Sharing Hazel: Lick of Fire Page 2

  But it wasn’t fear pushing his heart to beat so fast. Not fear at all, no. Instead, it was pain. It might have lasted for the time of a blink, but that look in Hazel’s eyes hadn’t lied. Her feelings for him were the same as they’d been practically since they’d met. She still loved him. He would have bet his wings on it.

  So why had she broken up with him? Why had she chosen the damn lion over him? Why?

  When he’d managed to get his body under control, he opened his eyes again and looked at Hazel on the opposite bench. He tried to meet her eyes, desperate to see that fire again and assure himself he hadn’t imagined it, but she didn’t look at him, focusing instead on the child seated across from her.

  Petro clamped his mouth shut and tried to clear his mind. From this close, Millie’s telepathic abilities were probably picking up every ounce of turmoil he felt whether she wanted to hear it or not. He liked her as a friend, he respected her as a leader, but she had no business knowing about his love life.

  Twenty minutes later, when the van stopped back in the safe house garage, Hazel was the first to jump out, the sleeping girl in her arms. Petro soon followed, and something tightened inside him as he watched her cradle the child. When they’d been together, he’d let himself dream, sometimes. Dream of a time when they wouldn’t need to fight anymore, when they’d settle down in Sanctuary, or maybe somewhere else if there was peace between paras and regular human beings. A time when they’d have started a family together, and in his dreams it had always been a little girl they brought into the world. A little girl with his nose and Hazel’s eyes, or maybe the opposite. A mix of them both, and when people saw all three of them together, they’d comment on how they could see bits of both of them in their daughter.

  Turning his gaze away from her and back to the task at hand, he absently ran his thumb along the inside of his right wrist. Although the tattoo there was covered by his sleeve, Petro could see every detail of it in his mind, every elegant curve of the script that spelled out ‘Hazel.’ She could say anything she wanted, she could break up with him and take another lover, the fact remained that her name had been inked on his skin since his birth, and together with his name on her wrist it meant without the shadow of a doubt that they were mates, destined by fate to be together.

  There was only one small problem: she also had two more names on her wrist other than his own.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The child, Hazel soon learned, was named Isolda. She was eleven, although she looked small for her age. And she was a dragon.

  “An ice dragon,” she said from inside the shower stall. “Are you an ice dragon too, or just a regular one?”

  “Just a regular one,” Hazel replied, silencing the little voice that scoffed at the claim she was anything but regular.

  She was a dragon shifter, yes—and telling the child about it had been the key to have her speak in more than monosyllables. But she was also a lion shifter.

  There was a word for shifters who could assume more than one animal form: chimera. It had even become her codename in the squad. But Hazel had never heard of anyone else with her dual abilities, and no one who knew about her had ever encountered someone like her, either.

  Both her parents were lion shifters, and they’d always encouraged her to choose that part of her nature as her dominant trait. A lion could roam in the dense woods near the town where she’d grown up in relative impunity, while a dragon would always attract too much notice. It wasn’t until she’d first arrived in Sanctuary that she’d finally been able to fly freely as she’d longed to do all her life.

  “How are you doing in there?” she asked, smoothing the bathrobe she held on her knees. “Need any help?”

  “No,” the child answered quickly, but soon added, “Maybe. I washed my hair but it’s all tangled.”

  “That’s all right, I’ll help you comb it when you get out.”

  “I don’t want to get out yet. This is nice.”

  Unseen by anyone, Hazel allowed herself a sad smile. A hot shower would be nice, yes, after who knew how long Isolda had spent in a high security cell. How these people could keep a child in these conditions and call themselves ‘human’, Hazel couldn’t fathom.

  “I’m sure it’s nice,” she said, trying to sound teasing, “but I’m also sure Leah would like to take a hot shower too. She won’t be able to do that if you use all the hot water.”

  For a long moment, the child was quiet. Then the water slowly tapered off. In the sudden silence, Isolda’s voice was a murmur.

  “Mari always pretended to complain when I used all the hot water, but she was only joking.”

  The door of the shower opened a smidge, just enough for Hazel to pass the bathrobe to Isolda. She emerged a second later wrapped up in pink terrycloth, the sleeves falling long past her fingertips and the bottom of the robe dragging on the floor. They’d furnished the safe houses with clothes in various sizes, but there was nothing here that fit a child, so Petro had gone out to find something for her to wear. This would have to do in the meantime.

  Hazel held out one hand to her, and showed her the hairbrush she held in the other.

  “Let’s go in the living room,” she said, “and we’ll work on those tangles.”

  On the way out, Hazel poked her head into the bedroom where Leah was resting to tell her the shower was all hers. Leah gave her a grateful if tired smile. She hadn’t said much since she’d been freed, and Hazel didn’t dare push her after such a traumatic experience. There would be time to talk about it all later.

  Only after they’d settled on the sofa, sitting sideways so Hazel could sit comfortably behind Isolda, did Hazel ask gently, “Who’s Mari?”

  Isolda took in a shuddering breath before she answered, and Hazel wasn’t sure if it was because of the topic or because she’d pulled a little too hard on a knot.

  “My big sister. She’s a dragon, too. A regular one, like you.”

  Hazel was afraid to ask the next logical question, but she had to. She passed the brush three times through the strand of hair she’d untangled and then said, “And where is Mari now?”

  Isolda’s shoulders started shaking and she lowered her head, though she didn’t make a sound. Hazel never stopped running the brush through her hair. She spoke as soothingly as she knew how.

  “It’s all right. We’ll look for her. The squad helps paras all over the place. In a few days we’ll take you to Sanctuary. You’ll really like it there, I’m sure of it. It’s a place where all sorts of paras live together. There are many dragons there. You’ll be able to shift and fly as much as you want. You’ll go to school, and make some friends. And when we find your sister, she’ll join you. Okay?”

  “O… okay,” Isolda hiccupped.

  The two of them fell silent. Little by little, the tangled knots in the child’s hair surrendered under Hazel’s gentle brushing. At some point, the three locks on the front door clicked open, then shut again after Petro had come in. Even without looking across the room toward him, Hazel could feel his presence, like the heat from a forest fire carried on the wind. She kept her attention on her work, aware that he’d come closer and was watching her and Isolda. Finally, she lifted the brush one last time, leaving only silky pale blond strands behind.

  “All done,” she said softly.

  Isolda flashed her a tiny smile over her shoulder.

  “Can you… can you make it into braids? Like yours?”

  Hazel passed a hand through Isolda’s hair and shook her head. The glass beads on her braids tinkled lightly against each other.

  “Not tonight, sweetie. It takes a really long time, and it’s late. You should get some sleep. But I can do a quick one so your hair doesn’t get tangled again. Would you like that?”

  Isolda agreed and Hazel started quickly weaving strands of hair together, now hyperaware that Petro was watching them. Watching her.

  She should have been annoyed, but really, it wasn’t like she hadn’t expected this. Petro was the squad�
�s second in command. He took care of a lot of the minutia, while Millie, the squad leader, was more focused on the larger mission.

  He’d set up the safe houses, planned how the squad would be divided between them, and how long they’d stay there with their charges.

  Of course he’d arranged it so Hazel would be with him. Of course he’d put them at the end of the schedule, so they’d be last to go home to Sanctuary with the newly released prisoners they were keeping safe.

  Of course.

  She hadn’t expected anything else.

  She couldn’t manage to be all that upset about it. She felt too guilty for that. She hadn’t given him the slightest explanation when she’d broken up with him, and she’d avoided being alone with him ever since, preventing any sort of discussion about what had happened. Of course he’d used the first opportunity to get some time with her. She already knew he’d try talking to her as soon as they were on their own.

  If only she knew what she might tell him then.

  She couldn’t say that she didn’t love him anymore. It might be kinder than to allow him hope, but it wasn’t true and she couldn’t manage to lie about it. She’d tried when she’d told him it was over between them, but the words had simply refused to come out—as she knew they would if she tried to utter the lie today.

  Why even bother lying, though? He’d seen her wrist. He knew his name was on there—and it was distinctive enough that there was little doubt it was his name, especially with her name on his wrist.

  They were mates. There was no denying it. She’d started falling in love with him from the moment she’d met him, when she knew nothing more than his codename and that he was the recruiter for the squad.

  “I’m our leader’s right arm,” he’d said that day, and thrown a self-deprecating look to his own right arm, wrapped in a green resin cast from the wrist to beyond the elbow.

  Even with his injury, he remained impressive, his t-shirt stretched over a broad chest, his thighs as thick and solid as tree trunks behind faded denim. He had the complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outside, his dark blond hair streaked with a few bleached strands. It wasn’t a look Hazel had ever been attracted to before, but this guy just looked yummy.

  “You can call me Talons,” he continued. “To get a chance to impress my boss, you must first impress me. Try to get me out of this circle. No drawing blood. Show me what you can do, and we’ll see if that’s enough to earn you a spot in the squad.”

  He seemed tough, standing in that ring painted right on the bare earth, like he was trying to intimidate the candidates before they even walked up to him—and even with his broken arm, it worked. The first young man who came forward was so nervous that he didn’t even manage to shift to his eagle form. He didn’t try to get Talons out of the circle any other way either, simply standing there and apologizing for wasting Talons’ time.

  Talons didn’t mock him or otherwise embarrass him. Instead, he showed kindness when he suggested the young man practice more and try again in a few months… or in a couple of years. He’d claimed to be nineteen, but Hazel would have bet he wasn’t a day older than sixteen, and it seemed Talons had seen the same thing she had.

  Another candidate stepped forward. Suzy was a few inches shorter than Hazel, which put her at a full head below Talons, and she was frail-looking to boot. Hazel had done basic training with her, however, and she knew how deceptive appearances could be. Suzy may look like a too strong breeze would topple her down, and that might have been what Talons thought when he took the hand she was offering him to shake to start their match-up, but she quickly demonstrated otherwise.

  As soon as she had his hand in hers, she twisted her body, pulling on his hand and using his own weight against him. Before he could shake himself from his surprise, he was sprawled on the ground, his legs still inside the circle but his ass and upper body past the line. He blinked several times while looking up at Suzy, and suddenly burst out laughing. Suzy had passed.

  Hazel was next, the last of this group, and neither Suzy nor the young man stayed to watch her test, which suited her fine seeing what she meant to do. As she stood in the center of the ring with Talons, he smiled faintly, looking more alert than he had with Suzy. Without a word, Hazel whipped off her t-shirt… and his eyes widened noticeably. When she stepped out of her skirt and shoes, the faintest trace of a blush started rising in his cheeks.

  “Listen,” he started saying, but seemed to lose his train of thought when she removed her bra and panties, too, leaving them on top of the rest of her clothes.

  He looked unsure whether to turn around to give her some privacy or keep an eye on her—for the purpose of the test, no doubt, and nothing more. Hazel didn’t particularly like stripping down in front of strangers, but it was one of the hazards of being a shifter that you often showed more skin than you wished you would. Besides, if she was accepted into the squad, surely there would be times when she had to shift in front of him and others. There was no point in being shy now.

  The last thing she took off was the leather cuff on her wrist, and she did so in such a way that the names tattooed on her skin would remain hidden for the second or so it took her to shift. She thought of taking her lion form—lions seemed to scare a lot of people almost viscerally, and surely she could make Talons take a few steps back if she frightened him—but at the last moment she decided to go with her dragon form.

  Only recently when she’d come to Sanctuary had she been able to shift to her dragon form for the first time in years, and the novelty still wasn’t fading off. Besides, no need to scare Talons as a dragon: as her body grew and elongated, she filled more and more of the circle, pushing the man standing next to her inexorably out and past the line. She didn’t actively force him out of the circle, but he’d never said it ought to be a fight.

  When she was fully transformed, she cocked her head toward him and gave him the closest approximation to a smile that a dragon could perform. He snorted and shook his head, but he looked more amused than anything. In this form, her sense of smell was keener—although not quite as keen as when she was in her lion body—and something tickled her mind as she took in Talons’ scent. She wasn’t recognizing it, or at least not exactly. She was fairly certain she’d never smelled anything as intriguing as his scent before. And yet, at the same time, it was as though she’d always known such a scent existed.

  “All right,” he said with a grin. “That’ll do it. Although in a real combat situation, the UIPP is unlikely to let you take the time to strip before you shift, you know.”

  It took no more than a thought to return to her human form, and as she did Talons half turned away, giving her a semblance of privacy.

  “I’m sure,” she replied, an exhilarated laugh in her words. “But all you said was to get you out of the circle. You didn’t say I had to pretend you were UIPP.”

  She put her clothes back on, starting with the cuff on her wrist. It was, after all, the most private part of her.

  “True enough,” Talons said. “And it’ll be nice to have another dragon on the team. It was getting a bit lonely.”

  With ‘Talons’ as a codename, she’d figured he was some kind of winged shifter, but she still felt a pang, the way she always did when she met another dragon. Most people didn’t share the same abilities as their mates, but her parents had, as had her paternal grandparents and her uncle and his mate, and something in her had always wondered if it would be a lion or a dragon that captured her heart—and which of the three names on her wrist he would bear.

  She caught Talons glancing in her direction just as she was drawing her skirt over her ass. Seeing that she was decent again, he came closer and extended his left hand, the right one being hindered by the cast.

  “Our leader has the last word,” he said as he shook her hand, “but I’m still going to go ahead and welcome you in the squad, miss..?”

  “Hazel,” she replied, beaming at him. “Thank you.”

  But he didn’t se
em to hear those last words, and instead repeated her name softly. As he let go of her hand, he extended his index finger, a wicked-sharp talon emerging at the tip. Under her confused gaze, he ran the talon from the cuff of his cast to the elbow bent first on one side, then on the other. The resin tumbled to the ground, revealing skin a little paler than the rest of him. He turned his wrist toward her even as he said, his voice shaking a little, “I’m Petro.”

  And right there, on the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist, was her name.

  “Are you all finished?”

  Isolda’s quiet words shook Hazel out of her memories and she shuddered. Braiding—usually her own hair—often put her in something close to a meditative state, her fingers following the familiar patterns on their own and leaving her mind free to wander. Rarely had she fallen in so deep, however, when others were around her.

  “All done, yes,” she said after clearing her throat. “I just need something to…”

  She trailed off when Petro, who had come closer without her noticing, held out the twist tie from a bread bag toward her.

  “Will that work?” he asked, the faintest of smiles on his lips.

  She took the twist tie with a nod. Not exactly a beauty staple, but she didn’t have anything better on hand. Once she tied it over the end of Isolda’s braid, it looked secure enough.

  “I found you some clothes,” Petro said, his eyes on the child, holding up a couple of bags. “Just basic things. Not many stores open at this hour, but you’ll get more once we get to Sanctuary.”

  Isolda didn’t move a muscle, her gaze turned in Petro’s direction though it didn’t seem she was looking directly at him. Hazel had seen animals act like this when she was in her lion form and they were trying to decide whether to flee and attract her attention or stay still and hope she wouldn’t see them.