Page 49 of Dark Dragon’s Wolf

Zakerek frowned. “Who says I want a bunch of idiots messing with my stuff?” Mayah narrowed her eyes at him and he said, “Except you two. Who are not idiots. Of course.”

“Well, if you want to explain the credit card charges to Emon yourself, that’s fine too.”

They stared at each other. Zakerek didn’t budge. Mayah sighed. Stubborn dragon.

“Okay,” she said. “The other proposition is even more important, and has nothing to do with the first one. Whatever you decide about this one, we’ll understand.”

Zakerek frowned at her serious tone. “Okay,” he said. “What is it?”

Mayah explained about the white wolves, and the mission. “It’s probably going to be dangerous, and the Earth Shifter Council is going to be pissed if they find out. Pissed enough that the whole clan might be banned from Earth. You can say no if you want—Emon’s not asking you himself because he thought you might not think you could say no to him. But I’m hoping you’ll say yes.”

She looked him in the eye. “I came to you first because I know you have influence over the other two. If you agree to do it, they’re more likely to come as well. And we could really, really use you on this mission. Lives could depend on it.”

Zakerek looked down, toying with his popcorn bowl. “Huh,” he said. “So now you need us.” But his tone didn’t have any sting to it.

“Think it over,” Mayah said. “It’s probably not happening for a little while—we don’t have all our intel yet. You can let Emon know.”

Zakerek shrugged.

Well, that hadn’t gone quite as well as she’d hoped.

“I guess we’ll be going now,” she said.

“Hell no,” Tristan said. “I’m not going until I have a chance to annihilate this lizard at pool. I bet that table’s barely broken in.”

Zakerek’s head went up. “I could squash you with one claw tied behind my back, Wolf.”

“Want to bet on that? If I win, I get to be grillmeister on Sunday.”

“Fuck no,” Zakerek said. “I’ll bet you a six-pack of cold beer.”

“Done.”

Mayah left them wrangling and racking up the balls, smiling to herself.

Chapter 23

It was late when Tristan got back to Mayah’s room, and she was already in bed. She turned over when he crawled in beside her, even though he tried not to wake her.

“So who won the beer?” she asked.

“I won the six-pack,” he said. “And then Zakerek won it back. But by then we’d already drunk it, so we had to keep playing.”

Mayah giggled. “You’re not making any sense.”

“I know. There was a lot of beer.”

He lay on his side next to her, running his fingers lightly up and down her shoulder, her ribcage, the curve of her hip.

He could never get enough of touching her. He wished he could give her everything she ever wanted—but he could only give her a little.

“When we get to Portland tomorrow,” he said, “I want to take you on a date.”

Mayah, who’d had her eyes half-closed, her dragon purring in her chest, opened them wide. “A date?”

She smiled, and then a little frown wrinkled her forehead between her eyebrows. “But… I thought you wanted to do this reconnaissance as soon as possible, so we can get started on the mission.”

She touched him briefly, skimming her fingertips over his shoulder muscles. “I know how much freeing those captives means to you. Even more than the rest of us.”