Page 5 of Darkhan

Harmony stared at him, her mind not processing hisstrange words. The subtlest hint of an accent flared in his voice when he had spoken that time, too faint to identify but adding to his allure.Allure I am ignoring.She pursed her lips and repeated what he’d said to herself. “Is that your name?”

He inclined his head. “Yes. And to answer the rest of your accusations, I do not take you as stupid, nor do I have any ill intentions toward you. Whatever you’re running from, Harmony, you are safest with me. But I cannot remedy your problem without knowing what it is, so no, I have not let you out of the car. Nor will I, while you have neither a destination nor proper footwear.”

She scoffed before she could stop herself. “Youcost me my footwear!”

He arched a brow. “Those worn-out slippers were little more than tissue paper.” In a fluid movement he bent forward and pulled both her feet up onto his lap, physically twisting her sideways on the seat in the process.

Harmony let out a yelp in surprise. “What are you doing?”

Zeno curled both hands around the tops of her feet, just shy of her ankles, and squeezed gently. “Making sure you aren’t bleeding, Little Dove.” He moved his hands up the length of her feet in a caress she would have called tender under any other circumstance. His mesmerizing gaze had dropped to her feet as well, and despite the angle he’d given himself, he didn’t seem to be making any effort to sneak a peek up her skirt.

Harmony squirmed, her face heating as his fingers moved around to her exposed soles and her weakness was revealed. Her feet were horrendously ticklish. “D-don’t!”

Zeno chuckled, the sound low and rumbly. She could feel the vibration of it through her legs and it sent a very different vibration through her body. He continued gently sweeping his fingers over her feet, even inspecting her toes and rubbing her heels, before finally dragging his gaze back up to hers. “It seemsI owe those flimsy slippers of yours an apology. They at least did their job.”

She wasn’t sure what sound she made, or even how to describe the feeling as it crawled up her chest. It was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, blended with a gasp of relief. “You … you really…” What she wanted to ask sounded so stupid, andfeltstupid, but it needed to be asked. She licked her lips and tried again. “You were really just checking to see if my feet were okay?”

Zeno inclined his head, rubbed one thumb across the inner curve of her ankle, and gently returned her feet to the floor. When he straightened, and after she had resituated herself, he met her increasingly confused stare. “I will never lie to you, Harmony.”

Warmth blossomed in her chest for no reason whatsoever. She pushed her face into a frown despite the feeling. “You expect me to believe that?”

He didn’t blink. “I hope you’ll allow me the opportunity to prove it.”

She should have anticipated that response. Then again, she could never have anticipated any of this—any of the events of the afternoon. So Harmony replayed everything Zeno had said to her since their surprise encounter, searching for a single clear contradiction. The only thing she could find was the whole possible-kidnapping thing. And something inside of her insisted she consider that he’d been gentle with her at every turn. A fantastic deception, or proof of his claim?He asked for an opportunity.She’d lost her mind if she was even considering believing him, but she wasn’t sure what more she had to lose.

Consciously uncrossing her arms in an effort to not exude such shut-off body language, Harmony posed a theoretical question. “So, if I asked to go to the airport?” He had said something about her having a destination, so making thescenario specific seemed more sensible.

His brow twitched almost imperceptibly. “I would insist on a detour to acquire you new shoes,” he said, tone calm.

He’s really hung up on that.“But you would take me to the airport?”

“Yes,” Zeno said. “I would take you to the airport.”

Harmony studied him. “And you’d let me go into the airport? Board a plane of my choosing?”

Another whisper of a smirk teased his lips, just for a second. “I appreciate your cleverness, Little Dove. And yes, I would.”

She warred with herself on whether she should believe him. His responses seemed sincere, but how well could she really trust her own judgment? She pushed the concern down. There was another question she needed to ask. No more theoretical crap. It was easy enough to pass those tests. “Then … why?”

One of his dark brows arched up his forehead again.

Harmony made a vague sweeping gesture to the cabin of the vehicle surrounding them. “Why all this? Why give a darn about me? Why the pledge of eternal honesty?”Okay, phrasing it like that makes it sound a little dramatic.But he had said “never.”

Zeno made a sound like a muted sigh. “It might be too soon for that answer, Little Dove.”

She frowned. “So you won’t lie to me, you’ll just straight up refuse to answer.”

He held her stare with faintly narrowed eyes. “Tell me this: did you run from the vermin who put his hands on you because of what hedid, or because of what heis?”

The breath lodged in her throat and Harmony’s eyes blew wide. She barely registered the sensation of the car coming to a stop. Her heart leapt back into overdrive as a new realizationrushed through her. This man who may have kidnapped her or may have deluded himself into thinking he was her rescuer was like Patrick Eades. He was a shifter.

She knew they existed outside of her neighborhood, she wasn’t that ignorant, but she’d let her guard down anyway. She hadn’t considered she would somehow run into one once she’d put that comparatively small section of New York behind her. She was a fool.

Chapter Three

She was a human. Of fucking course his mate was a human. It was no wonder he hadn’t found her yet in all his travels. The beautiful, tiny woman whose scent had slammed into him like a fortified castle wall looked barely old enough to drink by her government’s standards. Yet, for a long moment, as Zeno had stared at her on that sidewalk, he’d wanted nothing more than to drop to his knees and drown in her. He remembered hearing that dragons knew their mates immediately. He’d always wondered if it was a scent thing or some intuitive line-of-sight awareness, and having experienced it, he still wasn’t sure he could explain.

It was simply everything.

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