“Come on, hot stuff,” she said. “You’ve got false trails to lay while I book our flights. I’d better find an internet café.”
Not waiting for him, she sauntered back out into the sunlight and bustling humans. This woman was going to be his ruin. He could see it coming. Like a bullet in his path, and he couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way. Wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Which is how he now found himself sitting in the third fucking tin can in more hours than he cared to enumerate.
It had already been a miserably long couple of days. Fuck that, couple of decades. After dumping the kid and arriving in port, they’d decided to use both their plans, because if hers was going to work, they needed to be in a crowded city with a large airport that flew massive planes. So they’d stolen a fishing vessel and made their way farther north. They’d anchored the ship nowhere near humans and he’d charted a smaller flight to get them inland to Arequipa, Peru. From there a nerve-racking flight to Lima.
He’d relaxed a little when they’d made it to that major city. Now they were winging their way to Atlanta, Georgia and from there across the U.S. to Sacramento, California. As close as he could get them without another puddle jumper flight closer to where his team was located.
They couldn’t get there fast enough as far as Rune was concerned. Planes were not built for dragon shifters, who tended to be larger than human men. His shoulder was sticking out into the aisle, his legs jackknifed at odd angles around the seats. He was surrounded by a couple hundred slack-mouthed humans, listening to a way-too-chipper man explain how a seat buckle from the 1950s worked and pointing at exits with two fingers.
“Like anyone is getting out of this thing alive if it goes down,” he muttered.
“Thanks, captain obvious,” Hadyn whispered pleasantly beside him.
“What?”
“Unless you’re immortal, no one likes to be reminded of that when they’re about to take off.”
He glanced across her to an older, balding gentleman sitting in the seat beside the window, currently ripping a napkin to shreds. Then shook his head. He didn’t blame the guy for being nervous. Flying was an art. Even when you were born to it. He’d seen dragons—usually newer to shifting—fuck up takeoffs and landings, misjudge distance, or even have a flock of birds blind them and take them down.
The sky was the one natural realm where animals born to be there couldn’t remain there indefinitely. The land and the seas, creatures born to those realms could relax. Take a nap even. Not so in the air. Everything that flew had to land eventually.
Rune crossed his arms and settled back in his chair with a grunt. “I’m going to sleep. Wake me up when it’s over.”
“So am I,” Hadyn announced. Then proceeded to use his arm as a pillow, snuggling right into him like a kitten. “You wake me up.”
Only now he was wide awake because she was touching him again. She did that a lot. An innocent touch that meant absolutely nothing. In fact, Hadyn seemed to have forgotten everything that happened on the boat. Or, at least, the interesting bits between them. He’d managed to convince himself that forgetting was a good thing. The right move.
After all, that Zeke kid would tell whomever he was with that Rune had been with a woman named Hadyn. Hopefully, they’d think she was another mate he’d stolen. The more dangerous conclusion, for her, was anyone thinking she was special to him personally.
Guaranteed they’d go after her to try to get to him.
Not that she is special, he reassured himself.
His dragon rumbled a protest, and Rune gritted his teeth. The words, even vaguely thought, felt wrong in his head. Which meant he was already deeper than he wanted to be with her.
Hadyn twisted around to face him more, her arms winding around his bicep like she was clutching a pillow, one palm flattening against his stomach. She sighed, relaxing against him, and his heart did a stupid thing. It clenched inside his chest, skipping a beat before starting back up double-time.
Maybe this was worse than he’d thought. Maybe he was getting attached. Dammit, they hadn’t even fucked yet, and here he was getting all mushy and uber protective over her.
Bad idea, every direction he came at it.
Maybe, once he got them to the Huracáns, he’d enlist the help of his old teammates and leave them to it, disappear by himself elsewhere. After all, they owed him for a multitude of sins and, more recently, services rendered.
Hadyn grumbled unintelligibly in her sleep, and, without even a blip of hesitation, he placed his lips at her temple. “Sleep, love. I’ve got you.”
She eased immediately and cuddled him again, as though he were some damn giant teddy bear. With a shake of his head, at himself mostly, Rune laid his cheek on top of her head and closed his own eyes. They would both need to be rested for what came next.
“Sleep, hot shot,” Hadyn grumbled against him, patting his chest.
“Yeah.” Rune inhaled and let go the tension stringing him so tightly, then let sleep overtake him.
They were safe enough for the next fifteen-plus hours. Even dragon shifters knew not to screw with human flights. Rule number one was that humans weren’t supposed to ever know about their kind. The first thing the Alliance would do to anyone who took down an airplane full of humans was send an enforcer team to execute said dumbass.
The Americas colonies might be light on enforcers, but that wouldn’t stop the dragon or dragons who exposed them like that from losing their king’s mark, turning them into the very thing they feared.
Him.
…
Hadyn hadn’t known Rune long, but after what they’d been through over the course of the few days they’d been together, she’d had the strangest sense that she knew him intimately all the same. Which was why she knew, for a bona fide fact, that the man was not remotely comfortable with their current situation.
They’d landed in Atlanta, got through customs and security to officially enter the country of the United States. Then they’d waited several hours for their next flight before spending more hours in yet another plane—she really did feel bad about Rune being cramped into the coach seats—to arrive in Sacramento, California, well after dark.
From there, they’d hopped in a cab.
That alone hadn’t made him happy. There’d been a grumbled comment about how bad cabs smelled—sweat and balls, she’d thought she’d caught those words. After that, his tension had grown the longer they’d been driving. They’d merged onto a highway heading south after leaving the airport, then, after some tricky maneuvering to a different highway heading east, had exited. Sooner than she’d expected.
Now they were making their way through what appeared to be urban housing. Adorable little cottages from the turn of the twentieth century. She hadn’t seen any mountains but had assumed that was because the moonless night had obscured them. She also didn’t know where she was going. She’d never been to this city before.