Zed shoved a travel cup of coffee at her. “Dani sent this.”

“You remembered coffee for me, but not a shirt?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes.

“That was Dani,” he said. “Bael called. Jillian’s water hadn’t broken. She’s only had four contractions in the past hour. But in the middle of the contraction, she set her phone on fire. And then she set Bael’s phone on fire while he was texting me. And then she set his laptop on fire. It was a rough day for electronics at their house.”

“OK, so we don’t need to panic. Everything is going just the way it should. Why didn’t Jillian call me?” she asked, closing the door so she could slip on some jeans and shoes.

“The phones were all on fire,” Zed reminded her.

“Right. You’ve got those fireproof suits at the cave, right?” she called, grabbing her medical kit and her go-bag, a phone charger, and her granny’s journal.

“And the extinguishers,” he yelled back, lowering his voice as she stepped out and locked the door. “Bael’s already got her on the way out to the cave. I’ll have to blindfold you to take you there. It’s a dragon thing. Secret treasure hordes and rules and such.”

She nodded and wrapped the bandana around her neck. “OK.”

Zed’s dark brows rose. “No objections?”

“Do you think that’s the weirdest request I’ve ever gotten?” Charlotte asked.

Zed frowned. “Well, I did.”

Zed managed to find a spare shirt behind his driver’s seat. Charlotte climbed into the truck and tied the bandana tightly around her eyes. She could feel Zed making hand gestures in front of her face. He started the engine and drove out of town. She could feel the tension rolling off of his huge frame as he silently maneuvered the truck. He only spoke again once they’d parked in a dark wood that smelled of wet earth and decay.

“Do you mind if I invade your personal space a little bit?” he asked over the drone of nighttime insects. “It would be easier if I just carried you rather than asking you to go trip through the woods blindfolded.”

“Sure,” she said, shrugging. “I’ll need my strength over the next few days.”

He wrapped her around his back piggyback-style and carried her bags in either hand.

“I’m literally the only other person besides Jillian who knows where this is located. And that was only after Bael knew me for years and for safety purposes. He had a cousin that was crushed under some ancient Greek marble statue in his cave and no one found him for months because he left a series of very complicated maps and clues to find his cave. Bael didn’t want to die in the dragon version of ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’”