10. Soren
SOREN
Her building comes into view in minutes. I drop out of the rain onto her balcony rail without a sound, then step off to the side where the brick hides me from the glass door.
Light spills out of her living room. She’s at the little kitchen table with her laptop open, clicking through page after page, a tuna sandwich waiting on a plate beside it. And filling the whole apartment is a voice I just left across town.
It’s the dragon’s podcast, playing right out of her speakers. I huff at the glass. I flew here to be rid of him, and his voice beat me to her door.
She scrolls past old sketches of hunched stone monsters, and the wings are wrong on every one of them. My mate is researching gargoyles, exactly as she promised that empty roofline she would. If she wants to know what we look like, I could save her the search.
“Shadow Wolf Creek has gargoyles?” Jalen’s voice says through the speakers. “And would anyone like to explain the statue on the diner roof that was there at dinner and gone by close? Because statues don’t keep hours.”
Treasure slaps the table. “THANK you!” she shouts at the laptop. “One person in this whole town with working eyes, and it’s the messy podcast man.” She takes a triumphant bite of the sandwich.
The dragon rolls on. “In other news, Stanley’s Diner can’t keep employees. Stanley’s is on its sixth new hire in two years, and Andy still wants us to believe it’s a coincidence. While we’re at it, someone bring me Stanley, because I’ve lived here my whole life and never met the man.”
She cackles with her head thrown back. “Andy, baby, the shifters are not your problem,” she tells the screen, pointing what’s left of the sandwich at it. “You are the whole problem.” She shakes her head, still grinning.
My mate and the dragon agree on everything. I file that under problems for later.
Her laughing winds down after a while, and she leans back in the chair and stretches until her back pops.
“And Andy better dust that Help Wanted sign off,” she tells the ceiling, “because Lamar’s about to quit on him behind me and my one little rule.
Talking about Shadow Suds is hiring.” She shakes her head.
“That man would really change jobs just to take me to dinner.” Her fingers drum the tabletop, and her voice comes down to almost nothing. “Shoot. Maybe I should let him.”
My claws punch through the balcony rail. The want comes up my back hot and fast, and I spread my wings. Everything in me is ready to go through that glass and end the discussion.
Mine.
She’s been mine since her scent climbed that diner wall, and she’s in there talking herself into the cook because I haven’t given her one reason not to.
I make myself let go of the rail. She can’t give anyone a chance if she knows the position is filled, and she can’t know that while I’m crouched out here in the rain letting a podcast introduce me.
The episode winds down behind the glass. “This is Messy Jay reminding you—where there’s smoke, I’m probably the fire.”
Treasure sits up straight, clicks one more time, and slams the laptop shut.
“HA! I knew it. I KNEW I wasn’t going crazy.” She’s up out of the chair now, pointing at the dark window with no idea what’s on the other side of it. “And I know you wake up at night. Tomorrow? I’m gonna be standing right there when you do, and you are GOING to give me answers!”
She stomps down the hall on the last word. Water runs, then a toothbrush, then the shower, the pipes knocking the same way they did the last time I clung to this brick.
I stay where I am and give her that much privacy. After a while she pads back out in pajamas, crosses into her bedroom, and the strip of light under her door goes dark. Her breathing stretches out long and even.
The sun comes in a few hours. I don’t want to spend them on the wrong side of her door.
The balcony door has a simple latch, and my claws were made for finer work than humans ever gave them credit for. It gives without a scratch on the frame. I tuck my head under the doorway, step inside, and ease it shut behind me.
For something my size, I know how to be quiet. The apartment smells like her in every direction, strawberries over dish soap and coconut, and for a moment I forget I came in here to do anything but stand in it.
The picture frames are up on the walls now, hung straight and level, every one of them empty. I smile at them anyway, because a woman who decorates is a woman who’s staying.
Would she ever put a picture of us in one?
Her door sits half open at the end of the hall. I step through and stand at the foot of her bed, towering over it, careful of my wings in the small room.
She sleeps on her side under a pile of covers, her braids wrapped in a silk bonnet and her hand curled under her chin. Her scent owns the whole room.
“Every treasure I ever guarded was practice for you,” I whisper.
I reach out slow, my claws careful, for the edge of the blanket.
Her eyes snap open.
Something whistles up off the nightstand and cracks across my face. I straighten up wincing, and she’s already moving, throwing the covers off and getting her feet under her until she’s standing on the mattress with a stick in both hands, ready to swing again.
“AH!” she shouts. “So not only are you a moving monster who’s got this whole town thinking I’m crazy. You’re a creep, too!”
The stick comes around and slaps the side of my head, and I take it, because catching it out of her hands would frighten her worse than anything else I’ve done tonight.
“Treasure.” I raise my hands, my claws open and empty. “Forgive me. I??—”
“Oh, and he KNOWS MY NAME.” The stick levels at my chest. “You’ve been watching me!
You better start talking, or I will beat your big ass up and down this apartment.
And don’t you dare underestimate me either.
I’m from Los Angeles. Your big gargoyle ass would’ve been the least of my worries out there. ”
The sting is already fading from my face, and I’m smiling through what’s left of it. She’s standing on her own mattress in a bonnet and pajamas, swinging a stick at a monster twice her size and lecturing him while she does it, and she looks exactly like what she is, a goddess with her hair wrapped.
My feisty mate. I love her already.