Miguel Ramirez Lopez

I usher the brainy people into the mansion and led them straight to Damon. None of them were shifters, and I was a little wary about them drawing his blood, but what choice did we have? Francesco wasn't the only one who had noticed that Damon wasn't quite right.

Honestly, I had a theory about this, but I wasn't ready to vocalize it. Maybe I was a little superstitious, like my grandmama had been. If you said something, it could make it real, or so she had thought. Then again, she tended to use that for the positive, saying if you said something and repeated it twice more, that you truly meant it. It was a vow, a promise, something that must always be kept. Three was her magic number, so it hardly surprised me when she had died on March third.

As I wouldn't allow them to move Damon, who hadn't stirred since a little bit this morning, they brought their equipment into the room, turning it into a makeshift lab or hospital room. I asked if I could help them with anything, but they all ignored me.

To stay out of their way, I left the room and then the mansion entirely. I couldn't stand to be there another moment while Damon was like this and Francesco was gone.

Before I consciously knew what I was doing, I was in my car driving with the windows down, sniffing. When I stopped in front of a small house, I parked and shook my head. I was gone over the girl, and I wasn't sure she knew just how much she meant to me.

Yes, I had used my nose to find my way to Audrey's place.

Now, I had looked her up before to see who she was so I could've just found her address online. Oh, well. A little more animalistic this way, but it got the job done just the same.

All of the non-leader dragon shifters had to shift entirely into their dragon or not at all. Francesco, Damon, and I could change just our nose or grow a tail or wings… or a claw.

With one of my fingers-turned-claws, I picked the lock and opened her door. An invasion of privacy, yes, and I couldn't even tell you why I was doing this. Maybe I was desperate to be close to her. Maybe I needed to smell her. Maybe it was killing me inside that I couldn't find her, save her, be with her.

If this was the best that I could get, then I would take it.

Still following my nose, I realized she had most recently been sitting at her computer. I shook the mouse, and the screen turned on. Not password protected. I tsked my tongue. As a reporter, she should've known better.

Her emails were up, and I always thought dragons had some feline qualities to them because I sure as hell was curious as to what emails she might've sent after getting to know us and about dragons.

Not that I didn't trust her. She would never tell anyone about us. Audrey wouldn't be like that. The damn fine girl was too smart and loyal for any of that shit.

But then I saw it. Her last sent email to a detective. It told Hugh Mark that if she disappeared and couldn't be contacted, that there was a message for him on a password protected file on her laptop.

Gritting my teeth, I hunted around until I found the file, entered the password from the email, and read everything about me and the other dragons.

You had to be fucking kidding me. Seriously? I was damned furious that she would betray us like this. Did she really think that we wouldn't save her? That she would need some human to come in and save the day? What would a human be able to do for her that we could?

My blood was racing, my heartbeat pounding in my ear. I was so furious that I wanted to unleash a torrid of cuss words that would make even sailors blush.

But all of that blood was rushing throughout my entire body, and when I said throughout, I meant throughout. As angry as I was with her, all of this blood was also giving me a raging hard-on.

It was then that I knew this girl would be the death of me, and honestly, maybe I was okay with that.