Page 4 of Kenna's Dragon

A few more nods, a scattering of tension released.

I still don’t look at her, and do my best to pretend she isn’t even there as I thank everyone for their time and step down from the podium. The crowd starts to disperse, and I’m about to make for the exit and retreat to my office to get a handle on myself when a familiar voice stops me.

“Do you care to explain what happened up there?” Cleo asks, nodding toward the podium.

“No,” I tell her flatly.

She purses her lips. The shifting expression on her face has me half-convinced she’s going to argue the point, but after a few seconds she seems to think better of it and shakes her head. Half-vampire and sharp as a damn tack, I know she’s already clocked the way I was staring at the woman and made her own assumptions, but she’s also astute enough to pick her battles.

“Fine,” she says. “When would you like to discuss the upcoming visit from HHS?”

Health and Human Services, the Cabinet department which oversees the Bureau, has upped their oversight in recent months. They’re sending a Deputy Secretary to meet with us about some changes they’d like to see in our organizational structure, and just the idea of it makes me itchy.

“Tomorrow at 11?” I ask her. “I can have Ruthie clear my calendar through lunch.”

Cleo nods, pulling out her phone to put the meeting in. While she does, I unconsciously glance toward the back of the room.

The woman is gone, but instead of relief, all my instincts kick into high gear. Where is she? Flipping rapidly through my mental catalog, I remember seeing her standing near Yvette, our Community Outreach Director. Is that the department she works in? If today’s her first day, her paperwork should be on file, and when I get back to my office, I can…

Gods above.

Enough. This is enough. I’m not the mindless creature I’m acting like right now.

I gave Elias so much grief for the way he seemed to lose his mind the moment he first spotted Nora. A mating bond does strange things to a monster, and with the instinct riding me now, I regret every bit of ribbing I gave him.

Not that this is the same thing, though. This woman is not my mate. She can’t be.

I’ve already found my mate.

Found her, and lost her, all over two centuries ago.

So whatever this instinct is, it’s something I need to leave well enough alone. Perhaps it’s just a rogue synapse firing, or some rebellion in the base, lizard part of my brain that hasn’t been exercised enough since I stopped shifting regularly. Temporary insanity or the misplaced urge to hoard, all directed at some innocent bystander.

An innocent bystander with hair that glints like a flame and a full, delicious body that makes me want to sink my claws in.

“Tomorrow at 11, then?” Cleo asks, again snapping me out of the madness that’s gripped me. She glances in the same direction I’m looking with clear knowing and disapproval on her face.

“Yes,” I say gruffly, and turn to go.

Back upstairs in my office, however, the instinct doesn’t go away. No, it only heightens with each moment the woman is out of my presence. Madness, utter, misplaced madness, but it’s enough to have me pacing up and down the length of the room, mind whirring and skin burning from the inside out.

Unable to deny it, I open the door and stick my head around the corner. “Ruthie?”

From her desk, my forest sprite assistant’s head snaps up, her curtain of mossy hair falling back from her face. “Yes, Mr. Blair?”

Since she started working directly with me a couple of months ago, I’ve told her a dozen times ‘Blair’ is more than fine. Ruthie, however, has the formal manners of the old fae from where her sprite family line originates. That heritage also gives her a deep well of empathetic instinct that makes her all too preceptive at times.

Like right now.

She frowns as she looks at me, tilting her head to one side as her black eyes sparkle with concern. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” I tell her, hoping I sound more convincing than I feel. “I need you to look up a new employee for me. One who started recently in the Community Outreach Department.”

Nodding, she turns back to her computer. “I’m only seeing one new employee in that department in the last year. Kenna Byrne.”

Kenna Byrne.Well, the Irish name would certainly explain the red hair and the freckles.

“Good. Can you connect with her boss and have her send Kenna up?”

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