by Ava Benton
Only there was no rescue to be made. Not by them, anyway.
And yet, I couldn’t accept it. My rational mind wouldn’t allow the existence of dragons, much less humans who changed form and became them.
Leaves and vines whipped against my face, arms, legs, but I barely felt the sting. I had to get to the boat. I needed to get to the boat. What were we going to do without a radio? It was all my fault. They were inside, and there was nobody to help them. We would have to leave the island to get help, losing time with every mile.
And Mom would never let me come back. Not ever.
I burst through the last of the trees and hurtled down the beach, my lungs on fire, my legs quaking.
Klaus spotted me and jumped from the boat, wading to shore with a furious grimace.
“What did you think you were doing, following them?” he demanded. “Do you know I almost came looking for you? What would’ve happened if somebody had found the boat abandoned and taken it away? We’d be stranded!”
I froze so suddenly, I almost landed on my ass. But I maintained my footing at the last second and raised the bow until it was aimed straight at his heart.
He froze, too, hands up. I didn’t know who he was or what he was capable of, did I? What if he was one of them? What if he hurt me?
I stared at him, while his eyes went from mine to the tip of the bolt then back again.
I wanted to scream and weep and give up entirely. Maybe throw myself into the sea and never come back. It was all too much.
“They took them,” I panted, still fighting for breath. “Gate. Miles. Lots of guards. Took them.”
“Shit. What are we supposed to do now that we can’t call for help?” He made a move, like he wanted to go back to the boat.
“Not so fast,” I warned, moving one step closer.
“What are you doing? Why are you aiming at me?”
There was a truth somewhere in his eyes, on his face. He knew what I had seen. He knew what I knew. His fingers, still raised, twitched as though he was fighting to remain in control of himself.
He wanted to fight back.
The idea frightened me worse than anything I had seen up to that point.
“Who the hell are you people?” I gasped.
12
Martina
We stared each other down for a single, strained moment before he spoke. “I’m going to lower my hands, but I’m unarmed. And if you think I would ever do anything to hurt Mary’s daughter, you’re beyond all hope.”
“I saw him,” I whispered, my heart still racing to the point where I was certain I’d throw up. “I saw him back there. Gate. I saw him…”
His mouth set in a firm line, and he nodded. “You saw him shift, did you?”
So he did know.
My arms were suddenly too weak to support the bow, and I let it fall to my side. “It’s not possible, is it? I mean, how is it possible? I thought I was imagining it.”
“No, you didn’t. You’re too smart for that. You knew it was so.”
At least he was admitting I was smart. It was a step.
“But how? I just want to know how.”
“We don’t have time for this.” He looked over my shoulder, as though watching for trouble. “Come on. Back to the boat. We can’t wait around in the open. We need to decide what to do.”
I didn’t protest as I followed him, handing the bow over to swing myself onto the deck.
To his credit, he handed it back before raising anchor and going up to the controls.
When I joined him, he was running both hands through his shaggy blond hair.
“Are you one of them?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“Can we discuss this at another time, please? I’ve lost the two of them, and we need backup. Immediately.”
“Please, just tell me. I need to know who I’m dealing with before I do anything else. If we go back to the resort, I’ll never be allowed to see any of you again. I’ll never know.”
He let out a sigh which could’ve been mistaken for a growl, turning the key in the ignition and starting the engine.
My heart sank in dismay. This was it. I would never get another chance.
“Klaus, please. Why won’t you tell me? Are you one of them?”
He shook his head as he steered the boat away from the cove. “No. Not them. Not exactly.”
Oh, sweet Jesus.
That sounded even worse, somehow.
“What are you, then? Not human?”
“A lion.” He didn’t look at me as he delivered that heavy blow.
A lion? No way.
But I had just seen a dragon, hadn’t I? It was all like some inconceivable nightmare. If I didn’t smell my own sweat and hear the blood rushing in my ears, I would’ve been able to believe it was all in my head.
“Okay. Great. A lion. Super.” I held onto the console to keep myself steady, swaying on my feet. “And my mother knows?”
“She does. She works with many of us. Shifters, that is.” He glanced at me before turning his attention to our progress. “Why do you think she always wanted to keep you away from her work? It’s not as if we’re a welcome bunch. If anybody found out you were her daughter, knowing what she does for a living? You’d never have a moment’s peace. Not ever.”
I closed my eyes as this sank in.
Everything looked different from the perspective he’d just painted. She was protecting me, not holding me back. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust me. She didn’t trust the rest of the world.
“What got her started with this?” I wondered.
“It’s a long story, and I’m sure she’ll be happy to tell you about it after she tears my head from my shoulders when she finds out I harbored you. Though it was Gate who convinced me to do it.”
“He did?” I shook my head, struggling to focus on what really mattered. I could deal with Gate another time. If there was ever another time. “Why are they here? Who is being held prisoner?”
“Their clan,” he explained, snarling. “I hate myself for telling you this, but what’s the point in being secretive anymore? You already know too much.”
“Their clan. So I was right. Other dragons.”
“Yes, other dragons. Dragon blood has untold properties, the chief of which is healing. It can heal nearly anything, I suspect—in humans, that is. In other creatures, not so much. I wouldn’t want to try it. Then again, I also heal quickly.”
He turned to look at me, eyes wide. “What about the syringes?”
“What? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Gate was carrying a handful of syringes, probably in the pockets of his pants. I assume he didn’t take time to strip down before shifting.”
“No. He didn’t. His clothes went everywhere.”
“I thought so. Did you see if anything got picked up?”
“I ran straight back to the boat once I saw them being led inside.”
“Shackled, I would imagine?”
“How did you guess?”
“They would use iron,” he explained. “Iron is supposed to keep a dragon from shifting. I’m sure they’re using iron on all of the clan. What they don’t know is that Miles and Gate are inoculated. A scientist they’re involved with created an antidote which protects them from the effects, allowing them to shift in spite of the iron. He was carrying more of the antidote with him, but not all of it.”
“To inoculate the rest of the clan,” I mused, staring off. “Gate only went along with them because they had Miles at gunpoint. He could’ve freed himself at any time.”
“Exactly.”
“Where’s the rest of the antidote?”
“Down below, in a bag.”
“Good.” I raised the bow, touching the tip of the bolt to the center of his back. “Now. Turn the boat around.”
He tensed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Try me, Klaus. Turn it around. We’re going back.”
“For what? What are you trying to prove?
We need more men.”
“We need to get the antidote to them. That’s what we need. I can do that.”
“You’re joking! You think you could face that many armed men at a time? Quit it with your delusions. You’re putting them in greater jeopardy by even wasting time like this.”
I pressed the bolt into his skin until he winced. “Either I shoot you through the heart and take over, or you steer the boat for me. I’m going to have my way regardless—unless you think you could heal from a wound like that. Want to try and see?”
“This is insane.”
“You’re the one wasting time now, Klaus,” I informed him. “Listen here, we bring more boats, they’re bound to notice. There are a lot of them. They might be watching. All you’d be doing is leading a bunch of my mother’s men to their deaths. Meanwhile, they won’t know I’m coming for them. I’d much rather send only me in there with a bag of the antidote in that situation. Wouldn’t you?”
“You honestly think you’ll be able to pull this off?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I was out of patience by now.
He relaxed when the pressure from the bolt left his back, but only long enough for me to take him by the neck and slam his head against the wheel. I
f he’d seen it coming, it would’ve been impossible for me to do it. A lion shifter. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around how big and strong he had to be once he shifted.
He sank to the floor, and I did what I could to shove him aside as I took control of the boat.
Blood trickled from the cut above his eye, and he groaned, semi-conscious.
I was glad I hadn’t hurt him any worse than that—it wasn’t as though I wanted to kill him. But I was sick of playing his game. It was past time for me to do things my way.
I turned the boat around, keeping one eye on him at all times.
He’d be furious, or worse, when he came to his senses.
Would they really be watching for us? I had no idea. Possibly, if they’d questioned the men.
Then again, I doubted that they would give us up that easily. Not much time had passed. Not enough for torture to have taken effect.
My blood nearly froze at the thought. What were they doing to them?
But they could shift back at any time. That alone gave me hope, even though it seemed unlikely that even a dragon could withstand a bullet to the brain.
I wondered how the morons in control would react when they saw their new captives shift in spite of their iron shackles.
If I played my cards right, I’d be there to see it for myself.
“I’m coming for you,” I whispered as I piloted the boat, Gate’s face in front of me all the while.
A dragon. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, not that it mattered. He deserved my help no matter who he was, or what he was.
It wasn’t as if I could forget what he had done for me, either. He had made sure Miles and Klaus treated me well. He had somehow convinced Klaus to keep me with them. He had treated me like a person, someone with feelings and abilities. Not just a spoiled brat who had to have her way and wound up sabotaging the mission because of it. He took the time to know me. I owed him this much, at least.
There was more. Much, much more, but I didn’t dare think on it right now. Not when I couldn’t make sense of his dragon nature and how it mixed with his humanity. Not when I didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. Not when I had far too many other things on my mind. More important things, like strategy.
That didn’t stop the tingling in my lips, where his had moved against them, or the memory of his hands taking their slow, sensual tour of my body.
There was so much passion in him—more than that, he’d pulled passion from me that I never knew existed. It was addictive, that sort of passion. That rush of sensation, the sudden bone-deep certainty that nothing else in the world mattered.
Nothing else had ever mattered. The question of how anything had even appeared to matter up until that very moment.
I needed to feel that again. I needed to feel him again. I needed to meet his gaze from across the room and know we were thinking along the same lines without having to exchange a word. To find him watching me when he didn’t think I noticed. To feel secure in his presence, to know that nothing would ever harm me while he was near. He didn’t have to say it out loud for me to know it with every fiber of my being.
“I’m coming for you,” I repeated, louder this time.
13
Gate
“Stay calm,” I whispered to Miles as they led us through the tunnels which wound and curved, seeming to go this way and that with little concern for a plan.
Who had designed this place?
“You, too,” he warned.
I sensed his amusement at my state of undress and deliberately avoided looking his way.
The rest of them were amused, too. They hadn’t been so amused when I’d shifted, though, had they?
Pissing their pants, more like. Oh, I’d wanted nothing more than to tear them all to pieces and paint the walls of the compound with their blood.
Except, not when the single twitch of a finger could mean the end of my cousin’s life. I hadn’t noticed them taking control of him.
And I hadn’t been able to get hold of the antidote.
If I’d been able to raise my arms, I would’ve smacked my forehead for that misstep.
I shouldn’t have shifted at all.
Instinct had taken over in that moment, along with the dragon’s fury at an attack by such lesser beings as the ones currently holding the chains attached to my shackles.
I’d been too heavily wrapped up in the fight to expend energy on controlling the impulse to shift. I’d just done it.
It had felt so good, giving in to my nature that way. Shifting to protect the cave was one thing, but to protect myself?
Far more satisfying—that, and the expression of empty-minded fear at the sight of me when I’d reared up to full height.
I hoped to see it again, and soon.
But not immediately, as we both had to pretend to be hamstrung by the presence of iron. All the while, the syringes sat outside, on the ground, inside my shredded pants. Would any of them even register its presence? Or would it sit out there until we escaped? How would we escape without it?
It was funny, the way my mind immediately went back to Martina.
In that last moment, when the shackles were closing over my wrists, I’d been almost certain of her presence nearby.
That was impossible, wasn’t it?
And yet I had felt her, just the same. Had she been watching from somewhere? And if so, why? What could she possibly hope to accomplish?
Just the same, I hoped she was. She could alert Klaus and go back for help. Without the rest of the antidote, it would be just Miles and me against untold numbers of armed mercenaries while the clan looked on, helpless in their iron shackles.
We reached a set of doubles doors guarded by two armed men who nodded in acknowledgment and stepped aside to allow us through. I kept my eyes peeled for any signs of something that might help us—emergency exits, a control panel, anything—as we entered a large room lined on both sides with what were obviously cells.
Inhabited cells.
Miles’ sharp intake of breath told me he saw what I saw.
So many of them. At least six on either side, with glass doors. Each cell held two occupants, both shackled at wrist and ankle in thick iron.
The rush of memory as I made eye contact with one after another was nearly enough to knock me off my feet.
It all came flooding back, all the time in our homeland. All the life spent there. Years of it. How could I ever have forgotten?
Alan and his twin sister Ainsley, Owen and Tamhas. Leslie, Isla, Dallas.
So much time had passed, and yet it may as well have been little more than a day.
They watched as their captors led us to the center of the corridor, then came to a halt. I hardly cared that I
wore not a stitch of clothing as we waited for whoever we waited for, or that so many pairs of eyes were watching.
My heart ached too badly for modesty to come into play.
It wasn’t long before we were greeted by the apparent head of the operation. I’d been expecting a larger man, older, someone who looked as though he’d be in charge of a group of heartless soldiers of fortune. Not the short, balding, lab coat-wearing, bespectacled man who shuffled our way, looking us over with great interest.
“I must say, this is a great surprise,” he smiled, his voice high and breathy with excitement. “We thought we’d located every member of the clan, and yet there were two more of you all along. What a pleasant turn of events.”
“For whom, exactly?” I demanded, raising my chin.
He looked me up and down with a flick of his shrewd eyes. I knew then that his outward appearance was nothing more than a charade. There was much behind those eyes, inside that head of his.
“Why, for me, naturally. Dr. Elliot Vernon. For me and my men.”
“Your men,” Miles snickered.
“My men who managed to take you into their charge with very little effort,” he replied, and his once breathy voice was suddenly sharp as a whip. “You may correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems as though you were quite easily apprehended. I can report from experience that it’s never wise to underestimate one’s adversaries.”
“Too true,” I replied through clenched teeth.
He was already underestimating us, the smug prick. He’d soon see.
He looked me up and down once again. “Separate them,” he ordered.
Miles and I had the chance to exchange one last look before the guards holding him took him to a cell at the far end of the corridor, while those holding on to me led me to a cell not far from where we stood.
The inhabitant already inside sat with their face to the wall, hunched to the point where I couldn’t tell whether they were male or female. They wore the same shapeless, gray tunic the others wore. Like something from a hospital.
