Javier questioned his sanity after the first month of class. Why had he assumed it would be easy? Oh right, because he was a dragon, and he could do anything.

Except find a job.

While resting a MacBook over his lap, Javier sipped a frosty Coke and worked on his threadbare resume. Technically, he’d been employed on the island as upper-level management, but it would be cheating to use the experience in his work history.

Despite the hellish class load consuming every minute of his daylight hours, Javier wanted a job. Tolerating free room and board from family friends didn’t mean he had to be a bum relying on his parents to cover his grocery bills too. He’d been a leech living in his father’s shadow long enough.

Loss prevention maybe. All big chain stores had those guys in navy polos watching for shoplifters. If it gained him employment, he’d sacrifice his morals and namedrop the resort.

Damn. Maybe he should have liquidated some of the jewels from his hoard after all. He’d wanted to, but then his father had talked him out of it, promising Javier could always pay them back in the future once he achieved success.

The doorbell snapped him out of his thoughts. After setting the laptop aside on the coffee table, Javier crossed the living room to the foyer and opened the door. Yasmin stood on the stoop, beautiful as ever in unicorn print leggings beneath her oversized pink sweater.

He stared at her, momentarily lost.

She smiled up at him. “Hey. Are you busy?”

“Hey. Not at all. Well, a little—not really.”

A slight furrow appeared between her brows. “Are you busy or not?”

“I’m job searching,” he explained. “But it’s mostly been me tabbing through pages and pages of part-time job openings in the area.”

“Oh…” She scraped the edge of her shoe against the ground then tipped her chin toward her chest. When she looked up again, her green eyes shimmered in the evening sunlight. “We ordered takeout from a Vietnamese place on the way home from school, and we have extra. Wanna come over and hang out with us? We could give you a hand. Gillian works at the University Center, and she always hears about the job openings for students.”

“Sure. Lemme grab some shoes.”

“It’s just next door.” She folded her arms over her chest and laughed. “Besides, you walked barefoot all over the island, so c’mon.”

“Right.” Damn. Why did he become a dimwit whenever she entered the vicinity?

Yasmin led the way to the other side of the building and held the door open for him. Immediately, the mingled scent of multiple perfumes reached his nose. The whole place smelled feminine, and he felt like an intruder invading their private space. Within view of the front door, her two friends sat on stools at the breakfast bar in the kitchen with several takeout containers spread between them.

“No, no, you have to add in the lime to make it taste right,” Amaya said, trying to squeeze a wedge over Gillian’s soup bowl.

“Ew. No. Take your bitter demon fruit elsewhere.” Gillian slapped Amaya’s hand away. “That’s gross.”

“Is this how we act in front of guests?” Yasmin teased.

The girls stared at Javier, caught in a silent trance until Amaya broke out of it first. She straightened in her seat and dropped the lime on the counter.

“Oh, um, hi.” Amaya smiled. “How’s it going, Javier?”

“Good, thanks. And I don’t like lime in my soup either, Gillian. Limes only belong with tequila. And if it’s good tequila, it doesn’t need lime.”

“Ha! See?” Gillian patted the empty seat to her right. “You’re allowed to sit next to me.”

With the ice broken, they welcomed him over and piled the mountain of appetizers on a plate. The ladies had enough phở, spring rolls, and delicious shrimp cakes to sate even his dragon-sized appetite.

“Do you guys always buy this much food?” he asked between sips of steaming broth.

“Yasmin thought—”

“The guy at the counter misheard me when I made the order,” Yasmin interrupted Amaya. “Anyway, Javier’s looking for a job. I told him you had the scoop on campus work, Gill.”

“Oh yeah. There’s always custodial work open, or food service, but I’m guessing that’s not what you were going for.”

“I’m not against it, but it’s not to my preference either. Trash duty isn’t going to help my work history.” But if it was the only thing available, he’d suck up his pride and take whatever was available. Money was money, and he’d grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle, a lifestyle of comfort he wouldn’t ask his parents to support when they’d already performed an amazing act of kindness by getting him into school after enrollment closed.

“So, what have you already checked out?” Amaya asked.

“I spoke with the recruiting department for the SAPD. They have an internship.”

“That what you wanna do?” Gillian’s blonde brows rose a mile. “You came to America to be a cop?”

“Yeah. I guess all that stuff on the island kind of provided the kick in the ass I needed.”

“Huh. Okay, in that case, you’re probably better off pursuing that lead. I don’t think campus security hires students.” Gillian dragged a spring roll through sweet sauce. “There are probably unarmed security officer positions you can apply for online. It wouldn’t be difficult to get the license to carry either. You have citizenship, right?”

He grinned. Having an American mother had been useful for that. “Yeah.”

“My brother-in-law is a licensed bodyguard out in LA. Might have been like forty hours or something for him to get it. You know, training and all. He had to pass an exam and get certified to carry a weapon.”

Javier cocked a brow. “I’ll look into it. I mean, I’m already carrying the mother of all weapons naturally.”

They all laughed.

“Most places are going to want part-time hours from you though. When are you going to sleep when you’re taking over twenty credit hours and trying to train for a job?” Yasmin asked.

“Dragons don’t need much sleep. I’ll hibernate over the summer for a few weeks to catch up if whatever job I find is cool with losing me for a month.”

Gillian glanced between both of them, lost. “Hibernate?”

“Dragons don’t need to sleep as much as humans because they can hibernate and sleep for days, or even months and years at a time,” Amaya volunteered. “If you’d paid attention in Paranormal Studies, you’d know that.”

“I just needed the easy credit,” Gillian muttered.

A little good-natured teasing occurred between the three women, most of it Yasmin and Amaya tag-team teasing their friend while she flushed and brought up their university mistakes. The longer they chatted, the less Javier felt like an intruder, and a sense of belonging fell over him like a warm blanket.

The only thing that could have improved the evening would have been a beer, and maybe holding Yasmin in his arms.

“I am full,” Amaya declared a few minutes later. They’d all eaten their fill of what had to be the most generous takeout order Javier had ever seen. He wasn’t accustomed to American takeaway, however, and wondered if the portion sizes merely grew once travelers crossed the Mexican border. “Last call for the shrimp cakes before I feed them to the dragon.”

Gillian shook her head. “I’m done. They’re never the same reheated.”

“Same.”

Amaya slid the plate in front of Javier. He polished off the last three and the final spring roll, then the group of friends relocated to the living room with a six-pack of wine coolers Gillian couldn’t wait to try. Yasmin sat in the recliner, leaving him trapped between the other two on the sectional.

Neither of the ladies moved in close enough for contact, the space between their thighs and his legs sending a clear message—they thought he belonged to Yasmin.

Even though Yasmin herself didn’t seem to realize it, her friends knew.

“What’s it gonna be, guys?” When Yasmin powered on the television, a female news anchor appeared, gazing with solemn blue eyes into the camera. “Netflix or HBO?”

“Good evening and thanks for joining us. I’m Sarah McConnell with Channel 9 News at Five.”

A photo of a young girl with rosy cheeks, strawberry-blonde pigtails, and a gap-toothed smile appeared. Javier stared at the screen. “I recognize that girl, I think. From the island.”

Wrinkles deepened across Gillian’s brow. “Do you recognize every guest’s face?”

“Not usually, no, but after what happened, I started watching the kids more. Turn it up.”

“I’m trying, sheesh.”

“Law enforcement agencies are searching for five-year-old Pamela Rhineheart of Huntsville, Texas.”

“That’s only a few hours from here,” Amaya said.

“The girl’s mother awakened alone in the trunk of her car after a routine visit to purchase groceries. Here is where police believe the child was abducted.”

The camera swapped to footage of a Kroger parking lot and proceeded to show interviews with customers and an employee present at the time of the kidnapping.

“I don’t know what happened. One moment I was walking to my car, and in the next, some guy was honking his horn at me,” one woman said.

“That little girl is a shifter,” Javier said.

“How do you know?”

“Like I said, I kept a closer watch on the kids, and we made it a point to know them from the humans,” he explained. “I think she’s a fox or something small like that. Her mom was there with her last month at the same party.”

Coverage of the incident continued for a few minutes longer, including interviews with police officers and a tearful entreaty from the mother for her child’s safe return. When it ended, Gillian spun on her barstool to face Javier.

“So, what exactly did happen on the island? We never got the full deets.”

“I’ll tell you, but no spreading it around, okay?”

All three women voiced their agreement.

“It wasn’t a lost kid. Not exactly, anyway. Two shifters and a wizard tried to abduct a little boy.”

Gillian’s eyes went round and Amaya threw a hand over her mouth. Yasmin’s entire body tensed. The kind of news he gave them was precisely why mortals feared the paranormal community. Companies made millions selling gadgets designed to repel shifters, from scent-barriers with obnoxious, stomach-churning odors to machines emitting high frequency noises human ears couldn’t hear.

In other words, they treated their supernatural neighbors like cockroaches and pests.

“Omigod,” Gillian said. “For real?”

“Yeah. They tried to take him off the island, which is why your ferry was delayed so long.” He hesitated to mention who had been involved, since the two dog shifters had been all over them at the mixer. Nothing good could come of it. “Thankfully we were able to rescue the kid and took two of them into custody, but the wizard got away. We have no idea who he is.”

“You think this is connected?” Yasmin asked, gesturing to the newscast.

“Could be. No way to prove it, though.” When the anchor made a plea for anyone with information to contact the Huntsville Police Department, he memorized the number. At the very least, he could inform them of a similar kidnapping attempt and pass on the wizard’s description.

Javier rose to his feet. “Probably time for me to head home and study. Thanks for the meal, you three. I appreciate it.”

“Aw, gone already?” Gillian frowned.

“No worries. You’re welcome over anytime,” Amaya replied. “Right?”

“Oh yeah, anytime,” Gill agreed. “I mean, you don’t have to go right now, unless you have something important to get back to.”

Yasmin only nodded and cut eye contact with him, sending more mixed signals than a referee on LSD. He grunted. Stay or go?

Her pals gave him imploring glances and gestured to the drinks they’d barely touched. Yasmin stole another look at him from the corner of her eyes.

“Sure. If Yasmin is okay with it.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Reminding himself to take it in baby steps, Javier rejoined her pals on the couch. An indifferent invitation was better than being ignored. One day, their relationship would be on track again, and if he pushed it too fast, he’d risk losing her altogether.