Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

1. Jalen

JALEN

Something is wrong with my nose. I wake up in my bed already sure of it, and I lie still under my blanket trying to place what’s off.

The itch sits deep at the root of my nose, past where a finger could reach it.

My dragon turns over under my skin, and heat climbs through my chest without settling anywhere.

I sit up and stretch my arms over my head. Halfway through, I sneeze so hard I drop back onto my elbows.

Smoke curls out of my nostrils and drifts toward my ceiling. A thinner ribbon leaks off the points of my ears. That’s new. I wave it away from my face and shake off the rest.

Dragons don’t get sick. It’s rare enough that I can’t name the last time it happened to me, and I can name everything. I keep receipts on this entire valley, dates and sources included, and my own body is the one file that’s never needed updating.

Newspapers pile in drifts against my dresser, my notebooks stack knee-high along the wall, and loose pens ride the tops of both. My podcast rig sits in the far corner where the room throws the sound right, and my mic is still tilted where I left it.

Last night was a live special. In the back half I congratulated Nyra on her new baby before she’d told Marcus.

I said it on air with half the valley listening.

My defense is that she came by the Chronicle office yesterday smelling sweet and new over her usual pine, and I know that scent from when her son Elijah was on the way.

The town is going to have opinions today. Marcus forgives everyone in this valley, so he’ll get over it. Nyra owns knives. I haven’t checked my comments, and I already know what’s in them.

I swing my legs out of my bed and pick a path across my floor between a stack of Chronicles and a notebook I’d fight my whole clan to keep. I’m in my gray sweatpants and nothing else, and the cave air sits wrong on my skin, too cool on one step and too warm on the next.

I rub my nose on the way to my window. The itch doesn’t move.

Shadow Wolf Creek spreads out below the mountain, and the morning sun is already working on Main Street. My town is beautiful. I’ve watched it from this window my whole life, and the view hasn’t worn off yet.

I sneeze again, and smoke rolls against my window glass. I shrug at my own reflection in it. If dragons caught colds, I’d have run that story already.

Pancake smell drifts up the corridor from the family kitchen, and coffee rides underneath it. I don’t drink coffee. The pot is for my clan sisters, and my brothers keep it full.

I dig a shirt out of the clean pile on my reading chair, which is not to be confused with any other pile in my room.

I take the long way around my floor to my bathroom, which is the one tidy territory I keep. I run the water hot and wash my face. My gums feel warm around my canines when I brush, and thin smoke keeps leaking off the points of my ears in my mirror.

Whatever this is, it can wait until after breakfast.

The stairs down from my room are carved out of the mountain, and I jog down them.

The rest of my family’s condo is immaculate.

The floors shine, my sisters keep fresh flowers on the hall table, and every painting hangs straight with its own little light over the frame.

The only mess in this house is behind my door.

Both of my brothers are already in the kitchen. Dorian stands at the stove in his pressed shirt, adding to a stack of pancakes taller than the occasion calls for. My middle brother is the biggest, and he feeds this whole family.

Malachi sits at the table with his tablet propped against the fruit bowl. My oldest brother is the clan Alpha, and he moves the clan’s money around the world from that tablet.

I grab a plate and pull three off the top. I sit down across from Malachi.

“Where are my sisters?” I ask, drowning my pancakes in syrup.

“In town.” Malachi swipes his tablet without looking up. “Another shopping trip.”

These two are all the family I have. The clan that raised us was executed by humans in the land we came from. My brothers and I got out. Malachi was barely grown then, and I was small enough to ride his back when my wings gave out.

He flew us toward a rumor about safe land in the mountains where shifters could live out loud. The rumor turned out to be Shadow Wolf Creek. The town was brand-new and half-built, and it was already the best thing I’d ever seen. We’ve been here ever since.

Malachi taught me how to be a dragon.

I sneeze between bites, and a puff of smoke rolls across my plate.

Both of my brothers raise an eyebrow at me in unison.

“You coming down with something?” Dorian asks. He slides the last pancake onto the stack and cuts the burner.

“I don’t know.” I cut into my stack and keep eating.

My dragon has been off all morning, sleepy and restless at once. I chalk it up to a mood and finish my stack.

Malachi taps his tablet dark and pushes back from the table. “I’m driving into Millbrook this morning. There’s a piece of land on the east side about to go cheap, and the seller wants to shake hands in person.”

I stop chewing.

Millbrook has a whole notebook to itself in my room. My brothers don’t know that, and they wouldn’t ask why if they did. If it can’t be traded, banked, or built on, it doesn’t exist to them.

“What time?” I ask.

Malachi looks up from his tablet. Dorian pauses with his own plate half-loaded.

“When did you get curious about day trading and real estate?” Malachi asks.

I shrug and get up from the table.

My brothers hoard money. The clan safe runs down through the heart of this mountain, and feeding it is their favorite thing on this earth.

I hoard truths, sources, and the real story under the polite one.

They’ve never understood my hoard, and I quit explaining it a long time ago.

Answering honestly gets me the speech about wasted instincts, and I don’t feel like hearing it over breakfast.

So I say nothing. I carry my plate to the sink and run it under hot water.

Dorian finishes loading his plate and takes the chair beside Malachi. “I don’t love you going in alone,” he says to Malachi.

I dry my hands on the dish towel and lean back against the counter. “He’s right. They don’t like us in Millbrook, and shifter money buying their land will sit even worse.”

“Money speaks louder than hatred,” Malachi says with a shrug.

Dorian doesn’t argue. Neither do I. Our money keeps half of Millbrook running, and they hate us while they spend it. Go figure.

My dragon stops sulking and pays attention. Heat climbs up through my chest, and my wings itch where they lie flat under my skin.

“Then I’m coming with you.” I hang the dish towel back on its hook. “For your safety.”

Malachi turns in his chair to face me. “What are you up to?”

Doubt has a smell. On Malachi it’s vinegar, and the kitchen is thick with it.

I put on my best press-conference grin. “Brotherly love.”

Dorian doesn’t answer my grin. He pulls his phone from his shirt pocket and sets it on the table with the volume already up.

My own voice fills the kitchen with its late-show polish. “—and before y’all light up my comments, know that I stand by my reporting. Nyra, baby, the crib is already ordered. It’s cherry wood. This is Messy Jay reminding you—where there’s smoke, I’m probably the fire.”

Malachi missed the live. He drags a hand down his face.

Dorian stops the playback. “Why do you want this town to hate us so much?”

I roll my eyes. “I love what I do. The show keeps this valley informed, and half these people wouldn’t know their neighbors’ names if I didn’t say them on air. Everyone keeps to themselves and calls it respect. It’s isolating, and I think it’s stupid.”

“The quiet keeps the peace in this valley,” Malachi says. He leans forward with his elbows on the table. “Packs mind their business, clans mind ours, and no one goes to war over a rumor. Just because you hate the quiet doesn’t mean you get to pull shit like last night.”

I could recite this speech right along with him, and I know exactly how to end it.

“Now who’s the real snitch in this kitchen?” I wave at Dorian’s phone.

Dorian keeps eating. Malachi stands and tucks his tablet under his arm.

Everyone’s a critic these days.

“Make yourself presentable if you’re coming,” Malachi says to me. “We leave in an hour.”

I grin.

“And no funny business.” He points at me on his way out of the kitchen. “Or I will shut that little show of yours down myself.”

“Noted,” I say.

He’d do it. An Alpha’s word is law in a clan, and my brother doesn’t bluff. But he’s driving me straight into Millbrook, and he thinks the biggest story in that town is a land deal.

I glare at Dorian on my way out of the kitchen. “Fucking snitch.”

Dorian laughs into his pancakes and keeps eating.

I jog back up to my room and raid my reading chair. I come out with a white button-up, gray slacks, and my good watch. I dress fast and grab my Millbrook notebook off the floor.

Every page in that notebook circles the same witch.

She sent ghouls into my town, humans who traded themselves to her for gifts.

They broke into Shadow Suds, our local cleaning service, and stole cases of a discontinued solution.

Then they broke into Treasure’s apartment.

She’s my good friend’s mate, and the witch meant to use her as bait against the gargoyles.

And I know exactly who I’m hunting. Delilah has worked my valley before.

She’s told fortunes in my town wearing a borrowed face, and she’s cut deals with wolves on our mountain.

Now she’s gone to ground. Where does a witch hide?

And why is she sending ghouls to do her handiwork when she could level a building with a snap of her fingers?

A witch like her doesn’t borrow hands unless she’s scared of something. I want to know what.

All she left behind was that solution, and it can fool a shifter’s nose. The company that made it sits in Millbrook.

I dig my ear cuffs out of my dresser and drop them in my pocket. They pin my points down, and in a town like Millbrook, flat ears keep a dragon alive.

I sneeze again on my way out the door, and smoke curls down the hall behind me.

Neither of my brothers has ever heard the name Stillwater Solutions. I plan to keep it that way.

For now.