1. Maya

1

Maya

On a morning like this, Maya Flores could almost believe her old life never existed.

Hideaway Cove felt like a different world. A place of magic and friendship, and a community that banded together to support its members—the sort of thing that existed in stories, maybe, but never in reality. Not in her experience.

Then again, a few years ago, she wouldn’t have said dragons were real, either. That was before she had her son. Her adorable, crazy little Tomás, who had turned her life upside down the moment she discovered she was pregnant—and completely shattered everything she thought she knew about the world when he was six months old and transformed into a tiny baby dragon for the first time.

Back then, she hadn’t even known what shifters were.

Speaking of which…

She tiptoed to Tomás’s room and put her ear against the door. Silence. Her little dragon shifter was still asleep.

More magic , she thought, and went to the kitchen to prepare a rare treat: a cup of coffee she might manage to finish drinking while it was still hot.

While the coffee was brewing, she went over her plans for the day. It was a habit from her old life. Whereas previously she needed multiple electronic calendars and scheduling apps to keep on top of her duties as assistant to Corin Blackburn, now she struggled to fill a single appointment diary. She’d bought a new, very small appointment diary because the one she’d been using before had looked so empty.

It was … fine. It was good. She and Tomás were building a life here. A safe, happy life where Tomás would grow up surrounded by people like him. It was better than good, she reminded herself. It was perfect.

Except for the dreams that haunted her every night. Dark, sensual dreams about her ex-boss, which left her body aching and her mind longing for something she could never, ever have.

Her old life was long gone, and for good reason. She shouldn’t want Corin Blackburn. She should resent him. Maybe even hate him. But want him?

Something was terribly wrong with her, and it got more wrong every day. Cold showers only went so far.

She closed her eyes, and Corin’s face was in front of her, his sea-glass eyes bright with unnatural fire.

She hadn’t known shifters existed until little Tomás transformed for the first time.

And she hadn’t known her sexy-as-hell, absolutely-out-of-bounds boss was a shifter too, until her life was falling to pieces around her.

It wasn’t like he was even the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The camel was already a goner. Corin just set fire to it and catapulted it into space.

She’d already known she would have to quit her job. Tomás’s shifting was too unreliable and, back then, she hadn’t known any other shifters who could help. She had been terrified that if anyone found out her baby could turn into a freaking dragon, they would both be locked up. But—one last visit should have been fine, right?

She’d brought Tomás to the office to meet her old colleagues. It had felt like a bigger mistake with every step. The visit was timed for his nap, but what if he woke up? What if he transformed? What if someone got a glimpse of her strange, magical baby in his dragon form?

She was right to worry. She was always right to worry. Everything she feared had come true, with a bonus helping of things she hadn’t even known to be worried about.

Tomás had transformed. She’d hidden him under a wrap, holding his webbed wings tight against his wriggly little body, hoping his tail wouldn’t flick out from under the cloth and give him away. She remembered making some panicked excuse—he was teething; he was hungry; he needed a longer nap or a diaper change.

Corin had taken charge, which wasn’t unusual. He was the boss, and nobody ever forgot it. He’d told her to take a moment in his office to let the baby calm down.

The baby had calmed down, all right. The moment the door shut behind them, leaving them alone, Tomás had darted his head up from beneath the wrap, wriggled free, and flown—flown!!—across the room to Corin’s desk.

Before she could reach him, he’d clawed open a desk drawer and plucked out his prey: a gold watch Corin had been given by his grandfather.

Pleading with Tomás to return the watch hadn’t worked. Distracting him so she could sneak it away and safely back into the drawer hadn’t worked. If she’d known then what she knew now, she wouldn’t have bothered trying. Her little dragon had the first piece of his hoard, and nothing would part him from it.

Corin had come in to check on them. She’d thrown the wrap over Tomás again, but it didn’t make any difference.

Her boss’s eyes had flared with the same magical fire she recognized from her own son’s eyes when he was about to shift.

Corin was a dragon shifter.

“You should be more careful,” he’d whispered, his voice sharp-edged and soft as sin. “Didn’t anyone warn you? Dragons are covetous creatures. And we take what’s ours.”

For a moment, she’d felt something like hope. Corin Blackburn could turn into a dragon, too?

Maybe he could help her.

Reality had crashed in like a polar blast. She’d worked for Corin’s grandfather for years, and for Corin himself most of the last year. She could translate every flicker of expression that passed over a Blackburn man’s face.

And the determined shadows in the corners of his eyes weren’t those of someone who would help her. Corin would take over. He would take what little control she had left over the mess her life had become, and fix things.

But she didn’t trust what fixed would mean to him. She’d thought she knew everything about him. But she hadn’t known he was a dragon. And if she’d missed that, what else might she have missed?

So, she’d done the first smart thing she’d done in over a year.

Corin had told her to wait where she was. Instead, the moment he turned his back, she ran.

All the way to a small town on the edge of nowhere. Hideaway Cove. She’d only known the town’s name because her friend Felicity was there on a work assignment. With nowhere else to go, she had put it into her map app and driven like the devil himself was after her.

What she’d found was beyond anything she had ever imagined. A town where people like her son could live openly. Because there were other people like him. So many that there was a name for them: shifters. Living in secret among normal humans like her who had no idea.

And running had been the right choice, because Corin had chased her all the way to the town boundary, until the town’s guardian had turned him back.

Maybe she could have talked to him then. Found out what the fuck that was all about.

But she hadn’t, and that had been the best choice she’d made in a long time.

She’d made it. She’d fixed things herself. She was building a life here in Hideaway Cove. Everything. Was. Perfect.

And yet. Six months later, his words still echoed in her mind.

We take what’s ours.

He’d been talking about treasure. But that wasn’t what her heart and … other parts of her body thought, late at night when the world was quiet around her and there was nothing to distract her from the need pressing against her skin.

Dragons took what was theirs and, god save her, she wanted to be his.

“Dummy,” she murmured to herself, checking the time. If Tomás didn’t wake up soon, she’d have to go in and rouse him before it was time to drop him off with his carer and head to work herself.

If Corin Blackburn had wanted her to be his, she would have been. The man—the dragon —was an unstoppable force. Whatever he wanted, he got.

But he hadn’t wanted her. He’d wanted his watch back.

“I am happy with my life,” she told herself quietly. “Tomás is safe here. He’s going to grow up around other shifters. I’m safe here. I have friends and a job that doesn’t take over my life, and a nice house to live in, and…”

The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

The house was still silent—but it was a different sort of silent. One she’d learned to be wary of.

“Tomás?” she called out. “Tom-tom? Are you awake, baby?”

No answer but the very slightest change in the texture of the air.

“Oh, shoot. ”

Almost everyone in Hideaway Cove was a shifter, with enhanced shifter senses. They could hear a pin drop across a crowded room. But she had been a dragon shifter’s mom for a year and a half now, and her own senses, though only human, had become very specialized.

She crept up the stairs. Surprising Tomás was a bad idea: last week, he’d flown out the window in shock, and the whole neighborhood had come out to watch her rescuing him from where he got stuck on the roof. She still felt guilty at the memory.

“Hey, little baby. It’s time to get up for the day! Rise and…”

His crib was empty.

Alarm bells rang in Maya’s mind. She silenced them. Of course his crib was empty. He was a dragon shifter. He didn’t have to wait until his human form was big and agile enough to climb over the railing—he could fly.

Fly where , that was the question.

She scanned the room, chattering soft nonsense to her baby boy the whole time. On top of the dresser? No. Beneath the crib? No. Hanging from the light fitting? Not today…

Outside, gravel crunched and metal clanged as one of the local kids flung the post through the mail slot in the front door. She wasn’t expecting anything, and the sound distracted her long enough for a shimmer of orange-gold scales to flash over her head.

“Tomás!”

She sprinted down the stairs after him. Flame-colored wings flared, and he dived to grab something from the pile of letters in front of the door—then waddled through her legs as she stooped to scoop him up. “Baby! Come back here!”

He launched into the air and soared away, loot clutched in his claws.

Maya shot after him. “Wait! Where are you going with that?”

Images popped into her head as she chased him back up the stairs. Formless, shiny things. She stumbled and caught herself on the railing.

This was happening more and more. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else yet. She didn’t know whether it was pride or anxiety that stopped her, but, whichever it was, whenever she thought about telling one of her new neighbors about how Tomás seemed to be developing new magic skills every day, she broke out in a cold sweat. Her new neighbors were all so welcoming. Her best friend in the world lived with her dragon shifter mate a few streets away. And if she admitted to any of them how out of her depth she still felt, surrounded by their support, her last bit of self-confidence would crumble to dust.

A rush of air; Tomás was flying back into his bedroom.

Maya hauled herself up the last few steps and flung herself after him. She wasn’t expecting any parcels, which meant if Tomás ripped his loot to pieces—his favorite pastime—she was going to have to explain to one of her neighbors why their mail looked like it had gone through the shredder.

“Hey, my sweet little man,” she called, pushing through the bedroom door. “Can you give Mama the parcel? Then we can go downstairs and have some breakfast. What do you feel like this morning? Bananas and oatmeal? Waffles?”

Crunch. Rip. Tear.

Maya winced. Forget food. Right now, Tomás felt like destroying.

The noises were coming from the closet. He’d pulled the door half-closed behind him, but his tail was hanging out, flicking like a cat’s. “What are you doing up there on the top shelf, sweetie?”

What was in there? She ran through her mental inventory. Clothes that were too big or too small. Extra blankets. Some toys she had been saving to use as emergency distractions. Nothing dangerous. At least, nothing that she knew was dangerous.

If there was one thing she’d learned in the past two years, it was that there was a lot she didn’t know. And that Tomás could turn the most innocent situation into heart-attack central.

“Sweetpea?” she called, stalking towards the closet.

Tomás’s scaly little butt was blocking her view of what he was doing. Crunch, tear. But there was something behind him. Something glittery.

“What do you have there, sweetheart?”

He chirruped and wiggled around. His snout was surrounded by shreds of paper and packing tissue, and half-hidden in the wreckage beneath him…

Maya’s mouth fell open. “What is that ?”