The smell be coming not from Alex and Neil’s apartment. It be coming frommine. And when I wrenched my mind off my growling stomach, I finally sensed them.
My back stiff, I opened the door and stalked in.
Matt be in the kitchen, bent over a frying pan. He wore an abbreviated shirt, grown from his gold and bronze scales, and academy sweatpants. The fledgling Dragon still had yet to master scales on his lower half.
He waved a set of tongs at me. “G’day mate. Or rather, morning.”
I glared from him to Cara, who be beating eggs into a froth in a bowl. “Good morning, Sebastian.”
My beast hammered at me. Matt behere. Inmyapartment. It wanted to yank my horn free from my waist and...
No. No,Iwould not. But for a moment, it be a less than sure thing.Hellfire,did he not know what he risked by being in here?
A slim figure slipped out of the room on my right and up to me, her bicolored eyes glimmering with mischief. She slid an arm around my waist, and smoothly removed my spiral sword with her other hand, setting it against the wall.
“Let’s just put that there for now,” she said, and rose on her tiptoes to kiss me.
Her warm lips on mine distracted my beast from mayhem, which be probably the point. She pulled back and led me to the room she’d just left.
“We thought this one would work,” she said.
It be the spare bedroom, and another bed had been moved in to be combined with the single already there. A haversack leaned against one wall. Mounted over the beds be Talakai’s sword and knife combination. Draped over the chair be a hoodie, and at its base be a set of suitcases. Trix lay on a dog bed set up in the corner, and wagged her tail at me.
They’d moved in. While I be out on my run.
I stood frozen in the doorway while my beast raged. But Anna leaned close, and her energy flooded over me. Powerful, assertive, but also soothing.
We are one,she said.We must learn to live together, or we will never be a family.
My inner stallion insisted that it be too much. That we couldn’t live with the other males so close. So close toher.
But the man knew the truth. And the truth be, she be right.
Suddenly, we be not alone in the link.Your room is down the hall, mate. We won’t set foot in it. But we need to be together.I caught a glimpse of Matt flipping strips on the frying pan, while Cara used another to scramble eggs.
Anna moved into my arms.Cara arranged this.
I ground my teeth.Yes. This would be a Cara thing.
She put her hands on each side of my face, and pulled me down to her.She’s a wise lady.
She be manipulative,I insisted.
No, that is me.She sent another pulse of her alpha energy as she kissed me.
My beast snorted and stomped, and then—
It relented. Ceded control. Because Ididbelong to her.
Anna broke the kiss—I almost pulled her back into it, and I longed to take her down the hall to the next bedroom. But she led me back toward the kitchen.
There be a Dragon coming in through the door.
Talakai’s wings arched over his back and sparkled with moisture. He stopped dead, and our eyes met. He said nothing, but I caught how his gaze assessed the spiral sword leaning against the wall. It would take me one long step sideways to reach it and give him a split second to sprout talons...
It impressed me that he’d come through the door without them, when his instincts had probably told him to do otherwise. The wings indicated he be not as calm as he tried to appear. But he just stood there, watching me, as water dripped off them onto the rug.
I let my eyes follow the drops.
