Page 38 of Don't Tempt Me (Nora Jacobs 4)

The ten minutes it takesto reach South Bass Island are the longest of my life. I’ve never been on a plane, but I’m pretty sure I’m not meant to be in the air. By the time we reach the island, I’m chilled to the bone. As warm as Nick’s dragon is, the wind roaring around me was brutal. My muscles are rubber from being completely clenched the entire ride.

Nick circles the island and touches ground surprisingly gently. I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m never doing that again. Before I can worry about how I’m getting down, Nick shifts. His body blurs, and for a split second I’m surrounded by the tingly sensation of magic. Then I fall. I shriek, and flail my arms, until Nick catches me bridal style. “Nick!” I punch him in the shoulder. “You asshole!”

He sets me on my feet with a shrug. “Sorry. It was the easiest way I could think of to get you down.”

“And if you’d missed?” I start brushing myself off even though I never hit the ground.

“I wouldn’t have missed.”

Ugh. There’s no arguing with the cocky man.

I stretch my sore muscles and take a look around. Or, I try to anyway. If I thought it was dark back on shore, I was mistaken. Out here, so far away from the city with the moon still lost to the cloud-covered sky, it’s nearly impossible to see. As far as I can tell, we’re in a field, and I think there’s a thick wall of trees not too far away. Thankfully, Nick made me put on my big clunky pair of snow boots because I’m standing in probably ten to twelve inches of the stuff. My toes are going to freeze—along with every other part of me—if we stand here long.

As Nick tucks some of my hair back into the fur-lined hood of Charlie’s coat and re-wraps my scarf for me, I realize he’s still dressed. “Hey, how come you still have clothes on?”

Nick arches an eyebrow at me. “Disappointed?”

I tug away from him and roll my eyes. “When Rook or other werewolves shift, they have to strip or they rip out of their clothes. They always shift back nude.”

Nick looks around the field and points toward something I can’t see. “All shifters do that.”

“And that explains exactly nothing to me. How come you’re different?”

“Come on, this way.” He starts guiding me through the dark toward what I think is dense woods. When I start following after him, he says, “I’m not really a shifter.”

I stumble in the deep snow, and Nick catches me by the arm before I fall. Instead of letting me go, he links my arm through his and guides me along like a Boy Scout would help an old lady across a street. He’s not stumbling at all. “Can you see in the dark?”

“Yep.”

Of course he can. Annoying. “So how is it you’re not a shifter when you can shift into a dragon?”

“I’m a different class of underworlder,” Nick explains as we make our way across the dark field arm in arm. “Dragons are what are referred to as mythics. There are a few species out there that are purely magical beings. We were born from magic and are some of the most powerful creatures on Earth. There are so few of us that we’ve become nothing but myth to humans. There are four types of light mythics: dragons, gryphons, phoenixes, and unicorns. We’re—”

“Whoa, wait.” I stumble to a stop. “Are you telling me that there are actualunicorns?”

Even in the dark I can see the sadness in Nick’s expression when he says, “Not many. There’s only one herd left in the entire world. They live in the Redwood forest in California.”

I blink a couple of times, trying to accept this. “That’s…incredible.”

Nick smiles and tugs me into motion again. “They are rather magnificent. Anyway, we’re called the guardians of light because we were born from the most pure form of light magic to be protectors over this world. There are a few dark mythics, too, like hellhounds, gorgon, and kraken. Not many, though; they’re just as rare as we are.”

My mouth falls open. Kraken? Hellhounds? There’s a whole lot more to the underworld than I ever realized.

We reach the trees, and as we pass through the dense grove, Nick grips me a little tighter. After about thirty feet, we hit a narrow road that has been plowed of snow. At the end of the lane, there’s a small farmhouse with the lights on. As we approach, two people come outside. A woman who looks to be in her twenties or thirties throws herself into Nick’s arms and starts sobbing. “Oh, Nikolai!”

Nick hugs the woman and whispers soft words of comfort. It’s both touching and heartbreaking. I step away, wanting to give them some privacy in what is obviously a time of grief for both of them. Again, I wonder what has happened and how it involves Nick.

“Hello,” a gentle voice murmurs.

I jump, startled to see a man standing right beside me. Where in the world did he come from, and how did he get so close to me without me hearing him?

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

This man is powerful. A very strong sidhe. I’m curious how Nick knows them and what we’re doing here.

His face is solemn and full of grief, but the small smile he manages is genuine. “You arrived with Nikolai, yes?”

I press my hand against my frantically beating heart and nod. “Yes. I came with Nick. I’m his…partner.”

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