Abi shifted into his human form.
Colin’s cock fell out of the rando’s mouth. He squeaked and held a hand to his heart as if attempting to keep it from running out of his chest.
Colin cursed and then winced.
“Should I have watched my teeth too, Colin?” Abi shrugged. “Oops.”
“What the fuck? Abi?”
Abi turned and walked away, heading back to his car. “You have twenty minutes to get to the hospital.”
Colin pulled up his pant leg. The pain from the bite, while delayed, was settling into the puncture wounds on his calf muscle nicely by now. “What the…”
Abi smiled.
“What the fuck did you do?”
“Hospital. Tell them you need rattlesnake antivenom.”
The new boy screamed about a snake being nearby.
Huh. He expected getting revenge would make him feel better, but all he felt was hollow.
Chapter Two
The sun had just started peeking above the tops of the trees when Nash pulled into his driveway. His eyes felt gritty. He struggled to keep them open. All he had to do was lift the garage door and roll his bike inside. His bed wasn’t that far away. He could practically hear it calling his name, luring him in.
The air bit at Nash’s fingers when he took his glove off and fished around inside his leather coat for his phone. He kept his face mostly covered. Seeing the road was the only thing he had needed to do, but he lifted his hood.
The cold had seeped into his bones, anyway. It didn’t matter how many layers he put on. It was still the Arctic fucking circle in the Midwest in March. And he still had to get his bike home somehow.
He pressed his thumb to his phone screen, making it come to life. Hisbreath made his phone screen foggy, so he pulled it further away from his face.
Everything on the screen was blurry. Even without the fog, it had been.
Nash sighed. He needed to take a break. He’d been working too much. Sleep made the four senses he had left stop working.
He found the app for his garage door. The blurry shapes might blend, but he recognized the colors just fine—the rest he did from memory more than from sight. The door groaned to life.
He waited for it to ascend, only moving when it was high enough for him to roll his bike under. He had to duck his head out of the way as he went inside.
As soon as he was inside the garage, he knew someone had been there. He sensed their presence. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck, even though he knew it was Jonik and Wren. Still, Nash’s dragon rose to the surface. His eyes shifted, but only for a moment. Wren, all by himself, was harmless. Jonik was lethal, especially if someone hurt his mate. It didn’t matter to Nash’s dragon that Jonik didn’t intend ill will toward him. That he was dangerous at all was enough.
Nash sighed and shook his head.No one has come to hurt you. Certainly not Jonik.
After the pep talk, Nash shut off his bike’s engine and dismounted. He entered the house through the garage.
The little shit always broke into his house and didn’t bother waiting until Nash got home. When Nash was home, Jonik never knocked. Ever. He’d just find Jonik and Wren in his kitchen, eating, or upstairs in his spare bedroom, giggling and rolling around in the sheets together.
It was a good thing Nash didn’t do strange things while home alone. What counted as strange was speculative. Nash considered everything he did as normal for a dragon shifter, except for holding something very close to his nose so he could smell it. His cup of coffee. Jars ofspice. It didn’t matter which one. He wanted to smell them all. Food. Even the smell of a greasy burger from Draco’s eluded him.
He’d like to find out how Jonik smelled someday. He knew it was unique because Daruss talked about it once, but he’d never been able to get close enough to find out for himself. It would be weird to stick his face into his best friend’s neck. That level of intimacy wasn’t something Nash and Jonik had ever shared. Not that Nash was complaining. He loved Jonik like a brother. The keywords there werelike a brother. But Jonik would probably let Nash smell away if he asked, not that Nash would. Nash and Jonik didn’t vibe that way.
He heard Wren giggle and then tell Jonik to stop. Based on the sound, Nash knew they were in the kitchen. His sense of smell might be shit, but his other senses made up for it. The other four were even superior to other dragon shifters when he wasn’t exhausted. Maybe it was his body making up for lacking something fundamental to most people. It was his body’s way of processing the trauma in his past.
Nash holstered his gun and gave himself a pep talk about trusting himself.
When he turned and entered his kitchen through the mudroom, Jonik had Wren pinned against the kitchen counters. He ran the back of his finger down Wren’s cheek. His expression was soft whenever he looked at Wren, and sometimes Jonik forgot other people were in the room. All he saw was his mate.
