by Abigail Owen
Brand caught up to her in less than a frustrating blink, only he didn’t stop her. “You’re going to have to fly.”
Relief trickled through her panic. “Then you’d better shift fast.”
To her shock, he ran to the perch and started the process, taking up more and more of the rock bar as the transformation took hold. She climbed onto his back, and he launched into the air, spiraling down to the first floor and through the large opening to the training room where they’d been before.
Only the steel door to the outside was down now.
“How do we get out?” Kasia tried to not let her desperation show, but it came out in her voice anyway.
Brand turned to face the back wall where a man sat in a glassed-in control room. She couldn’t hear the mental exchange he must’ve had with the guy, but after a moment, the door cranked open, with a heavy clunk, clunk, clunk of massive metal gears turning.
The door couldn’t move fast enough for her. “Go,” she yelled as soon as the door was up. Urgency drove her past the point of fear.
Without question and with a running leap, Brand took to the air, pushing with those strong wings to gain altitude, even as he had to navigate around the twists of the canyon wall until finally they burst upward, above the mountain. From there he tipped his wings to aim them to the south.
Where were the other dragons who’d flown out with Ladon? She couldn’t see any in the air around them. Were they high above? That would make no sense if the threat was what she thought. They’d be on the ground.
“Where are they, Brand?”
“Almost there.”
That’s when she spotted them. Ten blue dragons on the relatively flattened side of a mountain circled something large and black that snapped and snarled. She could make out the ferocious sounds even from above. None of the dragons had gotten close yet, as far as she could tell, giving the creature a wide berth. But she could tell by the way they were swinging their tails, they were working closer with the intention of killing it.
Faster.
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
Wait. She hadn’t aimed that thought. Kasia shook her head. They’d have to figure that out after. “Tell them to stop.”
In her head, she aimed her own thoughts at all the dragons below. “Stop. Leave him alone.”
One of them must’ve gotten through, because the warriors paused; all but the largest indigo-colored dragon turned their gazes upward as Brand spread his wings wide and landed outside the circle they’d formed. He hadn’t even dropped to his forefeet when she hurled herself off him, shooting between the blue dragons gathered to the massive black dog snarling in the center.
“Kasia. No!” Ladon and Brand both boomed, but she ignored them and the pain of their combined voices in her head.
Instead, she rushed the beast, threw her arms around him, and buried her face in his bristly, smoke-scented fur. “Maul!”
A rumble ran through the warriors surrounding her, and she could practically feel the need to kill pouring off them. She lifted her face, grinning and probably looking like a total lunatic. Maul’s hot breath puffed against her hair. He opened his mouth, and every dragon took a step forward, but then he gave her a long slobbery lick up the side of her face. With a tongue as big as her head, she came off soaked and gross, but too happy to see the mutt to chastise him.
Two human-sized shadows fell over her, and Maul pulled back his lips, baring his teeth in a silent growl. Kasia patted him. “It’s okay, Maul. These are friends.”
Understanding her perfectly, the dog moved out of his defensive crouch, standing to his full six feet, and appeared to grin at whoever stood behind her, black tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted, red eyes glowing eerily. Kasia gave his shoulder another pat as she turned and faced both Brand and Ladon who, now human, stared with twin expressions of incredulity.
“You know that’s a hellhound, right?” Brand asked.
Kasia lifted a single eyebrow. “No, Brand. I thought he was just a really big sheepdog.”
Ladon coughed, covering up a laugh. “Is he…yours?”
Kasia shared an amused glance with Maul, who huffed a chuckle, the sound coming out more like a dry cackle. Both Ladon and Brand tensed. In their defense, the cackle came off a tad on the creepy side. Still, seeing the toughest men she knew warily watch the hellhound brought on a bout of giggles she had to choke down. “He’s mine as much as a hellhound can be, I guess. Have you ever encountered one?”
Two negative shakes of the head.
“Hellhounds are warriors who died too soon. They’re reincarnated in this form, forced to remain this way until they complete their unfinished business.” She patted Maul’s neck again. “This one seems to think his business has something to do with my family, but he’s never shown us what.”
“He’s been following us for weeks,” Brand said. “I scented him shortly after leaving the clinic when you stole my car.”
“Awwww…” She gave Maul another hug, and he gently nudged the top of her head with his muzzle. “He sees it as his job to protect me. My mother found him as a pup and brought him home. We thought he was the runt of the litter and abandoned. Though who could abandon you?” She gave the dog a playful rub across the bridge of his nose, and he rumbled deep in his throat.
Brand, as tall as he was, basically looked the hound in the eye. “That’s a runt?”
She shrugged. “I can’t say—I haven’t met any others—but that was our best guess. He tends to do his own thing, leaving for weeks at a time, but he always comes back to me.”
She left out the fact that the night her mother died, she’d teleported Kasia to the hellhound for protection. In Alaska, he’d never left her side, but Kasia had to leave him behind when she went to the doctor. He must’ve decided she’d been gone long enough.
“Shite. She’s a phoenix, and teleports, and has a hellhound. Can we keep her?”
Kasia recognized Duncan’s accent coming from the gigantic beast to her left. The gigantic sky-blue beast.
“You’re awfully pretty as a dragon, Duncan,” she teased.
That shut him up. The dark navy dragon, which she recognized as Asher, snorted a laugh, and she blinked. The Beta had actually laughed.
She turned to Ladon. “Anyway, his name is Maul.”
“Maul?” Brand clarified.
She nodded. “Seemed appropriate.”
Blank stares.
“Remind me not to let you name our children,” Ladon muttered.
Denial too strong to ignore gathered in her heart like a lead weight, and realization that she’d been holding at bay too long finally broke through.
Oh gods. I can’t mate him.
But the specter of High King and the fate of these people and other dragon shifters hung over her head like the blade of a guillotine.
To hide her reaction, she turned to Maul, and he lowered his head so she could scratch him on his favorite spot, behind his neck right in front of the large, leathery hump that sat atop his shoulders. “I can’t believe you found me here,” she murmured.
Taking comfort from her pet and bodyguard didn’t help. What am I going to do?
“I assume you want him to stay with us?” Ladon asked.
She peered back at them. Brand said nothing. Apparently, he’d gone back into shutdown mode, resuming the same closed-off expression he’d worn since arriving.
Kasia ignored him and her dang heart. “Yes. Maul’s a big teddy bear, as long as no one is messing with me.”
“I think we might be out of a job, boys.” Reid’s muttered comment rang in her head. “The bodyguard position is filled.”
And I think I’m out of a home. She needed time to deliberate, to make plans. Only she had no one to talk to. Surrounded by an entire clan, she was still alone. “He can stay in my room.”
“If he can fit down the hall,” Brand said.
She sent him a glare that clearly said, “Butt out if you can’t be helpful.”
Maul gave a tiny rumble of a growl delivering basically the same message, and Brand snapped his mouth shut.
“We should return. How do you suggest we get him down there?” Ladon asked.
“Maul can take care of that on his own. He teleports.” Sort of. He had to see where he was going first, but he had a way to deal with that.
The two men exchanged a glance.
Before they could tell her no, which she could tell they were building up to, she hopped up on the hound’s back, wrapping her fists in his thick fur. “I’ll go with Maul. We’ll follow you, so he can see where he’s going.”
Another manly glance containing a wealth of decision-making that made her want to smack their heads together, then Ladon nodded. He and Brand both backed up and made their shift. Maul watched as the dragons took to the air. Then together she and Maul blinked out and reappeared in a different spot, a cliff at the edge of the mountaintop where he could see the dragons diving below.
Unlike her mother’s or her own version of teleporting, Maul’s was so fast there was no silent break or moment in darkness. Just a flash as your eyes adjusted to a different view.
Another blink and they stood on a ledge halfway down the canyon wall. They teetered on the tinier outcropping as he tracked the dragons’ movements, and Kasia stared down at the river at the bottom of the canyon.
Maybe I should’ve flown back with Brand.
But she didn’t have time to do more than have that one queasy thought before another blink brought them to the platform where she’d landed the day Brand brought her here, where the dragons were all standing, already shifted into their human forms, murmuring among themselves.
They tensed as soon as Kasia and Maul appeared, a few even taking fighting stances, though they slowly eased up as they realized who stood among them. Kasia hopped down, noting that all the fighters cast wary glances at the hellhound at her side.
As well they should. Legends and stories of the mysterious creatures were nothing short of terrifying and typically portended death. Good. She could use another advantage to balance out her side of the scales these days.
“Let’s move inside,” Ladon said.
As they started to walk, it became obvious that Maul was limping.
My visions. How could she have forgotten?
She jerked to a halt and turned to Ladon. “I saw gold and green dragons in the skies.” She’d tell him about Chante later, and the golden scales she held back. What if they blamed Brand?
“What?” he frowned.
“In my visions.”
That got his attention. His hands fisted. “How soon?”
Frustration pinched from the inside. “I don’t know.” She tried to picture it again. “The skies were gray. Not blue like today.”
“How fast do they usually happen?” he snapped.
Again, she felt like a fool with a power that maybe hindered more than helped. “Only the wolves and Maul have been immediate.”
Which brought back the details she’d seen concerning the hellhound. She whirled to face him. “Are you hurt?” she asked the hound. Immediately an image of his leg flashed through her mind—the way she and the hellhound had always communicated.
Hurrying around his side, she hissed through her teeth at the sight of the deep gash oozing blood on his right hind leg. “What did this?”
Another flash of an image, this one of a dragon so pale gold, it appeared almost white, except for a pale yellow around the edges, its scales flashing in the sunlight with blinding brilliance.
She glanced at Ladon and Brand. “A gold dragon.”
Both men went grim, lips pressed together, jaws clenched.
“How do you know?” Ladon asked.
“He shows me images.”
“He shows—” Ladon glanced back and forth between her and the hellhound, as if not quite believing her.
“Where did he attack?” Brand asked Maul directly.
Kasia raised her eyebrows, impressed. Of her sisters, only Skylar braved addressing the dog directly. Meira and Angelika had been too afraid of the whole “look in his eyes, three times spells your doom” superstition, despite Kasia obviously not succumbing to any ill effects.
Unless you counted losing her mother, being caught by dragons, and being forced into choosing one she didn’t love as a mate as ill effects.
Maul answered Brand’s question with a flash of an image of mountains—though not as craggy with rocks like here, and steeper, taller. In the background was a long lake followed by a lush green valley that fell away to the flatter lands beyond.
“I know that location,” Ladon said as Maul projected the same image to both men.
Kasia closed her eyes as a new dread sank into her like poison. “So do I.” That wolf shifter, Bleidd, had told her where to find them if she ever changed her mind.
Angelika.
But she couldn’t tell anyone here.
XIII
Brand scrambled up over the craggy rocks of the mountain, careful to keep his head low, following after Asher, Reid, and Wyot. Of the three, he preferred Wyot. The man kept his mouth shut and didn’t bother Brand any.
After Kasia’s visions, Ladon had doubled the patrols around the mountain as a precaution. It was a good thing he had, because gold dragons had been attacking the Blue Clan’s sentries with increasing frequency.
Ladon had later shared Kasia’s vision about Chante, something she’d told only the king. The jealousy that arose at the realization that she’d trusted Ladon with the info, and not him, had not been one of Brand’s finer moments. Which was ridiculous. The only thing affecting him was the increase in time spent with Ladon’s men.
They peeked over the edge of the ridge they’d skirted to find four men below them, huddled together, talking in low voices. Despite his acute hearing, Brand could catch only parts of their words. The gusting winds over the highland mountains did not help.
“Can’t hear them,” Asher whispered.
“If we get any closer, they’ll scent us,” Reid pointed out.
True. They were pushing the limits as it stood. Brand studied the scenario, working through options in his head. Based on their eyes—varying shades of gold, glittering in the moonlight—the men were all gold dragons. Which gave him an idea.
“Stay here,” he whispered to Wyot.
“Brand.” Reid snagged him by the arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Weeks of getting all chummy with these guys and he was still the mistrusted outsider. Kasia, with her speech about “good guys” and her hellhound, had somehow managed to earn Ladon’s warriors’ trust. But not Brand, despite bringing a phoenix and fighting with them side by side through several skirmishes.
He glanced at the hand on his arm, then back up at Reid, who clenched his teeth but let go.
“I’m going to see if I can get more info from those assholes,” Brand said.
“How?” Asher asked. The Beta, at least, respected Brand’s tactical skills.
Brand pointed to his hair. “By blending in.”
Before they could argue him out of it, he scurried away. Confident his form was blocked from view on the far side of the peak, he shifted then flew over to where the men were still gathered, his enhanced hearing allowing him to pick up their conversation.
The Norwegian lilt to the accent was familiar. Slightly English sounding, but with more R and V sounds mixed in. He’d spoken that way once, but that was over five hundred years ago. Dragons lived a long time, and he’d learned to adapt, to blend in wherever he went.
He landed and shifted back to his human form, hoping the fact that he was gold would keep them from checking the mark on his hand.
; No bullets struck him in the chest, and none of the men shifted to confront him. So far so good.
Keeping his hand out of view, Brand approached with his gaze lowered submissively, not a natural position, but he’d learned long ago that acting weak got you closer to your enemies.
“Brock sent me.” He tossed out Uther’s son’s name with the confidence of a practiced liar. At the same time, he deliberately switched to the more generic, slightly lilting accent he’d acquired as a child. Before Uther. Slipping back into that old way of speaking was like putting on a jacket. Comfortable. Easy. If you were going to trick someone, commit.
Besides, based on the intel they’d gathered lately, Brock was in charge of these patrols. Spies, trying to infiltrate the mountain or take out a few more of Ladon’s warriors, killing the Blue Clan like a slow bleed.
The question was, when was the bigger attack coming? And when would the green dragons get involved?
“I don’t know you,” the shorter, stockier of the men challenged.
Ah. The one who thought he was the boss.
Brand raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know you, either. Your point?”
“I know every warrior under Uther’s command, and I do not know you.”
Shitballs. Time to borrow a past. The healer, Fallon’s, story would work nicely. “I’ve been in the colonies for a while. Part of an enforcer crew over there.”
That at least gave the stocky one pause. “You don’t sound American.”
Brand shrugged. “I can when I want.” He pulled out the inflection just for effect.
Stocky sniggered. “What’re you here for? Did the crew kick you out?”
“I’m here to meet a potential mate.” Yup, borrowing Fallon’s story helped give the lie truth.
That shut the leader up. In the last hundred years, mates seemed to go only to the richest, most loyal, strongest dragons, though the process was supposed to be dictated by the fates.
“I see.” Stocky eyed him with new respect. “Our clan could use new blood. I hope you plan to fuck her hard and get her pregnant quick.”
