Page 8

“Come on. Who is this guy and why can’t he get his mail forwarded?”

I would have preferred not to get involved but didn’t want Indigo to hear the new tenant swearing over Miles’s mail. Also, my dragon was telling me to help our mate.

No, ours.

I gritted my teeth and strolled over, tapping a mailbox on the row above. “This is where he is now.”

He glanced up and our eyes met. The gaze lingered a smidgen too long before I stared at the garden where Mrs. Munro’s cat was eying a tree. Jon would appear soon with a ladder, and if he saw us, he might do what I called an Indigo and think we were destined.

“Oh, why did he move? Better place?”

“He ma… married.”

“Nice.” He closed his mailbox and wriggled the key, but it wouldn’t budge.

I turned away because the guy could sort that problem out himself. Besides, being near him and scenting him was torturous. My beast was banging against my ribs, and it was echoing in my head. I had to get away from him and shift or at least lock my door and hide under the blankets.

“Damn, what’s wrong with this?”

I sighed because if he didn’t pipe down, Mr. Girling would snarl and snap at him.

“Let me.” The key was no match for my shifter strength, and I yanked it out, but all the mailboxes rattled as if they were scared of me and my beast. “They stick, and you have to lift the door a little when you turn the key.”

“Wow! Thanks.” He stared at my hand and ran his eyes from there to my upper arm. “If you hadn't been here, I would have had to knock on someone’s door and admit I couldn’t close my mailbox.” The tips of his ears were pink, and I wished I hadn’t seen that because they were so cute.

I swallowed and forced myself to mumble a “No problem” and turn away.

“You’re upstairs, aren’t you? Sheridan.”

“Radley.”

“I know. Jon told me. He told me about everyone in the building.”

“Ahhh yes, Jon’s invaluable.” I did something with my hand that was a cross between a wave and a shake and walked up the stairs, gripping the handrail.

I’d managed that encounter, but this was a small building, and Sheridan was everywhere. As well as the mailboxes, he was often emptying his garbage when I was there. I’d pass him on the stairs or catch the back of him walking to his car. I tried to avoid him, but he didn’t give me his schedule, and I’d give him a neighbor’s nod and keep moving.

Every time I scented him, my beast lunged toward the scent, telling me Sheridan was our mate and we had to mark him. The scent was the hardest part about having my mate live in the building. I didn’t get a say about whether I wanted to smell the guy, and his scent lingered in the building, sometimes for hours.

And though I couldn’t mate him, it really hurt that he never looked at me the way a shifter would look at their mate. He’d smile and greet me and go on with whatever he was doing. And despite my disappointment, it was the one positive in this whole messy situation. He couldn’t scent me. He’d never experience being knocked sideways every time we were near. He might wonder why I was being an asshat and ignoring him or saying a couple of words before dashing off. Whatever fate had done to me, it had spared him.

I repeated to my dragon what I’d been telling him since Sheridan moved in.

He’s not mine or ours even though fate says he is.

He is. You can’t ignore fate.

And how would that work?

I imagined the scenario with me knocking on Sheridan’s door and telling him he was fated to a dragon shifter who got thrown out of his flight for being broken. And I wasn’t supposed to mate. That’d be the clincher that would have Sheridan packing his bags and taking off.

You could show him your scars.

Unless he was unobservant, he would have seen my neck, and like most people, didn’t want to hurt or embarrass me by asking how it happened. That was one reason I liked Indigo. She didn’t pretend the scar wasn’t there.

Even if Sheridan overcame his shock and took pity on me, he’d be tied to someone for the rest of his life that the shifter world would look at sideways and judge. He hadn’t signed up for any of that. He signed a lease, and he didn’t move in to become an exile’s consolation prize. And I wasn’t going to make him one.

The flight had made their ruling, and just because I was a long way from home, that didn’t make it invalid. A dragon with marks like mine couldn’t protect a nest and that was the law, not that other shifters needed to know dragon law. They just had to see the scar climbing up to my jaw.