Anya hesitated in the passenger seat of her father’s giant SUV as she looked up at the massive, old building ahead of her. It wasn’t a seat she occupied too often anymore. She had been out of the house for years now and nearly had a bachelor’s degree under her belt. The only reason she’d taken the ride her father offered was because they happened to be going to the same place now.

It felt odd to be working at the same place as her father after she spent most of her years working against just about everything he believed in. She knew this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for, the internship that would set up the rest of her life. For the Guardians of Existence, this place was a ticking time bomb.

The Guardians of Existence, an international organization with branches everywhere there were dragon shifters, told the world they would keep order against magic and its chaos. The organization told the world that they protected humanity from the dragon shifters. While dragons were forced out of the closet after the Welsh Occurrence, the day that a Welsh red dragon took vengeance upon a city for his mate’s death, the Guardians of Existence promised the world that they’d always been there. The Guardians, or GOE as it was referred to today, became globally funded and recognized to protect humanity against another Occurrence.

Her father happened to be an agent of that organization.

Anya was a bit more skeptical of GOE’s doings. Her father called her a dreamer or an innocent, from time to time. She liked to think of herself as a champion. Dragon shifter rights in the US were woefully lacking. They couldn’t hold jobs in the US, which meant they couldn’t afford to live. If a dragon shifter was seen as disrupting the peace in the slightest, GOE agents had every right to detain or deport the dragon with no trial or investigation whatsoever.

The US was a nation founded on liberty for all. People sought out the New World with hopes of finally finding freedom. Why, in this day and age, was that freedom suddenly restricted to a certain type of people? Anya threw herself into her Public Relations degree and happily shouldered the minor in dragon history. Soon, she would have that degree in her hands and she’d be able to move on to her Master’s.

“Are you going to get out of the car?” Her father asked patiently. He probably thought she was afraid of the dragon shifters inside the building. She’d never actually met one face to face. “Or, should I take you home?”

Anya shook her head. If the world can accept her parents’ marriage, they would learn to accept dragon shifters, too. She gripped the door handle. This building, this Embassy between dragons and humanity, was just the first step. Her internship here would build the foundation she needed to change the world. The first Embassy had recently been built in Wales, the red dragons’ reaction to the recent White Dragon Uprising that had plagued the city.

The old building before her, with its strong columns and green copper roof, would stand as the meeting place for dragons and humanity in America. The red dragons had sent over an Ambassador to help build it and form relationships across seas. It’s been a stroke of luck or fate that had brought the Ambassador and the American Dragon Leader together, binding them as mates. It was a love story that Anya wholeheartedly bought into; it was good press for the new Embassy.

Her car door swung open, her hand slipping away. When she saw the face outside her door, her stomach dropped. It took some effort to keep her face from doing the same.

“Howard Beauchamp!” Her father greeted the man standing outside her door with enthusiasm. Of course, her father approved wholeheartedly of the fellow GOE agent. So much so that her father often hinted at a relationship between her and Beauchamp. She had to hide her gag from him every time.

“Agent Forrest,” Beauchamp said with a nod of his head. The agent offered Anya his hand to help her out of the SUV.

She didn’t need it. Her skirt was short enough that she had free range of movement and she’d worn flats because she knew she’d be climbing stairs. Yet, as Beauchamp stood outside her door and his eyes moved over her bare legs, she wished she’d worn a Hazmat suit instead. With a little hop, she jumped out of the car without flashing the Agent.

“As much as you two should catch up, I need to steal Agent Beauchamp for a briefing,” Agent Forrest said as he came around to her side of the SUV.

Anya felt her heart leap with relief. She was safe from Beauchamp for the time being. She did have the sneaking suspicion that her father had requested the younger agent as his partner on this assignment only to push the two of them closer.

If Nathan Forrest truly thought a relationship between her and Howard Beauchamp would ever happen, then he had another thing coming. She’d sooner turn into a crazy, old cat lady than… she felt bile rise in her throat as she even thought about it.

Beauchamp said his goodbyes, attempting to reach for her hand even though she pulled it away several times. In the end, she gripped her purse strap with both hands to keep him from touching her and watched her father and the agent disappear into the small trailer parked behind the Embassy. It was a small, travel trailer packed with GOE issued computers and technology.

In other words, a safe haven for the GOE agents to hide from the dragon shifters inside. 

Once Alone with her thoughts, Anya chewed her thumbnail. The old building was at the tail end of the renovations process. People were moving furniture into the building. The other day, some GOE agents had dropped off some old files that she’d been tasked with photocopying for the Embassy’s records. It would be a boring day, but she had hopes that her work would get more exciting as the Embassy grew.

Her flats were silent on the stone stairs. The man at the door didn’t hear her coming up behind him until she was at the door. His skin was the color of dark bronze and his giant hands were in the process of getting a stiff dummy through the two sets of doors. Anya paused, a smile crossing over her face.

The sharp lines of his jaw cut a strong profile, clenching as he growled at the dummy in his hands. His shoulders were broad and his arms thick. Anya’s eyes continued to rove over the man’s body, taking in the denim taut over the curve of his ass. It wasn’t until his face shifted and the rising sunlight glinted off his eyes that her breath caught in her throat.

Color raced over his eyes, reflecting light the way a cat’s eyes did in the dark. This man was not human. Anya tried to force down the dancing feeling in her stomach. She brought her chin up and moved towards the doors. Her eyes slipped to the side again and she couldn’t help but take in the straight line of his nose and his full, lower lip. Her skin tingled when she stepped closer to him.

For a reason she could not define, she reached forward and pulled open the door the dragon shifter was struggling with. His head shot up, lips parted in surprise. When his gaze met hers, she felt a fire ignite inside of her.

His eyes were dark, but she swore she could see flecks of every color shimmering in them. She caught the flash of green and the hints of gold. Anya knew he would mean trouble, but that didn’t stop her from smiling at him.

 

***

 

It was one of those dewy kinds of mornings where there was a cool moisture to the air. Later, the sun would peak and the pavement below would make the air unbearably hot. They would need some kind of laughter to get them through this kind of day.

At least, that was Luc’s reasoning behind what he was doing. He’d gotten up early and flown out to the Embassy before anyone else woke, having two tasks to attend to that day. The Embassy had come a long way in the past month, taking up more and more of Liana’s time. Luc figured his leader’s mate could use a good laugh, too.

It had been easy to carry what he needed while in dragon form. It was a bit cumbersome in his human form, getting him caught at the front door of all places. A young woman approached and held the door open for him, but when he looked up, his brain stopped altogether.

Her hair was a soft fall of curls that settled around her chin and there was a splattering of dainty freckles over her nose that Luc couldn’t help but stare at. They were dark on her coffee colored skin. The short skirt of her coral colored dress did nothing to help his addled brain. Her legs were long and smooth, Luc’s brain sending him inappropriate images of them wrapped around him. He felt his brain jumble like someone had put an egg beater directly into his skull. She smiled up at him and it only made it worse. The ability to form words left him completely. All Luc knew was the thumping beat of his heart inside of his chest.

“What do you need the dummy for?” The young woman’s golden-brown eyebrows slid together in confusion while she held the door.

For a moment, Luc’s brain refused to process her words. They both paused, unable to speak while the moment grew awkward.

Luc normally wasn’t like this. He could normally spin lies and half-truths off the tip of his tongue, leading everyone in circles so that they never knew what he was really up to. It was years of practice, really. But, this petite woman had his tongue in a knot.

Once he hauled the dummy through the door, the intern lingered. Luc couldn’t help taking in her thin legs and the tiny paw print tattoo above her ankle. It was such a silly thing, but it made him smile. He imagined this woman not in a professional dress, but in a pair of loose jeans and one of his shirts while surrounded by a small pack of dogs. It was a happy image and not one Luc should have allowed himself.

“What is it?” the young woman asked, her voice holding true concern.

Luc’s stomach flipped. He, apparently, did not like hearing worry in her voice. Instead of answering, he flashed her a wide smile and held a finger up to his lips before turning away. It was the best he could do, really. His tongue was still in a knot as he walked away.

His beast writhed beneath the surface, begging him to turn back. The beast was content to stare at her all day, content to study the constellations that her freckles made over her button nose.

But, Luc had other things to attend to. More important, even, than the prank he was about to pull. Upstairs, he found the office Liana had picked out for herself. There was a small supply closet in the corner that he opened and situated the dummy into. It took a bit of ingenuity to get the rigging just right.

Prank set up, Luc retreated to the basement. He’d heard Liana let slip that there were a number of physical files being transported from the nearby defunct GOE facility, a building that had been shut down due to budget cuts. Hope had surged through Luc’s chest and he’d met his twin’s gaze when they heard. Those files would provide an opportunity they’d never had before to learn more about their parents’ disappearance.

For decades, the twins spent a good portion of their free time looking why their parents had disappeared during their trek into the States. They remembered travelling north, flying over the border in the dark of the night when they were just young teens. They’d gotten about as far as Colorado before they’d been separated.

It was so long ago, the memories felt fuzzy. Often, the twins would stay up late, sitting on the back porch of their modular home, trying to dig through the haze of memories to figure out what had happened. Other nights, they would lose themselves in research. The brothers learned that a lot of dragons disappeared around that time.

There was no Territory, no safe haven, back then. The Territory began with Dane and the brothers. It grew little by little, starting with Isaac, a young dragon with no memories of who he’d been or where he’d come from. That should have been their first clue that something fishy was going on around them, but that had been a time consumed with growing to trust one another and building the foundation of the Territory. They hadn’t been thinking about missing dragons because there’d been no way of knowing.

Now, Luc and Marc had heard a bit more from the dragons Dane had brought into the family. They’d heard stories of losing touch with blood relatives, of getting separated. There weren’t too many, but enough for Luc and Marc to notice.

They’d written down stories, noted what kinds of dragons had disappeared, and kept their own files. Now, Luc had access to some of the files made at the time of their disappearances. It gave them hope. For fifty years, they held on to the hope that they would find their parents. Yet, when Luc descended the stairs, his heart plummeted through the floor.

The files in question were nothing more than three, small boxes. He’d envisioned a room full of papers that he could slowly pour through in order to find small clues. He’d been willing to dedicate the time and effort it would take to find anything, but this smashed all his hopes. Surely, there wasn’t anything of import in those three little boxes.

He moved to let himself fall onto a stray chair, staring at the boxes with despair. The glow of a computer screen and a sad, yellow-orange lightbulb washed over him. This shouldn’t take long, he thought without much hope. They needed a break through. It’d already been fifty years. How much longer did they have? Or, had time already run out?

Luc’s chest seized.

“Um, excuse me?” a soft, familiar voice asked.

Luc shot up from his seat. The intern looked up at him with questioning eyes. Luc’s focus blew out the narrow window and, suddenly, he found himself thinking about threading his fingers through the soft curls near her chin and tracing his thumb over her cheek. He took a step back, not sure what was going on with his brain.

“No, don’t go,” the young woman said as she held her hands up. “I only meant to ask you if there was anything I could help with. I’m the intern sent to help update the Embassy’s current records.”

Luc raised an eyebrow. Maybe the girl could help him find what he needed. He gestured to the sad number of files stacked on the floor and the intern caught on without him having to speak.

She nodded. “Those are the physical files the office allowed the Embassy to have. I’m supposed to make copies of everything and then return it to the office. Everything else is going to be shared digitally.” She gestured toward the computer behind him.

The young intern passed by him on the way to the computer, her bare arm brushing his. He felt the beast inside of him lurch toward the surface and Luc physically staggered. The intern paused, looking up at him with confusion. He gave her a tight-lipped smile as he was trying to reign in the beast that urged him to grab her.

The beast wanted this woman more than it had ever wanted anything in Luc’s life. It wanted to feel the soft skin of her chest pressed against his. It wanted to feel her hips beneath his hands as Luc plunged deep inside of her.

He forced himself to take a step back, bringing with him a waft of the cinnamon scent that clung to her. It was not helping his situation or the growing discomfort of his jeans.

Luc scratched the back of his head and opened his mouth to try speaking when they both heard a scream above them. Only, it wasn’t the feminine voice Luc expected. His heart lurched. The intern’s face blanched. Together they bolted for the stairs.

Liana stood in the doorway to her office, hiding her mouth behind her hand. The intern squeezed past her and slipped into the room. Luc stood behind his leader’s mate and peered into the room. The GOE agent sent to help them establish the Embassy stood before the closet.

The dummy, wearing a werewolf mask from Halloween of last year, was hanging out of the closet, singed from where a Taser had burned through it. The agent’s shoulders fell, trembling slightly from the adrenaline that must have coursed through them. Slowly, he turned to face the room with burning eyes. His face was nearly purple with anger.

“Who did this?” he demanded to know.

Liana’s hand finally fell away from her mouth to reveal the smile that was probably the reserved version of what she’d hidden. As she stepped away, Luc took up the space to lay claim to his mistake. That had not been meant for the agent to find. Why the GOE agent had opened the closet was beyond him.

Luc watched as the agent reached for the silver cuffs on his belt and felt his stomach lurch.

“Hey now,” Liana said as she stepped forward.

At the same time, the intern reached over and placed her hand over the agent’s. Seeing her touch him made Luc oddly upset, but he remained where he was standing. He couldn’t ask them to step apart. Not because of some unnamed emotion swirling around inside of him. Definitely, not in that tense moment.

“He endangered lives outside of the Territory grounds,” the agent told the intern. It was odd to see her stand her ground. It was almost as if they knew one another, despite their age difference. Luc would have assumed she was his daughter if it hadn’t been for the difference in their skin tones. “That means he is in defiance of several laws. I have every right to detain him until further notice.”

Liana’s face turned hard. Dealing with her was going to be a challenge for the angry GOE agent. “I’m afraid that it was only a prank meant for me. The prank itself was unable to cause harm, Agent Forrest. It was yourself that openly used your weapon on a dummy.”

“I used it in defense.” The agent gestured to the mask hanging from the dummy’s face. “Wouldn’t you be alarmed if that flew at you from the inside of a closet?”

“You and I both know that werewolves aren’t real, Agent Forrest. Had that dummy jumped out at me, I would have been startled, but not so alarmed as to provoke an attack.”

They all watched as the agent’s face scrunched with a flurry of emotions that he was trying to process. Luc could tell that he desperately wanted to slap those silver cuffs around Luc’s wrists. They’d all heard horror stories about dragons being detained and never released. The Guardians of Existence claimed that the dragons that never returned were sent back to their country of origin.

Marc and Luc thought otherwise. They wondered if those dragons often went the same place as their missing parents, as the other missing dragons. Luc now stood only moments away from the same fate, all for a prank. All he’d wanted to do was make someone laugh. It did no good to spend one’s life drowning in constant concern and responsibility. It was his job to make sure everyone stopped and took a breath once in a while.

The room was tense. The intern stared the agent down while holding the hand that held the cuffs. Liana marched over to the dummy and removed the used Taser from its body. Luc stood his ground.

Eventually, the agent’s hand dropped. He clipped the cuffs to his belt and turned to glare at Luc and Liana. When the agent grabbed the intern by the arm and dragged her out of the room, Luc felt anger roil through him and a growl slip from his lips. He’d already spun around to follow them, but Liana caught him.

She stood between him and the door, staring him down. Luc was forced to watch the agent and the pretty intern leave and he could do nothing about it. He was charged with protecting humanity and she was human. It was the agent’s right to direct the intern. Luc shouldn’t have felt so angry, shouldn’t have wanted to hunt down the agent and pry his fingers off the girl’s arm before breaking each one of them.

Liana raised a brow while she watched Luc pull himself back together.

“You’re an idiot,” she said once he calmed down.

His shoulders slumped. He still watched the doorway, but the regret for what he’d done was starting to sink in. Luc threaded his hand through his hair, pushing it away from his forehead. The female dragon in the room with him was not happy as she ripped the dummy out of the closet. The mask went straight into her trash bin.

“Go home,” she commanded. She had every right to tell him what to do as Dane’s mate. “Dane will have some words with you later. Just get out of here before Agent Forrest comes back for blood.”

Luc had no other choice but to retreat with the dummy in his hands. Liana called out behind him, telling him to wait to use his dragon form until the edge of the territory. That meant walking three miles with the dummy in his human arms.

 

***

After listening to her father’s tirade about safety in the presence of dragons, Anya retreated to the Embassy basement. Whatever hopes she’d had were dashed when she found the dim room empty. Had she really hoped the dragon man would be hiding down here? Had she really hoped he would seek refuge with her?

She had helped save the dragon man from her father’s crusade, after all. The least the bronze skinned dragon could have done was say thank you.

She didn’t know why she was sad to see him gone. Anya didn’t know this dragon man in the least. He was a foolish child, playing pranks on his superiors. She shouldn’t have thought about him, but as she sank into the desk chair she found her mind completely engrossed with thoughts of him.

“Long day already?”

Anya tried to swallow the curse that slipped through her lips. At least it was nothing more than a harried puff of air before she raised her head with a false smile plastered on. Agent Beauchamp lingered in front of her. There were two paper cups in his hands and he offered one to her. She shouldn’t accept gifts from him, but there was no way she could refuse the coffee.

It would be rude and then the young agent would run up to her father and complain about her temperament. Anya knew everyone at the GOE facility on a first name basis, but it’d been her father’s idea to invite Howard Beauchamp to dinner with them a few months back and she hadn’t been able to shake him since. So, Anya accepted the too sweet coffee and set it aside. She would dump it later. Anya was more of a tea person, but as long as she’s known him, Agent Beauchamp couldn’t get that through his thick skull.

The Agent stepped around the paper files she should have been going through and ungraciously took a seat on top of them. She opened her mouth to tell him to remove himself from her work, but the words died. She didn’t want to work anyway. No, Anya wanted to run past Agent Beauchamp and turn the Embassy upside down in search of the dragon man her mind seemed to be obsessed with.

Finally, Anya shook her head. “I think Dad is the one who’s had a long day already.”

Agent Beauchamp laughed. Apparently, he’d heard already. The agent, a man maybe a couple of years older than her, had lips that were femininely carved and high cheekbones that made his face seem fragile. He should have gone into modeling, Anya thought, not dragon hunting.

“I don’t blame him,” Agent Beauchamp said. “We’re in a high stress environment. I don’t know why Headquarters thought it was a good idea to mingle with the animals. What the one did today was child’s play compared to what they could do. Not only is your father on high alert because of the animals, he has to worry about you, too.”

I’ve seen you at the office holiday party, Anya thought to herself. You’re not much more than an animal yourself.

But, she didn’t say anything. She only nodded as if in agreement.

“I can’t believe Headquarters only released Tasers for this assignment. There are much more effective weapons for when dealing with the dragons. I would feel much more comfortable working here if they’d issue us something better.

“You know, GOE should have had them all line up when their existence was revealed and had their wings clipped. That would have made life for us a bit more secure for the general people. I’d still gladly do it today if the organization asked.” Beauchamp went on about himself and GOE policies.

It was clear both Beauchamp and her father expected the Embassy to turn into a bloodbath at any moment. It was true that the Welsh Embassy had experienced a hostile takeover within their first weeks of opening, but no one had died. There were a few reported injuries, but from the reports Anya had read they were all inflicted via human panic. The humans in the building had trampled over one another to get to safety.

She didn’t think it was the dragons they had to worry about. At least, not the ones responsible for setting up the Embassy. She knew the areas around the American dragon Territory were often besieged by raider dragons who found no other way to survive than by taking what they needed. She also knew from her conversations with the Ambassador dragon in charge of the Embassy that the local leader was working to resolve some of those issues.

“I don’t think you need anything else,” Anya ventured. “Considering the fact that Dad accidentally shot a dummy today should serve as evidence.”

Agent Beauchamp gave her the look. She should start capitalizing it. The Look. It was the one, despite their slight age difference, that said he still saw her as a precious child in such moments. He saw her optimism as innocent naivety. She wanted to help him remove his head from his ass, but she didn’t want to deal with the shit that would come out after that.

“I’m just saying, the Tasers do the trick. They put the offending dragons down long enough for you to silver cuff them.” She played into what he might want to hear and watched The Look recede a little.

Beauchamp nodded. He took a sip of his coffee before his expression changed and the conversation shifted. Anya tried not to roll her eyes.

“I was thinking,” Beauchamp began, setting his coffee aside. Thinking was not Beauchamp’s strong suit. “Since you’re interning here and I’m stationed here, maybe we could finally redeem that raincheck. When I’ve asked you out to dinner before, you’ve always had homework or were volunteering.”

She’d grabbed so many rainchecks that she couldn’t remember which excuses were lies and which had been truths. Beauchamp had been relentlessly optimistic about their standing, asking her out at least once a week. She couldn’t fathom why someone who still saw her as a child would ask her out to dinner so many times. It made her skin crawl. Agent Beauchamp wanted a sweet and innocent woman. Her petite and pixie-like features made her look the part and Beauchamp was willing to play into that fantasy.

Anya could be sweet, but innocence had passed her by a long time ago. It would never work between them, a fact she could see and he, apparently, couldn’t.

She opened her mouth to rattle off some other excuse, but Beauchamp held up his hand. His eyes sparkled.

“I won’t take no for an answer. How about I pick you up at seven tomorrow? You should be done with your duties here by that time. Right?”

Not if you won’t get your ass off my boxes, Anya thought. All she could do was smile and nod. If she opened her mouth, she might tell Beauchamp what she actually thought and she’d have to hear it from her father later. Maybe, she could feign sickness tomorrow night. Her mother would vouch for her.

Beauchamp darted in and planted a kiss on her cheek before she could move back. He lingered, his lips too warm, too wet on her cheek while his hand moved to her shoulder. She wanted to shy away from him. If Anya wanted to, she could use several moves she’d learned in self-defense classes on campus.

But, to avoid her father’s ire, she patiently waited for Beauchamp to pull back. When he did, there was a cold, wet spot on her cheek and her stomach churned uncomfortably. He flashed her a smile before retreating back up the stairs to the main floor. How was she going to shake Beauchamp if they both worked in the same building?

There was no way she would ever go on a date with him. Not only did he make her seriously uncomfortable, she knew what real attraction felt like. It was the warm jolt she’d felt earlier when the bronze skinned dragon man had smirked at her and held a finger over his lips. It was the fire that burned on her skin when she brushed his arm here, in the basement.

Damn it, Anya. She knew she shouldn’t be thinking about a dragon man like that. As much as she was a champion for dragon causes in the States, her family would never accept her having even a tryst with a dragon man. So, she carefully boxed up the burning attraction she felt for this man and tucked it away somewhere deep down so that she could get to work on the files in front of her.

There was a photocopier somewhere in this building, right?