11. Treasure
TREASURE
Ikeep the stick pointed at him from up here on my mattress, and I want it on the record that I was right—after this whole town had me feeling like I’d lost my mind, my proof is standing right here in my bedroom, working his jaw where I cracked him.
He shakes off the hit and settles, claws loose at his sides and wings folding tight behind his back.
His skin is blacker than the dark of my bedroom, pulled taut over muscle stacked on muscle, and his eyes burn a low, steady gold, the only light this room has going.
I keep my swing ready and look him over slow, head to claw, and my grip on this stick is doing more praying than holding.
I groan and lower my arm. “What on earth are you doing in my apartment?”
He turns his face away from me and says nothing. He has the nerve to go quiet in my apartment after everything he’s put me through.
“Well, you weren’t gonna eat me, that’s for sure,” I mutter.
His wings burst open so fast I stumble back a step on the mattress, and the tip of one knocks my lotion bottle clean off the dresser. “I would never harm you.” His voice rolls up through the mattress springs. “Never.”
“Maybe not physically.” I point the stick at him again and walk myself back to the edge of the bed. “But mentally? You knew I was aware of you, and you let this whole town think I was going crazy.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and his wings sink low behind him.
I ask the ceiling for strength first. “You know my name. What’s yours?”
His wings fold down slow behind him, careful of the dresser this time.
“My name is Soren. It was not my intention to harm your mental state.” He pauses and chooses his words with care.
“I am cautious. I have been a nomad for centuries, and I have never found a home. A land such as Shadow Wolf Creek is unheard of for my kind. It was merely a dream.” His gold eyes come back to mine. “And then, you.”
My grip goes soft on the stick, and I catch myself smiling at a home invader. You have got to do better, Treasure. I hop down off the bed.
I don’t even make it to the floor. His claws come around my waist mid-air, warm through my pajamas, and he sets me down easy on my feet and moves his hands right back to his sides. My skin stays warm everywhere his claws were.
I tip my head all the way back to take him in. He’s massive, and his head sits inches from my ceiling.
“Soren, I don’t know how your big ass got in here,” I tell him, “but come on. Let’s get out of my bedroom so we can talk.”
He nods, and then he just stands there while I wait on him. Finally he groans, tucks his head under the doorframe, and squeezes through with his wings clipping both sides of it.
When he came in, I didn’t hear a single step.
I didn’t know that giant was in my room until his voice touched my ear.
Now every footfall rattles the empty picture frames on my walls, and right on cue my downstairs neighbors start banging a broom against their ceiling, hollering for me to knock it off.
I snort, drop the stick on the bed, and hurry out after him. “I don’t know how you were so quiet the first time, but can you do it again? Let’s not piss off the neighbors.”
He nods, and the floor stops shaking. I don’t have one clue how.
I walk right up to him in my little living room, where he’s standing in the one spot with room enough to hold him, wings pulled in tight. “Okay. So what are you doing in here?”
He gives me nothing, again with the silence, and I narrow my eyes up at him.
“Am I in danger?”
“No.” The answer comes out fast, insulted that I even asked.
“Are you here because you were scared of what I’d find out from that messy podcast?”
“Partially, yes.” At least he’s honest.
I put my hands on my hips. “Okay. So you’re afraid of something. What?”
A grin spreads across his face, slow and a little crooked, and I catch a flash of fangs that should scare me more than it does. “You, Treasure.”
I snort so loud it echoes. “Little ol’ me? From Los Angeles? Ha!” I press my hand flat against him, and it barely covers one slab of his chest. “See the size difference, sir?”
“You are a fierce woman,” he says, smiling down at my hand like I left something precious there.
“I’m a survivor. Honestly?” The truth comes on out. “I’m tired of surviving. I want the fairytale. I want to kick my feet up sometimes and know someone’s gonna look after me.” My bonnet slips, and I push it back up where it belongs. “Am I delusional?”
He shakes his head no.
“Yes, I am,” I say anyway. “I want to be someone’s fated mate, me out of everyone in this world.”
He smiles at that, and then it eases off his face while he looks at me. “Could you…” He takes so long finding the rest of it that I almost hand him a word. “Could you love a monster?”
I stare up at him, and my throat goes thick. “Is that what you are?”
“I know that is what I am. I have been called it for centuries.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “How old are you?”
“I have walked this earth for six hundred years.”
“Holy hell,” I say, grinning.
“Does that displease you?” he asks, and he sounds sincerely worried about it.
“What displeases me is you still won’t tell me why you’re in my apartment.”
“Can you love a monster?” he asks again, softer.
“Listen.” I fold my arms. “I don’t care if my soulmate is a whole demon, okay? He better help me with these bills and take some of this mental load off my shoulders. That’s the requirement.”
He drops to one knee so fast I step back. All of that size goes down without a sound, and he bows his head, his wings settling low around him.
“Treasure,” he says. “I have guarded the treasure of kings, and every crown and coin of it was practice. Fate carved me, set me on rooftops, and made me wait for you. I am yours to command.”
My heart is doing something new in my chest. “What are you doing?”
“I am offering myself to you.”
“That explains the loincloth,” I manage. “You are really out of touch with the times.”
His gold eyes lift to mine. “Are you rejecting me?”
“You need to tell me what’s going on.” I put my hands back on my hips.
He finally lets it all out. “You read differently the first time I saw you. It was yesterday, your first day at the diner. When I rest in stone, I read heat. Humans read gold, every one of them the same, but you…” He drops his voice so low I lean in to catch the rest. “You read red, with light around the edges. I have watched from rooftops for centuries and I have never seen it.”
I keep my mouth closed, which is growth for me.
“Then your scent reached me.” He breathes in like he’s doing it right now. “Strawberries. It cut through everything, and I knew.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
He nods once. “You are my mate, Treasure. I will do anything??—”
“Get up.” My whole body is buzzing, and I cannot have a gargoyle on his knees on my secondhand rug while I figure out my life.
He rises and shuts his mouth, and I look him over from his pointed ears down to his clawed feet. What exactly am I supposed to do with a big-ass gargoyle?
Well. There’s one way to scout the situation. I lean in and try to sneak a peek under that loincloth.
He steps back. “What are you doing?”
“You are big as hell, Soren. I don’t know if I can handle all of that.”
His claws wrap around my wrist, not one sharp point of them touching my skin, and he pulls my hand back. “I will fit you, Treasure.”
Oh, okay then. I pull my hand out of his and tuck an invisible lock of hair behind my ear, since the real ones are wrapped up in my bonnet. “I know I shouldn’t be blushing right now, but.”
He tilts his head, studying me like I’m the confusing one in this room. “You aren’t afraid of me.”
I roll my eyes. “Sir, I watched a grown man strut down the middle of the freeway in nothing but cowboy boots. I stood in line behind a lady who walked her raccoon into the club on a leash, and the bouncer checked the raccoon’s ID.
Two men dragged a whole ATM down the sidewalk with a bungee cord at rush hour one time, and every single person kept on walking.
” I pat his arm. “I promise you, gargoyles are the least of my worries.”
“How hard was your life,” he asks, “while you waited for me to find you?”
I snap my mouth shut, because no, we are not doing that. I have known him for minutes, and I am not about to trauma-dump on a gargoyle in my living room.
He watches me hold it all in, and he doesn’t push.
“I feared you would reject me,” he says instead, and the gold of his eyes dims down to embers.
“Well, you were wrong, and I wish you would’ve given me the chance.”
He spreads his hands. “It has only been one day.”
“Okay, fine.” I wave him off. “You have a point there.”
I must be looking some kind of way. This enormous creature melts. His wings loosen and his shoulders come down with them, and the glow of his gold eyes banks down warm. My smile stretches wide.
“Okay, so what now?” I ask him. “Am I expected to go live in a cave or something? Because I’m telling you now, that is not happening.”
His wings twitch, a little offended. “Of course not. My brother Sable??—”
“Hold on.” I put a hand up. “There’s TWO of you?”
He nods. “My brother Sable has been my companion since the humans came with the hammers and destroyed our clan. The others who survived scattered across the world. It has been the two of us for centuries.”
My face falls. “Ohhh. I’m so sorry.”
“I am not alone now,” he says, and he steps forward, and I don’t step back. “I will provide a good home for you. I believe my brother and I have land here now. But I will have to learn to assimilate.”
While he’s talking his big talk, I lean sideways and steal a look behind him, because that loincloth does not cover much back there and a woman deserves the full report.
His eyes track me the whole way, and I give him a shrug with no shame anywhere in it, because it’s nice back there and he’s the one who broke into my apartment, so I’ve got looking rights.
What did he think was gonna happen, I’d play damsel and run for the hills?
No, baby, Soren should be running from me.
“I know how to sew,” I tell him. “If you let me get your measurements, I can make you some pants. Your brother too, whenever you let me meet him.”
The smile he gives me could warm this whole drafty apartment. “I must go.”
He reaches out and brushes one big claw over my cheek, and my eyes drift shut. All that worry about whether I’m crazy goes quiet under it.
“Where will you rest tonight?” I ask.
“There is danger in Shadow Wolf Creek.” A growl comes in under the words, low and rolling, and not one bit of it is aimed at me. “I will rest where I can guard you.”
He pulls his hand back and walks to the balcony, and when he opens the door I see how he got in, the little latch flipped open without a scratch on it.
He steps out into the night, and I follow as far as the doorway. “If I find you in stone form, can I still talk to you? Can you hear me?”
“Every word.” He smiles at me.
I run back through everything I said to that statue outside the diner, the flirting included, and decide that’s a problem for future Treasure.
“Okay, next question. When I catch you in a new spot, am I supposed to act like you’ve always been sitting there? Because Lamar looked me dead in my face and swore up and down nothing was ever on that roof.”
His wings snap open at the name. I smirk. Ohhh, he does not like Lamar, and I am absolutely keeping that in my back pocket.
“No. That was the Settling. I use it as a protective measure in new places, in case humans seek to harm me while I rest. It doesn’t last.” His jaw sets. “That messy dragon made sure of it.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I say, smiling because I’m really not.
“It is no matter. There is nothing left for me to worry about.”
“Shadow Wolf Creek is a safe place,” I tell him. “And if I’m close by, I’ll protect you.”
His mouth opens, and nothing comes out. All that talk about guarding the treasure of kings, and I’d put money on it that no one once offered to guard him back. “Then I will not use my Settling at sunrise.”
I beam at him. His wings spread wide, and a creature that big has no business leaving the ground that quiet, but he rises off my little balcony without one rattle of the rail. I step out into the cold to watch him go, my head tipped all the way back.
“Rest,” he calls down. “You will see me again.”
“Okay!” I holler after him. “You better find me! Or I’ll find you!”
He banks over the rooftops until the clouds take him, and I stand there grinning at the empty sky.
The happy gets to be too much to hold still in, so I do a little shimmy right there on the cold balcony. Somewhere in LA my roommates are filming another club night that can’t touch this.
I go inside, slide the door shut, and flip the latch, laughing at myself while I do it.
Then I dig out my sewing kit, because my mate needs pants.