“Having a mate?” Kelos asked.
“Yes. I’m so happy I could burst and yet at the same time I am terrified that something is going to happen to her while we’re searching for Karl. It makes me resent the guy even more,” O’Malley admitted.
“Resent him for getting lost even though if he had not gotten lost, Hannah would never have walked into your bar?” Kelos had a way of putting things into perspective.
“Now you are saying I have to thank the guy for getting himself in whatever trouble he is in?” O’Malley rolled his eyes. “Some friend you are.”
Kelos chuckled. “Aren’t we such complex creatures?”
“None more so than a dragon shifter who has lived through the ages of man,” O’Malley stopped walking and turned to face Kelos. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”
“Yes, you can. By finding Hannah’s brother.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Dead or alive.”
“Dead does not bear thinking about.”
“But whatever the outcome, you are there for Hannah and that is the most important thing. You will be her shoulder to cry on or the person she celebrates with. But more importantly, you are the person she came to who she knows she can rely on and you will not let her down because you are her mate.” Kelos glanced at the sky once more. “As much as I enjoy your company, we need to leave. I really do not want to spend a day in some remote place when I could be here with my mate.”
“I understand.”
“I know you do.” Kelos laughed as they turned to the house and their mates who were inside talking.
When O’Malley woke up this morning, all he had to think about was his bar. Now he was leaving the bar in the hands of a man he barely knew to fly off into the night with his mate, while riding on the back of a dragon.
Fate sure knew how to mess with a man.
Chapter Eight – Hannah
After her talk with Amber, Hannah felt a little more confident about everything. She’d confirmed Kelos was a dragon shifter and left Hannah in no doubt that they weren’t all making this up as a joke on her.
She’d also talked about mates, just as Betsy at the diner had. Amber seemed to think, no, believe, that Hannah was O’Malley’s mate. Although, she didn’t explicitly say the word.
Now things were about to get real. Kelos was about to shift and then Hannah and O’Malley would climb on his back and they would fly away to the Himalayas.
“Just breathe.” Amber touched Hannah on the shoulder and spoke to her in a soothing voice. “Kelos will look after you. He won’t let you fall.”
“I don’t like flying much at all,” Hannah confessed.
“This isn’t like putting your life in the hands of a pilot who is flying a metal box, Kelos’s dragon is a living, breathing, feeling creature who is deeply caring of those around him.” She smiled as Kelos looked at her. A look that was deep and loving. That was the look that finally convinced Hannah that she would be okay.
Even if their journey took them across oceans and up a mountain.
“Are we good?” O’Malley asked. The cougar shifter had been keeping himself in the background, letting Amber reassure Hannah instead. She was grateful he’d seen that she needed to hear about Kelos the dragon from someone else. There was less pressure listening to Amber tell her about the marvels of dragon flight.
“We’re good.” She gave a nervous smile. “I might not be saying that when we actually take off and fly but for now, we’re good.”
“Then we need to move.” O’Malley had his pack on his back and held Hannah’s pack in his right hand.
“I’ll take that.” She held out her hand and he passed it to her, helping her heave the pack onto her back as she put her arms through the straps.
“Comfortable?”
She nodded although comfortable wasn’t exactly the term she’d use. Even with the extra weight O’Malley had shouldered, the pack still dragged at her shoulders. “Thank you, Amber.” She gave her new friend a quick hug.
“I’ll see you both when you get back. And I hope I’ll get to meet your brother, too.” Amber hugged Hannah and then went to the kitchen door where she leaned against the frame, waiting for Kelos to shift.
Kelos was waiting around twenty feet away having already said goodbye to his wife. With one last lingering look, he turned his attention to O’Malley and Hannah. “Don’t scream.”
“I think he must be talking to you,” Hannah leaned across and whispered in O’Malley’s ear.
“You might be right.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him.
Her teeth chattered as she watched Kelos closely. It was the strangest thing. One moment the man was there, the next he was gone.
Hannah took a step back. She didn’t really know what she’d been expecting but that wasn’t it. For a person to just completely vanish seemed more unbelievable than dragons existing. This whole experience was definitely messing with her grasp on reality.
If shifters were real, if dragons were real, then what else was real?
“Hannah.” O’Malley’s hand on her arm brought her back to the mountains where the darkness surrounded them. But there, out of the darkness, a large creature loomed, its scales rippling in the light from the kitchen doorway where Amber stood.
“It’s really a dragon.” She stared at the creature as it turned its head from side to side and then sank down with one knee.
“It’s really a dragon and we have to get on his back.” O’Malley cupped her elbow in his hand and propelled her forward. She wasn’t aware of how it happened, which foot she placed on his leg first or how she managed to swing her leg over its back, but somehow, she was straddling the dragon.
Hannah gripped onto the large horn that jutted out along the dragon’s back, just as O’Malley had described. Behind her, his body pressed against her backpack, his arms around her waist, was the man who was her mate.
“Hold on tight.” As the dragon dipped down and then launched himself into the air, Hannah saw things in crystal clarity. Dragons were real and she was O’Malley’s mate. They shared a connection. It was evident in the touch of his fingertips as he held her elbow and now in the way her body tingled as he held her against him.
Her world tilted sideways just as the dragon did as he cleared the tops of the trees and then flew across the side of the mountains, heading for the peaks. There was nothing between them and the stars as the dragon skimmed the peaks and then flew higher. He climbed and climbed until the air was cold and thin. Up here they would not be seen from the ground as he banked to the right and flew toward the coast.
Out across the ocean, he flew without pause. On and on, not tiring as her hands stiffened around his horn. She could not flex her fingers and ease the cramps that tightened her muscles. Yet she wasn’t scared. Amber was right, this was not the same as being in a tin airplane with a pilot at the controls.
She was riding on the back of a living, breathing dragon. Made of muscle and bone, with scales that shimmered and wings that beat a steady rhythm as he carried them toward their destination.
Time seemed to have no meaning, she was locked in another world with O’Malley watching over her, holding her, keeping her safe. She leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder. Turning her head, she said, “This is incredible.”