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A snippy reply was on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to hold back. Things had devolved quickly and some time apart would not only allow her to cool down and regroup, but to also find out a little more about Stonefire’s leader from the human sacrifice she was here to visit, Melanie Hall.
“Fine, I’ll come round about seven p.m.” She stood up and held the manila folder against her chest. She wanted to walk out without a word, but after working with Marcus, Skyhunter’s leader, she decided to fall back on the other clan’s protocol to avoid angering Bram further. “May I be dismissed?”
Something she might call amusement flashed in his eyes. She clenched her jaw and wondered why following protocol would be funny.
Then, despite her slowly simmering temper, she forgot about everything else as Bram stood up, filling her vision with a broad chest and strong, muscled arms cradling a crying baby.
She finally forced her gaze up to meet the tall dragon-shifter’s light blue eyes, but his expression was back to that bloody unreadable one. He nodded. “You may go, Evie Marshall.”
She blinked. He did know her name after all, and she sort of like how it sounded in his Scottish accent with a hint of Northern English. Maybe one of his parents was Scottish and the other English. That would explain it.
Get it together, Evie. She wasn’t here to get to know the man; at least, not until she’d secured her safety.
Evie nodded. “Right, till tonight then.”
She turned before Bram could say anything else and decided what the hell; she should make an impression. She carefully swayed her hips as she made her way across the floor. It was ridiculous, but she swore she could feel his eyes on her quite sizable arse.
Maybe, despite the rough start, she had a chance after all.
Chapter Two
If Evie’s newfound hope at maybe succeeding with Bram wasn’t enough, she didn’t stumble or trip over her heels the entire way to Melanie Hall’s house.
Even if she had, it wasn’t like her assigned guard would have noticed. After asking to see Melanie, the dragonman had just kept walking, expecting her to follow. But he looked young, maybe twenty, and all dragon-shifter males were broody and irritable at that age. After all, according to her textbooks, that was when their inner dragons started demanding sex on a more regular basis.
Dacian stopped in front of a two-story stone cottage with what she assumed were bushes in front of it. Having spent a good chunk of her life in London, Evie was no gardener, but the vegetation was definitely wild.
Since her brain always did that, fluttered about from one topic to the next, she merely brushed it aside and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, it opened to reveal yet another tall, muscled dragonman holding a baby.
Really, did all of the dragon-shifter males around Stonefire go around carrying babies?
As he glared down at her, the male patted the small baby’s back, as if he were burping the little one, and growled before saying, “I don’t know who you are and I don’t like it.”
This dragonman’s accent was purely from the North, unlike Bram’s. “I’m Evie Marshall with the Department of Dragon Affairs. Your clan leader should have notified you of my upcoming visit. Is Melanie around?”
“Melanie is busy. You can wait out here until she’s done.”
If she thought Bram had stoked her temper, this man had done it with a handful of sentences. Luckily, she didn’t need to try to seduce him, so she put on her take-no-shit attitude and said, “Look, I get that you might not like me. Most dragon-shifters don’t like the DDA, but it’s my job to make sure Melanie Hall is well and I’m not leaving until I see her. Now, where is she?”
Before the dragonman could reply, a female voice drifted down the stairs behind him. “Tristan, who’s there? Is it the DDA?”
So, he’d known full well who she was. Well, if he was going to play games, so would she. She shouted loud enough that the woman would be able to hear her. “Yes, I’m Evie Marshall. Can you tell your dragonman to let me in?”
There was a snort from Dacian’s general direction, but when she glanced over, he had the same expressionless face as before.
Tristan said, “Shut it, Dacian, or I’ll tell all of the young females you have herpes. Then you’d only have your hand for relief, and it would get quite tired before long.”
Evie blinked and looked back to the dragonman with the baby, but he was still burping the little one with his hardass expression unchanged.
Before Dacian could reply, thuds sounded down the stairs at the same time as the American female voice said, “Tristan, move and let her in.”
After one more good glare, Tristan stepped aside to reveal a smiling, short woman wearing loose clothing with another baby in her arms.
Melanie put out her hand and Evie took it to shake. As Melanie dropped her hand, she said, “Sorry about Tristan. The babies are barely a month old, and to say he is protective would be an understatement.”
Tristan stepped closer to Melanie. As the other woman leaned against her dragon-shifter, a surge of jealousy shot through Evie; due to the death threats and the dragon hunters, she’d accepted she’d never have that kind of closeness, but sometimes she wished it could be different.
Rather than think of what she couldn’t change, Evie focused back on the present. “While Skyhunter never had a human sacrifice stay on after a birth, the male dragon-shifters were always protective of their young.” She tilted her head. “May I come in?”
