Hidden Embers

by Tessa Adams

  Dylan himself was sitting in a huge chair at the front of the room, talking intently to Gabe, who was perched on a huge, flat stalagmite. Shawn and Caitlyn, two of the newest sentries but also two of the most powerful, were leaning against a wall and squabbling, as usual, while Travis, Paige, Jase and Shawn were deep in conversation as they lounged against a huge rock formation in the center of the room.

  As they were the most tech savvy of the dragons—and the ones responsible for much of the clan’s security—he imagined they were probably trying to figure out how the Wyvernmoons had managed to breach the many technical and magical security safeguards they’d put into place in order to attack Ty.

  Only Callie was by herself as she squatted next to the stream that ran along the back wall, rinsing her hands and face.

  Quinn helped Logan and Riley get Ty settled on a cot Dylan must have had brought in for just that purpose, then followed Ian to the bar in the center of the room. Figuring he’d had more than enough tequila the night before—and tormented by the memory of how it had tasted warm from Jazz’s skin—he passed on the half-empty bottle of Patrón and went for a cold bottle of water instead.

  He’d barely gotten himself settled at the front, near Dylan and Gabe, when the king’s voice rang out, filling every corner of the cavern. “There’s a traitor in Dragonstar.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dead silence followed Dylan’s announcement, which was then replaced by complete pandemonium as ten of the dragons in the room started talking at the same time.

  Quinn turned in his seat so that no one could see the “what the fuck” look he shot the king. Dylan’s answering smile was grim, his silver eyes ice cold. It was a look echoed on Gabe’s face, and the other sentry shook his head when Quinn started to ask who the traitor was.

  After a couple minutes of listening to his sentries’ confusion, Dylan held up a hand. “I know that it’s hard for any of you to imagine someone betraying Dragonstar. It’s hard for me to imagine such a thing too. But Gabe and I have been aware of the possibility for a while. This latest incident just confirms what we already suspected.”

  He stood up, and walked to the center of the room. “Someone is betraying us. At the very least, this person is giving the Wyvernmoons information about us, information that is being used to infiltrate our safeguards and hurt our people. At the worst, he or she is actively conspiring to hurt us and is, in fact, acting as an agent for the Wyvernmoons. Either way, this person must be stopped.”

  “Do you know who it is?” demanded Jase, who looked ready and willing to be judge, jury and executioner. As the youngest sentry, he was still something of a hothead—but he was also hell on wings in a fight. More than once, he’d saved Quinn’s ass when a battle went to shit.

  “If we did, he’d already be dead,” Gabe answered, and Quinn couldn’t help admiring Dylan’s shrewdness in letting Gabe be the one to make that announcement.

  Kings were meant to lead and to protect. When they found the traitor, Dylan would be the one who dealt with him, but until that time was upon them, he needed to avoid speaking about the killing of one of his people so casually. Much better to let Gabe be the one to keep the idea front and foremost in the sentries’ minds.

  “It’s someone relatively high up,” Dylan said. “Someone who knows which safeguards we’ve used to protect ourselves—and someone who knows exactly how to break them.”

  “But that’s impossible,” protested Caitlyn. “The only people who know that information are sitting in this room. Surely you’re not accusing one of us—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Shawn growled. “Dylan knows better than to think we would betray the clan.”

  “Does he?” Callie asked, jumping to her roommate’s defense as she straightened from her spot near the stream. “Because from where I’m sitting, he doesn’t look nearly so sure.”

  “Well, then, you’re stupid,” chimed in Ian, his gold eyes glowing brightly in the dim room. “Dylan knows other people know the safeguards. He doesn’t think we would turn on him or the clan. Especially not now.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” stated Riley, his huge hands clenched into fists. “I think it makes sense for him to be suspicious. Someone is selling us out to the enemy, someone who has freedom of movement. Someone whose actions won’t be called into question, even if they show up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Who else but one of us has that privilege?”

  The tension in the room soared as the sentries all turned to Dylan. Quinn didn’t like the looks on their faces—everything from anger to betrayal to outright disbelief that their king would think they were capable of such a thing. He wasn’t crazy about the accusation himself, but he knew Dylan well enough to know that if his friend was thinking along those lines it was because he had a very good reason.

  Instinctively wanting to soothe everyone before things reached the breaking point, Quinn sent out a healing wave meant to calm tempers and bring clarity. He kept it subtle—very subtle—not wanting anyone to pick up on what he was doing, but from the look Logan shot him, it was obvious his touch wasn’t as light as he’d hoped.

  But no one said anything, and he watched as, one by one, fists unclenched, claws retracted and tense shoulders relaxed. They were still angry, still demanding an explanation, but none of the dragons looked like they wanted blood anymore. At least not yet.

  “Clan doesn’t betray clan,” Dylan’s voice rang out. “Isn’t that the code we live by? Your clan is your family. They’re who you lean on, who you fight with—who you fight for. They’re who has your back when no one else does.”

  He stood up, strode to the middle of the room, using the power of his huge frame and mighty charisma to command every eye in the place. “That’s the code I stand for, the code I know you stand for as well. We’ve lived that way for thousands of years, and for thousands of years, it’s worked.

  “But just because we believe it, just because we would die to keep our clan and our people safe, doesn’t mean that everyone feels the same way.

  “Do you think I stand here and accuse one of my own people of being a traitor lightly? Do you think I want to even imagine that someone is working with our sworn enemies to defeat us?

  “This clan is everything to me. My people are everything to me. I have lost my parents to the enemy. I have lost my brother, who was meant to be king before me. In the last three months I have also lost my sister, my niece and three of my sentries to this enemy.

  “In the last three months,” his voice boomed across the cave, bouncing off walls and filling every nook and cranny, “I have lost one hundred and twenty-seven of my people to this enemy. I know the names of every single one of them. I have been to each of their funerals, visited with every single one of their families. Can any of you, besides Quinn, say the same?

  “Do you think, for one second, that I want to imagine that one of my own has been a party to this? That someone I have trusted, someone in whose hands I have rested my entire clan’s fate, has betrayed me? Betrayed us? If you believe that, then you are not the men and women that I have worked and fought beside for centuries, and I am not the king you have chosen to serve.

  “I do not appreciate the accusations, any more than I appreciate the lack of faith some of you are showing in me. So I will make this offer and I will make it only once—you know the way out. If you want, feel free to use it now.”

  No one spoke, no one moved, and for a few seconds, Quinn didn’t think they even breathed. When no one started for the door, Dylan’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Know this, if you stay. If you listen to the evidence Gabe and I have accrued and still believe that we are wrong, you will not be allowed to leave later. Not until the traitor is caught. Not until our enemy is vanquished.

  “It is my duty—and my right—to protect my people to the best of my ability. I would die for them, would die for you. I am lenient on many things, but I will not tolerate betrayal, not when it risks the very fabric of this clan. So make your decision now
—get the hell out or stay and help me find the person, or people, who have sold their souls to our enemy.”

  When he finished speaking, Dylan waited a few moments to see if anyone was going to take him up on his offer. When no one immediately headed for the door, Dylan inclined his head, then walked through it himself.

  Looks were exchanged, but no one spoke, so Quinn, as Dylan’s second-in-command, stood and filled in the gaps. “We’ll take a ten-minute break. If you want to take advantage of Dylan’s offer, now’s the time to do it. If you decide to stay, however, remember what he said. You’re locked into this—whatever the outcome may be.”

  Then he turned and retraced Dylan’s path out of the room, knowing, without looking, that Gabe was right behind him.

  They were ten of the longest minutes of Quinn’s life. Judging from the looks on Dylan’s and Gabe’s faces, the other two men felt the same, though none of them said anything about the gauntlet the king had just thrown down. Instead, they spoke of mundane business matters, things that needed to be taken care of but that no one had had time to deal with in the wake of all the death and destruction.

  Finally, though, the last minute ticked away, and they headed back into the War Room. Still, Dylan didn’t say anything, but Quinn could feel the tension radiating from him and could only imagine what his friend was feeling right now. Dylan had given his very soul to keep the Dragonstar clan alive through the last century, and it sucked that he was being doubted now, when he most needed his council’s trust.

  Unable to do much but stand next to him and offer his unwavering support, Quinn did just that, laying a hand on the king’s shoulder and transferring every ounce of healing warmth he had inside him into Dylan.

  Taking a deep breath, Quinn braced himself and looked out at the waiting sentries. The room was still full. None of them had left, though Callie and Caitlyn still looked doubtful. The others all seemed solid, however, which was as much as they could expect.

  “All right, then. Thank you for your trust.” Dylan turned to Gabe and Quinn. “Gentlemen, please fill us in on what your research has shown in the last few months.”

  Gabe went first, discussing each one of the breaks in the safeguards.

  “As you know, each of the spells we’ve used to protect our territory carries a certain magical thumbprint that reflects back on its owner. Most of our newest safeguards were done by Travis, Paige, Jase and Shawn, though Dylan, Quinn and I are responsible for the most powerful, outer layers. Their stamp is all over the safeguards.

  “But what we’ve found in the safeguards that have been broken recently—like the one a couple months ago when Liam was killed—is that they’ve been ripped apart from the inside. Which means someone had to be inside our safe zone to do it.”

  He paused, but when no one said anything, he continued, “I haven’t had the chance to examine today’s break yet, but my suspicion is that we’re going to see the same thing—that the safeguards were torn apart from the inside. And if that’s the case, I’m going to want to compare it to the others, to see if the magical thumbprint is the same.”

  Shawn spoke up then. “Shouldn’t you be able to trace the magic? I mean, each of our powers has a distinct signature. We know each other’s, so if it’s one of us, wouldn’t it stand to reason that you’d be able to tell?”

  “That’s the weird thing. I should be able to tell, but the traces left have all been corrupted by Wyvernmoon magic. Their signature is very different from ours—darker and a lot messier—and it’s completely intertwined with whatever traces we have left.”

  “But isn’t that to be expected in a case like this?” asked Logan. “Can’t you just separate them somehow? I know some of the old magic can—”

  “Yes, but we’re not talking just about the Wyvernmoons’ magical thumbprints—we have those in abundance from each of the sites. We’ve managed to identify three Wyvernmoons who have come consistently through the breaks, with the others changing regularly.”

  “Who are the three Wyvernmoons?” demanded Paige, the quietest of the sentries, but also one of the most cunning.

  “Give me one second and I’ll get to that. I want to finish answering Logan’s question first.” Gabe turned back to the light-haired sentry. “The kind of signature I’m talking about is infused directly into the fabric of the safeguards and the magic used to tear them apart. It can only be left by the person who actually unraveled the spells, ripping them apart.”

  “But how can that person be both Dragonstar and Wyvernmoon?” demanded Ty. “The two are pretty much mutually exclusive. Our DNA is different, the spells we use and the powers we wield are all different—”

  “Not if the person has switched allegiances. Whoever it is can’t hide the fact that he or she was born Dragonstar. But now that his loyalties have shifted and he’s probably taken a blood oath, much like the one you take before entering my Council, he carries the stamp of Wyvern magic as well.”

  “But shouldn’t that make it easier to catch him, then?” asked Shawn. “We should be able to smell the Wyvernmoons on him.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Dylan agreed. “But so far, we haven’t been able to find any trace of them—at least not one that didn’t come from Brock and his group being here.”

  “Brock?” Travis, who Quinn believed was the smartest sentry by far, leapt on the name. “Wasn’t he one of Silus’s guys?”

  “He was,” acknowledged Dylan grimly. His stance screamed aggression, and Quinn knew he was remembering how the last Wyvernmoon leader had died at his mate’s hands—after putting her through hell first. “And now that we’ve eliminated Silus and his son the Wyvernmoons are pretty much in a civil war as different factions fight to fill the power vacuum left by their deaths.”

  “But that’s good for us,” Paige said. “If they kill each other off…”

  “Oh yeah, that would be great,” agreed Gabe. “The only problem is what they’re using to jockey for position—which, it seems, is mainly us. Each group is trying to prove its leader is stronger than the others by getting in here and killing some of us.”

  “Which is where the traitor comes in,” Dylan continued through the horrified silence. “We’re pretty sure that he or she is working directly with Brock, which is why he’s had so much more luck infiltrating the safeguards than the others have.

  “That doesn’t mean there haven’t been attempts by others. You all know there have been because you’ve seen them, even fought in some of them, but no one else is having near the success Brock is. And we never see him coming, like we do the others. He’s always in before we even have a clue that he’s around. And today’s incident is looking like it follows the same pattern.”

  The room was silent as the sentries absorbed what Gabe and Dylan were telling them. After a minute or so, Riley turned to Quinn and asked, “What else? Dylan said you had things to say, too.”

  “To begin with,” Quinn answered, “you know from our discussion a few months ago that one of the main methods of virus transmission is actual injection with the disease. They tried it on a couple of us three months ago, and they’ve tried it a number of times since.”

  “You mean when they break in?”

  “Yes, and even when they aren’t here.”

  “What does that mean?” demanded Caitlyn, who had moved closer to the inner circle. Her mother had died of the virus a few months before.

  “What I’m finding is that while not every victim has been injected with the disease—meaning there is another way of contracting it that we haven’t found yet—most of the recent victims have been.”

  “But there’s only been three or four Wyvernmoon attacks in the last couple of months,” Jase objected. “Lately, people are dying almost every day.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Shawn incredulously. “Are you telling me this traitor is actually injecting his own clan mates with that goddamned disease?”

  Quinn nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  The se
ntries went wild and Quinn knew exactly how they felt. The act of physically fighting was one thing—they could understand it, they could see it, and they knew they had a better than fifty-fifty shot at winning in battle. But biological warfare was something else entirely—it was something none of them were equipped to fight. Even worse, they’d all seen what it was like to die from this virus. The idea that one of their own was doing it was anathema to them, not to mention absolutely enraging.

  “Michael?” Ty choked out, from his spot on the cot. He had pushed himself into a sitting position and his eyes were colder than Quinn had ever seen them.

  “Yes, Phoebe found that Michael was injected. Which meant that someone got close enough to jam a needle in him without either him getting upset about it or reporting it. Which means he either didn’t know it happened, or he trusted, implicitly, whoever injected him.”

  “Shit, fuck, goddamn motherfucker. Are you shitting me?” Riley was out of his seat and rocketing to the front of the room. “Are you fucking telling me that one of us—one of the Dragonstars—killed Michael?”

  “And Marta,” intoned Gabe, his face carefully blank as he said his wife’s name. “And God only knows how many others. My daughter wasn’t injected, at least not that we can find, which means that there’s still another method of transmission that we haven’t found. But overall, a lot of dragons have been given the virus that way. That’s what Dylan’s been trying to tell you. Things are much worse than we ever suspected.”

  “Well, then, the only question is, what the fuck are we going to do about it?” demanded Logan. “I’m done sitting around and waiting to die of this fucking thing.”

  “That’s why we’re having this meeting,” answered Dylan. “So sit down and start talking, because we’re not leaving here until we have not only a plan but a set course of action that involves more than blowing the Wyvernmoons sky high.”