Carefully, he sat up on what he realized was a battered couch and looked around in wonder at the explosion of color all around him. His own local residence was a small house high up in the mountains, and when he was there all, he had never thought much about the white walls except perhaps to note how clean and bare they were.
Morgan had thought that he liked the plainness of his home, but now, looking at walls that were drenched in sapphire blues, ruby reds and amber golds, he felt a possessive envy come over him. The apartment was small, made smaller by the plastic tubs of fabric stacked neatly along the walls, but the color gave it a kind of life and vitality that fed something in him.
I didn't even know that I had been hungry.
It took him a moment to realize that it wasn't paint. Instead it was swathes of fabric somehow plastered to the walls, giving both color and texture to the small space.
“It's starch.”
Morgan turned quickly, biting back a yelp at the pain that bloomed through his body at his sudden movement. He wondered if she had caught the discomfort on his face, but Harper looked utterly calm, coming to sit next to him. In her hands was a bowl that she set down on the small table in front of him, carefully and cautiously as if she were feeding a dog she didn't know.
Morgan couldn't miss the wary way she looked at him, and that stung, but he couldn't take his eyes off of her or dismiss the wonder that suffused him. She was his mate, and there was nothing in the world that would change that fact. He was hers, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say it.
However, she was also looking at him expectantly , and he tried to reclaim the part of his mind that was shrieking with joy at having found her, the dragon that was roaring and begging for the open sky.
“Um…starch?” he asked, casting back for the last thing that she had said, and she nodded.
“You were looking at the walls. I can't paint in here, they won't let me. I got some scrap fabric and sprayed it to the wall with a mix of liquid starch and water. It holds it up pretty well when it's dry, and it'll come down easily whenever I move.”
She nodded at the bowl.
“That's for you. If you want it.”
My mate is giving me a present! Morgan thought, and he tried to quell the ridiculous pleasure that gave him.
He picked up the bowl, remembering at the last moment to use his left hand rather than his right. He was prepared to eat what was in it even if it was molten lead, and then he realized where the delicious smell had been coming from.
“You made this,” he said in pleased confusion. “It's pottage.”
She laughed, that bell-like sound sending a shiver straight up his spine.
“That's not a word you hear every day,” Harper said. “But yes. My grandmother showed me how to make it. An onion, a lot of broth, a few cups of barley, and then whatever I have in the house. Comes up pretty tasty.”
It was more than pretty tasty. Morgan took a few bites and had to keep from groaning in gratitude. Dragons were always hungry after a transformation, and crippled or not, he was no different. He wolfed down the bowl of pottage, paying no mind to how it steamed, and he was just finishing up when Harper spoke again.
“That's your suit, isn't it?”
He blinked at her, setting the bowl aside so he would not be tempted to lick it clean. God, how long had it been since he had had a meal that wasn't something he grabbed on the road?
“Um. Yes?”
“No, I mean your suit originally. It's always been yours.”
Morgan had liked it a little better when she thought it didn't fit because it belonged to his grandfather. He couldn't lie to her, however.
“It's mine. I picked it up sometime in 1936.”
“That makes sense, the shoulders and the lapels –“ Harper shook her head. “So how old are you really?”
“Two hundred and seventy-four.”
“Wow.”
Harper was sitting very still, her body turned towards him, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She had removed the brace at some point, but he could see the slight discoloration on her skin that suggested she wore it regularly. It struck him that she must not keep herself still very often.
“Just wow?” he finally asked.
“You are two hundred and seventy-four years old, and you turn into a dragon. And someone attacked you.”
“You're taking all of this rather well.” he hazarded, and she gave him a pointed look.
“I had some time to think about it while I dragged you into my car with the help of some plucky teens and then loaded you into a furniture dolly to get you up to my apartment. You're lucky this is kind of a crappy apartment. They don't really blink at the idea of someone moving bodies.”
Morgan stared.
“You…dragged me from the parking lot? In your car?”
“Not like I had a choice,” Harper said, sounding slightly put out. “You dropped at my feet, and then when I was all set to take you to the hospital, well, you refused to let me.”
Morgan winced, finding a great black spot where his memory of that incident should have been. It happened more frequently after he transformed now.
“What…that is, I hope I didn't say anything untoward to you.”
To his surprise, she gently rested her hand over his. The touch was soft, but it still sent a jolt of electricity through him. From the way she paused, he could tell that she felt it as well. When she spoke, her voice was calm and even.
“You only asked me to take you home. You were pretty insistent, and I didn't know what a hospital would make of you anyway. I was afraid you might
