Page 2 of The Dragon's Stone Hearted Mate
“I’ve kept him alive this long,” Preston said, projecting his voice so that Ni heard it over the phone.
“He better keep that up,” Ni sighed. “I love you. Be careful.”
“Love you. Kiss the baby for me.”
When the call ended, I turned to face my twin. Preston shot me a ‘told you so’ look.
“He can’t live without you,” he teased me.
“He can and he is, and he will,” I said. “The same applies to you.”
“Are you going to let them help?” Preston asked.
“I am but there isn’t anything to help with right now,” I shrugged. “Besides, there are too many tiny things inside the store for the baby to be here. There’s no babyproofing this place.”
I shuffled through the mail. Most of it was small parcels filled with items folks wanted me to take a look at. Most ofthem would be mundane. They always were but every once in a while, we’d find something actually magical or cursed. Curses and hexes weren’t as common as people claimed. Most magical practitioners didn’t have enough rage to cast magic that would do any real harm and most of those didn’t bother to curse objects. Bones carried magic just fine and most of their enemies had bones.
There was a letter from a friend in London. Crilus. He ran a bar there now even though he hailed from the Raven Hollow Wolf Territory on the other side of the continent. Then on the very bottom of the pile was a postcard. I squinted at the card, willing myself to turn over the photo of a horned statue surrounded by trees and to read the back. Preston peered over my shoulder and flipped it for me.
“YOU’LL COME WHEN HE HAS MADE UP HIS MIND!” was scrawled across the back of the postcard.
“Is this a joke?” Preston asked. “Dern said the first time they just yoinked people out of their bodies.”
“Maybe they’ve changed how they recruit? Dern was practically a bajillion years old,” I said and bit my lip. “Don’t tell the others. Not our parents and certainly not Ni or Teddy.”
“Ni and Teddy aren’t my friends. They’re yours,” he shrugged. “We don’t socialize.”
“Not our parents,” I said again because he hadn’t mentioned them. “The last thing I need is them trying to keep me bedbound. We don’t even know if this is real or who the guy is or what he’s deciding.”
“Fine but then you have to stick close to me,” he said. “Mori, I know you have this whole independent wolf thing going on, but someone has to watch your body when they yoink you out of it.”
“I know,” I sighed. “I don’t know why they can’t just be straight forward.”
“Because they’re probably dead guys and dead guys are rarely straight forward,” Preston shrugged, looking more like our carrier than ever.
Chapter Two
Morvan
A Therapist’s Office, Moonscale London
“Was that Teal texting you again?” Chole asked, nodding at my phone vibrating across the grey loveseat, tucked away in the corner of her office.
This was only my third appointment with her as my therapist, but she knew that almost every text I received these days was from Teal. Everyone else had given up on me reaching out but I couldn’t shake off my ex-best friend. Though, his texts were coming in less often as if he finally took my words seriously. A few months ago, I’d told him to stay out of my life. His grandfather ordered the execution of my brother. No, not even execution. His grandfather – Clarence Fucking Moonscale – ordered the assassination of my brother on a public street in broad fucking day light.
My dragon snorted inside his inner sanctum, and I let out a long, slow breath. My inner beast had turned the scenario over and over again. Torvan had tried to blow up Teal and his mate at Moonglow Cabin and lied about it being an accident. He had hired a hitman to kill me so that he could have our family’s restaurants all to himself. Hell, I’d have given him the damn things if that’s all he wanted. What the hell was wrong with all these jackasses wanting to kill each other? Months after his death I found out that Clarence Moonscale killed the hitman who took the job himself.
“It’s not like we have room to talk,”my dragon chimed into my thoughts before I had the chance to answer Chole’s question.“We kill people too. We’re the reason Patrica – aka the crazy lynx who killed Torvan – knew how to kill that well in the first place.”
“Yeah,” I nodded finally answering Chole’s question, grateful for the moments of time it bought me before we talked about Torvan again. “He doesn’t understand boundaries. He’s codependent with his brothers. Has been the whole time I’ve known him. I don’t think he gets that somethings end. Well, everything ends.”
“Do you want to talk about that?” Chole asked.
The shebear was nearly as tall as me but wore a bright pink floral shirt and a black pencil skirt that fell just below her knees when she sat down. She had dark hair and honey-colored eyes that didn’t leave me from the time I walked in until I left our session. Chole even scribbled notes on her clipboard without looking away from me. Sometimes I wondered if she only pretended to take notes during our sessions.
“About how codependent Teal is?” I asked.
“About everything ending,” she said, her expression serious.
