Chapter One
At the ring of Tristan’s cell phone, Melanie just stopped herself from swearing out loud. She knew the sound meant the end of their little bubble of sex and teasing. Even if it was only a short call, it didn’t matter. Interacting with the other dragon-shifters might snap Tristan back into his grumpy self.
Her fear was only made worse when she heard him say, “Dragon hunters?
She stopped breathing, sat up, and listened with every cell in her body to Tristan’s side of the conversation. Would talking about the dragon hunters bring back his hatred of humans? Or, his initial hatred of her? After all, he’d been familiar with his hatred for far longer than he’d known her.
And if, indeed, talking about the dragon hunters undid all her hard work in getting Tristan to give her a chance, Melanie wasn’t sure she could start all over again. She wasn’t about to trap herself into a repeated cycle of niceness and hate. Even her resolve and stubbornness had limits.
Tristan kept his gaze away from her face as he finally said into the phone, “I can be there in forty-five minutes. Contact Kai and Zain to start putting together a rescue plan. But whatever you do, make sure the boy’s parents are watched at all times. The last thing we need is for them to go looking for the dragon hunters themselves.”
A few seconds later, Tristan clicked off his phone and stared at it. Melanie burned with curiosity, and decided to dare a question, “What happened?”
She steeled herself for a gaze of hatred, but when Tristan’s eyes met hers, they were neutral.
His look filled her with a small sense of relief. There was still a chance this could work between them.
He said, “One of the teenagers went out flying on his own into one of the restricted areas and had a run in with a group of dragon hunters.”
Melanie’s heart clenched. “Is the young one okay?”
“From what information we have, he’s still alive.” Breaking eye contact, he stood up and reached for his clothes as he said, “Get dressed. We need to head back.”
As she watched him pick up his shirt, she made a split second decision and said, “Shift into your dragon form and fly back. That way you can do whatever you need to do to help the teenager faster.”
He looked over at her. “I can’t leave you alone.”
While it wasn’t a declaration of love, Melanie felt a small sense of relief at his concern. She still couldn’t tell how the news of the dragon hunters had affected him, but he didn’t seem to completely hate her. “If you lend me your cell phone, then I’m sure Bram’s number, as well as a few others, are in there. I can also call Samira to meet me and take me back to her house.” She saw his frown and quickly added, “Just for now. I still want to live with you, Tristan, if you still want me after this.”
Rather than give a gushing dialogue about how he couldn’t imagine living without her, he merely grunted and said, “I don’t like handing over your care to someone else.”
She stood up and took a step toward him. “Look, as much as I enjoy your bouts of alpha to the tenth power, if you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life coddled and locked away, then you have no idea who I am.” She still didn’t see any emotion in his eyes. She took another step toward him. “If I need your help, I will ask for it. But I can damn well handle walking a mile to my friend’s house, in the middle of dragon territory no less, unless you’re going to doubt the safety of our clan’s lands?”
There was a flicker in his eyes, but it was gone before she could tell what it was. After a long moment, he nodded. “Very well. But if I come back to find that you wandered off or got yourself killed, I will bring you back to life so I can kill you myself.”
His words still didn’t tell her anything about how the phone call had affected him. For all she knew, he just wanted to ensure his unborn child’s safety.
She ignored the flash of sadness at that possibility. Not that she didn’t want to protect their child, but she wished he wanted to protect her too.
Enough. She wasn’t about to turn into someone waiting around for a man to like her.
She raised her chin and placed her hands on her hips, not caring that she was standing naked with unruly hair in the middle of an outside clearing. “Again, your stubbornness isn’t quite that powerful, but I suppose I can live with that threat.”
She looked around the clearing. While she hadn’t seen Tristan in his dragon-form yet, she bet he was at least as big as those two dragons she’d seen on her very first day here and neither of them would fit here. She said, “Will you be able to fit if you change here?”
~~~
Tristan stared at Melanie and tried not to let his mixture of emotions show on his face. He had no right to blame the human female for what was happening to Miles, the teenager that had been captured, but some of his hatred of humans was seeping back into his consciousness. The sooner he could take care of this problem, the sooner he could spend more time with his female and work on ridding himself of his hatred for good.
Especially since his dragon was determined to keep her.
While he’d grudgingly agreed to let her return on her own, something his dragon was very much not happy with, now she was asking him about shifting and fitting into the clearing. He shook his head. “No, but you can get dressed and wait here for Samira. I’ll go beyond the trees where there’s more room and shift there.”
Melanie’s lips pressed into a thin line and then she said, “So you trust me enough to fuck me in the open, but not enough to allow me to see you shift into a dragon.”
Her tone ignited his temper. “I’m not a bloody mind reader. You didn’t even ask if you could watch me.”
She blinked. “Well, then, can I?”
“No.”
She closed the distance between them and punched him in the chest. “Good to see the asshole version of Tristan MacLeod has returned. I was starting to think you might be a nice guy under all that alpha anger.”
With her eyes blazing and her cheeks flushed, all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss her. But he pushed that thought aside. “Again, you’re jumping to conclusions.” He grabbed the wrist of her hand still on his chest, her touch burning his skin. “Humans don’t handle seeing the shift well. And if this is to ever work between us, the last thing I need is for you to think of me as a monster.”
At that, Melanie blinked. Her voice was no longer angry when she said, “After all of this, you still think I fit the stereotype of a typical human? When will you start thinking of me as Melanie Hall and not just ‘a human’?”
His dragon said, Stop it. She is ours. She is different. Tell her.
But Tristan denied his dragon. That conversation would have to wait. A teenage dragon-shifter needed his help.
Still, both halves of him wanted to feel her softness one last time before possibly taking on a group of dragon hunters. While he shouldn’t have to attack anyone since he wasn’t one of the clans’ trained Protectors, anything could happen.
He reached out and pulled her flush up against him. As the womanly scent that was Melanie filled his nose, a scent with a slight undertone of himself because of their baby
, he decided this woman deserved a chance to watch him shift.
Over and over again she’d proven she was different, so it was time to see if she could pass the ultimate test. He said, “Give me a kiss and I’ll allow you to watch me shift.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ll ‘allow’ me to watch? When you get back, Tristan MacLeod, we’re going to work on your domineering tendencies.”
Despite everything that was going on, he smiled. “There’s my little human, full of spirit. Now, kiss me and watch me shift.”