Theo
Theo woke to the bright shining sun coming through his window. He rubbed his eyes, which still felt heavy with sleepiness. Then, he reached for Gemma. He had told her last night that he couldn’t love her or be with her. However, he wanted to make love to her one more time before he left to find Aliyah. Then, if he lived, he would help her find her nice little farmhouse.
He rolled over, thinking she had simply gotten hot in the middle of the night and moved. He looked at the indention where her body had lain, pressed close to him, and then gasped. She was gone.
She probably went to the bathroom or went downstairs to make breakfast.
The thought was logical, but somehow, Theo refused to believe it.
Sitting straight up in a panic, he looked around his room, listening. The only thing he could hear was the blood rushing through his ears.
Surely, none of the wolf shifters had come in during the night to steal her away. He would have heard them and smelled them. She wouldn’t have gone with them without putting up a fight. He was never that heavy of a sleeper.
He pulled on his pants as he jumped out of bed. He ran around the house frantically, calling out her name. The only thing he got in response was dead silence. The emptiness of the house swirled around him, taunting him.
She was nowhere inside.
Calm down. She’s probably outside. Or in her room. That’s the one place I didn’t check.
He was trying to be logical, even though he knew deep inside she was gone.
He hurried up to her room. All her clothes were there. Her bag that held the pictures of her parents and a baby Gemma was there. And so was her fanny pack. She had laid it in the middle of her bed. That meant only one thing: she thought she wouldn’t be needing it anymore. That meant she didn’t think she would survive her journey.
He ran downstairs to see large wolf tracks imprinted in the morning dew. They held her scent. He thought of the haunting wolf’s howl he had thought had been a part of his dream. It had sounded so sad as it echoed through his mind.
Theo followed her tracks down the path.
His heart stopped. He roared so loudly that the trees shook in fear. Without bothering to take off his jeans, he transformed into his dragon shape and launched into the sky.
It didn’t take him long to find his destination. He dropped out of the sky, right onto Germaine’s front porch and transformed. He didn’t care at all if there were mundane humans around. If they happened to see him, then so what. If they tried to tell someone what they saw, then a nice doctor would just give them some good drugs and put them away somewhere.
He pounded loudly on Germaine’s door. When he didn’t answer right away, Theo pounded again, loud enough to wake up everyone in a four-mile radius.
“What the hell are you doing here at this time of the morning? Do you have any idea what time it is?” Germaine groused at him.
“Gemma is gone. We made love last night, and I told her I couldn’t love her. When I woke up, she was gone. You have to help me find her,” Theo said.
Germaine didn’t break his stride as he headed toward the kitchen and his coffee maker.
“So, she’s gone. Maybe it’s for the best. You did your best to protect her, risking your life and your status with the clan. No one could have done more. Her leaving releases you from your vow. You fulfilled your end of the bargain,” Germaine said, his voice calm as he measured out the amount of beans needed.
Germaine’s words hit Theo like a ton of bricks. Theo roared in anger, his entire body shaking. If Germaine hadn’t been his best friend, he would have torn the man into small pieces right then.
Shrugging, Germaine blew off Theo’s show of rage. “Why are you so damned upset? It’s not as though you were real mates anyway. You were just pretending so the rest of the dragon shifters would have to help you protect her. It’s not like she means anything to you. You even told her you couldn’t love her man.”
The words cut through Theo’s soul, breaking him in a way he wouldn’t have ever thought possible. He had only felt this way one other time – when he lost Savannah.
Another roar shook Germaine’s house. Germaine was still unaffected by Theo’s show of temper.
“You break anything in my house, including my house, you will have to fix it, my friend,” Germaine said calmly.
Theo couldn’t hear anything Germaine was saying. He pictured the morning when he had found Gemma in his living room. He would have overtaken her, but she had put up one hell of a fight. For a wolf shifter, she was holding her own. Then, at dinner that night, the conversation. She loved gargoyles. She loved architecture and talked about the Parthenon for a long time. She giggled because she liked cartoons.
When they faced down the wolf shifters, she fought fiercely. And Theo realized she loved just as fiercely.
The next thought almost knocked Theo to the ground. A truth that had been staring him right in the face the entire time.
“Germaine?” Theo said.
Germaine turned to look at his friend, his brows raised.
“I’ve been blind. I’m a complete idiot,” Theo said.
“So, what else is new?” Germaine asked. “What are you an idiot about this time?”
“Gemma really is my mate, Germaine. She really is the one.”
