the journal of r. cooper

Okay, these keep going long, and getting a little sad. I’M SORRY. It’s my brain lately.

This is for @vashti-lives who donated, and asked for Theo/Zeki, babysitting.

Theo slid the last tray of cookies into the oven with a satisfied hum, and then surveyed the many racks of cooling sugar cookies around him. He stopped humming, and blinked back to the awareness that he wasn’t in his kitchen, he was in his parents’ house, and he’d gone into their kitchen a while ago to find a snack.

He glanced around guiltily, although his parents had learned over the years to leave him alone while he was baking. It allowed him to focus, while keeping him from wallowing in painful thoughts, or worse, not feeling anything at all.

He stopped before he could search for powdered sugar for icing. Because of course, he didn’t need to wallow now. Zeki was here. His mate was here and wanted him, and had claimed him probably far too early but neither of them could seem to care about it.

Theo blinked down at the dozens of heart-shaped sugar cookies, at the room almost literally overflowing with the power of his full heart, and didn’t have to wonder why he’d gotten distracted enough to bake.

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Since he had a few minutes to wait—and probably some apologies to make to his family for forgetting about them—he poked his head out of the kitchen to look out into the living room. He expected to his parents, and some of his visiting cousins. What he saw was his mate, sitting awkwardly on the couch while two of Theo’s young cousins played on the floor in front of him.

There wasn’t a sound from the rest of the house, as if everyone else had left. He couldn’t tell when they’d be back, or when Zeki had arrived, but he’d clearly been asked to babysit, and for some reason, he’d agreed.

Zeki hadn’t been raised around a lot of relatives or children. That much, Theo knew. He could also tell that Zeki hadn’t been around kids when he’d been in school either, because he staring at the two children in front of him with a blank expression. That was Zeki when he hadn’t worked out what to do about something.

He must feel so unprepared right now, and yet he’d been roped into babysitting anyway. Zeki was… unnerved by Theo’s parents, guilty, around them. They weren’t… well, he had some reason to be. Not guilty—none of that was his fault—but worried about them accepting him. They would in time of course. Zeki’s was Theo’s mate, and more than that, actively trying to prove to them he would protect Theo. But in the meantime, Zeki had probably thought babysitting would impress them.

Theo looked to his cousins. Seven-year-old Lupe’s attention seemed split between the cartoon on TV and Zeki and keeping an eye on her older cousin. Mai was going through some things, or, her mother was, and her father wasn’t around to help, which would probably explain why Mai was currently a wolf. Being upset as a wolf was much easier than being upset as a human. No one made you talk.

Mai’s mood had nothing to do with Zeki, but Zeki probably didn’t know that.

“Are you, um, okay, over there?” he asked Mai, whose ears flicked in his direction, although she didn’t turn to acknowledge him.

Zeki just nodded. “Okay, cool. Um. I know you’re old enough to play outside, or by yourself, and let’s face it, even a young wolf can take care of herself, but let me know if you need anything. Okay? You don’t even have to talk. I’m getting pretty good at figuring out all the were-speak… or at least I think I am.”

“Mai thinks you’re itchy,” Lupe offered. Mai swiped a paw over her nose. Lupe rubbed the sleeve of her Oscar the Grouch T-shirt over her face, although Lupe was only half-wolf, and hadn’t ever shown a hint of shifting that anyone had seen.

“Itchy?” Zeki perked up. “That’s the scent of my magic. It’s uncomfortable at first I know. It’s hard to quantify.”

Lupe exchanged a frown with Mai.

Theo smiled to himself, just a little, for Zeki’s inexperience with talking to children. But Zeki always was quick to learn.

“Oh,” he said, as if correctly interpreting their silence. “Um. I mean that magic smells like a lot of things, but also like nothing else. So a lot of weres find it strange, or unpleasant. But that usually goes away if you’re around it long enough. You get used to it, or I think, maybe you learn to parse it out.”

Lupe put her head in her hands and sighed dramatically. After a moment, she turned toward the TV.

Zeki, unexpectedly, sighed with her. Instead of being relieved, he stared between the two children with that adorable frown of determination on his face. It was similar to how he looked after realizing that if he wanted to tire out a werewolf—sexually—he had to up his game.

Which he had. Very much.

Theo felt himself flushing. Luckily, it was time to check on his cookies, so he did that while he sorted his thoughts out. When he was calmer, he crept back to the corner. He should announce himself, but there was something about the set of Zeki’s shoulders that stopped him. Zeki was up to something.

“Are you guys hungry or anything?” Zeki prompted. “No one made me a list, but I could see what’s in the kitchen. Like my mate, for example, who has forgotten all about me.”

“Never,” Theo breathed, far too softly for Zeki to hear. But since he had gone into the kitchen over an hour ago to get snacks, he could see how Zeki might think it.

“You can cook?” Lupe wondered, voice full of scorn.

Zeki, in purple skinny jeans and a long black cardigan, with rings on every finger and a huge, delicate, fairy-knitted scarf around his neck, made a face as if wounded. “Of course I can. My dad is a chef. I grew up in kitchens.”

Mai’s ears flicked toward him again, but he wasn’t lying. Zeki could cook. He just generally didn’t bother.

Lupe made a doubtful noise. “My mom says you mess around in the kitchen.”

Theo put a hand over his mouth. Zeki, far less shockable than he was, only hummed thoughtfully. “What does she mean by mess around?”

“I don’t know,” Lupe told him, as if this was obvious.  

Zeki’s tiny smile was smug. “Well then yes, yes I do mess around in the kitchen.”

“With cousin Theo?” Lupe wondered. Mai tilted her head in Zeki’s direction.

“With Theo, yes.” He was facing down two children, but Zeki raised his chin with proud defiance anyway. He was… well this town had made him defensive about some things.

Lupe shrugged and made a big deal out of staring at the TV. “’Kay. Just make him feel good.”

Theo froze. Weres grew up with a lot more awareness than human children, or fully human children, but Lupe was still eight.

“What?” Zeki cleared his throat. Now he blushed. “What was that?”

“My mom says before we got here that I had to be nice so Theo would feel okay. She always says that when we drive here.” Lupe made it clear this was a burden. Theo frowned a little, although it was nothing to how serious Zeki suddenly was.

“What else does she say?”

“She always says he’s a good place for naps. Which I guess.” Lupe shrugged. “And that if I thought he was sad, I’m supposed to play with him.”

Oh. Theo’s heart felt heavy.

“Did Theo need the cuddles?” Zeki asked softly, knowingly. Theo shook his head, but Lupe looked up.

She responded to Zeki’s serious interest with an adult-like tone. “My brother says his scent is dark sometimes. My mom naps on him too, when we visit. And when they drive out to see us, people hug him a lot. Ooh!” Lupe sat up excitedly. “Even cousin Beautiful Pixy.”

“Cousin Beaut—” Zeki paused. “Do you mean Violet?”

Mai let out a small whuff of amusement.

“No,” Lupe corrected. “Cousin Beautiful Pixy. Violet only sometimes.”

“Right.” Zeki nodded. “My mistake.” He studied the two in front of him, then cleared his throat again. He wasn’t going to let the subject drop, not Zeki. “Theo needed that, huh?”

“I guess.” Lupe glanced to Mai, who sat up on her haunches.

“Mai?” Zeki turned to her. “Theo didn’t smell itchy?

Mai tipped her head to one side. She looked at Lupe. Lupe frowned.

Zeki clucked his tongue. His tone grew lighter. “Did no one tell you Theo was a powerful wizard?” He nodded forcefully in the face of their doubt. “It’s true, he is. That’s why he needed you to help him nap and make him feel better. Magic takes a lot of strength, and he’s so powerful that he lent me his strength while I was… while I was away.” For a moment, Zeki’s smile wasn’t quite real. “I’m a powerful wizard too, you see. That’s why Theo and I were meant to be together. And it’s why I came back. I had to return what he gave me, and make him strong again. But I’m glad you guys were here to help him when I wasn’t.”

Theo’s mate was so beautiful. He was lying, or half-lying, to children who, in a few years, would know he was lying. Mai might be able to tell already. But he was beautiful all the same.

“You’re really a powerful wizard?” Lupe demanded, unconcerned with anything else now. She rubbed her nose—probably mimicking weres she’d seen do that. Mai whuffed again.  

Zeki lowered his head to consider them. The light in the room seemed to dim. The wind whistled outside, then rushed past the windows with an impatient howl. For a moment the air smelled of lightning, and then slowly, slowly, Zeki reached over and bopped Lupe on the nose. “Got it,” he called out in delight, and the room was bright and quiet and warm again.

Lupe slapped a hand over her face in horror, then remembered herself and pulled her hand away. “You didn’t take my nose,” she insisted. “That’s not magic, that’s a trick.”

“Oh yeah?” Zeki, unfazed by her doubt, held out his hand. In his palm was one of her barrettes.

Theo hadn’t seen him take it. Neither had either of the children, he guessed, because Lupe gasped and Mai jerked back.

Of course Zeki knew sleight of hand. Of course he did. Non-magical illusions probably amused him.

Lupe screwed up her little face. “That’s still not magic.”

“Nope,” Zeki agreed, smiling and so casually powerful that Theo wanted to pet him. Zeki turned toward Mai. “That’s not magic. But this is.” Theo couldn’t see his face any longer, but he’d seen Zeki concentrating before, felt his stillness and the rising, invisible presence of something his were senses couldn’t identify. It was maddening and frightening for a were to be confronted with that. And awe-inspiring too, once he’d realized Zeki never used it to harm anyone.

Mai’s hackles were raised, but she hadn’t run or back down, or even growled. Her gaze was fixed on Zeki. Theo opened his mouth, although he didn’t know what Zeki planned and if he should interrupt, but then it didn’t matter. Between one second and the next, Zeki was human and bright on the couch, and then a slight, fluffy dark wolf, and then a human again.

Theo took a step backward in astonishment, but Mai flinched, and then shifted in a too-fast blur that probably left her with aching bones.

Lupe cried out in excitement, and Zeki jumped to his feet, already apologizing. “Oh, Merlin’s beard, I did not mean to scare you. It was just an illusion—a real one. I’m so sorry. Here.” He yanked off his cardigan and held it out, with his face turned away and his eyes closed tight. “I’m so sorry, Mai. You can shift back if you want. I forgot that kids don’t have the control like adult weres. Guess I’m not so powerful.”

Theo had never seen an illusion like that, and Zeki was going to claim his magic wasn’t strong?

And oh, but Zeki imagined himself as a beautiful wolf. Little, with fur like his hair, and sharp, crackling energy.

“How did you do that?” Mai and Lupe asked in unison, although Mai’s voice was rough. The sleeves of the cardigan dangled over her hands, but she didn’t get up to go find better clothes.

Zeki opened one eye, then both. He looked over the two of them, and when there was no more shifting or any other signs of trouble, he slowly sank back onto the couch. “Well,” he said nonchalantly, as if his heart wasn’t still racing from accidentally scaring a nine-year-old. “Magic like that takes years of study. If you want to know, you’ll have to work hard.”

Two disgruntled faces answered that.

Zeki waved them off, then leaned down again. “But, if you want to get a feel for natural magic, you should work hard at what you love best. Like Theo does. Then you can see if you’d like to learn other kinds of magic.” The fact that both children seemed uncertain didn’t appear to bother him. “I’ll tell you another secret….” Zeki began to whisper. “Do you know why Theo’s cookies are the best? Because he makes them with magic for you, to make you happy, to make you as happy as you made him. And you know what else? I know he’s been making some for us today, so when you get them, let me know if you can taste the magic.”

“You’re weird,” Mai announced. She had the cardigan tight around her, like a big robe. She was rubbing her nose too. But she wasn’t going anywhere.

“I hear that from wolves a lot.” Zeki shrugged, giving no sign that it hurt for so many weres to reject him, although of course it had.

“Because you aren’t one?” Lupe wondered, scooting a little closer to Zeki. She was… half-were with no signs of being were. Oh, Theo thought again, she was going to feel so alone whenever she was around all her cousins. Like a human in a town of werewolves.

“For a lot of reasons, but we can go with magic, sure.” Zeki answered her seriously, before glancing to Mai. “Also because my pack was just me and my dad, and they didn’t understand that. And I looked different than most of the kids in my school. I was alone a lot. Weres aren’t used to that. They didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe some of them… weren’t nice.” Mai lowered her eyes.

Theo’s mate was kind and smart and wonderful. Theo’s parents were going to be so pleased with him, and grateful they had trusted him with the most precious members of the family.

“But you know who was always nice, even then?” Zeki raised his voice. “Theo. Hmm. He should have been back ages ago. Where is he anyway?”

He possibly hadn’t expected an answer, but both children simultaneously pointed in Theo’s direction. “There,” Lupe announced grandly. “Duh.”

Zeki jumped and swung around to stare at him. His cheeks darkened. “Oh. Hello.” But his slow smile was warm with welcome. “Have you been there the whole time?”

With a clear view of his face, Theo could tell Zeki was tired. That illusion had taken a lot from him, or maybe that was the babysitting.

“Hey,” Theo greeted him, soft and stupidly shy. Sometimes Zeki made him feel that way, he couldn’t help it. “Hold on, okay?” he went on, before Zeki could say anything. Then he ducked back into the kitchen to load a plate with cookies. “They aren’t frosted, sorry,” he said as he handed the plate to Lupe. Lupe, who often mother-henned anyone close to her, related or not, crawled over to Mai to give Mai her share.

Theo kept two cookies for himself, then sat on the couch next to his blushing mate.

“Um, so,” Zeki began, only to stop when Theo kissed his cheek. He slid a questioning look Theo’s way, then sighed and leaned against him. “I’m sorry. I wanted them to know this Theo too, and not just you from before. And you are powerful, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Was that was he was embarrassed about? Theo’s mate was so hard to understand sometimes. He shouldn’t be sad. Theo’s family had been here to help him, the way Zeki was going to be here for Mai and Lupe, and any other Greenleaf or other were who needed him.

“Pack.” Theo buried his nose in Zeki’s hair. “Mate.” Two heart cookies rested on his palm. He held them up until Zeki took one. He made a surprised, sweet sound at his first bite.

The children, already dusted with crumbs, had wide smiles on their faces, although Mai grumbled, “I didn’t taste anything magic,” while Lupe announced smugly, “I did.”

“Look what you’ve done,” Theo warned Zeki quietly, while Mai licked a new cookie in search of the magic taste. She was smiling, and couldn’t seem to stop. They were very happy cookies. “They’re going to want to learn magic now. You’re going to be surrounded by children soon.”

“Everyone should want to learn anything they possibly can about the world,” Zeki responded, with sugar on his breath. He pushed the other cookie at Theo, quietly insistent. “Anyway, I can’t believe we’ve been mated less than a month and you’re talking kids already.” He was teasing, but he was close and warm, and the fast beat of his heart was nothing to the thunder in Theo’s chest at the idea of mate and children and their children. There were always weres in need of homes, and other children too. Zeki might like human children as well, someday.

“Ah, Zeki,” Theo murmured, a little overcome with the rush of instinctual need.

Zeki kissed his cheek.

“Gross,” Lupe declared, and turned to watch TV.

Okay so two people donated and asked for John and Rennet, and I just… sort of blanked under the pressure of two people I guess, so this took a while. What I am going to do it, is post this one and then the other one, and you guys can just have two stories dedicating to both/each of you. :) 

So this is for @selenographics and for Amanda on Facebook. And the next one will be too. 

Although this is really more of John’s bio than a story. 

Despite his fondness for firecrackers and small explosions, John had never thought of himself as a troublemaker. He didn’t cause mischief for the sake of maliciousness, he did it for a reason, even if other people didn’t understand why yet. Although he could admit, sometimes the reactions amused the shit out of him. The world he grew up in a lot of rigid, stupid, pointless rules and he thought someone should test them, bend them, and eventually break them, where necessary.

His teachers had noted it. He had a good mind, and ambition, but no respect, and a disregard for detentions. John was considered unusual, in a way that wasn’t welcomed in a small town.

He’d stood out in the army too, as much as anyone could. He asked questions. He read too much. He apparently insulted people by using words they didn’t know. His COs had also noted that.

He’d never understood why he was singled out, although he’d never minded much either, which might have been why. He was a B student with no money for university and no desire to go to the state college, so he’d joined the army. That wasn’t special.

John even looked unexceptional, a balding white man in a suit, approaching middle age. He had always looked that way, except for the balding part, and hated it as a teenager only to embrace it by twenty-seven. He had never been striking, or handsome, not even in his more physically impressive youth. None of which had ever stopped him from getting laid. Not after school with other scared boys, not in the army, and not afterward.

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Although a lot of that time was a blur to him now—the closeted army days and the slutty era afterward when in college on the GI Bill. He’d been free and aimless and finally found a place full of people like him. His parents had raised him to be his own person, but nonetheless had no idea what to do with him when he’d driven back for a visit and told them he liked men, he’d only ever liked men, and he didn’t see anything wrong with it.

After years in uniform, and the fucked up, ugly reality of service in the name of Reagan and US interests while seeing way too many men like him, boys, really, destroy themselves out of fear of discovery, John had not been inclined to hide that part of himself anymore.

His father had mumbled something about the Greeks. His mother had swallowed her words and told John to clean his plate. They hadn’t talked much since. John had never stopped feeling that wound, but he’d done what they had raised him to do. Been a scholar and a soldier, been his own man, never stopped learning, or fighting. In their way, he thought they were proud.

After that, John read a lot, and drank too much, and held any job that would teach him something. He lived in a shitty apartment on the border of the fairy village and old town Los Cerros, where queer humans had carved out a sort of refuge between outcast beings and elderly, usually poor, Latinos. Fairies liked him. He learned about shine, and glitter, and the dark shivering fear inside every fairy that they had no soul. They danced and fucked and stayed beautiful and hated themselves while the humans like them, the humans they loved, wasted away and died by the dozens, and then hundreds.  

In a city the size of theirs, the loss had been shattering. Across the country, the death toll reached the hundreds of thousands by the end of the decade. People scorned, feared, shunned, and left to die by the government John had risked his fucking life for. Running for office to fight for the rights of their small portion of the city had been an act of defiance. He wasn’t in the mood for any more lies, delays, or bullshit, and neither were the outcasts in his district who had voted him into office and then kept him there.

The framed photo of him in Los Cerros City Hall, as he’d been sworn into office, while wearing jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and a feather boa someone had thrown on his shoulders as he marched into the building, was, according to Rennet, the sexiest picture ever taken.

John supposed the younger body and slimmer build had something to do with that, even if he had been losing his hair already by then.

The first year on the council had been difficult. The next year worse as the backlash truly began.

Funny thing about that though. He’d loved it.

The drinking all but stopped. The fucking too, because he’d had no time. John had gotten into actual, physical fights with council members he’d later watched lose their seats, absorbed information and procedure, and with it who was who and what they really wanted no matter what their public posturing—cruising as practical experience for sizing people up.

John sometimes thought that a lifetime of reading and fighting and fucking had prepared him for politics in a way nothing else could have, no offense to poli sci majors. He knew a lot, and what he didn’t know, he could learn quickly. He wasn’t afraid of blood and dirt. He was adaptable. And there was very, very little that shocked him.

He got a nickname, and it stuck. Times changed. He was joined on the council by more women, and people of color. No one lisped at him, to his face at least. He was invited to lots of very full parties out on the bluffs and approached by old school genteel semi-closeted gays, the kind who would consider the fairy village a place to go slumming but now kissed his ass. He wore a suit to work and bought a pretty house in a neighborhood full of respectable citizens who didn’t know what to do with him. He expanded his library, and became more than just the outspoken queer on the city council, which he honestly thought was a shame. He had gotten away with so much when he’d been so consistently underestimated.

He was alone more and more, if he didn’t count colleagues. The queer humans of the village were wary of the limelight or disliked what they viewed the prostitution of politics. The fairies had left him long ago—they admired him, voted for him, but the attention he received made them nervous. They’d seen what happened to one of their kind when on the wrong side of a scandal. John missed them. He missed all of them, human and being. The sex, yes, but his human friends from that time in his life were mostly gone. It was the fairies and the occasional troll who remained, who would live on—who could live on.

And then there was Rennet.

John had a house now, and a busy job, which meant he had to hire people to do things for him he couldn’t manage alone anymore. So he called a number on a card for a handyman, and Rennet had appeared at his doorstep, the strangest combination of clumsy and graceful John had ever seen.

Rennet, with a body for sin, as the expression went, and a sense of humor best described as wicked, and hands that could carve and build like an artist but could also wrap detonator cord around a bundle of dynamite. Someone else, with a more conventional life, might have thought to themselves, I’m going to marry that imp, or, so this is love at first sight. John did not make plans with definite endings because definite outcomes were impossible, but he had watched Rennet move around his house and comment on the things he liked—the books and records, and the things he was certain were going to break or fail—the hinges in the backdoor, the corner of the roof over the garage, and thought how incredible it would be to see Rennet more.

The Incredible Unflappable Mr. Sunshine had no idea what he was in for. Thankfully, no one in his life except for his secretary had been close enough to notice him floundering.  

John didn’t make plans, he set goals, and now he had no idea how to achieve them, or even what they were for the longest time. Only that he liked Rennet in his life, and there had to be a way to keep him there somehow.

John wasn’t beautiful. He was an over-forty politician in a small city who lived alone, slept alone, and whose hobby was reading. Rennet was—not too good for him, but too much, too interesting, too different, to want that. He had a punk’s sensibilities but a faint aura of sadness, age that had come with wisdom but the eyes of a killer. He knew random facts that could never be learned in books. A dozen languages could trip off his tongue, in between references to legends that Rennet had known personally. He loved children. Of all the facts about Rennet that would have surprised those who feared him, that was the biggest. Rennet adored children and they loved him enough to spark something in John he hadn’t realized was there. Or maybe he had, but had never once allowed himself to think of it because he couldn’t have it.

It didn’t matter anyway. He was gay, and a workaholic who drank too much coffee, and two men couldn’t get married in his state, and human and being marriages were illegal too, and for a million other reasons, it didn’t matter. But that didn’t stop him from wondering while Rennet allowed small humans to tackle him to the ground and came up grinning.

Rennet absolutely had a soul, but tried to convince the world he didn’t.

I grew up around a lot of other kids, Rennet said once, and then went quiet, the way he only ever did when something reminded him of his childhood.

John had done the math, and made some guesses about Rennet’s past, but he watched and waited and didn’t push. In the meantime, Rennet begged John to fuck him, and ate his food, and cared for his house without charge like it was a pet project, and visited him at work, and never slept the night in John’s bed. He said not a word about what they were to each other, and could go days without contact before he’d reappear, and then smile tensely and disappear again whenever John would attend an event in the fairy village.

None of it made John want him less. Someone who didn’t try for the impossible every day might have given up and ended what they had the first time Rennet flirted with someone else in front of them.

John, in his darker moments, had thought that fighting against impossible odds was too ingrained in him to quit now. But the truth was he’d never been in love before. The truth was Rennet throwing himself with fists and teeth and a lashing tail at a racist drunk in a holding cell with him, or singing in soft French under his breath as he worked, or never, ever sleeping over despite how much John wished he would. The truth was Rennet had been alive for decades before John was even born, and there are years of trauma in him that he won’t talk about, and probably a trail of lost loves and broken hearts in his wake. The truth was, Rennet must have been in love before, and if he wanted to hold John close and brush his teeth next to him in the bathroom in the morning and fall asleep on the couch at his side with the TV on, or hell, even go out to dinner with John, he would have done so.

And he hadn’t.

A lifetime of reading and fighting and fucking hadn’t equipped John for the world of romance. Dating was such an unknown concept that he relied too much on popular media when he asked Rennet out, and it took him months of teasing and banter and fucking to realize that once the sex was over, Rennet was always out the door. He came back. He swaggered into City Hall and John’s office as though he owned the place, and visited John for reasons of his own, only to tiptoe out, without even a stolen kiss, as if fucking hadn’t been his goal at all.

John was known as a miracle worker, but even he couldn’t make someone love him. So he ignored the knowing looks from Margery as he stayed at work longer and longer, and he didn’t allow himself to call Rennet, and when he went to the fairy village and a fairy he’d never met before complimented his shine, John asked him to dinner.

He wouldn’t call it a mistake. He’d prefer tactical maneuver. Or more realistically, throwing a cat among the pigeons.

Or, even more realistically, waving a red flag in front of a stubborn, defiant, childish, irksome, hilarious, sweet, sexy bull, with wings and a penchant for black eyeliner.

Margery had been right. John had been stupid. And Rennet had been scared.

He spent the night on a mattress on the floor, tail slung over John’s hips, his face at the back of John’s neck. He walked into City Hall and came straight to John, like he always did, but this time his red eyes sparkled more than a fairy’s when he looked up. And he said, This human. This human, and no other, to stop John’s heart and replace it with fire and heat and flashes of lit gunpowder. Rennet loved him. Him, an ordinary man with an absorbing job and a tendency to light fires, but only under people who needed to get off their ass and do something. Maybe that was what Rennet liked—loved about him. The fucking was good—great—but there was no fighting, and no need for it and still John couldn’t get enough of him, and Rennet couldn’t seem to stop climbing onto him the moment they were alone. He didn’t want John for anything anyone else had ever wanted him for, and he worried for him like no one ever had, and confessed, in stops and starts, that he’d never stop worrying for John, and why that was.

His reasons were good ones. John could admit that, despite a passing moment of jealousy for the childish crush Rennet had had for someone long dead, who had left him with a burning devotion to bookish and rebellious soldiers.

Honestly, knowing Rennet thought of him that way had robbed him of speech for a while. Rennet had startled out of his reverie, then wriggled closer beside him in their brand new bed. Rennet had purred at him, teasing even while folding John protectively within his wings. Sunshine, don’t you know what you are? Don’t you know what you could do?

He stared at John as if he wasn’t the most remarkable person John had ever met, beautiful and not beautiful, and wicked and caring and the love of John’s life. He loved John, but he thought John was the exceptional one.

So John, who could not and would not hide, looked at him and said what he should have said the day he’d met Rennet, I could marry you.

He could admit to some amusement at the disbelief in Rennet’s expression, the shocked blinking and the utter stillness of his tail. But he hadn’t done it to be funny, or cruel, and when he waited, watching, without speaking, needing to know what Rennet would say before he could do anything else, Rennet gave him a reckless grin that meant John could ask again, ask him seriously, sometime in the future.

It was the most remarkable thing, and he was going to make it happen, and he would test, bend, and then break the laws standing in his way. It was almost as if he’d been born to do it.

In the nineteenth century, the dragon Dìzhèn put the small coastal town of Everlasting under her protection. Her family was supposed to carry on the tradition, but all of Dìzhèn the Great’s heirs eventually left rather than live in the shadow of such a powerful dragon.

Only the youngest dragon of the current generation remains: Zarrin, the softhearted disgrace of his family. He might be weak, small, and afraid, but he is determined to show the humans they have not been forgotten… one human in particular. The problem is, Zarrin can barely get that human to talk to him.

It should be a dream come true to have a dragon trying to get his attention. But Joe refuses to bow to Zarrin like everyone else. Yes, Zarrin is sexy, oddly gentle for a dragon, and stares at Joe with a gaze so hot it makes him shiver. But hurt, mistrustful Joe can’t believe Zarrin’s promises that he’s here to stay. Joe doesn’t realize he is the treasure Zarrin has been looking for his whole life, a treasure he once let slip through his fingers out of fear. Now, to win Joe’s trust, Zarrin has to be brave and become as strong as Dìzhèn herself.