Chapter Ten
Augie
“My dragon needs to shift.” Dante grabbed my hand and led me farther away from the building. He didn’t say much. I could scent his beast, and mine was nearly as close to the surface. It took all I had to keep him contained until we reached the bench.
We could talk later, but until we allowed our beasts to meet, no conversation could be productive. Our entire focus would be on keeping our skin. It was better to let them out first.
Dante said, “For our clothes,” as we reached the benches.
One of the many cool things about Animals was that the staff often lived on-site, and that meant it was a safe place for us to shift without having to worry about drunk alphas or a wandering human.
One of my regular customers lived here and he loved it.
I lived at work too, so I got the convenience of it, but the way he spoke about it, this place was more than that. It was a home.
As excited as my bearcat was, he wasn’t panicked or freaked out the way I feared he would be. Instead, he was excited to the point of ignoring my commands. It was a pain in the ass. Things settled when Dante took my hand. And as long as I was touching Dante, my animal was simmering down.
But then we reached our destination, and that all changed. The second we dropped hands at the bench, my bearcat was no longer cooperating. He was coming out, whether I permitted it or not. It was a game of beat the beast, where if I lost, my clothes would be the victim.
I started yanking my outfit off, unwilling to have it shredded.
Normally when I shifted, I folded them nicely, but that wasn’t happening today.
Heck, getting them on the bench was only half a thought.
I tossed them in the general direction and called it good enough.
I’d barely stepped out of my pants when my bearcat ripped through me.
It was one of my more painful shifts and I’d been lucky to get a few steps away from Dante when it began.
The last thing I wanted to do was hurt my mate less than ten minutes after I met him. Or ever, but definitely not already.
I landed on all four paws and turned to watch Dante shake off the last of his clothes.
I wanted to stand there and admire the beauty that was his body, his muscles a work of art.
His dragon had other plans. Once the last item of clothing, his shirt, fluttered to the ground, Dante ran, his dragon pushing through.
I’d never seen a dragon in real life. I’d known they existed, but that was the extent of my knowledge. People felt the same about my bearcat. We hadn’t been super common in the places I’d lived. Quite a few of the shifters I met had never even heard of them.
Despite knowing that they were real, I’d never really considered what a dragon would look like. My only knowledge of them was from storybooks, and in those, they were either adorable or terrifying. Dante was neither. He was magnificent.
His massive body landed with a thud. If he’d been anybody but my mate, I’d have been scared shitless. The power flowing off of him was intense, and his wingspan was larger than my van. There was an indescribable beauty to him, his scales catching the moonlight as he moved.
Dante had the grace of a dancer, as cliché as that sounded, and made my beast look clumsy. I was in awe, and I’d yet to see him take to the air.
My bearcat ran straight to him without a second’s hesitation and started rubbing against his legs.
He wanted this ginormous being to scent of us.
Talk about possessive. For an animal who liked to cower away, he was going straight for it.
Once he felt he’d marked our mate with our scent enough, he went around to the front, and Dante lowered his head.
They sniffed each other, my beast licking the side of his face and then circling him as if memorizing his entire form.
The dragon lifted his head and shot out some fire, and my bearcat took off running.
It was a game as old as time between mates, one chasing the other. Only this time, it wasn’t really a chase. Instead, my dragon took to the air. My dragon, because he was mine. I couldn’t think of him any other way.
Dante circled the area, never getting ahead of us.
Eventually, my bearcat wanted to be caught and stopped and rolled onto his back, exposing his belly.
I expected Dante to come to the ground and nuzzle him.
Instead, he took it as an opportunity to show off his flying skills.
He did somersaults in the air, flew faster than a car street racing, then slower than my beast could run, so high, he looked the size of an eagle then so low, his talons almost scraped the ground, and then he circled the area once more and fluttered down beside me, nuzzling my belly and then pointing his head toward where we left our clothing.
We walked back slowly. Well, my dragon walked slowly while my beast had to step lively to keep up. When we got back to the bench, we shifted.
There was a comfort to shifting with him, to having our animals meet, and I felt more at ease than I had since moving here.
“Sorry, I couldn’t keep control,” Dante said.
I had to laugh. “Do you think I had control? Our beasts are quite the pair.”
He reached for my hand. “Yeah, they are.”
“You think everybody in there is talking about us?” I asked.
“Maybe not you,” he said. “But I did throw a mic and claim you as mine in front of a room full of people I’d been talking to only a few seconds earlier, so pretty sure I’m a trending topic in there.”
“True. They’re all talking about you.”
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss against my lips. I hadn’t expected it. From the look on his face when he pulled back, he hadn’t either.
“Looks like my human side’s not in control either,” he murmured.
“At least we’re the same on that. My name’s Augie, by the way. And you’re Dante.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m the baker,” I added, unsure if he had pieced that together.
He grumbled something, and, when I asked him what he was saying, he said that he should’ve been the one to make contact first.
“We wouldn’t have recognized each other over the phone.” I handed him his shirt. “And even if we did, what then? Not having the work done on time?”
He reached for his shoes.
“Speaking of, we need to get back in there. As much as escaping into our own little world was necessary, this is a charity event.” Why did I have to go and be all responsible?
“I know. But is it okay that I hate the idea very much?”
“Yes, because I do too,” I admitted.
We finished putting our clothes back on, and on the way back to the door, Dante told me how my display was stealing the show.
I’d heard it from the servers, but hearing it from my mate just hit differently.
We went in through the kitchen, and I had to give them credit for pretending like nothing had happened, despite knowing that the rumor had already spread that far.
Back at the event, Dante went to meet with some bigwigs from the organization he was helping. I didn’t know if they were presidents or managers or fundraising coordinators. It didn’t matter, because my dessert table was looking weak.
I had plenty to keep me busy, going back and forth, replenishing it, cleaning it, swapping out tablecloths. And when the to-do list was nearing an end, trying hard to focus on the details at hand and not on the sexy man who would be waiting for me at the end of the night. Trying and failing.
I ran a finger over my lips, wishing his were there again.
My bearcat was content for the first time, possibly ever, at least in my memory. I had no idea what it was going to be like when the event rolled to an end. We’d made no decisions at all, other than that we’d wait for each other. For now, that was enough. It had to be. Didn’t mean I liked it.