Page 46 of Outnumbered

“Should we pull out all the prizes so you can decide the winner?” Caleb asked and opened the bag at his feet.

“Do we need a winner?” I asked. “Can we all stay together tonight?”

“We don’t have a bed large enough for all of us,” he reminded me.

“What about sleeping in the living room? We don’t need to be in the same bed, just together.” I wasn’t sure why, but the urge to be with them all was immense.

“Okay,” he said and set a hand on my leg. “We’ll have a sleepover in the living room. I’ll take the cushions off the coach and move the coffee table to give us enough room.”

Leaning over, I kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

He rubbed his cheek against mine and whispered, “Anything for you, my queen.”

Chapter

Thirteen

Iwoke with a start as the building shook.

“Earthquake?” Riddick asked, already on his feet.

We all lay in the living room on the couch cushions, our game last night going until two o’clock in the morning.

Glancing at the clock, I groaned when I realized we had only been asleep for four hours. “It’s too early.”

“That’s not an earthquake,” Caleb said and picked me up. “Come on, sleeping beauty, we need to figure out what’s going on.”

“What?” I asked and blinked the sleep out of my eyes.

“I think someone just bombed our building,” he told me. “Or shot it with magic.”

Instead of heading down towards the entrance, we went up to the roof.

My little garden of herbs was growing nicely despite the cold air.

I shivered in Caleb’s arms as he handed me to Branson. “I’m going to shift into my dragon form and fly up to see what I can find.”

“You can put me down,” I said and kissed his cheek. “I just wasn’t fully awake yet.”

Branson set me down, but immediately wrapped his arm around me and held me against his side to shield me from the wind and provide me warmth.

Caleb flew up into the air in his dragon form and circled the roof.

He truly was a gorgeous dragon.

Dropping back down to us, shifting to human form as he fell, he said, “There’s a group of people along the street shooting magic at the building. We need to evacuate in case they cause it to fall.”

“Fall?” I gasped. All of our belongings were in here.

“There are guards already headed towards them, but better safe than sorry,” he explained. “Triston, you carry Branson and Ember, and I’ll carry Riddick. Riddick and I will head down to help protect the building. You two go to the park across the street and wait there.”

He was always separating our group and I hated it.

Leaning down, he brushed his lips over mine and said, “If anything happens, you run away, you hear me?”

“Not going to happen,” I said and scoffed.

He growled. “Right, fine, just stay safe. Okay?”

---