Treasure Lane Dragons: Complete Series (BBW Paranormal Dragon Shapeshifter Romance) (54 page)

“So, you goin’ to move or what, mate?” Deacon asked, scowling.

Anyone in Shifter Grove could have told Ares that Deacon wasn’t the kind of man to get upset easily. Few things could rattle him, but apparently one lazy dragon was all it took to ruin the otherwise pleasant day of one of the town’s founders.

What’s in it for me?
Ares asked, feeling the corners of his massive jaws twitch just a bit.

It was an entirely human reaction, but he’d had plenty of time to perfect the connection between his dragon and human sides while killing time in Colorado. It was probably another thing that made him as bloody unbearable as he was. There was only so much self-assurance one could take from a man and when that was combined with the overwhelming sense of self that dragons had… well, the result was bordering on obnoxious.

“The fact that you might be able to make a friend in Shifter Grove in the future?” Deacon growled.

With mild amusement, Ares watched as Deacon’s hands balled into fists. Diesel, the local sheriff, put his hand on Deacon’s chest and pushed him back a bit, urging him to keep his cool – no use in getting into a fistfight with a dragon, after all.

A thin pillar of smoke rose from the corner of Ares’s mouth, the eternal fire in him coming to life along with him. His golden eyes, their dark pupils narrowed into slits, considered the woods around him. He huffed in a breath and it was like the sweetest balm – there was gold in those mountains, that much he knew. Of course, he hadn’t come here for the gold alone. The real reason was something much more desirable, if that was even possible for a dragon.

“Why are you here, dragon?” Warren asked, his voice steady and authoritative.

Must be the Alpha,
Ares mused to himself, keeping these thoughts out of everybody else’s heads.
Brave. Good for him.

Why is a dragon ever anywhere? For gold and a woman, of course,
Ares projected, his heavy tail swishing back and forth once or twice, felling a few small trees in its path.

“Spirits above, man, watch where you flail that thing,” Rush snorted, jumping out of the way when the boulder-like tip of the golden dragon’s mallet-tail came flying past him too close for comfort.

“Okay. You asked what’s in it for you. How about you tell us what you want?” Warren asked, tipping his hat back as he stared up at Ares, eyes squinted.

Ares quirked his head to the side in apparent contemplation. As much fun as it was to play heavenly overlord to all the little shifters, he had to remind himself that he was in Shifter Grove with a bigger goal in mind – a goal that would have to be achieved sooner rather than later in Ares’s opinion.

Any of you know Pearl Landon and where I might find her?

Warren and Diesel shared a puzzled look, but clarity edged over the features of the other two.

“Yeah, I know her. She’s the woman leasing the grocery store from Rhett. But I think she’s been going by Mae Landon here,” Rush said.

A predatory grin bubbled forth in Ares, appearing as a grimace on his leathery jaws.

I’ll get out of the way if you take me to her.

“Deal,” Rush said easily, shrugging his shoulders. “As long as you promise that you have no bad intentions towards her. Is she expecting you?”

In a manner of speaking,
Ares noted dryly, imagining the look of pure fury he was going to see on Pearl’s face.

Ah, it was going to be heavenly.

“If you hurt her or cause her any distress, your big size won’t help you none,” Diesel said darkly, the Navy SEAL’s eyes projecting the promise of quick and painful retaliation if anyone in his town was hurt.

Noted but disregarded.

Ares let the shift take him and he distilled the sounds of surprised gasps deep within him, reveling in them – apparently the other shifters weren’t accustomed to the change of a dragon shifter. Though he hadn’t been on stage in a while, Ares couldn’t help but miss the sounds of impressed fans, dazzled by his presence. It was the dragon way. They always needed to make a bit of a show out of everything, and that was doubly true for Ares. As the brother of two of the biggest rock stars on the planet and one of the founding members of the Gold Dragons, he’d got his share of the limelight and was still sort of sour it got taken away from him. So, he had to make due with what he could get.

Everything was just so much bigger and more intricate with dragons. The scales, the wings, the towering heads that were as large as the shifters’ pick-up trucks and the sheer magnitude of it all – it was enough to make even the steeliest of observers succumb to surprise. Yes, Ares sure was magnificent, no one needed to tell him that.

He’d forgotten how big of a show it was for other shifters to come across a dragon, what with them becoming so rare lately. There weren’t many of them left, and the ones that were still around rarely left their hoards. It was a blessing and a curse that Ares Goldplains came from a big family, one that had dragons to spare to guard their hoards. Now with his older brothers busy with their new mate, Ares had plenty of time to seek other ventures than guarding the family treasure.

And this time, he was after one precious gem in particular – Pearl.

Once the shift was complete, he dusted himself off, patting his hands over his worn and fashionably torn jeans and white tee. He wore wide gold cuffs on his wrists and several golden chains around his tanned neck that tucked into the collar of his V-neck shirt. He had a few haphazard piercings in both ears. All in all, he looked like a well-off surfer bum, what with his casual style and his blue eyes with gold flakes in them. But he was certainly built like a shifter – tall, broad-shouldered and carved out of pure muscle and power – and could give any shifter a run for their money, even out of his dragon form.

With quick, fluid movements he covered the ground between himself and Rush Dean, tying his longish, wheaten-blonde hair into a bun as he walked to the group of shifters. He was half-expecting Deacon to punch him and wouldn’t have really faulted the man if he had.

“Now wasn’t that fun,” Ares said with a wink, lightly punching the werebear in the shoulder.

Deacon didn’t seem to share his sentiment.

“Try to behave yourself, dragon,” Diesel rumbled, a low threat in his voice.

“I never do,” Ares promised, already extending his hand to Rush.

The werebear grabbed it easily and they shook hands.

“Rush Dean,” the werebear said.

“Dean. I think I know that name. Ares Goldplains.”

His name got another round of glances. Yup, everybody knew who the Goldplains were, but not everybody knew that they were dragons, though Ares had always thought the band’s name had been a dead giveaway.

Rush Dean looked like the kind of guy Ares could grab a drink with. The other three looked like the kind of guys he’d get his ass whooped by if he weren’t in dragon form. All in all, he wouldn’t have considered it the right kind of shifter town if there hadn’t been plenty of people that fell into both categories.

“Alright. I guess we’re going to town then,” Rush said with a shrug, pointing his thumb at his F-250.

“Lead the way!”

Ares gave a wink and a wave to the shifters they were leaving behind. He hadn’t got a single friend out of that exchange, but frankly, he couldn’t have cared less. He was in Shifter Grove for two kinds of business and neither one of those required him to get along with anybody – and he wasn’t intending on wasting any time on things that weren’t of vital importance.

I’m coming to get you.

CHAPTER TWO

Pearl

Usually, Pearl Mae Landon was not the kind of woman to find happiness hard to achieve. On the contrary, she thought of herself as a smiley, the-glass-is-half-full kind of woman. But lately, that effervescent happiness of hers was really being put to the test.

“I swear to god, if I have to tell you to come in on time one more time, Dalton, I’m going to start looking for new help,” she growled, looking the teenaged polar bear shifter right in the eye with her best angry schoolmarm impression.

The teenager seemed less than impressed – no wonder, any cousin of Deacon North had probably seen far scarier scowls than the one Pearl could muster.

Pearl couldn’t blame him for looking unfazed. She knew her mild anger came off as a fizzle of irritation at best. Now, were she really enraged,
that
would get him to notice. But Pearl had far too much to do to waste energy on getting peeved at a teenager and his antics. Besides, she’d seen the cute lynx shifter girl he’d walked to the store with, hand in hand, and if there was one thing that got her happiness levels up then it was seeing young love.

Because you can’t find any of your own, obviously,
a bitter little voice inside of her said, only to be brushed away later over a glass of red wine.

“Sorry, Miss Mae,” Dalton drawled, shuffling his feet a little.

Pearl sighed. She knew she couldn’t keep her irritation going for much longer.

“Fine, Dalton. Just don’t be late again. Go stack the fruit stands at the back. The first shipment is coming in tomorrow and I don’t want to be selling apples out of crates.”

“Yes, Miss Mae,” Dalton said, perking up immediately and stalking out of Pearl’s sphere of annoyance.

“And stop calling me Miss Mae! It’s just Mae!” she called after him.

“Sorry, Miss Mae!”’

Pearl sighed again under her breath and picked up the rag she’d been using to clean the glass surfaces of the display boxes near the register. She spritzed some detergent on the glass and started scrubbing away, doing the same damn thing for the fifteenth time in a row, all in the hopes that
maybe
this time she’d get it spotless.

That was never going to happen, of course, but hope was the refuge of the foolish and she needed all the refuge she could get.

What have you done, Pearl?
she asked herself for the umpteenth time, brushing a strand of shortish auburn hair out of her face.

She’d been in Shifter Grove for a week now and she’d never felt so elated for her future and so terrified at the same time. The area was absolutely beautiful and she already had scruffs and scrapes on her arms and legs from checking out the nearby mountains – she was an avid mountaineer and climber. It was pure heaven, right down to the little cottage she was renting not far from Slate and Teresa’s home.

Pearl looked up from the annoying spot she couldn’t scrub out of the secondhand furniture, letting her gray gaze roll over the contents of her small store. It was stocked with every manner of haphazard furniture, featuring shelves and tables and cabinets that would soon house groceries and common goods. No two items seemed to go together and that was no surprise, seeing as she’d driven round all over Idaho and parts of Montana to buy up the furniture from yard sales and consignment stores.

But it didn’t matter how it looked, all that mattered was that it was all hers and hers alone. Well, hers, and 60% Rhett Dean’s, seeing as she only had enough money to rent the space from him, but that would have to do for now. She’d build it up and buy Rhett out eventually. He seemed like a reasonable enough guy.

For a billionaire Mississippi black bear shifter, anyway,
Pearl thought with a grin.

She’d never thought she’d end up in a place like Shifter Grove. A year ago, she’d barely even known that shifters existed. She’d been working as a hostess at a cigar club (of all places!), going about her rather unintriguing life in Delaware, when a weretiger came in one night and changed her whole life.

He was an elderly shifter by the name of Andrei Feodov, a Siberian tiger, and he took an immediate shine to Pearl. He was never crass, never lewd, but just the kind of gentleman every woman needs in her life – showing her that there were better things to strive for than making minimum wage at a foggy hole in the wall. They quickly became friends.

They’d got to chatting that same evening and he came back every night after that, sharing his life stories with Pearl and making her dream of more. Andrei worked himself up from nothing, coming to the United States when he was a teenager and starting out as a shoeshiner – a job far beneath any shifter. Not only had he divulged the semi-secret lives of shifters to her, but he’d also told her that she could be more than what she was.