Page 11 of Smoke and Flame

“Fiction.We only attack when attacked.It has been centuries since that has happened.”He moved closer to her.“Shifters have lived among humans since before the recording of time.We were not the ones—”

Kai shook her head, refusing to believe him or hear his words.“If that’s true.Maybe you all are the ones responsible for the Great Catastrophe.”

His laughter roared out of him at her absurdity.“Dragon shit.Humans are the destroyers.Nature.The planet.Each other.Preternatural entities’ makeup is different.Not that we were not affected in our ways by the fuck ups of man.But the fortune of the species kept us from burying our families under the sand.”

“Well, goodie, goodie for lizards and things.Maybe that’s why your kind has thrived through this, while we...we—”

“Stop calling us lizards and reptiles.”He cut her off.He understood that she was angry, but he wouldn’t allow her to cast the blame on her governing body at his council’s feet.“Humankind is responsible.We didn’t build the wall.”

She faced off with him, her jaw clenched and her lips tight.

He exhaled to release the tension in his body and the room.What was it about this woman?His mate.She stood against him, fierce and bold.It wouldn’t be hard for him to imagine her showing the same force to defend her young.

“Enough.I’ll explain more later.Now you need care and food.We must go.”

“I won’t leave Morlie until I know she is all right.”She glanced over her shoulder.Smog still filled the room behind her.“And I can see her.”

“That will take some time.”He listened in on the young one.Her breaths were still shallow but even.

“How long?”

“Weeks, perhaps, before the room clears and she awakens.”He set his hands on her hips.

Kai jerked at his touch as she snapped her head around but remained.“What did you do to her?”

He took a moment before speaking, remembering to offer her the description in words she could understand; dragon’s tongue was hard to comprehend for those not born to it.“Deatach glan heylmeans pure smoke healing.”He gestured to the room with his chin.“There is a difference in the smoke we can create through our dragons.As I explained before, we don’t have the needs of medical attendants as humans do.However, there are rare times when our kind is attacked in walking form, and they can’t shift to their dragon.If helped in time, a healing smog can save them.We discovered years ago it worked on humans as well.”

“How many humans have you healed of XD87867?”

“Enough.”This was not the time to share the history of what had transpired between her people and the council.Gazing through the smog to see her sister on the bed, he knew the discussion would raise itself soon.“We will return once you have refreshed yourself.Come.”

Her steps started tentatively behind him.They gained confidence as she followed him.

“If my sister doesn’t pull through, I will hold you responsible, Aodh.And it will be you on that bed.”She brushed past him out the door into the sunlight.

Aodh admired her strength, even as the scent of fear still braided through her aroma.He couldn’t bring himself to snuff out the courage in her threat by telling her that, as his mate, she would never be able to cause harm to him.It would kill her.

~YH~

“Right.”

Kai followed Aodh’s direction and opened the entrance on her right.In her anger, she’d acted hasty and forgot she had no damn clue where to go when she walked out of the room where Morlie fought for her life.She stopped inside the glass door.Rumbles and laughter came in waves along the rough, stone-crafted corridor before her.She couldn’t see where it led, but she was intrigued to meet others of his kind.

“Up the stairs to the right.”

She glanced over her shoulder and eyed the big shadow behind her.“Why up?”

“There’s privacy for you.I’m sure you would rather be in a more presentable state when I introduce you to my thunder.”Aodh sniffed and arched a brow at her.

Did he just smell me?The rudeness.She knew she smelled.A place to bathe wasn’t easy to find in the Dispatch District, especially when she’d sold her and Morlie’s home weeks back for money for medicine and food.But the massive man didn’t have to make it seem like people would fall out in her wake from her stench.She stomped up the high stairs.It frustrated her that the thick stone seemed to absorb her weight, mocking her.

The other thing that aggravated her was her response to her shadow—thedragon-shifter.Kai had no damn clue what that meant.She would have to unpack that later.Too much had happened on this day, and she couldn’t process everything.Now, the man.When she stood close to him, her eyes met his chest, and oh, what a chiseled chest it was, decorated by the same colorful tattoo-like designs that covered his arms.They fascinated her.Her fingers tingled with the desire to reach out and touch, trace them.

His size dwarfed her, and she wasn’t a short person or small for that matter.From his intense, magical, turquoise-opal gaze to his strong, square jawline, the man had a face that took her breath away.She couldn’t deny it, not to herself.His thick, ebony brows seemed to make his gaze foreboding.Aodh’s stare made her heart beat with trepidation...and anticipation.Before her parents’ death, she and Morlie had a good, simple life.In the education center, she’d flirted with guys and even found hidden corners for stolen kisses.None of them short-circuited her senses like Aodh.The man’s perfectly formed fire-kissed lips captivated her, even when she didn’t want them to.

After they had begun to establish life above ground, between work and sickness, men weren’t even an afterthought.But around Aodh, the man, the king, the shifter, he consumed her thoughts.It made her feel guilty because her mind should be on her sister.However, since the moment he stood before her beside the truck, she could feel him.No other way to describe it.When he was close to her, her body felt the heat of him.It was like standing just close enough to a furnace; it was seductively warm.However, you knew that if you touched it, it would burn fast and hot.That was Aodh.

Even with the alerts going off in her mind, her body yearned to lean into him and find comfort and...

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