Page 56 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

MINE.

I sink my teeth into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder. She screams and claws down my back. She pushes closer. Her blood comes over my tongue, and it tastes like burnt caramel gone molten, and I drink my mate and come inside her all at once.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the bond finishes. A second warmth settles in behind my heartbeat, and it points toward her.

I lick the bite until it closes under my tongue.

She goes soft and heavy in my arms, out cold, the same as the first night. I hold her against me and work on calming down, her blood still warm on my lips. I move us up the bed until my back hits the headboard, the one she made me crack, and I tuck her in.

The bite on her shoulder has already sealed into two small crescents, and when the morning light crosses them, they flash gold. I tilt my own neck and catch our reflection in the dresser mirror, her mark on me, my mark on her, a matched set. Somewhere in this mountain, Dorian is going to be insufferable about being right.

The house goes on below us. Water runs through the pipes. Dorian’s pans knock around the kitchen, cooking for people who keep walking out on his meals. Brandy’s voice has settled back down to normal, whatever that panic was about. My town, mymountain, my family, all of it hums along while the whole world quietly changes shape in my lap.

I’m not going to sleep. There’s too much to do. First I feed my mate when she wakes. Then I record the message that changes everything. Then I find out if her friend Renee is truly in danger, and if she is, I get her out. And after all of it, I put the crown down and I rest.

Nothing matters but Zuri.

22

ZURI

Iwake up turning toward a warmth that’s still in the hallway. Half asleep, I don’t question it. Then I come all the way awake and understand that I just felt him through a wall.

The door opens, and Jalen walks in, and the warmth arrives with him. It sits behind my heartbeat and leans whichever way he moves. I could find this man in the dark now, and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt.

He’s changed clothes again, a fresh shirt and different sweatpants. He’s been up doing things while I slept.

I look down at myself. He cleaned me up. I’m in a fresh nightgown, my skin is soft with lotion, and there isn’t an ache anywhere on me. I slept through every bit of that care. All my life, I’ve woken up alone in rooms where nothing got done unless I did it. Somewhere in this cave there’s a dragon who works while I sleep.

Then I run my hand up my neck, and the memory arrives with my fingertips. At the curve where my neck meets my shoulder there’s a raised mark, two small crescents, smooth and new.

I wait for the panic. Yesterday I screamed at a mirror over less. It doesn’t come. I press my fingers flat over the mark, and all I feel is his.

He crosses to the bed chewing on something, carrying a whole tray of chicken wings. “It’s wing day,” he says around the bite.

Wings aren’t my favorite. But his chewing could fool me into a new opinion.

He sits down on the bed next to me. I sit all the way up, and he hands me a bottle of ice water off the nightstand. I crack it open and drain most of it in one go, and I’m somehow still thirsty at the bottom.

He sets the tray between us and smiles at me. “Hey, baby.”

“Did we just bite each other?” I say.

He laughs and picks up another wing. Then he points down the tray with it. “Lemon pepper. Buffalo. Teriyaki.” He gets to the last row and winces. “Barbecue. All special sauces made by Dorian.”

I look over at the other nightstand while he talks. My tote sits on it, packed neat, with my phone resting on top and the amulet lying right there next to my wallet.

I look back at Jalen. He’s leaned against the cracked headboard, and when the meat is gone off his wing, he eats the bone too. It crunches. I press my palm to my own forehead and wonder about my mind.

He picks up a remote off the nightstand and points it across the room.

“While you slept,” he says, and presses play.

The rig in the corner lights up, and his show voice comes out of the speakers. He watches me.

“CREEK BABIES. And to every den, pack, and city tuning in for the very first time — welcome to Shadow Wolf Creek Diaries. You picked a night to find me. This is my first episode to gonational, and it’s my last one ever. One show left in me, and I’m spending all of it.”

Last one ever.He said it to me at the workstation, and I didn’t believe him all the way. Hearing it recorded, finished, already done, my stomach drops. There’s no talking him out of a thing that already happened.