Page 21 of Primal Dragon

“Q?” Henrik’s voice startled her.

She glanced over at him again. “I’m dealing, I guess. Two hours into pretending to be a vampire and I’ve seen real magic, kidnapped a girl, I’m hanging out with a dragon shifter, and I’m headed back to a vampire den to give up the said kidnapped girl. I don’t know how I got here. James let me look into his world through the window. I went with him to a vampire bar once and we left in about five minutes. Apparently, he missed a memo that it was BDSM night or something and there was an orgy going on with a whole lot of biting involved. James didn’t want me seeing it. He’s a little overprotective.”

“You were brave to come looking for him.”

Quinn laughed. “Fuck up is what I keep coming around to. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m mad at him. He left me completely on the outskirts of his life and now I have no way to help him properly. If I knew even one friend of his, I could’ve contacted them days ago. Instead, I’m just thanking every single one of my lucky stars that I got paired with you, seemingly a good guy. What if I ended up with one of the other thugs? I’d probably be dead right now, or heck, kidnapped too.”

“I’d imagine they’re just looking for females, so you’re probably safe on that end. You would’ve just been a vampire’s late-night snack. Or if it was another human, you have a mean swing, you probably would’ve knocked him out cold. I just don’t go unconscious easily.”

“Dragon shifter superpowers or unusually hard head?”

He chuckled. “A little of both. If you ask my brother, it would just be stubbornness.”

“Stubborn is a quality I’ve been labeled with as well.” Quinn sighed.

“At least yours isn’t literally king. It’s his job to tell me what to do.”

Quinn’s brows rose. “King, huh? Does that mean you’re a…a prince?”

“It does.”

“Why are you out in the field? Shouldn’t you be in a castle with guards all around with some sort of secret service that goes out and does this kind of thing?”

He shook his head. “Not with dragon shifter royalty. It’s our job to protect the clan. Our clan needs more protecting that most right now. We need to prove to our clan we can keep them safe. We failed them a little bit over a year ago.”

“Failed how?”

“It’s a long story. Maybe we can share our stories over some drinks sometime.”

Quinn nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

She almost forgot she was in disguise. She’d learned more about Henrik in the very short amount of time she’d known him in the last couple of hours because she was pretending to be someone else. She hated that he didn’t know it was her, but she didn’t know how to tell him.

“How’d did you meet James?”

Quinn’s chest ached at the mention of her friend. She was scared he wasn’t going to be all right or even alive. There was no reason for him to be, not if Stefano found him out. But she feared there was something far worse that could be done to him.

“I actually found him outside a party one night at my college. He was barely alive. It was clear pretty quickly that he wasn’t human. I was freaked out, but he grabbed onto me and he pleaded with me to help him. It’s probably because of his dumb big brown eyes, he reminds me of a Labrador. I helped him to my car and got him into my home somehow. The guy weighs a ton. He’s heavier than a Labrador.”

Henrik chuckled. “Yeah, he’s not a small guy.”

“He told me he needed blood from the tap. So…I helped him.”

“You let him feed on you?”

Quinn nodded slowly. “There was a lot of discussion first. How did it work? How was it going to feel? Was he going to kill me? You know, the important questions. I took a lot on faith that night. I realize now how lucky I am that James was true to his word. He not only kept his word and took minimally what he needed to survive. Once he was well again, he came back around, made sure I was okay. Which he didn’t need to do, but it was nice of him. Since then we’ve been friends. He told me he met me at a low point in his life. He was ready to give up on everything. I gave him renewed hope. That was also about the time he decided he was going to try and change things from the inside. He was done playing by the rules that had been set out for him when he was turned.”

“Yeah, James wasn’t always such a good guy, or so says one of his vampire buddies,” Henrik replied.

“Everyone has a past. It’s all what you do with the day in front of you, right?” Quinn said.

Henrik glanced over at her. “I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t thought about that. I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but paying for the sins of my past and nothing is ever good enough.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the phone in her hand pinged. The text message on the screen read:

Bossman: If you come back without your partner, you will be disqualified. You have to be a team player to be on my team.

Quinn smirked. She’d almost taken out her partner and herself out of the competition, and now they were possibly going to win since they had help from a witch and another human. Now she was playing with the bad guys and she could end up just like James.

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