Page 19 of Fated to the Gargoyle

“Stay with me a moment longer.” Sable sighs. “I promise you’ll still get your hours of surveillance in.”

I frown at the word. He isn’t wrong, though, so I let it pass and stay where I am.

For a while we simply stand there while humans and shifters flow around us, orbiting wide the way people walk around statues. A human runs the counter with a towel over one shoulder, building three drinks at once. He doesn’t lift his head when we approach.

“I already know,” he says, still pouring. “You don’t eat or drink anything in this bar. Maybe the water.”

“We are new to town,” Sable says.

The bartender raises his head with his eyebrows sitting high, and his scent tells on him, pure sarcasm. “Oh, really? With the barbarian look, I could hardly tell.”

“You are all more focused on our attire,” Sable says, “than on what we are.”

“This is Shadow Wolf Creek. Nothing surprises us here.” He sets the finished drinks in front of their owners, then puts his hand out across the counter. “David. I run this counter, I hear everything, and I repeat none of it. Welcome to town.”

I take his hand carefully. It disappears inside mine, and he doesn’t flinch about that either.

“I suppose we’re trying to understand where we would fit here,” I say.

David goes back to his glasses and ice, talking to us sideways. “For starters, Shadow Bar ain’t where you two want to be hanging out. Go visit city hall and announce yourselves. There’s a whole department for new arrivals. They’ll get you registered, set you up with some land if you mean to stay, and…” He gives us one slow up-and-down. “…some clothes.”

This town keeps an entire office for what we’ve spent our whole lives hiding.

“And you can stop using your Settling.”

The voice comes from behind us, easy and amused. Smoke and hot metal ride in with it, and I know a dragon’s scent when it fills a room. “You’re on safe land. You don’t need protective measures here.”

We turn together. He’s tall, though not as tall as either of us, with bright green eyes and pointed ears that give him away at a glance. He has deep brown skin, a muscular build, and sharp teeth set in a smile that annoys me on arrival. He’s dressed the way the humans dress, from the long-sleeved button-up shirt down to the belted pants and shoes.

I scowl at the shoes, glance to Sable, then down at my own bare feet.

“I will not domesticate myself into wearing those,” I say, pointing at them.

The dragon chuckles. “Shadow Wolf Creek won’t force you. But the citizens, especially the humans, are not gonna stay happy with the loincloth situation. Ass out the back, dick and balls swinging up front. It’s a lot.”

Sable frowns at him.

The dragon extends a hand. “Jalen. I run the gossip column at The Creek Chronicle, which makes me the best-informed man in this valley, and the least trusted.”

“A dragon shifter,” Sable says slowly, “and a journalist?”

“Careful with that one.” David doesn’t stop building drinks. “That’s Messy Jay. Whatever you tell him ends up on the Shadow Wolf Creek Diaries. Town podcast.”

“The town likes to call me Messy Jay.” There’s no shame anywhere on him.

Sable’s frown deepens. “Dragons are hoarders. What do you care for gossip?”

“We are known for the hoarding. It’s our little…” Jalen lifts both hands and hooks his fingers into quotes. “…stigma. But here’s the thing. Most dragons hoard treasure. I hoard information.”

He starts a circle around us, taking his time with the measurements. “Damn,” he says from somewhere behind my wings. “Y’all are big.” He finishes the loop and stops in front of us, right where he started. “I knew the night you two came into town.”

And I place him now. He’s the dragon from the bench at the shopping center, the one who sat with his wings folded over a little notepad and waved at the patrol car without a care. He watched us land, and he wrote it down.

“So.” Jalen’s eyes settle on me. “What brings you to Shadow Wolf Creek? The new waitress? What’s her name. Treasure?” He clicks his tongue. “Interesting name, considering what she’s mated to. Because that’s exactly how you’re gonna treat her, isn’t it. Like treasure.”

My foot comes down, and every glass behind the bar rattles, and I lean into his space with a growl that empties the nearest stools.

“She’s mine.” It’s the first time I’ve said it outside my own head, and the whole bar is welcome to it.