17. Maya

17

Maya

Maya rolled over. Time to get up , she thought. The light coming through her eyelids was warm and bright, so Tomás must have slept in. A miracle. She should take the chance to catch up on chores. Put some laundry away. Open some of those endless boxes from her old apartment…

…Why did that thought feel familiar? Like she’d thought it before, and recently? She’d forgotten something. Something … important, and annoying, and scary…

Corin.

She launched herself out of bed before her eyes were even open. Her feet skidded on the floor. Corin. Tomás . She’d left them together? What was she thinking? Corin was a dragon shifter, but he didn’t know kids. He didn’t know Tomás. And—

And the idea of Corin and Tomás playing together was almost disturbingly adorable.

She was sure the reality would be far less cute.

She ran down the stairs, calling their names. Someone shouted from the back garden.

“We’re out here, Maya!”

Felicity?

She caught her breath, head still spinning. Was this … was everything … maybe … fine?

She pulled a light coat over her pajamas and went outside to find a scene that had never before featured in any of her definitions of the word ‘fine’.

“Fee,” she said awkwardly. “What’s going on? Why is Tomás in the firepit?”

“Because he keeps spitting fire!” her friend responded chirpily.

“Oh.” Maya’s knees wobbled. However long she’d overslept, it was clearly not enough. Or too much.

Her back garden wasn’t really hers. She shared it with the bed-and-breakfast next door, and it stretched the length of the whole building. Mrs. Hanson had planted part of it as a kitchen garden, and the rest of it was packed with flowers and a small paved area with outdoor seating and a firepit.

Felicity and Apollo were sitting on the benches.

Corin was kneeling on the pavers. That was cause for alarm in itself.

Tomás was in the firepit. It wasn’t lit, but still .

“Maya.” Corin’s eyes found hers, the hint of something that looked like mischief in them.

Surely not.

He was kneeling next to Tomás. When she heard Felicity, her first thought had been that Corin had called her friend to babysit. But from the particular pattern of stains and wrinkles on Corin’s clothes, she had to assume that her ex-boss had taken point on looking after her little boy.

Her ex-boss. Her mate . Looking after her son.

Her heart warmed.

And she still didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“Did you manage to sleep?” Corin asked, searching her face.

“Like a log. What time is it?” She glanced at the sky. Past lunch time, at a guess. “Can I get anyone…”

She trailed off as Corin took her hand. “Sit,” he said gently. “Your guests can fend for themselves.”

“Or, since you’re the one who invited us over, you could play host?” Felicity suggested tartly.

Corin grinned at her.

He grinned. Not even ferociously. Almost … sheepishly?

Was she still asleep? Why were her best friends and her asshole ex-boss acting like they were all friends?

“What is going on?” she asked Tomás.

He giggled at her, clapping. “Fun!”

“Fun?” She leaned in, wrinkling her nose in a smile. “What sort of fun?”

“Hoo!”

“Here we go,” Corin murmured, and the hairs on her arms stood up.

“What—”

Tomás puffed his cheeks out and huffed out a breath like he was blowing out candles. Apollo’s fingers flickered; tiny golden sparks filled the air around Tomás, and everyone clapped and cheered. Tomás waved his hands with delight, cackling.

“He’s … not breathing fire?” Maya asked quietly, while Tomás was still distracted trying to catch the flying sparks.

“We’re pretending he is so that he stops actually trying to,” Felicity whispered. “Corin says that’s what all his huffing and puffing is about.”

Corin leaned closer, his breath tickling her ear. “Better to play-act exciting new powers in human form, than discover what his power is when you were both already exhausted.”

Her hand found his automatically. New powers? The thought was terrifying enough when she’d had enough sleep.

“Is that why you couldn’t sleep last night?” she asked Tomás. “You were too busy trying to figure out how to … breathe fire?”

“Hoo!”

More sparks and applause. Tomás gurgled happily.

Maya felt light-headed.

“Has he slept at all?” she asked nobody in particular.

Corin replied, “Not yet. But he might be willing to make the attempt now he has mastered breathing fire.” He sounded proud. And strangely shy.

Maya’s heart made an odd thud as she looked up at him.

He saw I needed help this morning, and he made it happen. Immediately. She swallowed over a sudden lump in her throat, then held her hands out to Tomás.

“Come here, baby. I’m so proud of you!”

Tomás raised his arms, and she scooped him up.

“Has he eaten anything?” she asked nobody in particular.

“Everything he could see,” Corin informed her seriously. “I told him—” His mouth twitched, humor warring with a wary pride that she’d never associated with him before. “I told him that dragons need food to fuel their magic fire, and he took the hint.”

Had Corin enjoyed playing babysitter to Tomás? Something in her softened. If things had been different…

Tomás wriggled, flinging his arms around her neck and beaming up at her. Then he smiled at Corin, rolled over, and tucked his face into the crook of her elbow. She stroked his back gently, hardly able to believe…

“He’s asleep,” she breathed. “I can’t remember the last time he went to sleep that quickly.”

“Are you counting the literal entire night you spent up with him?” Corin asked dryly.

“Well, no, but…” Maya shook her head. Tomás’s weight was warm and heavy in her lap. It reminded her so much of when he was only a tiny baby, and had refused to nap unless she was holding him.

And there had never been anyone else to help her, then. Not friends, and not…

Not Corin.

Oh, great, now she was going to cry.

She blinked her eyes clear and looked up. “The firepit? Really?”

“He was trying to breathe fire!” Apollo raised his hands in mock-defense. “We had to be outside, in case he actually managed it. And he must have seen you or Mrs. H’s guests using the fire. He knew exactly what it was for, and decided it was a throne especially designed for him.”

She had a sudden vision of the four of them roasting marshmallows as her son happily puffed little fireballs at them, and squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe she still needed more sleep.

“But how did you know he was trying to breathe fire? And how—” Her throat tightened. “If he only calmed down because you made him think he was breathing magic sparks, how am I meant to keep that up? Do one of you two have to hang out with us all the time? What if he figures out it was all a trick?”

She’d aimed the questions at the whole group—rapid-fire, somewhat panicked—but Corin answered.

“That might be best.”

Maya groaned out loud. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Felicity and Apollo.

Apollo raised his eyebrows. Felicity snorted. “Don’t be silly. We’re your friends. And we’ve got this ridiculous magic for a reason. Might as well use it for something other than making drinks.”

“ Ridiculous magic?” Apollo asked her, placing one hand on his chest and playing hurt.

“So ridiculous. The ridiculous-est.” She grinned up at him. “And it’s not like either of us has a real job, so we can hang out with you and Tommy, no problem.”

“I have a job,” Apollo protested.

“Mmm. Channeling our magic through the town and pretending it makes you an electrician. You can do that from home. Or Maya’s home.” Felicity looked up, and Maya caught a flicker of something mischievous in her eyes before she said, innocently, “What about you, Corin? Do you breathe fire? You can join the roster.”

“My flame would not be suitable.” Corin’s voice was cold. “We are trying to stave off destruction, not cause it.”

Maya caught Corin’s eye by accident, and was trapped. The shadows that stormed in his gaze seemed thicker.

“How many types of dragonfire are there? Or dragon … not-fire,” she added, thinking of Apollo’s electric magic.

Corin shrugged. “As many as there are families of dragons, I suspect.”

“So Tomás’s fire might not even be fire . It could be anything?” And she wasn’t prepared. She hadn’t even known that Tomás’s behavior meant he was trying to do more dragony things. Like breathe fire.

“It’s fine, Maya. Look. I’m sure every baby dragon does this—”

“Not usually this young.” Corin’s voice was like a tolling bell, foretelling doom over the garden.

Felicity groaned. “We’re trying to help Maya not freak out here. I don’t know if you noticed.”

“Tomás found his dragon form far earlier than any other dragon I’ve heard of. He’s a prodigy. Miss Flores—Maya needs to be prepared for him to find his other powers, as well. Whatever they end up being.” His eyes sharpened—then he looked away, grimacing. “I know you prefer to be prepared, Maya. The least I can do while I’m here is to give you access to whatever resources you need. Especially as, so far as I can tell, the only thing standing between your son breathing fire for the first time is the fact he hasn’t yet figured out he needs to be in dragon form to do it.”

The blood drained out of Maya’s face. “But he loves being in dragon form.”

“Quite.” Corin adjusted his weight, and even through her rising panic, Maya got the feeling he was uncomfortable. “Yesterday, you suggested that you didn’t feel secure asking your new neighbors about things you felt you should already know, as a mother to a young shifter.”

Apollo and Felicity protested. Maya glared at him. He was bringing this up now? In front of her best friends?

He continued as though he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary, or treacherous, or plain rude. “And even the other parents here will not have parented a dragon shifter. Baby seals and the like pose their own challenges, but none of them involve spitting one of a variety of magical types of fire.”

Felicity pointed at Maya. “Don’t faint.”

“I’m not going to faint.” She faced him, the mate who’d abandoned her to this town, with her sleeping toddler in her arms. “Thank you for the summary of our conversations these past few days, but you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Corin.”

“No. I’m forcing your friends to hear it. If you won’t tell them, someone has to. And I’m offering a solution,” he went on, while she was still reeling from that bit of treachery. “You need information about raising a dragon shifter child. This dragon child, in particular. I can help you with that.”

For one horrible moment, she thought he was going to suggest he hunt down Tomás’s father.

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t . She hadn’t been able to.

But she was Maya Flores. A nobody human. And he was the leader of the Blackburn clan. If he wanted to, he could track down the man who’d fathered Tomás.

She kept her voice steady. “You can put me in touch with someone who knows what I should be doing?”

“Yes.”

Was it her imagination, or did his neck bob like he was swallowing?

“Who?”

“My mother.”