Chapter 17

Caspian

“Where do we go from here?” Miles asked as we boarded the plane.

I was still quite upset. Sure, we’d planned for these sorts of contingencies. I’d barely slept in two weeks, and sleeping was my favorite thing to do. Instead, Murtagh and I had to play a very life-or-death game of ‘Capture the Flag’ with the same monster that Murtagh and I had feared when we were toddlers, and had been doing nothing but planning for this and fortifying for two weeks while our mate—the creature we were trying to protect—mostly just made fun of us.

And then she leaves for an outing. A few hours later, Seraphus tries to raid my mansion.

I certainly wouldn’t stand for ever again being called ‘paranoid’.

She was quiet now, realizing that we weren’t as paranoid as she thought we were. She just let me carry her without any fuss through a tunnel, into a getaway car, and to the airport. She seemed surprised, because she had stopped listening to our escape plans long ago, since she obviously thought it wouldn’t happen.

“Okay, I understand I’m in the shit with you. And I’m sorry,” Zazie finally sighed when we got onto the plane and I put her down and told her to buckle in. Maybe it was the crisp way I’d ordered it. “If it makes you feel any better, I was already punished.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better, actually. Beating your ass would have felt very cathartic right about now,” I grumbled at her, even checking her buckle when she snapped it into place with a click.

My whole body still felt wired, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin.

“Where are we going?” she asked me.

“Somewhere else,” I hissed, “and where we go next, you will stay put like a good girl, won’t you?” My tone came off as threatening enough that her eyes rounded. Good. I was so incredibly close to losing my mind on her that my claws kept on snapping out.

“Calm down. It might have been a coincidence,” Murtagh told me as he sat down across from me.

I glared at him. “The worst thing for her is to take her side right now,” I reminded him crisply, pointing to her. “And even if you’re right—imagine how bad it would have been if they had come before she’d come home?”

Murtagh’s expression now was justifyingly nervous, just like mine was.

There was a sound from next to me, and I thought that Miles had taken his seat, but instead there was nobody.

Except there were red footprints walking all the way to the seat. My hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I put a hand over Zazie to begin shielding her with my body.

“It’s just me,” the empty seat said.

It was the shadow. Only now he was just sort of… invisible.

“What happened?” I asked, looking at the footprints.

“You don’t want to know,” said the nothingness. “Your mansion is a crime scene now, though. Lil’ Mama knows, and she’ll make sure it’ll be like a massacre that never happened. Sorry about the mess, but buying you time does come at a cost.”

After a moment where I was about to start asking many questions about what happened, he said, “Still don’t know exactly how they found out. We’re still lookin’ into it, but so far, we’re beginning to realize that Seraphus had an eye on your place probably for some time. You see, you’re not very good at not being a dragon. So you start doing suspicious shit; like buying supplies, boarding up windows, that sort of thing… It would be silly to not put the pieces together when an Uber driver comes to pick up a girl matching her description… He put it together. Now he knows for sure because her scent is every-fucking-where in that house.”

I pressed my lips together and avoided Murtagh’s gaze. “Fuck.”

“Big Daddy will want to know the plan.” The disembodied voice seemed to pause there for a moment. “Got one?” he finally asked as the engines whirred to life in the plane.

“Let me find those gems you need,” Zazie begged me, looking wearily in my direction. “Those ones that’ll get you home.”

I was about to tell her to get serious, when she said, “I can find them. Just tell me what I’m looking for, and I can find it. It’s my gift.”

“No,” I told her succinctly. Slowly, too, in case she had trouble understanding. “I’m not going to go out into the desert and start to dig holes.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” the shadow said. “Gifts are no small things, especially when a djinn says it. Hell, if you got a guy with one drop of djinn blood and a gift, you got somethin’ special. Satchmo had some djinn blood. Fun fact.”

“That’s so cool,” Zazie said, leaning forward.

I pushed her back into her seat. I still didn’t trust anything that didn’t have a body. “What’s your angle?” I asked. “Why does it matter to a… whatever it is you are… that this realm stay how it is?”

“Lil’ Mama likes it this way,” was the creepy-voiced reply. “Make the flight-plan to New York. I’m gonna try to find some books about ancient pieces. See if I can get her an idea what she’s looking for,” he said, and I saw the padding of the chair move. “Meet ya there.”

“Hey, we’re taking off!” I reminded him, gesturing to the window.

There was a very spooky laugh before it suddenly disappeared.

“You have to give her this,” Murtagh said, crossing his legs. “Little Mama runs a good full-service.” He turned then to Zazie. “How certain are you that you can find those gems in the middle of the desert?” he asked her.

“Firstly, you have no idea if they’re in the middle of the desert,” she reminded. “That’s just something in your head. You said so yourself—you don’t even know where to start looking.”

“Neither do you.”

“If I can visualize it, I can find it,” she announced, certain.

I had to admit, she did look very adamant. And confident.

“No,” I said anyway. “That could keep us in a strange location too long, exposed, vulnerable. I need to keep you safe.”

“Look, I’m not a precious stone, Caspian!” she cried, sounding frustrated. “I’m a person. Someone who could be helpful to you. And on-the-run sounds like a shit way to live when we could just hide out in another realm! Your realm!”

I raised an eyebrow. “If you’re so good, why aren’t you richer? Why aren’t you famous? Well-known?”

She shrugged, deflating slightly, then said quietly, “Because I keep it.”

“Hm?” I asked, leaning forward as the flight took off.

“I said I keep it,” she snipped. “I hunt for them, but I never said I give them back to their owners.”

Murtagh and I looked at her, incredulous for a moment.

“Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly ethical, and I don’t search for them with not returning them in mind, I swear. But when they’re in my hand, it just feels like they like me better.”

I massaged my temple.

But then I picked up the phone, talked with the captain, and made the flight-plan to New York.

She clapped her hands with delight. “Thank you! Thank you, you’re not going to regret it!” she told me.

“I already regret it.”

“What is THIS?” Miles gasped, suddenly walking out to our group of seats and pointing to the bloody footprints.

My familiar didn’t look like he was handling this very well. I could almost feel his tension from where I was sitting. “Take a seat, Miles. Make yourself a drink.” I paused, then cocked my head. “Actually, make a drink for both of us. I think we both need it, hm?”

Miles rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if a long life is worth this stress,” he grumbled, then walked off.

“Can I have a drink?” Zazie asked, bringing up her feet to her chest as she sat in her seat.

“You’re so in the doghouse with me, darling. The fact that you’re still sitting down annoys me.” He looked at Murtagh pointedly. “Next time, beat her harder.”

“Hey,” she said defensively. “It’s your fault, too. You heard the guy—I mean… Monster? Ghost? Thing? I don’t what he is. But he said you were already on the dragon-watch-list.”

“It’s because Caspian knows no restraint in his lifestyle,” Murtagh replied in that way that made us break apart in the sixties.

“I’m a dragon! I don’t ask for your leave to be one. I’m not going to apologize for being what I am,” I snapped at him.

“And I’m not either,” Zazie told me, her mouth drawn down at the sides.

I had time to think about those words. I didn’t like them at first, and I got up and went to pout on the other side of the plane all the way to New York.

I knew she was right. It wasn’t her fault that she was Seraphus’ spawn. It wasn’t her fault that she was a djinn. It wasn’t even her fault that she had a brother she cared about—in fact, that was an admirable quality. It was the thing that was going to make her a good mother for my children and a good partner to Murtagh and myself. She cared, and she was loyal, and she certainly had the ability to love.

You don’t call someone every day and text them every few hours without love.

I grumbled a bit, but then when we landed, and Miles was able to get the blood stains off of the carpet of my plane, he saw the shadow leave us a bunch of books and wish us luck. Then he left again, and Miles began to whine.

I forgot that Miles whined like a kicked dog every time he didn’t agree with something. He wasn’t a silent sufferer.

At least my mate never whined. Oh, she grumbled a bit whenever she was told to do something, but she didn’t whine. She seemed to finally understand the situation and wanted to help.

“I think it’s this,” Murtagh said, pointing to a page in a book. He read it aloud. “The Bloodlight Diamond. Legends say that it could see into other realms when the light was just right.”

“What’d the witch put on your shopping list?” Zazie asked, looking up from where she was sitting on the floor of the plane.

“Ancient Diamond of Priam,” he replied. “Priam… If it’s who I’m thinking of?—”

“King of Troy?” she guessed, lifting her head.

I straightened, and so did Murtagh. We blinked down at her with surprise.

“How did you know that?” Murtagh asked.

“Oh, man. I never miss a Brad Pitt movie,” she assured with a grin.

Murtagh just rolled his eyes as I tried to keep down a laugh.

“Okay, so Troy was in Turkey, and this Bloodlight Diamond originates in Turkey,” Murtagh said.

“Do we have a picture?” she asked, blinking up at him.

He smirked and turned it around, showing a picture of an ancient carving with lots of footnotes scrawled in very small print just below it.

She smirked. “Oh, yes. That’s our baby. I can feel it.” She scrunched her nose.

“It can’t be that easy,” I doubted.

She shrugged. “I guess there’s only one way to find out,” she replied in almost a musical and overconfident sort of way.

I snorted but picked up the phone to call the pilot with a flight plan.

“You plan to take her—a small woman—” Miles continued, pointing at Zazie.

“I’m very average height. Five-six,” she immediately retorted without defensiveness, poking around the large stack of books that had been piled freshly in the middle of a table on my plane.

“A Gen-Z barfly,” he amended, adding, “No offense—” to her, but then looked at me, “to a dangerous city to look for long-lost artifacts while a daughter-eating monster and possibly hundreds of his minions are out there looking for us?”

“And hopefully we find the gems before he finds her, and thereby finds us. Dying would really put a pin in my plans,” I assured him. I didn’t like that he was trying to shame us about our decisions. We had no choice—we had to either breed with her, or escape with her, and no option was a safe option.

“She doesn’t speak the language,” he began, counting off all the reasons he thought this was a bad idea on his fingers, “she doesn’t know how to use a weapon, she?—”

“Miles,” I halted, putting up my hand to silence him. I didn’t like the plan either, but I found myself defending it anyway. Mostly because I needed peace between us and her, or else she’d never just behave herself. “We need to at least try. I can protect her against people. I won’t let this carry on for long,” I assured him.

“How long is this even going to take?” he demanded, falling down in a chair across from me.

“I’ve never hunted for anything longer than five days,” she assured him. She shrugged her shoulders and laid back and looked at Miles, who snapped himself into his seatbelt and was almost vibrating with stress. “Can you chill?”

“No, I can’t, because we’re being chased by crazy, insane people who came within five minutes of breaking into my house and killing us, and I have monsters helping us, then leaving bloodstains like I’m living in a horror movie,” Miles said succinctly. “Not to mention that my stomach is no good with middle eastern food,” he pouted, crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

“And you wonder why I didn’t travel much in the last century,” I sigh, looking at Murtagh, who had mentioned it more than once.

“Co-dependency does have its downsides,” Murtagh commiserated sardonically, handing over a book to Zazie.

Zazie looked down at the book—it was thick, it seemed like her hand had to stretch just to hold it at all. “What the balls is this?” she asked, looking at it with disappointment the same way a child might look at a homework assignment given to them for summer break.

“The new city is built, more or less, on the old city, and the old city was built on an older city, and all the way down.” He frowned and winced. “And I’m going to go ahead and imagine that this is locked away in a place that wasn’t even obvious or easy to find, even when the ancient city thought of itself as quite modern.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve found a lot of shit in my life, and I’ve never needed a tome.” She picked up the book and dropped it onto her lap just, apparently, to make the ‘thud’ that sounded as it dropped a few inches.

“You’ve never looked outside of your backyard,” he reminded her.

“Shows how much you know,” she snorted. “I have to go into Houston every now and then—wait,” she held up her hand, then thoughtfully nodded and paused. “No. I heard it. It sounded much lamer outside of my mouth.”

I smirked at her. She was quite delightful—it was this ability to find humor in dark times that made me take on Miles as a familiar during the middle of the first World War, which he had seen up-close, had lungs almost demolished by toxic gas, and was still missing two fingers from. Still, he was more than eager to let small things bother him and could always joke about big problems. I always found that comforting.

And here was my girl—she very recently found out she was a different species and that her parents were part of a cult, that she had been bred to be sacrificed to and was currently being chased by her father, who was an evil djinn king—something she hadn’t even known existed last month.

“I’m going to be honest, though—I’m hoping this has a lot of pictures,” she said, beginning to skim though the book lazily.

Murtagh rolled his eyes at this. “Maybe we can stop at an ancient map-shop or something, then,” he grumbled.

“That’s not going to help, but you can certainly get a souvenir there,” I scoffed at him. “Are you serious? This city predates Rome. It was ancient when ancient cities were brand-spankin’ new! They’re not going to know what’s under the city.”

“Oh, well then maybe we should just give her a shovel and have her dig in random spots,” Murtagh argued with me pointedly.

“That would work better than any map,” I snapped tersely at him.

“And that’s been…” Zazie looked at her cellphone. “Five hours since your last argument. New record.” She grinned up at me. “It’s ridiculous—you’re basically the same person from my point of view.”

“Oh?” I asked with a snort. “Really? The same person?”

“Your goals are the same, your values are the same, and you’re both older than spit. I mean, way older than Ben Franklin’s spit. Older than the spit of Leonardo Davinci, as well, if I’ve picked up enough hints. Like, how old are you, exactly?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“About 1007,” I replied, and she whistled appreciatively.

She straightened slightly, surprised. “You look good for your age,” she mentioned, looking me over, and then Murtagh. “Both of you do. Did you come out of your realm hunks?”

I could tell that Murtagh was going to let this compliment go to his head, which was stupid. He was going to change his looks probably before we returned to Daconia. We did it about as often as we molted our scales in our dragon form. “Well, we come from a shape-shifting species. You can’t choose what your dragon looks like, but you sure as hell can choose what you morph into. I feel we’re attractive dragons, though. Still, honestly, what’s considered attractive has dramatically changed through time, not to mention depending on where we live. We don’t want to stand out. It’s better to blend in.”

“Why didn’t you decide to look like average shmoes, then?” she asked, her head cocking to the side.

“Because then they couldn’t get laid as easily,” Miles interjected frankly.

She gave a laugh and then looked at me, like I was going to disagree, but I shrugged. “He’s not wrong. Not to mention that it’s easier to be successful and intimidating to other males if you look attractive, we’ve found. Both sexes respond to this. Is this fair? No; I can’t tell you how much talent is wrapped in plain or less-than-desirable packages, and thus lost to time.”

“How often can you change your looks?” she asked, peering up at me; well, she was looking at my entire body as if analyzing my choices.

“Not as often as I can change my jacket, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I smiled at her. “But over time, we can change our looks.”

“Slowly as hell,” Murtagh complained; he had stolen back the book and was now flipping through it at a much slower pace. “And it’s painful. But we do it.”

“I just cut my hair and it seems fine. Takes me from one decade to the next,” Miles added. “Although I’m looking a little distinguished now.” He brushed his hair over the grey in his sideburns. “You can’t smoke on airplanes,” he added, looking at Murtagh, who was pulling a cigar out of his pocket.

“Says who? Since when?” he demanded around the cigar, still looking in his pocket for a light.

“Since forever?” teased Zazie, crossing her arms over her chest with amusement.

“Well, that’s not true,” Murtagh argued, lighting the cigar, which Miles immediately snatched away and snuffed out on the sole of his own shoe.

Miles ignored the murderous look from Murtagh and said, “What? Look, the smoke hurts the plain’s gadgetry, gets the windows dirty, grunges up the leather seats, and do you think it’s easy to get out of his suit? Well, let me tell you.” He stubbornly crossed his arms. “It’s not.”

“What do you do during the decades?” I asked Murtagh, turning my body towards his. “Find a cave to live in, away from society?”

“Like a dragon?” Zazie added playfully, as if I was the one being silly. “Honestly, though, I don’t know why you bother. Aren’t you tired of living a whole millennium? Aren’t you bored?”

Here we stopped talking because my plane’s second pilot came through to play at stewardess and collect our drink orders. Zazie asked for a Shirley Temple.

We all looked at her quizzingly as the stewardess walked away.

“A Shirley Temple?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

I imagined for a moment that she’d blushed, but if she did, it was fleeting. “She told me earlier that she doesn’t have any cider. She didn’t have a blender back there. I wasn’t gonna get a Grasshopper, a Pina Colada, or even a Brandy Alexander, so why the fuck even bother?”

I smirk at her.

“So if your drink actually tastes like there’s alcohol in it, you’re uninterested,” Miles told her thoughtfully as he sat down in one of the seats. “I dated a girl like you in the fifties…”

“What a grandpa thing to say,” Zazie mused at him, and Miles huffed and put his earphones on and his eye mask down over his eyes, deciding he was done with this conversation.

“See, you say you hate cats,” Zazie told me, promptly turning her body towards mine. “But then he’s your pet. A human-cat. That’s what he reminds me of, anyway.”

“Cat?” I curled my lip, disgusted, but then I sat and thought. It was true, I had been using Miles more or less as a comfort companion. I could almost call it a friendship, only that we took care of each other in ways that friends more often did not. “No. Not a cat. Pet…?” I shrugged. “That would be debatable.”

“Do you fuck—?” she began asking a question that I felt was going to be quite vulgar.

“Not everything has to do with fucking,” I assured her, although I regretted saying that immediately. I had a bedroom in the back of the plane, and I definitely wanted to fuck her in it very soon, but not now. She’d mentioned cats, and cats were now on my brain. It made my whole spine shudder. I had to misdirect my brain to something—anything—less disgusting to get my mind out of it, but it kept veering around to cats. “Sometimes you just get people who compliment you, and you should always keep those people around. You don’t always have to be so crass about it.”

“I’m not crass,” she assured me, leaning back in her seat as the plane went through turbulence. “I have been human for a while, until a couple of weekends when I was corrected about that, and although I did not understand why I felt differently, I can tell you that humans fuck a lot. They can’t stop thinking about it—it’s an obsession.”

I raised an eyebrow at this. “True,” I finally replied. “But I’m not a human.”

“You have a reputation for fucking everything that moves,” she assured me, and then I remembered she was a personal investigator… and she had been investigating me before she actually walked into my mansion and let me smell her delicious, amazing scent. “And this guy fucked me two seconds after stealing something of his,” she added, jerking her thumb towards Murtagh.

“I fucked you after spanking you for it,” Murtagh corrected, still flipping through the pages of the book. “Because you have a delicious bottom and I was eventually going to be fucking you anyway. I had a multi-year game-plan with you already in-play before I was going to even introduce you to that.” He pointed at me casually, not looking up from his book. I, apparently, was the ‘that’. I frowned with annoyance, but then smiled, because she was blushing now.

She didn’t like the fact that she got spanked. Or maybe she did like it, but didn’t like that she liked it. It was hard to be sure. I liked it when she blushed; it made her look that much more delectable, innocent, and sweet.

It definitely made me forget for a moment that most of her blood was djinn.

She hadn’t forgotten, though—it was obvious that she was already separating herself out from the species. I would have thought it might take her longer to start calling humans ‘humans’.

“Point taken, I suppose,” I sighed. “No, I am not fucking my familiar.” I pointed to Miles. “Is that clear enough for you?”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you were,” she assured with a shrug. “You’re not my boyfriend or anything. It’s not my business.”

“You’re our mate, so it’s very much your business, and what you do with other men, is very much Murtagh’s and my business,” I replied, rather crisply. “We’re lucky, because if you are a djinn from Daconia, then you probably feel about humans the same way I feel about squirrels.”

She straightened. “Hey, I’m half, so my father was apparently able to get it up for a human,” she reminded defensively. “They’re not all squirrels.”

“Your father was probably turned on by his goals of being the squirrel god,” I hummed with a smirk, despite the fact that her father was an extremely horrifying monster, and I had no idea what that must have been like for her mother. Zazie simply didn’t know, couldn’t understand, and had no frame of reference. She was taking things casually in stride, bit by bit.

“What I mean is that it is hard to get you going if you’re not surrounded by gems. You feed off the power. Or me, maybe.”

“Feed off your power? You don’t have power. You’re not a gem.”

“Dragons are very hard to kill because we are mostly made of gems, on a cellular level. We’re living stone,” Murtagh offered, looking up from his book.

“Stone? Stone that smokes cigars and drinks cocktails?” She turned her head towards him, apparently to make a scoffing expression as if we were just making all this up. “And then what am I?”

“Also stone with some human thrown in. That’s why you smell so good,” I told her, and she lifted her eyebrows, surprised and confused all at once.

“My smell?” she asked, blinking at me.

“You smell like Daconia, our home-realm,” I explain. “Probably because you’re mostly from there. Normally humans don’t smell like that.”

She scrunched her nose like we were talking nonsense. I hadn’t actually talked to a Daconian djinn before, and I realized that I didn’t know as much about them as I’d thought. I hadn’t been in the realm for over a thousand years, of course—maybe I’d forgotten what I did know. I was surprised for a moment that she didn’t seem to have much of a sense of smell when she asked, “What do humans smell like?”

“Soap.”

“Bacon.”

Murtagh and I looked at each other, surprised that we’d both answered at the same time. Then we looked at her.

She was suddenly looking askew at us, shaking her Shirley-Temple in our direction. “Wait. Do you eat people?”

“Not often,” Murtagh replied. “We mostly just salivate and go without. Unless they box us in a corner,” he added.

“Where you had to eat them?”

“Had to?” I leaned forward, smiling wryly at her. “Got to. Believe it or not, the quality of the soul gives it its flavor,” I assured her. “A good soul is really bad for digestion, to say the least. Doesn’t taste good going in, either. Bad souls, however, do make the body sometimes resemble something delicious to the palate.” Her expression was still very judgmental, I noticed. “What?”

“Gross,” she assured me, definitively, then sipped on her Shirley Temple. “I do wish there was booze in these,” she sighed, looking down at it.

“I could remedy that,” I assured her.

“Yeah, but then it would taste ick.” She pressed her lips together, staring into the red liquid.

She drank and stared at her book with distaste as I stared at her, drinking my drink, thinking.

“You know, this would be so much easier for you with a computer,” she said, looking up at Murtagh with a weary look.

“You’re not the first person to tell me something like that,” Murtagh grumbled.

“And they weren’t wrong. You know, computers aren’t going away. I think it’s time you bit the bullet and learned them.”

“Why bother? If this works, then we’re going to Daconia, are we not?” he asked, giving her only half his attention.

She sighed and frowned. “I guess I didn’t think of that.” She looked down at the cellphone by her knee with longing, probably considering what it would be like not to live with technology. “It’s hard to imagine missing the next season of Stranger Things,” she grumbled with a sigh. She looked up at me. “Like, it’s sort of at a cliff-hanger right now, isn’t it?”

I grinned and nodded. “I know, my sweet.” I looked her over, still taking her in. She was funny, in a companionable, easy way. She seemed to be able to get close to me without even flirting. She didn’t try to connect. She just plugged in with me, anyway. I hadn’t known her long, but she was already very comfortable to be with.

“Who knows? Maybe you won’t find them and we’ll just be here and on the run for another millennia,” I teased her.

I found, somewhere in my chest, that I was sort of hoping for that. She and I might have not fit in well in this realm, but it was still our home.

“Come here,” I said finally, putting my drink down in the drink holder of a nearby chair. I crooked a finger, imploring her to come to me.

She looked at me with confusion, then she looked down at her Shirley Temple like it was vodka and it would burn if she tried to drink it in a couple of swallows.

“Why?” she finally asked, but was already looking around for a place to put down the glass.

“I said come here,” I said, but not firmly, just more of a passive order for her to stop acting like coming to me was a hard thing to do.

She sighed and put down her glass, finally, and walked over to me. As soon as she got close, I pulled her into my lap. She obviously wasn’t a girl used to sitting on laps, because she had an uncomfortable expression like a cat who had gotten wet and was surprised to discover that it enjoyed the sensation.

“I know we’ve had quite the question-and-answer session,” I said, pulling her hair off her neck and shoulder. “But how are you feeling with all of this?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking around her as if ‘this’ was an object attached to the walls of the airplane.

“You’ve been through a lot in the last couple of weeks,” I reminded her.

“I have!” she agreed with a firm nod.

“So, are you doing okay?”

She narrowed her eyelashes and peered at me. “Why do you ask?”

“Because it wasn’t long ago that you were in the bed, huddled up in a fetal position, screaming just because your eyes turned white.”

“Well, shoot. A lot has happened since then,” she replied simply. “But despite the fact that you were annoyed by it, I have to say that the talking cat did a lot to make it so that I don’t think I’ll go into the fetal position again. You ever stretch a rubber band too far? It never goes back to its original size. And now, I feel like my tolerance for oddities in my current reality is like that. Warped.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said flatly, because I wasn’t sure if it was a relief. I’d been around long enough to know that the primary reason people who had dangerous jobs died was because they’d forgotten how dangerous their job was.

Luckily, she had two mates to look out for her, so she could let herself be lackadaisical for a while. And Miles would surely be a good third set of eyes, for as long as he was around.

“You need to sleep. You’ve had a long day,” I offered, pointing to a door in the back of the plane.

She jerked her head in the direction that I was pointing. “What’s back there?” she asked.

“A bed.”

“You’re shitting me,” she replied, raising an eyebrow.

I smirked and shook my head. “You can even call your brother if that’ll help you sleep.”

“But we’re in a plane.”

“Yes, but we’re in a good plane,” I reminded her, tapping her on her nose playfully.

She smiled at me, seeming to like the affection. She bit her lip for a second and then rolled her eyes and said, “You’re just hoping to get lucky.”

“I don’t think luck has anything to do with it,” I admitted. “I have a lot to offer, and eventually you’ll notice.”

Murtagh snorted, so I stood up and showed her where the bedroom was. “I mean it—I’m rich, powerful, stylish, and care about comfort. Tech savvy, up with the times.”

“Modest, too,” she added, and I gave her a smile.

“Dragons aren’t modest,” I clarified, sweeping my hand through the air as I opened the door to the bedroom. “Even Murtagh’s not modest. He’s just more minimalistic. Don’t let him fool you. Let me tell you about some of the other?—”

She grabbed my cock and my eyes widened.

I hadn’t seen it coming. She didn’t seem like she’d been properly seduced. I looked down at her. She had a wide-eyed, intelligent gaze, like she could either do this or eat ice cream but really didn’t care which. It was quite adorable.

“I appreciate your initiative,” I told her carefully, “Are you in the mood for my cock, then?”

“I think you’re in the mood for it, and you’ve been nice enough despite me running away earlier. I think you deserve it,” she replied, but I sighed and brushed her hand off.

“Zazie, I don’t want sex transactionally,” I said, mad at myself as I was saying it. I wanted her, and I loved fucking right before I planned to sleep.

“I thought that you’re used to transactional sex?” she asked, putting her hands behind her back.

“Not with you. You’re different. I want more than that with you,” I clarified firmly.

“Why?”

“Because I want to keep you, and not like in-the-basement or on-a-leash—except maybe under special circumstances,” I added as an aside. “But Murtagh and I want you to be our third. Our…”

“What? Like a wife?” she asked, looking startled.

I didn’t say anything as I thought very hard for an answer that wouldn’t startle her but wasn’t lying.

I waited too long because she straightened. “A wife—what? Am I the start of this harem?” she demanded, sounding none-too-pleased.

I rolled my eyes. “No. Dragons take one wife among two men. It’s how it works.”

“How what works?” she demanded.

“Mating.” She was looking at me very hard now, so I admitted, “Breeding.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You just met me, and you want to breed me?”

“Breed with you. With. With is a very important preposition,” I assured her as her eyes sparked at me. “I’m not just going to fuck you and leave you to stand at a breadline with my children in tow,” I assured, waving at her, or whatever idea she had in her head that was making this such a bad thing.

“That’s what the witch was talking about!” she snapped, like I was in any way responsible for what the witch had said. The witch said a lot of things that I wish had been said in confidence.

“We can’t breed with people who aren’t Daconian. We’re very biologically unique. So yes, sue me, I want children.”

“Were you going to tell me that was your plan?” she demanded.

“That’s not a very good strategy. Besides, you’re a personal investigator. Surely you know what fucking leads to. I’m not going to insult your intelligence in the beginning of our relationship,” I told her.

She waved her hand around like I was making this up or trying to ensnare her, one of the two. “Well then what does the second dragon do?”

“Also deposit DNA,” I said crossly. “Why else would I share? Why else would he? We literally need each other to breed you.”

Her little pink mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again. She looked too shocked for words for a moment, but then she got over it, turning incredulous.

“You are unbelievable!” She threw her arms up in the air.

“Well, I guess this is just something you’re going to have to accept too!” I replied, also feeling very heated. I was also getting very aroused; I was all too aware that I had never argued with a female before. It was strangely exhilarating. Much more fun than arguing with males, which I didn’t really like to do at all.

“So that’s why you chased me through Baton Rouge! To breed me.” She crossed her arms and looked at me pointedly.

“One of the many reasons, I assure you. You are an extremely attractive female. I’m sure that Murtagh and I aren’t the first males who looked at you and thought about it!”

I hoped she would take this as a compliment.

Apparently, this was a statement that didn’t make her feel better, but she rolled her eyes and began to mutter as she walked to the bed and sat down. “I will not be telling my brother about this.”

I gave a nod and admitted, “That’s probably for the best.” I frowned and added, “Did you tell them we were dragons?”

“I did. You guys made me all thrifty with the details over the phone, so I had to serve all that crazy all at once,” she added peevishly. She was pulling off her jeans, apparently to lie down, and I was just watching, amazed and almost mesmerized by how sexy her thighs were. “And then you still couldn’t just wait for me to come home. I’d planned several days of talking about it.” She pulled off her shirt now.

“Well, good thing you didn’t!” I snapped. “Besides, it’s not like you left a note saying where you went to. The last thing we’re going to do is apologize about summoning you!” I assured her, staring at her now. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to sleep,” she told me crisply. “And I can’t sleep in clothes.”

I looked her up and down, almost licking my lips. “Neither can I.” I stifled a wince, because my words came out just as seductively as I’d felt them, not as I wanted them to. I found myself crawling onto the bed. “I know something that could help you sleep,” I offered, happy that by the time I reached her she wasn’t trying to shake me off.

She did look a little put-out. “Sex?”

“I was about to go down on you until you saw stars, actually,” I told her, grabbing her knees and playfully pulling her flat on her back. She made an ‘oof!’ sort of squeak, and I kissed the inside of her thigh. “Come on, little mouse. It will make you feel a lot better about everything.”

“Somehow I’m having trouble believing that,” she muttered as I continued to kiss the inside of her thigh, but she let me pull her legs wider apart.

“Can I convince you?” I asked.

“I have a feeling that no matter how talented you think you are, you will not improve the shitty day I’ve just had, mixed with the knowledge that you and Murtagh are trying to knock me up on purpose.”

I immediately started in, and I hadn’t even gotten her panties off all the way yet.

She made a sort of squeak of surprise and then said after ten seconds, “Okay, you can try to prove me wrong.”

I grinned. How could I possibly pass up such a delightful opportunity?