Not surprisingly, I didn't sleep for the rest of that night. Also not surprisingly, my boss noticed even when I tried to hide it.

Kimiko Rodrigues was a full verda draki in her early forties, a beautiful woman who by human standards barely looked older than a teenager. But she had five sons, three of whom were older than me, and a baby granddaughter. So she had a bit of a maternal complex, not only with her family but with everyone younger than her. It was a good trait in a verda, the healing breed of draki, but when that verda had appointed herself your second mother? It got a bit annoying, how perceptive she was.

Even while our first customer of the day, a stealth woman named Magdalene who needed chamomile for her colicky baby son Gareth, was in our little shop, Kim kept giving me strange glances.

And after Magdalene left, she didn't hesitate to confront me about it.

"Okay, Aiya, you look exhausted and overstressed, and it's way too early in the day for that," she said. "What happened?"

I looked at the ground.

"Is it Blue? I know you girls had a date last night."

"Not exactly." I took a breath. "Kim, what would happen if a human had seen us? Not a hunter, just two ordinary humans. Kids, maybe my age."

"Aiya. What. Exactly. Happened."

"Nothing! Nothing really important anyway…I think. I hope. We were in this tree, and I had my wings in and everything, and Blue was in human form and we were just sitting there cuddling, and she did this thing where she made the water spin with her wings, and then I heard a noise and she thought I was just being paranoid and then we saw these two human kids come out of the woods and…" I forced the whole thing out in one breath.

I saw the alarm in Kim's expression, but she forced herself to remain calm. "Okay. Aiya, one word at a time. Panicking won't help anyone."

I nodded and forced myself to slow down. "There's no way they could have known that we can look human, because I was keeping my scales and eyes hidden and everything, and Blue didn't de-manifest, but she did hide so they couldn't see her. So the two kids, I guess they thought I was in danger or something, because the boy just kept calling to me. They asked my name…"

"Full name?"

"No, they just asked, and I quote, 'What's your name?' So I told them Aiya, but they misheard me and thought I said Maya. I didn't correct them."

Kim nodded approvingly. "That was smart of you. What happened next?"

"They thought I was in shock, and they tried to get me to go with them. I said no and told them I'd be fine, and then I ran and they didn't follow me."

"Okay. We should be fine, but Aiya, you have to tell Joss about this."

Joss was our alpha and my friend Adrian's father. He was a good, fair leader who was genuinely concerned with the safety of the pride, but he also strongly distrusted humans. Even with six hybrids in our midst, no human had ever been a pride member. And I didn't want to risk Brendan and Catherine's safety. They were innocent.

"Why does he need to know?" I pleaded, a hint of a whine in my voice. "They don't have any evidence that we even exist, and no one's going to believe a couple of teenagers just on their word. We're not in danger."

"No, but they have linked a girl with your description…"

"It was dark. They couldn't see me that well. I had my jacket zipped and the hood up, and I never looked them in the face."

"And because it was dark, they had a flashlight."

I bit my lip, and Kim continued brutally.

"However, you likely didn't, because you didn't need one. And, Aiya, that means that what these humans saw was a sixteen-year-old girl, alone. At night. In the woods. Without a flashlight. They're going to find that suspicious. I lived among humans for years, Aiya. They're going to wonder about you, maybe even tell their parents about you. And there isn't a damn thing we can do about that."

An onyx named Beck walked into the shop for some tea, and Kim got up to greet him, shooting me a look that said we'll talk about this later.