Logan stepped closer, his eyes going to slits. “It’s not fine and I’ll never let it happen again.” The sincerity in his voice, the loyalty, it knocked the breath right out of me.
I felt my dragon rising up, sending warm pulses of heat through me. All I could do was nod. Logan tucked a naked arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his body, and walked me the rest of the way out of the club like a treasured item.
“Nice shoulder lock on that guy,” Keegan said as he walked next to us as we made our way to where the rest of the pack stood at the front of the club.
Logan just gave his friend a side look and something passed between them, causing Keegan to smile raucously.
“Why do they call us ‘mutts?’” I whispered.
Keegan groaned. “Because even though most of the trash in here are barely ten percent sorcerer, they still hold themselves above us. Wolf is the most common shifter animal and to them we are little more than dogs.”
Well, at least we knew that Eva’s spell worked. To everyone in here we smelled like wolf shifters.
“You said you had a car around here?” Logan asked me. I was so close to him that I could feel the heat of his breath.
“Yeah, but it’s full of stuff, so it can only fit two people.” I had been in a transition period of my life when the Grand Canyon fall happened. And by transition, I mean homeless and sleeping in my car.
Logan nodded as we reached Nadine and the others. “Keegan, I’ll go with Sloane to grab her car. Then let’s all meet at the ranch. We need to regroup on the living situation. Can you run by the house and pick up Mittens? Pack some of our stuff?”
Keegan nodded. “No problem. See you there.”
Having a half-naked sexy dragon shifter with his arm around me … while he made plans to save his pet kitten … made my ovaries ache for his babies.
“Ready?” Logan looked down at me and I nodded, pretty sure that if I spoke I might say something stupid like, ‘I’m still in heat.’
What had I gotten myself into with this dragon shifter?
6
IT WAS FREEZING out and we were both half naked, Logan with his shirt off, me with my ass hanging out of his shirt. We were quite the pair as we walked side by side down Main Street towards my silver RAV-4. When my mom died, there was a small life insurance policy through her job as a school teacher, enough to pay for her cremation and this car. I didn’t have payments on it, and since I bought it with her death money, it was special to me. Almost like she had given it to me. Although I would rather have my mother back than any car in the world.
“When I realized the hunters were following me, I kept my car here and grabbed a rental. I didn’t want them to learn my name or license plate or anything,” I told Logan as we waited for a car to pass.
“Smart,” Logan said as we crossed the street. “We’ll need to talk about that. I’ll need details about who came for you. How many times? Were there different groups? Stuff like that.” I could see goosebumps had broken out on his tattooed, tanned chest.
Pulling my gaze away from the eye candy, I pointed to my car. “That’s me.” Bending low, I pulled the magnetic hide-a-key off my bumper. Every time I shifted, my clothes tore, so I had lost my original set of keys when I fell. I had no belongings left except this car, which luckily still held my wallet and laptop. My cellphone and camping pack were sitting at the bottom of the Grand Canyon along with my hiking clothes.
Unlocking the car, I jumped in and pulled a stack of drawings and colored pencils off of the seat so Logan could sit down. One drawing fell and Logan picked it up. It was a drawing of the sun setting over the Phoenix skyline. In the center was a girl, me. I always painted me whether it looked like me or not. The girl had an eye patch on, was missing a leg, and had blood on her shirt. The title was “Love is War.” I drew it to help cope with my mom’s death. It was dark but one of my favorites.
“You’re an artist?” Logan seemed surprised.
I shrugged. “Kind of. I mean, not a lot of jobs for illustrators, so it’s more of a hobby.” In order to actually make money as an artist I would probably have to get an hourly job at a gallery or take up graphic design. I had a few graphics classes in college, but I couldn’t get past the computer aspect of it. Art should be done by messy hands on grainy paper.
“This is pretty amazing.” Logan was sitting in the front seat, awestruck, staring at the Phoenix skyline drawing.
I suddenly felt naked, like fully naked. Art was personal and it wasn’t a finished piece.
“Thanks,” I said, snatching the piece from his hands and tossing it in the back as I cranked the heat.
I hopped up on my seat, on my knees, and turned around so I could rifle through my clothes. Pulling out a wrinkled t-shirt and jeans, I spun back around. Logan was looking at the back seat. My blanket and pillow were still laid out from when I had slept here last.
An awkward silence stretched out as I wiggled into the jeans and then whipped off Logan’s shirt, tossing it to him. After putting on my own shirt, I turned to face him.
“Alright, what do you need to know?” I asked, getting down to business. Anything I could tell him that would keep the hunters away from us was fine by me.
Logan eyed the back seat again. “Are you homeless?” His voice held not one ounce of judgment. It was full of compassion, and it made emotion rise up in my throat.
I didn’t see how this was relevant to the hunters finding me…
“Yes. I graduated in late May, and some savings kept me financially afloat through summer, but I’ve been sleeping in my car for about three months—saving up for an apartment. I had plans to travel, so it’s not a big deal.”
When Jen got back from Europe, we were going to move in together. Until then, I was going to be a car-sleeping hippie and see the country. But Logan couldn’t let it go.
He pressed. “Your mother passed, but do you have anyone else? An aunt? Cousins?”
Way to shine a light on my shitty family-less life, buddy.
“No. I’m all alone in this cruel world,” I said dramatically.
He smiled. “Right. Sorry. Umm, the first set of hunters that came for you. Were they the same ones we killed a few days ago? When we found you in the woods?”
I shook my head. “No. The first set found me a couple hours after I had first transformed. I had stolen clothes from a nearby ranger station at the canyon, and when I came out they were there. They wore olive green army fatigues and had that weird glowing red knife.”
Logan looked distressed; his brow furrowed as he pinned me with a gaze. “You’re sure this was a different set of guys?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m an artist. I do faces for a living. One guy had a big red beard and scar over his eye. The other was bald, and the third was a female with black hair.”
Logan cursed. “Start the car. Let’s get out of here.”
Chills ran up my arms. “Why, what’s wrong?”
Logan stared out into the dark cold night. “Those hunters that you lost up at the Grand Canyon will still be looking for you. How did you get away?”
I sighed, throwing the car into drive. “I flew.”
Logan’s eyes bugged out as he gave me directions to the ranch house. “You flew! I haven’t flown in years.” He sounded envious.
I shrugged. “I panicked. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that I hadn’t accidentally dropped acid or something.”
Logan chuckled. “I’m sorry about before. It’s hard for me and the others to grasp what it must be like for you. I can understand your wanting to leave.”
Guilt gnawed at me. These guys had saved my life, and twice now I had tried to figure out how to ditch them. “I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, and was rewarded with a sexy grin.
“Is it because I gave you a hundred grand? I was hoping that would make you guilty enough not to leave us,” he said.
Hah! I laughed a genuine laugh that felt rare in these dark days. “Is that real? The money. I mean, I don’t even know how she will get it into my account. I only gave her my first and last name.”