12. Corin

12

Corin

The last thing he expected was for Maya to call him a few minutes after sunrise the following morning.

“Confirming our meeting tonight?” he asked.

“Bringing it forward. I found something,” she said. “It’ll be easier if you come down here.”

He’d been planning on flying out to the Blackburn vault that day. He’d left messages with his grandfather, telling him of the theft and warning him he’d be coming down hard on the dragons who should have been guarding the clan vault the last six months. The old man hadn’t replied, which was typical.

But the promise of seeing Maya sooner than anticipated put all thoughts of that out of his mind. Besides, she’d found something. To do with the stolen treasures, he assumed. So technically, spending time with her instead of spending the day flying around in a cloud of misery counted as continuing his investigation.

“I’ll be down immediately,” he said.

“Great. It’s my day off, and Jacqueline said she can take Tomás for a play date, so—ow! Baby, it’s just cardboard. There’s no gold here, see?” The connection crackled for a moment as though she’d put the phone down, and then her voice returned. “See you when you get here.”

She hung up. He stared at his phone.

Nobody hung up on the leader of the Blackburn clan.

A year ago, Maya wouldn’t have, either. Not when she was busy being Maya Flores, competent and efficient executive assistant. She’d played her part perfectly.

The same way he’d played his.

And look where we ended up.

Maybe if they’d both been less good at being Maya Flores and Corin Blackburn, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

Maya’s front door was unlocked. He knocked, and followed her shouted greeting up the stairs to a room he realized too late was her bedroom.

It was as gloriously chaotic as the rest of her home. A brightly colored blanket covered the bed, and a worn armchair did double duty as a clothes horse. The whole room smelled like her.

Maya was standing by the window, backlit by sunlight that touched her in all the small delicate ways he wanted to. Her cheeks reddened as she caught sight of him—briefly and efficiently—and then she nodded, as though blushing had been on her agenda for the day and now it was over with, it was time to move on to other business.

“There you are,” she said. “I can’t reach the other ones. I’ll need you to hold on to my legs.”

“What?”

“I figured out where Tomás hid the packaging from the other parcels. No wonder my gutters have been so blocked.” She gestured to the bed, where Tomás was grumpily curled up in dragon form next to a pile of ripped cardboard and plastic wrapping. “Yes, you , little mischief. You just wait. I’ll put you to work as a chimney sweep, next.”

“He hid them in the gutters?”

“Somewhere Mama definitely wouldn’t find them. But I remembered he kept getting himself stuck up there, and connected the dots. He must have dashed up and stashed the rubbish after he intercepted each parcel.”

“Chree!”

“That’s very impressive,” Corin said, completely honest.

“Tell me about it,” Maya grumbled. “ Human children aren’t meant to learn lying and misdirection until they’re at least three. Anyway. Get over here. I figure if there’s one person I can trust not to drop me out a second-story window, it’s my mate.”

Corin stalked towards her, frowning as she climbed up onto the windowsill. “I hope you’re not suggesting—”

“That I trust you with my life? Yes. Grab hold.”

She stood up, her head and torso disappearing above the window. Corin dived forward and held onto her thighs.

“What are you doing?”

“More evidence can’t hurt, can it? This is the only evidence we’re likely to have, unless you’re planning on hanging around waiting for the mail van until the next delivery. Almost—no, wait, that’s a handful of leaves. Ugh.”

“How do you know there’s anything else up there?”

“I put my phone on a stick,” she said, as though it was a perfectly normal sentence.

Downstairs, the door opened again. “Maya?” a woman called, at the same time a child shouted “Tommeeeee!”

Tomás jumped up and raced downstairs, wings fluttering and claws skittering on the wooden floors.

“We’re upstairs!” Maya called. “Dragon incoming!”

“Got him! I’ll put a pot of coffee on!”

While Maya and whoever was downstairs were shouting at one another, Maya was leaning further and further to the side. Corin tightened his grip on her thighs.

Oh, fuck.

She wasn’t wearing jeans, like the day before. She was wearing leggings . He was gripping her thighs for dear life, in her bedroom, and that was something they should be doing on the bed, damn it, not with her halfway out the window.

What was she thinking? She’d started this before he even arrived? What if she’d fallen? What if—

“Got it! Hah!”

She slithered down from the windowsill, straight into his arms.

He scowled at her. “What were you thinking?”

“Excuse me?”

“You could have been hurt!”

She gave him an odd look. “It’s not like this is the first time I’ve had to climb up on the roof.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

She flinched. Which he felt, all over, because he was still holding onto her. His hands were around her waist; she’d slipped into the gap between him and the windowsill, pressed against his chest.

He should have been doing anything but berate her.

“I apologize. I didn’t mean that—”

“Yes, you did,” she said flatly, and threw a piece of battered cardboard packaging onto the bed with the rest.

“You wouldn’t let an intern stand on a chair to get something from a high shelf without reading the health and safety manual. And now you’re throwing yourself out of windows? You—” He tried, and failed, to soften his voice. “Are you all right?”

“Corin, if I never climbed up on the roof by myself, I would be that mom whose child lives with the birds in the eaves. My life is a lot different to when I worked for you.” She edged away, avoiding his eyes. “And I am all right. What sort of question is that?”

“Maya—”

“Someone promised me coffee, and I’d better get down there before Tomás and Tally burn the house down.” She marched away without a backwards look.

Why are you angry with her for finding her child’s hiding places? his dragon asked. You should be angry at yourself, for not being here to catch her if she did fall.

Now is not the time, he told it, teeth gritted, and followed Maya downstairs.

She was in the kitchen with a red-haired woman. Tomás was in human shape, running around the table with a slightly larger, also human-shaped child, while the adults sipped coffee.

Maya’s eyes flashed as he came in, but her voice was perfectly friendly as she said, “Corin, this is Jacqueline. Jacqueline, Corin.”

He held out one hand. “Jacqueline? Pleased to meet you.”

The red-haired woman took his hand and shook firmly. “If you don’t mind, I’ll give it a few days before I say the same.”

“Jacqueline!” Maya hissed.

Jacqueline squeezed her hand, then kept talking, holding Corin’s gaze. “Hideaway Cove took me in when I thought I’d already lost everything good in my life. I never thought it was possible to be as happy as I am here. And Maya is one of us, now. She’s safe here. If you do anything to make her not safe—”

“I already went over this with Felicity,” Maya said in a hurried undertone.

“Well, she and Pol will have to hold off on sending him head-over-tail until the rest of us get a word in,” Jacqueline said firmly. “We’re your friends, too.”

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the beach. “My mate, Arlo, and our other two kids are back at the house.” Jacqueline explained. “You might meet them later, if you stick around long enough.”

“He’s not going to be staying that long. Just until we figure out what’s going on with the stolen treasure.”

“Right—”

“I know it’s another problem Hideaway doesn’t need. We’re going to fix it as soon as possible.” Maya sounded almost pleading, and all Corin’s protective instincts rose up. His dragon lashed its tail, corralling his magic before he even realized it was blossoming.

“I wouldn’t want some creep sending me crap in the mail, either. Or stalking me.”

“Excuse me?” Corin raised one haughty eyebrow.

Maya looked as though she wanted to run out of the room and lock the door behind her. “He hasn’t been stalking me.”

“Who’s the dragon that’s been sneaking around outside the bay, then?”

The child she’d brought with her grinned toothily. “LOTSA dragons!”

All three adults exchanged a worried look. “I thought you said they were making up stories?” Maya said. “Tally seems pretty convinced.”

“So did the older boy who saw me flying yesterday,” Corin said grimly.

“I’ll talk to Apollo and Felicity,” Jacqueline said firmly. She put an arm around Maya’s shoulder in a brief hug. “Okay. Enough threatening your visitor. Let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay?”

“You’re already helping so much with Tomás.”

“Speaking of which, we’d better head off before the teen and the pre-teen wake up and eat us out of house and home. Come on, ratbags. Out the door!”

It took another quarter hour to corral the toddlers and all the various bags and equipment Tomás apparently needed for a morning out. The little girl shifted into a small seal and blooped out of Jacqueline’s arms when she tried to pick her up. But eventually, the door closed behind them.

Leaving Corin and Maya alone.

Maya took a deep breath and spoke before he could. “Shall we get started? Tomás loves hanging out with Tally and her siblings, but if it goes wrong it goes wrong fast. We could have all morning, or we could have twenty minutes.”

She spoke with the quiet authority of someone who’d experienced ‘going wrong fast’ more times than she could count.

“I’m not sure we’ll be able to tell anything from what’s left of these,” she went on, picking up the mail bags from where Corin had put them on the kitchen table. “They’ve been torn open by tiny talons, possibly chewed on, definitely rained on…”

“And they’re all addressed to you.”

She went still. Corin lined up the pieces he’d been looking at. Slowly, she set down the others next to them. Most of the addresses were torn, some were almost unreadable, but together, they made a pattern.

---y -----s

-a-y --or--

---- Flor--

Maya pushed them away, then wrapped her arms around herself. “Nothing we didn’t already know. But seeing it laid out like this … they must have been sent over months. The whole time I’ve been here.”

“Nobody is going to harm you, Maya.”

“Sure. Not before I throw myself out a window of my own accord, at least.” She shook herself. “What now?”

“My grandfather is performing an audit of our family vault.”

“How long will that take?”

“Several days.”

“And what happens if he finds something else missing? You’re going to storm in and be a big, bad dragon at everyone?” Maya pushed her hair off her face, frowning. “That won’t work. I’ll talk to—”

Her mouth snapped shut. “No. I won’t talk to anyone, because that’s not my job anymore.” She gave a wan smile. “Almost forgot.”

He felt strange. “This reminds you of working for me?”

“Except I never involved you in my Mr. Blackburn counter-measure conversations.” She leveled her gaze at him, and a wry smile flitted around her lips. “Look at us. Talking like people. I haven’t snapped at you or torn either of our clothes off in whole minutes.”

Corin cleared his throat. “We still have several minutes left of your twenty-minute safe zone—”

“And I’m terrified I’m going to mess them up. Can we—” She stopped, and took a deep breath. “I’m not going to ask you for anything you don’t want to give me. But can we—can we go somewhere, with some food, and just … talk? There are some things I want to ask you.”

They headed to the waterfront and, from there, to the local restaurant. Corin had already heard a number of stories about the establishment and was interested to see how true they were. He had assumed they would dine in, but after a few quiet words with the orca shifter who ran the place, Maya reappeared with a picnic hamper and a cooler that clinked encouragingly. Corin hoisted the hamper over one arm.

“Will this support of local business be sufficient defense against the town turning on you for disloyalty?”

Maya flashed him an unimpressed look. Not as ferocious as some of the looks she’d shot his way the last few days; she was still distracted, worrying over the questions she wanted to ask him.

He was worried, too.

But they were both putting on a good show.

Maya shrugged. “We should book in dinner and at least one brunch, just in case.”

“Understood. And to put your mind at ease I dined last night in the privacy of my own home, on dry bread and crackers, so I wouldn’t impugn the honor of your local establishment.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“I’m only partially joking. Avi seems to think your Caro will be able to sense his inferior cooking from her own kitchen. Apparently she’s infamous at the school they both went to.”

Maya frowned. “I didn’t know she went to school for cooking.”

“Not for long. She dropped out after—”

“Don’t. Please.” Her face twisted. “I know what it’s like to be prime gossip material. I don’t need to find out anything about my neighbors here that they don’t let me know themselves.”

He’d touched a sore point. Time to back off.

“I see there’s a local ice-cream parlor, as well. Should we schedule in some dessert?”

Maya sank back into the food talk, clearly relieved. “I expect Caro packed some in the chiller. She and Tess have been doing a lot of work together lately, by which I mean Tess has finally gathered her courage to go pick Caro’s brains. YouTube clips can only take you so far, apparently. And … I guess Caro has had formal training. Maybe Tess wants to do the same.”

It was no different to the hundreds of times she’d peppered her conversation about his upcoming meetings or social events with details about the other attendees. Except she’d never had this light in her eyes when discussing his corporate rivals.

This place isn’t just a convenience for her , he thought, a strange feeling twisting inside him. She likes it here. She likes the people here.

In a way she’d never liked his world. The human side of it, anyway.

He’d never let her see the draconic side of it.

Her phone buzzed, and she checked it. “That’s Jacqueline. The kids are having a great time.”

“What does that mean for our twenty-minute deadline?”

“That we can stretch things out a little longer.” She looked at the hamper and bit her lower lip.

“What do you have planned?”

“Let’s head up past the lighthouse. There’s a beach under the cliffs where we can talk without being overheard.”

She pointed towards the hill at the far end of the bay, but Corin wasn’t falling for that. Instead of following the line of her arm, he kept his attention on her face.

Her mouth went small. That was never a good sign.

His scales prickled against the inside of his skin.

“Is there a way around the beach, or do we climb all the way up the hill and back down again?” he asked as though he hadn’t noticed anything. “I’ll call the car—”

Just as he’d expected, a small line of irritation formed between Maya’s eyebrows. “If the hill’s too much of a challenge for you, we can climb around the bottom, over the rocks.”

He glanced down. She was wearing leggings and sneakers. He … was not. His leather-soled shoes were more suited to the office than anything that might be described as ‘rocks’.

He was still acting as though he was in the office, sitting behind his desk like a king at his throne, snarling orders to his underlings. Forcing them all to stay in line.

Losing everything.

Maybe it was time to be something different. While he still could.

“I have a better idea,” he said.

It was the work of a moment to shuck off his jacket, close his eyes and search inside himself for his dragon. Time to stretch your wings , he told it. Let’s show our mate what’s on offer.

Nothing happened.

You have approximately three quarters of a second before this becomes embarrassing for both of us , he told it.

Shadows rustled in the depths of his soul. His dragon had never been this reluctant to shift before.

Half a second. Maya’s eyebrows were already going up. One quarter—no. I’m done waiting.

He hauled himself into his dragon form like pulling on a thick winter coat. The air twisted around him, blurring his changing form at the same moment his dragon sent an aggravated memory into his mind.

Maya, hiding from him, her eyes wide with trepidation as a horde of Blackburns transformed into dragons all around her.

He tried to stop his transformation, but it was too late. His dragon form erupted in a whirl of gilded shadows and he was suddenly staring down at Maya from double her height.

He held utterly still, terrified of what he would see in her eyes. Fool , he berated himself, all the angrier for how useless it was. Show her what’s on offer? You’re just reminding her of the worst thing you ever did to her!

The night he’d followed her as she ran away from him. He’d been desperate to protect her, finally understanding that she needed protection, that her life was not the bubble of bliss she’d pretended it was. That it was actually crumbling all around her.

He hadn’t been able to shake off his cousins. So they had all been there when he finally caught up with her.

They had all shifted. And she hadn’t seen the Blackburn dragon clan coming to protect her.

She’d seen them hunting her down.

* Maya—* No. Shit and double shit. She wasn’t a shifter; he couldn’t talk to her like this. what had he been thinking?

Not thinking at all , his dragon suggested, the mental equivalent of talking out the side of its mouth so it didn’t move a single muscle.

Maya’s face was tipped up towards him. She seemed so small to him in this form. Small and delicate.

His claws tightened on the sidewalk. He had to shift back. His clothes were scattered on the ground all around. Excellent. He could scramble around picking them up and perhaps the sheer humiliation would amuse her enough to forget how terrified she was at the reminder of his dragon form.

Then she lifted one hand and pressed it against his foreleg.

He was already frozen in place. Now he couldn’t even breathe. She touched him? She willingly touched him?

Even his magic was frozen. A fucking miracle.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” she murmured. She didn’t sound terrified. She sounded like she was keeping something back, but it wasn’t terror. Corin blinked slowly, refocusing on her face.

She looked—she looked…

“And you even managed to keep hold of the picnic basket,” she said dryly. Her mouth was curving. A smile?! “Do you need me to pick up your clothes…?”

Absolutely not. He swept his tail out in an arc, collecting what was left of his outfit. Her smile quirked into genuine amusement.

“All right, then,” she said quietly, as though speaking as much to herself as to him. “Let’s go.”

He had never let anyone ride him before.

If he had planned this, he would have done it differently. He would have rehearsed. Not in front of an audience, and not dangling a picnic basket and cooler from one claw and a bundle of clothes in the other. But somehow, despite the interested looks directed their way, he didn’t prickle with prideful self-consciousness as Maya put her other hand on his flank, then one foot on his statue-like leg and then the other, and clambered up onto his back.

She wasn’t scared of him.

His dragon shook out its wings—carefully, so it didn’t even ruffle the hairs on its precious rider’s head—and waited until Maya was sitting firmly on its shoulders, her arms tight around its neck. Then it leaped into the air.

Flying was one of the few simple joys in many dragons’ lives. For duskfire dragons, that joy was permanently alloyed by their magic. But so long as he didn’t wreathe himself in his power to hide from view, he could enjoy the experience as though he were any other dragon.

In the air, using no power but his wings, there was nothing to navigate except updrafts and downdrafts. The interplay of light and heat and moisture told his wings when to flex, when to curl, when to beat once, twice to rise above the sparkling waves and drift like an albatross around the battered cliffs to the tiny beach hidden behind them.

A very tiny beach. He landed with his fore-claws on soft sand and his back legs in the water, which was far colder than its daintily sparkling appearance had led him to expect. Maya sat up and he shifted with a grace he’d only ever employed to threaten rival shifters: utterly controlled, settling his human feet on the sand as shadows led her hand to his, floating her gently to the ground.

She looked up at him and her eyes were shining brighter than gold.

And then she spun one hundred and eighty degrees away from him.

“Um?!” she said, and it took his brain a moment to process the alarm in her voice. “I’ll—picnic. You—clothes?”