If he had to chase her down and kiss her until she forgot the faces and names of every other person in the world, he’d do it. If he had to keep her in their nest, naked and sated, for weeks on end to convince her there was no alternative to them, he would damn well do that, too.
And then he’d track down the cat and make sure he knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that Paloma was taken.
Artem followed her truck closely, despite the way flying so near to the ground made his still not wholly recovered body ache. It took much more effort to glide and keep himself off the ground, but it wasn’t a long trip back to her home, so he gritted his teeth and endured it.
For one thing, he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight. For another, he wanted to be close just in case something happened to her truck. Even knowing that standard vehicles came with weather adaptive tires that could handle snow and ice, he worried about her taking the jackknife turns that littered the way up to their roost.
By the time she pulled into the driveway, the heavy snowfall had become a screaming blizzard — and he was even angrier for it.
He touched down onto the snow covered gravel with a ground rattling whumf, his wings stretched up and away from his body in a display of pure, dragonish irritation. Keeping his eyes on his wayward Chosen, Artem blew out a hard breath and stalked toward the idling truck. He smacked the ground with one foreclaw. It was a clear command.
Get out of the car.
He watched Paloma’s wary expression through the windshield. There was a quiet whirring sound as she lowered the driver’s side window a crack. “I’m not getting out until you shift back and tell me you’re not mad at me.”
Artem lifted his lip with a low growl, showing her exactly what he thought of that command, as he stalked closer. When he lowered his head to glare into her window, Paloma squeaked with alarm and rolled it back up.
He let out a low rumble of disapproval. She couldn’t stay in the truck forever, but he didn’t care to outlast her. The weather was getting worse by the second. She needed to be back in their dwelling, preferably safely swaddled in their nest, before the weather got any worse. It was a damn shame he couldn’t extract her from the truck in this form without hopelessly mangling the vehicle in the process. Maybe reminding her that he was one of the most powerful beings on Burden’s Earth would help reinforce the lesson that he existed to protect her — and that came with certain rules.
Like not driving in a fucking blizzard!
It took only a thought to bend his body back into his bipedal form. Reality fractured around him as magic burned through the air, forcing his bones and muscles to realign into the shape he desired. In a blink, he stood beside her door on two legs, one hand already outstretched to yank open her door.
Paloma made another alarmed sound and threw her hands up in surrender. “Artem, wait—”
Reaching over the wheel to hit the ignition switch, he snapped, “A blizzard, Paloma!” She yelped when he unlatched her seatbelt and wrapped an arm around her waist, hauling her out of the truck with no trouble.
She flailed in his arms, legs kicking as he threw her over his shoulder. “Wait, wait! The groceries!”
“I’ll get them after you’re safely inside and not standing out in the middle of a fucking blizzard!”
Sheltering her from the worst of the snow and wind with his wings, Artem hurried her back into the dwelling. He considered carrying her all the way back to their nest, but when she continued to wiggle and kick, he worried that she would end up smacking herself on something and begrudgingly decided to put her down.
Standing in the dark entryway, she rounded on him with small fists on her hips and an expression of pure exasperation. “Are you kidding me? You exposed yourself to the town because I went to get some godsdamned groceries?!”
He didn’t bother shaking off the snow from his naked body, nor did he care about the fact that she was puffed up with anger. Artem threaded his claws into her hair, walked her back against the door, and kissed her.
She gasped, stiffening for the span of a heartbeat before she softened under him. Paloma’s icy fingers clutched at his shoulders. He slicked his tongue along her bottom lip, coaxing her to open for him. Her lips parted on a soft sound of surprise that nearly made him forget why he was mad at her.
Holding her head between his hands, Artem pressed one hard, demanding kiss to her lips after another. His worry and his anger and his driving need to show her that he was the most fit, that he was the best match, that he would be the one to drape her in silk and love her until the end of their days sent him into a frenzy. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to lick the foolishness out of her or bite all that sweet skin until she said she was sorry for scaring fifty years off his life.
When she was panting, the scent of her desire rich and heady in the air, he managed to reel himself in enough to rasp, “What were you thinking?”
It took her a second to respond. “Me? What were you thinking?!” Even well-kissed and flustered, Paloma managed to give his shoulder a light, indignant slap. “I was just getting us some food! You’re the one who announced your presence to the whole damn town! You’re lucky it’s snowing too hard for anyone to track you, or we’d probably have Patrol here already!”
“And getting us food had to be done when I was sleeping? You couldn’t have told me you planned to leave at any point when I was up?” Artem clenched his jaw. Truthfully, he didn’t mind her coming and going. She was her own person. What he couldn’t abide by was the reason she left without a word, and the fact that she hadn’t spared a thought for her safety. He didn’t care that she’d probably driven the road up and down the mountain hundreds of times. One wrong move in a blizzard like the one whipping outside the door and she could have been lost to him forever.
She had to know that, which meant that she left not for some frivolous reason. Paloma wanted to get away from him. He was determined to find out why.
Keeping his claws in her hair so she had no choice but to hold his gaze, he ground out, “Tell me the real reason you didn’t let me know you were going to leave, Paloma.”
He watched her blink twice, slowly. Each brush of her eyelashes against the tops of her cheeks drew his eyes, trying to mesmerize him into forgetting why he was upset with her.
“I just… needed some space,” she finally admitted.
Artem’s chest clenched hard in response to the invisible blow. “Because I’ve been crowding you?” He tried to keep the strain out of his voice, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.
It was hard to hear the words, to see the way her expression crumbled, when he’d tried so hard to not overwhelm her. Even though everything in him demanded he keep her by his side, he hadn’t forced the issue of her sleeping in the nest. He knew the reputation for dragon possessiveness could scare a partner away, just as he easily picked up the fact that his Chosen had been alone for a long time and would need extra care. He tip-toed around her, keeping a tight leash on the instinct to press and press until she yielded. Artem made the choice to coax her into his arms slowly. In the moments when he was awake, he tried to be as casual and charming as possible, to ease her into living with a dragon in the only way he was currently capable of.