started to gasp and then quickly covered her mouth with her hands. But Theodore seemed to have heard the sound; his head jerked in her direction and even from the distance, she could tell that the bright green color had changed to brown.
“Jessica,” he called.
She turned and fled.
Theodore started after her when Connor changed back into his human form and grabbed his arm, “What the hell?”
“It’s Jessica.”
“I know exactly who she is,” Connor said.
“Let go of me, man,” Theodore ordered.
Connor tightened his grip, “Let her go. She saw us, which means she knows our secret. She’s a threat to you and to all of us. You already know she’s in cahoots with Roy.”
“I don’t care if she’s in cahoots with the Grim Reaper, I love her,” he told him.
Connor lifted his head. He was shocked. He managed to hold it in as he stared at Theodore.
“I want to make her mine forever. I don’t care what she’s doing or who she’s doing it with. I want Jessica in my life. I need her. She completes me.”
Connor searched his eyes some more. Whatever he saw there made him nod and step back. Then he said, “You’ve got it, Theodore. I’ll get her back for you.”
Chapter 22
As she ran, her breath was coming in harsh bursts. She kept looking over her shoulder but no one was coming after her.
She ran until Theodore’s house came into view and then she entered the house and ran upstairs, screaming for her kids. Kal and Arizona came rushing toward her, “Mom? What’s wrong?”
“We need to get out of here. Now!”
Carla came out, rubbing her eyes too, “What’s wrong? Why are you yelling?”
Jessica’s heart turned over when she saw the little girl. She had grown to love her like her own. It was just too bad that she was the daughter of a criminal. “It’s okay, love. Please go back to sleep,” Jessica whispered, pressing a kiss to the little girl’s head.
Then she dashed out and managed to drag her kids into her car. She rushed home and grabbed her handbag before dashing back out to the car. She stopped short on the stairs; Connor was standing casually in front of the driver’s door, his bulk blocking it.
“Get out of my way or I’m calling the cops,” she breathed harshly.
He walked toward her, both hands raised in the classic sign of surrender. It wasn’t very reassuring because she was sure he could still knock her out with nothing but his hands.
“Stay back.”
“I just want to talk,” he told her, his tone more pacifying than she had ever heard it.
“I don’t want to talk. I want to get out of here and forget you lot ever existed.” A thought seemed to cross her mind and she stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, “Please don’t kill me. My kids are in the car and I’m all they’ve got. Please, for their sake, don’t kill me.”
Connor frowned in confusion, “Kill you? Lady, I would never hurt a fly.”
He sounded so shocked it gave her pause. It had to be impossible to fake that level of consternation.
She stared at him, “Who are you people? What government or organization do you work for?”
He stared back at her, “You’re standing in it; Exotic Rescue.”
Jessica looked around as though expecting someone to burst from the shadows. “You guys are hurting animals and using them for experiments. And you have the strangest animals. For a minute there, I actually thought I saw a … a─”
“Dragon?” Connor asked with a grin as he looked over at her car. Her kids had fallen asleep in the backseat again.
He faced her, “Don’t scream.”
He shifted immediately into his dragon form and Jessica let out a blood-curdling scream.
He changed back into his human form and she fell back several steps, her fearful eyes going to the car where her kids continued to sleep, oblivious to the danger they were all in.
“Listen to me, Jess—”
“What are you?” she cut in.
“I’m a shifter. The dragon is my shifter form,” he answered.
Her eyes were round with fright. “Why show me that?”
“To help you understand. We aren’t hurting animals, we’re helping them. Most of those animals aren’t even really animals, they are shifters. That’s why Theodore set up Exotic Rescue, to protect animals.”
“And you’re going to tell me all this and just let me go?” she asked.
He sighed, “Theodore is in love with you.”
She did a double take.
“I know,” he agreed, reading her expression easily. “Coulda knocked me over with a feather, too,