Page 1 of Darkhan

Chapter One

“E-Excuse me, Mr. Darkhan … you’re smoking.”

Zeno pulled his unfocused gaze up from the mostly melted ice cubes at the bottom of his glass and forced his grip to loosen before the fragile crystal shattered. It wouldn’t do to break the damn thing.

Across from him stood a female he vaguely recognized, dressed in The Gin Room’s staff uniform, and shifting her weight anxiously. It took him another moment to process her words, as well as the thin haze of still-rising smoke between them.

Damn.Zeno willed his temper away from the edge before pushing out a smokeless breath. He set the glass onto the table next to the chair he’d claimed earlier that evening and said, “I apologize. It seems I should take myself elsewhere.” The Gin Room might have been New York’s most shifter-friendly drinking establishment, but they did have rules. Chief among them involved not letting surly dragons lose their tempers.Well…He’d tried to slip himself onto the lineup for that night’s roster, but it turned out the lineup was booked. For at least two whole goddamn weeks. So, no fight club.

Too many alpha shifters and not enough safe space to letout their aggressions.

“Oh, no, sir, I didn’t mean—”

Zeno held up a hand to silence the panicking female. “You couldn’t have kicked me out if you’d tried.” She let out a low hiss of displeasure at his words as he lifted his wallet and extracted two bills, setting them beside the cracked glass. “One for your trouble, one to replace the crystal.” With a final nod, he stepped around her and made his way to the door.

He was still tempted to detour downstairs, but watching the evening’s brawl would only make the itch under his flesh worse. Finding somewhere to safely stretch his wings might also have been a good alternative, but he had things to get done. Things that demanded he stay in the city for the time being. Little, irritating, playing-human things. That was the downside to always making sure he had an income stream.

Zeno tilted his head back as he stepped outside and narrowed his eyes up to the sky. It was late, and New York City was not known for its fresh, clean air. But with his vision he could see enough. Even with the city’s built-up skyline, there was plenty of space for a dragon to fly. If only he could do so without risking another age of dragon hunts.

There was a reason his kind of shifters were so scattered.

He ground his teeth and continued forward. Nearly four hundred years of searching, and still he hadn’t found his fabled mate. He feared sometimes that the century he’d blown off being young and foolish had cost him his future. It made no sense why any dragon wouldn’t be scouring the earth for their destined partner. Nearly all shifters were driven by the need to find and possess their mate. Yet still, his continued to elude him.

Spotting his frustratingly grounded transportation, Zeno moved up to the curb and the sleek black car as two young human females rounded the corner ahead. The stench of mixed alcohol wafted around them, thickening with their overlyvociferous laughter. Zeno would have been content pretending not to notice them, if not for the way they stumbled to a stop and shouted toward him.

“Hey, Sexy Daddy!” Her words were too loud and slurred badly enough that he had to consciously decipher them. Which made it worse.

Zeno let the fire build up his throat just to feel the burn of it, then pushed it back down. He turned only partially, kept one hand on the door and narrowed his eyes at the pair. One wore full-length pants that might have been painted on and likely didn’t cover the crack of her ass—certainly didn’t hide the strap of her thong. The other wore a glittery miniskirt and outrageous heels. Both wore tops designed to emphasize their breasts. No one else had joined them while his back had been turned, and somehow, their glaring vulnerability only agitated Zeno more. “I am not your daddy,” he said sharply. “And you wouldn’t like me if I were.”

The girls broke into giggling fits, leaning into each other to stay upright. The brunette turned her head as if to whisper to her friend, but he didn’t need his heightened hearing to hear every word. “What afox!”

Zeno rolled his jaw.

The other girl, who was apparently the one who’d first called to him, grinned wider. “A silver fox!”

Zeno turned his back and pulled the door the rest of the way open. He wasn’t going to babysit these irksome children.

“He needs a little more silver for that, I think,” the brunette said, her slurred words carrying in his wake as he ducked into the car. “Hey! Wait!”

“Daddy fox!”

Zeno slammed the door shut, and for good measure, pressed the lock button. “Drive.” Maybe he’d clean up his business situation and put New York behind him for good thistime. Maybe the pull he’d felt for this city for the past several decades that had compelled him to keep coming back had been some kind of universal misdirection, a siren song dragging him off course. He leaned back in his seat as the vehicle eased into traffic. That was a thought.

“Home, Mr. Darkhan?” the beta in his driver’s seat asked quietly.

“Yes.”For now.

****

Harmony bit her lips as frustration mounted inside her. How was a person supposed to get a job when so-called entry-level positions required multiple years’ worth of relevant experience?Do they not understand what they’re asking?She jerked the mouse to the side, clicking out of yet another briefly promising option and returning to the list. The imperfect, depressingly small list.

She almost didn’t hear her mother’s shuffling approach in time to close out of the site and pull up the news article she’d left open in another tab.

“Harmony, that’s enough screen time for now.”

Harmony dropped her gaze to the digital clock in the corner and barely kept her expression calm. It was a miracle she’d ever managed to graduate, regardless of how many years the process had taken. “I was in the middle of reading something, can’t I—”

Linda clicked her tongue, rounded the desk, and reached over Harmony’s shoulder. As her finger descended on the button that would shut off the monitor, she said, “You know the rule, Harmony. I gave you an extra thirty minutes since I was busy, but we can’t have you poisoning your mind with all the nonsense on the Internet.” She pulled firmly on the wheeled chair, dragging until Harmony was awkwardly stretched awayfrom the desk entirely, and spun her to the side. “Now stand up, stretch, and get some lemonade. Oh, and go freshen up. We have company coming.”

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