Alarm bells rang in Maya’s mind. She silenced them. Of course his crib was empty. He was a dragon shifter. He didn’t have to wait until his human form was big and agile enough to climb over the railing—he could fly.
Flywhere, that was the question.
She scanned the room, chattering soft nonsense to her baby boy the whole time. On top of the dresser? No. Beneath the crib? No. Hanging from the light fitting? Not today…
Outside, gravel crunched and metal clanged as one of the local kids flung the post through the mail slot in the front door. She wasn’t expecting anything, and the sound distracted her long enough for a shimmer of orange-gold scales to flash over her head.
“Tomás!”
She sprinted down the stairs after him. Flame-colored wings flared, and he dived to grab something from the pile of letters in front of the door—then waddled through her legs as she stooped to scoop him up. “Baby! Come back here!”
He launched into the air and soared away, loot clutched in his claws.
Maya shot after him. “Wait! Where are you going with that?”
Images popped into her head as she chased him back up the stairs. Formless, shiny things. She stumbled and caught herself on the railing.
This was happening more and more. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else yet. She didn’t know whether it was pride or anxiety that stopped her, but, whichever it was, whenever she thought about telling one of her new neighbors about how Tomás seemed to be developing new magic skills every day, she broke out in a cold sweat. Her new neighbors were all so welcoming. Her best friend in the world lived with her dragon shifter mate a few streets away. And if she admitted to any of them how out of her depth she still felt, surrounded by their support, her last bit of self-confidence would crumble to dust.
A rush of air; Tomás was flying back into his bedroom.
Maya hauled herself up the last few steps and flung herself after him. She wasn’t expecting any parcels, which meant if Tomás ripped his loot to pieces—his favorite pastime—she was going to have to explain to one of her neighbors why their mail looked like it had gone through the shredder.
“Hey, my sweet little man,” she called, pushing through the bedroom door. “Can you give Mama the parcel? Then we can go downstairs and have some breakfast. What do you feel like this morning? Bananas and oatmeal? Waffles?”
Crunch. Rip. Tear.
Maya winced. Forget food. Right now, Tomás felt like destroying.
The noises were coming from the closet. He’d pulled the door half-closed behind him, but his tail was hanging out, flicking like a cat’s. “What are you doing up there on the top shelf, sweetie?”
What was in there? She ran through her mental inventory. Clothes that were too big or too small. Extra blankets. Some toys she had been saving to use as emergency distractions. Nothing dangerous. At least, nothing that sheknewwas dangerous.
If there was one thing she’d learned in the past two years, it was that there was a lot she didn’t know. And that Tomás could turn the most innocent situation into heart-attack central.
“Sweetpea?” she called, stalking towards the closet.
Tomás’s scaly little butt was blocking her view of what he was doing.Crunch, tear.But there was something behind him. Something glittery.
“What do you have there, sweetheart?”
He chirruped and wiggled around. His snout was surrounded by shreds of paper and packing tissue, and half-hidden in the wreckage beneath him…
Maya’s mouth fell open. “What isthat?”
2
Corin
Another day in hell.
“Mr. Blackburn?”
Corin gritted his teeth as his assistant knocked softly on his office door. It wasn’t that the woman was bad at her job. Quite the opposite. She came highly rated and had brought a level of dull efficiency to his work life that made him want to bunk off and smoke illicit cigarettes behind the bleachers—something that, as heir to the Blackburn dragon clan, he’d never been tempted to do even as a teenager.
But every time she knocked on his door, or patched a call through to his phone, or sat at her desk quietly portioning the rest of his life into seven-minute increments, he was reminded that it wasn’t Maya Flores doing those things. And it never would be again.
From his first day as CEO of Blackburn Inc., Maya had been at his side. He’d known at once they were two stars in orbit around one another. She was his fated mate. The one person in all the world whose soul could have been magically entwined with his.
