1
Maya
On a morning like this, Maya Flores could almost believe her old life never existed.
Hideaway Cove felt like a different world. A place of magic and friendship, and a community that banded together to support its members—the sort of thing that existed in stories, maybe, but never in reality. Not in her experience.
Then again, a few years ago, she wouldn’t have said dragons were real, either. That was before she had her son. Her adorable, crazy little Tomás, who had turned her life upside down the moment she discovered she was pregnant—and completely shattered everything she thought she knew about the world when he was six months old and transformed into a tiny baby dragon for the first time.
Back then, she hadn’t even known what shifters were.
Speaking of which…
She tiptoed to Tomás’s room and put her ear against the door. Silence. Her little dragon shifter was still asleep.
More magic,she thought, and went to the kitchen to prepare a rare treat: a cup of coffee she might manage to finish drinking while it was still hot.
While the coffee was brewing, she went over her plans for the day. It was a habit from her old life. Whereas previously she needed multiple electronic calendars and scheduling apps to keep on top of her duties as assistant to Corin Blackburn, now she struggled to fill a single appointment diary. She’d bought a new, very small appointment diary because the one she’d been using before had looked so empty.
It was … fine. It wasgood.She and Tomás were building a life here. A safe, happy life where Tomás would grow up surrounded by people like him. It was better than good, she reminded herself. It wasperfect.
Except for the dreams that haunted her every night. Dark, sensual dreams about her ex-boss, which left her body aching and her mind longing for something she could never,everhave.
Her old life was long gone, and for good reason. She shouldn’t want Corin Blackburn. She should resent him. Maybe even hate him. But want him?
Something was terribly wrong with her, and it got more wrong every day. Cold showers only went so far.
She closed her eyes, and Corin’s face was in front of her, his sea-glass eyes bright with unnatural fire.
She hadn’t known shifters existed until little Tomás transformed for the first time.
And she hadn’t known her sexy-as-hell, absolutely-out-of-bounds boss was a shifter too, until her life was falling to pieces around her.
It wasn’t like he was even the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The camel was already a goner. Corin just set fire to it and catapulted it into space.
She’d already known she would have to quit her job. Tomás’s shifting was too unreliable and, back then, she hadn’t known any other shifters who could help. She had been terrified that if anyone found out her baby could turn into a freaking dragon, they would both be locked up. But—one last visit should have been fine, right?
She’d brought Tomás to the office to meet her old colleagues. It had felt like a bigger mistake with every step. The visit was timed for his nap, but what if he woke up? What if he transformed? What if someone got a glimpse of her strange, magical baby in his dragon form?
She was right to worry. She wasalwaysright to worry. Everything she feared had come true, with a bonus helping of things she hadn’t even known to be worried about.
Tomás had transformed. She’d hidden him under a wrap, holding his webbed wings tight against his wriggly little body, hoping his tail wouldn’t flick out from under the cloth and give him away. She remembered making some panicked excuse—he was teething; he was hungry; he needed a longer nap or a diaper change.
Corin had taken charge, which wasn’t unusual. He was the boss, and nobody ever forgot it. He’d told her to take a moment in his office to let the baby calm down.
The baby had calmed down, all right. The moment the door shut behind them, leaving them alone, Tomás had darted his head up from beneath the wrap, wriggled free, and flown—flown!!—across the room to Corin’s desk.
Before she could reach him, he’d clawed open a desk drawer and plucked out his prey: a gold watch Corin had been given by his grandfather.
Pleading with Tomás to return the watch hadn’t worked. Distracting him so she could sneak it away and safely back into the drawer hadn’t worked. If she’d known then what she knewnow, she wouldn’t have bothered trying. Her little dragon had the first piece of his hoard, and nothing would part him from it.
Corin had come in to check on them. She’d thrown the wrap over Tomás again, but it didn’t make any difference.
Her boss’s eyes had flared with the same magical fire she recognized from her own son’s eyes when he was about to shift.
Corin was a dragon shifter.
“You should be more careful,” he’d whispered, his voice sharp-edged and soft as sin. “Didn’t anyone warn you? Dragons are covetous creatures. And we take what’s ours.”
