Dragon Guardian (Drakins of Wyrmarach) by Eden Glenn

around the block, damn. On the hope that they would be
back soon, she’d order pizza-- the one fast food that was even good cold. She
didn’t know what toppings they liked.
    Cheese was always a safe bet but she hated plain cheese. Her
favorite pepperoni, mushrooms and black olives would have to do. She put in the
order for two large pizzas and went across to The Ground. Next stop, caffeine,
large quantities and keep it coming, hot and now.
    She scooted into the coffee shop and couldn’t bring herself
to order. The smell turned her stomach to acid. She settled for a large skinny
chai latte with colored sprinkles on the non-fat whip cream instead.
    That was why she was so fuzzy headed today; she had not had
her quota of caffeine to get all her brain cells firing, much less the residual
terror from her brush with death. She sat there sipping tea, lost in musing on
the events of the day and trying to make sense of the insanity.
    Izzy slid into the seat across from her dressed in a red
flowing peasant blouse and multi-layered skirt, apparently more than a little
flustered for having been summoned from what she was doing, to come so quickly
to the coffee shop. She looked the part of a gypsy fortune-teller, perfectly.
    “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here faster. One of the new guys,
Haydn, who joined the house recently, had a bad night. He’d had a really tough
time in his former life and last night was an awful for him.”
    Wren knew Izzy lived and worked at something that seemed like
a residential half way house. She wasn’t sure if it was homeless men or
addicts. She’d never thought to ask.
    Izzy just called it ‘the house’. Wren had the impression from
past conversations that Isobeau helped men transition. Could one of them have
followed Izzy to the store and invented a reason to try to hurt Wren? She
closed her eyes and sighed. She was seeing boogie men where none existed.
    Wren’s expression must have given her inner turmoil away
because Izzy stopped mid-rant and asked. “Honey, what’s wrong? How did your
chin get cut? You’ve got bandages on your hands. What happened to you?”
    “I fell this morning, ah, the stairs. I may need you to come
in and run the shop for a few days.”   She
could feel Izzy studying her. It wasn’t like Wren to bail out on her
responsibilities, after months of excited planning and especially this close to
an event.
    “I’ll be there for the Samhain festival we have planned but. . . something’s come up. I’ve met…I just need you to
handle the shop for me, please.”
    “I thought maybe you’d hurt yourself worse than you look
but…” Izzy breathed deep collecting her thoughts before speaking.   “Oh my, hell, you’ve met him,” she gasped out
with an exhale.
    Izzy had done a tarot reading the previous week, saying wild
things about betrayer, turning of an age, and yes passionate love. The
prediction was turning out to have potential for an uncanny accuracy.
    Wren wasn’t sure what the give-away was and she certainly
didn’t intend on explaining. Lustful feelings did not equal lovers taken. She
really wanted to hide out somewhere till everything returned to normal.
    Before she could lock her lips closed, she told Isabeau
everything. Well, almost everything. She left out the part about the police
coming by and wondering if she’d be filing bankruptcy by the end of the year.
Oh and that someone evidently wanted to kill her…
    Okay she left out quite a bit of stuff actually. The
conversation focused on the fact that she’d gotten pretty intimate, okay
orgasmic intimate and wanted more with two freaking hot men, together,
simultaneously, two at once. What kind of kinky freak was she?
    Izzy was after all her best friend. And, if a best friend
couldn’t be trusted to help you make sense of your most intimate secrets, who could?
    The strong urge to escape the coffee shop rebounded. Just
talking about them caused a need for Caleb and Ethan to flash over her as
clearly as