“What if they see you?” I asked, but the dragon only huffed, a real sound that I felt through the thick, hard scales covering his chest. He was laughing, as if that thought were silly, and I poked him against one of those iron-hard scales in irritation. “What, does the whole town know about you? You can’t suddenly turn invisible, can you?”
We circled downward, and he still did not reply, so I studied the town instead. It was small, covered in a thick blanket of snow. Picturesque. Cozy. But the storm had swept through here, and some trees had toppled, a roof had collapsed, and only a handful of homes had lights on or smoke billowing from their chimneys. There was a slight feel of emptiness—of abandon—to many of these buildings, but signs of life in others. The fallen trees had already been cut into smaller pieces and moved to the side of the roads, for instance.
I only had a short time to glimpse the main street, but it was enough to notice that some people were out and about here. Then Ísarr brought us down for a landing on the road leading into town. I was carefully set on my feet, a claw braced against my back until I was steady. Kevin was carelessly dropped in the snow, out cold, but still breathing.
Then Isárr shifted, and for the first time, I got a proper look at what that entailed. Last time, I had not truly believed what I was seeing was real, and much of him had been encased in snow, obscuring the process. This time, I saw the way he seemed to reshape into pure light, a pale blue energy, the exact same shade as his eyes. When it faded away, I stood blinkingfrom the brightness, but there he was: two legs, two arms, and that familiar grim look on his handsome face, azure hair in windblown locks around his shoulders, and his horns rising proud and sharp from his forehead.
He caught my hand, pressed a kiss to the knuckles of my icy skin, and then rubbed the digits warm between his fingers. “Come on, we’ll walk the rest of the way. I think everyone we need to see was on Main Street.” He ducked and casually slung Kevin over a shoulder like the man was a sack of potatoes, or perhaps feathers, given how little effort that seemed to take. Then he took my hand again and urged me with him. “I want to know what the hell we’re dealing with before we go to sleep tonight, Elskling.” He said the words with a heated glance that told me sleep was the last thing he had on his mind tonight. And it was definitely going to be we—and not in separate beds—this time.
Chapter 14
Bianca
I didn’t expect to feel like I’d just walked into a warzone when we came down Main Street a few minutes later. It did, though. Everyone I saw—and that wasn’t really a whole lot of people—seemed tired and a bit grim, like they’d just fought a strange, scary battle with shadows the same way we had. Maybe that was actually true, I realized, with horror curling through my gut.
Nobody said anything about Ísarr’s strange appearance, and though I looked, no one seemed out of the ordinary. My dragon spoke first with a man dressed like a sheriff’s deputy. His tan uniform stretched tight over wide shoulders, a boyish grin on his face, though his posture was stiff and oddly motionless. A minute later, another man came to take Kevin, and that was that.
“That’s the town’s doctor. He’ll be in good hands. Come on, I see Char up ahead. Everyone is gathering at Mikael’s diner.” Isárr did not want to go in and talk to anyone, it seemed, but this ‘Char’ waited for us by the door: a tall man, Native American, with sharp, golden eyes that were definitely not human—the first sign of anything unusual, as far as I could tell. A beautiful Black woman stood at his side, green vine tattoos curling from the collar of her open jacket.
“Chardum the Destroyer, please tell me you know what is going on. Did you sense the darkness, the shadows? Was it in your dreams during the storm, like it was in mine?” Ísarr did not bother with a real greeting; in lieu of an introduction, he just stated this strange man’s even stranger name.
“We did,” the woman answered after sharing a long look with the golden-eyed man. “Hi, I’m Rosy. You must be Ísarr’s unexpected house guest.” The way my dragon glared made it clear he did not appreciate this lady knowing about me, especially when the town had made it clear yesterday they could not take me off his hands. I, on the other hand, appreciated it very much.
“I am Bianca, nice to meet you. Are you?” I didn’t know what to ask or how to ask it, but it didn’t seem to matter, thankfully. The woman smiled, her eyes glinting a green that should have been impossible. Why was everyone so damn pretty around here—with all these enviable hair and eye colors? Perhaps this really was a town full of beings like Ísarr, and that’s why he didn’t have to worry about being seen. Had my poor guy only played the hermit because he feared freezing people? It was beginning to seem that way.
“It has been driven off,” the stranger with his arm around Rosy said. His voice was deep, a rumbling sound that reminded me of the earth and green, fresh things. “We’ll be ready for it when it comes back,” he added, nodding at the people gathering inside the diner through the sparkling-clean glass windows. “For now, it is defeated. You can take your mate home and rest easy.”
“You are certain? It did not feel defeated when we faced it near my home not long ago.” Ísarr snarled the words, and cold white fog misted in front of his face, turning into shards of ice that clattered to the ground in sharp staccato sounds. His arm went around my shoulders and hugged me tightly to his side, and I went willingly, tucking myself against his chest.
“You are alive, are you not?” Chardum drawled, and something in his tone made my toes curl in my boot, while fear skittereddown my spine. A threat, a sense of danger. I had a feeling this guy was just as terrifying as my dragon when he was riled. “You must have encountered it while it was fleeing me.” He was arrogant too, but I hoped it was well-deserved—and that he was right.
“I’ll convince the Warlock to come by to lay down wards tomorrow,” Rosy said. She reached forward and patted my arm; warmth instantly shot through me like I’d been touched by a ray of sunshine. “Go on home, rest up, enjoy the matebond.” Her curiously green eyes went from warm welcome to sharp reprimand when they shot to Ísarr’s face. “And don’t be a stranger.”
It might have been the weirdest conversation I’d ever had with people I’d just met. It had me tingling with excitement and confusion. This could be the place where I fit in, where I could feel at home amid all the strangeness. I had liked the idea of being with Ísarr on his quiet hill, living in his charming cabin. The thought of having a small, welcoming town nearby to visit was the cherry on top. And it wasn’t even that far from my family; I could visit them too.
Which reminded me: I really had to call my mama again to let her know all was well. Isárr just wanted to go home, now that he’d been told it was safe to do so. I couldn’t blame him for that, this was probably more people than he’d seen in years. He looked his grumpy self, scowling as we turned to walk down Main Street again, toward the softly sloping hills covered in forest beyond the town’s borders.
The deputy hurried past us to the diner, stopping only to report that Kevin would make a full recovery. The shadowy thing hadactually kept him alive through the storm—just long enough for us to find him and free him from its grip. Very lucky, and he likely wouldn’t remember anything—also lucky.
Nobody stopped us as we reached the woods. “You’re staying, right?” Ísarr asked. “With me?” When I nodded, his mouth twitched. “Should have known. Come then.” He unfurled his wings but did not shift further, beckoning me into his arms. I went gladly, ready to let him take me wherever he felt like going.
“So that shadow thing is really gone?” I asked as he leapt skyward and, with great sweeps of his wings, took us home. I know they said so, but it was hard to believe that was true. It had been the scariest thing about all of this, even scarier than nearly dying in a snowstorm. This stranger called the Destroyer seemed very certain, though.
“Whatever it was, they defeated it. I do think they were right, it couldn’t really affect me. It seemed far weaker than it had in the dreams last night.” It hadn’t felt weak to me, but perhaps that was because I was human and he was not.
I called my mom while we were still flying, letting her know that Kevin had been found and that I was still fine. Then, because I knew Ísarr was listening in, I couldn’t resist teasing him. “Set an extra plate for Christmas dinner, okay? I’m going to bring my boyfriend.”
Ísarr’s low growl was just a rumble against my side, but his eyes flashed in warning. “You and Kevin patched things up?” Mamma asked in my ear, breathless with surprise, and with a note of displeasure in her tone that caught me off guard. Wasn’t she the one who had wanted me to date that idiot? Perhaps she feltdifferently now that she knew he was idiot enough to abandon me in a storm.
“Definitely not,” I said with a smirk. “You’ve seen the last of him. No, the man who saved me, Mamma. I’ll be introducing you to him.” I could see the horror on Isárr’s face, his head whipping left and right in denial. My mama was squealing in delight, so loudly I had to pull the phone away from my ear for a moment.
“You’ll regret that. What am I gonna do? Show up with a Santa hat to hide my horns?” he snarled at me. The phone was snapped from my fingers, and the call ended. His eyes flashed, but I was far too pleased, because he hadn’t said he couldn’t go because he’d freeze people.
“Oh, I’ll think of something, don’t worry,” I promised him. “And I’ll make it worth your while, mate. That’s what you call this, right? A matebond? Mate?” I gestured between us and laughed when his eyes went from angry to heated and his mouth descended on mine.
Chapter 15
Ísarr
