3. Alexandra

Alexandra woke up abruptly as always, and she was half out of the bed on her feet before she realized she wasn't in the park. She arrested to a stop, one foot on the tight-weave carpet, the other still tangled in sheets, as her pillow slumped in slow motion off the side of the bed. It landed by the side table with a soft collapse. She swept her eyes across the room in one rapid glance, taking in a familiar layout. Two queen beds, a wide window with a heavy curtain, a TV on the dresser, desk next to it with a rolling chair, a door–closed—leading to a bathroom. She was in a hotel. Specifically in a drive-up motel, the kind that catered to cheap nights on the side of the road when you needed a bed and no other luxuries. The kind that might moonlight with an hourly rate to keep the lights on.

She used to stay in these kinds of places regularly. Back when she had the cash and the vampires weren"t as close to her as they were now. Back when she could stay in a small town for a couple of weeks and work at the local groceries a bagger for some spare change. Back when before he had been called in to kill her.

Where was he? Why wasn't she dead?

He hadn't brought her here… right? No, surly not. This was… she had no idea what this was.

Alexandra threw the sheets back and stopped short again at the dresser with the TV. A microwave dinner slumped beside the screen with a plastic fork on top. The film dripped with condensation. It was hot. Like it had been microwaved only minutes ago.

And left for her here.

Her stomach twisted, and against her better judgment Alexandra peeled the plastic off. Her nose identified it as a chicken risotto, which she promptly shoveled into her mouth as fast as she could eat it. She didn"t know where she was, but if the food was hot she wasn"t going to be alone for long.

She strained her hearing both behind at the bathroom, and forward at the front door. Some lump of chicken threatened to choke her, but she'd eaten far worse and muscled it down whole.

Unfortunately, the reprieve gave her time to think, and none of those thoughts were good.

For some reason the vampires hadn"t killed her. Her memory was fuzzy after her crash landing. She had shifted down to human and… crawled? He had found her in the park, right? Why hadn"t he killed her?

She was halfway through the fastest meal of her life when he walked through the front door of the motel room.

Alexandra dropped her fork.

Every single hair on her body stood to attention and she remembered with stunning clarity the touch of his hand on her wrist. The bolt of lightning it had shot through her body, awakening her for the first time in her life.

Fate whispered in her ears. He shouldered into the room like she was expecting him, one hand full of a few plastic shopping bags, the other with a drink. Was that a Starbucks?

Then he noticed her standing there, awake and up, and his eyes brightened.

His hazel eyes.

She dropped the food on the dresser and grabbed for the desk chair in a single blitz of motion. She hauled it up—easy with dragon strength—and threw it at him. It wasn't the most elegant weapon she"d ever used, but it was heavy and awkwardly shaped. More than good enough as an impromptu opening salvo.

She flung it wildly at him, hoping that he"ll stumble backward out the door and give her a chance to escape. He did nothing of the sort. To her surprise, he stepped into the chair. The poor coffee he dropped without hesitation and it fountained wildly between them as it hit the floor. Everything instantly smelled like caramel machiatto. He struck the chair down with one hand already morphing into claws, and reached for her with the other.

She threw herself at him, shifting as much as she could in a confined space. Claws on both hands, fangs in her mouth, ripples of scales to protect her chest and belly. Their fight didn"t have the room to be elegant. There were no high kicks or sweeping haymakers. It was grappling and snarling and tearing at each other until he slammed her on the bed and pinned her there with his greater weight. Alexandra's energy bled out of her quickly. She might"ve slept just now, but she lost out on a lot of sleep in the last six months and she was exhausted instantly. She hissed and slapped at him, struggling and struggling and struggling and getting nowhere. To stop fighting was to die and she wasn't ready to die.

She wasn't ready to give up on the dream Fate had for her.

She just needed…

When she took enough of a breath to come back down from the panic, she realized he wasn't attacking her. She'd done some damage: claws across his cheek in three shallow stripes that hooked across the corner of his lips. Another slice of claws on one arm, right through his nice dress black shirt sleeve and dripping bright blood down his wrist.

Where one of his hands was tangled into a fist in her hair to hold her down, but the other pet against her cheek with a coarse thumb as he whispered in her ear.

Her breath was coming too fast, her heart a wild animal in her chest, to understand what he was saying, but the tone was soothing and the contradiction made her pause in confusion.

She gulped for her breath and he turned his head slightly to peer one bright hazel eye her. It was a nice eye. Deep in the center, darker at the outer edge. Almost gold. And it was pinched, but not in anger. She stopped trying to shove him off and watched a sly smile reach across his face.

It pulled at his new injury and he flinched. He prodded at the end of the scratch with the tip of his tongue. A thick, wet tongue she wouldn't mind probed her someti—what the fuck kind of a thought was that? She'd never thought something like that before. And now? Of all times?

What—by the Goddess above—was wrong with her?

"Are you ready to listen now?"

His voice is like velvet. Thick and deep and rubbing her up in all the right places. Places she had no idea were right to be rubbing! This shouldn't have been possible!

Confusion pinched her eyebrows until she realized her hands had come to rest on his chest, and they feel good there. His dress shirt was thin like silk and he was nothing but muscle underneath. Pecs she could grab with both hands. She snatched her hands away in horror and stared at him, but he didn't let her up.

"I just want to talk," he said.

Her confusion morphed into a glare. She didn"t trust him at all. He had been stalking her for months. Hired to kill her. He'd toyed with her, he was sure. And enjoyed it.There"s nothing he could say that she would believe.

He seemed to recognize the intent on her face and nodded slightly, apparently to himself. "Yeah, I get it," he said. "But you have to understand, I didn"t know you were the one."

"I"m not the one," she hissed. "That"s why I"m a target. Easier to kill me alone than my daughter when she might have a family or clan to back her up."

"Not as easy as you might think," he grumbled.

Alex felt a bolt of pride at clearly being a tough piece to swallow.

"I"m not talking about your daughter. I"m talking about you. You"re the one. For me. My mate. I didn"t know." His voice softened at the last, almost like an apology.

She spat at him. Disbelief and frustration both. She'd felt the same zap he did as he pulled her from under the park bench. She felt it and knew what it meant, but that didn"t change their reality. He was still hired to kill her, Malik and his vampires still wanted her dead—it was odd that he captured her alive but maybe he was holding her so the vampire master could do it himself.

She hadn"t met Malik personally. She liked to think he was still cautious of her, even at her weakest. Too cautious to do the deed himself. But she knew his name, and knew he was behind every vampire she had killed until now. He was behind this dragon coming for her.

A dragon that Fate said would belong to her.

She didn"t trust it. Fate was clearly mistaken. He was going to kill her as soon as he remembered how much he was getting paid.

He seems to take her hissing and spitting in stride, like he expected it from her and she had fallen directly into her role as a spicy feral kitten in need of oven mitts and some light petting. It made her furious that he could predict her reactions. He would find her a difficult thing to tame.

"If I let you sit up, are you going to run?" he asked, tongue again probing at the end of the scratch she'd delivered.

She grinned at him, full of teeth. Of course she"d run. And he could see that in the set of her face. But she was also keenly aware of the way her legs were trapped between his knees, and the weight of his body on hers keeping her pinned.

Her skin shivered where he touched her cheek. Her panic had fled, leaving her body full of adrenaline to burn. It went straight to her core. She felt arousal building just from his proximity. She wanted to touch him and pull him closer. Know what his tongue could do.

And that thought made her scowl again.

"Get off me," she growled.

"I want a chance to talk to you," he said. "I"m not your enemy."

She didn"t trust that as far as she could throw him, but she also couldn"t get away pinned like this. She swallowed her frustration and nodded. "Just talking," she said.

He slowly levered up from leaning on his elbows to leaning on hands on either side of her head. She immediately missed the touch of his thumb on her cheek. She bit her own tongue to chase the thought away.

"Just talking," he confirmed. They maneuvered around each other delicately, like dancers. He angled himself to the side, protecting the door so that her only option was to roll away from him, deeper into the room.

She did so.

She paced to the back of the room where the bathroom was and yanked that door open as if it had been her idea all along.

He didn't follow her.

She took a step into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror in shock. Her hair was a ragged, tangled mess, shiny with grease. There were stains and holes in her clothes that she hadn"t noticed—or had noticed and dismissed because running for her life was a priority. Her entire arm fit in the bloodstained slash in her shirt where the vampire had tried to gut her. Her jeans were filthy and all of a sudden the only thing Alexandra could think of was a hot shower and getting clean for the first time in weeks.

She wanted to scratch every inch of her skin.

She twisted back to her captor just as he tossed a plastic bag onto the bed closest to her. That's right, he'd come in with bags.

And the unfortunate coffee. A sharp pang of regret sliced her heart, instantly dashed by shock and anger as she opened the bag. Clothing. The audacity of this man.

"While you were sleeping I took the liberty of picking up a change of clothes. You must be tired of those."

She pressed her lips together, wanting to deny them on principle. But her stomach was full for the first time in weeks and she wasn"t horrible in a fight if she was naked instead. A dragon didn't need a shirt to shift shape. She could call her scales at any time.

She snatched the plastic bag and glared at him defiantly, but he just put his hands up in surrender. He didn't even grin at her, so she couldn't pretend he was mocking her and start a fight about it.

Alexandra hissed anway. Then felt like she was still playing the role of feral kitten and snapped her mouth shut. She clutched the bag and stepped into the bathroom with a parting glare.

Goddess, she was filthy. She couldn"t stop staring at herself in the mirror at the complete disaster she had become. She was barely skin and bone, her face looked gaunt, and her hair was so limp she was surprised it wasn"t falling out.

She reached a hand up like she could run her fingers through the mess of it, but stalled before she made contact and let her hand drop again. It was going to take more than a shower to fix this up, but a shower was a good start.

She ran the water hot. Motel soap was like sandpaper, but she needed sandpaper to scour all the crap off her ski. The water ran black for whole minutes as she scoured from head to toe. Even her hair, which did start dropping clumps simply because it had been so long since she brushed it. Goddess, she would kill for a brush.

She stood under the hot water as weeks of fear washed down the drain. Taking some of her exhaustion and stress with it.

She scrubbed a second time and a third. She couldn't get the slick of oil out of her skin and the grit of living on the street felt embedded like the world"s worst tan. But eventually she admitted she was as clean as she could get without a full spa visit, and finally turned the water off.

The towel was just cheap bleached cotton but it felt like silk to her abused skin. For a moment Alexandra just held it against her face feeling clean and light and relieved. It was so overwhelming, her chest tightened and her breath started to hitch. She hiccuped twice before she got control again. She counted on the inhale and exhale until the threat of wild sobbing passed.

She finger combed her hair with the conditioner, pulling out broken ends and trying not to look at the ragged result too closely in the mirror. She should shave it. Just go bald. It was noticeably thinner now from the stress of her life and keeping it short to her skin would be easier to maintain on the run.

She drew it back into a braid with a frown at herself. She had lost everything she'd ever owned. Everyone she'd ever known. She didn"t have to give up her hair too. It had once been thick with waves and fell the middle of her back. Now it was closer to shoulder length ,and weirdly straight, but it was at least clean and she found a rubber band in the bathroom drawer to tie the braid off.

She took a deep, settling breath.

Then looked through the plastic bag of clothing, her head full of doubt. There were a couple pairs of jeans in different sizes and three different shirts, which was frankly more than she had in months. She picked the best jean option: a little tight around her butt, but the waist fit well and she didn"t have to suck it in to button the fly. The shirts were plain black, white, and blue. She chose blue.

And she stepped out of the bathroom to find her captor had microwaved a second meal and held it out to her, piping hot.

All the confused tangle of emotion she'd managed to settle in the bathroom rushed back up to strangle her. She had questions. She was afraid. She was furious. She wanted to leave. And he offered her dinner.

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, then looked up at him. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you"re my mate and you're malnourished," he said, again without that teasing grin she'd seen so briefly. "I want you well."

"You caused this!" she barked at him, flashing a hand between them both. "You're the one who drove me to the edge of exhaustion!"

"Yes."

"You were hired to kill me!"

"Yes."

"Stop agreeing with me!" It was hard to be pissed when he just accepted all the blame without complaint.

He flashed that grin. "Now I have options," he said. "You're ready to talk."

Statement, not question. The anger flashed again and she tried to wrap her hands around it and wrestle it back down for just a second. It was making her blind to things, she was sure. It had been so, so long since she'd needed any skill other than instant, on-demand brutality that she didn't quite know how to be a person anymore.

It felt dangerous to have this much time to think. Risky.

She licked her lips. Chapped, but infinitely better thanks to the steam in the shower. They didn't bleed on contact. "Thank you for the clothing," she said. The words felt stilted and strange coming out of her mouth, like a robot or a poorly-practiced play. An alien pretending to be a person.

"You"re welcome. We can pick up something more your style once we figured this out."

Her style? She hissed at him, "What"s my style, exactly?"

He shrugged casually and she hated how her anger didn"t seem to affect him. Like a wave crashing uselessly against the base of a lighthouse.

"I don"t know," he said. "I"ve been chasing you down pretty hard and you haven"t had a chance to go shopping. Or shoplifting." He smirked a little and lifted the microwave dinner. "Food?"

It was like an olive branch. She could see it, the way he let her get comfortable in the shower, new clothes, food after no decent food for weeks. (Her brain shied away from the memory of exactly what she'd been eating lately.) She could see the steps that took her from pissy feral cat enemy to ally and she did not trust that it was real.

This was some kind of elaborate trap. A snare she couldn't see under the leaves set and baited with a TV dinner.

Only a fool would walk into it.

She was a fool.