Day Care Dragon (Bodyguard Shifters Book 4) Read online

Disaster averted.

  She went over to write COFFEE!! in large letters on the magnetic notepad on the fridge door, where she kept notes to herself. But first she had to move a card with scribbled, childish letters reading HAPY BIRT-DAY MISS LORETTA!

  There were a bunch of them, all proclaiming variations on the birthday theme or simply featuring lopsided drawings of wrapped presents and multi-limbed people giving each other octopus-like hugs. And under those were more cards and drawings, proclaiming sentiments like MERY CRISMUS and WE LOV YOU MISS LORETTA. The older ones had been up so long they were yellowed from exposure to light, and the children who drew them were probably in second or third grade by now. They were held in place with magnets shaped like bananas and grapes, and the Grand Canyon magnet she'd gotten on a trip with some of her cousins ten years ago. When she'd run out of magnets, she'd used tape.

  Standing this close to the refrigerator made her realize that it was humming even louder than its normal throaty wheeze. And ... was that a slight draft coming from the door ...?

  "Oh, mother of fudge!"

  She'd done a pretty good job of training herself out of swearing around the kids. Even when the kids weren't there. But if ever an occasion called for a proper "fuck," it was this one. Damn it, she wished she'd noticed it last night. She had been trying to get the building super to come up and fix that stupid refrigerator door, but she could never get hold of the man; he didn't answer his phone. In the meantime, she'd been holding it shut with a frayed bungee cord, but she had used the bungee cord a couple of days ago to fix the thing in the back of the toilet, whatever it was called, that wouldn't stop running (building super hadn't fixed that either) and she'd forgotten to find something new to hold the fridge shut. And when it stayed open all night like that, the compressor tended to stop working ...

  She opened the door and waved a hand around the inside of the fridge. Yep. Warm.

  "This day," Loretta muttered to herself, "is a roller coaster that only goes down."

  At least there wasn't a whole lot in the fridge to go bad, and most of it probably should've been tossed anyway. She threw out some Chinese takeout and a couple slices of pizza she'd brought home from work. And the milk had gone off, damn it. So much for the nice, responsible, healthy cup of instant oatmeal she was going to make herself. Oatmeal without milk was just ... blargh.

  However, there was a plastic-wrapped slice of birthday cake from yesterday's party at the day care. Which needed to be used up, because otherwise it might go bad, and how terrible would that be?

  "Happy birt-day to me, indeed," she murmured, and took it out.

  She ate birthday cake for breakfast, standing on the apartment's tiny balcony in the morning sunshine and drinking instant creamer-less coffee out of a thrift-store mug, looking down into the parking lot. Forty-four years old. It was so hard to believe. It seemed like just yesterday she'd been twenty-two. And now here she was, not only past the big 4-0 but staring nervously at the big 5-0 rushing at her like an oncoming freight train. And what did she have to show for it? She was single, living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that didn't even have a properly working refrigerator. No Mr. Right. Mr. Right probably didn't exist. Heck, at this point she'd settle for Mr. So-So or even Mr. Not Entirely Wrong.

  And as much as she loved her job working with the kids, she wasn't sure if she could see herself spending the rest of her life at the day care. She barely made enough to pay for this crappy little apartment and keep herself in instant coffee. Which reminded her—she needed to run to the store tonight to pick up coffee and milk, and she wasn't sure how she was going to pay for it. Maybe she could find a credit card that hadn't been squeezed for credit until it was wrung dry.

  This isn't the life I daydreamed about when I got myself out of the trailer park, that's for sure.

  On the whole, she really liked the city. It was exciting and interesting, and there was always something happening. She just wished she made enough money to enjoy more of its amenities. It would be nice to live somewhere that was in easy walking distance of restaurants and stores, instead of liquor stores and gas stations and pawn shops. She wanted to be able to go into the fancy little boutiques and buy things, and eat in nice restaurants every once in a while. Not that there was anything wrong with KFC, and at least she didn't feel out of place there ...

  I do kinda miss being able to walk around in sweat pants and not have people look at me funny.

  But right now, she needed to get out of this bathrobe, take a shower, and get dressed for work.

  Since she was feeling sad and a little lonely, a little homesick, she decided to wear the sunflower blouse to cheer herself up. It was the kind of blouse that would have made her mother wrinkle her nose and say, "Oh, Loretta, girls your size shouldn't wear patterns, it makes you look fat."

  Yes, well, that ship had sailed, and Loretta had absolutely no intention of going through her life wearing nothing but black just because it made her look a few ounces skinnier. She liked flowers, and patterns, and the color yellow. She had a dress with wide vertical stripes, for heaven's sake, and she liked it. She was wide and tall, the worst combination, but it wasn't like not wearing yellow flowers was going to make her any less wide or less tall.

  She laid out the sunflower blouse and a pair of yellow stretch pants on her bed, and smiled at them. See? She felt better already. You just couldn't look at flowers and not feel better.

  And, as if to signal that things really were going better, the hot water came out of the shower head on the first try, no need to twiddle the knobs or anything. Maybe that was one thing the building super wouldn't have to fix.

  She got in the shower and started singing "You Are My Sunshine" as she soaped up her hair. Look on the bright side, right? The fridge needed to be cleaned out, and now she'd cleaned it. Maybe she could talk them into buying her a whole new one rather than trying to fix the old one. Wouldn't that be great? An appliance that was newer than 30 years old?

  As she began to scrub the shampoo out of her thick hair, she became aware of a sound, over the running water, that was something like a telephone ringing. How odd, she thought. She didn't even own a landline, just her cell phone. Maybe it was in a neighboring apartment—

  The water cut out abruptly.

  Loretta blinked wet lashes and stared up at the dripping shower head. "Oh, come on!" She twiddled the knobs, turned them off and on. Nothing happened. "Really? All I want is to take a stupid shower before work. I don't know why everything always has to be an enormous hassle in this rat-trap roach motel—"

  The power went out. Suddenly she was standing in pitch darkness.

  "Seriously?"

  As she stood there in the darkness, dripping, her hair still sudsy, she realized that the ringing sound was really loud. And it just went on and on. And—

  And ... was that the smell of smoke?

  This was officially the worst day ever.

  She tried to scramble out of the bathtub and ended up tangled in the shower curtain. Fighting her way free of it, she crashed into the wall and found a towel by feel. The smoke smell was getting stronger, but that was nothing compared to what she saw when she opened the bathroom door. Her entire apartment was hazy, a pall of smoke floating in the air. Loretta sucked in a shocked breath and started choking.

  Something really was on fire! And not in her apartment. She didn't see smoke billowing from anywhere in the kitchen, just hanging in the air, drifting in ever-thickening clouds. The jangling fire alarm went on and on, raking her nerves.

  I have to get out of here.

  She ran to the door, towel and all, then stopped. A scrap of memory came back to her from old fire drills in school. You weren't supposed to go through a door if it felt hot; that meant there was fire on the other side.

  She touched the door, then pressed her hands to it. Was it warmer than usual? Nobody ever said it would be hard to tell!

  There was definitely smoke coming in under it, though.

  Coughing, she backed a
way. Annoyance had by now given way to genuine panic. This wasn't just a little fire. This was a big fire.

  She ran to the sliding balcony door and pushed it open. Instead of fresh air, more smoke billowed in. Loretta staggered out onto the balcony, coughing, her eyes streaming.

  It looked like the entire population of the apartment building were out in the parking lot. There were fire trucks around, which was good, right? But there was also a lot of smoke, billowing up in huge choking clouds.

  And the parking lot was three stories down.

  "Help!" Loretta screamed. Over the wailing of sirens, the jangling of the fire alarm, and the babble of voices down below, she didn't think anyone heard her.

  Okay. She could get out of this. She would get out of this. Maybe she could risk the hallway?

  She ran back into her apartment. The smoke was thicker now, and she had to cover her mouth with a hand, coughing. She hesitated at the door, then took her courage in both hands and wrenched it open.

  There were no visible flames, no visible anything really, since the lights were out. She wished she dared go look for a flashlight in the kitchen, or even her phone for some light, but she was starting to think that every second she delayed might mean the difference between life and death. Cautiously, feeling her way along the hall with her hand, she ventured out of her apartment.

  Her courage lasted until she got to the stairwell. When she opened the door, choking smoke roiled out of it. Coughing, her eyes streaming, Loretta slammed the door and rested her shoulder against it.

  What am I going to do?

  A sudden noise above her made her jump. It sounded like a thump on the roof. She looked up, eyes straining against the darkness. Could the firefighters be on the roof?

  "Help!" she screamed. "Someone! Help!"

  And then the ceiling caved in.

  At least that was what it seemed like. Plaster and pieces of lathing showered her. Loretta screamed and covered her head with her hands, the towel managing to stay on by virtue of tight knotting and nothing else.

  The cascade stopped at last and she squinted up, brushing plaster dust out of her hair. Light was streaming down through the smoke in the hallway, seeming bright to her after the pitch darkness, though the sky above the building was filled with roiling black smoke.

  And there was something peering down at her through the smoke.

  Something huge. Something impossible.

  It was silver, this vast creature, as if its body was scaled in hammered metal. Vast wings half-mantled over its back, shimmering with hints of iridescent colors in their gunmetal gray. Its eyes were fixed on her with glittering silver intensity. As she stared, it hooked a claw in the edge of the roof and tore back another section.

  Loretta raised a hand to block a renewed shower of plaster dust and kept staring. If she didn't know she had to be hallucinating, she'd probably have been terrified. She should have been terrified. And yet she wasn't. At the sight of that huge, impossible beast ripping a hole in the roof to get to her, her first reaction wasn't fear; it was an irrational feeling of safety, as if it was here to rescue her.

  "What are you?" she said aloud.

  There was no answer; instead it reached for her with the claws of an enormous forepaw, as fast as a hawk pouncing on a mouse.

  Loretta had time for one startled yelp before it wrapped its claws around her, and she was suddenly, breathlessly wrenched into the air.

  Chapter Three: Darius

  In thrall to his instincts, Darius had torn his way through the roof, but he didn't understand what he was doing until he saw the fragile human female looking up at him through the smoke. His dragon oriented on her like a compass needle pointing north, and a shocked realization burst upon him.

  This woman was his mate.

  He had never understood what that meant before. Never known the way that instinctive recognition would explode in him, as if his soul itself was opening up to the sun.

  His mate. His mate. His mate!

  He had a mate!

  His mate—in danger!

  It was impossible and wonderful, and in that initial rush of startled wonder, he lost himself entirely to his enthralled dragon. And the dragon knew only that there was mate, and danger to mate. The dragon acted on instinct, wrapping its claws gently around their mate, who was staring at them in an awestruck way that completely befitted a woman seeing her mate for the first time. A hard downbeat of wings, and they were airborne, relying on the heavy smoke to hide their takeoff as it had hidden their landing.

  The city fell away beneath them. Darius experienced a moment of pure elation, like nothing he'd ever felt before. Life was beautiful and wonderful: the sun on his back, the warm feeling of his mate in his claws, knowing she was safe, knowing she was more beautiful and precious than all the beautiful and precious things in his hoard, and she was his—

  "Put me down, you ... thing!"

  A fist socked him in the ankle.

  Darius twisted his head to look down.

  "Put me down!"

  The thought slowly dawned on him that his mate did not look at all happy to be rescued and flying through the air safe in the clutches of a powerful dragon lord. In fact, she looked absolutely furious. She was struggling so hard that he had to hold her tighter than he would like, to make sure she didn't slip from his grasp.

  She was exquisite. It looked as if she'd just stepped out of her boudoir, her hair a riotous mass of wet dark curls gleaming with coppery highlights underneath its dusting of plaster powder, a towel just barely concealing her luscious curves (held in place at the moment by his claws, mostly). She was fierce and fiery, as a dragon's mate should be. She was absolutely perfect.

  She punched him in the foot again.

  "We're very high," he told her, and she stopped struggling, her eyes flying wide open. "I don't think you should do that."

  "Did you just—talk?" She involuntarily looked down, then let out a shriek and clutched at his leg.

  "Yes, that's better. Hold onto me."

  "Put me down!" It was a high, breathless squeak. "I mean, land first! And then set me down right now!"

  "As soon as I find a safe place," he reassured her.

  "We're in the sky! Anything is safer than this!"

  "I assure you, you're perfectly safe with me."

  "Excuse me if I don't feel reassured when the monster that just kidnapped me tells me I'm safe!"

  Monster? he thought. His dragon was not especially bothered; instead it preened, pleased that their mate recognized its awesome majesty and fearsomeness. Darius, on the other hand, was starting to have a slowly dawning feeling that he might not have chosen the best way to approach his mate for the first time.

  "I rescued you," he pointed out.

  "Which I appreciate very much, believe me," his mate said breathlessly. "And I would appreciate it even more if you would put me down!" She glanced down again, and then hastily looked away from the lovely view of the patchwork of field and forest visible through the thin, misty clouds. "I mean, put me down safely. In a safe location. On the ground. Immediately."

  "I don't feel that it would be safe or comfortable for you if I set you down in the woods. You have no clothes on," he pointed out. He hoped his mate wasn't dim. She didn't seem to be thinking very clearly.

  "Well, whose fault is that? And I'm not going to magically generate clothes flying through the air!" she shouted. "I'm freezing up here, you dimwitted ... dragon!"

  Oh. He curled his head down, bending his supple neck to look at her more closely. She did look cold. There were goosebumps and perhaps a faint bluish tinge to her skin, to the extent that he could tell under the plaster dust and soot smudges.

  "You should have said something," he said, wrapping both his front feet more securely around her so she was encompassed in a pair of dragon fists from neck to thighs.

  For some reason this just made her squirm more.

  "You're not putting me down," she said. "I hope you have a good explanatio
n why not."

  "I explained why not. Besides ..." Along with the slow development of the unfamiliar concept that he might have made a mistake, he was starting to have another realization, namely that she did not appear to know that she was his mate. Or at least she wasn't responding at all as a woman in the embrace of her mate ought to. "If I put you down, what will you do?"

  "What will I do?" she repeated, in a tone that made it sound as if she thought he was slightly dim, which of course was ridiculous. "Well—well, I'll find a phone, that's what I'll do, and I'll call for a taxi, and I'll go home and find out if my apartment is okay—"

  "I can check on that for you."

  "—and if I still have clothes to wear—"

  "I can provide clothes for you."

  "Stop interrupting me," she said between her teeth.

  Darius mulled this over. All of what she'd said sounded sensible, but also sounded like excuses for one key fact. "What you're saying," he said at last, "is that if I put you down, you're going to run away from me."

  "Of course I am! You're a—" She seemed to have to fight to get the words out. "You're a dragon! People running away from you should be what you're used to."

  Hmmm. There were so many mistaken assumptions in this statement that he wasn't sure where to begin. However, one thing he did know for sure. "If you're going to run away if I put you down, then I can't put you down. You wouldn't be safe. So I'll just keep you here and take you where I was going to take you."

  "Aaaugh!" She tried to kick him with her bare foot. It didn't work very well.

  "Don't you want to be safe?" Darius asked. Really, she didn't seem to be very clear on the concept.

  "I want to be safe somewhere that you aren't, yes!"

  Darius flew in silence for a moment or two, detouring to avoid being spotted by a low-flying plane. He would like to put his mate down and go back to check and make sure everyone else had gotten out of the building okay—they were just humans, but then, so was his daughter-in-law. There were emergency vehicles there, so the humans must have it under control, right? It had looked like they were starting to put out the fire when he got there.