Charlotte blinked away the prickle of tears. Was it silly to believe him? Maybe, but she desperately wanted to. Any sort of reassurance she wasn’t dreaming this, that she would never be put back in her prison, was welcome.
“Your shadow would keep us connected even if I got put back in an m-siphon?” Her voice was annoyingly thready, but she needed to know the answer. For her peace of mind, for that anxiousness that insisted she could be snatched and thrown back in her humid little prison at any moment. She needed to know that someone would find her.
Dom held her gaze for as long as he could before turning his attention back to the road. “Yes, it would. My shadow isn’t just magic, Charlotte. It’s my soul.”
She blinked rapidly. “Your… Are you saying you have a little bit of your soul circling my ankle right now?”
A small smile quirked the corner of his lush mouth, turning a face of hard angles into something softer, something handsome enough to make her breath catch and her wings sing. “Yes. Does that scare you?”
After a year of being alone, believing she’d be reduced to a husk and then to a moldering corpse in a jar? No, it really didn’t. Charlotte wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, no matter how surly, antlered, or callused he was.
“As long as you promise to never let anyone put me in a jar again, you can get as weird as you want with your soul, old man.” She grinned. Just a little bit of her fear loosened, but it was enough to make breathing easier. “Besides, it could be worse. You could be a dragon or something.”
Dom arched a heavy brow. “Have a problem with dragons?”
“Oh, every girl knows to avoid dating a dragon,” she smartly replied, a little bit of her pre-captivity personality shining through. “One day they’re the most fun, playful guys, and then the next — poof! They’re roaring, possessive, territorial, big-ass lizards.”
No one was really sure what triggered the change in dragons, but there absolutely was one. She’d lived in the city long enough to meet a handful of the brilliantly colored, horned race, and knew that they underwent a monumental shift in personality when they “chose”.
The problem was that dragons didn’t have a single mate predestined by the gods — or chemicals or whomever one wanted to blame. Like the fey, they had multiple possible partners, and that meant enticing the one you wanted and fighting for the right to be their choice. The worst case scenario involved a dragon choosing someone that already had multiple interested parties. Dragons were infamous for their implacability and their sheer, single-minded determination to win a mate — no matter the cost. Taking out rivals in whatever way they deemed necessary was a point of pride for dragons and one of the many reasons the other races kept a wary eye on any dragonblooded romantic partners.
One of Charlotte’s favorite fairytales involved three dragons, all from different clans, fighting for a single human mate. It was only in adulthood that she learned the real story it was based on ended with two of the dragons ruthlessly murdered by their rival, their corpses thrust onto pikes, displayed for all the world to see and know that the victor would tolerate no challenge to his claim.
Dom snorted. “Dragons aren’t fun to be around when they’ve decided on a mate, no.”
“Are demons much better?” Charlotte sent him a curious look. “The fey don’t really have any customs around courtship — they’re not partial to monogamy — so I’m in the dark here.”
No, they just had the mating song and the frenzy, the instinctive change in behavior triggered by the presence of a compatible mate. The fey usually went through many partners in their lives, many frenzies, and the products of those frantic couplings created people like Charlotte — unwanted, untalented Changelings.
“Demons respect matehood.” He sighed, and there was a wealth of old feeling in it. “Maybe too much. I know many demons who’ve run off into the world, hoping to find their mates before even thinking of what else there could be in life.”
“You don’t sound terribly enthused by the idea.”
Dom lightly massaged her nape before sending her a quick, apologetic look. “I wasn’t. I like being alone. Always have.” He paused, shoulders bunching, before quietly admitting, “But… I like you. Seems obvious to me now that my life will be better for having you in it.” He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with his own admission. “Do I think those demons should get to know themselves a little before they go handing their shadows to anyone who asks? Yeah. Do I get why we chase mates now? Looking at you— being with you, I get it.”
Charlotte’s toes curled against the rough carpet. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears; her glow pulsed in time, lighting up the skin of her hands and face. “You don’t even know me,” she rasped, suddenly terrified that this big, earnest demon wouldn’t feel so sweetly toward her when he figured out she wasn’t anything special or noteworthy or—
“Don’t care.” Dom slid the pad of his roughened thumb over the corner of her jaw. It was a small, chaste caress, but it lit up her blood like nothing before it. “You’re my mate. We have centuries to get to know one another.” A flash of amber was her only indication that he peeked at her out of the corner of his eye when he added, “If you’ll have me, of course.”
Warmth bloomed in her stomach. “Well, maybe we could go on a few dates and—”
The truck swerved sharply to the right, nearly pulling over onto the shoulder before it self-corrected. Dom swore and removed his hand from the back of her neck to clutch the steering wheel.
“What’s wrong?” Charlotte craned her neck to see if they swerved around some debris or roadkill.
Dom let loose a low, terrifying rumble. It wasn’t quite a growl, but it wasn’t a noise like any she’d ever heard, either. It came from deep within his chest to fill the entire cab, raising the thin hair on her arms beneath the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
He turned his head just enough to glare at the rear view mirror. “We’re being followed.”
* * *
Dom swore as the big, dented SUV tried to drive them onto the shoulder again. This part of the New Zone was largely unpopulated wilderness broken up by long stretches of highway. There were no walls or bumpers to keep cars from going off the roads and into the low drainage ditches overgrown with greenery. This far away from UW, they were one of only a handful of cars on the road, too.
If they’d been in anything except his sturdy work truck, they would already be in a ditch.
Pressing his forearm back against his mate’s chest, Dom firmly held her in place against her seat as he swerved out of the way of the tan vehicle — which must have been either old or heavily tinkered with. No untouched or modern vehicle could move that dangerously on a road with even the most basic m-grid. It would stop automatically to avoid a collision; something this car obviously had no intention of doing.
Dom ground his teeth together. A hot flare of protective rage roiled the shadows under his skin, pressing them close to the surface — to fight, to get his mate to safety, to avenge her for the wrongs done.