by Abigail Owen
Thank the fates for a moonless night.
…
Kasia hummed along to another country song—the only station she could get out here in the middle of nowhere, though it didn’t come in quite right, going fuzzy on her every now and then, but she needed the noise to help her stay awake. The Montana border was still hours away, but she was making decent time despite doubling back a few times and changing directions.
The headlights lit up the patch of road in front of her, the highway only a two-lane road this far away from larger cities. At this early hour, long before dawn broke, she’d passed hardly a soul. If she could make it to Bozeman, she’d drop this car and borrow another, but that was hours of driving ahead of her.
The only warning she got that she was being followed was the flick of a shadow in the headlights. Before she could react, a massive golden dragon slammed down on the road in front of her about half a mile out. She almost expected the ground to shake with the force, but the act was near silent.
Dammit.
She gritted her teeth and tightened her hands on the wheel. Rather than stop, Kasia hit the gas, pushing the car to go faster. He wasn’t taking her without a fight, that was for damn sure.
The dragon’s deep golden scales glittered in the oncoming headlights. He didn’t budge. But he did growl, his tail slashing back and forth.
“Move, you scaly bastard,” she muttered.
But she didn’t let up on the pedal.
He lowered his head and let loose a growl of warning, which she responded to by stomping harder on the gas.
“Get out of the way!”
She had no intention of playing chicken. If he didn’t, she’d ram this car down his fire-breathing throat. The hell with it. She didn’t want to go back to that cabin in Alaska anyway. Maul would miss her, but he’d be the only one.
Only the dragon didn’t move. Okay, then. Kasia braced for impact.
At the moment she should’ve slammed into him, the beast heaved himself into the air, and she zoomed past, fishtailing underneath him from the force of the wind his wings caused.
He must’ve backed up, because he landed on the road in front of her again.
“You want another go, you oversized flying iguana?” she shouted, and bore down on him.
And again, he hopped out of her way only to land in her path.
Damn. Kasia held in a scream of fear-tinged frustration. They could keep this up all night, getting them nowhere fast. He wasn’t going to let her go.
With a growl of aggravation, though not defeat, Kasia stomped on the brakes. The tires squealed in protest, and the unpleasant odor of burning rubber followed her as she skidded the car to a stop broadside of the dragon, only a few feet away. If she rolled down her window, she could reach out and touch him.
The terrifying creature moved around the car, his movements more of a glide, like golden water flowing around her. He lowered his head to gaze in at her with an eye the size of her entire thigh. He snorted, and smoke trailed from his nostrils as he glared at her.
Please let this be Brand, and not some other phoenix-stealing dragon shifter.
Kasia glared back but raised her hands off the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender. He backed up, and she slowly exited the car, grimacing a bit as she straightened her knees, the scrapes from her landing earlier having stiffened up.
Once outside, she raised her gaze up, way up, as the dragon lifted his head. Was she completely nuts to think he was glorious? Impressively large—at least forty feet high—the sheen of his scales gave him a metallic appearance, as though hewn from spun gold. Even so, she could make out the definition of his muscles underneath. Hell, even his muscles had muscles. Deadly-looking spikes rose from his head, like a crest, meeting at the back of his neck. They stood out down the length of his spine to the tip of his tail, which sported larger spikes, like a mace.
Her mother had told them all sorts of facts and stories about dragon shifters. She’d conveniently left out how sexy and powerful they could be in this form.
As that thought registered, Kasia gave herself a mental slap. What was she doing drooling over this asshole who’d hunted her down?
It’s official. I’ve lost my mind.
“Brand?” she asked, needing to know.
He didn’t move or make a sound, staring at her long and hard, muscles trembling as if he was not quite in control himself…or holding himself back.
Kasia raised her eyebrows, then opened her mouth to ask again, only a subtle change in his form caught her attention. It took another few moments of staring before she realized he was shifting.
No bones crunching or grunting. No sound whatsoever. No naked skin, either, as he slowly reformed into a fully clothed man, though she had no idea where the garments came from. They appeared to flow out of him, along with a backpack, as he shrank to his human size in a silent rush. Limbs shifted positions and proportion, spine straightened to stand on two legs rather than four, scales disappeared, and wings tucked into his back, almost like they were absorbed into him.
She let out a puff of relief. Definitely Brand.
Then she caught the hard glint in his eyes and revised that thought. Maybe relief was the wrong sentiment; perhaps dread would’ve been a better choice. Kasia lifted her chin, matching him glare for glare as he stalked toward her, only to give in at the last moment, taking a small step back, brought up short by the car behind her.
Brand didn’t stop when he got to her, instead invading her space. He leaned one hand against the car and stared down at her. Kasia held her breath and tried not to register the heat of his body close to hers or the amber and obsidian flecks that graced the depths of those tawny eyes. Eyes narrowed at her in smoldering anger. If she hadn’t seen him in her visions, she would’ve been nervous that he’d shake her or something, his gaze had gone so savage.
Kasia waited, unblinking, for his next move.
“Get in,” he growled. His voice was lower, smokier. Was that from his shift? And why was she noticing that inconsequential detail right now?
Frustration—with herself for her reactions as well as getting caught—surged back to the fore, joining the dread that refused to dissipate. She had no choice but to follow his instructions. It’s not like she could outrun him. She’d just have to outthink him and escape. Again. Only better.
Followed by his unfaltering stare, Kasia scooted along the car, away from his body, then moved around to the passenger side and got in.
Brand took the driver’s seat in total silence. After a year of it, Kasia wasn’t a fan of silence, but she didn’t break it. He sat there for a long moment, running his hands over the steering wheel, almost in a caress.
Realization struck. No way. She couldn’t have. “I took your car?”
His jaw hardened. “You did.”
Kasia grimaced. Of course she did. Because apparently the fates had it in for her. “At least I don’t have to worry about returning it now,” she quipped, though he didn’t strike her as the type to appreciate her “look on the bright side” comment.
He wasn’t. “I suggest you don’t talk to me for a while.”
He didn’t even glance her way. Instead he put the car in drive, turned it to head in the direction she’d just come from, and started them back on the road.
She ignored the no talking edict. Too much needed to be said. “Where are you taking me?”
“Away from here. Airport.”
Airport? Hell no. “You know what I am?”
He flicked her a brief, unreadable glance. “Do you?”
Right. All those lies at the clinic. “Yes.”
His hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, knuckles showing white, even in the dim interior lights of the dash. “I do, too.”
So much for her cover story. Back to that airport issue. “Are you going to try to mate me?�
�
Would he be that stupid? Or did he assume mating a phoenix worked the same as mating a human? Mating a human had its own level of danger, resulting in the woman’s highly gruesome death if she wasn’t destined to be the dragon’s mate, not to mention the dragon losing part of himself as punishment. Mating a phoenix, however, added a whole extra layer of complication. If she didn’t choose him, the dragon was the one consumed by the flames, not the phoenix.
Did Brand know that?
“No. I’m not going to mate you.”
So not that stupid. “Then why the airport?”
“Because dangerous things walk the earth. Things that would love to capture a phoenix. The sooner I get you to a clan, the better.”
That word—what she was—hung in the air between them. Like a gauntlet thrown down. Like a challenge. Like an unbreachable wall.
Kasia frowned as she processed his statement but also the subtle shift in his tone. Was he…worried about her? “Where are you taking me?”
“Scotland. To a man named Ladon Ormarr.”
Ormarr. That wasn’t one of the names her mother had listed as a line of kings, was it? Kasia tried to pull the memory from her mind but couldn’t quite reach it. “Which clan does he rule?”
Another flick of a glance. “Blue.”
Kasia slumped down in her seat. So Brand was taking her to a dragon king. “Is he mated?”
“Not yet.” Now his tone carried an edge of darkness.
“I see,” she replied quietly.
Less than a year on her own, and already she was to be slaved out to the first dragon king to find her. At least Brand wasn’t taking her to Pytheios. She could be grateful for that small mercy. But who was to say that this Ladon guy was any better?
Can’t be worse.
She hoped.
Wait. She bit her lip. “What if I have a vision on our way there? They’re coming on faster lately. I might crash the plane.”
He gave an unconcerned shrug. “I can control the fire if one comes on. Just give me warning so I can get you somewhere out of sight.”
On an airplane? Sure. Easy. And what about the pain? The passengers would hear her screams, no matter how hard she tried to keep them in.
Not that she wasn’t going to try to get out of this before they were airborne.
Kasia turned her head toward her window, staring out into the inky darkness, but not seeing. A strange disenchantment threaded its way through the alarm and anxiety sitting in her stomach like giant boulders. Silence, her old enemy, settled between them, heavy and still.
After a while, she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, but used the time afforded her to tick over different plans to escape. First, she needed to figure out how he’d tracked her down so fast, so she’d know how to fool him next time. She’d wait and observe.
For now.
III
After hours in the car, they’d bypassed Cheyenne and driven to Denver, leaving Brand’s car in the airport parking lot. Maybe he’d get it later? They’d arrived in time to hop a plane to Barcelona, stopping through Toronto on the way.
Dragons couldn’t fly across oceans. Her mother had always appreciated that fact. Apparently the farthest they could fly before they needed to land, rest, and feed was about two hundred miles, which didn’t quite allow them to island-hop the Atlantic.
Kasia suspected there was no way he would’ve risked taking her across Alaska to Russia where, last she heard, Volos was King of the White Dragon Clan. According to her mother, Pytheios controlled Volos. If Brand was trying to get her to Ladon, he couldn’t risk another king snatching her away.
The only good news so far was that she hadn’t had a vision. They’d left at seven in the morning and had arrived, vision- and plane crash-free, at nine in the morning local time, and despite his assurances that he could control her fire if one had come on, she’d been a bundle of nerves the entire flight, leaving her exhausted.
But did they stop then? Nope. When he couldn’t get a flight to London that day, Brand had hustled her to the airport parking lot. She stopped dead as he approached a familiar vehicle.
“Is that…?”
The Hemi Cuda sat shining in the sun.
His lips tipped up in a grin. “A demon owed me a favor. It’s enchanted to show up wherever I need it.”
She had to close her mouth, which hung open. “Handy trick. Why didn’t you just summon it, or whatever you do, when I stole it?”
He dumped his duffel and her backpack in the trunk. “It doesn’t work like that. I can summon it only when it’s parked, turned off, and doesn’t have anyone inside it.” Another rare grin had her tummy fluttering in response. “I didn’t want the demon able to hijack me along with the car.”
Because you had to watch out for those sneaky demons. Hysteria wanted to bubble out of her in a laugh, but she held it back. “Good thinking.”
She shut up after that.
When they drove over the Pyrenees, she hadn’t missed how tense Brand had gotten in the mountains, but he didn’t say a word.
He’d relaxed more once they left those peaks behind, making their way across France, heading for the Chunnel. The man was a machine.
Kasia stared outside her car window and tried not to let the combination of weariness and nerves make her sound whiny. “How much longer?”
He didn’t even spare her a glance. “Not long. I don’t want to be on the road in the dark if we can avoid it.”
“Plus, sleep and food are always good ideas,” she muttered.
Evil things came out to eat you at night. Even her mother had taught them that. Kasia had ignored that edict in order to escape from Brand, which turned out to be an exercise in futility. She knew they were damn lucky to make it this far. That didn’t make her any less grumpy.
After several turns, taking them west of Paris, and another hour of driving, the lights of a small town glowed white on the horizon. The creak of the leather on the steering wheel brought her gaze to Brand’s hands. He was white-knuckling that wheel again, or at least his version of it.
“Something got you worried?” she asked.
His chest rose and fell on a breath, but he said nothing.
“Because you’re holding that wheel like you want to strangle it. What’d it ever do to you, anyway?”
Immediately, his hands loosened up. “I don’t like this.”
“What? Slaving me out to your king?” she asked. “Me neither. Let’s part ways now.”
Brand ignored her, staying eerily silent the rest of the way to the small town, eyes darting from side to side. He didn’t speak even when a questionable-looking motel came into view—run-down, trashed out, neon sign not even attempting to blink, and mostly uninhabited based on the lack of cars gracing the small lot.
Nor did he speak as they parked, grabbed their bags, and checked in. Kasia didn’t bother to protest the single room he procured. No point in beating her head against an immovable object. She’d only give herself a headache. After moving the car to outside their door, they finally settled in.
Kind of.
Kasia plopped down on the foot of one of the double beds with threadbare covers and watched as Brand prowled the room, checking every nook and cranny. Not that there was much to scope out. She didn’t say anything, though, because she’d be doing those checks herself were he not here.
His presence filled the room, crowding her, putting her on edge. She hadn’t been able to escape him for going on thirty-plus hours.
“Is there a specific something you’re concerned about finding us?” she prodded when he went to the window and cracked the curtain to stare out into the night for the sixth time.
He kept his focus outward. “Not specific, no.”
“Just any garden-variety monster?”
That caught his attention, and he glanced at where
she sat. “We’re not monsters, Kasia.”
She snorted inelegantly. “Wrong. I grew up on terrifying stories of what hunted me.”
Brand let the curtain slide back in place and gave her a hard stare. “You don’t look terrified.”
She raised a single eyebrow. “I’m not exactly a damsel who faints at the first hint of danger.”
“Good to know.”
Was that a quirk of a smile lifting one side of his mouth? No, she had to be wrong.
He crossed to stand in front of her and leaned a hip against the dresser, on top of which sat the silent, boxy TV from the 1990s. He considered her for several long, uncomfortable moments, during which she did her best to stare steadily back without blinking or dropping her gaze. Hard to do when that look, even when impersonal, heated up parts of her that made her want to squirm.
Allowing herself those fantasies before she met him was messing with her mind way too much. No more of that in the future.
“What kinds of monsters?” he asked.
It took her a second to figure out what he was asking. She shrugged. “All kinds. But dragons are the worst.”
“Who says?”
“My mother.” She glanced down at her feet. “Your kind killed her and her mother.”
“A dragon killed two phoenixes?”
If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was pissed.
She hitched a shoulder. “Red dragon. Big guy. Named Pytheios, I believe. Ring a bell?”
“You’re saying the High King killed a phoenix.” Skepticism laced his voice.
Kasia snorted her derision. “As I understand it, he’s not truly the High King without a phoenix for a mate.”
“Apparently with no phoenixes around, he was the only option.” Brand didn’t blink or move, but his eyes went from molten gold to flat tawny yellow. She had been right. He was pissed. “Rumor had it that the last phoenix mated the wrong man and they both died during the process,” he said.
A sharp ache took up residence in her heart. Heavens, dragons had gotten that so wrong. “No,” she insisted. “My parents mated, though the bond hadn’t solidified.”
