I sighed in relief. “Right.” Man, I was getting paranoid. I really needed to hear back from Eva already.
I told Nadine I would change and meet her downstairs and she left. I had promised to help cook for this bunch, so I needed to pull through. If I thought we might stay here a while, I would plant a garden. I hadn’t had a back yard since my mom passed, and it would be nice to garden again. It reminded me of her.
After cleaning up, I put on my favorite pair of tight cargo pants and a black t-shirt with one of my drawings screen-printed on it. It was an iridescent hummingbird drinking soda from a straw. I grabbed my new phone and tucked it into my back pocket as I made my way down the stairs. As I was rounding the corner, I overheard Dom and Logan talking.
“It took every ounce of willpower I had not to gut them all,” Dom seethed, and I knew right away who he was talking about. Druids.
Logan chuckled. “You know, beheading them is my favorite.”
My stomach churned.
Dom spoke next, his voice was full of rage: “We should hunt him down. Kill him.”
Logan sighed. “I know and you know that I want nothing more than to have a world where druids don’t exist, but … I tried, and he’s too powerful.”
Now that had my attention. “Who?” I asked, and Logan spun around, took one glance at my t-shirt, and then a half smile tugged at his lips.
“Did you draw that?” he asked, indicating my shirt.
Shock ripped threw me. How the hell would he know that? “Yeah…” I said.
He nodded. “It has your style.”
Logan Sharp knew my drawing style? My dragon coiled tightly inside of me and a pulse of warmth shot down my legs, making a slow burn start between my thighs. Okay, it was official. I needed a hysterectomy or something. My dragon lady parts were malfunctioning and I was stuck in heat.
I changed the subject. “You were saying you tried but he was too powerful. Tried what?”
Logan shared a look with Dom and brought his left arm up to rub his right shoulder. “About five years ago I tried to kill Ardan. We hunted him down and I tried to take him out. I thought if I could kill the evil master, the minions would … go away.”
Holy shit. “What happened?”
The room had quieted. Sophie, who was cooking in the kitchen, had stopped, and Gear and Cooper, who were playing video games, dropped their controllers; Nadine stopped sharpening some knives. They all looked at Logan.
“I nearly died. He tore my arm right off. Keegan got me out. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made it.”
My mouth dropped open. “The master of all evil druids tore your arm off?”
He nodded, rubbing that spot again. “Yes. It took about nine months to grow back.”
My eyes widened. “GROW BACK?”
Logan chuckled. “Dragons are descended from lizards. So yeah, it grows back as long as you don’t bleed out.”
Holy freaking crap! I’ll admit I had the same thought. Take out this Ardan character and save the world, but clearly that wasn’t on the agenda. Unless you wanted to lose an arm.
“Didn’t he see you? I mean, now he knows what you look like…” I mused.
Logan shook his head. “I wore a ski mask. We all did.”
Geez. I couldn’t imagine getting your arm ripped off. If I thought Steven and those other meatheads were scary, then I didn’t even want to meet this Ardan character.
“Alright, enough storytime, I need help in the kitchen,” Sophie announced, pulling my thoughts away from Logan’s story.
“Right,” I muttered, and threw myself into the task at hand—making forty chicken soft tacos for ten hungry shifters.
“So, do we know anything about the new recruits?” I asked Sophie as I diced fresh tomatoes.
Sophie and I had thawed a little; she had seemed friendly when I was helping her in the kitchen, so I thought I would take advantage of it.
Sophie shrugged. “Just that they are twin brother and sister. Both bear shifters.”
I dropped the knife I had been holding and it clattered onto the granite counter. “Bear shifters!” I whisper screamed.
Sophie tipped her head back and laughed. “You’re a dragon.”
True. Enough said.
By the time we were done frying forty taco shells, my wrist was sore. And I wasn’t sure we’d have enough food. Bear shifters … they must eat more in one meal than I did in the entire day. Come to think of it, my appetite had increased a little since I started shifting, but not as much as the others. I wondered if it was because I was only half dragon. In the end, Sophie and I decided to take the leftover ground-up chicken and make a quick chicken enchilada soup to dip the tacos in. Sophie would never say it, but she liked watching me cook; she was learning. I’d already taught her how to make an avocado aioli and she’d actually written the recipe down. I decided not to pull the boys in for their cooking lessons until tomorrow.
We were just setting the pot of chili on the dinner table when the front door opened. Sophie and I turned at the same time as the two giant shifters walked in, dwarfing the alpha. The guy was nearly seven feet tall and packed with more muscle than a professional wrestler. He wasn’t my type but he was good looking, I would give him that. Caramel skin, brown hair, and hazel eyes. His sister was nearly six-feet-tall, her hair long and curly, hanging low about halfway down her back.
Sophie leaned in closely and whispered into my ear. “Dibs.”
I just smiled, secretly glad that her sexual attention was pointed away from Logan.
“Everyone!” Keegan announced. “This is Roxy and Ruben. They are bred from a long line of skyborn protectors and are very excited to be joining the team.”
Gear and Cooper rushed in to introduce themselves first, while I hung back with Sophie. “So there are people still training their kids to protect the skyborn, even though there is only one left?” I asked her. I had remembered her saying she was trained to protect since the age of three.
Sophie looked over at me with only mild annoyance, which meant I might be growing on her. “First of all, there’s two now. You keep forgetting that. Secondly, yes. My family and dozens of others train their young to protect in the hopes that the remaining skyborn will find them and hire them. The money isn’t great. I could make more doing something else, but protecting Logan … and you … it’s a great honor.”
Wow. That was almost a compliment. “So, if you had kids one day…?” I let the question hang in the air.
Sophie nodded. “They will learn to protect. Just as I did.”
Wow. I imagined there was some secret list out there that Keegan had of shifters who were secret skyborn protectors, and when one died or he needed to add to his pack, he just picked off of his list. Crazy.
“Sloane?” Logan was calling me to the door with his hand outstretched. I stepped forward, taking his hand, and ignored the pulse of heat it caused to creep into my stomach, where my dragon lay resting.
“This is Sloane Murphy, the other skyborn,” he told the twins, and I dropped his hand and waved sheepishly.
Ruben and Roxy both bowed. “It’s an honor to be a part of this team,” Ruben said with a very slight Russian accent.
Roxy looked a bit star-struck. She wasn’t your typical beauty like Sophie, but there was something unique in her features, exotic, that gave her a beauty that was rare. “A female dragon…” she breathed, staring at my hair. The hair shock was common; my hair was redder than a tomato, and I added an apple-red shampoo wash that kept it away from the orange and more into the cherry-red variety. But the dragon awe was new and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Luckily, Logan was.
“We are honored to have your service. Sloane is … unique, and we’ve just had a run-in with some druids looking for her, so we’re going to need more help. It’s great to have you. Come on in.”