Oakwood was a sleepy little town about one hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco, and it made the perfect place for a dragon shifter to hide out. The townspeople here were tough, outdoorsy types who liked to keep to themselves. They were happy to discuss the best hiking and fishing spots with you, but they didn’t like any personal questions. In turn, they didn’t ask any personal questions. Clint himself might have settled down in this town before moving to Torch Lake, if he’d know it existed. He could understand why the dragon shifter they were trying to recruit had bought himself a little house on the edge of Oakwood after the Great Dark War. No wizards or shifters were likely to bother the dragon shifter here. Or so he thought.
Clint himself had thought for a while that it was possible to hide from the world of magic and shifters. He had tried to blend into the human world, until Jake, a dragon from Torch Lake, had found him and convinced him to move to the up and coming shifter-wizard town. Now, Clint understood better than most that you could never truly hide from who you were. That’s part of why he had trusted Sunny to make the right decision about revealing who she was. He knew if he gave her a chance to think about it and decide for herself, she wouldn’t be able to resist helping the people of Torch Lake.
Now, Sunny was sitting in their hotel room and staring out the window to the woods beyond, tapping her foot nervously. The trip out here had been uneventful enough, but Sunny was still a ball of anxiety.
“Want to go for a walk or something?” Clint asked. “We could see a little bit of Oakwood. I hear there’s a great fudge shop downtown.”
Sunny shook her head no. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t want to take the chance that someone from the Dark Warriors might see us and figure out who we are.”
Clint sighed as Sunny went back to her nervous tapping. She was right, of course. Walking down Main Street of Oakwood would be a pretty risky move. But Clint didn’t know what else to do to take her mind off of the task ahead of her. It would be at least tomorrow before she would need to cast the counter spell, and in the meantime all she could do was freak out about everything that could possibly go wrong. Besides, he was feeling a little trapped himself in this room. It was a small room, with barely enough room to walk around the two double beds that had been squeezed into the space. The effect was mildly claustrophobic.
“A walk in the woods, then?”
“There might be Dark Warriors hiding in there.”
“Yes, there might be. And there’s a small chance that we’ll run across some of them. But you can’t just sit here and stare out the window for the next twenty-four hours.”
Sunny looked back at him and frowned. “Fine. But only a short walk.”
Clint nodded. He would take what he could get. And he was hoping that once she was outside and breathing the fresh air, she would relax a bit and walk longer than she intended to.
Once they were outside, he found himself relaxing, too. He hadn’t realized how tightly wound he had been, but the warm air and sunshine soothed him. Signs of spring were everywhere, with bright green leaves slowly unfurling and the merry cheeping of birdsongs all around. Clint breathed in deeply and savored the balmy air. He and Sunny walked in silence for a while, content to just take it all in. Sunny finally broke the silence with a wistful sigh.
“Spring was always my favorite season back in Eagle Thicket. The winters were strong there, with lots of snow, so the arrival of spring was always a dramatic change. I loved watching all the new plants and baby animals. Everything felt so fresh and new. When my High Council sent me into hiding, spring had just begun. I have such strong memories of hiding in the forest, surrounded by all the new life. Little did I know that my old life was about to be completely burned away.”
Clint gave her a sorrowful glance. “I’m really sorry about your clan.”
Sunny shrugged, even though he could tell she was blinking away tears. “Thanks. It happened to pretty much everyone during the war, though. We all lost so much.”
“Still, I’m sorry. The fact that others lost everything too doesn’t make your loss hurt any less.”
She nodded, and walked in silence for a few moments. Then she turned to him and gave him a curious look. “You don’t talk much about your old clan. How did they fare in the war?”
“Not great. We were a small clan to begin with, and couldn’t defend ourselves well against the massive armies of dark wizards and evil shifters. Only a few of us survived, and I wasn’t that close to the ones who did. The others all went to live in Falcon Cross. I initially tried to escape to a human city, but Jake convinced me to come live in Torch Lake.”
“Jake the People’s Governor?”
“Yup, he used to work in the Dragon Utilization Department back in Torch Lake’s really early days.”
“I didn’t know that. But I guess there’s a lot about Torch Lake I don’t know.”
Clint laughed. “It can be a surprising place. There are so many different people from so many different backgrounds. It keeps things interesting.”
“That’s part of why I moved there, you know? I thought with so many different types of people, it would be easy to hide who I was.”
“I could see that. You might have hidden for a long time if it hadn’t been for the fact that we happened to be dealing with this dragon disappearance situation right now.”
“Yeah. And if Mocha hadn’t insisted on burying my Academy of Ancient Magic t-shirt in your flowerbed.”
Clint laughed again. “Remind me to buy that dog a nice juicy steak when we get home.”
Sunny laughed too. “Seriously, though, I’m sorry about Mocha’s digging. I know you just wanted a secluded house with no one bothering you, and then in I came with a misbehaving dog to boot. But I don’t know how to make her stop digging holes.”
“I’m pretty good at dog training. I’d be willing to work with her, if you want.”
“Oh my god, I would love that. I’m completely at a loss with her. She’s so sweet, but so stubborn!”
“I’ll see what I can do when we get home. In the meantime, though, stop apologizing for invading my space. It was pretty ridiculous of me to think I was going to have a street full of houses to myself forever. Torch Lake’s population is growing fast. Even if you hadn’t moved in, the rest of those houses will be filling up sooner rather than later. Besides, as far as neighbors go, you’re pretty great.”
“Really?” Sunny sounded surprised.
Clint took a deep breath, stopped walking, and turned to face her. “Really.” His voice sounded husky now, and he knew his eyes were giving away his feelings. If he had any sense about him at all he would have at least waited until they were done with this mission to show Sunny how he felt. But it was hard to be sensible when a woman as beautiful and sweet as her was standing right next to him. They still hadn’t talked about their kiss, and, honestly, Clint didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted to kiss her again. And again, and again. The more time he spent with her, the more he knew he was falling for her.
“Well, um, you make a great neighbor, too,” Sunny stammered out. Her cheeks had turned bright pink, and she was chewing her bottom lip nervously. She looked so adorable that any last shred of caution he had disappeared on the soft spring breeze.
“Stop that,” Clint said.
“Stop what?”
“Chewing your lip like that. It makes it too hard to do this.”
And then, he bent down and kissed her. She did not resist. Her lips were soft and warm, and she let him slip his tongue past them and into her mouth. She tasted sweet, and she felt warm and welcoming—just like the spring after a long winter. Clint smiled and wrapped his arms around her, and she reached to wrap her arms around him as well. They kissed long and deep, until finally, she pulled away and gave him a shy smile.
“We should get back,” she said softly. “It really isn’t safe to be out here,”
Clint nodded. He knew she was right, but damn. He could have kissed her all day. Maybe one day he would. But not today. Today, they needed to focus on the mission at hand. Besides, if he kept kissing her they were eventually going to have to have some sort of discussion about it, weren’t they? Wasn’t that what girls always wanted? To have “the talk” and know where they stood?
Clint glanced over at Sunny as they walked, and she looked right back at him and bit her lip in that irresistible way.
Something told him she knew exactly where she stood.