I swallowed and took the handkerchief, wiping my face. "The room I've got has cleaners. They'll see him."
"Then I suppose I must insist that you accompany me home tonight. For the time being, you may use a spare room to hold him until our contract is complete."
"How can I trust you?"
He sighed and ran his fingers over the whelp's snout. The little jerk rubbed his head beneath the touch, clearly enjoying it. "I am bound by the conventions of guest right, as is any other supernatural entity. Should harm come to you under my roof or in my keep, I am responsible. And I am loath to allow such a smirch to taint my otherwise-perfect honor. So long as you are within this contract with my Nightflight, no one will dare to lay a finger on you."
It sounded like the contracts I had grown up making with invisible sprites and the sorts of things I read about in the few fantasy books I'd read since. Besides; what did I have to lose? Without the Nightflight's help, I was going to have to kill the whelp or lose my job.
At least this way I stood a chance of making my life normal again someday.
"Fine," I said.
The dragon's eyes shone in the dim light. "A bargain struck, then. Delightful. Meet me at my car when you finish your work for the day. Leave the whelp here. He needs nothing the first day after his hatch."
I rose and left the office, hating every choice in my life for leading me to this moment in time. A deal with dragons. A whelp that loved me. My return to the supernatural world? Rarin' to go.
Great. Wonderful. Fucking perfect.
Chapter 9
Eskal
My little witch left the office, smelling of fury and disappointment. It was a scent I cherished when I was in my usual office.
Strangely enough, I did not enjoy smelling it on her.
That would require some thought later on in the day, when I had time to reflect on myself and the senseless choices I sometimes made. I couldn't help how I felt, drawn toward a mortal witch that would die long before I needed to trim my talons again. My lip curled as I watched the whelp on the floor.
It hissed at me.
I had wanted this victory, this simple matter put to rest. Yet, it was hollow. It was a cold, dark thing that provided me none of my usual joy in conquering something new. I scuffed my foot at the whelp and watched as he scampered after his reflection in my shoes.
"You are a tiny idiot," I told him. I glanced out the window to make of a certainty that no one was near me. Then I whispered to him, my tongue curling around each draconic syllable. "One day the world will bow before you, taken by the night in your honor. And the skies will be yours. The seas will be yours. All things of creation, now or to be, will be of your hoard or yours to take as you see fit."
Dragons are born speaking the language, something I cannot say for the rest of my supernatural contemporaries. The werewolf puppies seem to learn relatively quickly compared to human children or unicorn foals. Yet we of scale and claw are the only ones born knowing what our mothers whisper in the night.
It occurred to me that Olivia was his mother in all true rights. If she desired to keep him, I would have no legal way to debate it be it in my community or within her world.
That irritated me. A dragon needed to be with his own kind. It was half the reason so many nest mates usually stayed together in this vile, threatening world. If the vast population of humanity knew we existed, they would hunt us down in moments. Bombs, nuclear warheads, or simply soldiers with armor-piercing rounds, would be more than enough to annihilate us.
My shoe reared into the air but the whelp knew I posed no real threat. He shrieked, short and high-pitched, then tackled the leather and gnawed it with his tiny, razor-like teeth.
I could only smile as I watched him, putting the thoughts of displeasing times behind me. My only disappointment was in that the dragon was red.
Color, unlike in other species, had something to do with our alignment. Black dragons, such as myself, were always alphas. Blues ran the gamut, though they were typically betas. Reds? Alphas, again. The whelp would broker no deals for us other than if we offered him to Alashia, in which I had little interest. She had lost her first alpha to a bar room brawl several years ago, goading him into taking on a bet he never should have.
It was why I had been so surprised to see my nest mate take on a phoenix. They were more than capable of wiping the floor with us, especially when motivated by something they wanted. Pride meant everything to the fire birds, though I doubted that our culture appeared to be any different to them.
Nariti kept the humans from their office for the day at my request. I watched and toyed with the whelp, though he had no interest in the shredded meat I offered him from my sandwich. Instead, he attempted to set my tie on fire. Wonderful.
As the day drew to a close, Olivia hung back from the other humans; I could see her through the window. When my eyes hadn't been on the whelp, they had been drawn to her. And as the sun fell lower toward the horizon, I watched as each individual left in their vehicle. When the last was gone and Olivia emerged
