9. Soren
SOREN
We land at the edge of the Shadow Bar’s parking lot, and neither of us moves toward the door.
The building is nothing special, a squat windowless box at the edge of town with music thumping behind its walls. The sign does all the work. Blue and purple neon spells out SHADOW above the door, and a red outline of a howling wolf flickers beneath the letters, buzzing against the drizzle.
Sable tips his head at the entrance, asking. We’ve hidden above towns like this one for centuries, and tonight we’re expected to use the front door.
The door swings open and takes the decision from us.
A wolf shifter steps out with a human woman tucked under his arm, and the story is right there in her scent, liquor and perfume over plain human. She is fated to no one, and certainly not to him.
Sable’s nostrils flare, and his wings draw in tight against his back. It doesn’t trouble me. We both know the nature of wolves. They like to mate, they enjoy it often, and many of them will not wait for the one fate promised them.
Our law is older and harder. Only my fated mate will ever touch my flesh. That vow lives in every gargoyle ever carved out of the old country, and Treasure owns mine completely whether she ever learns it or not. If she rejects me, I stand alone until I fall. There is no other woman.
The wolf catches our scent mid-stride and looks up, and the woman clutches tighter against him. His arm drops away from her fast, and the shame coming off him reaches us across the lot.
“No,” he says, stepping apart from her. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Sable grins my way, and I answer with a knowing look and nothing else. Our reputation walked into this town ahead of us.
The woman props a hand on her hip. “Hmm. Okay. You wasn’t saying that earlier. You wasn’t saying that last night either.”
The wolf isn’t listening to her anymore. He straightens up in front of us instead, respect thick in his scent. “Gargoyles in Shadow Wolf Creek,” he says. “Welcome.”
The woman scowls up at the pair of us, from our wings down to our claws. “That’s what they are?” She glances around the wet parking lot, unimpressed with every inch of it, and there’s no fear on her in the least, only irritation.
Sable’s face doesn’t move, but I know his thought. It’s mine as well. The wolf pushed her away the moment he stood in front of us. It’s shameful to touch a woman who isn’t your mate, and shifters have always resented gargoyles for keeping that law when they can’t.
Nothing in this woman calls to me anyway, fine work though she is. She is not Treasure, and fate ruined me for every other woman the day it made me.
“Don’t call me again,” the woman tells him.
He cares nothing for her anger, and the whole lot can scent that on him too. She isn’t his mate. When he finds the woman who is, he’ll devote his life to her, and not to the one he chose for a temporary fix.
She turns her scowl on us next. “Can y’all at least shift? Or is this the whole thing?”
Neither of us owes her an answer, which is fortunate. It’s the one answer I hate giving.
“Go inside,” the wolf tells her.
She shrugs, finished with the lot of us, and does as he asks. The door swallows her along with half a song.
The wolf offers his hand. “Tyson. I work up at the lumberyard.” I take his forearm the old way, and he adjusts his grip without blinking. “Heard whispers there were gargoyles in town.” He shrugs, sheepish about it. “Honestly? I thought you were all dead.”
Sable steps forward, lays a hand flat against his own chest, and bows his head. “We are among the last. The humans came with hammers and fire. They found our resting grounds during our rest and destroyed our clan.”
He straightens and looks down the road at the town’s scattered lights. “These humans are different.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Tyson huffs something close to a laugh. “They’re friendly when they wanna be. But we’ve got a treaty with them. Had it for decades now, and it works.” His eyes narrow at us. “If y’all are planning on staying, you might wanna blend in a little more.”
Sable and I narrow ours right back at him.
“Clothes,” Tyson says, gesturing at us from wings to feet. “You can’t be walking around looking like you’re from the old times.”
“We are from the old times,” I say.
He groans. “Come up the mountain to my pack. We’ve got some old abandoned land you could settle on, and we’ll help you get acquainted with the town.”
Sable smiles and bows his head again. “Thank you, brother.”
Tyson glances at the bar doors, and his shoulders drop. “I’m gonna head home. I didn’t have no business at this bar anyway. It’s just the need.”
“We do not judge, Tyson,” Sable says.
“Oh, bullshit. Your whole demeanor is judgy.” He’s already walking backward toward the road, pointing at the both of us. “Every shifter in town knows gargoyle discipline. Loyalty to your mates, top tier. It’s obnoxious.”
He turns and goes with a grunt, and the frustration trailing off him could be scented a ridge away. May fate send him his mate soon.
Sable pulls the door open, and we step inside.
The music keeps playing, but the conversations die, and every head in the place turns.
Shifters at the pool tables, humans in the booths, a whole bar of drinks stopped halfway to mouths while two massive gargoyles drip rain on the floor.
I read the air and find no fear in it, and no disgust either. Plain curiosity fills the room.
Then a pool shot drops, a woman laughs at her own joke, and the whole place goes back to its business with two gargoyles standing in the middle of it.
“This place is strange,” Sable and I say at the same time.
We trade a glance, and I recover first. “What more do we need from this bar? They accept us. That much is clear.”
“Mm.” Sable grins. “Sounds like you’re eager to get back to your mate.”
“Very eager. I’d like to see her before the sun rises.”
“Stay with me a moment longer.” Sable sighs. “I promise you’ll still get your hours of surveillance in.”
I frown at the word. He isn’t wrong, though, so I let it pass and stay where I am.
For a while we simply stand there while humans and shifters flow around us, orbiting wide the way people walk around statues. A human runs the counter with a towel over one shoulder, building three drinks at once. He doesn’t lift his head when we approach.
“I already know,” he says, still pouring. “You don’t eat or drink anything in this bar. Maybe the water.”
“We are new to town,” Sable says.
The bartender raises his head with his eyebrows sitting high, and his scent tells on him, pure sarcasm. “Oh, really? With the barbarian look, I could hardly tell.”
“You are all more focused on our attire,” Sable says, “than on what we are.”
“This is Shadow Wolf Creek. Nothing surprises us here.” He sets the finished drinks in front of their owners, then puts his hand out across the counter. “David. I run this counter, I hear everything, and I repeat none of it. Welcome to town.”
I take his hand carefully. It disappears inside mine, and he doesn’t flinch about that either.
“I suppose we’re trying to understand where we would fit here,” I say.
David goes back to his glasses and ice, talking to us sideways.
“For starters, Shadow Bar ain’t where you two want to be hanging out.
Go visit city hall and announce yourselves.
There’s a whole department for new arrivals.
They’ll get you registered, set you up with some land if you mean to stay, and…
” He gives us one slow up-and-down. “…some clothes.”
This town keeps an entire office for what we’ve spent our whole lives hiding.
“And you can stop using your Settling.”
The voice comes from behind us, easy and amused. Smoke and hot metal ride in with it, and I know a dragon’s scent when it fills a room. “You’re on safe land. You don’t need protective measures here.”
We turn together. He’s tall, though not as tall as either of us, with bright green eyes and pointed ears that give him away at a glance.
He has deep brown skin, a muscular build, and sharp teeth set in a smile that annoys me on arrival.
He’s dressed the way the humans dress, from the long-sleeved button-up shirt down to the belted pants and shoes.
I scowl at the shoes, glance to Sable, then down at my own bare feet.
“I will not domesticate myself into wearing those,” I say, pointing at them.
The dragon chuckles. “Shadow Wolf Creek won’t force you. But the citizens, especially the humans, are not gonna stay happy with the loincloth situation. Ass out the back, dick and balls swinging up front. It’s a lot.”
Sable frowns at him.
The dragon extends a hand. “Jalen. I run the gossip column at The Creek Chronicle, which makes me the best-informed man in this valley, and the least trusted.”
“A dragon shifter,” Sable says slowly, “and a journalist?”
“Careful with that one.” David doesn’t stop building drinks. “That’s Messy Jay. Whatever you tell him ends up on the Shadow Wolf Creek Diaries. Town podcast.”
“The town likes to call me Messy Jay.” There’s no shame anywhere on him.
Sable’s frown deepens. “Dragons are hoarders. What do you care for gossip?”
“We are known for the hoarding. It’s our little…” Jalen lifts both hands and hooks his fingers into quotes. “…stigma. But here’s the thing. Most dragons hoard treasure. I hoard information.”
He starts a circle around us, taking his time with the measurements. “Damn,” he says from somewhere behind my wings. “Y’all are big.” He finishes the loop and stops in front of us, right where he started. “I knew the night you two came into town.”
And I place him now. He’s the dragon from the bench at the shopping center, the one who sat with his wings folded over a little notepad and waved at the patrol car without a care. He watched us land, and he wrote it down.
“So.” Jalen’s eyes settle on me. “What brings you to Shadow Wolf Creek? The new waitress? What’s her name. Treasure?” He clicks his tongue. “Interesting name, considering what she’s mated to. Because that’s exactly how you’re gonna treat her, isn’t it. Like treasure.”
My foot comes down, and every glass behind the bar rattles, and I lean into his space with a growl that empties the nearest stools.
“She’s mine.” It’s the first time I’ve said it outside my own head, and the whole bar is welcome to it.
“Sure.” Jalen doesn’t move an inch. “Is that why she thinks she’s crazy? Too afraid to approach your own woman and tell her who she belongs to?”
I turn to Sable. He shakes his head once, a warning to leave the dragon breathing. I want to hurt him anyway, badly.
“Relax, big man. I figured you just needed a little push.” Jalen flashes his teeth again. “I might have brought it up in my nightly recording. Which airs…” He lifts his wrist and checks his watch. “…right now, actually.”
My wings snap open and send a stool over. “You did what?”
“There’s a statue moving around at Stanley’s Diner. The humans who remember it moving, the ones your Settling spell has been working on, deserve to know they aren’t crazy. The town is.” He shrugs. “And now that the humans know you’re here, the spell wears off quick. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”
“The bartender is right,” Sable tells him. “You are messy.”
“If you’re gonna live in Shadow Wolf Creek, don’t play with us.” Jalen spreads his hands, all hospitality. “We welcome you to town. So long as you behave.”
David sets a glass of water in front of him unasked, and Jalen drains it dry.
“And by the way,” he says, setting the glass down, “there’s been a string of robberies in town.
I know. Robberies, in a shifter town. Magic’s involved, if you ask me.
Feels like a witch looking for something she lost.” He turns on the stool to face us.
“So it’s quite the confidence, you two strolling in right in the middle of it.
We all know the debt your kind owes the witches and warlocks.
That conniving little Settling spell they put in your blood for protection.
” His green eyes hold on us, and there’s no play left in them.
“Stay out of trouble. I’ve got my eyes on you. ”
“Robberies?” Sable asks.
“I have not seen one,” I answer, and I barely hear my own words.
The dragon put me on the air. His episode is playing right now in every home in this town, and Treasure is sitting alone in hers, hearing a stranger confirm that the statue she touched is alive.
My chest goes tight around the thought. She shouldn’t have to learn what I am from a podcast.
Sable reads me without a word and tips his head toward the door.
“Go,” he says. “I’ll stay and untangle this with your dragon. Go protect your mate.”
I’m through the door hard enough to nearly take it off the hinges, across the lot, and up into the rain, the Shadow Bar’s neon shrinking under my wings as I bank toward her side of town.