Stolen and Seduced - Christine Pope Page 0,168

find a tow-foot long lizard who blended into everything.

Fuck my life.

I grabbed a flashlight—or more like a fog light since it was way overkill, but I was on a mission—and searched every room in the house. “Donut!” I called out, like a dummy, as if he’d bound into the room like a dog.

Just when full-blown panic was setting in, I spotted a piece of his skin at the bottom of the stairs. Not like a piece of his skin in a Holy shit something killed him way, but in a he’s shedding, and this is a clue where he went.

“Come on, Nancy Drew,” I said to myself. “Think, think, think.”

My gaze went to the back door and, like my fog light was drawn to it, the beam landed on another piece of shed skin.

Had he really hated me that much he fled the house? It didn’t matter, I took off on my bare feet, flinging open the back door and waving the fog light like a maniac in the dark of the backyard. I was probably waking neighbors, but luckily Sadie’s property backed up to a wooded area. Just when I thought I was going to have to call my niece and tell her why I couldn’t be her favorite aunt anymore, the fog light landed on a distinct shape. A scuttling lizard-type animal moving at a rate of speed I didn’t think it was capable of. He turned his head, looking me right in the eye, and took off into the woods.

“You little shit!” I called as I took off at sprint across the backyard. “You’re getting frozen spinach for a week. And I’m picking out the smallest mealworms I can find.”

My fog light caught on his body, but he was moving fast, racing under bushes and other forest undergrowth so I kept losing sight of him. By the time I finally gained some ground on the little fucker, I was a good hundred yards or so away from the property line and still going.

Donut finally made a miscalculation in his escape attempt and burst into a clearing. Without anything to hide under, he froze in the moonlight. “Ah-ha!” I cried, diving on him and scooping up his scaly body into my arms. “Gotcha!”

He was pissed. I knew this because his little beard was black. I wasn’t sure quite how it worked, but Greta had been very clear that if his beard—normally a tan color like the rest of his body—blackened he was angry, irritated, or scared. I was sure it was the first, since I thoroughly ruined his escape attempted.

“Why are you trying to ruin my life for running away, huh?” I demanded. “I fed you your worms. I chopped up vegetables and gave you a gourmet salad, and you repay me by running out the back door while I napped?” I shook my head. “Rude, Donut. Really freaking rude.”

He didn’t answer. Because of course he didn’t talk. I sighed and tucked him against my shoulder, so his claws dug into my thin shirt. Wiping my hands, I glanced up and immediately froze.

I blinked at what stood before me in the clearing of the woods right before it ducked back into the shadows. Was that… was that a life-size Donut? And I didn’t mean the confectionary, I meant the little thing currently clinging to me.

Nah, I was seeing things. Or dreaming. Was this whole chase in my imagination and I was going to wake up on the couch still smelling burnt popcorn?

I pinched my arm. “Ouch,” I muttered.

A large shadow in front of me eased into the moonlight, and I gasped. No, this wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t my imagination, because even I couldn’t have thought of something this whacked.

Because staring at me with slitted yellow eyes was a six-foot version of Donut, except this creature stood on two legs and his entire torso was a wall of bunched muscles covered in black and tan scales. Just like Donut, the creature had a row of spikes along his jawline, although his face was slightly more humanoid, with a flat nose and full lips. His long, whip-like tail hovered motionless a few inches off the ground, and he wore only a pair of pants and an open vest with metal braiding along the hem. His feet, made up of five thin toes with claws, were bare, one talon tapping into the dirt as he studied me.

I was going to go with he, even though I didn’t like to assume