Javier’s last four days with Yasmin passed too quickly. He had engineered every excuse he could to spend time with her, from taking her and her friends out with Phoebe to the hippocampi lagoon to leading them on a personal tour of his dad’s aviary. They’d even gone on a five-mile hike.

Sometimes Yasmin slept overnight, and those memories were burned into his heart and mind. For her final evening on the island, she’d stayed in her own bungalow, and he’d laid in bed without sleeping, dreading the coming day.

With a few hours to spare until Yasmin was due to depart the island by ferry, Javier set his alarm and drifted to sleep.

Then bright light flooded his face as his father yanked open the curtains. “Rise and shine, Javier.”

He jerked up and shielded his eyes with one arm, twisting away from the blinding light of the noonday sun. “What the hell, Dad?”

“We’ve raised you to be better than this. You cannot sleep the entire day away like a lazy bum.”

“You sleep during half the day,” he grumbled back.

“I also work, which is exactly what you’re going to do today.”

“Dude, come on. I was catching a nap before Yasmin’s ferry left, that’s all.”

“Dude?” An incredulous raise of both brows made Teo look comical and offended. “Dude?”

“Uh. Sir. Anyway, I’m just getting a nap until it’s time for Yasmin to leave.”

“You can go down from the office when it’s time,” his father compromised. “I’m glad you took your mother’s words to heart when she asked you to show the young ladies around. But now that they’re leaving, you will start assisting me daily in the office.”

“Dad, come—”

Teo slashed his hand through the air. “This is not a negotiation. I have been patient, Javier, but enough is enough. I expect you to be dressed appropriately, and in my office in exactly half an hour. Understood? If you do not like it, you can live elsewhere and learn the difficult route of carving your own way forward through life.”

“Fine,” he gritted out, though he wasn’t yet sure if he was “fine” with his father’s decree or to leaving the island.

“You live a charmed life, my son. A life of privilege. You want for nothing, yet you mope around my island with no drive. Your mother and I have decided it’s time to kick you from the nest. What happens next is up to you.” And with that, the mighty Teotihuacan strode from the room. A few seconds later, the beat of powerful wings stirred the tree tops surrounding Javier’s bungalow.

Anger drove him from the bed and into the shower. He scrubbed his hair and muttered to himself about the unfairness of it all.

But was it unfair?

As the water pounded against him from the high-power shower head, it massaged the fury from his bones and left emotional exhaustion in its place. No longer fed up with his father, he emerged under the gloom of a deep melancholy for failing to see what everyone else had noticed all along.

Maybe if he’d gotten his life into gear months ago, Yasmin would have asked for him to seal their bonding.

Javier emerged from the shower to find his father had even laid out “appropriate” clothes for him. The old man must have done it before awakening him. As he dried off, Javier eyed the khaki slacks, white linen shirt, and brown leather dress shoes with disdain. He’d look like an exact replica of his dad in those, a younger imitation twenty pounds lighter and one inch shorter.

Was this going to be his life now? A carbon copy doomed to remain chained to the island?

No. He had to figure out what the fuck he wanted, and he had to do it soon.

Javier rubbed his temples with both fingers. No matter how much he tried to focus on the screen, administrative work eluded his interest and his mind would wander to everything else he enjoyed. Nothing was fun about math and lawyer jargon.

Then he heard Teo’s voice in his head. Work isn’t meant to be fun. Yeah, it was almost like Dad was right there, he could imagine the words so clearly.

His father wanted him to learn to monitor the many different departments and conduct spontaneous audits, but he’d spent most of the day zoning out on the security monitors instead like a total voyeur.

Then he’d spotted a guy lifting a wallet from a woman’s beach tote in the lower gift shop and felt immense pride once he radioed it in and security escorted the guy to the island’s jail. They had a small police department of their own with actual trained law enforcement since, technically, his father’s island was now its own little sovereign state where he ruled supreme over all within his domain. How he’d worked that out was anyone’s guess, but Javier figured money had to be involved. Lots and lots of money.

Then again, maybe nobody wanted to argue with a dragon about what he did with his property.

Sitting back again, he returned to his pile of financial documents, sipped coffee, and concentrated on what he should have been doing.

If he didn’t make some progress by the time his father returned from his business dinner off the island, there’d be hell to pay. He didn’t think they’d really toss him out on his ass, but part of him wouldn’t blame his folks if they did. He had been a bum—a lazy, leeching bum—and self-deprecation wasn’t going to fix that problem either.

Focus, Javier. Fucking focus, he chided himself.

Betsy rapped on the open door and leaned into his father’s office. “Would you like anything from the Surf and Turf, Javier? I’m calling in an order.”

The secretary had been an installation of the administrative compound for the past sixteen years, coming into employment a few years after his birth. He smiled at her. “Yeah. I’ll have the steak and scallops. Thanks.”

“No problem. Rare, right?”

“Yeah.”

She returned to her desk and phoned in their requests, ordering food for Javier and herself.

An hour later, the two guards on duty left on their lunch break, leaving Javier to fill in for them after stuffing his belly with good food.

“Your father is so proud of you, Javier. Every time you come to work at the administrative office, he boasts about what a great son you are for days,” Betsy told him.

“He does?”

“You can’t get him to talk about anything else.”

The door slammed open against the stopper with a bang, and a harried woman burst inside, her pale blonde hair sticking on end. The short pixie cut surrounded a pale face with a set of distraught blue eyes shimmering with tears.

“Please, I need your help,” she cried. “My son Dylan is missing. Is he here? Has anyone brought him in looking for me?”

“Oh, dear,” Betsy said. “No one has reported a missing little boy. Let me call security.”

“Security told me to come here!”

At that moment, a flushed security guard entered behind her. “She ran ahead of me. I wanted to bring her here for a report.”

Javier nodded to the man then stepped around the desk. “Slow down for us, okay.” He moved forward, hands up with his palms out. “Listen, I know you’re freaking out, but take a breath and start at the beginning for me. What’s your name?”

Gentle, with infinite care and patience, he settled one arm around her back and guided her toward the nearby couch. Betsy hovered close by.

“Lydia.” She sniffed and swiped at her wet cheeks. “Dylan and I were on the tram heading to the preserve. H-he loves birds, you see, so he was watching at the viewport while I was sitting down. But at one of the stops, a huge crowd swarmed on and we were separated.”

Javier pulled the radio off his belt and depressed the push-to-talk button. “Javier to Central. I’m going to need you to halt all incoming and outgoing movement between the islands and the mainland. A child is missing. Over.”

“Amber alert set,” the voice on the other end replied. “Can you give us specifics? Over.”

“One moment,” Javier said. “Getting the details now, but I want this island closed off and everyone on alert. No ferries in or out. No transport between islands. Kill the trams.”

“Roger that.”

He spent the next few minutes learning everything he could from Lydia about what happened. She’d ridden the tram back and forth for twenty minutes, checking each stop for her son before running for the admin building. Betsy sat beside her and held her hand with motherly concern while Javier stepped away to relay the necessary information.

“Child is male, six years of age, and forty-five inches tall. Sandy brown hair, blue eyes. Wolf shifter. Last seen in a black Minecraft T-shirt and blue swimming trunks approximately twenty-five to thirty minutes ago on the blue tram line.”

The security officer repeated everything back.

“Good. I want every shifter available assembled outside my office building in five minutes for further instruction. The rest of you begin the search for a boy fitting that description.”

While Betsy remained with Lydia, he hurried back to the security feed and pulled up the blue line, going back through the footage until he found Lydia sitting on the tram. Her son stood less than ten feet away with his face and hands pressed against the view window next to three other children. Playing at an increased speed, he watched as the crowd surged on and he lost sight of the boy. Javier rewound the footage and slowed the video down to replay frame by frame. At one point, a hand with a heavy silver band on the third finger settled on the boy’s shoulder.

Swapping to the platform camera at the same time did absolutely nothing. A large man with his back to the camera stood in the way of the doors, blocking the view. The next camera with a good angle was similarly blocked. The three men vanished with the crowd, their departure coincidentally timed with the disappearance of the boy.

Rewinding the footage again, Javier watched one last time.

The passengers spilled forward, but the boy remained hidden from view, lost within the sea of adult bodies egressing from the tram. When Javier moved to different security cameras and ran through their footage, he couldn’t find the little boy again.

They had more than a missing child; they had an abduction.

What the hell do I do now? Should I call Dad? Definitely should call Dad.

Two calls later, after leaving an urgent voice mail and equally desperate text on his father’s phone, Javier groaned into his hands. His mother had gone with him, and she’d also turned off her phone.

“Javier? Security team is waiting,” Betsy called, interrupting him. Javier hurried from the office and into the main room, but he paused by Lydia and crouched down in front of her. His heart slammed in his chest, but for her sake, he put on the cool and collected demeanor he thought his dad would display in the same situation. If only Dad were there to take over.

“Do you have anything of Dylan’s?”

“I have his hat.” She reached into her oversized tote. “He asked me to h-hold it while we were on the tram.”

“That will be perfect.” Javier took the black and green baseball cap and lifted it to his nose. Sweat mixed with coconut shampoo and sunscreen created a unique scent. “Mind if I borrow this?”

Lydia shook her head and blew her nose.

“Stay here with Betsy. I’m going out personally to help find your son. Betsy, do me a favor. If she has a photo of him on her phone, I want you to send it out as an administrative alert. I want every employee on this island to know what Dylan looks like. Even the people manning the gift shops and the food carts need to know.”

Outside, he moved onto the steps to address the group of security officers who gathered. They kept a number of shifters from varying species on staff as law enforcement and lifeguards, because nothing beat the mounted hippocampi patrols who traveled the island perimeter.

“It’s a confirmed abduction. Possibly two or three men working together,” Javier said. “I couldn’t see much over the security cameras, and we don’t have time to waste crawling through them if someone took the kid. I’ll assign one of the humans to that.”

Hyrum, a dark-haired hippocampi, crossed his enormous arms over his chest. “Did you let Teo know?”

“I shot him a text, but who knows when he’ll get it. Besides, we don’t have time to wait on him. I’m here, and this is what I’m saying we do. Everyone take a whiff of this.”

One by one, the guys passed the hat around and breathed it in, committing the boy’s scent to their short-term memories. Javier assigned each of them to an area to patrol, dividing them into pairs.

“Oscar, you’re with me. We’ll start at the tram station and try and get his scent there.”

A younger man stepped forward from the group, a startled but eager look in his pale yellow eyes. As the only gull shifter on the island, Oscar often received tasks related to patrolling by air. A few months ago, when there’d been a shoplifting ring on the island, he’d been integral to busting them.

“Sure thing. What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Air surveillance. I want you to keep over me,” Javier replied. “If you see the kid, raise a ruckus. Shit on his nabbers if that’s what it takes.”

Oscar tapped the butt of his handgun. “Got it. Lemme store this and my clothes in the locker.”

Once Oscar emerged from the security office in his seagull form, Javier hurried to the closest tram station. The bulk of the crowds had dispersed, having no reason to linger while the tram line was closed. He made it on foot to the station where Dylan had disappeared in less than ten minutes.

The boy’s scent led him from the platform to a public restroom down the path. Javier navigated his way past a few idling groups and stepped into the modest building. Like all the other restrooms on the island, this one provided private stalls as well as showers. His search ended at a trashcan, where he discovered a discarded black T-shirt decorated with Minecraft Creepers stuffed below wet paper towels and other garbage. He dug deeper and found blue swim trunks.

“Dammit,” he muttered, then raised his radio to his lips. “Be aware that the child is no longer in the described outfit. I repeat, the kidnappers have either stripped or changed the boy’s clothes.”

“Roger that, mate.”

There had to be hundreds of children on the island at any given time, but plucking one missing boy out of them couldn’t be too difficult, could it? Forcing himself to think like a kidnapper, he removed the employee tablet from his belt, pulled up a map of the resort, and judged the distance between the blue line and the pier. The ferry traveled every thirty minutes. Although it had been due to depart less than ten minutes after the boy had gone missing, an unforeseen delay had been notated into the schedule. Good. They couldn’t have gotten him off the island. Yet.

And they couldn’t hide him forever, even if he’d disappeared into thin air like…

Magic. There’s no way to remove him from this island without using magic at this point, Javier realized. A perimeter of wards and glyphs had been inscribed and etched into the ground, on the trees, and in the stone at varying intervals to disrupt teleportation spells, however. Even genies would struggle with teleporting onto Isla de los Sueños, because his father valued security, privacy, and safety for all inhabitants and visitors.

But there were blind spots. His father had once admitted the charms weren’t 100 percent foolproof, and there were ways in between them only an experienced wizard could find. Because of that, some areas of the island remained under twenty-four-hour guard, patrolled at all times by some member of their security team.

The scent of magic had a peculiar sting that buzzed around the nostrils and inside their nasal cavities when they breathed it in, so it made sense for shifters to routinely watch their weak spots for magical activity.

Plan in mind, Javier abandoned the public paths and made his way through the restricted areas of the resort, using every shortcut he knew to make his way toward the beach. Unless Dylan’s kidnappers were idiots, they’d have made a contingency plan, and there would be no other way off the resort save using magical means.

The vulnerable spot nearest to the ferry lay two miles west of the pier. It’d be the logical place to get the child out of the public eye and somewhere private once they evaded security.

“Oscar, scout ahead.” To the radio, he called in, “Post Floraverde, report.” After a few moments of silence, Javier repeated the call, but no one answered him. He tried again before proceeding to the next stage of his plan.

Every second counted. Even if the perpetrators had magic, alarms should have sounded, but Javier had no real idea what they were, which was another reason to regret not taking more of an interest in the administrative duties related to his home.

Running like his life depended on it, Javier’s feet beat against the loamy coastline where the sand melded into soil and tropical growth. The wind tossed his long hair around his shoulders, and the surf washed foamy waves against the shore to his right.

Overhead, Oscar cawed and flew downward in a tight spiral. Javier hurried forward, pushing through dense growth. The thick ferns thinned to reveal a long stretch of rocky beach. Floraverde was off-limits to guests, known to have dangerous currents off the coast and jagged rocks hidden beneath the surface. Only the bravest and strongest hippocampi risked the treacherous waters, and Phoebe’s father had forbidden her from swimming in the area.

Farther up the beach, three men traced sigils and symbols into the sand with twigs. The wind carried a musky, familiar scent mingled with traces of Dylan. He wasn’t far, slumped on the sand a few feet away from his abductors.

“Javier to Central. I’ve found the boy. Send all units available to Floraverde.”

The moment Javier stepped onto the beach, Oscar fell from the sky like a white and silver bullet. The gull collided with one dog’s face then soared off again. He rounded about in the air and came winging back a second time, moving too fast for them to target and keeping all the attention on himself instead of Javier.

Perfect. Oscar’s antics bought him vital time to close in on them.

As Javier sprinted across the sand, the unmistakable odor of dog filled his nostrils. He squinted through the glare of the setting sun to recognize the dogs who had tried to pose as wolves. Brad and Ryan. Then an unfavorable shift in the wind blew Javier’s scent toward them, and both whirled on the offensive.

The third guy had a wizard’s staff in his hand, a long shaft of ebony wood with a curved top and numerous magical glyphs etched into its surface. Somehow he’d smuggled it onto the island past security. As the mage channeled a spell into the fingertips of his right hand, the larger dog shifter rushed Javier with a knife. Dodging to the side, Javier pivoted on his left foot and landed a roundhouse to his opponent’s back. Ryan stumbled forward and face-planted against a boulder. The sound of his nose meeting the unyielding rock made a wet cracking sound, and when he rolled to the sand, a smear of blood remained on the stone.

Meanwhile, arcs of electricity flew toward the sky into a dozen branching streams of power, but Oscar was so damned good he rolled through the air and avoided each one. The wizard spread his fingers and aimed again.

Thanks, man, Javier thought. There was no way he could have taken on those two and a wizard at the same time without using his dragon body, and he was reluctant to pull that out with the kid present.

One wrong move and the child would be the one to pay for it.

“I’ll kill you, asshole!” Brad lunged forward from two legs to four, a flash of white and golden-brown fur streaking toward him. When the heavily muscled malamute struck Javier in the chest, ripples of pain blossomed across his ribs.

Shit. For a dog, he hit like a motherfucker. Thrown off balance, Javier tumbled with him to the sand. Brad’s back claws tore through his shirt and into skin before the blond danced out of reach. He may not have been a wolf, but he had moves like one.

Javier didn’t want to endanger the boy, but he couldn’t depend on shifter strength and reflexes alone in his human body. Like the wizard, he had to tap into his innate magic. He seized control of the earth instead, applying his willpower to the sand and the nearby rocks.

When Brad bounded toward Javier again, a pillar of stone exploded from the sand and intercepted the dog shifter. Brad barreled into it head first, and his sharp yelp echoed across the water. The moment he recovered, he came after Javier with renewed fury, snapping, snarling and biting at him, impossibly quick on his four paws.

Slower but definitely smarter, Javier took on defensive maneuvers, backpedalling and sidestepping, just analyzing his opponent’s attack pattern. Brad either tried to bite at Javier’s lower body or pounce him to go for the throat.

Perfect.

The next time Brad went for his throat, Javier was waiting for him. He’d been in enough fist fights in his human body on the island to know winning a fight was as much about strategy as it was strength. But it definitely helped to have a dragon shifter’s power.

He drove upward with his knee toward Brad’s underbelly and ribs, putting some real muscle and all of his supernatural strength behind it.

And the dog ate it. Took it all. His cry and the sound he made was like all the wind had come out of his lungs at once, and it probably had. Before he could recover or even consider bounding away, Javier was on him, gripping the large dog around the middle and squeezing what little air remained in his lungs until ribs gave—until something cracked and the desperate, panicking shifter became limp in his arms.

Before he could celebrate his victory, a bolt of fire hurtled past him and sizzled against the sand, turning it to glass. The next strike didn’t miss, and it splashed against his ribs like napalm. Flames incinerated his shirt and licked against his unprotected human torso, introducing him to a world of agony unlike anything he’d ever known.

True wizards were rarer than dragons in the world, and Javier only knew of a few. The man holding fire in his bare hands without any visible talismans or enchanted objects appeared to be the real fucking deal.

Where the hell had Oscar gone? Javier’s gaze darted over the sand until he located the fallen seagull against the surf with a wet patch of scarlet glistening on his ivory wing. From the way the blood pooled beneath him, the wound was still leaking—practically seeping.

It was foolish to bring a knife to a gunfight, and equally as foolish to try and use human skill against magic. Javier burst from his uniform when he shifted, and his phone fell to the sand amidst the tattered remnants of his slacks and shoes. He lunged forward and snapped his jaws, but only snatched thin air. The wizard appeared behind him and a barrage of fireballs licked against Javier’s spine, each explosion hotter and more brilliant than the last. Roaring in pain, he stumbled forward before whirling to face his opponent.

Got to get him away from Dylan. Lead him away from the kid so I can use my main weapon. Got to get him away from the kid before he burns us both to ashes.

As far as dragon’s breath went, each colorful variety of dragon had their own unique weapon. Volcanic red dragons exhaled fire, silvers screamed lightning, and earth dragons like Teotihuacan and Javier projected lethal clouds of acid.

With precise flicks of his tail, Javier herded the wizard away from Dylan. The kid still hadn’t moved aside from the steady rise and fall of his chest. Once they were a safe distance away, Javier opened his enormous mouth and exhaled a caustic wave of acidic fog.

The fumes billowed outward in a controlled burst and the sand bubbled around the wizard’s feet in a perfect circle, doing no damage to the smug man within. Blasted wizards and their magical shields.

Another fireball sizzled toward Javier’s face, but he didn’t see the true attack until he dodged the diversion. Earth exploded at his clawed feet, and the sand became a spear of dense stone, transmuted by the wizard’s sorcery. It slammed into him like a truck flying full speed down the road and punched him in the chest, tearing his tough dragon skin.

Between the years of wrestling with his father and training with other powerful figures in the supernatural community, Javier knew how to throw down—especially when it came to smaller, magical opponents. One of their family friends was the dragon Loki, and the sorcerer had been a strict tutor, putting Javier through the ringer for days. Had someone asked him yesterday if the training would ever prove useful, he’d have laughed and said no.

Now he’d have to thank the trickster.

Javier beat his wings and directed a blinding cloud of sand and grit toward the wizard, but his opponent thrust both of his hands into the ground and charged the sand with magic. A wave of power swept over the individual granules. They transformed, melting into glassy structures within seconds. A portal opened, and the man dashed inside before Javier could close the distance between them.

Goddammit, it’s too small for me to follow, Javier thought. Unable to continue after his prey, he bashed his clawed fist through the glowing gateway, snarling as its shimmering pieces rained down against the sand. No one would be using that particular portal again without rebuilding it completely.