"I'm not a thing," I said, drawing away from her. "And you're the lady on the commercials for that dog sanctuary."
Sadie beamed at me. "Guilty as charged."
Gabriel Fontaine, one of the owners of the company, brought a blanket to me. It smelled faintly of horses, but the apologetic smile he gave me said he wasn't trying to be rude. I'd been wrapped in worse over the past few years and it was warmer than I'd imagined.
But it was Hudson that worried me. Eskal, still stark naked, was in a heated conversation with him. I started toward them, but Sadie grabbed my arm again and towed me off away from the boys. "There's no reason to try to deal with them when they're like this. They'll growl at each other but one of them will eventually fold. They'll make a deal, settle down, and stop trying to tear each other apart. It's just how businessmen are."
"It's how dragons are," I told her, my voice low. "You know they're dragons, right? All of those guys. I guess your guys are, too."
She laughed and shook her head. "We're werewolves."
"We're?" I choked, pulling my arm away from her.
Werewolves were bad news. They bit people, turned them, sometimes ripped them apart. I took a step back and wished I'd had the wolfsbane my mother had made me keep on hand when I was a teenager. Maybe Mom was right about more than I'd given her credit for. The world really was a fucked-up place.
Sadie held her hands up. "Hey, easy. I'm not going to get weird with you. I've got the sanctuary to run. If I went around biting everyone the wolf felt like biting, I'd never do anything else. You get used to it. You kind of tell it to buzz off, or you help it relax and... it's kind of like having anxiety. You learn werewolf coping methods."
I watched as she shrugged, as if the explanation was a good as any. I chewed the inside of my cheek and looked back at the guys, who seemed to be debating all the more enthusiastically. "Are they always like this?"
"They're a competitive group. But after you've been around them a little while, it's hard not to love them."
I wrenched my attention back to her. "I'm here to get rid of a whelp and my bills. That's it. I don't need a relationship."
"Someone sounds like they're in denial," Sadie grinned. "Besides, why have one when you can have them all? You hatch those eggs for them and they'll be on their knees for you. They aren't my type, and I have my pack, but they could use someone around that puts them in line."
"And it won't be me," I told her, walking away and heading back toward the pair of Eskal and Hudson before a fight broke out.
"Like I said," Hudson snarled, his voice low. "You dragged us when it was clear that I was in love. All I wanted was a mate; it was all any of us wanted, and you were determined to turn it into something for the Meet. You want me to call it? I will. I don't mind. But aren't your lot judged by the griffins? Because they're fucking mad at you, too."
Eskal wrinkled his lip at the... hell, apparently the werewolf pack leader. Really, what the hell. "You do what you think is necessary. The mortal authorities were on our tails and we were saving our young. Anyone would understand what we would do to protect eggs."
"My son was up for a punishment as bad as death, or possibly including it, when he was just a baby because he wanted to have a mother."
The dragon growled, "And I allowed him to live. I returned Lillian when she was wished to be brought home. I have cooperated with every moronic scheme present in that pathetic wolf brain of yours, Fontaine. Everything. You can forget you saw us here. You can give me one bloody break."
A hint of English crept into his voice when he said bloody. I wondered if he'd been in Europe at some point. Were dragons native to the Americas? There were so many stories about knights slaying dragons and other fearsome beasts. As the guys fought, I wondered if these shapeshifters had come to the new world like the rest of the settlers.
But the image of a dragon shapeshifter walking up and buying passage on a boat startled a laugh from me. It bubbled up from my belly and burst from my throat until I had to put my hands on my knees to hold myself up. Both dragon and werewolf stared at me, but I didn't care. The night had been so rough and just, imagining a dragon trying to keep itself hidden on a sailing ship for months at a time; a sailing ship covered with all that tar and filled with gunpowder.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and shook my head. "You don't know how ridiculous you look."
"Be that as it may," Eskal said, straightening. He looked at Hudson and scowled. "We require transport and request it of the Fontaine pack, per the laws-"
"I know what the laws are," Hudson grumbled. The man threw his keys at Eskal's chest. "Take the Hummer. We've got Sadie's car here. I'll send Leo to come pick it up in the morning."
Eskal gave him a look of pure loathing, but Iyadre picked up the keys and nodded his thanks. Within minutes, we were piling into the oversized Jeep. Sadie waved at me and I paused, then gave her a hesitant little wave. Had she been a normal person once? Or had she always been a werewolf?
"She seems nice enough," I said as we rolled out of the parking lot.
Iyadre drove, Eskal sitting in the front passenger seat with
