Chapter 8

He always seemed to glide, wherever it was that he went. And now he was in front of her, like an apparition appearing out of thin air. Like any ghost, he brought with him an aura of cold air and death. He looked pale, he looked dangerous, he looked like the light of the world would never shine again. She tried to imagine how he’d once been a child, someone’s son. Maybe somewhere in the world, there existed baby pictures of this man, something human and frail.

But he was a statue before her, burgeoned into existence by his own anger. He was nothing but raw energy, horrifyingly piercing eyes, and untested power. He was used to walking into a room and getting exactly what he wanted right away. So, Andrea decided that if she would die, she would make sure that she fought him as much as she could.

“You don’t scare me.” A flat-out lie.

“It’s not my intention to scare you.”

“Then what is?”

“First, to find out a little bit more about you. What’s your name, my dear?’

He sat on the chair she wasn’t using, resting his elbows on his knees like he might be a school counselor or a doctor asking if she had her flu shot yet. She ignored it. It was an act, it was a distraction. She needed to remain focused on the curve of his lips and how hard his brow seemed to stare at her.

“Andrea,” she said because she felt like not being honest would allow him to win, letting him trick her into lying, admitting that she was, in fact, too scared to tell him truths about herself.

“What do you do, Andrea?” he asked. “Have a nickname? Andi perhaps? I’ve never been one for using someone’s full name.”

“Call me whatever you want.” Was that giving him too much power? If anything, it was taking it away. She knew he would call her whatever he damn well pleased so the least she could do was grant herself the agency of pretending like she gave him permission.

“So, what do you do?”

“I want to be a lawyer.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?”

She forced herself to look at him because, if nothing else, she absolutely hated condescending men. She hated being talked to by professors and colleagues like she was inherently inferior, unintelligent. She could focus in on that, she could harness some anger that way. She could grind an axe against hyper masculinity, after all, she did it often in her undergraduate classes.

But his face was stronger. Scarier. It was a lot more real than the pictures of dudebros in a textbook. This was real danger, not just the possibility of someone saying her outfit was too revealing or that she should smile more.

“I work in the DA’s office as an aide.”

“A glorified secretary.”

“I make a difference.”

He snorted. It seemed almost too juvenile for him to do it and it made things all the more scary. He was versatile, capable of several things. He could stare into her soul, he could make her feel two inches tall, and he could snort at her like she’d said some asinine thing about the nature of his favorite sports team.

“Have you ever seen a shifter in full form?” he asked.

“No.”

“You fucked one for years and not once? Most shifters need to let off a little steam, as it were, after a round or two.”

So he talked to Diego first. He’d gotten that information from him. Had they hurt Diego to get it or was he simply that willing to give her up? She didn’t know which idea scared her more. She stared into those cold, piercing eyes.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Would you like to?”

He came so close to her. She was terrified of where he may be going with it all. She imagined him shoving her against the wall and her own tears as she screamed out for help that would never come. But he didn’t get any closer to her. He didn’t even touch her. He just stared at her from inches away and kept on smirking and smirking.

“He’s a wolf, you know,” he said. “It’s impressive, I’m sure, for people who don’t know a thing about shifter lore. But it’s far from the most powerful. Do you know what is?”

She knew better than to answer. She knew better than to give in. She was shaking now, breathing heavily through her nose, her chest rising and falling with breakneck speed.

“The dragon,” he whispered into her ear and then backed up.

She could feel the heat. It was as if she was in a furnace, surrounded by fire and the rippling of the air as his eyes changed in front of her. They went dark like the heart of a volcano, the very core of the earth. It was the glow of embers at the very base of the bonfire. It was hell itself. He cackled but his mouth and throat didn’t move at all. It was like he was inside her head as the heat pushed and pushed against her. It was like it wanted to break her bones and rip at her skin. It was suffocating.

“Please,” she gasped out.

He wasn’t even transformed. He stood there, giving off heat, staring into her very soul with eyes that seemed to drag right out of a wad of brimstone. She was terrified of what it would be when the full dragon stood before her. When he was there in all his might and all the terrifying glory.

“Please, don’t,” she whispered.

His smirk remained, but the heat and energy of the room died down as he took a long sigh of a breath.

“I’ve got a plan for you, Miss Andi.”