The Dragon's Mate

by Emilia Hartley

  His brother had a mate and hadn’t told him. Luc worked through the rolling waves of emotions until he could nod. He understood. Marc did what he had to do for his mate’s sake. That was a feeling Luc was starting to understand.

  Luc bent and grabbed his fallen shirt before pulling it over his head. All he wanted was to get to his mate’s side. The rest of the world would be fine as long as he could stand beside Anya, as long as he could keep her safe.

  “Pants, brother? Why don’t you try to put some on?”

  Luc paused, trying to think of the place he’d last seen them when he realized his pants were nowhere in the room. His face warmed as he remembered the night before.

  Luc scratched the back of his head. “I think they’re in the living room.”

  Marc rolled his eyes, even if a smile touched the corner of his mouth. Marc was happy for his brother, even if the twin was afraid of what the day might bring for them. This was just a simple expedition into an empty building.

  They stepped into the hall. Luc saw the familiar head of golden brown curls and felt his heart surge until he saw his mate standing too close to Isaac. A growl trickled up his throat. The beast wanted to leap over his mate and tear out his friend’s throat. The sudden bloodlust made him pause and steady his wild heart.

  He couldn’t go around, attacking his friends because they stood too close to his mate. Then again, he wondered what they were doing there. He’d never seen Anya and Isaac share more than a few words before. Now, they were immersed in a low conversation that Luc couldn’t pick up.

  Anya’s head perked up, like she could feel his presence. Perhaps she could, now, because her head turned and her eyes caught his. A smile danced across her lips and lit hope through Luc’s chest. This woman, this brave little human, was his mate.

  Luc closed the distance between them and pulled her tight to his chest so he could lay a kiss on the top of her head. She was already dressed for the day, wearing a pair of loose jeans and a black top. In the chair beside them was a backpack loaded with tools, like a crowbar and a pair of flashlights.

  What would they find today? The hope was that they might come across the full files and perhaps any death records that might have been kept. Luc’s highest hope was for closure. After he and Marc had the closure they needed, then the dragons could deliberate on what they wanted to do with the information they had.

  All they knew right then was that Lucia Avila had been in that facility at some point in her life. The idea… the notion that their mother might still be alive was a tiny voice, screaming in the back of his mind. He knew they were both thinking it, he and Marc, but neither wanted to give sound to the screaming voice, neither wanted to believe it possible after what they’d seen. Lucia’s greatest hope was death after that.

  “I was just giving Isaac… some last minute directions,” Anya informed her mate.

  Luc’s brow furrowed with confusion, but she didn’t offer any further explanation. He turned his gaze to the man he considered a brother and felt his beast grumble in response, the growl of a threat rising through him.

  Isaac took a step back, his eyes downcast. Luc felt bad. The beast didn’t.

  “Let’s get out of here before you and Isaac tear the house down.” Anya tossed her mate a pair of pants and waited somewhat impatiently for him to pull them on. Once he’d donned pants and shoes, she dragged him out of the house.

  Chapter Eleven

  The building ahead of them was surrounded by a barbed wire fence that was slowly being reclaimed by nature. Trees leaned against the fence in some places, shoving the wire into the earth. In other places, vines rose up to strangle the wire.

  For all appearances, the facility had been forgotten. Anya’s stomach did several flips. She had a feeling that the facility had not been forgotten. There was no way that GOE had flippantly abandoned a facility where disastrous experiments had taken place.

  “We need to be careful,” Anya reminded her mate.

  Luc glanced down at her, his trademark smirk not helping settle her anxious bones.

  “You’re going to get us killed,” she grumbled.

  The smirk fell. His hand touched her back and she leaned into it. Maybe her father didn’t like it, but he understood. Nathan Forrest was ready to welcome the bronze skinned dragon man into their family. It had opened a door for Anya that she’d been so desperately trying to keep shut. She had her mate and her family.

  But, she also had a feeling this supposedly abandoned facility was waiting to take both from her. By all means, it was only a building, but it loomed before her like a portent she couldn’t shake. Luc reached up and pulled the wire fence open with his dragon strength, the lock and chain that had been keeping it shut snapping and flying into the uncut brush. The gate swung open to let them in. Ahead, the entrance of the facility looked like a dark maw, ready to devour them.

  Was that what it had looked like for the dragons that had been dragged here against their will? Her chest tightened and she reached for Luc’s hand. The glass of the front doors was dark and almost impossible to peer through. Pressing her face to the dark glass, she could see the familiar shape of a receptionist’s desk. GOE didn’t change up their designs that often, she thought.

  Luc reached ahead of her and grabbed the door handle. It took a moment, one hand on the handle and the other on the second door, but the lock finally snapped and the door swung open. The smell of dust and rot greeted her. She almost couldn’t tell what the second smell was. It was so faint, just the barest hint of something foul, but it was Luc that picked it out immediately.

  He slapped his hand over his nose and reeled back. “There’s something dead in here.” His voice was muffled behind his hand.

  Anya looked ahead and swallowed. If Luc was going to get any answers, they needed to see what was hidden in here. “I can go on ahead by myself.”

  “No way in hell,” Luc growled before stepping back up to her side.

  ***

  As soon as he stepped over the threshold, Luc’s stomach turned. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that made his stomach uneasy. Perhaps it was the smell of death and decay that lingered in the air. Perhaps it was the idea of finding one of his parents amid that smell that gave him the feeling.

  Either way, his headstrong, because that was the best way to describe Anya, mate led the way and he felt no other choice but to follow her. If not to follow her lead, then to protect her from whatever situation she might get herself into.

  Luc had never been inside a GOE facility, but Anya walked through the space like she’d been there before. She easily navigated around the front desk and confidently led the way through the halls. Their eyes scanned closed doors and open doors, searching for evidence of what had gone down here. By all means, it looked like a normal facility full of offices and conference rooms. It didn’t look like the kind of place where dragons had been dragged for illegal experiments.

  “You’d think that there would be more graffiti or evidence of teens trashing the place. Don’t teens like abandoned buildings? It’s a human gene that kicks in during the adolescent years. There should be crumpled beer cans and little notes on the wall that say ‘Sally plus Jonny Four Ever’. Right?”

  “The barbed wire on the gate might be keeping them out. This is also a little off the beaten path for a teenager.”

  Anya nodded. It was an expression that said she’d hear him, but her wandering gaze over the space around them said she didn’t quite believe him.

  Luc was starting to wonder if they’d made a mistake. They knew, without a doubt, that the Guardians had kidnapped dragons, but maybe they hadn’t been brought here. What was the chance that a facility so close to the Territory was the place where all of that had gone down? Luc’s lips pressed together.

  His hope was sinking.

  They moved from room to room, Anya’s feet leading them down paths familiar to her. Luc knew his mind should have been on the task ahead of them, should have been dissecting the qu
easy feeling in his stomach. Instead, it had returned to the house and the whispers his mate had shared with Isaac before he’d woken.

  “What did you have to talk to Isaac about this morning?” Luc blurted out the question.

  Anya paused to look back at him, one eyebrow raised. Luc watched her draw a slow breath before responding and it drove him mad. Was she formulating a lie? Had she already moved on from him?

  “I gave him some last-minute directions,” was all Anya said in response.

  Luc growled. It was all he could manage as the images of Isaac and his mate tangled together flashed through his mind.

  Anya sighed, turned to him, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and pulled him down for a long kiss. When she pulled back, she met his gaze with her own, steady one. “Do you trust me?”

  Did he? Luc had a feeling that his beast was being more territorial than untrusting in that moment so he nodded.

  “Alright, then trust me on this. I did it for us.”

  “That isn’t cryptic in the least,” Luc said with sarcasm. Anya only responded by waving her hand in the air after she turned away.

  Luc trusted her. Whatever the two of them had been doing this morning, he knew it was necessary. He only wished she was willing to be more forward with him. Why keep what she’d done a secret like this?

  Luc’s mind raced while they crept deeper into the empty facility. They needed to find the records room and then get out. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand the smell of rot and the queasy feeling in his gut while his beast growled and paced. All at once, it was maddening.

  After a while, it began to feel like Anya was meandering. Her pace slowed as she took in every detail like something was wrong.

  “This isn’t right,” Anya said, almost to no one in particular as she looked around. “This is almost the same exact floor map as the facility where my father works. Everything has been the same right up until this point.”

  They stood at a dead end. It seemed like a glitch in the floor planning. If anything, it felt as though there should be at least a mop closet here. But, they stared at an empty expanse of wall.

  “Okay, so they fixed this mistake in the second facility.” Luc shrugged. The empty wall meant nothing to him.

  Anya, on the other hand, was running her hands over the empty wall. Her brows were knit together in confusion. Luc wanted to grab her by the shoulder and tell her to stop being so weird about a wall, then something clicked. Anya’s nails sank into a crease in the wall. She dragged it down the dingy yellow wallpaper until the outline of a door appeared.

  Luc stepped up, reaching for the top corner of the wall paper and tore it down. A smooth, knob-less door appeared. Luc’s stomach did a flip that sent waves of nausea through him.

  “Why was this hidden?” Anya asked. She pressed on the door to no avail. After that, she jammed her nails into the crease and tried prying it open.

  “Step aside puny human.” Luc used humor to cover the feeling that was making him begin to shake. His mate stuck her tongue out at him, but she did as he said. It should have been a simple feat, kicking the door open with his long legs, but it took two tries before the locking mechanisms broke. When he was done, he felt out of breath. It was a strange sensation that he shouldn’t have felt.

  Dragons were hardly ever out of breath. He’d only ever seen Liana heave after one of her marathon runs around the Territory. He’d reached that once or twice after running from a prank gone wrong, but never this easily.

  That should have been Luc’s first hint that something was very wrong with this place. He should have noticed that his beast was quiet. It wasn’t keeping an eye on Anya, ever conscious of her presence. Luc was so caught up in what was going on outside his body, that he didn’t see what’d been happening inside him.

  The door leaned inward at an awkward angle, never able to sit straight again. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they were going to try to cover their tracks. No one had been here in years, if the thick layer of dust on the floor was any indication.

  “Flashlight?” Anya motioned for Luc to pull the handheld light from the backpack between her shoulder blades. He slapped it into her open palm, light flooding the stairs before them moments later.

  Luc sucked in a deep breath, trying to steady his unsettled stomach before descending into the darkness. Anya gave him one last glance back to make sure he would follow before pushing ahead. Luc told her he would always follow her and he would, even if his body told him to leave.

  Was he nervous? Was that the feeling that gripped him? Or, was he expecting the worst? He had for years. There was no way to expect that their parents were still alive. It seemed unreasonable to expect such a good outcome after the pictures he’d seen.

  “This definitely is not part of the current facility,” Anya said as they descended the stairs. She paused. “As far as I know, it isn’t. Who the hell knows what else they’re hiding.”

  She was right, Luc thought. There could be a similar basement beneath the current facility. The stories of ‘deported’ dragons were varied, like an urban myth that no one could agree on. Instead of randomly grabbing dragons, GOE might be using the ability to ‘deport’ dragons to keep harvesting their kind.

  The beam of the flashlight swept over another small lobby. There was a simple desk in one corner. Papers lay over it, seemingly blank. Nothing important would have been left behind. Then again, the Guardians had left behind the whole facility.

  The smell of rot grew stronger, making Luc’s stomach turn. He could no longer separate his anxiety from the sickness growing in his stomach. There was something wrong, he thought. Something very wrong. But, his mate was already pressing forward.

  Luc wanted to turn and leave. He wanted to tell her that nothing was more important than their safety, which was surely forfeit if the kept moving forward. Anya was impatient. She was constantly ten feet ahead of him, sweeping the beam of the flashlight over everything for only seconds before moving on.

  The lobby led into a narrow hall lined with doors. Narrow windows, the glass panes sandwiched with a wire mesh, offered a glimpse into examination rooms. There were stainless steel tables and light rigs that hovered over them.

  Luc tried a few of the door handles, but they were all locked. Instead of staying to break the locks, he chose to catch up to his mate. She was searching for a record room. There had to be a room dedicated to the files they’d found on the computer. If they could find the paper files and take them home, they’d have a better understanding of what was going on.

  Luc and his brother could have closure.

  Maybe, if they wanted to take it further, they could show the world what GOE had done on U.S. soil. It was a stretch, one he would have to talk over with his mate, but it was a possibility. It, perhaps, depended on how angry Luc was when they were finished.

  “Something feels weird,” Luc acknowledged finally. He couldn’t tell if it was inside of him or something outside of him, but there was most certainly something wrong as they stepped into a wide room filled with neatly placed desks.

  His mate twisted to look back at him in the dark. Luc could make out the faint furrow of her brow in the dark. Her eyes surveyed their surroundings once again. Luc watched her face soften through the dim light.

  “There’s no dust on anything,” she whispered.

  Chapter Twelve

  Anya stopped dead in her tracks.

  The sound of clapping echoed around them. Lights flared to life. Anya had to hold her hand up against the glare while her eyes adjusted. Luc was lighting fast, planting himself between her and the source of the clapping.

  “Very well done,” a familiar voice said.

  Anya leaned to peer around Luc’s wall of a body and felt her stomach drop through the floor. Andrea Backus, the head of the local GOE facility, stood at the far end of the room. There was a demure smile on her lips and an ease to her shoulders that spoke volumes to Anya.

  They’d done exactly what Andrea wan
ted.

  How, though?

  Another voice screamed through Anya’s mind. They were trapped. If Andrea Backus was here, then Luc and Anya were trapped inside the experimental facility. It wasn’t an abandoned facility. No, they only wanted the world to think that while GOE continued what they were doing beneath the old facility.

  And, Anya had led her dragon mate right to them. In front of her, Luc grew stiff as if he was thinking the same thing at the same moment. Anya’s thumb rose to her lips by instinct alone. How was she going to get them out of this?

  “You’re wondering why I knew you would be here,” Andrea began as she claimed a desk chair. “Right?”

  Neither of them said anything. Anya was still playing scenarios in her mind, trying to find one that led to their escape. Could they get out of this mess without having to pull her trump card? But, Andrea didn’t give Anya a chance to decide. The facility director raised her hand and flicked her fingers in an unspoken command. From the shadows of the far hall appeared two more figures.

  Anya cried out when she saw the state of her father’s face. One eye was swollen shut and his lower lip was cracked open so that blood trickled and dried down his chin. He walked with a limp, led by a figure she was growing to hate. Beauchamp smiled wide while he led Nathan Forrest into the open light. His eyes met Anya’s and her stomach flipped.

  “Now,” Andrea began, dusting off her skirt. “You may think those files accidentally found their way into the folders you were to transfer from our facility to the Embassy. You may think you were doing the right thing by telling the dragons, think that you were acting of your own free will.

  “I’m here to tell you that you were wrong. What you did for us, Anya, was hit two birds with one naïve little soul. You see, we knew there were some rumblings on the Territory about missing dragons. We needed someone to smoke them out and this new venture of theirs was the perfect opportunity. You landed in our lap, this voice of equality for humans and dragons, and made it all the easier. I knew if we fed you a spoonful of information that you would run and tell the dragons. In turn, that would bring us this little morsel.