A ring that tried to ensure he would behave like a trained dog and be on the side of the humans and good shifters, even take a human mate.
As if that would ever happen.
The human in front of him was a perfect example of why.
Sneaking in here uninvited, hiding her identity with an excess of clothes, scarves obscuring even most of her face, setting up camp to ambush them in the morning. She was clearly some kind of thief.
Or spy. Or stalker.
He wasn’t sure how menacing her goals were; he only knew the great potential for human misdeeds.
So much worse than in his time.
But he had to stop thinking like that. His time was lost and he could never go back, and his endless bitterness couldn’t change that.
“What are you doing here?” he asked sharply as he pointed to her, drink in hand.
She was trying to extricate herself from some kind of soft bag made of swishy fabric, and her panic was evident as she began to pack up.
She was going to run for it.
He stepped forward, placing a foot on the bag she was attempting to stuff into her backpack, and she looked up at him, alarm in her eyes. With her face mostly covered and the darkness around him, he couldn’t make out her features or even the color of her eyes, but something about the panic in them, the fear, even desperation, made him release her and step back.
What did it matter if one human spy got away?
He took a sip of his scotch as she quickly shoved her things together and into her pack, staggering toward the steps.
He could go after her, question her, but she was leaving, and that was all that mattered at the moment. She could go back to where she came from and tell whoever sent her that the men (or dragons) at Date-A-Dragon weren’t so easily caught.
He walked downstairs after her to lock the doors, as he’d promised Citrine he would, and saw her look back at him with a bitter, flashing glance before hurrying across the road, pack slung over a shoulder.
It was a large pack for such a young, petite woman, though he wasn’t sure of her build, whether she was curvy or if she simply wore many layers of clothing.
It was beginning to get cold in Seattle, and the humidity in the air made it feel much colder than it was. The air tended to feel as though it were biting through your skin.
Adrien gave her one more look and then headed upstairs to continue his drinking and contemplation.
He glanced once at the spot on the ground where she’d been a moment ago and then swung open the doors and returned to the chaise lounge he’d been occupying by the window.
He refilled his scotch on the way and sipped it as he sank into the chaise, propping up his legs as he watched the street and the so-called spy. Before, he’d been watching the rain and the skyline, but this was moderately more entertaining.
She looked both ways, as if lost, or perhaps she was trying to throw him off so he couldn’t follow her and see the identification tag on her vehicle.
No matter. He was curious about this human now; he wouldn’t be telling on her. He was almost hoping she decided to come back and try again to get in, just for the slight excitement of it.
He chided himself for even thinking such a thing and sat up slightly as she walked toward a darkened alley between two buildings.
That was Ron’s territory, and Adrien often saw him and his group smoking there or panhandling. Not recently, though.
But what was a woman doing going in there? Perhaps she’d parked back there, somehow.
He stood, clutching the beautifully crafted crystal he insisted on drinking scotch from, and his eyes narrowed as he saw her stop in the entrance to the alley, look around, and then slowly remove her pack.
What was she doing? Why didn’t she drive away?
His brows lowered as a painful ache sank in his chest. He rubbed his heart with his free hand, wondering what this foreign feeling was.
She began to unroll that strange, swishy bag and set her backpack on the ground, and he realized with stunned, frozen shock that she was going to stay there. On the street. In the cold, with no shelter.
The images of a moment ago, when he’d seen her at the door, assuming the worst of her due to his suspicions of all humans, flashed through his mind.
He knew what that feeling was now, though it was so foreign he barely recognized it.
Guilt.
He felt his lip curling reflexively in disgust, this time at himself. He put a hand up to the window glass, almost as if he could reach out to her, apologize.
Still, was it his problem if she had nowhere to go? He hadn’t seen a homeless woman before, and in his day, he and his fellow dragons would never have allowed it. As leaders, they had taken care of those in their areas.
But this wasn’t his day.
So he watched her bedding down for the night, in this frigid cold, with a growing sense of unease.