The wolves howled, yipped and snarled. Half of them charged away into the trees, the other half quickly following. The guards regrouped and Cooper shifted back to his human form as the dragon did as well. Clementine choked on her relief when she saw it was Eugene. She reached for him, but he jerked out of her reach.
Unlike Cooper, Eugene had kept his clothes with his shift. He pulled Clementine to her feet and propelled her across the road.
“Give me the keys,” he snarled, holding out his hand. “You and your team get back to the Academy. I’ll get her somewhere safe and then contact Colonel Sheen.”
Cooper handed over the keys, his gaze sliding to her. “Major—”
“I know,” Eugene snarled.
He shifted again. As his arms wrapped around her, pulling her tight against his hot belly, Clementine’s mind was awhirl. If the Pack was so worried about the truth coming out, about it being revealed that she wasn’t the traitor, that they were willing to kill her…
The only way she was going to live for another year was to find the real traitor and expose them. As the wind dried her tears before she had a chance to cry them, Clementine clung to Eugene and prayed that he would actually listen to her.
Because if he really didn’t believe her, then nobody would. And she would have no chance at this.
Chapter Four
Eugene was still shaking when he set down outside a log cabin which served as an off-the-grid safehouse when the Blaze Ops needed to lay low away from the Academy before a mission. The image of Clementine with a gun pressed to her forehead kept flashing through his mind. He wanted to go back, find that wolf and kill him all over again.
Blood rushed in his ears as he set Clementine down and shifted back to his human form. Clementine shivered, the chains on her wrists and ankles clanking together. Her eyes were wide, her orange jumpsuit twisted around her.
“You followed?” she asked, her voice faint like she was about to pass out.
Eugene took her by the arm and led her into the safehouse without a word. Of course, he’d been following. Technically, he had just been flying patterns as exercise. He’d known in his gut something was going to happen, though. A prisoner as high-profile as Clementine was a prime target for the Pack to attack.
He had thought that they’d try to rescue her, though. Not kill her. Why go through all that trouble just to kill her, when it would have been just as easy to take out the guards and drive the van off with her in it?
Apparently, the Pack didn’t think she was valuable enough to keep alive.
But maybe this would mean she’d finally fess up, take the deals she was offered and go against the Pack. She could be shown some leniency that way, after all.
He didn’t say any of that, though, as he took Clementine into a back room. It was windowless, bare. A large pole ran up through the center of it and Eugene uncuffed her hands so he could then cuff them around the pole. There were no locks in this cabin, and he couldn’t risk her attacking him and escaping.
“The blocker is going to wear off in a few hours,” Clementine whispered, her shoulders hunched, and her face turned away. “I’ll be able to shift then.”
“We won’t be here that long,” Eugene replied stoutly, then left the room.
The cabin was not set up to hold anybody. There was some emergency water and canned foods but only enough for a day at best. Not that it mattered. They weren’t going to be here for that long.
Eugene slumped against the wall for a moment, his eyes closed. Every fiber in his being yearned to go back into that room. To take the chains off his mate and reassure her that he wasn’t going to let anybody hurt her. He wanted it so bad that his hands shook as he dialed the Academy on his cellphone.
“Major,” Captain Liam Young greeted on the first ring. “I was worried.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Eugene chuckled weakly, then gave a quick rundown as to what happened, knowing the Captain would relay it to Colonel Sheen. Thankfully, Liam didn’t ask him why he was following the van in the first place—that would probably come later.
Instead, he hummed and said, “You’d better move locations. For all we know, the Pack could have some way to trace your cellphone signal. Go to Fort Stinky Butt.”
Eugene bit back a laugh. It wasn’t the official name of site delta, of course, but if anybody was listening into this unsecured line, they wouldn’t know what they were talking about. The Pack probably knew about the locations of most safe houses and stinky butt was an inside joke among the Blaze Ops. The thing was, it wasn’t a stinky location—they called it that because of the granddaddy of all farts Stephen had let out there after eating fourteen bean burritos.
“We’ll meet you there,” Liam said.
“Hurry,” Eugene said, then hung up.
He wondered if the Captain would know what the hurry was about. Not because he thought there was any danger of the Pack finding Fort Stinky Butt but because of his own feelings. The doubts wiggling into his mind. The way his arms were heavy with the desire to hold Clementine.
He pulled the battery out of his phone and left it on top of a can of peas before he retrieved Clementine. He didn’t speak to her as he pulled her outside and shifted once more.
When they landed at the Fort, it was utterly dark out. Not so bad for a dragon, even in human form, but Clementine stumbled. How soon would the blockers wear off, allowing her to shift? He hated the idea of something preventing a shifter from embracing their other half but in this situation… well, Clementine had always been fast and graceful in her mountain lion form. She had always been able to outwit him in the forest.
After he chained her in the basement, where escape would not be so easy, Eugene found the flashlights in the cupboards and found himself some water. As he gulped it down, he couldn’t help but think about how thirsty Clementine must be—especially since he had seen tears on her face.
She can survive a few more hours until the rest of the team gets here, he told himself, even as he grabbed a second water bottle. She can’t escape if I don’t open that door.
But he was already headed for the door. It was only when he grasped the handle that he realized why he couldn’t just leave it alone. From inside the basement, hardly audible, were the sounds of sniffling and crying. His heart clenched even as his knuckles went white.
He couldn’t let her weasel her way back into his heart. Especially not now. He couldn’t just throw away everything he’d built over the last fifteen years because of someone who had already ripped his heart out once.
Taking a steadying breath, he released the door. Then, with the bottle clutched in his hand, he opened it anyway. He didn’t have to be a monster, after all. Giving her water didn’t mean he was going to trust her.
She was a huddled ball of misery, sitting on the plastic cot that was covered in a thick layer of dust. Tears poured down her face.
“Hey,” he called, and she jumped. He handed her the water and she took it hesitantly. “This is all you get for a while, so be smart about it, okay?”
The bottle fell into Clementine’s lap like she didn’t even care. She inhaled, shuddering, and opened her mouth—only to collapse into sobs again.
Eugene’s heart lurched. He dropped onto the cot beside her, reaching out to put an arm around her. Clementine shied back from him and he withdrew. God, he was such a softie! He glared at the floor, wanting to say something that would ease her sobbing but what could he say? Nothing.
“They were going to kill me,” Clementine rasped. “They were going to kill me.”
“You shouldn’t have expected anything different from the Pack.” Eugene’s voice came out harsher than he wanted, but he pressed on. “Maybe now you’ll consider doing the right thing and—"
“I am not working for the Pack!” Clementine clutched the bottle in her hands, turning a full-force glare on him. “I am not a traitor. I was framed.”
Eugene pulled back, scowling.
“The reason they tried to kill me was because
they wanted to make sure that I couldn’t convince anybody I was innocent. They still have a traitor in the Academy! Why can’t you see that? I thought out of everybody, you would be the one to believe me. Why don’t you believe me? You know me better than anybody else, why can’t you…” She trailed off, fresh tears on her face.
Eugene jumped to his feet. He was not going to let her manipulate him like this. That’s all she was doing. Trying to make him feel sorry enough for her that he’d let her go. His fists clenched with anger, and he backed away from her. A snarl tore from his lips and Clementine flinched.
He hated that she flinched. Hated it. Hated himself for scaring her enough to make her flinch. But he couldn’t apologize. Couldn’t soften. He just couldn’t.
“Just because we once dated doesn’t mean you’re going to get a free pass from me,” he spat at her. “I don’t know you. It’s been fifteen years since I knew you and fifteen years since you knew me. We don’t know each other anymore, Clementine. And if you think you can get me to let you go—”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“You can forget about it,” Eugene roared. “I will not be tempted into throwing away everything I’ve fought for! I will not aid the pack because I used to love you.”
Clementine flinched again. She shrank back from him, a ragged breath in her throat. Her eyes were wide, terror on her face. Eugene froze. As angry as he was, as determined as he was to make sure that she didn’t trick him… he was terrifying her. And that wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be afraid of him.
“I…” He choked on his own words. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Clementine stared back, still shrinking in on herself. Finally, she whispered, “Not physically, at least.”
It was too much. Eugene turned on his heel and fled. He raced up the stairs, slamming the door and locking it behind him.
He leaned shakily against the wall, the words running over and over in his mind. It took several minutes for the pounding of his heart to settle enough for him to push himself away from the door. To start going through the cabin, assessing what they had and calculating how long it would be before the Blaze Ops joined them.
His throat was dry, his hands trembling, as Clementine’s words flowed through his brain. There is still a traitor.
But she was the traitor. She was just trying to confuse him. That’s it. She wasn’t telling the truth at all. She was the traitor and that’s all there was to it. He couldn’t let himself doubt. Patrick had found the evidence. The Colonel was nothing if not thorough. Eugene had seen the evidence for himself. There was no other explanation…
But it makes sense, if she was framed, why the Pack would try to kill her. Shut her up, stop people from even looking for another traitor in their midst…
And he suddenly realized it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if she was lying or telling the truth because he was not in a state of mind to think rationally about anything she said. Half of him was so desperate to believe her innocence, he’d believe anything; and the other half so desperate not to be taken for a fool that he couldn’t believe anything.
So, he needed to take her out of the equation.
Start looking at this like he would if it wasn’t Clementine. As though it wasn’t the woman he had once thought of as his mate.
If it wasn’t Clementine, he would be taking the accusations that the Pack was trying to kill her to prevent the true traitor’s identity from being revealed a lot more seriously.
Eugene grabbed a notepad and a chewed-up pencil and put the flashlight next to him as he sat at the table. Then he started making a list of people who could have done what Clementine was accused of. Because if she wasn’t the traitor, it meant someone else was. And if someone else was the traitor, they were still in danger.
Chapter Five
Even though she wasn’t chained to anything, Clementine still found her mobility severely limited. The basement room was small, cold and dark, even with her mountain lion groggily awakening. She could feel it on the edges of her consciousness, like a dream just out of reach. Not enough to shift, not even enough to help enhance her senses, but still there. The fact that it was coming back helped to calm and center her enough to think clearly.
Eugene was angry. He felt hurt and betrayed and he did what he always did when he felt hurt and betrayed. He ran. In this case, he was running away from her. While he couldn’t physically remove himself any more than he already had, he was emotionally removing himself. Not allowing himself the possibility that she was telling the truth because it meant he didn’t have the possibility of being hurt worse than he already was.
It was how he always reacted to these situations. Didn’t mean it hurt any less, but that’s what it was. He was, in his essence, someone who couldn’t stand to be hurt. Wasn’t that the reason he took off the very night she refused to marry him? Forget about what else was going on, the reasons she’d given, he was hurt and so he decided to leave because anything else was going to hurt even more.
The real question was, how did she stop him from running right now? He was never going to listen to her if he was afraid of being hurt…
Clementine gingerly laid down on the plastic cot. It was nearly as hard as the floor and smelled musty, but at the moment she hardly cared. With people trying to kill her and the man she once loved with all her heart refusing to believe she wasn’t a traitor, a hard cot was hardly the top of her priorities.
What hurt the most about this was that she had recently been giving her relationship with Eugene more thought. She’d been considering asking him to have a quiet dinner with her, so they could finally talk about what happened fifteen years ago. Seeing him again had been too painful at first. She had finally gotten to the point where she could explain what she had felt when he left her like he did and be willing to listen to what he had to say.
Now, though, if she brought that up, it’d only make him think she was trying to manipulate him. He’d never accept that she was really, truly wanting to move on from the hurt between them and make a life together.
Clementine let out a dry laugh, then groped for her water bottle. Any chance she had at a happy life with Eugene had blown up in her face.
To think, she had only told him no to marriage because it was so ridiculous to think about being married at fourteen. Even then, she had been more than convinced that they were going to be together for the rest of their lives. The thought that anything would come between them was beyond thinking about. She had thought that Eugene understood that. That she wasn’t saying never, she was saying not now.
And he’d left her. He left a note, saying that he didn’t want to distract her. As though the pain of waking up every morning, knowing that her dragon was out there, beyond her reach, wasn’t distracting. As though being alone when she stood at her grandmother’s graveside wasn’t distracting. As though he hadn’t taken away the future she saw, not just of being a celebrated physician but a wife and mother, too.
It had taken her a long time to come to the realization that him leaving had been him acting stupidly, trying to prevent himself from being hurt further. For the longest time, she thought it was punishment. It was Eugene saying that if she didn’t want to marry, he didn’t want anything to do with her.
It had taken a long time to heal.
If I ever actually healed, she thought bitterly.
In the past fifteen years, when had she ever had a real relationship with a man? She’d never let herself drop her barriers with them. Even with guys who were great, who treated her right and were the perfect material for lifelong companions, she had a hard time trusting they were really that good. Her first relationship after Eugene, she drove the man away because she was so insecure and demanding.
The first time she slept with another man, she’d felt so much regret that she threw up and cried for two days straight. It felt like such a betrayal. She’d tried a few times since then, determined that she wasn’t going to spend her life pining for someone who
would just leave her like that. It never felt good, so eventually, she had stopped.
Clementine thought that she couldn’t cry any more tears, but she’d been wrong. As she finished the water bottle, fresh sobs overtook her. She pressed her arms to her mouth, trying to muffle the sound of her crying. She didn’t want Eugene to hear and think she was trying to play on his sympathies.
When the door slammed open, she realized she had been unsuccessful.
“Stop crying,” Eugene snapped at her as he came down the stairs, a fresh water bottle in hand. “They didn’t kill you, and the Pack can’t find you here.”
Clementine wiped her eyes with a shaking hand. “I’m sorry for having emotions. If you don’t want to listen to me crying, maybe you can cover your ears and sing The Song that Never Ends.”
She pushed herself to her feet, the chains clinking. What she wanted more than anything right now was for Eugene to take her into his arms. To reassure her that he believed her, that everything was going to be okay. She didn’t care how impossible the situation was, if he was on her side, then she could hope that it was going to be okay.
Eugene handed her the bottle. With the only light a beam from the flashlight, she couldn’t see his expression. She wished he’d just leave her alone if he wasn’t going to believe her. It hurt too much to look at him.
“You don’t get to tell me not to cry when I’m going to be murdered for something I didn’t even do.”
“Clementine—”
“I don’t care if you don’t believe me!” She dropped the bottle, suddenly not wanting anything to do with him. “I don’t care. It’s the truth. I was framed. I didn’t betray the Academy, and I don’t work for the Pack. And even if they don’t kill me, I’m going to be shipped off to D.C. and I’m going to be given the electric chair because who cares what I have to say? Who cares that I’m going to die? You sure as hell don’t!”
Dragon's Pride (Dragon Blaze Ops Book 3) Page 3
