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“I’m waiting on some parts for the truck. I think I’ll head home.”

This is where she can tell me to stay. Or Manny can tell Rhea they ought to leave.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Victoria asks, not getting up.

Duh, Laz. She’s still limping around.

But Rhea gets up, hugs me hard, and whispers, “Thanks for letting me do this. It helps me stop thinking about other things.”

I hug her back and nod against her white-streaked hair. I’m so selfish.

I mean... I’m a monster. No matter how similar we look or what I want to believe, I’m not like them, and I’m not like Victoria, either. I wave and grab my jacket.

I need a drink.

PINE RIDGE NEEDS A liquor store, but we don’t have one, not in town. Maybe one day.

We do, however, have Jax Alley, where you can go to the bar, see Eddie Hyde working it, and ask for a whole bottle, and if you’re the right kind of customer (like me), he’ll give it to you at the right price.

“I haven’t seen you in a week. Nice holiday?” Eddie asks.

“Weird.”

“You go back to California?”

“I don’t have family there. I have enemies there.”

“It’s a big state. I didn’t think you’d go to the CrossRealms,” Eddie whispers, sliding me a bottle of Jack.

“Everybody knows everybody’s business,” I mutter.

“It keeps us safe.” The dark, swarthy man shrugs and turns to the next customer. “Oh, speak of the devil, my other CrossRealms escapee.”

I turn too fast, and it’s a good thing Lazenby put in something extra in the agility and equilibrium department, or I would have fallen on my face.

It’s Graham Kane, the dragon shifter who helps run the garden center and who is the son-in-law of the couple who runs the new Italian restaurant. I don’t know him well, but like I was just complaining, everybody knows everybody’s business.

Like, I’ve heard rumors his father-in-law turned state’s evidence against some big California crime bosses. Like Kane used to be the “bad brother” in the family, and he met his wife when he was supposed to be returning her to her mafia-arranged marriage.

That didn’t work out for the bad guys, not at all. Pine Ridge got another dragon, an expanded garden center, and a new restaurant out of it.

Things work out here.

I take a risk.

“You still know anyone in the underworld of the CrossRealms?”

Graham Kane almost shifts on the spot. I can see the flash of talons at his fingertips, purple scales popping out along his hairline. “Excuse me?”

“You used to live there. I was ‘made’ there.” I rub my temple, and my finger grazes a fine scar by my eyebrow, one that probably came with part of my face. “Maybe I used to live there, too. Or parts of me did.”

Kane puts down the beer Eddie just passed him, face turning from hostile to thoughtful. “Oh. I had heard that, but—”

“But I don’t really talk to people, I know. Look, I got out, so did you.” I smile as best I can. “I don’t have contacts there, but I want to know a few things that relate to protecting a certain girl I’m interested in. Protecting the town, too.” I play my choirboy role without much conviction, but the words are right. Protect a love interest. Protect this town. Graham’s a dragon, hardwired to protect his family, and he can relate to protecting someone you love, especially since the story goes he ended up as his wife’s bodyguard before he was her boyfriend, before he was her mate.

Mates and lovers should trust each other.

I don’t fully trust Victoria.