On Wings: A Reverse Harem Dragon Shifter Romance (Her Secret Menagerie Book 2) Read online

  I slapped his hand away and withdrew, ignoring him. Instead, I followed my wingmate over to the bar and settled in to have a drink, having decided that I had sorely earned one.

  Chapter 2

  Olivia

  My shower was freezing by the time I got out of it, but I desperately didn't want to go into work today. The big brass would be bustling around, meeting with the billionaires that wanted to push us out of the project. I knew I was being irrational but even as I dried off, I sighed.

  They knew that we had every right to investigate to the fullest extent of the law. That was fine with the Fontaines, a big pet food manufacturing company that had taken the world by storm a while back. It wasn't fine with their lawyers or with the pet food company itself, which kept begging us for a timeline in which we would be done.

  The discovery of the newest set of fossils had been nothing more than a bunch of shells from mollusks that still had relatives roaming the world today. It wasn't impressive or shocking, but the first fossil had been. And we had to keep searching for more of those.

  "I don't want to end their building project," I told my locket as I closed the clasp around my neck. "But if it's the right thing to do, I'm doing it." I pulled my clothes on and hid the necklace beneath them, touching it and whisper, "Love you, Mama."

  Three years she'd been gone but it felt like three days. The pain never really went away, but neither did my fury.

  With a press of a button my phone, I summoned a rideshare to my house. I couldn't remember if it was Uber or Lyft or some off-brand one that didn't operate in any city larger than a few stoplights and it didn't really matter to me. The bed and breakfast was a nice place to spend a few weeks, but I didn't want to live here the rest of my life.

  I stepped out of the car and choked on the swampy air. In the short time it'd taken to get from my room to work, it felt like the temperature had tripled. Though I had wanted to work outdoors my entire life, and I'd always had a passion for the past, I didn't want to die of heatstroke, either. First stop? Check-in under the shadiest tent we had up.

  "Olivia, sweetheart, there you are," chirped a lean woman in a lab coat. "Did the traffic keep you? It's been hell for most of us."

  No doubt it had. They had decided to stay downtown in a place that looked like it served caviar for breakfast. I was much happier on the quieter suburbs, even if the commute took a little longer. "Yep. You know how these places are. You're going along no problem for ten miles then all of a sudden, huge traffic jam for no reason. Where am I today?"

  "Managing site 16 with Dr. Pender. Be careful. She had a bad night last night."

  I tilted my head, asking the question without words.

  "Boyfriend broke up with her. Too much time apart, never any time for him; supposedly. But, and you didn't hear this from me, last I knew he was dating his own secretary when Nicole was out of the office," she said.

  They always made long-distance relationships seem so romantic on those dating app commercials, but I'd seen time and time again as people failed to make a match when they were a few states away. Doctor Nicole Pender had been away from her boyfriend for the past six and a half years on regular trips like these. It was no wonder the guy was tired of her never-there lifestyle. I didn't think I could do that long, either.

  Not that I knew anything about relationships. I wasn't social enough to have a social life, not quite dead enough to be studied by my cohorts. I made my way down to site 16 and rejoiced that we had a tent down there, too. "Hey Nicole."

  She was as blonde as I was and covered in dust up to her elbows, but when she saw me, she smiled. "Olly, aren't you a sight for sore eyes."

  "I heard about Larry," I said, walking down the ladder to join her.

  The light in her eyes went out. "Oh. Jennifer?"

  "Yeah. Told me as I was coming in. Probably telling everybody. I'm sorry," I shrugged. "But I never thought a lot of him anyway. He was a jerk in high school."

  She shook her head and squatted back down in the filth, brushing at some fragment that looked like it might be a bone. More than likely, it was some old pottery or a piece of a septic drain. We'd found an entire leech field the other day and had to call in hazmat to deal with it. You never knew what was lurking in those pipes or in the ground, possibly making it inhospitable to your average everyday paleontologist.

  It was a common issue when you went digging around in layer after layer of soil. You never knew what you would find and sometimes, that meant a pretty scary dig site. We'd found unexploded landmines once because the old owner had been some kind of intensely private person who had wanted to blow up solicitors, according to the local newspapers in that town. The cops had found a few of the landmines.

  We'd found the other 30.

  "You wanna go out to lunch and swerve the brass?" I asked. "There's a great vegetarian store-shop combo not too far from here."

  Nicole's mouth hooked in a lopsided smile. "You gonna go veggie with me just because, huh? Do I look that pathetic?"

  "You look great, but I figure I can suffer with you, if it helps."

  Someone cleared their throat above us and I sighed as I looked up. The man who stood there was our boss, the budget version of Dr. Ian Malcolm, Dr. Willem Sonnet. His eyes narrowed when our gaze connected and I just knew he was in a pissy mood. "Neither of you are going anywhere for lunch. You're needed here."

  "Do we have to?" I said, pleading. "You can handle all of the big wigs coming in. There's no reason to keep us dirt-pushers around. They're just going to stare at us like we're garbage."

  He rolled his eyes. "The entire staff is to stay and that means you, too. We need to show that their money isn't being ill-spent. These exploratory investigations are expensive and people like the Fontaines want to see that they aren't wasting their funds. If every site is busy and everyone is working, it looks better."

  "They won't notice two of us gone out of a hundred," I muttered.

  Willem pretended not to hear me. "A lunch cart will come around for your orders in a few hours. It's on the house today, as a thank you for staying on the clock. I don't mind if you sit down to eat, but be aware that you should make quick work of it."

  That said, he disappeared off to another site to badger them. I sighed and picked up a tiny, hand-sized pick axe and began to chip away at the dark soil around us.

  "What a prick," Nicole sighed. "Gives us a free sandwich to stand around and look pretty for the people with the cash."

  I shoved her brush back into her hands and went back to work. There was no arguing with Willem, not when he was like this. And I wasn't going to fire up Nicole by agreeing with her. It was better to stay quiet and try to get my work finished. I still had Mom's hospital bills to pay, the funeral cost, and my student loans. I couldn't afford to lose the job and there was always someone that could whack the ground.

  Willem went back past us without another word. We spent the next few hours in silence, the steady whisper of her brush accenting my carefully-laid digging plans. Though we didn't find much, we removed several buckets of soil from the site and pushed another few feet back into the ground. It was a good use of time and I was pretty proud of myself.

  The lunch cart came and went. I ordered a mushroom-replacement version of a cheesesteak sandwich, with Nicole doing the same. Summer blazed down on us. If nothing else, at least I'd have a nice tan by the time we were done with the land in front of us.

  An hour passed and dizziness rocked my head. "Did you see the cart come back through?"

  "I haven't seen any sign of it for a while, no. It came past us about 45 minutes ago but..." Nicole trailed off. We only had four workers under us. It was possible that we'd been skipped.

  I mopped my brow with the back of my sleeve and sighed. "Lemme go see if I can find it. I'm starving."

  "Good luck."

  That? I didn't respond to that, but a boiling urge to snarl at her came bubbling up deep within me. Nicole was your church-casual Christian, the type that went on h
olidays and when her parents bothered her to go. She didn't know anything about luck, didn't understand what she was saying. I stalked off after the cart.

  Luck was what had cost me my mother.

  Luck was another one of those stupid words that people used in my mother's magical crystals-and-herbs community when they didn't want to call on a specific deity or whatever. I'd been raised around that, believed in it most of my life, and knew the deep, passionate intricacies of a bunch of different forms of witchcraft. I understood the rituals, the casting; all of it.

  And none of it had helped me in the end.

  You couldn't prove that a spell done skyclad beneath a full moon did anything other than make you stand naked out in your yard at 3 am. What I did now? That had evidence. I could touch a dinosaur skull with my hands. I could reassemble pottery based on accurate reconstructions based on facts.

  Maybe, just maybe, if Mom had put more belief in her doctors than her spiritual healers, she would still be with me. And my life wouldn't have been tipped upside down.

  I nearly tripped over the lunch cart, as distracted as I was with my thoughts. I managed to regain my balance, and my composure, before the little old lady blinked up at me. "Yes, dear?"

  "We had two veggie cheesesteaks, three BLTs, and a Cuban over in site 16?" I said, frowning. "Did you miss us?"

  She gasped and put her hand over her mouth. "Oh, my goodness. Yes, I must have. I'm so sorry. This old brain ain't what it used to be." I smiled as she laughed it off, but my stomach demanded justice. Thankfully, she was quick to bag up the order. I don't know where she got a 6-seat drink tray, but she certainly had it. Though I thought it was a bit of a waste; we'd all ordered Sprites. She could have simply kept the cans together in their plastic. "There you are!"

  "Thank you," I said, heading back with the order.

  The scorching sun bit into me with every step I took. Though I'd been born and bred in the southern states, the whole climate change thing was really drawing me down. Every year this area got hotter than it had any right to be and it felt as though I was that proverbial egg on the sidewalk, cooking in the sun without any way to escape it.

  I paused under a tent to take a breather and heard the scrape-crunch of gravel.

  Them.

  A large, dark Hummer rolled up, followed by a similarly-colored sports car of some foreign make. At first glance, I knew it was too expensive for my blood, that I'd never ride in something so fancy my whole life.

  That went double for the men who climbed out of the car. The duo wore impeccable suits, the kind that you have to go get measured for. Their ties probably cost more than my room did. They were nearly identical, though the leaner of the two seemed to have an air of confidence about him that put my teeth on edge.

  You know those kinds of people that you see that you just know, the second they open their mouth you're going to want to slap them? That's who he was. Smug, sleek, drop-dead gorgeous, but so arrogant that my grip drove my fingers through the plastic bag carrying our sandwiches, tore through the handle, and ended up with all six of them flopping uselessly to the ground.

  And that drew his attention. He tipped his sunglasses down and I got the full effect of his gaze. They said Medusa turned men to stone with a single look. I was certain he could do the same to me. My heart froze in my chest and I groped uselessly for a bag I no longer carried.

  Heat washed over me, through me, and if I'd thought it was hot before, good lord, it was hotter now than it'd ever been. I panted and realized I couldn't look away from him even if I tried.

  That man knew something about magic; the stuff that had made up my childhood. And he was using it to ensnare me completely.

  Well, so did I. I thought of a bubble that completely wrapped around me. It was made of a rainbow of colors, sealed all the way around. The moment I made it real, focusing every bit of will I had on it, I was able to stoop and grab the still-wrapped sandwiches off the ground.

  He jerked as if someone had slapped him. I put it out of my mind. All I'd done was bring myself around. There was no bubble, no magic in this world or any other. The place for that was in books or movies, and only the sort of media that I tried to avoid these days.

  "Olivia!"

  Willem waved at me. I put on a smile that would be better used as a cheese grater and put our lunch down on a nearby table beneath one of the many tents. Why didn't they make those things site-sized? I knew the military had some large enough and theirs even came with fans! But us? The museum wasn't going to shell out for something like that; not on their shoestring budget.

  I didn't blame them, but would cyclone fans have set us back so much?

  My walk to Willem, who stood next to the line of suits, was one of dread. I had no place associating with people like this. I wasn't exactly an introvert, but I still preferred to keep everyone at arm's length after all that had happened in my life. "Yes, doctor?"

  "Olivia Monx, Hudson and Gabriel Fontaine," Willem said in way of introduction. Hands were jutted out at me. I shook them and tried my best to look like I knew what I was doing. The Fontaines owned the Hummer. Not what I'd expected, but well enough. Who knew the pet market was so financially securing?

  Then my boss nodded to the duo from the car. "Eskal Vervain and-"

  I missed the second man's name completely. Eskal, the one I'd locked eyes with only a hundred years ago, took my hand in one of his and watched me. So close, I could see his eyes move through the sunglasses. His palm was surprisingly rough for a man who dressed like he did and drove a vehicle like that. Most rich guys never submitted themselves to hard labor but this one had.

  "Miss Monx," he said, lowered his head to brush his lips across my skin.

  If I'd thought the heat was too much to bear before, this almost drove me to my knees. My breath caught and I blinked at him, completely at a loss for words. Was this how people felt when their crush was in the room? I'd never gotten in to all of that silliness most teenaged girls squeak over; I'd been too busy taking care of Mom.

  That did it. The thought of my mother threw ice water all over me and melted to quench the volcano inside of me. I drew my hand back after a moment and made myself swallow so I didn't drool all over him. "It's a pleasure to meet you, gentlemen. I'm one of the many scientists attempting to make this process as quick and painless as we possibly can. But to do that, I'm afraid I'll have to get back to work. If you'll excuse me?"

  I did all the smiling and flirtation that I'd practiced for years. They expected it and Hudson dismissed me with a gentle wave of his fingers. Most would have taken it as the sort of be gone, peasant, gesture that I'd gotten used to waiting tables in school, but there was a smile that met his eyes attached to it and I decided he didn't seem to be such a bad guy, after all. Maybe he even knew what it was like to work yourself into the ground and never make headway on your bills.

  Maybe, but I doubted it.

  I went back to grab our lunch when a bell rung off in the distance. When we'd first attached ourselves to the project, we'd done as we always did: we mounted a giant bell in the center of the dig so we could ring an alarm whenever someone found something major.

  And whoever had found it was beating the hell out of the bell. I took off at a run and gasped when I saw Nicole trying to get everyone's attention.

  There, in our little divot in the ground, sat a perfectly oval, solid black egg the size of my head.

  What the hell?

  Chapter 3

  Eskal

  I traded a glance with Hudson, frowning. Were the humans so excited over another bit of shell? Impossible.

  Nariti at my heels, I followed the commotion. The wolves were close behind us, irritating by their very presence. If an item had been found, it was mine. How dare they consider laying claim to my world?

  I peered down into the miserable little mud pit the humans had created, were wallowing in at the moment. So many hands, too many heads. Nariti saw it before I did, grabbing my wrist in a steely grip that gave
me no manner in which to move.

  The egg was a perfect oval, dirty from decades hidden in the soil, but as black as my scales. As I watched, they unearthed another. This one was solid gold, sparkling in the daylight even through the filth on it. I couldn't breathe, couldn't wrap my mind around what I was seeing. Mother's final nest had been a complete loss.

  And humans had found it. I'd never dreamed she would bury the little ones, leaving them in stasis until she could hatch them. Had she known what was going to happen to her, to the rest of us? Had she suspected the humans were plotting against her and put the eggs into the care of the only being she could trust?

  It is our way to respect the soul of the planet beneath us. She feeds us, warms us, birthed us from the flames of her core. And when a mother dragon is frightened, she puts her children as close to that core as she may well risk.