Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc 7)

Welcome, little sister, said her tiger.

The kitten folded her sapphire wings and purred.

“A gift for your inner eleven-year-old,” said Ethan, and kissed her. The kitten arched her back and flapped her wings in alarm. “Relax, kitty. We can share her.”

“I think it’s just scared by your giant face.”

“Hey, you love my giant face. Let’s get inside and get dressed. I’m about to freeze off my other giant thing you love.” He gestured at his frozen bathrobe front.

As Destiny dissolved into giggles, the kitten launched off her shoulder, seized her bathrobe cord with all four paws, and flew into the living room with the end trailing on the floor. Destiny snatched at her suddenly-open robe. Snowy woke up abruptly and pursued the cord, barking. The cord froze solid and clattered across the tiles, startling the kitten enough to drop it. Snowy began to gnaw on his prize as the kitten flew into the bedroom and perched on the brackets that held Destiny’s tiger claws.

“I can tell it won’t be boring around here,” Ethan remarked. “Got a name for her?”

“Sky,” said Destiny. As they returned to the bedroom, a thought struck her. “I thought Snowy was the animal that could open portals. But Sky’s here too. Think it was really her?”

“It might not have been either of them,” Ethan pointed out. “The portal creature helped all the other animals escape. It might be something we haven’t even seen yet that’s still out there somewhere, sending its buddies where they belong.”

“Think anyone else who didn’t get a pet at Apex will get one now?”

“What, you mean like Merlin?”

A little guiltily, she admitted, “No, I hadn’t been thinking of those guys. I meant like Grace and Ellie and Journey. I know they wanted one… but you’re right, if any animals come back for anyone else, it’ll be for the people who were actually there when they got released.”

“You never know,” Ethan said thoughtfully, watching Sky and Snowy chase each other around the living room. “They are magical.”

There were too many happy occasions to have separate parties for each one, so they celebrated the twins’ birth, Ethan joining the team, and Ethan and Destiny’s engagement all at once. Grace and Rafa, who had the biggest backyard, were the hosts.

Like all shifters who owned their own house, Rafa had made sure his backyard was enclosed in a high wall. Like the wall around Destiny’s backyard when she’d been a child, where she could play outside without fear of exposure. She eyed this wall, which Grace had painted in vibrant colors, with the memory of feeling trapped, relief that it was over, and a strange kind of nostalgia. She’d had happy times in her backyard, too.

Raluca came to greet her. She wore a dress of her own design that was elegant without being formal, in a shimmering blue-gray that set off her silver dragonmarks. To Destiny’s amusement, her purse and shoes matched the sapphire dragonette

perched on her shoulder.

“Did you pick a name for her yet?” Destiny asked. Raluca, who like Lucas had already known about dragonettes and how unusual it was for them to bond with humans, had taken that task very seriously indeed.

“I have. Her name is Doina.”

“That’s pretty,” Destiny said. “Does it mean something?”

“It’s a very old name from my own country. And also a type of music, the kind one might hear in a remote village.”

Doina trilled a musical note, making both women smile, then flew away.

“I saw you looking at the wall,” Raluca said, a little hesitantly. “Does it remind you of your own?”

When Destiny had returned, she had finally told her entire team and their mates the full story of her childhood, which not all of them had known. They’d reacted much as Ethan had, with sympathy and respect. By then that didn’t surprise her.

“A bit. Mine had ivy growing all over it. A wall of green, like a jungle…” For the first time, Destiny realized why the Indian jungle had never seemed alien to her. “Huh.”

Lucas and Journey joined them. She was bedecked with precious jewels, as usual, with her mating gift of a golden dragon pendant in the hollow of her throat. But none of them outshone the glittering brilliance of Treasure, the diamond dragonette that had appeared and bonded with them both, and was now coiled around Lucas’s forearm.

“Lucas and I had a wall that was special to us, too,” Journey said. “It was part of a maze, all covered in roses.”

“That sounds beautiful,” said Raluca.

“It was,” said Lucas.

Treasure flew up to join Doina in an aerial game with Carol and Sky. Shadow stayed on Shane’s shoulder and watched.