by Jadyn Chase
Snatched
A Dragon Shifter MC Romance
Jadyn Chase
Copyright © 2019 by Jadyn Chase
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
* * *
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Contents
1. Brayden
2. Brayden
3. Morgan
4. Brayden
5. Morgan
6. Brayden
7. Morgan
8. Brayden
9. Brayden
10. Morgan
11. Morgan
12. Brayden
13. Morgan
14. Brayden
15. EPILOGUE: Morgan
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1
Brayden
Carlos sliced his finger through the air. “Take your men around the other side of the bunker. Hold them there until you see my signal.”
“But, Sir….” I protested, “that will leave you with half your force gone. If The Desperados get the jump on us, they could cut you down. We wouldn’t be around to support you.”
He arched his eyebrow at me. “Are you questioning my orders, Soldier?”
I pulled my head between my shoulders and braced myself. Now would be the worse time to get into a head-to head-confrontation with the baddest biker on the West Coast. “No, Sir. Of course not, Sir. I would never do that. I’m just pointing out the fact.”
“Duly noted,” he snapped. “Now, get over there and don’t let me hear another word about it.”
He turned his back on me and raised his binoculars. That left me with no alternative but to take my men and disappear. I blew out a shaky breath and turned away. Ten men crouched behind the barricade with me. They all observed the interaction waiting to see what would happen.
I scanned their chiseled faces. Red bandanas hid their hair, and they all sported identical leather jackets emblazoned with our club patch.
I mustered my resolve and nodded to no one in particular. “All right. Let’s go.”
I stayed in a crouch and scuttled around the retaining wall. When I peeked over it, a flat expanse of bare dirt offered no clue to the bunker hidden underneath. A slight, rounded hump gave any indication the place could be anything but a vacant lot.
The retaining wall ended a dozen yards away and I stopped on the sidewalk. From here, I could stand upright behind the chop shop. I pressed my back against the wall and took stock of my position. Five men lined up next to me. They held their breath, waiting for the signal.
I snuck to the end of the building and stole another furtive glance outside. Nothing moved out there. Did we make a mistake? Please God, I hope Carlos didn’t make a mistake sending us over here. I didn’t like getting shunted to the sidelines when the club needed us the most.
Someone whispered in my ear. “Brayden.”
I didn’t bother to turn around. I recognized Cisco’s voice and I wouldn’t take my sight off the target at a time like this. “What, man?”
“Shouldn’t we be back with the main party?” he rasped. “We can’t do anything over here.”
I didn’t answer. He heard Carlos’s order as well as I did. If we twiddled our thumbs behind the chop shop while The Desperados annihilated our people to the last man, that was Carlos’s problem.
My skin crawled while scanning the lot. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it one bit. I couldn’t see anything. Where would they come from if they came at all? This whole raid depended on the element of surprise. If The Desperados somehow got wind of our plans, they could be on top of us in seconds. They could turn the tides and wipe us out instead.
Cisco hovered too close to my back. His breath tickled my neck. I wanted to spin around and shove him away, but that would reveal the extent of my disturbance. Carlos put me in charge of this flank. I couldn’t lose my cool now, or all my men would fall apart along with me.
My hand flew to my chest. My sidearm nestled in my shoulder holster under my vest, but I wouldn’t need it. Touching it just made me feel better, but once the shit hit the fan, guns wouldn’t mean a thing.
I dared to sneak another quick look from behind the building. Don’t ask me why. I wouldn’t see anything. The Desperados conducted all their business from their underground bunker, and who could blame them?
They could sit down there utterly protected from any attack. Any club foolish enough to pick a bone with them would end up in this exact situation. They would have to attack blind and disabled while The Desperados hid under thirty feet of Earth and concrete.
No, I didn’t like this at all. I didn’t like provoking another club and for what? The Desperados never did anything to us. They just got a little too big for their britches. They bought a few tumble-down buildings that our club set its sights on. They moved in—not into our neighborhood. That would be suicide. No, they moved into the neutral zone between us and the Chinese Longtails club.
No one took The Desperados seriously. For nearly forty years, they lurked under the radar of every other gang on the block. They dealt a few sacks of cocaine and a few kilos of marijuana—nothing more. They didn’t even carry guns.
Then, out of nowhere, they up and bought out two apartment buildings from under our noses. They snatched them from our fingertips. Within a week of closing the sale, they fixed them up and rented them out to low-income families exactly the way we would have if we had managed to buy those buildings.
If you really want to know my unvarnished opinion, Carlos overreacted. He got a bee in his bonnet and said we had to send them a message. We had to show them this was our territory, and no upstart bunch of teenage hoodlums was going to muscle in and start taking over.
Like they would ever take over. In the first place, they never came near our territory. The neutral zone was…. well, neutral. Anyone could operate there. If the Desperados never called themselves a club or gave their group a name, we never would have known or cared about what they were up to.
Now here we were, decked out in all our regalia, ready to assault their bunker on a whim and a prayer. This whole operation had disaster written all over it.
Cisco touched my arm again. I gritted my teeth. If he said another fucking word to me, I swear I was going to lose it completely.
He whispered under his breath, “Hey, Brayden, man….”
I almost whipped around and roared in his face when, with no warning, a huge section of the vacant lot lifted out of the ground. A motor whined and a massive square of cement peeled up. Dirt clung to it for a second. Then it slid off in a cloud of dust.
The instant it cracked open, a greenish-black shape zoomed out of the hole. It spread its black wings to the sun and hurtled toward the retaining wall. Within seconds, ten identical dragons erupted out of the ground. They stretched their serpentine necks and trailed their snaky tails behind. The sun glittered off their scales and their high-pitched shrieks rent the air.
My heart leaped into my mouth. Adrenaline scorched my insides. How did they know? How did I know this would happen? None of that mattered now. Maybe they posted cameras around their perimeter to alert them to enemy attack. They would be stupid not to, and everything leading up to this moment indicated they were anything but that.
One dragon after another soared out of the opening. They screamed across the lot heading for the men we left unguarded. Did Carlos see w
hat I saw? How could he miss it?
Cisco surged forward to blow past me. Tomas jumped into his path and extended his arm. “Hold it, man. Carlos said wait for the signal.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Cisco waved toward the lot. “They’ll tear our people apart. We can’t stay here and do nothing. Come on!”
Tomas rounded on me. “What do you say, man? Should we engage?”
I still didn’t turn around. My gaze riveted to those dragons pouring out of the unforgiving Earth. They resembled a scene out of Hell itself. They thundered to the retaining wall and the lead dragon spat a blistering jet of flame over the barricade.
A piercing scream ripped across the site. Cisco slammed his thick palms against Tomas’s chest. “Get the fuck out of my way, man. You want to sit around here and play with yourselves? Go right ahead. I’m going out there. I’m not letting my brothers die before my fucking eyes.”
The Desperados formed a rank wingtip to wingtip. They pounded their fire behind the wall. No human being could survive that.
All at once, a ferocious red dragon vaulted skyward through the flames. It emitted a spine-chilling shriek. The red-orange fire ricocheted off its scales and set it ablaze for all the world to see. At the same moment, another five red monsters launched out of the inferno.
In seconds, they streamed to the clouds, tilted, and stooped on The Desperados screaming in murderous rage. That was the signal. I didn’t need to see anything else. I lunged for the corner. “Now!”
I didn’t bother to make sure my men backed me up. I let my dragon spirit split my skin apart. I became pure flight, pure rage, and pure will to dominate.
My wings extended and I stretched my neck. Before I fully shifted, fire belched from my throat and pummeled the enemy from behind. I got halfway across the lot when Cisco flanked me on the right. Tomas took a position on Cisco’s other side and we bombarded these bastards to kingdom come.
The Desperados wheeled when the first blast hit them, but Carlos and his men rushed them from the opposite side. Together, we sandwiched them between us roasting them to cinders.
The Desperados screeched and fluttered, but they couldn’t escape. One or two managed to dodge out of our line of fire, only to get rounded up and driven to their destruction between our two fronts.
They were still young. Their scales couldn’t withstand the full heat of our flame. Their skin vaporized and then their flesh. Their bones crumbled to powder and rained down on the bare dirt.
In a matter of minutes, only red dragons remained airborne. I glared into the gaping vault below me. The concrete door stood open to reveal a long chute plunging into the ground. What would we find down there?
No more dragons appeared. Carlos descended and landed next to the opening. He strutted back and forth and stuck his long neck down the hole. Then he retracted it and shifted to become a man again.
He surveyed the scene and waved us down. Our boys alighted around him. One after another, we shifted, too, until we all regained our human forms.
Carlos arched an eyebrow at me. “Is there something you want to say to me?”
I bowed my head and mumbled into my collar. “Sorry, Sir.”
“Forget it.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You could have been right and I owe you for bailing us out just now. You did real good. I’m proud of you.”
I brightened up, but before I could say anything, he yanked his out sidearm. “Let’s go sweep the place. If you find anyone left alive, kill on sight. Understand?”
The rest of the boys armed up. My weapon felt good in my hand. I didn’t like going into an enemy stronghold without knowing what we would find, and I certainly didn’t want to fly down there.
Carlos went first. We soon discovered getting into the place turned out to be a lot harder than we anticipated. The chute contained no steps but smooth walls all the way down. The Desperados designed it for themselves to fly out of, not for enemies to walk into. Anybody could see that.
The tunnel itself ran nearly vertical for several hundred yards. No one would ever guess a structure this big could exist unseen beneath the surface of an ordinary LA neighborhood.
In the end, Carlos gave up trying to scale the chute. He sat down on the slick concrete and slid the rest of the way to the bottom. It ended in a horizontal shaft running parallel to the surface. Even that appeared designed for dragon flight.
No doors or any other features interrupted the endless corridor. It fed into the chute leading to the surface—nothing more.
We kept our guns ready sweeping back and forth, but we didn’t see anything or anybody. Could this whole massive edifice be manned by a dozen youngsters and no one else? That didn’t seem possible.
At the end of the passage, we found a single locked door. Carlos blasted the lock with his weapon, and we entered another long tunnel. Unlike the others, this one opened into dozens of rooms. Some contained shelves packed with food supplies. Racks of weapons lined the walls of others. Beds and pictures and baby bassinets decorated some. This was more like it.
We searched every corner and cranny. Still, we found no one. At the furthest end, we discovered a living room with the TV still blaring Nascar. Carlos switched it off and lowered his weapon. “All right. It looks clear but fan out and make certain. When you finish, reconvene back here and we’ll see about scalping their supplies.”
I opened my mouth to say something but thought better of it. After the debacle upstairs, I didn’t want to look a fool, or worse, insubordinate.
Carlos whipped around and glared at me. “Do you have something to say to me?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
“Say it, boy,” he snapped. “We don’t have all day.”
I hesitated one more time before I mustered the backbone to speak. “Excuse me, Sir. I don’t mean to question your orders, but this place looks…. you know, populated. They’ve got civilians somewhere—women and children and relatives. If they’re not here, they must be somewhere else.”
His features softened. “I know. I’m thinking the same thing. We cleared this place out, but we haven’t seen the last of them. We’ll take their stuff, but we have to keep an eye out for them in the future. Now go do your jobs and meet me back here.”
The others left the room. I turned away to follow them when Carlos laid his hand on my arm. “Wait a minute, Brayden.”
I raised my eyes to his face. I stiffened for another reprimand for daring to step out of line again. Instead, Carlos lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “Listen to me, son. I don’t want you to ever hesitate to speak your mind to me. If you’ve got something that’s bothering you or something I do that doesn’t seem right, you tell me. I give you my word you won’t ever be punished for that. Understand?”
A ray of hope shone into my heart. “Do you really mean that, Sir?”
“I mean it. Now go on and let me know if you find anything unusual.”
2
Brayden
I threw open one door after another, waved my gun back and forth, and left without really checking any of the rooms. They were all as empty and harmless as the ones we already searched.
You never saw rooms more ordinary and mundane. Only the fact that someone lived in them forty feet underground made them anything to remark.
I barely looked at all anymore, but when I came to one of the bedrooms, something made me stop. This one wasn’t like the others. Instead of a nice bedspread and curtains, bloody skull posters bedecked the walls. A hideous death’s head covered one side of the room. A dripping dagger pierced the skull and came out of the mouth. It gave me the creeps, but it appeared so unusual and out of place that I hesitated.
That enormous poster didn’t look right. It didn’t fit the homey, comforting air of the rest of the bunker. I stepped into the room and approached the image. I raised my gun, took my forefinger off the trigger, and trailed the muzzle over the glossy surface.
The paper wobbled and wavered. With that li
ght touch, I detected a hollow space behind the sheet. I pressed harder and touched…not sheetrock, but cold metal. Now I knew something wasn’t right.
I seized the side of the paper and tore it aside. The poster fell away to reveal a steel door set with timer locks and a huge pinwheel knob like a bank vault. My guts wrenched and I called out in spite of myself, “Hey! I think I found something!”
Footsteps ran down the corridor to the spot and the men crowded around. “Holy fucking shit!” Cisco whispered.
Carlos shouldered his way to the front. “Well, what do you know about that?”
“Look.” Tomas pointed to the timer. “It’s set for ten minutes ago. The door should be unlocked.”
Carlos and I glanced at each other and he waved his gun at the door. “Well? You found it. You do the honors.”
I swallowed hard. Okay. Here goes nothing. I holstered my weapon and took hold of the knob. I gave it a spin and something inside the wall thumped. The door swiveled outward on silent hinges to reveal another hidden passage inside the wall.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Cisco breathed. “This is like something out of a movie or something.”
Carlos motioned toward the opening. “Lead the way, Brayden. This is all yours.”
My heart thundered in my brain. What would I find down there? I ducked under the doorsill and stepped through. The tunnel branched in a T intersection to two identical passages going off to left and right. A dozen cells lined the walls. Barred doors revealed everything inside.
The crew streamed into the secret prison. No one could mistake it for anything else, but we discovered all the cells empty—all except the last one. I stopped outside it and looked down at a huddled mass of bloody flesh curled on the floor. A shock of strawberry-blonde hair draped over slender shoulders darkened by bruises and scratches.
