“You’ve had the Diadem this whole time?”
I would’ve answered, except the sheet dropping down to his waist suddenly distracted me in unexpected ways. My mouth went dry, and I found myself blinking at the sudden wave of sheer lust that washed over me.
I didn’t have time to even think about what I was feeling, though, because Rayce’s words caused Draven and Lanzo to both sit up, as well.
Suddenly, I was completely surrounded by naked man-chests.
By all rights, I should have been too focused on getting the Diadem and getting out of New York City alive to even think about the sheer amount of flesh surrounding me. But I wasn’t.
I pushed the thought out of my mind, but not before a tiny, rebellious part of me whispered, “What else are they wearing? Or…not wearing?”
Luckily—or maybe unluckily, I guess—all three of these particular Dragon shifters were much more focused on my words than on the possibilities presented by their nakedness.
“Did you just say you have the Diadem?” Lanzo asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“I don’t have it, so much as I know where it is.”
“And where’s that?” Rayce watched me carefully.
“In a safe deposit box in a bank.”
“Under your name?” Rayce asked.
“Under my name,” I confirmed.
“Which name?” Lanzo asked.
“Brennan O’Neill.”
“So…is that what we should call you?” This time, Lanzo’s question was accompanied by raised eyebrows and the sparkle I’d seen in his eyes before.
“Yeah. I’ve used Brennan for the last ten years. I’m used to it.” More than I’d ever be used to Queen Brionna, I thought.
“Never mind names. If the Diadem is in New York, let’s go get it,” Draven said, turning to swing his legs out of the bed.
“It’s not that easy,” I said. “I need to go back to my apartment and get a few things.”
Rayce looked me up and down. “Clothes, identification, and the like?”
“Exactly.” I frowned at the alpha, wondering how he knew so much about the human world.
His lips quirked up in a half-smile as he stared at me. “I went to college in this realm,” he said as if he were reading my mind. “It’s not uncommon for those of us who are expected to become alpha guardsmen.”
Having a guardsman familiar with human culture would definitely make things easier for me.
Unless, of course, I needed to keep him in the dark about something.
“So are we done with this room?” Lanzo asked.
“Probably best to move on, yes,” Rayce replied.
“Then let’s get out of here,” Draven said. He stood up, letting the sheet that had covered him up to this point drop to the ground and giving me an unobstructed view of his spectacular bare ass as he strode into the bathroom, ducking under the door frame to make sure he didn’t hit his head.
I looked down and blushed, torn between lust and modesty.
This was going to make for an interesting experience. I knew I shouldn’t stare. But I have to admit I sneaked glances at the other two as they took their turns in the bathroom, as well.
Holy moly.
Well. This part, at least, was going to be entertaining.
Chapter 6
I stared around my trashed apartment.
The cops had been right. Clearly, the shifters who broke in had been looking for something. I just happened to know what—and where—that something was.
“You okay?” Lanzo asked. His voice was quiet, and he reached out to touch the back of my hand gently as I clenched my teeth and nodded.
It wasn’t like there was anything here I was all that attached to. Not really. Fenwick had worked hard to make sure I knew that nothing on this side of the realms was all that important.
Still, I had built a life here.
I pushed the thought aside and moved into my bedroom. Opening my closet, I grabbed my go-bag off the floor. Grabbing the bag hadn’t even crossed my mind the night before. I had been too focused on getting out of the apartment.
It had been rifled through, but it didn’t look like anything was missing when I checked. So I zipped it back up and tossed it to Draven. “Here. You take that. It’s got most of the important stuff in it.”
I shut my bedroom door while I changed clothes. All three of my guards might have dragon shifters’ lack of modesty, but I’d been brought up largely in the human world.
When I was dressed in more formal clothes than the sweatpants I’d grabbed the night before, I opened the door and began packing an additional small bag. The go-bag had the essentials. In this bag, I included some of my favorite outfits and a few trinkets—mementos from my human life.
My phone was still in the apartment, too. I found it under the bed, where it looked like it had been kicked the during the melee the night before. Tucking it into my pocket, I turned to my Guard.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, suddenly anxious to be away from the one place Nico’s men definitely knew I had been before. As we left, I gave the place one last, long glance. Then I shut the door behind me, saying goodbye to my human life.
I had been planning to text on my friends on the subway as we traveled to the bank. But I had forgotten that my dragons had a more efficient means of travel.
At least this time when they took me by the arms and pulled me into the other side of reality to travel, I was able to watch how they navigated.
I remembered Fenwick telling me that with a little concentration, it was possible to see from one side to the other. So I tried to keep an eye on the human realm. It flashed by in an odd kind of montage of visuals, showing up and then disappearing almost more quickly than my mind could process it. We emerged in a shadowy alley just a block from the bank.
“That is such an amazing way to travel,” I noted.
Lanzo grinned at me. “Forgotten what it’s like to travel dragon-style?”
I shrugged. “More or less.” It had always seemed like it might be an easier way for me to get caught, but I didn’t say so aloud.
Rayce gave me a severe look. “Definitely do not travel that way on your own. Make sure you have one of us with you.”
Part of me wanted to balk under his authoritarian command. But he was right, and it would be stupid for me to fight him on something that might cost me my life.
As we walked for the bank, I asked Rayce, “Nico’s plan is to kill me, right? I’m a threat to his throne and his rule.”
The alpha nodded. “If he could figure out a way to do it, he wouldn’t hesitate. I’m sure those were his goons last night.”
“I am, too.” I shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if they had gotten their hands on me, and Rayce reached out to wrap an arm around my shoulders.
“It didn’t happen,” he reassured me. “You got away last night and from here on out, one of us will always be with you.”
If one of my human boyfriends had ever said that, I would have chafed under the suggestion that I couldn’t take care of myself. Hell, I would fight tooth and nail to make any human with that attitude leave me alone.
Coming from Rayce, though, the sentiment was comforting rather than suffocating.
And it’s not like the dragons were my boyfriends. They were my guards.
Very hot guards.
I shook the thought off as we moved into the bank. Lanzo glanced around. “Why couldn’t we just go get this box?”
“Because it’s in the vault, and it takes two keys—the bank employee’s and Brennan’s—to open the box.”
“But we could travel directly into the vault.” Lanzo frowned. “Then I could probably magic open the lock.”
“And if he couldn’t, I could probably break the lock,” Draven added.
I shook my head. “The goal is to get in and out without being noticed too much. We don’t want to leave an open trail for Nico’s men to follow.”
Rayce’s slow smi
le sent a shiver running down my back. “Just like the lady said, in and out with no evidence.”
Our plan was for Rayce to go into the safety deposit box room with me while Lanzo and Draven kept watch in the lobby.
And at first, everything went perfectly. Race and I got downstairs and followed the bank employee into the vault. She brought the box out into our private room, setting it down on the table for us to examine it. And then she stepped out.
Slowly, I opened the top of the box.
The Diadem was the only thing inside. It was a simple silver circlet with little ornamentation. Only the setting of the heartstone itself was it at all ornate, with a few filigree swirls around the stone.
The heartstone was about the size of a quarter in diameter, dark red and practically pulsating with power. I froze for a few seconds, stunned anew at its beauty. I hadn’t seen it in years—not since Fenwick had returned it to this vault after binding it to me.
Now, staring at it, I couldn’t imagine why I let it go so long.
Almost as if hypnotized by the pulsing lights deep in the stone, I reached out to pick it up.
As soon as I touched it, that half-remembered power surged through me. It started at my fingertips and wound its way through my entire body as if it had gotten into my bloodstream to be taken to every part of me.
And the power felt like blood, too—like it nourished me with something I needed as much as I needed oxygen.
I wanted to slip the Diadem onto my head, to wear it openly.
Or maybe the Diadem wanted me to.
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure which desires were mine and which belonged to the heartstone.
As swiftly as I could, I tucked it away into the bag that Rayce and I had brought in here with us.
“All done?” he asked.
Just as I was nodding, Lanzo suddenly flashed into the room. “We have trouble. Time to go,” he announced.
“What kind of trouble?” Rayce asked.
“Nico’s guys. They’re storming the bank. Making it look like a robbery. We need to get out of here before we get caught up in it. Draven is trying to hold them off without the bloodshed and plans to meet us at the rendezvous point.”
Race nodded. He turned to me to ask, “Do we have everything we need here?”
“I’m ready to go,” I said.
The next thing I knew, Rayce and Lanzo had each taken an elbow, and we were flashing through the other side, headed I didn’t know where.
But at least I had the Diadem. Whatever power that stone might hold was mine.
I shivered at the thought of the battles yet to come, and I found myself hoping beyond hope that Draven would escape whatever was going on back in the bank without getting hurt.
Chapter 7
We made one more stop in the city for me to send a text out to my friends in New York. They all said the same thing—that I was taking a couple of weeks off and would be in touch soon.
I hoped none of it was a lie and that I’d be able to travel back to the human realm before any of them got too worried.
When I was done sending texts, I slid into a booth in the random diner Rayce had chosen. The guardsmen, who had been standing around me in a circle outside as I texted, slid in around me, making sure I wasn’t next to a window.
“How are they finding us?” I asked. “I hadn’t been to that bank in years.”
“I’d like to know the same thing.” Rayce frowned, his heavy eyebrows drawing down in an expression I would have considered ominous if it had been directed at me.
“Not magic,” Lanzo announced. “I checked her while we were outside. If they’re tracking her, it’s not through any arcane means.”
Rayce let out an irritated hiss.
Draven simply continued scanning the customers in the diner incessantly.
The waitress, wearing a light blue uniform, arrived at our table. “What’ll it be?”
Rayce began to speak, but I interrupted him. “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten yet today, and I don’t want to do whatever comes next without food.”
A smile spread across Rayce’s face. “Yes. I was just about to suggest we get food, sweetheart.”
I glared at him suspiciously. I was pretty sure that was not at all what he’d been about to say. But I let it go. “Good. I want a bacon and cheese omelet and a Belgian waffle.”
The guardsmen ordered more than I did—so much food that the waitress lost her bored expression and stared at us all with wide eyes.
It takes a lot of fuel to power a shift from human to dragon—not to mention creating fire.
I was hoping I’d need some of that fuel soon. It had been a long, long time since I had shifted.
Two hours later, we stood outside a slightly dilapidated-looking farmhouse somewhere, Rayce assured me, in upstate New York.
I glanced around at the wide-open space around us. “This makes me more nervous than being in a crowd in Manhattan.”
Lanzo snickered. “You’ve been spending way too much time in human cities, Brennan.”
“I’ve been spending all my time in human cities,” I countered. “But even if I hadn’t, I spent my childhood in the castle. Country life isn’t really my thing.”
“That field will be good for weapons practice,” Draven announced, pointing at what I might have called a back yard—if I were inclined to call knee-high grass for miles a yard.
Yeah. Draven was right. It was a field.
“How did you find this place?” I asked Rayce.
“I rented it through an agency as soon as I was sure we’d found you.”
He really was well versed in moving through the human world effectively.
Still… “Sight unseen?” I asked.
He grinned. “I didn’t have much other choice.”
“Hm. I’d better check out the house, then.” I wasn’t inclined to offer to clean the place, but I’d done worse work—especially right after Fenwick’s murder when I’d first started trying to find a job. I’d disappeared into the city’s homeless population, moving into a shelter for teens, just as Fenwick had told me to do if anything ever happened to him. Then I spent the next few months figuring out how to get and keep a job that wasn’t connected to drug-running or prostitution.
Several of the local pimps would have loved to have me in their stable. But, although I might have been in hiding, I was still a dragon shifter. And that meant that even at sixteen, I was stronger than any of the men who’d tried to force me to do things I didn’t want to.
So I’d bussed tables and washed dishes and eventually waitressed and hostessed, moving from job to job often enough to keep from being noticed, but not often enough to keep from getting good references.
And not once in all that time had I ever shifted.
Oh, gods. I hadn’t shifted in literally years—and I’d never really been all that good at it. Fenwick had insisted I stay in practice, but shifting reminded me of my parents, and every time he announced we were shifting, I started crying.
The day Fenwick was murdered was the last day I used my dragon form.
It was like I’d spent the last decade trying to bury my dragon identity deep inside me.
And now my Queen’s Guard dragons were going to try to convince me to bring it back out and put it on display.
This is going to suck so hard.
I moved into the farmhouse to check it out.
Three days later, I was in the back field, desperately trying to shift.
Again.
I couldn’t do it any longer. And I couldn’t breathe fire, either. I’d been trying to do both all day every day and getting crankier and crankier.
“But dragonfire is the basis of all dragonkin magic,” Lanzo said for what must have been the fifth time.
“That just means I can’t do magic, either,” I grumbled, pushing back a lock of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail. “At least I can still swing a sword.”
Draven made a noise suggesting that maybe I hadn’t been al
l that great at my edged-weapons lessons, either.
I swore and kicked the ground in frustration. “Why do I need to do all these things, anyway? I’m not going to learn enough in just a few days to overcome Nico—he spent his whole life training to be a warrior. What can I possibly learn to do that might be effective against him?”
“Maybe we should try going in a slightly different direction,” Rayce suggested, his voice as calm as ever.
I didn’t know how he managed to stay on such an even keel all the time.
“Like what?” I knew I sounded like a mulish teenager, but I was exhausted. And more than that, I was frightened. Now that I didn’t have any other options but to try to regain my throne, I was learning that I might not win.
And that was terrifying—not just for me, but for my three guardsmen, and beyond them, for all of dragonkin.
“Do you know how the dragonkin rulers choose their consorts?” Rayce asked. Draven and Lanzo watched me with expressions suggesting they were attempting to hide avid interest behind a kind of forced casualness.
I froze. “Um. From their guardsmen?”
“I’m going to go practice a few spells,” Lanzo announced suddenly—but I could see laughter threatening to spill out.
Draven didn’t say anything, but he followed Lanzo.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
Rayce didn’t answer my question directly. “How much do you actually know about a dragonkin queen’s relationships with her guards?”
I frowned, thinking of Fenwick’s long-ago lessons. “I know that the guardsmen pledge their fealty to her at some point. And that she usually—but not always—chooses her consort from among them. They protect her. I guess that’s all I know for sure.”
Rayce chewed on his bottom lip briefly. The gesture drew my attention to his mouth. Rayce’s lips were slightly crooked, a fact I hadn’t really noticed until just now—and that suddenly, I found absolutely charming.
“Did you know that most queens…” His voice trailed off.
I could tell he was trying to find a way to say something he was afraid would bother me.
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