Page 25 of Our Haunted Omegas (Moonscale Heirs Duet #1)

Cobalt

Little scales rose here and there all over my body as my mate drifted off to sleep in my arms. My skin steamed in the cool night air.

As I watched it rise from my fingers I marveled at what he’d done to me.

I’d had plenty of encounters before. Hell, those were all I was known for besides being a possible Moonscale heir but no one had left my dragon so worked up and satisfied at the same time.

Now, the scaley beast was as out cold as my mate was.

I kissed the top of Odie’s head and stared up at the stars, tracing made-up constellations as he slept.

There was a five-pointed star up there and a witch’s cauldron.

A few seconds later I found a cat and a ship.

Then a bottle of champagne and something that looked like a short-tailed kangaroo.

I’d only met a handful of them on my travels and most of them stuck to their own hot, arid climates.

Not that I blamed them. Most of us were fond of the lands of our birth.

What I wouldn’t give to roll over and walk out into the garden and eat berries straight off the bush right now.

With one hand I groped around the still-open basket and grabbed out the first thing I touched.

Jerky wasn’t exactly what I was craving but it was a good enough source of food when I wasn’t willing to budge up and risk waking up my mate.

He needed all the sleep he could get. He had a lot of lost time to make up for.

When I’d had enough, I tucked the jerky back into the basket and brought my wings out to shelter him from the breeze in case it grew too cold while I dozed.

Even if a journalist followed us out into the woods, I was the meanest thing out here. They could leak my dick pics all they wanted but if someone snapped a photo of my naked mate, they’d be fertilizing my grandcarrier’s flower garden by sunrise.

“Put them through the woodchipper and give them to Teal for fertilizer. At least then they’d do something good for the group.”

“LET GO OF ME!” Someone yelled from the trees and a flash lit up the meadow.

Fucking aye! I didn’t really want to bury a body before I squeezed some sleep in, but you know what they say. Wish in one hand ---.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered under my breath, trying to slide away from Odell without waking him up.

“What’s eating George?” he mumbled in his sleep.

I made a mental note to ask him who the heck George was later. I pushed myself upright, mentally checking in with Indigo and Teal. Neither of them were close by. So whoever grabbed the looky-loo wasn’t one of them.

“LET GO OF ME!” the man shrieked.

This time his words rang out high pitched and turned into a snarl. Birds fled their nighttime resting places and Odell shot upright his hands out in front of him with shifted claws ready to fight.

“Stay here,” I hissed at him.

“No!” he hissed back scurrying onto his feet to catch up with me. Then he switched over to our mating link. “What has him? I’m not sitting here like a duck ready to be the next one grabbed!”

I took a deep breath but didn’t find my mate’s scent anxious. He was in go mode and I bit back a smile.

“It’s probably a journalist. Probably two of them fighting over who got to take photos of you naked.”

“I’m naked,” he said, embarrassment flooding onto his scent. “Hang on let me grab the blanket.”

I glanced at the tree line. Someone snarled again.

I almost called out. Almost told them to fuck straight off but I had to find out if they snuck photos while we were sleeping.

I had to find out how much I should kill them before they got away.

My dragon grumbled, opening one big eye and shifting mine to his as Odell wrapped the blanket around him.

Most shifters weren’t modest but the less that journalists saw of him the better.

“COBALT! HELP! COBALT, HELP!” The man screeched my name, and I darted into the foliage.

“Wait up!” Odell growled behind me. “I’m tripping on this damn blanket. I’m going to fucking eat them for this shit! Can’t leave anyone the hell alone. Come all the way to BFE and they still can’t leave us alone.”

The journalist was an iguana shifter that came up to my nipples.

It wasn’t the first time he saw me naked.

We frequented the same bath house when I visited London.

He never had his camera there but his camera wasn’t doing him much good at the moment.

A hand was wrapped around his arm and Reve slammed the camera into it again and again.

Through the dark I could make out the bruise forming on his skin.

I reached out, snatching at the hand, but my fingers went through it.

Whatever it was hissed as if I’d poured hot water on it and slithered away.

Reve dropped his camera and clutched his bruised arm against his chest as Odell came into sight.

I kicked the camera even further out of Reve’s reach and I took a long, deep breath.

His little itchy clicker finger was the least of our worries.

“Have you been tested for wraiths?” I asked Odell.

“Huh?” he blinked, looking back and forth between me and Reve.

“Don’t mind him. He’s just an iguana trying to make a buck. I’ll skin him and make a boot out of him later,” I said, grabbing his shirt collar before he could think about running off. “Have you been tested for wraiths?”

“There’s a test for that?” Reve asked.

“Shut up!” Odell and I said at the same time.

“I’ve never had a wraith problem! I’ve seen shamans, witches, and every other title you can imagine. If a wraith was causing my problems, I’d know, but ---”

“That wasn’t a wraith,” Reve spat out the words before we could tell him to shut the fuck up again.

“Is he your ex?” Odell asked.

“No,” I shook my head.

“Good, because if you buried your ex in the forest it would look bad,” Odell said and bit his bottom lip.

Fuck! He was too hot when he did that. He was only wearing the damn tartan blanket and it would be too easy to snatch away. My heart pounded against my chest and my dick hardened despite the death hold I had on the menace lizard.

“I don’t know what it was but it wasn’t a wraith,” Reve said again. “They can’t touch you like that. They can’t grab onto you. I thought it was some magical protection you put up. That’s why I yelled for you, you overgrown lizard.”

“Why are you here, Reve?” I asked, trying to ignore how easy it would be to snap his bones apart and turn around to take Odell again. The only thing that stopped me was that we didn’t have a condom. They were all back with our clothes and the basket.

“You haven’t told us anything,” Reve shrugged. “We’re all curious. He and his friend could possibly be our future first-mate of the flight. We deserve to know—”

“Smash the camera, mate,” I said, tired of hearing his mouth run.

“I swear! It was just for ---” Reve started but Odell’s foot came down on the camera. “Did you have to do that? Do you know how expensive that camera was?” The lizard smelled tormented but that was the price of being a bloody spy.

“I hope whoever hired you paid well.”

“No one hired me. I was at a diner when I spotted you guys in the truck. So I just followed you. When we got close-ish to the cabin I left my jeep and hoofed it out here. It wasn’t hard to follow Teal’s scent. It’s all around here. I figured someone had to come back for the basket.”

“Did you watch us….” Odell started but his words died in his throat.

“Want me to kill him?” I asked.

While my mate considered his answer to that question, I realized how serious my grandsire was every time he’d asked me or one of my siblings that question.

If he said yes, Reve was a dead lizard. He trespassed on something holy and I wasn’t going to stand for it.

I didn’t have any modesty left but Odell did, and I’d kill this bastard if it meant preserving his dignity.

Reve’s mouth dropped open in a disbelieving O. I opened my own to tell him off, but a tendril shot through his belly and sliced upwards slicing him from stem to stern as I held him upright. Then it was gone. It was gone just as quickly as the shadowy hand that gripped him minutes before.

Odell turned to run. For a second I didn’t move. What the hell was first aid for an injury like this?

“None,” my dragon said, standing up inside his inner sanctum already forcing his wings from my shoulder blades even as they knocked into trees. At my feet Reve’s bisected heart lay unbeating in a crimson pool.

“Cobalt! DON’T YOU MAKE ME COME BACK THERE!” Odell yelled.

“Sorry, Reve,” I dropped his shirt collar and what was left of the iguana shifter hit the ground where his heart and other organs lay waiting for their reunion.

My dragon took over moving me through the woods and scooping up Odell before taking to the sky.

My mate clung to me, half-clad in the blanket and shivering.

Teal was en route. Indigo was awake and shoving Ambry inside the house.

Though, was that safe? If the tendril could cut through Reve was anywhere safe?

My hand had passed through it when I tried to grab it though.

“That wasn’t a wraith,” Odell repeated what Reve had said before his death. “I don’t know what it was but that wasn’t a wraith.”

“We’ll call someone. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it all out,” I whispered over and over to my mate until my feet touched down on the cabin’s welcome mat.

Indigo opened the door and pulled us both inside before slamming and locking the door behind us.

They were as naked as we were and if the land around the cabin was about to become a crime scene, we all needed to put some Frost-damned pants on.