“They don’t belong in cages!”
She and Danny were both leaning over a wide cement berm, still many feet away from the lounging tigers, with a high wire fence in between them. She remembered hoping to find a long stick to poke them with, wanting the tigers to do more than just pant in the shade with the heat, whereas Danny had found some rocks to plink over the edge.
“They don’t belong in cages!” she heard again, and it was Danny’s voice. She realized he wasn’t aiming for the animals at all; he was throwing the rocks at the cage on purpose, upset that it was there, that the tiger wasn’t free.
“Yeah!” she said, and he looked over, seeing the light of agreement in her eyes. Almost as one they decided that he would push her up and over the berm, and then maybe she could reach the cage and climb over it because surely somewhere there was a lever and—
Their mother had come over and whisked them away, as if sensing the chaos in their hearts….
And when Andi woke up, the sun was shining brightly around the edges of her blackout curtains, and her blindfold had been knocked off sometime the prior night. She reached for her phone, out of habit, and also to figure out what time it was.
Three-thirty. She’d slept way in, for her—or not quite late enough if she was working tonight—but she was off, right? She sat up in bed, confused about the time and date in the way that only night work made you, when you didn’t know if you were coming or going and the days threatened to become a gray slide except….
There was a text from Damian. She swiped her screen on.
Princess?
Are you there?
I just wanted to check on you.
Andi smiled at her phone and texted back. Sorry, I was sleeping.
His reply was almost instantaneous. I know.
You looked??? She gave herself a brief glance in the mirror and saw the kind of bedhead that came from sleeping on wet hair.
Yes. Briefly.
Andi groaned. Damian, I expect to have some privacy.
I’ve seen you sleep before. Nice shirt, by the way.
Shut it, Mister, she typed with a grin.
She cast her phone aside and went to her desk to fish the photo of her family out. Her dream had felt so real, her emotions so genuine and warm. She wished she could rewind everything and get back to that point with Danny, back when they plotted with one another, instead of against, before their mother had pinballed them off in different directions.
I had the nicest dream, she texted, returning to her bed with the photo.
Was I in it?
Don’t take it personally…but no. It was about this trip we took to the zoo as kids. Danny and I hatched this scheme to release the tigers. We were convinced they wanted to go into the air-conditioned reptile house with us. It was a hot day, you had to be there, and it’d help if you were twelve….
That sounds charming.
It was. Andi gave both her phone and the photo a soft smile. Sometimes when I remember the good stuff, it’s hard to remember the bad, Damian. And I know, that’s 100% what someone who was abused would say, so don’t come at me with that. It’s just that…it wasn’t all bad, you know?
I know, princess, he agreed.
She set the photo down and turned her smile just to the phone. Thank you.
For what?
For not being mad at me. For not expecting me to just cut him out of my life completely. I know he’s no good, Damian, and I know everything he’s done, but he’s still part of me. And I know you’re going to have to do what you have to do eventually, no matter how much we try to avoid the topic, and I’ll still love you even after that, I’m sure…but…it’s going to hurt me.
Oh, princess. I am so, so sorry.
Andi hugged a pillow to her chest. It’s okay. It’s not even your fault. I mean, they’re not going to stop until you do, so….
I wish I were there with you right now.
Me too.
She stared at the phone disconsolately, willing Damian to say the right thing, even though she had no idea what that might be. Princess, I apologize deeply, but I have to go. Mills is calling a meeting.
The thought of that snapped her to attention. She knew Damian’s group always had meetings before going out. Be safe?
For you? Always.
Andi reluctantly set the phone down and picked the photo up.
Damian joined the others in the conference room and was surprised to find everyone else present and somber. It was clear Mills had sent Grimalkin to call him last. Max was wearing all black and leaning forward with his head in his hands, and Ryana had her wings hidden and a deep frown. Zach was in one of his tailored suits and his arms were crossed, while Austin looked rumpled in jeans and a flannel and had that look in his eye that said he’d rather be anywhere else but here. Stella was the only one who seemed as clueless as he was, again in her motorcycle leathers, and with her helmet sitting in front of her. He guessed she’d just arrived.
“Everyone here appears to be alive, yes?” he said, making his way to his familiar seat at the table’s head.
“For now,” Mills said with a frown. She was in jeans and a tight death metal T-shirt, like she’d been thinking too hard to get dressed for the current occasion, whatever it was. She gave Jamison a meaningful glance. His techmaster lit up the wall to Damian’s right.
“The Hunters are taking their armaments to Cyclo Arena,” Jamison said. He was in one of his usual tank tops and had his wrist plugged into the technology beneath the table. “They’ve been shipping trucks in and out all day.” The screen flickered between still shots of nondescript dressed men and women moving boxes around with dollies.
“Well, then, I’ll make it a point not to go there.” Damian shrugged.
Mills nodded. “That’s well and good, but…there’s a car show starting there this evening.”
Damian smirked. “Did someone enter my Pagani without me?”
“No. It’s a vintage thing. And there’s one Daniel Ngo and his fully restored 1970 El Camino registered to attend,” Jamison said. “The car show opens tonight at seven, but earlier for participants.”
Damian rocked back, as realization washed over him. The closest the Hunters had gotten to hurting him was the night with the helicopter—a trick they hadn’t tried again. So, it seemed in their frustration that they’d adjusted their scope.
Because if you couldn’t kill one dragon…perhaps another would do.
“Let him die, Damian,” Ryana said, the quickest to speak. “In this case, the enemy of my enemy is indeed our friend, and if they take him off the board, then your hands are clean. It’s perfect.”
“I agree with Ryana,” Max said. “This is a Hunter problem. Let Hunters deal with it.”
Damian looked to Mills. “How sure are you?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Mills said. “Although he has his own people to protect him, surely, and they’re fools to think they won’t come after him.”
“Not if all of his people are currently in cages at an undisclosed location trying to become dragon soldiers.” Damian spoke through gritted teeth.
“What?” Stella said, snapping her head to look at him.
“Danny took Andi out last night and showed her his lair. It includes people in cages, apparently, waiting to become draconic. He thinks he needs an army against the Conjunction.”
“Well, poor planning on his part then,” Mills murmured.
Damian looked to the other wolves. Zach shook his head. “I’m out on this one. I have opinions, but I don’t think you want to hear them.”
“I always want to know what you think, Zach.”
“Then, in that case, I’m aligned with Ryana and Max. My heart says you should intervene, but the man who wears this suit,” Zach said, tugging at his cuffs, “says fuck him.”
Damian grunted. The man who “wore” Zach’s suit frequently looked like his father, and that was indeed something his father would say. “And you, Austin?”
“Is there a way to help him that isn’t also a suicide mission?” Stella asked, looking around the table in hope.
“There is one way,” Jamison began. “I’ve gotten Danny’s phone number from Andi’s phone. He doesn’t leave it on too often though, which makes it shit for tracking, but there’s a number he contacts regularly. It’s not programed in—he has it memorized—and if I were a betting man, I’d guess it was his uncle.”
“So, you’re going to call a leader of the Hunters and ask him for his help?” Zach’s tone conveyed just what he thought of that idea.
Damian considered his options quickly. “I can’t call Danny; he wouldn’t believe me. I know that from last night. And telling Andi to tell him would only put her in danger, I know, and he probably still wouldn’t listen, besides. So, yes, I’ll try calling Lee, and ask him to rein in the others. It’s the least bad idea in the bad idea barrel. Grim?” Damian called, and the cat appeared. “I need a balaclava and a burner phone.”
The cat sat down just out of reach on the table, blinked, and both items fell from the ceiling.
“I’ll never get used to that,” Stella murmured as Damian pulled his mask on.
“What’s the number?” he asked Jamison, who projected it on the wall behind himself. Damian backed up so that no one else would be visible and called on video. Jamison projected that so the others could see too, although Lee would only see Damian’s masked face on his screen.
Lee was a slightly-past-his-prime Asian gentleman with a tidily trimmed beard, and Damian could see the slight resemblance between him and Andi, in the bright intelligence of their eyes, which narrowed on the screen. “Interesting,” he said, at seeing Damian. “Speak, or I’ll hang up.”
“I’m calling on behalf of the Ngo twins.”
Lee made a thoughtful sound. “I’m listening. Be quick.”
“Danny…Daniel…is in danger.”
Lee sounded amused. “Is that so?”
“You left town, left him on his own and left other Hunters, hungry. They’re planning an attack on him tonight.”
Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You presume to know much, stranger.”
“I know that other Hunters are planning to murder Danny.”
Lee laughed once, harshly. “My people will protect him, as if he were me.”
“Your nephew, in his infinite wisdom, decided to turn your people into a dragon army. They’re all currently in cages,” Damian informed him. He could sense the far older man’s reluctance to believe. “Find out for yourself,” he said, hanging up. He set down the phone and pushed the mask off his face.
“I like how he doesn’t disagree that his people are capable of killing his nephew, so much as he thinks they’d be too scared to,” Zach said, one eyebrow high.
“He knows who they are,” Damian muttered, then looked around. “Max, start adding fuel to the Forgetting Fire. If we’re going to do something this public, we’re going to need a fucking river of it to cover up the damages.”
“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind regardless, Damian,” Mills said. “Have you?”
If he’d left off with meeting Andi’s brother in person last night, maybe things could’ve gone a different away. But after being with her last night, and texting with her earlier—while someone else might get frustrated with her for not choosing—he understood. He knew it took a big heart to love himself, flaws and all, as he knew he had a lot of them. He was temperamental, he could be cruel, cold, imperious, demanding, and there was every bit as much blood on his hands as there was on Danny’s, even if he liked to think it more cleanly earned. If Andi was able to still love him, in spite of himself and his problems—and even with his curse!—then it was no wonder some small part of her still loved her brother, too.
And knowing that her brother had been murdered in cold blood by his “friends” to be eaten for his magical properties was not something his gentle mate could so easily return from.
So, we’ve decided then? his dragon asked him. To help this other dragon?
For Andi’s sake. Do you agree?
He felt his dragon thinking free of him. There will be a lot of carnage?
As many Hunters as there are drops of rain, sounds like.
Then I go where you lead. The beast flexed inside of him. As long as we always lead to Andi.
Damian looked around the table at each of his friends, and none of them looked away. “I realize I can’t ask you all to come with me. If Mills is right, which we all know she is, then we’ll be walking into a firefight with several hundred well-armed Hunters, all of whom would like to see our blood.”
“Yours, in particular,” Ryana reminded him. Her frown was unchanged.
“I know,” he said, and the phone rang. Everyone present looked at it and then looked to Damian.
He pulled his mask back down and answered it, Jamison projecting Lee’s image on the wall again.
“There appears to be truth to your words.”
“Can you help him?” Damian asked.
“No.” Lee’s jaw tightened. “And you must have known that when you called.” Lee’s expression became more menacing as he leaned closer to his phone. “So who are you?”
“Someone willing to try to save him.”
Lee looked puzzled. “Daniel cannot possibly mean that much to you. What is it you want?”
Damian stared down into the phone and let the impassive wall he used to keep his dragon at bay overtake him. “I want carte blanche,” he said coolly. “I want permission to murder every Hunter we find there, without retribution later.”
“Very well,” Lee promised. “Do not let a single traitor live.” Damian heard his sister snort, as Lee went on. “But what on earth could possibly cause you to risk your life for Daniel?”
“I’m not doing it for Danny, Hunter. I am the dragon that’s in love with your niece.” Damian reached up and pulled off his mask, as Mills gasped and Zach started wildly shaking his head across from him. “I’m not saving Danny for you or for him. But for Andi, I would do anything—and finding out that men like you slaughtered her brother will break her.” He threw the mask on the table.
For the first time a genuine emotion, amazement, penetrated Lee’s stern facade. “A dragon. In love with Mei Li’s girl.” He stroked his beard as he mused. “Truly, fate is unpredictable.”
Damian gave Lee a withering look, and let some of his magic echo out in his voice, while allowing his dragon to ride just beneath his skin. This would be as much its fight as it was his. “You wanted to know what ties would bind me to earth, human,” he said, his voice like gravel. “Andi has chained my heart.”
Lee took a sharp inhale and licked his lips. “Go then, Andrea’s dragon. Win,” he said, and Damian hung up the phone.
Andi had just eaten lunch, if you went by the time of day, or breakfast, in that it was her first meal of the day and that it also had been cereal, when her phone buzzed again.
Hey, you know how sweet my car is, right?
She would’ve known who was texting her without seeing the name. Debatably, yes.
Her brother sent over an eye-rolling emoji. Well, I’ve got it entered at this car show. They’ve got free early entry for participants. Wanna come check it out with me?
She squinted at her phone. Her life felt like it was getting more complicated which, at this point, was entirely unfair. But…she did have to tell Danny to let those people out, somehow, without letting on how she knew that his experiments would never work on them.
I’ll buy you cotton candy, he went on, and she smiled at her phone.
Diabetes on a stick? You’d do that for me?
Yeah, I think there’s probably 75 cents still stuck inside my car somewhere.
That car’s so old it’s probably seven hun
dred fifty dollars now, with inflation.
Another laughing emoji. Actually, the Elky’s already at the show. I dropped it off yesterday. Can you bus in or uber to Cyclo, and I meet you at the doors at five-fifteen to get you in?
Her eyebrows rose in bemusement. At least if she took the bus in, she wouldn’t be treated to Danny’s driving, and there was no way she could accidentally wind up at a pool hall. Sure.
Sweet. See you soon.
Andi went through the rest of her “morning” while Sammy was still at work. She combed out her hair, hit it with a flat iron just because it’d been ages since she’d gone out, and put makeup on for the same reason too. She and Sammy had redone the blue streak not that long ago, back when Damian had been in his “alive” phase, so she was particularly pleased with the color, and planned her entire outfit around showing it off—dark blue jeans, low gray ankle boots, and a tight white T-shirt that made her hair and features pop. Then she took the shirt off and replaced it with Damian’s because she wanted to, and she could.
His shirt was more appropriately a nightshirt on her, like she’d worn it the prior night to be, but eff that. She tied the excess fabric in an off-center knot at her waist, cropping it up. She was going to a car show; she could show a little skin.
And then at four-thirty she caught the appropriate cross-town bus to Cyclo, getting off it at precisely five-fifteen. She hadn’t figured out what or how to tell Danny in the meantime, but she knew she’d think of something.
“You made it!” Danny announced, seeing her walking up.
“I’m the on-time one, remember?” Andi told him.
“See also: judgmental and one most likely to drink haterade.”
“But also most beautiful and smart,” she corrected. “The haterade makes my skin glow.”
Danny laughed. “Come on in,” he said, gesturing her over with a ticket.
“So you’re going to explain what we’re looking at to me?” she said as they queued in line for wristbands. It was a hot day; she’d been wise to leave her coat and purse at home and just load up her pockets.
“All our childhood, all those cars, and none of them stuck?” he asked, reaching over to tap her head as she ducked.
Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4) Page 24
