Dragon's Challenge

by Jasmine Wylder

  He blacked out in the car, only to awaken to a pair of strong arms carrying him. It was dark all around, and he wondered how Maura could lift him so easily and how she could see so well in the dark.

  Then there was light, and he was laying on a cool bed. Maura bent over him, injecting him with something. He didn’t even feel it over the burning of his body. Without his fires, he felt so cold, and yet the terrible burns covering him were so hot he could feel his flesh still melting. The pain dulled, still there but not so biting.

  “Okay. Okay.” Maura set her laptop up beside them and gulped. “The blockers will start wearing off in two hours and then your natural healing will start to kick in. I just need to keep you alive until then.”

  Stephen’s lips cracked as he whispered, “But you’re not that kind of doctor.”

  “No,” Maura agreed. “I’m not. But I have had some medical training, and I think I know how to do this. Especially with Google’s help. You need to keep talking, okay?”

  Stephen moaned. Talking was too much work.

  She started moving across his body, her hands probing and dig and cleaning strips of melted polyester from his burns. Stephen gasped with pain, tears springing to his eyes.

  “I’m sorry. But I have to get this clean. Um, this tattoo. It looks like a shark. What is it for?”

  Stephen attempted to breathe evenly, to keep himself still. He almost asked Maura to club him on his head to put him out but feared the darkness more than he feared the pain. “Couple years ago, I met a shark shifter. She and I hit it off and we had a lot of fun. When we decided to break it off, I got a shark to remind me that I’m allowed to have fun.”

  “Oh, that’s a good reminder. And this butterfly?”

  “Reminder that I’m beautiful.”

  Maura let out a gasping laugh. “Oh, that is very true. You’re extremely beautiful.”

  “Yeah. So damn beautiful.” Nausea burned through him again, and he choked back more vomit.

  It took everything in him to keep answering Maura’s questions while she cleaned and treated his burns. She didn’t dare give him more morphine, which he understood was why he wasn’t dying from the pain. It hurt so much he almost lapsed into unconsciousness twice, but Maura’s voice brought him back. Eventually, the terrible cold gripping him filled with warmth, and the burning of his skin started to cool.

  Only then, when his fires were beginning to return, did he let himself drift to sleep.

  When he woke, he still hurt bad but not nearly as much as he had before. Maura sat in a chair next to him, checking the lines to an IV fluid in his arm. When she saw he was awake, relief broke over her face and she leaned forward.

  “You gonna live?” she asked.

  Stephen nodded.

  “Good. Because I’m not sure I can do this on my own.”

  “Do what?”

  Maura met his gaze, her eyes blazing but with a fear seated deep inside of them. “Everything. It’s more than the Blaze Ops now, Stephen. The Shadow Ops, the Howling Ops and others that you don’t even know. They’ve all been arrested. Everybody attached to the Academy. We’ve been betrayed.”

  Chapter Six

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Maura bared her teeth in a snarl, her leopard echoing the sound, as she stepped into the room to find Stephen on his feet. “Get back into that bed this instant, or I’ll put you back on blockers.”

  Stephen scowled as he eased himself back onto the bed. “So, you’ll stop me from healing because you want me to heal?”

  “No, I’ll stop you from healing because you’re not letting yourself heal, so I’ll be giving you what you want.” Maura set the groceries she’d bought to one side of the room, next to the hotplate and minifridge. This place wasn’t set up to be lived in for long stretches of time, but it was better than nothing. At least here they wouldn’t be discovered. “Now get back to bed.”

  Stephen let out a snort but did as he was told. The terrible burns that had made her nauseated just by looking at them had healed quite a bit over the two days they’d been squirreled away here, but his skin was still red and stiff. She’d been putting ointment on him every couple of hours to help the healing process and stop it from being so terribly itchy, but there wasn’t much to do other than let his natural healing abilities sort it all out.

  If he was human, he’d be lucky to be alive. If he was human, his tattoos would all be burned away, and his skin would be scar upon scar upon scar.

  Luckily for him, he wasn’t human. All shifters healed quickly, but none of them healed quite as quickly as a dragon did. Maura crossed the room to him, checking to make sure he hadn’t taken out the IV, then nodded. The clothes she’d stolen for him stretched tight over his fresh, delicate new skin. Well. Delicate being a comparative phrase.

  “You’re still losing muscle mass,” she noted, squeezing his bicep worriedly. “I don’t like that.”

  “It’s to be expected.” Stephen shrugged. “I mean, I am eating up a lot of energy and protein and stuff to heal from those burns. Only makes sense that it’ll take off some of my muscle and fat to do that. Speaking of, I’m starving. Did you bring steak?”

  Maura let it go at that, although she was still concerned. His appetite hadn’t been so good the last couple of days, but if he was looking for food maybe it was a good sign. “I did. I also got nuts and fruit and vegetables since you need more than meat to live.”

  Stephen grinned as he pulled his legs back up on the bed. “Alright. You’re the boss. I’ll eat whatever you want to give me; I’m not picky.”

  “And thank god for that,” Maura snapped back as she rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help but smile, though, as she went about making the food. First things first, she googled how to cook a steak properly.

  “You know, I could help you,” Stephen offered.

  “No, you are going to sit there and heal. If I have to tell you again—”

  “I know, I know. You’ll put me on blockers. Fuck, Maura. I’m not a kid, I can take care of myself.”

  Maura glanced over her shoulder, surprised by the annoyed tone. So far, he had just been teasing her back, but that sounded actually upset. She chewed her lip, uncertain. Had she gone too far this time? Shaking her head, she decided to be a little less harsh next time and got back to work.

  “Where are we, anyway?” Stephen asked after a couple of minutes.

  “I… don’t know if I should tell you that,” Maura hedged.

  Stephen hummed in his throat as he glanced around. “Looks like an underground bunker. We’ve got electricity, fresh air, and running water. But we’re also underground, I remember that much. So… bomb shelter of some sort?”

  Maura glanced over her shoulder at him, annoyed. “What part of ‘I’m not sure I should tell you’ do you not understand?”

  “The part where I don’t get my answer.” He winked at her.

  Unbidden butterflies erupted in her stomach. A flush rose up her cheeks and she turned away quickly, hoping he hadn’t seen. Well, it seemed like he wasn’t going to give up until he had an answer he could sink his teeth into. The whole truth was off the table, of course. Vampires were secretive by their very nature. The majority of shifters and humans didn’t even know they existed. The Ingles family would be furious with her for revealing their secrets when they’d allowed her to take refuge here.

  “We’re deep beneath the Academy,” she settled on. “These tunnels were built a long time ago. Very few people know that they’re here anymore.”

  “Huh.”

  They were also how vampires were able to attend the Magnus Academy—at least until recently. Her shoulders slumped as she scowled into the frying meat. “The Academy isn’t what it was. You know that they kicked out everybody who wasn’t a shifter? Well, now they have it so that there is a physical course that is mandatory for all students. They have to shift and run it every single morning. It’s like they have to prove that they’re shifters constantly.”

  T
he few vampires who’d been attending, the ones who had found comfort in being with other paranormal beings, rather than trying to fit in entirely with humans, no longer could attend. And from some of the wording of the new charters that were trying to be pushed through, Maura had to think that was on purpose.

  Her nostrils flared. Not that she could do anything about that now. Her face was plastered all over the news. Apparently, the cops hadn’t bought the hostage act she and Stephen had tried to pull off. They were looking for her and Stephen both with a bounty on their heads.

  How much longer did they have? And what could they do to stop this?

  “Hey, you okay?” Stephen peered intently at her.

  Maura shook her head, sighing as she told him the new developments. “Everybody who’d been involved in the off-the-books operations out of the Academy has been arrested now. My contacts told me that you and I are the only ones who have managed not to be arrested. Which means, whoever is behind this, whatever they want, they’ll be coming after us.”

  Stephen frowned as he fiddled with the tubes of his IV. “How much is the bounty?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Well, I mean it might be worth it to turn ourselves in, collect the money and use it to hire a really good lawyer.”

  Despite the crushing atmosphere and all her fear of what was happening, Maura laughed. The thought of turning themselves in and collecting the bounty on their heads was too funny. She shook her head as she started to sauté some green beans in curry sauce. The meat was looking pretty good, she had to say, and the smell was making her stomach rumble.

  “That would catch people’s attention, wouldn’t it?” She chuckled. “Hmm. Or we could turn each other in, if they won’t give us our own bounties.”

  The food was ready quickly and Maura sat on the end of the bed to eat. She’d been sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, the only thing she could get on such short notice. It wasn’t like it was uncomfortable, but it certainly wasn’t as luxurious as she was used to. Maura liked to have pretty things in her life, and so this situation was not only stressful, but it left her annoyed, too.

  Even though she felt silly for wishing she could have a proper mattress when there was a bounty on her head.

  “Well.” Stephen set aside his plate when he was only half done his steak. “I’ll have to finish that later. It’s not sitting quite right. Maybe I ought to have plain toast or something.”

  Maura looked at her own plate. She’d already demolished her vegetables and two-thirds of her steak. A blush rose in her cheeks. She ate too fast, she knew that. Had always known it. It came from a lifetime of wanting to just get eating over with so she could go and do more interesting things. Her busy schedule as head of the Academy didn’t help, either.

  “We also can’t plan on staying here forever,” Stephen continued. His gaze sharpened and a determined, fiery look came to his eyes. “We have to find out who’s doing this and take them down. I’ve been thinking, and there is something to your Pack theory. If this is somebody who is trying to bring it back from the dead, so to say, then we have to stop it before they can. The last thing this world needs is for that to make a comeback.”

  “Agreed,” Maura said around a mouthful of steak. “But what can we do? Neither of us can show our faces aboveground. I had to steal this from the cafeteria and they’re going to figure that out sooner or later. We have to have a way to keep ourselves from being arrested.”

  “’Cause once we’re in jail, we won’t stand a chance,” Stephen agreed.

  They both sat in silence, each thinking hard about their situation. Maura wasn’t about to just give up on the situation and go live in Mongolia. There had to be something they could do. So far, she hadn’t been able to get into anything to tell her what exactly her teams were being accused of. She knew the Blaze Ops were standing accused of war crimes, but the details were vague, and she hadn’t been able to get any information about any of the others.

  “First things first,” Stephen said slowly. “We have to get the others out of jail.”

  Maura looked up in surprise. “What?”

  “Jailbreak. The two of us alone can’t really do much. You might not know this, but I’m not all that useful on my own. I tend to charge in head-first and not see where I’m going. I’ve nearly gotten myself killed a dozen times doing it.” Stephen shook his head. “I need the team. Once we’re all together, we can plan and strategize. Evan can hack computers and figure out who is behind this. I don’t know. But I do know I need them.”

  It would be easier to find information with more people on their side, that was certain. On the other hand, it would be much harder to hide them.

  “The ones that have mates aren’t going to want to leave them alone. So we have to have a place that can hide us and them and their mates. Not to mention the children.”

  “So, we convince them it’s better for their mates and children not to…” Stephen trailed off and grimaced at her disbelieving look. “Okay, okay. Fine. You’re right. That wouldn’t fly with any of them. But we can hide them here. There’s got to be more rooms like this one, right?”

  “We can’t hide them all here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can’t,” Maura snapped.

  The vampires would never allow it, but that wasn’t something she could tell Stephen. Not when she had taken so many oaths to keep it a secret. She sat there, racking her brains and eventually shrugged.

  “It’s not like we can break them out, anyway. We’ll have to figure something else out.”

  Stephen frowned. “No.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “Don’t give me that look. You aren’t my boss anymore, and I’m allowed to disagree.” Stephen glared right back at her. “You want my help? You want me to sit here with this needle stuck in me and not get out there doing my own thing? Then we plan on how to break the others out of jail. I’m not leaving them there.”

  Maura opened her mouth to argue, but he had a point. What could they do, just the two of them? There was only so much her network of contacts could tell her. Only so much loyalty she could expect from them. And the Blaze Ops were very good at what they did.

  “Fine,” she snarled, hating to be beaten. “We’ll do it your way. So how do you suggest we go about this jailbreak?”

  Chapter Seven

  It wasn’t difficult to find out where all the Blaze Ops were being held. Stephen felt a little guilty focusing solely on his teammates when there were others from the Academy in just as dire straits, but there was nothing they could do about that right now. They’d overstretch themselves trying to save all of them. Right now, he had to concentrate on what he could do.

  Evan and Adam were the only ones being held at the same facility. Maura had gotten blueprints of the prison and spread them over the bed as they discussed their plan to get them out.

  “They’re going to be on blockers,” she said, musing over the blueprints. “Prisons have started giving them to all their shifter prisoners. Although the case is in court… you’d think that something like this, created by a hate group like the Pack, wouldn’t catch so much traction.”

  “Prisons aren’t exactly places where constitutional rights are respected,” Stephen growled. “I could say a lot about that. But now isn’t the time, is it? Right. So they’ll be on blockers. I can find a place to sit and watch and then when they come into the yard, just swoop in and grab them.”

  “Only no.” Maura pointed at something on the side of the courtyard. “They have an electric field. Strong enough to take down even a dragon. Even if you were stupid enough to go through it and somehow not end up with all your internal organs fried—”

  “Hurtful,” Stephen growled, but Maura ignored him.

  “It would most certainly kill Evan and Adam if you tried to take them through it.”

  Stephen frowned. He knew all too well that it was easy for him to forget about his teammates’ reduced strength when
they were on blockers. Guilt hit him hard in the gut as he remembered putting Adam in the hospital with a simple punch. Normally, he’d have laughed it off and returned the favor. But that time, it had caused some serious damage.

  “Right,” he murmured. “And we can’t just walk in there; they’ll recognize us.”

  “Exactly.” Maura stared at the blueprints and let out a heavy sigh. “I might be able to get some help with this, but you can’t ask me who is helping us and how I’m able to do the things I do, got it?”

  Stephen frowned at her. First this place and now a mysterious forbidding of asking questions? What was going on with her? She had a lot more secrets than he had realized. No wonder she was so good at keeping so many teams operating out of the Academy.

  As she disappeared to go arrange the secrets, Stephen laid back in the bed. Best to rest up, get himself recovered as much as possible. There was still uncomfortable tingling in his arms and legs, just beneath the surface. Not really an itch but still a clear sign that he wasn’t as healed as he would have liked to have been.

  He tried to slip into a meditative state, but his thoughts were too powerful. They kept clogging up his brain with everything that could go wrong on an op like this. Not to mention this was different from anything he’d tried before. He was never one for rules, following them only as much as was necessary, breaking them whenever it seemed like a rule was there just to be stupid.

  But this. This was something far, far more terrifying than anything he’d done. They’d never gone up against the government! The people they’d be fighting weren’t fascists or terrorists; they were hard-working American citizens who were doing their jobs.

  Well, prison guards. So, chances are they’re the petty little tyrants of their circle of influence, beating up on the most vulnerable prisoners.

  But even his disdain at the broken justice system and the people who perpetrated it couldn’t calm him. So, Stephen forced himself instead to think about Maura. Her curves, so soft and perfect. Her red hair, her cheeky grin. The way she held herself with such dignity and grace.