Chapter 9
NINE
Though he’d never been a fan of crowds—a city like Arthos was the last place he would’ve chosen to live, had things gone differently for him—Drakkal was grateful for the mass of pedestrians today.
In a less crowded setting, he would’ve stood out like a tralix at a volturian dinner party, but here they provided him some cover.
Some small part of him said this was wrong—or at least that Shay might see it as such—but his instincts were insistent enough to drown out that little voice of doubt.
He needed to know his terran was safe. This was the only way he knew how to accomplish that—watching her.
It didn’t matter if she wanted him to or not, it was what he had to do.
It wasn’t much different than what he’d done for Arcanthus for years, was it?
Apart from Arcanthus having asked me to do it and being fully aware of my presence and my methods…
Though Arc did have the cren brothers keep an eye on Samantha without her knowledge.
He sighed and muttered, “Not sure that makes it right, Drak…”
He stood against the outside of a building, only fifteen or twenty meters away from Shay.
He’d donned a long, dull gray coat, hoping it would obscure his frame a little better than the more form-fitting leather jackets he preferred.
The hood was a bonus, even if he hated the feel of it over his mane and ears.
Shay was dressed in a green hooded jacket, form-fitting black leggings, and boots.
More than once, Drakkal found himself hoping she’d move in such a way that the hem of her jacket would rise to afford him the sight of those leggings hugging her ass and thighs—not that the thick flow of pedestrians would’ve afforded him a clear view.
So I’m not just a stalker, I’m an aroused stalker. Nothing at all wrong with that…
Drakkal didn’t know if she’d been assigned this location for work or if she’d chosen it herself, but every time she was ignored or rebuked by a passerby, a spark of rage flared in Drakkal’s chest. Violence had been a part of his life in some fashion or another for almost as long as he could remember, but he’d never been so motivated toward it for so petty a reason.
He wanted to attack everyone who glanced at her in a way that could be interpreted as even mildly rude.
But he held himself back. He’d made mistakes when it came to Shay, and he intended to keep them to a minimum going forward.
That meant leaning on the patience he’d commanded before meeting her.
It meant drawing on the skills he’d learned as a hunter long before Arthos was anything more to him than a distant, almost mythical city he had no desire to see.
Yet despite his considerable willpower, it was a unique sort of torture to be so close to her without being able to interact with her, especially given how good it felt to finally speak to her yesterday.
Their conversation in her apartment had eased the stress that had built in Drakkal over the last three weeks—and he wanted to capitalize on the progress they’d made.
He wanted to woo her, as Arcanthus had suggested.
And how would that go? Hello Shay, I was just stalking you and I found myself wondering if you wanted to get some lunch?
He’d been watching her for a few hours with his tail pinned against the wall behind him to keep it still when the sedhi approached her.
Though Drakkal couldn’t see the entirety of their bodies—and therefore their interactions—through the constant flow of foot traffic, he knew Shay was not comfortable with the sedhi’s presence by her expression.
Keeping his eyes on Shay and the sedhi, Drakkal stalked closer, shifting his ears beneath his hood to focus his hearing forward.
“How much for you?” the sedhi asked.
Drakkal hadn’t wanted to punch a sedhi in the teeth that much since he’d seen Arcanthus that morning.
“I’m not for sale, so fuck off. And don’t touch me again,” Shay snapped. She turned away from the sedhi, her bright blue eyes spitting fire into the crowd as she raised a flyer. “Check out the Spectacular Skrudge Show!”
Drakkal’s brows fell low, his fur bristled, and a growl sounded from deep in his chest. The sedhi had touched her? Instinct rapidly overpowered Drakkal’s rational thought. He increased his pace, eyes locked on the sedhi as a red haze flooded his vision.
The sedhi reached forward and grabbed Shay’s shoulder. As he spun her around, he said, “I’m talking to you—”
Were he not so experienced a fighter himself, Drakkal might’ve missed what happened next—it was fast, much faster than he’d expected from a terran.
Shay dropped the flyers in her left hand, lifting that arm and using the momentum created by the sedhi’s pull to bat away his hand.
She hammered her right fist into the sedhi’s chin before he could react.
The sedhi’s head snapped back, and he staggered back a step, grating a curse. The crowd eased back from the terran and her foe, finally granting Drakkal a clear view.
Drakkal’s heart stilled when the sedhi recovered and swung his arm in a counterattack. Shay was too small, too delicate to take such a blow from a being so much bigger than her. Drakkal charged forward, but he wouldn’t get there in time.
Shay ducked beneath the sedhi’s swing. Having overextended himself, the sedhi was thrown off balance by his miss. Shay thrust a leg in front of his and twisted slightly to give him a shove on the shoulder. He toppled face first onto the ground.
By the time the sedhi flipped over and started to sit up—no more than a second or two, at most—Shay had thrown open her coat, drawn her blaster, and backed away from her opponent. She stared at him, her gaze as hard and unwavering as the gun in her hand.
The sedhi glared at her, fangs bared, his third eye dipping to the barrel of the blaster.
“I said don’t touch me. Is it really that hard to listen?” Shay asked.
“Fuck you, you—”
“I don’t know exactly where your dick is, but I have enough patience and ammunition to find out. So I want you to think very carefully about the next words coming out of your mouth.”
“You won’t shoot me.”
“How much you willing to bet?”
The sedhi pressed his lips together in a tight line, and a glimmer of uncertainty entered his eyes.
Several people had stopped to watch the altercation.
Drakkal halted at the edge of that crowd.
Despite his fury, he’d maintained just enough control to know that his interference now had a chance of worsening the situation.
“Good,” Shay said, her expression surprisingly calm. Even if she’d been shaken up, she was fully in control. “Now you’re going to get up very slowly, turn around, and walk away.”
Nostrils flaring with heavy breaths, the sedhi carefully stood up. His attention once again fell to the blaster as he retreated. Shay kept the weapon aimed at him even when he turned and sprinted away, his long tail trailing behind him.
With sighs and soft conversation—some of it relieved and some of it oddly disappointed—the crowd reverted to its typical state of motion.
Drakkal couldn’t take his eyes off Shay.
The confidence and competence with which she’d handled the sedhi were startling, though they shouldn’t have been—he’d seen hints of it in all his interactions with her before now.
It was yet more evidence of what Arcanthus had speculated regarding Shay’s past. This terran knew how to take care of herself.
And that fighting spirit, that warrior soul, called to Drakkal. It fanned those desirous flames she’d already woken in him, stoked them to new heights. That quickly, the fires of rage burning in Drakkal became an inferno of yearning.
Shay holstered the blaster and tugged her jacket closed to conceal it again. She looked down at the flyers on the ground, and her lips and nose scrunched endearingly.
“You know what? Fuck this,” she muttered and lifted her hand, yanking back her sleeve to reveal her holocom. She pulled up the control screen and flipped through the commands.
The now lustful haze in Drakkal’s mind prevented him from realizing what she was doing until it was too late to react. She detached the earpiece from her holocom, slipped it in her ear, and selected an option on the menu.
The holocom built into Drakkal’s prosthesis chimed—out loud. Were he even a few steps farther away from her, she likely wouldn’t have heard it over the din of the crowd, but he’d come within a couple meters during her scuffle with the sedhi.
Shay’s head turned toward the sound—toward Drakkal—and her eyes skimmed over him briefly. Almost as soon as she looked away, she snapped her gaze back to Drakkal, eyes going wide.
Of all the times to forget to silence this damned thing…
He almost always wore the earpiece for his holocom, keeping its speaker silenced.
That was part of his typical day, so much so that he rarely thought about it.
But today, he’d been so focused on his task, so focused on her, that he’d not bothered with his earpiece.
He’d wanted to keep his full attention on her.
Shay ended the call and removed her earpiece. “For real? You’re stalking me?”
If he should’ve been embarrassed, the feeling never came. He’d told Shay that he wanted her safe above all else. There was no shame in following through with that.
He reached up, tugged down his hood, and shook out his mane as he approached her. “I am.”
“Just like that? No excuses? No lies?” Her brows furrowed as she tilted her head. “You…you realize that doesn’t necessarily help your case, right? Just makes you creepy.”
Drakkal shrugged. “Creepy but honest. You hungry?”
Startled, she opened her mouth, closed it, and studied him with a furrowed brow.