Varos taps on my office door while Nosko and I finalize some wedding details. The look on his face says this is going to be a serious talk.

Nosko stands up. “Uh oh, do I need to leave and let you two talk?”

“No. You need to be here to hear this.” Varos waves a sheet of paper at me before he closes the office door.

This must be serious.

He has my attention now.

As he sets the sheet of paper in front of me, I see it’s a list of names. Out to the side is a shifter species. Most say dragon. A couple are griffins and unicorns.

I pick it up. “Is this the wedding guest list? I thought we agreed to keep the gathering small and intimate.”

Nosko leans over my shoulder. He hums when he sees the list. “Those are a list of people who have been mugged in the past month. After my discussion with Annika, she said something that has nattered around in my head.”

“Remind me. What did she say?” Nosko told me most of what they talked about. When it was obvious that she had nothing to do with the muggings and had even won Nosko over to her side of being a great person, I didn’t think anything more about it.

“She mentioned that where I’d been mugged used to be a really nice area. She’s right. It was and still is. After I was mugged, I didn’t hear about anyone else getting terrorized. It made me think.”

He sits down next to me and takes the list from me to review it. “I started combing through the news reports, police blotters, and social media for people who have been mugged since my encounter.” He waves the paper before setting it down again. “This is the list I came up with for the past month. My internet search is good but not near as good as Varos’ ability to suss out information, so I gave the list to him to see what he could uncover.”

Varos slides into a vacant chair across from me. “One hundred percent, they’re all shifters. Mixed species and breeds, the largest variety being dragons, but all of them are of a mythical bent.”

I pick up the list and scan the names. A few I actually recognize as being dragon-kind. “So no bears or wolves or anything else?” This doesn’t bode well if Varos is right.

“Nope. Just us mythicals.”

I glance at Nosko. His eyes have a pinched look about them. He’s worried and he has a reason to be. “So someone’s targeting mythical shifters.”

Varos waves at the page in my hands. “Looks like it.”

In a city as large as Stell, muggings are an everyday occurrence for humans. They wouldn’t look twice at the crime rate.

Looking at it from a shifter perspective, it’s telling a very different story.

I’m not liking the direction this is taking.

If Annika is off the table as a suspect, it makes me nervous. There’s no one to lean on to get more information. I’m just as in the dark now as I was after Nosko was mugged and he reported it to the police.

“Has anyone else in the community noticed?”

Varos shakes his head. “Hard to say since people are quiet. It could be they’ve put together the information like we have and won’t tip their hand in the event whoever this is watches our spaces. It could be it still looks too random to be more than coincidence and we’re the only ones who’ve put it together.”

“It’s not coincidence,” Nosko hastens to add. “The man knew I was dragon-kind. How else would he have known to call me a lizard?”

“Easy, Nosko.” I take Nosko’s hand and thread our fingers together. I kiss the back of his thumb. My touch calms him down.

Varos leans across the desk and places his hand on the list before he picks it up and folds it. “We can’t go to the police with this.”

“What the hell would we tell them?”

I am not happy about this. How am I supposed to protect my friends, my family, from this kind of threat? “Do the rest of the guys know about this?”

Varos nods. “I pooled their resources and contacts as well so they know. We’re all in agreement. We need to find a way to stop this and we need to find a way to get the word out that whoever gets targeted by this asshole,” his voice drops in volume and I can hear the anger settling in, “doesn’t have to go through this alone. I don’t know what we can do but we’ll figure something out. I’m not going to stand by and let someone try to victimize—”

Now I need to calm Varos, too, before he pops off and does something crazy. “We can deal with this, we just need to stay focused.” I lean forward to catch his attention. Our eyes meet and he takes a breath before sitting back in his chair.

“Right. Focused.”

“Which means,” I continue now that he’s a little more gathered, “we continue to monitor all the news outlets and talk out there and keep up with the statistics. Our mugger will eventually screw up and we’ll be able to step in and put a stop to this shit. So stay on it. Both of you.”

Varos leaves the office. I’m not convinced he’s all that restrained but Bronaz is better at damage control than I am. He can keep Varos in line until we can figure something out.

Nosko is sitting to my side, his teeth worrying at his bottom lip. I thumb along his chin and pull it away so he doesn’t draw blood. “You did a good thing, Nosko. It was a good call to start making a list.”

“I feel like I may have made everything worse. Wouldn’t we be better off ignorant and let the cops deal with this?”

I draw him in for a kiss. When we part, he exhales to a more relaxed state. “That’s better.” I kiss him one more time for good measure before I let him go.

Nosko draws a hand through his hair. It’s so fine and baby soft, it just flops back into his eyes again. “I’ll keep watch for more victims.”

“That’s the best thing we can do right now.”

“Alright.” Nosko leans in for one more kiss. “I need to drop by the tuxedo shop on my way to the gallery to set up tux fittings for the guys. Make sure they get there to get measured or the tuxes will hang like flour sacks on them.”

“If I have to carry them there myself,” I promise him.

I walk Nosko to the front of the shop to say good bye and wait until he disappears into the bus before I head back inside.

The atmosphere in the shop is not as energetic as it usually is. Whether it’s a conscious thing or not, something has everyone on edge. Before we close up for the night, I’ll talk to the guys and see what can be done to elevate the mood. We can’t have a depressed business trying to create good art on someone’s skin.

I glance across the street. Immortal Ink is busy as it usually is. Word has it she hasn’t chosen an apprentice yet. Sako, in his usually opinionated way, suspects she used that as a way to get people into her shop.

He may be right.

Nosko told me she confessed that she doesn’t need the money, so she can afford to lose business if necessary. Apprentice or not, she doesn’t seem to be hurting for business.

In the month since she opened, I haven’t noticed a lapse in our foot traffic either. Not that I’d admit it to anyone, but I think we’ve actually seen an increase in customers coming in. I haven’t been tracking if they’ve come from across the street or not. I need to remember that while she has a loyal fanbase built up, she’s only one person. That means one distinct style.

My shop offers five. So, we offer a different experience.

Whatever it is, it seems to be working. That’s all I care about.

“I don’t see why we have to wait until after the ceremony to move in together.” Following Nosko around my townhouse is an exercise in frustration as he waddles from room to room making notes on his damn notepad. All the man does is make lists.

Nosko stops at the coffee table and thumbs at it before making a note. “It’s bad luck to set up a nest before we’re officially joined in the eyes of our peers.”

“You’re making that shit up.”

“Alright. I can’t get out of my lease until then.”

Oh. That makes sense.

“We’ll need to get corner guards for this table,” Nosko says with a gesture of his pencil.

“You’re the one keeping the list.”

He straightens with a grimace and rubs at his back.

It’s still early in the pregnancy but Nosko is already starting to show. Dragonlings mature fast, taking five months from conception to birth. The growth is accelerated and can play merry hell on the pregnant father’s body. “How are you feeling?”

“Achy. Craving tacos and peaches. I have four more months of this? I’ll be crazy. Do we have any?”

“You mean, I’ll be crazy.” I stand behind him and wrap my arms around him in an embrace. I manage to stifle my laugh at Nosko’s look of daggers that he tosses my way.

“Are you sure you’re okay giving up the guest bedroom for the baby’s room?”

“Nosko,” I gently chide him, “I wouldn’t offer it if I weren’t okay.”

Nosko is incapable of being still. He struggles out of my arms so he can write on his damn pad again. “We’ll need to make sure to fire proof his room for the first year. At least until we can start teaching some control. And maybe get new drapes for the living room.”

Okay, I’ve had enough of this. I pluck the pad from his hands and give it a toss to the couch. He makes a small sound of protest which I silence with a firm kiss. “Stop. Worrying. It’ll all work out and we’ll be ready.”

Finally, Nosko relaxes, turning in my arms to lean into me again. Our fingers thread together and rest on top of what he calls his baby bump.

It’s a little more than a bump but the last time I suggested that, he had a minor meltdown, thinking I was calling him fat.

I slept on the couch for two nights until I was able to make up with him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his bump was going to get a whole lot bigger. That’s a storm I’ll weather when I get to it.

He sets up a slow rocking side to side that he says takes the strain off his lower back, legs, and feet. I move easily with him. It’s tempting to break out into a lullaby.

Beneath my palm, his tummy is warm and tight with our growing baby.

“We haven’t settled on a name yet,” he murmurs, and whether it’s to me or the baby is hard to tell. He’s taken to talking to his tummy more and more.

“It’ll come in its time.”

I smooth my hand across his abdomen again. When I stop, I feel it.

A tiny kick.

“Holy shit, did you feel that?” I start to search his belly for the place and I am rewarded with another one. “Nosko! He kicked!”

“Yes, Taran, I know. I feel it more than you do.”

For the first time since finding out that Nosko was pregnant, it finally sinks in for me.

We’re having a baby. A tiny dragon. Just like us.

It’s amazing. And glorious. And miraculous to consider.

We’re a family.

My family.