A human in our home.My dragon opened one eye and scratched himself.That’s risky.
I agreed. Having a human here meant every minute of every day was a performance. There could be no shifting, no fire, and certainly no flying. There was a reason why I’d bought this estaterather than a house in town. But now that there’d be a human living with us, it’d be like wearing a straightjacket.
But my children needed stability. They needed someone who showed up and stayed and who they could bond with. Perhaps having other shifters in the house had been a mistake. A human didn’t know enough, or anything, about dragons to be afraid of them. And I was running out of options.
“We have new house rules.” I leaned on the kitchen island near the table where Rory, Fraser, and Skye were eating.
“We know,” they chanted. “Don’t scare the manny.”
“That too, but you can’t show them your fire.” I handed out the bracelets.
“Why?” Fraser asked.
“Because he doesn't know about us.”
“About dragons?” Skye shared a glance with her brothers. She grasped that we were different from humans because she had a library full of human-written books.
“That’s right. He’s human, so he doesn’t know about dragons or shifters.”
Sounds like a disaster to me, my dragon huffed.
I ignored him, because unlike the few times I’d asked him to babysit when I was exhausted, he didn’t wrangle three young children as a single working parent.
Rory frowned. “So we have to pretend?”
“You have to be careful. There's a difference.” I crouched down so I was eye level with the three of them. “This is important. I don't want to scare him off before he starts. We’ll go into the woods every day when the manny has time off, and you can take off the bracelets.
There had to be a better solution than a human in our house, but I hadn’t found one. Even dragon mannies didn’t want to be around little dragons who were experimenting with fire. “Been there, done that, and never again,” one had told me.
“What if he finds out?” Rory finished off the last bite of toast.
“He won’t, not if we pay attention.”
Rory shrugged as if he wasn’t convinced, and Fraser was already distracted by a toy car under the table. Skye met my gaze and nodded.
I cleaned up the kitchen and checked the guest suite on the third floor had clean towels and plenty of toiletries. I considered adjusting the thermostat down five degrees. It would feel cold to us, and the kids would need sweaters. But that wasn’t fair to the children. They were making enough adjustments already.
As dragon shifters, the fire within us meant our internal temperature was much hotter than a human’s, and we preferred our environment to reflect that. The new manny would have to deal with the heat.
The buzzer rang, signaling someone was at the main gate. That had to be the new candidate. I peered at the screen. Their car was an older model, and considering the guy needed money, that wasn’t surprising. He was in his late twenties which I already knew because Meara had sent me his resumé.
That's him?My dragon was peering at him.This will end in disaster.
He looked nervous because he was tapping the steering wheel and biting his bottom lip. And when I let him in, he sat in the car for a minute, checking his phone.
I raced to the entrance, wanting to meet him before the kids tumbled out. Flinging open the front door, I prepared a smile, but that faded the instant I got a whiff of his scent.
It smacked me in the face and knocked everything out of my head. I gripped the door jamb as his scent wafted over me, and I identified the different notes. It was a combination of aromas. There was wood, cedar, I thought, and fragrant wildflower honey.
My dragon was rattling around in my head, staring through my eyes and making my teeth ache.
Mate.
No.
Ours. He's ours.
No. No, no.
