13. Jalen
JALEN
Zuri’s hand stays in mine the whole way up the stairs to Malachi’s office. In my other hand I’m carrying the folder and the soap, and my plan for the morning is simple: hand off both, then get my mate out into the sunshine.
At the top I stop us outside the tall doors and listen. Brandy’s voice is in there with his. I sniff the air first. There’s no arousal riding under their scents, which means it’s safe to walk in.
I knock and swing the door open, looking back at Zuri as I step inside. She follows me in.
“Whoa,” she says.
“Yeah.” I lean toward her ear. “Malachi is a bit over the top.”
The walls are carved floor to ceiling. The paintings have their own little lights. The desk in the center is one solid slab, and Malachi will tell you about the tree it came from if you give him half a chance.
He and Brandy are behind it, Brandy sitting in his lap with his arm wrapped around her waist. My brother rests his chin on her shoulder and smiles at my mate.
“Good morning, sister,” he says. “I trust you had a good first night.”
Zuri shrugs. “I slept well.”
He smiles at that.
I cross the room and set the folder and the soap on his desk. “Now we know why Delilah sent ghouls after her.”
Brandy stands up out of his lap. Malachi pulls the folder to him, opens it, and starts turning pages.
Halfway through his reading, a sneeze doubles me over my own elbow.
Smoke drifts off my lips, and I could spit about it.
I made it through the whole morning without one, and I want to know what changed.
My dragon is irritated right along with me, but underneath, his heat is climbing and dropping with no pattern I can read. That’s new.
Malachi closes the folder and sits back in his chair. “We came here with nothing,” he says. “We built this land with our own hands. Decades of it. And this damn witch has been picking at it like it’s hers to take.”
Brandy comes around the desk to Zuri and takes a soft look at her bruised cheek. “Are you two leaving for the medical center?”
I nod. “Yes. Just dropping this off first.”
Malachi looks up from the folder at Zuri and grins. “I can’t let you go back to Millbrook,” he says. “What’s in this folder could have gotten you killed.”
Zuri pulls in a sharp little breath. I cross to her side and take her hand, and her fingers are cold in mine. I fold them into my heat and hold on.
She searches my face. I hold still so she can find whatever she needs in it. Then she turns back to Malachi, and I brace, because this is where she fights us. I’ve been waiting since the alley for her to ask to go home.
“I’m more worried about the danger than the staying,” she says. “Are you sure I’ll be safe here?”
“Yes,” I say. My dragon is eager to kill anything that dares try to take her from us.
Malachi closes his mouth around whatever speech he had ready.
He taps the folder. “Let her try to come after you in Shadow Wolf Creek. A dragon will be the least of Delilah’s worries.”
Her grip goes firm in mine while he talks. She’s holding my hand in front of my Alpha, on purpose, and I grin so hard my ears move.
“Alright then,” she says to Malachi. “I’m not about to complain about living in luxury.” Then she plucks at the front of her shirt and turns to Brandy. “Do you have a cheaper shirt I can wear, though? It feels almost criminal to get a stain on this one. It was two hundred dollars.”
Brandy chuckles and fans the worry away with one hand. “Money grows on trees here, honey. You’ll get used to it.”
Zuri’s jaw sets. She doesn’t answer. Under her quiet, her caramel picks up a sharp edge, and I file that away for later.
“Thank you for this,” Malachi says, laying one hand flat on the folder. “You just gave me something to work with. Go get yourselves looked over. And Jalen, figure out what the hell that is before you get me and Dorian sick.”
I roll my eyes and keep hold of Zuri’s hand.
“See you at dinner!” Brandy calls after us as I pull Zuri out of the room.
I hate driving when I’ve got two perfectly good wings. But my mate can’t fly, so I borrowed one of Malachi’s SUVs and we take the mountain road down toward town.
Zuri’s eyes are glued to the window the whole way. It’s not much to look at, road, trees, and more mountain, but she’s got her hands on the glass about it.
I smile and take the curves slow. I check on her more than I check my mirrors.
I push down on the gas once the road straightens out. No one comes up this mountain unless it’s a delivery, so traffic isn’t a thing I worry about.
“Enjoying the view?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer. Her forehead is about to touch the glass.
I’ve got a view of my own on this side of the SUV. She’s the best thing I’ve had to look at in my whole measly life, sitting in my passenger seat in a shirt she’s scared of.
My dragon agrees.
I put my focus back on the road, since she’s too busy with her window to talk to me. She’ll have to make her peace with luxury in a hurry. I’ve got plans to spoil her rotten, and that shirt doesn’t even make the list.
We make it down the mountain and roll past the shopping center. She points at the craft store first, out of everything on the strip.
I make the right face at it. What is it with women and craft stores? First it was Brandy, now my mate.
Then Stanley’s Diner comes up on her side, and she giggles at the sign. I take my opening. “You know something about that diner? Andy can’t keep employees. Every time he trains someone new, a shifter scoops them up and mates them.”
“And gargoyles,” she says.
I snicker. “They’re my friends, by the way.”
She turns from her window to stare at me as we pass through town.
“Want to meet them?” I ask.
She nods eagerly.
The medical center sits at the far end of town, and I pull into the valet lane out front. Zuri scrunches up her nose at the sign.
“Oh, please,” I tell her. “Most human hospitals have valet service.”
A kid in a red vest opens her door and helps her out. I hop out and leave the fob in the cup holder. Then I peel a few bills off my clip and toss them on the driver’s seat.
A sneeze snaps me forward over the door frame. Smoke comes off my nose and both ear points, and I fan it away.
The kid pauses with his hand on the door. “Ohhh,” he says. “You caught the allergy.”
“What allergy?” I ask.
He grabs the cash off the seat and drops behind the wheel like I didn’t ask him a thing. I walk around the hood, and he drives off with my brother’s SUV.
Zuri waits for me by the entrance.
She frowns at my nose. “I’m more worried about your sneeze than my face.”
I stop in front of her and tip her chin up. “Don’t be. Nothing is more important than you. Not even me.”
I take her hand and rub my nose with the back of my other wrist as we walk in. The lobby smells like antiseptic and nervous shifters.
Then I stop walking.
Another dragon comes up the hall toward us, sneezing smoke into his fist. I’ve been making that exact ugly sound all week.
It’s Roland from the ridge clan, a timber dragon built like one of his own logs, with gray coming in at his temples.
He runs the logging crew on the north ridge, and his youngest hatchling is the one the school keeps sending notes home about for eating crayons.
Zuri looks between us.
Roland slows up and waves his own smoke out of his face. “Hey, Jay. I hope you haven’t been in close proximity to that Stillwater shit. It’s the cleaning solution.”
Zuri and I trade a look, both of us running the same math. I’m supposed to be the dragon who knows everything that moves in this valley.
Another sneeze rips out of me, right on cue.
Zuri chews on that while Roland moves off down the hall. “If it’s an allergic reaction, why aren’t Dorian and Malachi sick with it?”
I know exactly why.
“I’ve been around the solution. Lots of it, over at Shadow Suds.
Whatever Delilah couldn’t have her ghouls steal is still sitting in Derrick’s storeroom, and I went through every case of it when I started digging.
” I rub my nose. “It tracks. Malachi and Dorian aren’t anywhere near that stuff, and we don’t use cleaners from Derrick’s company either.
Brandy and Jules are meticulous about who touches their things. ”
Zuri purses her lips. “Hold on. Who does the cleaning, then?”
I shrug. “All of us.”
Zuri spreads her hands. “But that place is big as hell. Your cave.”
“Good thing you’ve got three dragons to handle most of the big work.” I walk around her and head for the front desk to check us both in. “Don’t worry. At most you’ll be dusting off your own dresser.”
Once Delilah is out of our lives, I plan to work on Malachi about letting Derrick’s crews take over the cleaning. That pitch got harder now that dragons and that solution turn out to be a bad mix.
Then I grin at the check-in counter. I handed Malachi the container this morning. I hope he doesn’t get any on him.
Something about Roland’s warning keeps itching at me. Halfway through check-in, I place it.
“Hey, Roland.” I cross the lobby and catch him before he’s out the door, Zuri right behind me. “I thought Derrick pulled all that cleaning solution off the shelves. How’d you get ahold of some?”
Roland turns around. “There’s Stillwater dish soap at the town shopping center now. New bottle. Hand soap right next to it.”
Zuri’s gasp is loud in the quiet lobby.
“Oh, shit,” I say.
Roland nods. “I knew something was up with it. My mate started smelling off when she used it. Really off. It drove my dragon nuts.”
“I gotta get home,” he says, already pushing the door open. “That shit’s going straight in the trash.”
“Good idea,” I tell him.
He walks out trailing smoke, and the doors swing shut behind him.
Zuri steps in front of me. Her caramel has gone hot and urgent under the antiseptic sting of this place.
“Screw my face,” she says. “We gotta get back home and tell Malachi.”
I grin at her. “Home?”
She narrows her eyes at me. It’s too late for a take-back. I plan to be insufferable about this for the rest of our lives.
Then the itch flares at the root of my nose, deep down where fingers can’t reach. The sneeze cracks out of me, and the sound slaps off the lobby tile. Smoke pours off my nose and both ear points, and I taste hot metal all the way down my throat.
“No,” I say, waving my own smoke out of my mate’s face. “I told you already, you come first. And I need this sneeze under control before I lose it.”
She crosses her arms. “You first.”
We have ourselves a staredown right there in the lobby, my smoke still drifting between us. She doesn’t blink. My eyes are already watering from the sneeze, which gives her an unfair advantage, and we both know I’m going to fold.
My dragon agrees.