The fact that Artem watched her work with undisguised fascination and spent a considerable portion of his waking hours asking her questions about it, as well as how she got to her position, was not lost on her. The fact that he was perhaps the only person who had ever looked at her with that sort of awe wasn’t lost on her either.
Feeling suddenly, terribly brittle, Paloma bit out, “I need to get home.” Stepping around him, she hopped off the low ramp to hustle her way across the gravel parking lot. Snow stuck to her hair and eyelashes as the wind blew it hard against her.
Of course, Jack Jr. followed. “Polly, come on! If you’d just come home with me, we could talk about things and you’d see that being my mate isn’t the damn death sentence you seem to think—”
An ear-splitting roar shook the snow dusted trees.
Paloma nearly dropped her bags when Jack Jr. pinned her against the side of her truck. She pushed at his shoulders instinctively, but he didn’t even look at her. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. That roar was huge and deep. It was the kind of sound only a massive being could make. Oh no.
Jack Jr.’s hands shifted into razor-sharp claws and his head lifted to scent the air. “What the fuck was that?”
She lifted her eyes to the stormy sky and felt all the blood drain from her face. Even through the swirling eddies of a growing blizzard, she could make out the flash of ruby wings overhead.
Too bad she wasn’t the only one. Jack Jr. let out a vicious snarl. “Fuck me, I thought the dragon turned around!” Using one clawed hand, he jerked the driver’s side door open and herded her into her truck. She fell back into her seat with a wheeze. Jack Jr. kept his eyes on the sky even as he leaned into the cab to growl, “Get your ass home, Polly. I’ve got to get my phone from inside and call Patrol before that dragon decides to burn down the whole godsdamned town.”
Lifting her calves with one hand, he swung her legs up and into the truck before he slammed the door shut. Paloma didn’t even have time to tell him not to call anyone, that Artem wouldn’t hurt a damn fly, before he slapped the hood and dashed off, back into the store.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Artem’s shadow passed over the parking lot as she attempted to untangle herself from her many tote bags and swing them haphazardly into the back seat. Freeing herself from the last bag, she turned back around just in time to see her huge, ruby-red dragon land in the street, tilt his massive head back, and roar.
The sound reverberated through the body of her truck to rattle her bones. This was no beguiling whistle. It was an outraged sound that would make any creature with a brain run and hide.
Paloma sat back in her seat for a long, breathless second. Snowflakes began to melt in her hair and on her cheeks as she took in the sight of Artem’s huge body, whipped by swirling snow, advancing on her truck from across the street. She knew it was him not only because he was the only dragon around, but because she’d know the shape of his horns and the circular tattoo on his right foreleg anywhere.
Even through the storm, she could see the very aware, very pissed-off look in his eyes.
Gripping the steering wheel, she ran through her options at lightning speed.
Option one: Get out of the truck and try to talk to him. I could calm him down, but Patrol could already be setting up an m-gate. If we don’t get out of here fast, he could be killed.
Option two: I get the hell out of here and hope he follows.
Sweat beaded under the collar of her shirt. Paloma didn’t feel threatened by Artem, but she always had a healthy respect for predatory instincts. Did she think he would intentionally hurt her? No, but if she pricked at the instinct to chase down prey, she wasn’t sure what would happen.
But when the alternative was sitting there and watching as Jack Jr. called a Patrol squadron to take down what they thought was a rogue, Paloma knew she didn’t have a choice. Artem’s life was worth the risk.
Keeping her eyes locked on his advancing form, she pressed her thumb into the ignition switch. “Okay,” she breathed, blindly shifting into drive. “Let’s play a little game of chase the scientist, dragon man.”
* * *
Artem knew terror. In his youth, he’d flown higher than he should, soaring into the shimmering layer between life and death, and he’d fought smugglers and invaders on behalf of the ’Riik for the better part of his adult life. Not even the agonizing suffocation of too little oxygen in the highest atmosphere compared to what he felt when he woke up to find his mate gone.
And nothing in all of his days compared to the fury he felt when his acute dragon hearing picked up the sound of another man trying to steal his mate out from under his wing.
The scent of cat shifter burned his nose even as he hauled himself up and over a small bridge connecting two low mountains. Paloma’s truck had a head start, since he couldn’t lift off from the ground in his larger form, but once he leapt off of the bridge, there was no way she could outrun him.
The chase thrilled his base instincts. The part of him that was more animal than man relished the flight over the treetops. Even in the driving snow and wind, he wouldn’t lose sight of his mate’s truck as she traversed the narrow road back to their roost. Knowing that she was headed home didn’t stop the exhilaration of the chase, nor cool his anger.
She left him.
It didn’t matter that her excuse of needing to go to the store was a valid one, since he’d damn near eaten her out of house and home since his arrival. She should have woken him. He would have hauled himself out of their nest on hands and knees if that’s what it took. She wasn’t allowed to go out into the world alone, unprotected, and in a fucking blizzard.
Worse yet, when he finally tracked her down, he found her with a shifter.
If you’d just come home with me, we could talk about things and you’d see that being my mate isn’t the damn death sentence you seem to think it is.
The words rang in his ears like the call of another dragon, a hard, screeching challenge that resonated in the basest parts of his soul. Another being wanted his mate. Another being thought he could lay a hand on her, that he could be the one to protect her and shower her with affection and build a nest with her. Paloma. His Chosen.
The knowledge was like claws raking the back of his mind. He would not lose his Chosen to another. He would cut off his own damn tail before he let Paloma slip into the hands of a tiny little cat shifter, with his weak claws and thin skin and blond hair.