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"Calm down,"Ty said as I paced the firehouse. "You can't do anything about it until your shift is over either way. I'm sure she is fine."
I scoffed out a harsh sound at my friend and stomped back across the room.
"Rai—"
"She hasn't answered a text in over twenty-four hours. Your parents haven't seen her. What if the demons got her again? What if they are torturing her right now?" A puff of smoke leaked out with my whispered words. My dragon wanted to leave, to say to hell with this mortal job and find his mate.
"Her location shows Fantasia, she is probably with Lex." He was right, and it wasn't like we were exclusive. At least she had made no such promise to me. I hadn't so much as looked at another girl since I kissed her.
"She never stays that long. What if she lost her phone and the demons kidnapped her from the club?" My voice rose a little, and I glanced sharply at Carl, but luckily he wasn’t paying us any attention. I couldn't stay here. "I have to go, Ty, I can't stay here while she could be in danger."
"In danger of too much sex." He grimaced when my head whipped back in his direction. "Come on, you know she has a weakness for that demigod, I think he is the only one she has had more than a one-night stand with."
"You know way too much about your sister's sex life," I grumbled, but he was right.
"But I know what I'm talking about," he replied. "I thought you were going to fix this issue and date her yourself."
I glared at him. He laughed and shrugged. "Don't you think I've tried? I told her how I feel."
"But did you tell her aboutyou?" His gaze darted to Carl lounging on the sofa across the room. I knew what he was asking.
"No, she doesn't know that I like to cosplay."
He laughed again. I was glad he was getting enjoyment out of my pain. "You should definitely tell her. I think she would understand."
"What if she doesn't, and she runs for the hills or attempts to murder me?"
"No lady is gonna murder someone because you like to pretend to be a video game character," Carl grumbled, joining our conversation. He had heard more than we both had thought.
"You know it is more than video game characters," Ty replied. "It includes lots of different things, TV shows, anime, fantasy characters, furries, just to name a few."
Carl eyed me before he asked, "You like to dress up like an animal?"
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. "More like a fantasy creature."
"She should understand. Maybe she would dress up with you," the old man said gruffly. He was probably the closest thing I had to a father figure since coming here. Sure, Ty's parents were nice, but his dad was a little distant since he found outwhat I was, though he seems to be a little more open to it lately, encouraging the relationship with his daughter. He was still nice, but I could feel that difference.
"Maybe," I murmured as I leaned against the wall.
It wasn't like I hadn't thought about telling her this past week. Before this past week, but now that a relationship with her might actually be a thing, I didn't want secrets to tear us apart. And they would if she found out another way. What if Lex told her? Was that why she was still at Fantasia? Or that God, Alastor, he could easily tell her. Shit. My fingers scraped against my scalp as I groaned in frustration. I felt like a caged animal. I supposed anyone that had to work for a living knew that feeling.
I plucked my phone from my jeans again and looked at the string of texts I had sent her. She hadn't even checked one of them. With a sigh, I straightened up and paced across the room again. I was going to wear a hole in this floor before it was time to leave. My thirty-six-hour shift was almost done. As long as there were no fires, I'd be free to go in a short forty-five minutes.
"Raiden, sit the fuck down. You are giving me anxiety," Ty barked. When I swung my gaze over to him, his leg was bouncing in a rapid tempo, and he rolled out his shoulders. "She is fine. When she finally checks her phone, she will tell you that herself. I would know it if something happened to my sister."
Of course, he would. They had that crazy link they never talked about. It was what led us to her tied to that tree when her phone had been lying on the kitchen counter at home. He knew something was wrong and sensed her nearby when we were checking on that burn line. I forced myself to drop into the seat next to him.
"You'd tell me though, right?"
"You two have the strangest relationship," Carl grumbled, and picked up the discarded crossword puzzle he had been doing.
We ignored him, because we knew what he said was true. Ty was the brother I wished for when I was a young whelp. Until the rebels had stolen it from me, in the same killing strike that eliminated my whole family. But when I ran from the massacre, like my mother told me to, I fell into the portal to this realm. A young couple found me wandering in the unfamiliar world full of moving steel monsters and towering buildings that rivaled my mountain home. They took me in, going through the legal steps to adopt me when no one stepped forward to claim me.
Ty had been on the playground when they brought me out to play. The immense structure intimidated me, and he was there to talk me down the slide, teach me there was nothing to be afraid of. Both he and his sister taught me so much about life here. My new parents could hardly keep me home once we became friends. Then that day in the woods when a few bullies tried to jump Ty and me, my dragon burst from me to protect my friend like I hadn't been able to do with my family. The boys ran screaming away from me. Of course, no one believed their tales of me being a dragon, and Ty backed me up. He hadn't even acted like he feared what I was.
So, yeah, our friendship was unconventional.
"Yeah, Rai, I'd tell you." He leaned back on the back two legs of the chair and snagged up the Rubix cube he had been trying to figure out. I watched for a few minutes as he mixed it up even more than it had been to start with. The only person I knew that could do one of those puzzles successfully was Sammy.
