was wearing a frown. “Leath, I’ve been thinking about Zoe a lot lately.”
I nodded. Over the last few days, I’d seen her watching Zoe with a mixture of awe and sadness in her eyes. It was natural for a mother to think of her daughter, especially one who only knew the barest of details about being a dragon and hadn’t even taken her first flight yet. “I know.”
“I feel like I should tell her all of this. Give her the choice of whether or not she wants to be a dragon. That’s what the reasonable adult part of me says.” She sighed. “But the momma bear in me, the one who would die for Zoe, who would walk through fire to protect her whether I was a dragon or not—that one wants me to just tell her, make the choice and turn her.” She shook her head. “And it’s selfish because it’s what I want. What I would do if the choice was mine.”
“We could talk to her together, Lila. And explain.” I didn’t have the foggiest idea whether Sunday sleepovers were all right, but I had all the answers about dragons, and I could explain to Zoe that letting her mother bite her would change very little except the aging process—who didn’t want to be young for hundreds of years longer than expected?—and that someday, loving someone meant she would feel a pull stronger than anything she’d ever feel before or after.
Lila nodded.
“Or you can wait. There isn’t a big rush, you know?” We had time before a bite would slow the aging process down. However… “But you should probably try to remember how it felt to you when I let it all slip about Gretta and Sam. Remember how cranky you were?”
“I wasn’t cranky.” She frowned, clearly not remembering the same set of days I remembered, or that Gretta had told me and Sam about it.
I laughed because I couldn’t not laugh, especially when she joined in, and my heart leaped. This woman, no matter where she went or what she did, was where I belonged.
I pulled into her driveway and shut off the engine. When I reached for the door handle, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s leave all of this for a little bit and go for a walk.”
There wasn’t a reason to hurry. We hadn’t brought the perishables home because Lila had sent them home with the dragons that had been helping us out. “All right.”
The air swirled around us, warm and fresh, a blanket pine scent and invigorating country air. And I was holding her hand, walking beside the woman destiny had picked for me. My perfect mate. Nothing in my life had ever felt so right.
She pulled me along to the clearing then stopped and gazed at me. Smiling. Hopeful. There was no mistaking what she wanted, what I wanted. And this time it wasn’t sex. “It’s time, Leath. Take me flying.”
I pulled her close. I’d been dreaming of this for longer than I could remember not dreaming of it—of flying beside my mate, but until I’d met Lila, my mate had been nameless and faceless. Now, I had her. Beautiful, perfect Lila. I kissed her softly. “You bet.”
She stripped and folded her clothes into a neat pile then waited while I faked my way through folding mine. Lila and I were opposites, would be until the day we died, but that was all right. I didn’t have to love everything she loved. We just had to accept and love each other. And I would, every day of my life.
Before I’d moved to the edge of the clearing where I would transform into my dragon, Lila had already shifted. And she was exquisite—forest green and earthy b
rowns, with scales that reflected the sunset. Everything she’d been through in her life, every memory good and bad, had formed her colors and was represented by each scale on her back and veined line in her wings. Gorgeous and defined, beautiful and fierce. This was my mate. My future. My destiny.
She let out a quiet roar, a call to hurry, and I shifted. Together, we soared through the sky, flew over the house, and called out to one another on our first flight, destined to be together forever.
22
Sophie
I loved fall. Pumpkin spice and bonfires, the whole town lit up with Halloween decorations and hayrides through the mountain pass and back. Stories of hauntings and scary movie marathons. But as I sat alone in front of the round table that should’ve been down at the Sacred Spaces Yoga and Holistic Tarot and Metaphysical Studio that Lila and I had opened together, the wind made a ghostly whistle through an air leak while tree branches scratched against the glass.
I cleared my throat and ignored it, although a cold bead of sweat rolled down my back. I wanted to be finished with this, warm and safe in front of my fireplace with a spiced latte and a rerun of Friends on the TV, but I had one last reading before I was moving the table and the remainder of my tarot stuff to the studio.
Mary Patterson was a fragile kind of woman who always looked like she’d been carved from a statue with the same porcelain complexion of Aphrodite. Her smile seldom wavered, and I’d read cards for her several times. She was a new client who liked knowing what the future had in store for her. And for all the times I’d seen her, I’d never quite been able to place what I found off about her. The thing that made her always look a little too perfect, a little too pretty. But it was there. And it made me uncomfortable on a good day, much more so on a day when the wind and a spooky night outside worked together to heighten the creepiness.
I looked up at her and smiled. “Mary, do you have any questions you’d like the cards to answer for you?”
It was a generic question, one I asked everyone just to get the ball rolling so I could see if there was a direction I could lead the spirit guides.
Mary smiled, and again, she was too pretty, and too blonde, and too perfect to be a normal woman sitting in front of me. “Love. I want to know about love.”
Of course she did. They all wanted to know if the next great romance was around the corner. Or if they should get out of the one they were in. Or if there was a better one on the horizon. Love was the be-all and end-all of my business. I should’ve just called myself a dating guru for the spiritually connected.
I closed my eyes and listened for the gentle hum in my mind that meant my spirit guides were opening the gateway between us. I’d done five readings earlier, and the hum, the gateway, had all been accessible. But now, I had nothing. Not a fizzle even.
My eyes snapped open, and I tapped my fingers then tried again. Closed my eyes. Listened. Waited. And when my hands moved for the cards, when they spread them into piles, then gathered them back together, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t in control. And that would’ve been fine, but I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t control the movements of my own body.
My stomach churned. This wasn’t normal.
When my eyelids popped open, Mary was gone. Her chair was empty, and the wind was silent—as still as if it was a hot night in July rather than a chilly night in September. I stared down at the card formation—the tower, Ten of Swords, Nine of Swords, Three of swords. All violent. All negative.
A slow, hard throb started at my temple and flowed through me to my hands. My entire body trembled, and I couldn’t sit looking at the cards. I stood and pushed my chair back. Gathered the cards into a pile, shuffled, and laid them out again. Same result. I tried twice more. Same cards each time.
Lila knocked then poked her head in. “Are you okay?”
Hell no. I wasn’t okay. There was some bad juju here. Bad. Bad. Juju. Where had Mary gone?
I shook my head and went to the apothecary cabinet against the wall in my tarot room. Here I kept incense and crystals, tea leaves, and stones. I slid open a drawer and pulled out a smudge stick then reached into another for a lighter. Lila hated the smell of burning sage, but I needed to ward off the spirits, get rid of the negative energy around me, around my house in case it was the cause. But we both knew. It was me. I was the bad juju.
I went from corner to corner, wall to wall and back again.
“Soph, what’s wrong? What happened?”
I nodded. “There’s a poltergeist here. In my house. I know it.” I continued waving the sage while Lila wrinkled her nose.
“Why are you still seeing clients here, anyway? Isn’t that why we opened the studio?” She looked behind the door. “And where is she?”
That was a good question. “She must’ve left when the spirit guides went rogue.” I sighed. “And she was the last client I planned to see here and only because it was after hours and she asked.” I didn’t add that I was a pushover. Or that I didn’t have any idea if the woman was some sort of apparition meant to do me harm, even though I felt it in every cell and fiber of my being.
I went for another bit of dried sage, and she took it from my hand. “Stop. The place smells like you burned Thanksgiving dinner. Come on.” She led me to the table. “Sit. Take a breath.”
“You think a breath will help?” Well, of course she did, but I knew better. This was a dried sage situation if ever there was one. “Why don’t you believe me?”
She chuckled. “I never believe that spirits are behind anything until you show me. This isn’t any different. And I can’t help it, and you love me anyway. Right?”
Of course I did. That was what best friends did. At least her mind was open enough to change when I made the evidence clear. Although this time, I only had a feeling. Still, I scowled at her because BFF or not, she should’ve believed me. “There is something bad going on. I know it.”
And now she would argue. Or she would have, but a light flashed behind her and she turned in time to scream along with me as a framed picture of my husband, Shane Riley Hudson, floated from the shelf into the air and circled us. Lila grabbed onto me and we held each other as the picture continued rounding. Lila yanked me toward the door, and I let her pull me outside, then waved the sage stick as she slammed the door shut. My heart crashed into my ribs over and over.
“Call a drywaller. We’re boarding that room up. I am never going in there again.” My breath was short and choppy, not allowing enough air in to make thoughts come in logical, normal order.
“You need to get someone in here to deal with this shit.” She pulled her phone from the pocket of her jeans and slid her finger across the screen.
“Poltergeist shit?” I was the person who dealt with that shit. Me. I was the one who warded off the bad and guided the good, chanted and sent up offerings, found crystals and took them for proper enchanting. Steven Spielberg couldn’t deal with all the poltergeist shit going on in my house.
Lila laid her hand against the wall beside the door then yanked it away as she waited for whoever she’d dialed to answer.
“If that isn’t the Ghostbusters, you might as well hang up now,” I said.
She held the phone out to me. “You need to hire a dragon.”
Book 3
The Dragon’s Bewitching Mate
Dragons For Hire: Book 3
Sadie Sears
© 2020
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
T
his book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).
1
Cameron
“Yes, please go ahead and sell.” I balanced the phone against my shoulder as I flipped the pancake. “No, no, that sounds good.” My broker shouted in my ear from his office, which was always loud and hectic, resulting in a lot of these shouted phone calls about stocks and bonds. It made me immensely grateful for having found such a fantastic place in the country; New York sounded like entirely too much, even secondhand over the phone.
I set the spatula down and pulled the phone away from my ear, wincing at the volume of the man’s voice. My phone was down as low as it could go without muting the call and he still managed to project himself halfway across the house. When he quieted for a second, I put the phone back to my shoulder and flipped the pancake onto the nearby stack, then poured more batter. I nearly dropped everything when the yelling in my ear started again and made me flinch.
Vincent, my friend and housemate, huffed from his spot in the gigantic window seat across the room. He’d been in a bad mood since the weather started turning. As an air dragon, he was more sensitive to the cold weather than the rest of us, and that window seat was the warmest spot in the house at the moment. The morning sun turned his hair gold as he curled up to read an old Oscar Wilde paperback.
The kitchen was one of my favorite places to be. Dark walnut butcher block countertops accented the white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances. Vincent’s window offered plenty of natural lighting during the day, and we’d installed some antique light fixtures which complemented the room nicely. It was a nice place for me to relax, unless of course I was on the phone with the entirety of New York City.