Page 4 of Nora's Kraken

When we were both young—well, whenIwas young, he had a couple hundred years on me, even then—we’d spent enough time chasing riches and treasure and other boons for him to know full well what I look like on the hunt. And there’s never been anything in my hundreds of years that called to me the way she does.

The instinct that drew me to her—the one that had me going out of my way on Tuesday morning, drawn a couple of blocks down from my normal route to the office—flares in me once more. It pulls and insists, commands me to go, do, seek.

“And if it was your mate, what would you do?” I ask before I can think better of it. I know the words are a mistake the moment they’ve left my mouth.

The dragon in him goes utterly still. A lethal, waiting sort of calm.

“You think I don’t understand what it means to lose a mate?”

Blair doesn’t sound angry, nor threatening, but something much, much more sinister and ancient. Krakens have nothing on dragons in the need to possess and protect our treasures, to keep them safe and sheltered from all harm. Knowing what I do about his own history, that was exactly the wrong thing to say.

I bow my head in a show of respect and contrition. “I’m sorry.”

The silent seconds stretch long between us. This is familiar, too, the reminder that in the grand scheme of our shared history, we’ve never fully been equals.

“I took this case as a favor to you,” Blair says, still with that ageless calm in his voice. “I did so out of respect for our centuries of friendship and because I know just how much she already means to you.”

“And I thank you for that. But—”

“No buts,” he cuts in. “You will abide by our laws in your pursuit of her. She comes to you of her own free will, or you leave her alone.”

My very soul flinches at the idea. Leave her alone? Never. She’ll never be alone again.

Blair, some of that frozen fire in him receding, gives me another tight smile. “You never were good with rules.”

“At one time, as I recall, neither were you.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’ve both grown up over the centuries.”

Another beat of silence. Some of the tension leeches from the air and Blair lets out a long breath.

“Tread carefully, Elias. I can’t tell you why, but all of this could turn into a huge problem for the Bureau if it’s not handled properly. After everything we’ve achieved for advancing monsters’ interests over the last few years, I’m not about to see our reputation damaged because one kraken thought he could go off half-cocked in pursuit of a mate.”

An oily, sinking suspicion seeps into me. “You make this sound like it could cause some sort of geopolitical incident. Who is she?”

I barely know anything about Lenora. She works at Tandbroz bookstore. She gets coffee at the Second Cup Cafe. Her light brown hair and hazel eyes might be lost in a crowd for anyone who wasn’t looking closely enough.

It doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I want to know.

I want to know her coffee order and what makes her tilt her face up at the rainy sky and smile like she did on the day I first saw her. I want to know all the books she recommends to the customers she speaks with. I want to run my hands through her impossibly soft-looking hair and see her stunning eyes looking back at me with trust.

Blair’s eyes harden. “You’ll have to find that out for yourself.”

My instinct perks up at the challenge in the statement. “Will I? I can at least guess she’s important if she’s warranted this level of scrutiny.”

Blair grimaces, but doesn’t contradict me. It’s not every day the Director of the Bureau gets himself involved in casework.

“You and your mate are a special case, Elias, and I’m more than happy to supervise and make sure you don’t fuck it up.”

Special case. So she is important. Why, or to who, I can’t even begin to guess, and the mystery of it just adds to the building need to seek, to know, to find.

“Anyways,” Blair continues. “We’ll try to reach out to her again in a few days, once things have gotten the chance to cool down. She might just be overwhelmed and need some time to process everything.”

Yes, or she might be letting all that fear and doubt harden into a resolve never to see me again, never to speak to me again, never give me the opportunity to show her who I am and why I would make a suitable mate to her.

I hold the words in, even though I know Blair reads them on my face. Damned dragon. He can’t read minds, but the deep well of instinct he possesses and the way he can see through peoples’ artifice are pretty close.

“In the meantime,” Blair says, apparently unbothered I still haven’t said anything, “stay away from her. And take care of yourself. You’re not going to convince her of anything looking like that.”

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