Page 36 of Damien’s Mate

She gave a soft snort of laughter. “Don’t worry, hooman. I’ll protect you.” She clawed her fingers and gave a soft rawr.

“At least I’ll get to see what animal you are.”

There was a short silence, and then she said softly, “Lion. I’m a lioness.”

Something felt like it opened up in the middle of his chest. She’d trusted him with a tiny part of herself, and he suddenly wanted to cup his hand around that piece of her like it was a butterfly or a flower, and keep it safe.

“I’d like to see her someday.”

She didn’t answer, but the silence in the car was somehow warmer, like they were sitting closer together than they’d been before.

She said, “So these shifters—what should I expect? What kind are they?”

Good question. “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “They’re a crew of some kind—private investigators, I think—but I don’t know which side of the law they come down on. If you mean what animals, I don’t know that either. Most of them didn’t change. I saw a snow leopard with wings and owl talons, and some kind of white bear-shaped thing only it was blobby, like Jell-O.”

She turned her head to look at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head. “No. For real. Is that unusual?”

“That’s freaking bizarre,” she said. “I heard that some people in this world were doing genetic experiments on shifters, but I didn’t believe it. Maybe it’s true.”

Damien shrugged. “I don’t know. It was only a few hours and shit was literally blowing up around us, so there wasn’t really time for personal questions.” He thought back on the weirdness of that night, and added, “Oh. And there was a dragon. But it disappeared and didn’t come back. I don’t know if it was one of them or not.”

He’d thought at the time that the dragon was Jaeda Harris, but she turned out to be the Jell-O bear, so it must have been someone else.

“A dragon?” Lila frowned. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“Is that bad?”

She reached down and touched the metal case on the floor by her legs. “These are dragon artifacts,” she said. “They’re illegal—and dangerous, in the wrong hands—so if your friends happen to be extremely law-abiding, they could rat me out. And if they happen to be dragons, they would sense the magic.”

“Why are they illegal?” he asked. “Because of the danger?”

“Partly. It’s complicated.” She sighed. “There’s real purebred dragons—the Draken—and then there’s Wild Dragons, who mated with humans or other shifters. The Draken left this world and went back to the Dragonlands over a thousand years ago.”

Damien’s brain was spinning. “Hold on. There’s other worlds?”

“Ohhh, hooman. So much you don’t know. The Dragonlands were the first world, so all the other worlds are connected to them. Then there’s the spirit world, and this world. I guess others, too, but I never learned about them.”

There went that roller coaster he’d felt back in the motel room. Everything was different from how most people thought. Fantasy movies were fucking real.

“Mind—blown,” was all he could say.

“Poor little hooman.” She patted his arm and he play-slapped her away. That made her smile. “Anyway, any Draken artifacts in this world still technically belong to the Draken, and because they’re so powerful and dangerous, by shifter law they have to be returned to the Dragonlands. So if your friends rat me out to the Shifter Council, they’ll take the artifacts from me.”

The Shifter Council? So now shifters had their own government? Damien thought his head was going to explode.

Lila said fiercely, “I can’t let anyone take them away from me. Not after all I’ve been through. I’d rather die.”

“Hey.” He reached over and touched her hand. “If you don’t want to give them back to the Draken, then you shouldn’t have to. Fuck their rules.”

“No, you don’t get it. They need to be returned to the Draken House of Makek-Dur. But I have to do it, and I have to do it by turning them over to the Lord High Commander of the Lion Guard of the House of Makek-Dur. I have to.”

There was that intensity in her voice that she always got when she talked about her mission. He got that it had been passed down from her father, but he still wasn’t sure why it was such a life-and-death thing to her.

“Okay.” He wrapped his hand gently around her wrist. “But… there’s more to this than you’ve told me. I wish you’d explain. Then maybe I can help you better.”

“I don’t need any help!” she burst out. “I’m—”