16. Jalen
JALEN
She kisses me until the sun sets. The gold in my window cools down to blue while we trade slow, careful kisses, and I’m not mad about it one bit. If the whole valley burned for attention tonight, the news could wait.
Her stomach growls between us.
I pull back. She makes a sound about it, but the one thing I will never agree to is my mate going without what she needs. That includes dinner.
Then she pouts, bottom lip out and kiss-swollen, and I about fall to pieces right there on my own bed. Gah damn, this woman.
I roll us so I’m over her and steal one more. “We can finish after you eat,” I tell her. “You might be sore, but you’ve got another set of lips I wouldn’t mind kissing.” I smirk down at her.
She stares at me blank. Then she catches it, and the giggle bursts out of her as she hits my arm. “You are so nasty.”
I shrug.
I sit up and pull her up with me.
“Besides,” I say, “Dorian’s gonna lose his mind if he can’t have brotherly time with you.” She smiles at that too.
“What?” I ask. “Not used to family settings?”
She puts her pretty lips together and gives me nothing. I have to read her scent to get my answer, and what I find there is old and lonely. “Ah, come on, Zuri.”
“It’s been just me and my mom,” she says. “And when I got old enough to take care of myself, she got married.”
She doesn’t even sound sad about it, and that’s the part that gets me.
Losing my clan tore me open, but at least I know they would have stayed.
Her own mother looked at this woman and decided she was finished raising her.
My chest goes hot and mean about it. Zuri will never be anyone’s leftover again, not while I’m breathing.
“Come here.” She yelps when I pick her up and set her in my lap. I kiss her temple and keep her there against my chest. “It’s only kidnapping if I give you back, right?”
She looks over at me. “This is gonna sound crazy, but I kind of don’t want you to give me back.”
She kissed me first this afternoon, and I thought that made my whole year. This beats it.
“Good,” I say. “That was never the plan.”
She smirks at me. “You’re so quick-witted it makes me nervous.”
“I might be quick-witted,” I tell her, “but I’ll always bend when it comes to you.”
She gives me a look. I don’t need my nose to read this one.
I narrow my eyes at her. “Try me.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll think of something.”
Her stomach growls again, louder this time. If I don’t get her fed soon, my dragon will handle it for me. Losing my grip on him means she wakes up tomorrow next to a fried elk in this bed. I shudder a little just thinking about it. She would not like that.
My dragon takes offense at my attitude. He considers a fried elk a perfectly respectable courting gift.
I have a better idea for a courting gift than fried game.
I scoot off the bed with her still in my lap and stand up with her. Her legs wrap around me, and she kicks her feet a little. The kick undoes me worse than the pout did.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “Just living out my biggest fantasy. Carrying my mate down to dinner after the most incredible makeout session of my life.”
“You’re making me feel like I’m in a dream,” she says.
“Great. Let’s keep it that way.” She has no idea how long this one was mine.
I carry her out of my room and down the stairs. The kitchen smells like Dorian working, butter and something slow-cooked going soft. He comes around the island and pulls out a chair without being asked, and I set my mate down in it.
“Can you keep my princess company for a little while?” I ask him. “I have a surprise I’m working up for her.”
Zuri starts to say something. I lean down and kiss her quick. “I’ll be right back. Thirty minutes, tops.”
Though as I run for the side door, I already know it’s going to take longer than that.
I pass the garage without slowing. What I need, my own hands can carry, and flying is faster anyway. My wings push out through the slits in my shirt. The night air catches them, and I’m gone.
I fly out over Shadow Wolf Creek with the mountains dropping away under me. The dusk burns out somewhere over Main Street, and by full dark I’m circling down exactly where I planned to land: the shopping center.
My bare feet hit the asphalt. I left my shoes by my own bed, because apparently that’s the kind of courting fool I am now.
The parking lot is emptying out, the last few shoppers loading their trunks and heading home.
Here’s one thing I love about this town.
A dragon drops out of the night sky with his wings folding down his back, and it’s a regular night for everyone here.
No one screams. A couple of the shoppers wave at me before they go.
Right on time, sundown has turned Soren loose. The door of Stanley’s swings open, and he ducks his head under the frame to fit himself through. He steps out and stretches his wings the width of the storefront.
I break into a grin and jog over to him.
Soren clocks me halfway there. His wings fold down flat behind his back, and he frowns at me the whole rest of the way over.
I’m never living down the day I announced him to this town.
It was good journalism and better civics, and he has hated me for it every night since. It was for the best, though. Right?
“Hey, man,” I call out, opening my arms like we’re old friends. We are, whether he admits it or not.
“Jalen,” he says, and he looks down at me from all seven feet of his disapproval.
I roll my eyes. He refuses to give me the two letters, and he knows exactly what it does to me. I would bet the clan vault he keeps a list of my reactions.
“It’s Jay,” I tell him, same as every night.
He walks right past it. “What is this business with the Stillwater products?”
“Damn,” I say. “Getting right down to business, huh? You could at least congratulate me. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Soren grins. Then he folds a wing over his heart and bows his head.
“Your mate is lovely, Jalen,” he says. “Her scent is unique. I cannot read a fated pairing the way your kind does, but that one is perfect for you.”
I smile at him. My dragon is proud right along with me.
Soren pulls us back to business. “The Stillwater products, Jalen.”
I rub the back of my head. My nose itches, but Shelly’s tea holds the line.
I quit playing around. Some names you don’t hand a friend with a joke attached.
“It’s Delilah for sure,” I tell him. “She’s running the company.”
His bright eyes narrow, the gold in them going flat and hot. He hasn’t forgotten what her ghouls did to Treasure. Neither have I.
“You and Sable told me once. ‘When you call, we answer.’” That pledge got made over a stolen coin and a bad night, and I’ve never had to spend it before.
“I am a gargoyle of my word,” Soren says.
“Those ghouls tried to kill my mate.” Smoke comes out with the words. I’m thinking about the alley, her cheek, that gun. My heat rises with the memory, and the asphalt goes warm under my bare feet.
His wings snap open, wide enough to black out the streetlight behind him. Then he smiles at me, all fangs.
This is what it means to have people. I’ve got two brothers up the mountain and this grumpy night-watchman ready to go to war off one sentence of mine.
I hold up one hand. “I don’t need the I-told-you-so. I already caught my karma for what I did to you.”
“I do not relish a ghoul harming your mate, Jalen,” Soren says.
“They’ll come here looking for her.” I rub my itchy nose again. “She’s trying to mask the fated scent. I don’t know why.”
Soren crosses his arms, claws wrapping his elbows. “The supernaturals she has had dealings with here.”
“The witch made a deal with Nyra once,” I answer. “It’s how she met her mate Marcus. She tried to collect on it too. Nyra’s pack and Marcus put a stop to that.”
Soren bends down into my space to deliver the look. “Nyra. The wolf shifter you have been terrorizing on your messy podcast.”
I frown at him and say nothing.
Okay, damn it, so they all have a point.
Wings beat the air above us, and Soren and I both look up. Sable glides past overhead, and his shadow crosses the whole parking lot. He banks toward Lena’s Crafts and lowers himself slow, until he’s standing at the entrance door with his wings folding down.
I look at Soren. He sighs through his fangs.
The lights inside the store go out. Lena steps out with her tote bag on her shoulder and locks the door behind her. Then she looks up at the seven feet of gargoyle standing over her, and all she does is frown. She doesn’t flinch, not even a little.
“What are you doing?” she says. “You’re supposed to meet me at home.”
His answer is to grab her and yank her clean off her feet. She yelps. He pulls her into him and presses his forehead to hers.
“Sable, ahh—“ she starts.
Then he moans low, and she goes quiet.
“I have missed you, my love,” he says.
I lean toward Soren. “Has he calmed down yet?”
Soren lets out a groan from way down deep.
“No,” he says.
Sable comes over to us still carrying her. He props her on one arm and slides her flat shoes off with his free claw. He tucks the shoes into her tote.
“Sable, really—“ Lena starts. Then he takes a claw to the sole of her foot, and whatever she was about to say turns into a moan. She leans into him and falls quiet.
He reaches us like that, wife on one arm, and smiles. “Greetings.”
Ohhh, this would be gold for the podcast. The old me is already writing the episode. I bite the idea back, because I can’t keep being messy about everything. I’ve got Zuri now. Sable can love his wife in peace.
Soren looks down at me. He doesn’t have to say it. We don’t alarm the women. If there’s one thing Soren doesn’t play about, it’s Treasure and Lena.
The door to Stanley’s chimes, and Lamar walks out with his head down for once. It doesn’t save him. A growl rolls out of Sable, and Lamar picks up his pace toward his new truck. Lucky for him, he’s got supernatural insurance.
“Calm yourself, brother,” Soren says.
“The sight of that human angers me,” Sable says. He’s still rubbing Lena’s foot while he says it.
“Stop it,” Lena tells him. He turns back to her.
“Fly me home,” she says. “I don’t feel like driving. My feet hurt.”
Sable obeys on the spot. His wings spread wide, and he takes her up into the dark without so much as a goodbye.
I look at Soren.
“I will have words with my brother tonight,” he says. “We will take on extra patrols.”
“Thank you,” I tell him.
He stays planted right where he is until the diner door swings again and Devon steps out. Soren watches the kid lock up and get all the way into his car before he moves a muscle. He guards the dishwasher after hours too.
“I must take my leave to check on my mate,” he says.
I smile. “How’s Treasure doing, anyway?”
“She takes longer naps now. My son is growing strong.” The gold in his eyes goes bright as day.
I step back to give his wings room, and then he’s in the air, and I’m alone in the parking lot, still smiling at the sky.
Now, where does a dragon find a bouquet of peonies at this hour?
The lights are still on at the florist down at the end of the center, and someone inside is flipping the sign to closed.
I take off running, bare feet slapping the asphalt.
“Hey, wait!”