by C. I. Black
Another growl curled in his throat. If he really was inamorated, he wouldn’t be able to resist her, no matter what he wanted. He didn’t doubt Hunter and Capri, probably even Grey, had tried to fight their soul bonds. All three of them were inamorated out of species or out of coterie. That was a problem none of them had gone looking for, and Nero knew from the first time around that resisting was pointless.
Please let the sensation come from our mental connection and not a true soul bond. He could survive that. He could work with that. It made more sense than being inamorated again.
Sure.
Right.
Okay.
Now, get back to the problems at hand: the dragon who’s going after you, the problems at Court, and how to protect the kids.
Something shifted at the edge of his senses. He wasn’t sure what and couldn’t explain how it caught his attention, but his gaze jumped from the shower floor to the door, and his heart froze.
Becca stood in the doorway, her expression worried, her hair a mess, and the hospital gown stained with his blood from when she’d stabbed him and he’d captured her against his body to escape. Even bedraggled and filthy, she was breathtaking, and the thought of her body against his drew a heat within him that his combat adrenalin had overridden during the fight.
She caught his gaze with a strength in her expression he already knew she possessed, from their mental connection. If anyone could conquer the soul sickness that resulted from having mind and body invaded by a powerful dragon spirit, she could.
“Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry, and she didn’t look away.
He shut off the water and reached for a towel, her gaze churning what little calm he’d managed to find in the shower into howling primal instinct. He belonged to her whether she accepted him or not. If she told him to leave her forever, he’d respect that. It would break his heart, but he couldn’t make her life miserable just to be with her. There would never be another—
Except that wasn’t true. She was another, a second one. Which meant this sensation wasn’t true. His soul was confused. The dugga’s magic was broken and making him feel this way. His unnatural Handmaiden-imbued telepathy had somehow locked with whatever earth magic Becca possessed. That was all.
And yet knowing the truth didn’t change how he felt, how he irrationally craved her, had to be near her, wanted to draw her close, wrap his arms around her, feel her body pressed against his, fully seal the bond between their souls. Forever.
Jeez. He clenched his jaw and draped the towel over his head to dry his hair. Maybe if he couldn’t see her—
But the loss of sight only made him hyperaware of her, standing a few feet away with her blazing red aura, half as brilliant as when he’d first seen her, but still squintingly bright and cutting through the towel’s fabric. Her power crackled against his aura, shivering over his senses, making him hard—
Who was he kidding? Harder. He could barely tell she was human, even with his enhanced ability to sense auras. Half of the members of the Asar Nergal might not be able to tell she was human, but he had no idea if that was the power of her earth magic, her soul magic, a result of being inamorated — which God damn he wasn’t — or something else.
“Did you use all the hot water?” she asked, her husky alto sliding, warm and sensual, over him.
Mine. Protect.
He growled and yanked the towel from his head. Get your shit together.
Fear flickered in her eyes for a second, then her gaze hardened and she squared her shoulders, which only turned him on more. “I mean, that’s not a problem.”
It should be. She should have all the hot water in the world—
Stop it. Not inamorated, remember?
A shiver swept over her, making him cold just looking at her. Soul mate or definitely not, she’d been through an ordeal. For the moment, he wasn’t trapped in her head, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t imagine her pain and confusion. Right now, she wasn’t trying to escape. He’d assume that was because of a conversation with Raven, but Becca’s mental state was unstable, and she could change her mind at any time.
“I’ll get you some clean clothes.”
“That woman, Raven, said she already got me some.”
Of course she did. “Okay, then.” He should go. Give Becca a chance to clean up. Alone. Putting some space between them might help him regain his bearings.
But he couldn’t make himself summon a gate, let alone walk out of the room. Walking out would just bring him closer to her. And he really wanted to get closer.
“She said I could use the bathroom next door.” Except Becca didn’t turn away from him, didn’t even glance in the direction of the other room. He didn’t think it was possible that she was just as captivated as he was. That was desperate hope, begging for something that wasn’t real. She had to be in shock.
Even if she wasn’t strapped to a bed or running for her life, and even if Raven hadn’t told her the truth, this new situation was still a lot to process. He couldn’t afford to make the wrong move here. He couldn’t scare her away, not because of his messed-up emotions, but because if that other drake got her again, everyone he was certain he cared about would be killed. Really.
Focus on the situation. Shut everything else down. That was what made him an effective dugga and doyen. He hadn’t survived more than two thousand years in a society of predators by letting his emotions get the better of him.
But he couldn’t get his mind to work past the thought of her, standing before him, her gaze locked on him, capturing his soul. Her. There was only her.
No, there wasn’t. He had a house full of teens, a whole network of natural human mages throughout the world who’d graduated from his program, and dragons who depended on him. They were his family. Their love and friendship had carried his shattered soul through all these years, patching it together enough that he’d survived the death of his inamorata. Focus on that. Whichever drake had captured Becca, he endangered all that, and to stop him, he needed more information.
Nero opened his mouth to demand details from Becca about the facility, but the words froze in his throat. At the moment, she might look mentally stable, but she couldn’t be. Not enough time had passed for her to even fully get her bearings. Interrogating her wouldn’t help. He needed to ease into the conversation.
“I’ll arrange for food.”
“Raven said that, too.”
Son of a— “Did Raven offer medical help, too? How’s your shoulder and ribs?” Hadn’t he thought she had a broken collarbone and cracked ribs? But she wasn’t showing any sign of pain.
Becca frowned and rolled her shoulders. Confusion flickered over her expression. “I thought—” Another shiver swept over her, and she gripped the doorframe as if to steady herself. The confusion deepened into panic and her breath turned into sharp gasps. She pressed one hand to her ribs but didn’t wince in pain. “They were— This isn’t… real?”
Shit. With one quick question, he’d managed to ruin everything.
He rushed toward her, every instinct screaming to comfort her. “You’re all right.”
“You tried to kill me.” She jerked away, stumbled, and fell onto her butt on the concrete bedroom floor.
He dropped to his knees but managed to keep from reaching out to her. “I was wrong.” Please, let me hold you. I’ll make this right. I’ll kill the monsters. I’ll—
“You’re a monster.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, you’re a dragon.”
“And this is real,” Raven said from the doorway. She crouched where she was and didn’t approach. “Just take a breath.”
“But my ribs were broken.”
And they should still be. Only human sorcerers had healing like a dragon. And it was too much to hope that his soul had picked a sorcerer. They were so rare. He was still kind of shocked he had one living under his roof.
“Does not having broken ribs put you in danger?” Raven asked.
Becca frowned. “No, but—�
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“If it’s not a danger, maybe you shouldn’t worry about it right now.”
Mother, he had to do something, but this was Raven’s specialty. He and his team brought the human mages to her and, of those she could save, she somehow just knew how to get them to accept reality.
“I don’t understand.” Becca hugged herself, her jaw clenched tight.
Except none of them had gone through what Becca had. Three dragon souls, each tearing into her, trying to awaken a magic that was now screwing up his life. She had to still be determined to hold onto her mind, and a part of that for humans involved clinging to their perceived reality.
“You do understand. You just don’t want to.” The muscles in Raven’s jaw tightened, adding to the evidence of what Nero had suspected for years but had no proof — that Raven had some kind of earth magic that influenced humans. “You know what I’m thinking. You know I’m telling you the truth.”
His mind lurched and he grabbed onto that detail. “Telepath?” Nero mouthed to Raven, and she gave a tight nod.
Well, that confirmed how Becca had managed to highjack his dugga’s mental connection. She had one of her own. Here was hoping it was still sporadic and wasn’t always on, like the only other telepath he knew about. Always on would create problems. It meant he couldn’t hide anything from her, and he certainly couldn’t lie.
Wonderful. That just made everything more challenging.
“One thing at a time,” Raven said.
Becca nodded and hugged herself, as if she could physically hold her mind together. “Baby steps.”
“Yeah. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Becca’s gaze lifted to Nero, making his soul tremble with the need to comfort her, even though his logical mind knew drawing closer would only terrify her. “He used up all the hot water.”
Raven cocked an eyebrow, and her gaze dipped to his soaked pants and the puddle around his bare feet.
“I didn’t use all the hot water.” He hadn’t even turned on the hot water. He’d just desperately needed to think. Not that the soak had helped, and now Raven knew something was wrong. She was a water drake, too. She knew what running water meant to their kind, now that they were trapped in human vessels.
“There’s a casserole in the oven.” Raven straightened and swept her ponytail over her shoulder, radiating a confidence he was starting to see more often in the young dragon. The strain in her jaw, however, remained. “Nero, why don’t you get changed and meet us in the kitchenette?”
“Yeah.” It was a good idea, but he couldn’t make himself say his power word to summon a gate and get a change of clothes from his bedroom.
The strain tightened around her eyes.
God damn it, just summon a gate. Raven had this. She was more qualified to help than he was, and even if she wasn’t, his very presence seemed to make Becca unstable.
He bit back a growl. Do it. Summon. He hissed his power word, making Becca jump. His chest ache at her fear, and he pressed his hand to the bathroom door. A black vortex appeared, and he staggered through before it had completely formed and before his emotions stopped him.
16
Ivette stood in her office on the top floor of her research facility and stared out the bank of windows at the city lights beyond. Her office tower wasn’t the tallest in the Newgate city center, but it sat on the edge of a high rise cluster and offered her a spectacular view of the original century-old business district and half of the state university’s campus, which looked more like a park than an educational facility. This high up, with the ground covered in snow in a typical February freeze and early evening darkness creating shadows hiding the hustle of pedestrians on the street, she could almost forget that her facility was in chaos.
Almost.
The red light at the top of her computer screen — reflected in the office windows — indicated Rebecca Scott’s tracker had been deactivated, and Ivette’s computer techs claimed they had no idea what had gone wrong. Their best guess was that Rebecca had been somehow hit with a violent surge of electricity that had fried the tracker, or it had been cut out and deactivated. Given the device’s location, Ivette doubted Rebecca had removed it, and the last time the tracker had worked, she’d been halfway across town from the other subject who’d escaped with her, so he couldn’t have cut it out, either. But the electric surge was also doubtful.
Which left magic.
Ivette turned to her computer, reran the security video of the fight outside, and paused it on a clean image of the dragon. Nero Tassinari. Given how private the black dragon was, there was a surprising amount of information on him. Of course, that might be due to his age, and the fact that her association had been gathering information on dragons since the Dark Ages. Capturing and torturing a few dragons over the years had also helped gather more details.
It shocked her a dragon as old and powerful as Tassinari would get involved with anything relating to humans. He was a known leader of one of the dragon clans and believed to be a dragon Traditionalist — which meant he approved of slaughtering humans who possessed magic.
She hit play and ran the video to the part where Nero grabbed Rebecca and dragged her into the street and out of sight. He’d gone straight for her. He hadn’t tried to kill her or Werner Scholtz, which was surprising, given Werner had clearly demonstrated his magic to consume someone’s life force with a touch and had taken out more of her men than she’d like to admit. Her head of security would need to be replaced. He hadn’t imparted to his men the importance of not letting Scholtz touch them.
She started the video from the beginning again. Tassinari went straight for Rebecca. According to the tracker, he’d gated her twenty blocks over and then gated her away again when the facility’s men went to pick her up. This had to confirm he was a high-level member of the Asar Nergal, someone the dugga trusted to apprehend the human listening to all his telepathic communications. And while killing Rebecca outright would have been more efficient, the dugga had proven once again he was a cautious dragon and chose to investigate Rebecca’s power before ending her. That was what Ivette would do. Find the reason, the cause, and a way to prevent it in the future, then eliminate it.
Her office door opened and Dinah Koehn stormed in. “Didn’t you warn the men about Werner Scholtz? Security is your purview.”
Ivette fought to not roll her eyes. Dinah cared too much about their employees and especially about the subjects. Yes, they walked a fine line between gathering the necessary information about humans with unnaturally acquired magic and endangering those humans, but lives were on the line.
“The head of security was appropriately briefed. He’d even witnessed a demonstration of Scholtz’s abilities, so he was fully aware of the danger.”
“Werner outright killed three of them, two more are in comas, and five sustained injuries that will put them out of commission for weeks.”
But those injuries had more likely come from Tassinari’s wind magic. “So you’re saying we need to hire more men.”
“I’m saying you should have let me fully sedate Rebecca.”
Ivette hit stop on the video — it landed on a blurry image of Tassinari — and turned the screen. “But the facility just got a surprise lead on the dugga.”
Dinah crossed her arms. “Which beast is that?”
“Nero Tassinari.”
“The Major Black Coterie’s doyen?”
“Indeed.”
“What is he doing in Newgate?” Dinah inched closer to Ivette’s desk. “All reports indicate he’s usually at his home in Rome. He’s been there exclusively for the last sixty years.”
“I think the dugga sent him to grab Ms. Scott.”
“You think the dugga is more powerful than an ancient dragon? Maybe he’s the dugga.”
“The dugga wouldn’t be so stupid as to grab Scott himself.” Ivette turned her monitor back into proper position. “We need to find out if Tassinari has returned to Rome.”
“We need to
activate the elimination protocol and destroy the facility before Nero returns,” Dinah said with a grimace, her expression clear that she didn’t like the idea.
Ivette didn’t like the idea, either. She might not like Dinah, and they might not have the same goals, but they’d been running this facility and overseeing this research for years. If they followed the required elimination protocol, they’d lose everything.
“Do we think Tassinari would return here so soon?” Yes, he’d return, but — if he was as smart as all information they’d gathered suggested — he wouldn’t rush back. Besides, he was the only lead Ivette had ever gotten in identifying the dugga, and she was damned if she was going to waste her time following protocol and let him slip away. Dinah might want to research the unnatural magic and the degrees of insanity developed by those forced to have a dragon soul invade their body, but Ivette wanted every dragon dead, and she was starting with those who reveled in murdering humans with a naturally born magical ability.
Dinah’s eyes narrowed. “Protocol clearly states if the facility is compromised, everything must be destroyed.”
“I know what the protocol is. I’m in charge of security.” Ivette gripped the back of her desk chair. “I also know your life’s work is in this facility. We have a secondary location…” A location Tassinari didn’t know about. If they moved, she might not be able to justify keeping a full security force here for when the dragon returned — and he, or someone else just as significant, would return to find out what was going on here — but if she slowed the transfer down, she could have at least a partial force.
“I could arrange to have the servers and the most important experiments moved while the suppression magic on the new cells is activated,” Dinah said.
“We could turn the elimination priority list into a moving priority list. The most sensitive information first. If Tassinari or anyone else shows up, we can always switch to the elimination protocol.”
