Cameron
“You’re hurt,” she says, rushing over to me.”
“I’m fine,” I growl, but she ignores me and takes my arm in her hands. She looks at my skin and makes a weird little clicking sound. Disapproval. She disapproves of my injury. Well, it’s not up to her, now is it? She had a chance to avoid all of this, but she chose to run. She chose to make me chase her. It’s her fault I’m hurt. Really. It is.
It’s not the human’s fault, my dragon whispers to me, but I ignore that fucker.
“Stop touching me,” I pull my arm away, but she glares at me.
“You listen here,” she says. “You might be some big, bad shifter, but my mother was a nurse, and I know a bad injury when I see one. We need to get this cleaned up. Now.”
She stands and offers me her hand. What? Is she going to pull me to my feet? I’m much too big and heavy for that, but I humor her, offering my hand in return, and she tugs. I push myself up to help her, and then I allow the human to lead me into the wolf’s cabin. We both pointedly ignore his corpse, not wanting to even deal with that at the moment. I should burn it, most likely, or bury him, but I get the feeling we don’t have time for pleasantries.
The inside of the cabin is dirty and dusty. I don’t know how long the wolf lived here, but it’s obvious he didn’t take well to solitude.
“This place is disgusting,” the human says.
“Human, you simply don’t understand the ways of shifters,” I say.
“Peggy.”
“What?”
“My name is Peggy,” she says. “Please don’t call me human. Call me Peggy.”
“All right, Peggy,” I say. “You just don’t understand the ways of shifters.”
“I think you just don’t want to admit that I’m right,” she says, and I notice she doesn’t ask me my name. Maybe she knows I won’t give it to her.
I sit at the dusty table. The chair creaks beneath my weight and Peggy begins to move around the cabin. She takes off her backpack and sets it on the floor. Then she unzips it and two little kittens pop their heads out.
“Go on, then,” she tells them. “This is your one chance to play and stretch, so don’t waste it.”
The kittens nervously begin to climb out of the bag. One at a time, they come out and look around nervously. The kitten who notices me first begins to hiss and spit at me, and the other follows suit.
“They’re charming,” I say dryly.
“They’re strays,” she says. “Someone abandoned them.”
“So you just took them in?” What a strange human.
“What was I going to do?” She shoots me a dark look. “Let them die?”
She doesn’t place Daisy down, I notice. Instead, she keeps the baby in the carrier on her chest and she begins to walk around the room. She gathers a washcloth and some other random supplies. Then she comes over to the table and sits across from me.
“Give me your arm.”
“You could say please, you know.”
“I think we’re past the point of pleasantries. Don’t you?”
I offer her my arm.
She sets it on the table and looks at the injury. It’s not terrible and if I leave it alone, it should heal within a few days. The beautiful thing about being a shifter is that I tend to heal very quickly from normal injuries. Almost instantly, actually. If I’m hurt by another shifter, though, well, that’s another story. Those wounds take a little while. A couple of days, maybe even a week for the really bad ones.
I don’t tell her that, though. Instead, I allow Peggy to examine my wound and to start cleaning it. When the first bite of peroxide hits my skin, I don’t hiss. Despite the sting, I don’t want her to think I’m weak or childish. After all, I’m the one who got myself into this mess. I don’t need to make things worse by complaining about the pain.
She gets to work, quietly cleaning and bandaging the deep cut.
“You should get stitches,” she says. It’s almost a whisper, and when she looks up at me, she seems nervous. Is she afraid that she might be bossing me around? Does she think I’m going to be upset at her words?
“I don’t need stitches, little human.”
“Peggy.”
“I don’t need stitches, little Peggy.”
“No,” she shakes her head, and her dark hair bounces. “Just Peggy.”
“I don’t need stitches, Just Peggy.”
Her eyes narrow, but she looks away, turning back to my hand.
“It’s a deep wound,” she points out.
“I’m not exactly human, love.”
She looks up at me sharply, but I quickly clear my face of any emotion. I’m not sure why I used the endearment on the girl. I’ve certainly never been one to randomly nickname people, but the word just slipped out.
Because she’s our mate.
I silently urge my dragon to shut up. That horny bastard would already have her in bed if it was up to him.
And oh, she’d be so delicious in there. We could spread her legs and just spend days making love to her over and over and over again.
“I know you aren’t human,” she finally says. “Does that mean you can heal yourself quickly?”
“A wound like this will take a few days,” I tell her. “Injuries sustained from fights with other shifters always tend to take a little longer to heal.”
“How long would an ordinary injury take to heal?”
“Well,” I say, leaning back in the chair. “That depends.”
“On?”
“On how deep it was, on whether I licked my wound after the injury occurred, and how quickly I shifted.”
“Oh.”
“Oh indeed.”
“Have you ever been in a fight like this before?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever…”
“Go ahead,” I urge her gently. “Finish that sentence.”
She takes a deep breath and then she looks right at me.
“Have you ever killed someone before?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
“Does that bother you?”
She hesitates for a minute, but then she simply shakes her head. Peggy starts cleaning up the supplies and putting things back where she found them.
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “He’s not coming back.”
“It just seems polite,” she shrugs. “A place for everything, and everything in its place. Right?”
“My mother used to say that.”
“Mine too.”
She looks at me for a long minute, and then Peggy continues moving around. She acts like she’s completely at home in this random cabin, like she doesn’t mind at all that there’s a shifter body lying just outside the walls.
Finally, she turns to me.
“It’s late.”
“Or early, depending on how you want to look at it.”
“Do you fly in the daylight?” She asks pointedly.
“Never.”
“Then we should sleep here,” she says looking around. “Until night falls again.”
Slowly, I push my chair away from the table and stand. I move to the window and pull back the curtains. Sure enough, the sun is coming up. I hadn’t even noticed the night had turned into morning, but Peggy had.
I turn back around and see her digging around in the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?”
“This.” She holds up a wad of towels and then she lays Daisy on the bed in the little cabin. She starts to undress my niece.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m out of diapers,” she says simply, as if that explains the whole thing. I watch as she carefully constructs a makeshift cloth diaper from the fabric and then she gives Daisy a bottle. She settles my niece in the bed, and then she turns back to me. For a minute, I think she’s going to say something to me. Anything.
For a minute, I crave her words.
I want her to look at me and think I’m worth talking to.
I want Peggy to think I’m important, valuable.
We’ve never cared about a woman’s opinion before, my dragon whispers, and I know that he’s right. Peggy’s different, though. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever known – man or woman. She’s kind and caring, compassionate. She’s very, very brave. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as brave as she is.
She doesn’t speak to me, though. Instead, she starts rummaging around again and produces a little cardboard box, which she fills with more blankets. Then she collects her two little kittens and plops them in the box.
“Stay,” she tells them, as if that’s all the instruction they need.
To my utter and complete astonishment, they stay.
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get them to listen to you.”
“I think they’re just tired,” she says simply.
“No, it’s more than that. I’ve been watching you.”
“Oh?” She looks amused.
“You aren’t an ordinary human.”
“And you aren’t an ordinary dragon,” she tells me. “We should get some sleep. At dusk, we need to go to Fablestone.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask her.
“Doing what?”
“Why do you need to get there so desperately?”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute. Instead, she begins to rub her wrist anxiously as she looks around. She has long sleeves on, so I can’t see her wrist, but suddenly, I desperately want to.
“Peggy?”
“Hmm?” She says, absentmindedly.
“Why do you want to get to Fablestone?”
She looks up at me sharply.
“I just need to, okay? What’s with all of the questions?”
I move across the room then, ignoring the fact that I’m naked and she’s not. I ignore the fact that she’s human and I’m not. I ignore the fact that I need her, that I want her, that I desire her. I ignore all of that, and I crowd her space.
“Tell me,” I ask. It’s not mean. It’s not a command. It’s a request.
From a man to a woman.
“I made a promise,” she says finally, and I reach for her wrist. Peggy is quiet as I push her sleeve back and find the mark on her wrist. Of course. She swore an oath. To do what, though? What exactly was her promise? And why would she make it?
A dragon’s oath is binding and cannot be broken, which is why so few people ever swear them. Most of the time, people plan to double-cross the shifters, so making promises and taking oaths are out of the question.
Not Peggy, though.
She didn’t shy away from honesty and loyalty, and I need to know why.
“You swore a dragon’s oath, Peggy.”
“I may have,” she admits.
“Why?”
“Someone needed me,” she says.
Who?
Ellie?
Did Peggy find my sister?
Was she okay?
Did someone else have the baby and find a way to ensure she got home safely?
What?
I need answers, and I need them from her.
I take a deep breath, and I do one thing I promised I would never do with a human.
I beg her.
“Please,” I say. “Please tell me, Peggy.”