25. Zuri
ZURI
ONE WEEK LATER
Lena’s Crafts takes up the corner spot at the shopping center, and it’s the store I pointed at on my first drive through this town. Today I finally get to walk in.
Inside smells like cedar and new fabric. A whole wall runs nothing but ribbon, floor to ceiling, and the yarn bins in the middle of the floor are sorted into a rainbow so pretty it feels wrong to dig in them. I dig in them anyway.
Lena meets us with a rolling cart she’s already emptied for us. She’s a small human woman with a big laugh, and she and Renee take to each other before we clear the first aisle.
Renee makes it two aisles in before she starts building a pile. Fat quarters, embroidery hoops, and then she holds a glue gun up over her head like a trophy.
“They have the good kind, Z.” She shakes it at me. “The GOOD kind.”
“Put it on the cart,” I tell her. Renee and I have lost whole Saturdays in hobby aisles half this good, and this one has us both a little drunk.
Brandy holds up two velvets that look the same to me and frowns from one to the other, hunting for a difference only she can see.
Jules waddles the baby aisle with a spool of yellow trim already on her wrist, touching every soft thing on the shelf.
Treasure supervises the whole operation from a chair by the register, one hand on her belly, pointing at things she wants brought to her for inspection.
“Bring me that basket, Zuri,” she says. “The good one. Don’t bring me the crooked one and think I won’t notice.”
I bring her the good one. I’ve known these women all of two weeks, and somehow this is the easiest I’ve breathed in years.
Renee bumps my hip at the ribbon wall. “You’re glowing, Z.”
“It’s the mate bond,” I tell her.
She snorts. “It’s a dragon with a whole cave. But okay, girl. Bond.”
I laugh so hard Jules pokes her head out of the baby aisle to see what she missed.
This is what I get to keep. It’s my best friend loud in a craft store, sisters on every aisle, a whole shelf of colors I don’t have to choose from yet, and a dragon right outside the glass who’d hang the moon in here if I pointed at the ceiling.
Jalen is planted right outside the front window with Dorian, and the two of them are a whole show I didn’t buy tickets to.
Dorian loves shopping with the women. He has opinions about throw pillows and everything.
Jalen, meanwhile, is one throw-pillow conversation away from clawing his own eyes out, and he’s fussing at his brother about something through the glass. I don’t know what. I don’t care either.
I told him this morning he could stay home and wait for me. I had Dorian. I had the girls. He heard all of it and nodded along. Then he got in the SUV anyway. So there he stands, posted outside the store waiting on me, my velcro mate, fussy and all.
Brandy steers Jules and Treasure off toward the quilting wall with Lena, and Renee helps me shop for my craft room.
Jalen started building it before I ever asked.
I pointed at a paint chip and there was primer on the walls by dinner.
Renee loads my arms one find at a time, canvas bins, a cutting mat, a ribbon organizer she swears by, and I quit pretending I have a budget.
“Can we stop by Cozy Corner?” she asks when the cart won’t hold another thing.
“There’s some furniture I want to look at for my apartment.
” Then she’s off about the business plan before anyone answers, the spa, the buildout, how Malachi’s already working on securing us a spot right here in the shopping center for the new build.
We agree before she can pitch us the whole franchise. We pay up and haul our bags out into the sunshine, and right on schedule, Jalen’s whole face lights up at the sight of me.
It gets me every single time.
We make it ten steps into the parking lot before every hair on my arms stands up.
Jalen goes still, nose lifted. Dorian drops his bags where he stands. Then the two of them move at the same time, and there’s a wall of dragon brothers between us women and the lot, herding all of us back toward the storefront.
High heels click across the asphalt, and I know the walk before I know the face. It’s my old boss, wearing that expensive suit, with the blue eyes that never belonged to any of it.
“You wanted me to come.” Delilah spreads her arms wide. “Now here I am.”
“Delilah,” Jalen calls back. “You look good for somebody who’s been hiding in a filing cabinet. But baby, that glamour is not glamouring today, and you smell like a candle store with a mildew problem. Funky witch.”
Her smile doesn’t move, but a wind starts up out of nowhere and worries the hem of her suit jacket. Her fingers spread at her sides, and blue light webs up between them.
I grab the back of Renee’s sleeve. I’ve read this woman’s memos. I never once read anything about her hands doing that.
“I want the amulet.” The wind climbs while she talks. “And I am not leaving without it.”
Jalen grins at her, sharp teeth and all. “Come and get it. Just know one thing. It’s not only me you have to go through. It’s not only my brothers.” He rolls his shoulders loose. “You have to go through all of Shadow Wolf Creek.”
Renee grabs my arm, and the two of us go wide-eyed together, because that’s when my mate and his brother come apart at the seams.
It’s nothing like the clearing. There’s no slow in it anywhere.
Heat slams across the parking lot, their clothes shred straight off their bodies, and two dragons stand up out of the wreckage of two men, wings snapping open over the storefront.
Jalen rises up forest green and shining.
Dorian lands beside him in deep bronze, built even thicker through the chest, and the asphalt cracks under the both of them.
Then Renee points straight up.
Malachi’s dragon crosses the sky over the shopping center with his wings at full spread, copper-dark against the blue, and he pours fire into the empty air as he comes. The roar behind the flame rolls out across the whole valley. It’s a call. Even I can hear that much.
He lands behind Delilah with both feet planted and boxes her in.
She looks back and forth between the three of them, and then she laughs, high and wicked. “Three dragons.” Her hands spark brighter. “I can handle that.”
“No,” I get out.
Something heavy lands on the roof of Lena’s Crafts, and the whole storefront shudders. A bear the size of a delivery van leans out over the gutter line and shows Delilah every tooth in his head.
That does it for the parking lot. Whoever was still loading a trunk quits loading it, and the lot empties in a running scatter of townsfolk and abandoned shopping carts.
Renee hauls at my arm, dragging me toward the store door. “Z, come ON.”
“No.” I plant my feet. “I can’t leave Jalen.”
Jalen’s dragon swings his great green head around and snips at me, teeth clacking shut with plenty of scold in it.
I pop him right on the nose.
He wrinkles his snout at me, every inch of him annoyed, and swings back around to face Delilah.
Renee stares at me. “Did you just pop your dragon?”
“Jay and his dragon love to try me.” I square up beside her. “I said I’m staying.”
She rolls her eyes and stays right beside me.
Then the wolves come. They pour in around the edges of the lot, gray and brown and black coats moving low between the parked cars, and more shapes keep arriving behind them.
I look around the shopping center and run the math I’m best at. Delilah came here for the Carter clan. What she’s got is Shadow Wolf Creek, all of it, and she is surrounded and outnumbered.
The circle tightens while I watch. The wolves come up out of the lanes a step at a time. The bear drops off the roof and lands in front of Lena’s door with a thud I feel through my shoes. Three dragons lean in over all of it.
And Delilah runs the same math I just ran. I watch it land in her face.
“This isn’t the end.” Her voice carries over the whole lot, and the blue light climbs her arms. “I’m getting that amulet back.”
The wind whips up around her, the light wraps her whole body, and then she folds into it and is gone. The wind quits all at once, and the middle of the parking lot stands empty.
I look at Renee. Renee looks at me. We’re both still standing here in one piece, holding craft store bags, and I nearly sit down on the asphalt from relief.
Jalen’s dragon swings his head back around to me, and this time there’s no snip in him anywhere. I drop my bags and run to him, and I throw my arms around as much of his great neck as I can reach.
“Thank god it’s over,” I say into his warm scales. “I love you, Jay.”
His answer rumbles up through my whole body.
Then I lean back and take his huge face in both hands, as much of it as my hands can claim, and I press a kiss to his snout.
“And I love you too,” I tell his dragon.