“Of course I’m here, Eloise. Do you think anything would keep me away?”
Her eyes met Julian’s over Eloise’s shoulder as they hugged. *Eloise Fairchild. She’s a lioness shifter.*
*I gathered as much. She appears to believe I’m your bodyguard.*
*We can work with that.*
“I know nothing would keep you away from anywhere you wanna be, bestie. I just didn’t knowthiswas where you would want to be. I didn’t know youknew.” Eloise’s eyes were huge and innocent, but her words thrummed with something that made his skin crawl.
Francine’s glacial beauty unfroze, and she flashed the other woman a quick, sharp grin. Her voice was a purr. “Isn’t that the whole idea?”
“Oh,god, Frankie.” Eloise laughed and took her arm. “I’vesomissed you.”
Julian fell in behind as the two women strolled away together. His face was impassive, but behind it, his emotions were in turmoil.
He didn’t know this woman, though Francine clearly did.Eloise.The name didn’t mean anything to him. There was no obvious connection to Gerald Harper and his cronies.
The two women walked through the town as though they owned it. Julian exchanged a flat look with the two bodyguards who shadowed their movements. Eloise’s protection team. From the way their charge ignored their presence, they might as well have been invisible.
He could do this. Keeping his dragon hidden wouldn’t be a problem. His sister had insisted he master the ability to mask his dragon self before he left home, to keep the existence of their people a secret. If he kept his dragon away from the surface, not letting it look out through his eyes or lend its superior senses to his own, then no one would be able to tell he was a dragon shifter.
But it wasn’t his own masking that concerned him.
He had thought he had seen through Francine, to the vulnerable, terrified woman behind the haughty exterior. But this was another her, one he didn’t know. Coy, laughing, bending her head to murmur a shared joke that made Eloise giggle helplessly. And she’d slipped into it so easily. So different from the fractured edges of the glacier.
Was this another mask? Or was he following her into a trap?
8
Francine
Francine thought she had hardened herself against the realities of her world after Harper showed her how despicable her fellow shifters could be—how despicableshecould be. She hadn’t thought anything would hurt her like that again.
Until now.
The Fairchilds were old family friends from upstate. The way her mother would say it, thegoodsort of people. Shifter girls fromgoodfamilies around Francine’s age had been few and far between in her childhood, and she had leaped at the opportunity to befriend someone like herself. Someone who would understand her.
It turned out she hadn’t understood Eloise at all.
And the more Eloise talked, the more her heart weighed down in her chest.
“…of course Ihadto come. I want my children and my children’s children to know I was here when we delivered shifterkind the world we deserve.”
As though enslaving mythical shifters was some sort of act of public service. Francine’s lip curled in a sneer. She hid it quickly, returning her expression to its usual cool, slightly derisive smile. Eloise raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t make that face atme, darling. I know you’re not the ice queen you pretend to be with everyone else.”
Francine made a show of rubbing her jaw and letting the haughty smile dissolve. Eloise was right, and it hurt. “It’s been too long since we hung out. I’m too used to…”
“Faking it?” Eloise squeezed her arm. “That’s the best thing about all this, isn’t it? After this, none of us will have to pretend to be what we aren’t. And if anyone tries to stop us…”
She grinned up at Francine, her teeth sharpening. The smells of the street blurred as Francine’s senses went into automatic overdrive. Eloise’s lion was suddenly so close to the surface it was all she could focus on.
She’s half a breath from shifting.Francine’s skin crawled.Here. In the middle of the street.
Around them, the mood of the crowd changed. Without even knowing what they were reacting to, people began to look over their shoulders. Their steps and heartbeats quickened. Sweat beaded on lips and the backs of necks.
“Elly.” Francine sighed as though Eloise was being tiresome, not terrifying. “I don’t want to walk the whole way, and I amnotdragging my own luggage all the way to whatever party boat you’ve commandeered for this. If you frighten off the staff, you won’t need to wait for things to get unpleasant.”
