Chapter 3

3

ARTEMIS

T he life of a dragon shifter without his mate was a lonely one. Not many of my kind were left in the world, so few that only two dragon holds remained. One in Aruba and another in Florida. Our beasts thrived in hot weather, so we tended to settle in warmer climates. But after roaming the world for a decade on my own, I decided almost twenty years ago that I enjoyed the changing of the seasons enough to settle in a cave in a forest where I could experience them.

I hadn't known back then that someone owned the land I made into my home. Not until I came across a grizzly shifter marking the territory by raking his claws against a tree only a few hundred feet from my cave. My dragon had been pissed enough that he wanted to send a stream of fire at the bear to burn him to a crisp. Luckily, I had been in my human form, and logic prevailed.

I introduced myself to the grizzly, and after he shifted back, he let me know he and his brother had just finished building a few log cabins farther down the mountain and had several more in the works. In all my travels, I had never met a pack that included different animals, so I was surprised to learn a cougar helping him with the builds had claimed the third cabin that was finished and a wolf planned to live in the next one that was done.

Not that Keane had called it a pack back then or thought of himself as the alpha. That had come with time. Which was a big part of why I'd been comfortable with accepting his invitation to take the fifth cabin, although I had them focus on the one at the end of the row so I had a little more space to myself before they eventually filled up.

I quickly learned that I often needed even more distance from the other shifters, so I still spent a lot of time in my cave. So much so that I had the cougar shifter, Garner, help me turn it into a second home for myself. One that more than rivaled my log cabin with all of the amenities I had added over the years.

I spent more time at the cave than my cabin, which worked well for me as The Wilderness Pack grew when several of the guys found their fated mates. I was happier for my packmates, but they were all younger than me, so I was also envious that they had the other half of their soul while I was still alone. It made me grumpier than usual, which was saying a lot since I had a well-earned reputation for being surly.

In an effort to be around more for my pack now that it had grown so much—and to get the female mates off my back about never being around—I had started to spend at least a couple of nights a week at my cabin, which meant keeping some of my treasures there instead of the cave.

Until this morning, remembering where one of my beloved items was hadn't been an issue. I had never misplaced anything from my hoard before, so I was stunned when the lunar meteorite I had found in the Sahara Desert wasn't anywhere to be found in my cabin. I'd been almost certain that I hadn't moved the moon rock from the spot where I'd placed it in the back side of my cave but had hoped that I was mistaken. The black chunk had brought me good luck over the years, and I was pissed as fuck that I couldn't find it.

After searching through all of my stuff in the cabin, I let out a roar of frustration. With the pregnant mates and babies of my packmates nearby, I knew better than to make so much noise this early in the morning. But I couldn't tamp down the fury coursing through my veins.

Bellowing with rage, I ran out of my cabin, stripping off my clothes along the way. My T-shirt was still on as I reached the edge of the woods, but my inner beast was done waiting. My bones popped as he pushed for control. As my wings sprouted, they ripped through the back of my shirt, the tattered pieces falling to the ground as the transformation into my dragon was complete. Then I took flight and headed back to my cave.

Instead of using the path I normally took to the front of the system of tunnels where I had built my other home, I landed near the back of the outcropping. Shifting back to my human form, I didn't worry about being naked since there wasn't another person for miles around.

A small entrance to my cave was mostly concealed by foliage, but as I neared the small gap between the rocks, I realized it had been disturbed since the last time I'd been back here. Which had been too long ago.

I had grown too comfortable with my surroundings and was now paying the price for relaxing my safeguards. The moon rock could've been taken weeks before I noticed, the thief's trail too cold for me to chase. My inner beast snorted in my head, disagreeing as he urged me to drag the scent he'd caught into my lungs. Flaring my nostrils, I did just that, intrigued by the sweet trace of vanilla in the air. None of the nearby flowers smelled anything like it, so the most likely explanation was that the scent belonged to the person who had taken my moon rock.

I was shocked when my dragon brushed against my skin with a purr as I flared my nostrils to drag the delicious smell deeper into my lungs. Locked into the scent, I let him come to the surface and took to the air again, being careful to fly just above the tree canopy so I was as close as possible to the path my intruder took. It also limited the odds of me being spotted if any hikers wandered into our territory. Cameras with telescopic lenses meant that I had to be much more careful, stretching my senses more than a mile around me to make sure nobody was around.

When I reached the edge of our property, I shifted back to my human form, grateful for one of the many stashes of clothes I'd left up in a tree behind a No Trespassing sign. After getting dressed, I followed the scent trail out to the parking lot and all the way to a college campus two towns over. It took me all damn day to get there, and tracing the person who smelled like vanilla was complicated by all of the students milling around.

For a guy who hated crowds, it was a fucking nightmare. Leaning against a tree in the middle of the quad, I ignored everyone around me while I focused on locating my prey. My patience paid off when a redhead stepped out of the building across from me.

Her scent drifted on the wind toward me, and I instantly knew she was the one I'd been searching for. My little thief was fucking gorgeous.

Her dark auburn hair hung in waves down her back, and her hazel eyes were a splash of color against her pale skin. She was tall—but still a good six inches shorter than me—and on the thinner side. My fingers itched to trace her gentle curves as my cock hardened to its full length for the first time in my very long life.

I hadn't just tracked down the person who had taken my lunar meteorite…I had finally found my fated mate.