And right now was just far too messy for any of it.
It was with great reluctance that he pulled back from her. She followed him, hungry for his lips, but Adam put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back.
“We can’t,” he sighed. The smell of her arousal wafted into his nostrils, and his fires burned even hotter. He stiffened, feeling almost painful in his jeans, but held firm. “Now isn’t the time, and I’m sure that Stephen wouldn’t appreciate having to listen in.”
Karey still pressed against his hands. Her brow furrowed as she stared up at him. “But now might be the only chance we get. If we’re going after my father, then… well. I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up dead. I mean, I hope not but…” She pulled away from him as her eyes widened. Her arms wrapped around her waist and she suddenly shook her head. “No. No, we can’t do this. I might have been part of the experiments and the Pack, but you never were! It’s not fair for you to get hurt or die over this. It’s not your fault.”
Adam’s brow furrowed. “Karey, it’s not about whose fault this is.”
“But it’s not fair for you to—”
“Karey.” He cut her off and grasped her hands in his because he could see that she was spiraling. He held onto her tightly. “Breathe with me. Slow breath in, slow breath out.”
She stared at his lips, mimicking his breathing. Adam used the techniques that had been taught to him when he was having so many troubles keeping himself calm after his near-death experience. Even now, the scar on his neck seemed to burn. For all of Karey’s terror at taking him into the Pack’s territory and him facing death, he had the same fears for her. Regardless of what she had done in her past, she didn’t deserve to die for it. If it wasn’t for the fact that he knew this was her only chance at freedom—and to free herself from the guilt that would destroy her—he never would have allowed her to go along with it.
Once she was physically settled again, Adam kissed her fingers. “I know this is frightening. But look at it this way. I have training for this. I have experience. If either of us is going to die doing this, it’s not going to be me.” Uncertainty hit him in the pit of the stomach. “Which… maybe it’d be best if you stayed here and—”
“No.” She inhaled shakily and shook her head. “I’m not letting you take that risk alone. So. Let’s plan on how to do this thing.”
Adam resisted the urge to kiss her as he grinned. She was so strong. She didn’t even know how strong. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
A sudden pounding on the basement door made them both jump. Soon, Stephen’s voice came through it. “Let me out of here, Adam! You can’t go flying off to the middle of Pack territory with the Alpha’s daughter! Are you crazy? She’s going to hand you over to her father.”
Adam glared at the door. “I didn’t ask you, Stephen. I trust her.”
Another, more solid pounding. Was he kicking the door now too? “Adam!”
“I just gave him the injection,” Adam murmured. “How long before his fires return and he gets out?”
“Four hours, thereabouts. At least, that was how it was for me. I don’t know if him being a natural dragon will change it.” Karey chewed her lip. “We can’t give him another dose; I don’t know what that would do to him. But we have at least twelve hours before he can fly again.”
Adam nodded once. “And how far is the place where your father is waiting for your return?”
“Four.”
Adam grabbed a chair and stuck it under the door handle, to make it a little more difficult for him to get out once his fires had returned. “Then we better get going. Time for planning later.”
***
Evading the Academy and the Pack both was easier this time, when nobody was expecting Adam and Karey to fly into the heart of Pack territory—except Stephen, but there was nobody he could tell. The weather was harsh and stormy, perfect to keep undercover. With the flames in Karey’s system and her own wings, she was able to fly with him and stay warm in the rainy weather.
They landed near a cave that Karey’s mother used to take her to when she was a child and her father’s abuse became too much for them. It was small and cramped for two adults, but they hunkered down inside, pressed tightly to one another. With the rain dripping down outside and the dampness working its way into the cave, Adam was glad for her closeness.
Even though as she lay in his arms, he started thinking about how easy it would be to remove their clothes and make love, limited space or not. It took all his strength not to start kissing the back of her neck. Especially since, as only a hybrid dragon, she didn’t have the dragon trick of shifting with her clothes. She’d had to undress before shifting and had been naked when they landed.
The thought of her naked body drove him crazy. Almost crazy enough that he couldn’t think clearly to make their plan.
“I don’t know how I’ll get blockers into his system,” Karey murmured when he suggested it. “They don’t work if ingested, you have to give them by needle. I don’t know how I can get close enough to inject him without him or one of his Betas killing me on the spot. He carries his gun with him everywhere.”
Adam nodded, curling her hair around his fingers. “Can you get him to come out here in the woods alone?”
“No. Never. If I told him I wanted to talk to him alone, he’d tell me I wasn’t worth that sort of time and put me in the cellar.”
Adam frowned. “What if I snuck into the cellar and then you got him angry, so he took you there? If you had a blocker with you then, I could disarm him while you injected him. Then we could get him back to the Academy.”
“That… might work.”
“Alright. Then we wait until night. If you can get me to where the cellar is, then I can hide while you get everything else in order.” His arms wrapped around her waist as he stared into her eyes. Uncertainly pattered against his ribs. If this went bad, then it would go really bad. Was he ready to face the responsibility of what that would be?
His arms tightened around Karey. He wanted to draw her in for a kiss but if he did that, he knew that he’d be distracted. And he couldn’t let himself end up like that. So he turned slightly, pressing himself into the ground rather than her, so she wouldn’t feel his desire, and sighed.
“Just remember, if this goes wrong, I want you to get out. Don’t try to stay for me. Do what you have to in order to protect yourself.”
Karey’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, a twig cracked.
Adam’s head jerked up. He smacked it against the ceiling of the cave as Karey let out a sharp gasp.
“Well, well.” An amused voice spoke as a dozen wolves appeared out of the forest. Many of them growled, hackles raised and fur standing on edge. Several others were in human form, guns in hand and pointed at the cave. “When I told you to go and get yourself pregnant, Karey, I didn’t expect that you’d bring the whole dragon back to me.”
Adam held Karey a little tighter. A growl built in his throat.
And then she was pulling away. Adam yelped as Karey slipped out of his arms and scrambled from the cave. He turned, pushing himself up, but there was no room. A gun pressed into his forehead as Karey went to stand beside the Alpha. Her expression was peculiarly blank as she looked up at her father.
“The situation wasn’t what I expected. He’d abducted another member of the Blaze Ops, and it was only a matter of time before the Academy came after us.”
His heart froze in his chest, his fires burning so low he couldn’t feel them. The cold radiated from his heart, moving down his spine and through his arm. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. Karey had wanted to get away from her Father. She wanted to make up for what she had done in the past.
She hadn’t brought him back here so that he could be the one to be experimented on. She hadn’t betrayed him! She couldn’t have.
“Although I tried to get him to sleep with me,” she continued, confirming every suspicion with every w
ord she spoke, “but he was too busy thinking about how to bring you in. So, I decided this was the next best thing.” Her head bent and her shoulders slumped even as Adam tried to deny what he was hearing. “I’m sorry for not being able to do as you told me to.”
“It’s not what I wanted, no,” the Alpha agreed as he put a hand on her shoulder. “But it might work out better this way. Although I do wish you had told me you were incapable of following orders before I wasted all that money on fertility treatments for you.”
Fertility treatments?
Adam felt his strength leaving him. Even if he had the room to shift, even if he could pull his fires up to defend himself, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to. The shock, the betrayal, flowed so thick through his blood that it weighed him down. He didn’t know what to think. How could Karey do this?
But oh, it made so much sense. How she had gotten away again. She said that the Alpha had let her go to set a trap. And she had. She had set a perfect trap for him. The silken threads woven by her tears had wound around his wrists, binding him with every smile. And he didn’t even know what was happening. And when she started kissing him?
Fertility treatments. She’d been trying to get pregnant. And if it wasn’t for Stephen, it would have worked. He would have made love with her. They would have found someplace to stay where they could develop a proper plan, and he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. Those feelings he had convinced himself were love… they would have betrayed him, and he’d have seen Karey pregnant with his child.
And then she’d take that child back to the Pack. Back to her Father. Would she have brought him along, too, if that were the case?
“Come along, then, Dragon.” The Alpha crouched and smiled into his face while the gun still pressed to his forehead. “Will you submit to being my prisoner or shall you die here and let me cut up your body to learn more about how a dragon works?”
Adam snarled, smoke curling from his nostrils.
“You’ll be given all the women you want, should you submit,” the Alpha added. “I do so want little dragons running around. But if you don’t submit, I’ll find plenty of use for you anyway. How do you think your teammates will feel when they open a package from you only to find your severed head inside?”
As much as Adam wanted to shoot a jet of fire and take off the Alpha’s head, that was too much to think about. He knew how much it had frightened and hurt the Blaze Ops when they thought he was dead before. And then again, how guilty Stephen felt when he thought he’d killed him. How much worse would this be for him?
“Fine,” he ground out. “I’ll submit. But I will see you brought to justice. You and your daughter.”
The Alpha only laughed. He gestured at his men, who dragged Adam from the cave and stuck him with a needle. And as the Alpha walked away, Karey walked with him, not looking back even once.
Chapter Twenty-Three
What the hell had just happened? Karey’s hands shook, her palms sweaty, as she followed her father into his office. She took her usual spot beside the door, leaning against the wall while her father chuckled. He sat at his desk while the Betas streamed in behind him. A few of them gave her appraising looks. One of them ran his gaze down the length of her body and let out a chuckle.
Her stomach twisted sickeningly, and she wanted to press herself right through the wall. All her life she wanted to be less invisible but not like this. What had happened? She couldn’t even remember the words she had spoken. Just that she had betrayed Adam.
He told her to do what she needed to survive. But he didn’t mean this. He couldn’t have meant this.
But she knew where he’d be. If she was still invisible enough, she could get him out.
The question was, how had her father known they were coming? Nobody knew except for her and Adam. There was no way Stephen could have gotten out of Fort Stinky Butt by now, so he was above suspicion. Adam wouldn’t have told, and she certainly didn’t, either. Had her father planted some sort of tracking device on her?
But if he had, why didn’t he simply kill her or put her in the cells with Adam? Did he still think she’d be of use to him? Or was he planning something really big to punish her? Make her an example to the whole Pack?
“Well,” her father said gleefully as he rubbed his hands together. “We have yet another dragon. This time, I don’t intend to lose him. Karey, you will continue to work at him. I recognized the way he was looking at you. It was the same way I felt about your mother. Unworthy of an Alpha and yet there is nothing that one can do when you’ve met your fated mate.”
Surprise rippled through her. Her mouth dropped open, and she let out a protesting squeak before she could stop herself.
“Fated mates?” the Beta that had given her the eye frowned. “A dragon, fated mates with an Omega?”
“A Chi,” the Alpha corrected. “And my daughter. There is strength in her genes, even if her mother weakened her blood. Perhaps the fires of the dragon brought that strength forward. In any case, I saw the signs. It won’t be long until he abandons everything for her. It’s just the way it works with fated mates.” He contemplated her for a moment before shaking his head. “It’s how I was brought into the Pack, after all. And perhaps that is the reason she was so weak, so that she could lower his guards enough for the fated mating to occur.”
Karey kept her head down. Her hands clenched at her sides, and she wanted to scream at them all that it wasn’t what was happening. She wanted to strike the smug smile off her father’s face. She and Adam weren’t fated mates! There was no way a man like him would want to be with a girl like her.
But fated mates isn’t about what you want. It’s about who you belong to.
She shoved the thoughts down. The Betas all laughed with each other. Her cheeks burned at the comments they made, about her and about Adam both. She wanted to flee but didn’t know if she was allowed. It soon became too much, though, and she stepped toward the door.
“Karey.” Her father’s voice cracked sharply in the air.
Unwillingly, she looked at him.
“Go get us some coffee.”
“Yes, Father.”
Karey slipped out of the room, trembling. She leaned against the wall, fighting tears of humiliation. So even when she had done something right, she was still mocked? Or was this all a big ploy? What did her father have to gain by acting like she hadn’t betrayed him if he knew she had? Did he think that she’d just fall back into her old patterns, to be the weak, shrinking, silent daughter that he hated?
She rubbed the tears away as she pushed herself off the wall. She’d get Adam out of here and then he’d see. Then he’d know that she wasn’t going to be his doormat anymore.
But…
As she was making the coffee, waiting for it to start percolating, she stared at the mugs she’d gathered for the meeting. But since she was here, she was in the perfect position to actually do more. Adam told her to do what she had to in order to protect herself… but what was the point of living if she was going to live in fear? If she was going to continue standing by while others were hurt?
If Adam was killed because of her?
Her heart leapt to her throat, and her palms grew even more clammy. Her head spun as she thought about the hasty plan that had popped into her head. She had always shrunk back from the blood and death that happened here. It was rare that subjects were actually killed, but sometimes they just put up too much of a fight.
How could she be free of the blood already on her hands? Why should she be worried about adding the blood of people who were causing that pain and suffering and thinking that it didn’t matter because they thought themselves better than the people they hurt? Because there was no other reason for why they did what they did. Her father beat her and her mother because he decided they were weak. He experimented on humans because he thought they didn’t deserve to live. He experimented on shifters because he thought he deserved better than them.
Her heart slammed into her r
ibs, but she didn’t let herself doubt. If her father suspected her of disloyalty, all this would do was confirm his suspicions. He’d kill her. But if he didn’t? If this did work, then she would be breaking the Pack apart, so that nobody else would have to be subjected to the cruelty that happened here.
The Academy could win once and for all.
And that was worth the risk.
She closed her eyes, briefly sending thoughts toward Adam that she knew he’d never hear. If this worked, she might actually have a chance to get him out of here. And if this worked, they might both die anyway.
No more doubts.
Moving quickly, her breathing shallow and her heart in her throat, Karey searched the kitchen cupboards. There, under the sink, was what she wanted. The arsenic was kept there as rat poison. Officially, at least. Karey had seen too many cases of suspicious deaths to think that was all her father used it for, though.
She had never thought about using it on him except in her darkest moments, and she’d always banished those thoughts to the back of her mind. Now, though… She held her breath as she added the arsenic to the coffee pot. How much was needed to kill them all? Was that enough or did she need more? She doubled the amount just to be safe and mixed it into the coffee until it was all dissolved.
The acrid smell of coffee wafted up to her nose. She shoved the arsenic back under the sink, put milk, cream, sugar and a vanilla shot on the tray and carried it back to where her father and his Betas were discussing their new plans to kill Maura Rizzoli. Karey poured the coffee, fixing each mug the way they liked it. When she handed her father his mug, he smiled.
“Thank you, Karey.”
It was the first time he’d ever thanked her, and tears came unexpectedly to her eyes. She smoothed her shirt, trying not to show the trembling of her hands. “You’re welcome, Father. May I go? I’m very tired. And if you still want me to… get with child by Adam, I will have to think of what I can tell him so that he’ll trust me.”
Dragon's Prisoner: A Curvy Girl Military Romance (Dragon Blaze Ops Book 4) Page 14
