Free Noah's Boy-eARC by Sarah A. Hoyt

she had any intention of stealing Ormson. Even if he was nice and good-looking. The world was full of nice, good-looking men, and trouble like this she didn’t need.
    The woman turned from giving coffee warm-ups to the table she’d been attending, and as she looked toward Ormson, Bea could sense some form of communication pass between them. Bea felt Ormson touch her arm very lightly and he pointed at the corner booth in obvious invitation, but she dug in her heels, turned around and said, “I— I’m sorry, Mr. Ormson, I—”
    “Sit down,” he said, very quietly, “and tell me who sent you.”
    She realized she’d called him by name and he’d never introduced himself. She could explain it. She could say that she’d heard it somewhere. But as she slid into the booth and saw those blue eyes watching her with an odd mixture of interest, amusement and wariness, she realized that perhaps it would be best if she avoided any unneeded complication and told him everything. He was a dragon shifter—the only one she knew other than the Great Sky Dragon. And unlike the Great Sky Dragon, he seemed to be sane.
    Sitting quietly, she folded her hands on the table. Tom Ormson got two cups of coffee, slid one in front of her, took one for himself, sat down. “Now, suppose you start talking. In itty-bitty words, because it’s already been a long day. Tell me who sent you.” He gave her a look. “You don’t look quite like one of the Great Sky Dragon’s people, but you look close to it.”

Chapter 8
    For a moment Tom thought she was going to bluff him. He could see the thought passing behind her jade-green eyes. Unusual eyes in an Asian face, but Asian was only the predominant cast to her features. Beneath it, she looked as exotic and unplaceable as Kyrie.
    Then she sighed. “My name is Beatrice Bao Ryu. Bea to my friends. I am…” Deep breath. “I was an art student at the University of Georgia, but—”
    “You shift into a dragon.”
    “Oh, yeah, since I was about fourteen. But it seems, because they don’t— It took them a while to find out what I was and that I was…”
    “Them?”
    “My parents and…and whoever it is, who works…the Great Sky Dragon’s people. My parents aren’t shifters. They only found out I shifted over Christmas. And I think…there started to be trouble at Dad’s business. Dad is a vet. Veterinarian. Clients would get anonymous calls saying that he was mistreating the animals when he boarded them and that he…well…other bad stuff. And the animal hospital was broken into twice, and everything…what wasn’t stolen was smashed. I didn’t know why, though I knew Dad was worried and, well…that we were having money trouble.”
    She looked up and saw Tom’s blank look. “I know, it sounds unrelated, but it isn’t. I heard my parents talk, and I found out that—you see…my dad was being blackmailed. He had to send me…send me here. Send me to the Great Sky Dragon, or they were going to bankrupt Dad. I didn’t like the sound of that”—she made an airy gesture—“so I came out to see who this Great Sky Dragon, Ancient One person was, and to tell him what I thought of what his triads were doing to Daddy.”
    “Oh, I’d have paid to see that,” Tom said, and grinned. “I think I was the only one to ever defy him before.”
    She shrugged nonchalantly. “I went to see him where his letters to my dad said to meet.” She waved her hand again. “At the Three Luck Dragon.”
    “Yeah, he likes that place,” Tom said. He had his own memories of the restaurant, his own reasons to stay away from it. For one, he’d been eviscerated in its parking lot. Fortunately dragons weren’t that easily killed. In fact, short of cutting the body into two or more pieces or separating head from body, they would come back from about anything.
    Still, Tom remembered dying and, knowing the Great Sky Dragon had considered that a gentle spanking, it made him very careful about the creature. He