“Like on his driver’s license, it says ‘Alistair the Undying.’”
“I don’t think he drives, but if he did, yes, it would.” She cleared her throat. “I had a point that wasn’t related to Ali. What I mean is, I’m rich enough that we could absolutely order everything on this menu and rent a private room at the back of the restaurant so people wouldn’t be able to see us devouring everything.”
That idea had undeniable potential.
But before they could even start dealing with it, their server returned. She didn’t have their wine, and there was a little furrow of uncertainty between her eyebrows.
Logan just figured they’d somehow sold out of Iz’s choice at the last minute, but then the server awkwardly cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said, her eyes on Iz. “But someone left this for you at the hostess stand.”
She held out an envelope with an elaborate wax seal.
Every protective instinct in Logan’s body instantly flared to life. He knew dragons liked elaborate, old-fashioned gestures, but Iz’s mother and cousin both seemed to have a good sense of what would seem normal to humans and what wouldn’t. They wouldn’t enlist some confused restaurant staff into a ritual that might make them uncomfortable.
Besides, if they wanted to contact Iz, they had her phone number.
This allscreamedRandolph Sebastian.
From the sudden stiffness in Iz’s demeanor, she was thinking the exact same thing. But she politely thanked the server for passing the note along to her, offering the woman a reassuring smile in the process.
“I’ll be right back with your wine,” the server said, obviously relieved that they were rolling with whatever weirdness they’d just been presented with.
If she only knew everything else they’d been dealing with ....
As soon as the server stepped away, Iz laid the envelope down on the table. She handled it as carefully as if it had been a bomb. Her hands were shaking a little.
“He’s here,” she said, her lips barely moving. “Or he’s paid someone else to be here, watching us. If he swallowed his pride and hired a human private investigator, we wouldn’t be too hard to find. All he needed to do was wait for us to leave the motel and get away from all our backup.”
Logan felt the same threatening vortex of dread, but he tried to resist it. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. Together.”
She reached across the table and clasped his hand for a second or two.
“Now watch,” Iz said, picking up the envelope and preparing to break the seal, “this will all just be an elaborate invitation to Alistair’s wedding. Thisdoesseem like the kind of thing he’d do.”
She opened the letter and unfolded the piece of parchment inside.
Her aquamarine eyes skimmed lightly over the page, and then all the blood seemed to run out of her face at once. She was as white as a marble statue.
“What is it?” Logan said.
He couldn’t keep himself from raising his voice; he couldn’t even keep the growl out of it. He was having a hard enough time not instantly melting back into his hellhound form and savaging anyone and anything that looked to be threatening his mate.
People were staring at them, and he didn’t even care. He was past feeling like an animal in a zoo: he felt like a shifter whose mate was in trouble.
He felt like Logan, looking at a suddenly horrorstruck Iz.
Wordlessly, she held the letter out to him. Her hand was shaking so much now that the paper flapped erratically in the air.
Logan caught hold of it and spread it out. It took his eyes a moment to make sense of the ornate, old-fashioned calligraphy, but when he did, the words hit him like a burst of ice-cold lightning.
My dearest pet Isabelle—I have your mother.
Unless you want her to become the centerpiece of my new collection, you and your infuriating mutt will do exactly as I say.