She stared at me. "Is that how far this territory stretches?"
"For us, yes. When Hudson pulls himself back together, I expect that he will raise the majority of the shifters in the east and tell them of my crimes. No shifter community will take us in at that point, though few are willing to cope with dragons for reasons that I am certain are clear by now."
Olivia looked away from me at that. "You were just trying to save your kids. And then you were just trying to save me."
"Then why not allow the human authorities to do what their jobs entailed? There was no purpose behind smashing the police station other than the fact that we could. And that our mate was inside."
There was a long pause and I thought she was going to reject me for a moment. Then she met my gaze and reached up to pet my chin. Again, I was overwhelmed by the scent of her magic. I wondered if I had that same scent rubbed on me. Perhaps it was what had set Hudson's tension so high. If I could smell that magic, had he thought I was powering some spell to hurt him?
Oh, who knew what the wolf was thinking. My mate continued to pet me. "You like me that much, huh?"
"It is hardly a matter of what I like. It matters as to what you would prefer to do. You may still walk away from this. You would require a transfer of station. Perhaps you would have to take a pay cut, but we would maintain you as necessary. Whether you wake the eggs or not, we are in your debt, Olivia," I said.
"You said you'd help me and you have," she said. "I'm not walking out on you now. Or ever."
My mate.
Our mate.
Chapter 18
Olivia
I don't know how my cellphone had survived the past many days, but it had. It woke me up before dawn, ringing in my ears.
"Huh?" I answered.
Nicole's voice growled at me. "Where are you? The cops are looking everywhere for you and so is the museum. I've been taken into custody because you aren't here. They think I know something about wherever you went and I keep telling them I don't and-"
"What, they can't find me via my phone? That's how they do it on tv."
I thought she might reach through the phone and bite me. "Of course not. They can't do that stuff in real life anywhere near as well as they do on those idiot shows of yours. What are you doing? Where are you? Are they really dragon eggs? Doctor Sonnet's trying to hire people to find you so he can press charges and get insurance money off the opals."
"Nicole, I'm not coming back. Or at least, not for a really long time," I said.
And it hurt to say. She'd been there for me when few others had. But if the cops caught me again, they'd probably put me somewhere deep underground so the flight couldn't come and get me. The world knew there were dragons now, they had to be trying to find ways to thwart their efforts.
Which bothered me. All the Nightflight wanted to do was to be like any other family. They wanted to grow, settle down, reproduce. They wanted a mate, which... well. They'd gotten their wish there, hadn't they? I didn't know how or if they whole kid thing would work between us, but if I could hatch the eggs settled near my feet, maybe I could hatch other eggs.
But the idea of sharing them with a female dragon, just to reproduce, kind of pissed me off.
I was deep in the world of the fantastic again, and I knew Nicole wouldn't want to believe me.
"Olly, the cops are looking for you. You have to come back or they're going to... to..."
I smiled. "What are they going to do? Come fight a dragon for me?"
"They could."
"They have to find us first."
And as I said the words, I had... sort of a miniature revelation. I grabbed my bag and tore through it, looking for a single thing that could make my life so much easier. If only I could find it. Had I even picked it up from the bed and breakfast? There were only so many things I could fit in the satchel and-
I pulled the leather notebook from the bottom of the bag and sat it in my lap. I'd slept surrounded by the dragons, the whelp nestled up against me, but my fingers traced the book, regardless. My phone sat on the ground beside me and I only realized I hadn't told Nicole I was going to go fishing through the bag a second before she hung up. The dark phone screen, the dark book in my lap.
There was no reason to go hunting for a new place to live when I knew exactly where we needed to go.
The phone rang a few hundred times before someone answered on the other end of the line. She sounded worn, tired, and all-around grouchy. "Who is this and why are you calling here?"
"My name is Olivia Monx. I don't know who you are, but there's a note in my mother's address book with your name and phone number beside it. It says if I'm ever in legal trouble to speak with you."
The other side of the line was dead long enough that I thought the woman had hung up. I
