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Athena woke up with a start.
Her eyes went immediately to Olivia, who was breathing quietly next to her. On the bed in the furniture shop, her mind reminded her. Right.
Her phone was next to her, but the alarm hadn’t gone off yet. Checking it, she saw that it was ten minutes to six. Close enough. She turned it off and sat up—and froze.
She wasn’t alone.
There was a man sitting in the opposite corner of the room, leaning back in a chair with a book in his lap.
The sight was so incongruous that Athena couldn’t parse it for a long minute. Man. Chair. Book. Lap. What?
But the moment went on for long enough that eventually she had to acknowledge that yes, she’d gone to sleep in an empty room, and woken up in a room with a man reading in a chair in the corner. An incredibly handsome man, her brain decided to inform her—sculpted features, long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, thoughtful dark eyes—
Wow, that was irrelevant. She shook her head, trying to get her brain in gear. She needed to figure out what she was dealing with.
“Who are you?” she asked, going for the direct approach.
“My name is Santos Ramirez,” he said. His voice was quiet and deep, but he didn’t sound angry or aggressive at all. “I own this store.”
Athena stilled. “Oh.” Her mind raced. How to get out of this? Had he already called—whoever? His clan leader, or the human police? He wasn’t between her and the door, but if she grabbed Olivia and ran, she thought he could probably intercept her before she got there—and if he was a dragon, all bets were off.
What kind of dragon owned a furniture store, though? He was probably human.
She tried a smile. “Well, I—I’m very sorry for sneaking in. I’ll just be going now. I didn’t steal anything or break anything, I promise, and I won’t bother you anymore.” She stood up slowly, keeping her eyes on him.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said, still sitting, still calm.
Athena scowled instinctively. “I’m not.”
“Okay,” he said, with a little smile. “Then how about you tell me why you broke in? Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m not in trouble. I’m fine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So fine you needed to sneak into a store to have a warm place to sleep?”
Her pride struggled with the need for secrecy. She couldn’t just blurt out her mission to this guy—but for some reason, she didn’t want him to think that she was homeless and destitute, either.
“I’m here visiting my cousin,” she said finally, which was technically the truth. “My car broke down outside of town, and I don’t get cell phone service here. So I walked into town, but it was late at night and I couldn’t find his house. So I came in to sleep here.”
“Oh,” he said slowly. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. “What’s your cousin’s name?”
Oh, boy. Truth or lie? It was a small town, would he know if she made someone up? And she did need to find Ronan...
“Ronan Reinhardt,” she said, before the pause stretched out too far.
His eyebrows hit the ceiling. Oops.
“You’re Ronan’s cousin,” he said, as though he hadn’t quite heard her and needed the information confirmed.
Oops oops oops. Maybe Alaric was right, and red dragons just weren’t designed to be stealthy. “Yes.”
He looked like he was taking a minute to process the information she’d given him. Great. Did he know who Ronan was? He couldn’t, right? There was no way Ronan would have just straight-up told everyone he was from the clan they were all fighting.
Unless he had.
With a quick, efficient movement, the man set his book aside and stood up. Athena blinked. She hadn’t realized how enormous he was. Well over six feet—maybe approaching six and a half? His shoulders were broad enough that he seemed to fill the whole corner of the room.
He’s probably human, she told herself again. Shifters don’t own furniture stores. Unless he was some kind of meek, small shifter, a prey animal.
A beaver, maybe. What with all this woodworking. She had to suppress a totally inappropriate snort at the thought of this huge, chiseled man shifting into a beaver.
He took a step forward, and she froze, her thoughts immediately shifting into defensive mode. What if he was a dangerous shifter? Was there room in here for her dragon form? There was, as long as she kept her wings in fairly close to her body.
Don’t fight! her dragon hissed in her chest.
Athena blinked, as the man held up a hand and said, “I’m not trying to hurt you. Here, I won’t come any closer, I promise. I just want to take you to meet Ronan.”
“Oh.” Okay. That was—that was good. Athena felt like her head was spinning from all of the quick changes of attitude she’d had in the last few seconds.
Why don’t fight? Her inner dragon was not known for its peaceable nature.
Don’t fight. It also tended to be pretty short on words, and apparently this was all it had to say for now.
Athena forced her thoughts to collect together into something coherent, and was about to tell the man thanks and ask when they could leave, when behind her Olivia woke up and started to cry.