Dragon Her Back

by Susannah Scott

  Li bowed his head, as if in regret, but Darius saw no genuine disappointment.

  “If the king would deny our inclusion,” Li said. “I would simply take my mate and go, never to bother you again.”

  It was his real plan, Darius realized. They didn’t want to be a part of the kingdom. He likely didn’t even care if Darius lived or died, he just wanted Mei.

  “My king, I would talk—”

  Alec shook his head. “None of this will be decided tonight.”

  “She did nothing wrong,” he said, stepping forward to defend Mei again, not sure in his own mind if she deserved it.

  “She did something, ice dragon,” Alec replied quietly so that only those closest to him could hear.

  “She is a treacherous mate.” Li shook his head as if disappointed by this obvious truth.

  Alec motioned to Leo. “Take Darius to a holding room and the water dragons as well. Separate them all for safekeeping. Find Mei and bring her to me.”

  Alec’s men moved fast, and Darius felt himself manacled behind his back by a stern looking Leo, who pushed him toward the roof exit. His only real choice to escape would be to start an all-out fight.

  “I know this is a bit of a shock,” Alec addressed the crowd in a loud voice. “I’ll deliberate on this tomorrow. Tonight we dance.” With that, the music began again as if the interruption had never happened.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Thank you for meeting me,” Mei said to Scott.

  She had taken Lana’s advice and used her phone to call Scott. They sat at a downtown dive restaurant of dubious ethnicity. Both had on ball caps and kept their voices low. It was six in the morning on Sunday. She’d hidden in Darius’s office at Lana’s club overnight, waiting for morning. She hadn’t slept, too worried about what was happening at the casino with Darius, and amped up waiting for Li and his thugs to appear and snatch her away.

  “Darius said to tell you not to return to the casino.” Scott rattled the ice on the bottom of his soft drink, as if he could make the plastic cup refill.

  “What does he expect me to do, sit on my hands while they hold him and order his death?” Anxiety twisted her gut. She had to get to Darius and explain, and save him from the King’s wrath. Leaving Vegas without him wasn’t an option.

  “All I know is he said for me to tell you to stay away.”

  Stay away. Did he mean from him—or the situation?

  Scott said nothing else and would hardly meet her gaze across the scuffed table.

  “Why can’t I reach him with mind speak?” she asked.

  Was this a further sign of his loss of faith in her? He could be deliberately shutting her out, cutting her off. The pain and shame of her actions meshed with her anxiety into a ball of pain in the pit of her stomach.

  “He’s in one of the veiled holding cells, so you won’t be able to reach him.” Scott shifted his eyes downward, and she knew he wasn’t telling her all of it.

  She grabbed his hand. “Is he hurt?”

  Scott disengaged himself and pulled his lips together tight. “I think he dove under the lake water.” His voice was incredulous. “He’s depleted and in rough physical shape.”

  Mei swallowed before she could talk. “This is all my fault. I brought this on him. I brought these monsters on everyone.”

  “Yep.” Scott nodded in unfiltered agreement. “Are you really a water dragon?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head as if not knowing what to think about that. The revulsion and distrust she saw on his face had her sitting back against the bench seat protectively. This was what she would have to deal with: censor and judgment from her closet friends and allies.

  Would Jane and Tee turn on her, too?

  “I’m a dragon just like you. I’m the same person I was three days ago when this all started with that damn fax.”

  “It’s just that…” Scott looked at her curiously. “We’ve been taught to hate your kind from the moment we’re born. I don’t know how this can end well for you.”

  “You’re worried about me?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m worried about Darius. He put his neck on the line for you, and it looks like he might get it cut off. ”

  Mei blinked against her tears.

  Scott reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an oversized envelope. He slid it across the table. “There’s a mask in there that will change your features so facial recog won’t pick you up, and a key card that will get you in to see him.” He paused before continuing. “The key card will only work once.”

  “You don’t trust me?” She suspected it, but the limited entry key confirmed it.

  “I don’t.” Scott met her gaze, unapologetically. “I’m doing this for him.”

  Mei slowly slid the envelope across the table to her side. “Thank you.”

  “I just know that if my mate betrayed me,” his words took on a hard edge, “I would want to hear why.”

  Scott looked at her expectantly, but the “why” of it was something she still didn’t know how to put in to words. “Do you think he’ll forgive me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged and scooted to the edge of the bench to leave. “For all his hard ass-ness, he is loyal to his friends, and he expects the same in return.”

  “I know.” Mei nodded.

  “Don’t call me again,” Scott said as he left. “I have my own family to protect.”

  After a quick stop by the Sterling Club to change, Mei strolled into the casino lobby in a mermaid getup she borrowed from one of Lana’s girls. She’d never worn more revealing clothes in her life, but the clam shell top, mermaid-scaled green skirt, and purple wig did wonders for keeping everyone from looking at her face. The sunglasses and mask Scott had brought helped, too.

  She sailed past the doorman, who covered his smile and averted his eyes respectfully. She knew him. Rick was his name, but she doubted he would remember anything about her except the bounce in her step.

  Her heart pounded loudly in her ears, and she turned her face away from all the lobby security cameras. The mask was thin and translucent at the edges, so it blended to her face, eyes, and mouth almost seamlessly, making her look like a dark-eyed Caucasian vamp.

  When she’d applied it at the club, she’d had to look away from the disconcerting vision of herself in the mirror. Yet another mask—this one purposefully applied. It jarred on a level she didn’t have time to examine.

  As she walked through the Crown Jewel lobby, she flicked a hotel room card in her hand, so despite her getup, it would be apparent she had a reason to be there. She sauntered to the elevator bay as if she had all the time in the world.

  At the elevator doors, she pretended to read a nonexistent phone in her empty hand. Then she reapplied her magenta lipstick until she sensed the presence of another dragon pair. They looked sideways at her, and with a small nod, acknowledged their kinship.

  The man pushed the up button, and in his bent posture, she detected a slight smell of ash lingering on his human skin. Fire dragons.

  She ducked in the elevator with them, with a sideways smile.

  “Would you mind?” She affected a helpless damsel tone, all the while keeping her face away from the elevator camera. The couple gave her an assessing side-glance before the woman inserted her dragon key card in the tiny slot under the regular floor buttons.

  The elevator sprung upward on well-oiled bearings, seeming to mimic her jumping heart.

  On the top floor, Mei cut through the common room to the bathroom to regroup. She bent double in a stall, trying to control the panic screaming up her spinal column like a parading march of fire ants.

  Darius. She reached for him with mind speak, but just as before, the call went into the void that seemed to surround her like a padded room in an asylum.

  Two women entered the bathroom, chattering. They stopped at the sinks, then rifled through their bags. Mei peeked through the slit in the stall door to see them primping with makeup
at the mirror.

  “They say the water dragons will leave if the king turns her over.”

  Mei listened with interest to their conversation, knowing it was about her.

  “He should do it,” the second woman said.

  They first nodded in agreement. “Poor Darius. Such a handsome man to be mated to such a treacherous creature.”

  Poor Darius, indeed.

  Mei shook off the hurtful assessment, and when the women exited the bathroom, she got down to business. In her oversized purse was the next borrowed disguise from Lana’s place: the naughty lab assistant. She pulled out a blond, ponytailed wig, nerdy black glasses, white lab coat, and official looking specimen tubes. She fastened the coat over her mermaid outfit, exchanged the glasses and wigs, and put the glass tubes in her front pockets.

  After stashing her purse in the diaper changing station, she slipped from her stall and stopped in front of the mirror. She smoothed her new blond wig and adjusted her nerd glasses, all the while avoiding her eyes. She didn’t want to confront the fear she knew she would see there.

  She knew from her aborted attempts to flee the islands that too much thought, too much introspection, was crippling. When she’d finally broken away from Li, it had been with a beautiful sunrise, and with no thought, just action.

  She’d just left.

  Leapt into the air and kept going.

  That’s what she was going to do now to reach Darius.

  Keep going.

  No matter how afraid she was. No matter the consequences. Nothing would stop her from getting to him. Not even her own recriminations and fear.

  When she was certain she wouldn’t be recognized, she pulled the tubes from her pocket and left the bathroom. She rotated the empty blood-vials in her hand and kept her head down as she moved through the dragons’ common area.Her pulse pounded so loudly in her ears, she didn’t hear the excited conversations around her.

  At the hallway to the security center, she paused and assessed the corridor like the gauntlet it was. Her crazy pulse throbbed below her chin at the juncture of her ear. Too quick and too frenzied, making her feel light headed, as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in the casino.

  One, two… She walked forward, counting her tight-rope mimicking steps toward the security center. Nine, ten… A group leaving through the center’s glass door gave her a quick glance. Mei held her breath and stopped. She knew them. They knew her.

  She forced her feet forward, flashing the vials, and following the scrolling carpet patterns with her eyes. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven… She peeked up, but the group was gone, walking away from her down the hallway.

  Mei whooshed out a held breath and stopped in front of the glass door. Thirty steps to get to this locked door. It seemed more momentous than the ten minutes in actual time it had taken, as if this was the journey of her life: choosing Darius, no matter the result.

  Her legs shook so hard, her ankles wobbled in the borrowed green heels. She pulled Scott’s card from her purse, knowing he could have set her up and the insertion might set off a firestorm of alarms. She held her breath and inserted the key.

  The green light indicator flashed, and relief surged through her system.

  Mei opened the door and took another step toward her final destination.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Darius’s holding cell was outfitted with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, and living room. The first-rate furnishings didn’t hide the fact that there were no windows, and the walls were 6,000 psi reinforced concrete with lead barriers to block mind speak.

  He’d designed it himself. He knew its strength, and he knew it had no weakness, save the single door in and out, currently guarded by two of Alec’s men, not his own security forces. If he hadn’t already known the king was pissed, the change of guard would have been a sure indicator.

  Li and his men were in less accommodating cells, which he supposed might mean the odds were in his favor, but he suspected it had more to do with Scott directing traffic when they’d arrived. He was grateful for the shower, and the bed, which he had immediately crashed on to try and restore his depleted energy.

  He’d told Scott to tell Mei to stay the fuck away from the casino.

  Whether he wanted to keep her safe from Li or him was definitely up in the air. He loved her, but he couldn’t trust her, and he never wanted to see her lying face again.

  If it meant his death, so be it.

  Fury knotted his gut, but his dragon, usually always ready for a brawl, hardly acknowledged the spark of adrenaline. He was flat—inside and out—unable to respond with the onslaught of emotional and physical surprises in the past twenty-four hours.

  Darius grimaced when he sat up. He slid his socked feet to the ground and pushed against his knees to straighten his back. Someone had brought him sweat pants and a T-shirt from his apartment. His body ached like a son-of-a-bitch train had run him down, but his head no longer pounded like he’d gone eight rounds with no air.

  The door opened and a blond, white-coated woman walked in. She held a collection of glass vials in her hand, announcing her purpose.

  Fuck. Now they wanted his blood, too. He glared at her for a long moment, hoping she’d turn tail and leave, but she just stood there, mouth slightly open, her arms held away from her sides.

  “Darius.” She rushed to him and threw herself at his chest.

  “What the fuck?” Her small body propelled him straight back to the mattress, even as his dragon registered that her scent was Mei’s. Her eyes were Mei’s, too, but her face belonged to a pony-tailed, girl-next-door.

  “Get the fuck off me.” He gave her shoulders a shove that should have backed her to her feet, but it only separated her smothering body from him by a few inches.

  Mei stood back, her hand still twisting the tubes at her waist. Her smooth mask showed no emotion at all. How appropriate. Mei would be the one person in the world who actually showed her true colors with a mask on.

  “I’m here to explain—”

  “Save it.” He didn’t like the way she towered over him on the bed, so he pushed himself to his feet. He wavered, and she reached her hands toward him, but he jerked away from contact. “I’m not interested in more of your lies.”

  She walked to the dining table, put the vials down, and pulled the wig, glasses, and lab coat off. Underneath, she wore a skimpy outfit, more call-girl than girl-next-door. Unwanted desire he’d have sworn was dead forever surfaced, tightening his gut with longing, sending blood away from his still functioning brain to his cock. Anger at himself, and at her, swamped behind his desire, creating a melee of need and disgust.

  “A strip show won’t fix this.” He sneered on purpose, letting his contempt show.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was broken, as if her heart meant every word she said, but the mask was worse than a botoxed, as-seen-on-TV pitchman.

  “Take that fuckin’ mask off if you want to talk to me,” he hurled at her, wishing with all his heart that she would go away and stay away.

  Mei brought shaky hands to her face and tore the mask away, leaving pale strips at the edges, like some godforsaken leprosy victim.

  But she was no victim.

  “I’m so sorry.” Her voice shook and the corners of her mouth twisted down in anguish.

  His heart slammed in his chest at her raw pain, and he looked away, deliberately repelling any softening toward her. She had lied to him about being a water dragon. Fine. She had been scared, fine; he knew that. But then, to lie to him after they’d been together about having a motherfuckin’ husband?

  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… No fuckin’ way.

  Mei walked to him, and the tears in her dark eyes overflowed and ran rivulets down her cheeks. “I thought…” She raised her face to him, beseeching and vulnerable, so that he knew that whatever she said next was the truth.

  Right. The truth according to Mei.

  It only meant she herself believed it, not that it was th
e actual truth.

  “You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass.”

  “What?” She snapped her head back as if dodging a blow, but quickly recovered. “I get that you’re angry.”

  “Really? What gave it away?” Pain was shooting fire down the back of his legs, making him uncertain he could continue to stand. He hobbled to one of the living room chairs and sank into it, putting needed space between them.

  Mei trailed him, and he cut off her progress with harsh words. “That’s far enough. Give me your spiel and go.”

  She jutted her chin up and wiped the tears from her eyes. She walked forward so that she stood just five feet away and took a breath. “At first I didn’t tell you about Li—”

  “Your husband.” He cut her off.

  “Right,” she said.

  He crossed his arms and waited for the rest with a clinical eye, his forced disinterest making him feel somewhat impervious to her bullshit.

  “I didn’t tell you because I thought that if he ever found me, then you could claim you didn’t know about him. I wanted to protect you.” She lifted her hands toward him, but must have seen the dubious look on his face, because she pulled them back as if stung.

  “Convenient,” he said. “You didn’t tell me the truth to protect me.”

  Mei nodded, as if he was finally getting her brand of crazy.

  “You keep lying to yourself if it helps you sleep at night. But I call bullshit.”

  The need to comfort her rose hard, belying his righteous detachment.

  “I told you I needed to know everything,” he yelled. “Hell, I hardly flinched when I found out you were a motherfucking water dragon!” His banked anger rose, making the pain in his backside increase. He forced his back against the chair, trying to find a more comfortable position.

  Still Mei said nothing and just stared at him with raw pain on her face.

  “Is that it?”

  “No.” She took a step toward him. “I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment we met in Paris.”