For the first time in months, Lance felt like his old self as he looked up at the nondescript building that housed the MacInnis Agency. The lingering dread that had dogged his thoughts since Irina was kidnapped was, if not gone, then reduced. Manageable.

No, he thought as he drove up to the carport. Not my old self. Better. Because now, I have her.

Keeley fit. It was as simple as that. All his life, there had been Lance, and his snow leopard. And now there was Keeley, too, filling a gap in his soul he hadn’t even known was there. Steadying the ground under his feet.

And her kitten, too, his snow leopard insisted.

Lance shook his head. The dragonling isn’t her... You know what, I don’t have time for this.

He pulled to a stop and looked across at Keeley in the passenger seat. Warmth flooded through his body as he reached for her hand, an electric thrill of anticipation already whipping across his skin—

Chomp!

“Ow,” Lance muttered, shaking his finger as Keeley exclaimed, “Maggie! No biting!”

“Prr-eep-eep!” Maggie argued back, her head-spines bristling. She glared at Keeley and Lance in turn, hissed, and burrowed back into the box Lance had found and filled with her ever-growing hoard.

“What is up with her this morning?” Keeley pushed her hair off her face. Her stormy eyes were troubled. “She’s been tetchy ever since she woke up. And she hardly ate anything for breakfast. I hope she isn’t getting sick.”

Lance reached out psychically to the tiny grumpy dragon. Her response was the telepathic equivalent of another bite. He sighed.

“I think she’s jealous.”

“Jealous?” Keeley frowned at him, and then her expression cleared. “Oh,” she said, going pink.

Lance smiled and took her hand. “I told you her psychic powers are ridiculously well developed for her age, didn’t I? She can probably sense the bond between us.”

“Poor baby,” Keeley murmured. She stuck her free hand into the hoard box to pet Maggie. “Don’t be sad. You’ll be back with your family soon. You won’t even notice we’re gone.”

“PREEP?”

Maggie stuck her head out the top of the box, outrage radiating from every golden scale.

“She didn’t like that,” Lance remarked out the side of his mouth.

He sent Maggie a burst of reassurance and scratched her under the chin. Maggie accepted the scratches, but still looked suspicious. She gently gnawed on his thumb, and then on Keeley’s pinky finger, before burrowing back into her hoard.

Lance exchanged a puzzled look with Keeley. He squeezed her hand.

“How are you feeling?”

She took a moment to reply. “About…?”

“You know.” Lance kissed her fingertips. “This isn’t exactly small steps.”

“No kidding.” For a moment, Keeley’s light-hearted expression slipped, and she looked lost. She took her hand out of Maggie’s hoard box and brushed it against her pocket.

She wasn’t wearing Lance’s t-shirt today. He’d made several calls the night before while she was putting Maggie to bed, and one of them had been for a full new wardrobe. Keeley had chosen a soft, knee-length knit dress in a navy blue that made her eyes seem even more storm-tossed, with a light cardigan thrown over the top. He’d seen her slip her phone into the cardigan’s pocket back at his apartment.

“Do you need a charger for that? You can take my office if you need a quiet place to make any calls.”

Keeley saw him looking and grimaced. “There are some things I have to check in on.” She paused, and Lance couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Stuff from—well, it’s my old life now, I guess.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to leave it behind,” Lance reassured her.

“Oh, trust me, this is sh—stuff I want to leave behind.”

“Your cleaning job?” Lance guessed, running the pad of his thumb over her fingers. He frowned. He hadn’t noticed it before—how was that possible?—but there was a fine, pale scar running along two of her knuckles.

“My job, yeah,” Keeley mumbled.

Lance lifted her hand into the light. The scar on her knuckles wasn’t the only one.

“Um.” Keeley pulled her hand away. “Should we get moving?”

Lance darted around the car to open her door and help her with the hoard box, questions whirling in his mind.

He took Maggie’s box and led Keeley through to the foyer with his hand on the small of her back. His snow leopard purred with satisfaction as she automatically leaned into him.

“Welcome to my workplace,” he said. “If you’d been here five years ago, it would have been just me and a desk. Today...” He balanced Maggie’s hoard-box against his hip and flashed his security card to open the door. “Four floors of office and training spaces, a rooftop terrace, and more paperwork than you can possibly imagine.”

Did he sound too smug about that last part? Probably.

Keeley blinked, and he hid a smile. He had to admit, the foyer wasn’t exactly impressive. He was proud of that. Any stray door-to-door marketers or time-wasters would find themselves faced with an elevator that didn’t work, a reception desk that wasn’t staffed, and a reception bell that would ring exactly four times before falling silent with a dispiriting whonk-whonk sound.

And then there was the smell. Damp, with a hint of desperation.

It also had a fully integrated defense and shutdown system, bullet-proof windows, and rhinoceros-proof internal walls—but those were a bit harder for the average onlooker to spot.

“It’s... nice,” Keeley managed, and Lance laughed.

“It’s a deliberate amalgamation of the worst aspects of the worst office buildings in the city,” he explained. “From the front end, at least. A friend and I spent months researching just what makes office buildings so depressing—ah, never mind.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. Francine had been the one who handled the interior design—a fun distraction from her high-class hotel projects, she’d called it.

Back when they’d been friends. Before he failed her.

Lance pressed his thumb against the elevator button. It looked like your standard elevator button, complete with suspicious greasy smear, but it was calibrated to only respond to the thumbprint of employees of the agency.

“Come on. My first meeting for the day should be arriving soon.”

He checked his phone as the elevator doors closed and found a message from Briers. Dissatisfaction prickled from every word.

Lance chuckled softly. “Make that now.” He turned to Keeley. “Time for you to meet another of the old crowd.”

“Preep?” Maggie poked her snout over the edge of her box. She flicked her tongue out at Keeley, then turned her shining eyes on Lance. “Prr-eeep?”

“We’re going to the roof?” Keeley asked as he pressed the button for the top floor. “Is that safe for Maggie?”

“Preep?”

“Don’t you give me that look, Maggie. I saw you jumping off the kitchen table last night. I don’t want you jumping off the side of a building, too.” Keeley frowned and bit her bottom lip. “And—what if someone sees her?”

“You’d better hold her.” Lance grinned as Keeley bundled the wriggling dragonling into her arms. “She’s going to be a handful when she’s bigger.”

“She’s an entire armful now,” Keeley shot back. “Ow. Claws, Maggie. I hope your uncle has tougher skin than I do.”

Her words made Lance’s snow leopard prickle. It stalked inside him, unhappy but not letting Lance know why. Lance frowned, but whatever had upset it, it refused to explain.

If you can’t figure it out yourself, I’m not telling you, it sniffed, whiskers bristling.

Suit yourself. Lance pushed his snow leopard’s moodiness to the back of his mind as the elevator doors opened. The elevator opened out into a window-lined room with a view of the roof.

The agency didn’t have a helipad. Wrong zone, too many restrictions. None of which apparently meant anything to the pilot gently easing a shiny black chopper down on the roof.

Lance sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Damn it, Harley.

Well, he’d told him the risks. The people who’d tried to take Maggie were still at large. Clearly, Harley thought the best solution was not letting his feet or the eggs touch the ground between Lance’s aunt’s place and the agency.

Briers was already there, watching the helicopter land with his hands clasped behind his back.

Lance greeted him with a nod. “Everything ready to go today?”

Briers’ mouth went pinched as he looked back out the window. “I would prefer it if you’d let me use my contacts for this part of the mission. Is this Harley Ames even licensed?”

Lance brushed aside the meerkat shifter’s question. “Until someone reports him landing on our roof, I expect. Briers, meet Keeley. She’s—”

His heart glowed as he introduced Briers to his mate. Even his snow leopard unwound from its huff, purring smugly as he showed off the wonderful woman he was going to share his life with.

Briers’ pinched expression actually relaxed slightly as he shook Keeley’s hand.

“A pleasure to meet you—Keeley Smith, was it?” Lance swore the meerkat shifter almost smiled as he turned back to him. “I want to double-check the arrangements for your call later this morning. We can’t afford any more mishaps.”

“Agreed.” Lance hugged Keeley closer to his side as Briers scampered to the elevator. “You’re wonderful,” he whispered into her hair.

“For managing to shake his hand without letting Maggie jump out of my arms and run off the side of the roof? That’s pretty wonderful, I guess.”

“No, you’re—” Lance gazed into her eyes. “You’re incredible, and I want everyone to know.”

Keeley looked away, biting down on her lower lip.

Something’s wrong. Lance was about to ask if there was anything he could do for her, when the thwop-thwop-thwop of the helicopter blades outside finally slowed. Light glinted off the helicopter’s door as it swung open.

“Ow!” Keeley yelped. “Maggie!”

The tiny dragonling was struggling out of her arms, wings flapping madly. Keeley hissed as she clawed her way up onto her shoulders, and Lance grabbed the dragonling before she started clawing her way up Keeley’s head as well.

Maggie chirped urgently. Emotions battered Lance’s mind, a frenzied, half-happy, half-worried storm.

He glanced across to the helicopter. Of course.

*It’s okay,* he whispered into Maggie’s mind, his psychic voice overlaid with as much soothing emotion as he could manage. *They’re here. You can see them soon.*

NOW NOW NOW, Maggie thundered back, her tail whipping back and forth.

Lance chuckled and tucked the little dragon under one arm. “She’s excited to see the other eggs,” he explained to Keeley.

“She couldn’t be excited with less claws?” she replied, wincing as she checked her shoulders for scratch marks.

He gave her one last squeeze and waved to Harley, who was stalking across the roof with a sturdy carryall in one hand and a winning smile on his face. Lance hit the button to open the foyer doors as he approached.

“Harley!” he called as the cheetah shifter stepped inside. “You know this isn’t a helipad, right?”

“Really? Shit, my bad.” Harley swept his light hair out of his eyes and grinned. “Good thing I know a nice old lady who can make any complaints go away, eh?”

“One day, I’m going to not regret introducing you to my aunt,” Lance groaned. “Regret it more, I mean.”

“Your aunt?” Keeley asked, and Lance rubbed his forehead.

“Ex-military, like me. Unlike me…” He tried to find a way to describe his aunt that wouldn’t take all day. “Most people see retirement as a chance to catch up with their family and gardening. My aunt saw it as a way to start playing with all the toys she’d missed in her years behind a desk. And sharing them with friends, apparently.”

Keeley went pale as she looked out at the helicopter. “That’s army issue?”

“Retired, same as General MacInnis,” Harley said.

“Oh.” A line formed between Keeley’s eyebrows. “Police, army—sounds like your agency has contacts everywhere,” she said quietly. Her hand slipped into her cardigan pocket.

He took her hand gently. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, it’s all good.” Keeley smiled unconvincingly, and the golden light that stretched between his heart and hers wobbled. “It’s—nice to meet more of your friends.”

Lance’s heart dropped. Of course. He was introducing her to his people—friends, family, colleagues—but what did he know about her social circle? Only that she had a workplace that treated her like crap, and no one who would even notice she’d disappeared for two days.

And a network of old scars on her fingers.

He squeezed her hand. “They’re your friends now, too.”

“Speaking of…” Harley cleared his throat. “Is this who I think it is?”

Right. His friends might be her friends, but he still had to, for example, make sure she knew all of their names.

“Keeley, meet Harley Ames. Ten years ago, I made the mistake of bringing him home for the holidays. He’s stuck to my family like hot tar ever since. Harley, this is—”

“Keeley Smith. Beautiful. Charming. Your mate. Yes, Grant filled me in. Your aunt’s going to be thrilled. Hey, do you mind if I’m the one to break the news? It might sweeten the whole ‘airspace violation’ issue.” Harley flashed Keeley a grin, but otherwise stood completely frozen. “Lance, I was talking about her. Wings. Scales. Biting my hand off at the wrist.”

Our kitten, Lance’s snow leopard said, and its smugness must have reached Harley’s cheetah as well, because the other man’s eyes went wide.

“What?” he spluttered, his eyes flicking between Lance and Keeley. *She’s not—you’re not—what?*

Lance disentangled Maggie from Harley’s hand but couldn’t convince her to let go of the bag.

“Let’s get them all settled in my office,” he said, “And then I’ll explain everything.”