Page 197 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Max pressed his head against my thigh, solid and warm.

I touched Quinn’s face with both hands. Her skin was warm. She was alive. A thin cut crossed her collarbone where the knife had nicked her. Dust clung to her lashes. She blinked up at me, trying for a smile and failing when she saw whatever was on my face.

“Rafe,” she said softly.

I couldn’t speak, relief clogging my throat.

The truth had been moving toward me for weeks, perhaps from the moment she had stood in a law firm break room and bargained with a dragon while wearing my family’s necklace. I had named it interest. Irritation. Respect. Want. Concern. I had hidden it beneath restraint and professionalism, beneath consequence and responsibility, as if love were a legal matter that could be postponed.

But Quinn Bradley was sitting in rubble with her dog pressed against my leg, and the thought of a world without her in it had emptied me so completely there was no room left for denial.

I loved her.

I loved her in the awful, clarifying way of almost losing someone before admitting they had already become everything.

Her fingers closed around my wrist.

“I’m okay,” she whispered again.

I nodded once because I didn’t trust myself with words.

A crash behind us forced me back to my surroundings.

Dimitris had a fully awakened Luke by the throat against the wall, but Luke’s free hand was glowing dark blue, the magic crawling up Dimitris’s burning arm like rot through gold.

I stood, made room, and let the shift take me again.

Quinn caught the edge of my foreleg before I could move.

I looked down at her. She was dusty and bleeding and far too close to every threat in the room. Max pressed against her leg, ears forward, waiting for her next command.

“Stay alive,” she said. “I’ve got Max.”

Max barked once, offended that this needed stating.

I lowered my head until my snout was close enough that she could feel the heat of my breath. She didn’t step back.

“I know,” she said softly. “Now go before he gets clever again.”

Behind me, stone scraped. The remaining constructs were pulling themselves together, jagged bodies reforming from the ruin. Luke forced himself free from Dimitris with a magical blast and lifted both hands.

The constructs surged.

I met the first one head-on.

In dragon form, the room was too small for elegance. My body could not fully uncoil. My tail struck broken displays when I moved. Every turn threatened another priceless object Dimitris would undoubtedly mourn at length if we all survived. But there was room enough for claws. Room enough for fire. Room enough for my body to stand between Quinn and anything that came for her.

Dimitris hit one construct from behind in a rush of gold flame. I struck the second from the front, jaws closing around its stone shoulder. I drove it down into the floor and burned through the iron woven into its frame until the whole thing collapsed beneath me in smoking pieces.

There was nothing graceful about it.

Dimitris burned bright and vicious beside me, laughing as if near-death had improved his mood. I tore through stone and metal, using fire where force failed and force where fire wasted time. Luke threw spell after spell, blue-white shields snapping into place and shattering under gold flame and dragon heat. One spell struck my side and opened pain beneath my scales. Another slammed into Dimitris’s chest and sent him crashing through the remains of a marble column.

He rose from the dust younger again somehow, broader through the shoulders, brighter at the edges, and delighted beyond reason.

“I missed this,” he said.

I growled.