by Dena Christy
Whatever he planned, he would not be successful because the biggest advantage that Gregor had over him was his love for Elle. He would do anything to keep her safe.
“You’ll have your fight. Let me speak to her.” The brief moment hearing her speak his name when she’d answered the phone was not enough for him. He needed to talk to her, to tell her that this would all soon be over.
“You don’t need to talk to her.” There was an impatient quality to Nash now as if he wasn’t as confident that Elle was his as much as he was pretending. Gregor wanted him off balance as much as possible. It would further strengthen his advantage.
“I do if you want me to go through with this. I need to know that she is unharmed and her brief greeting has done nothing to assure me of that.” Nash growled slightly, and for a moment Gregor thought he would not comply.
After a second’s pause, Elle came back on the phone. Gregor’s mind raced over what to say. There was so much he wanted to say to her, to tell her, but they didn’t have time for that. He would share what was inside him with her once this was all over.
“Baby, are you hurt? Has he hurt you?”
“No, he hasn’t hurt me.” Relief went through Gregor for a split second. He would still kill Nash, but at least it wouldn’t be because he’d hurt his woman.
“When this is over, we need to talk. There are things I need to say to you, things you have to understand.” Before he could say more, Nash’s voice came back on the phone.
“You’ve heard her, you know she hasn’t been hurt. Now if you want her back, you better meet with me and come alone or I might hurt her.”
“Listen to me, you prick. If you harm her, there will be no rock you can crawl under that will keep you safe. I will hunt to the ends of the Earth until I find you and kill you.”
“Just be there alone.” The call disconnected.
Gregor calmly and carefully set his phone aside. He wanted to smash everything in the room, but that would not help Elle. He needed to maintain his composure and store his rage until the time came to unleash it on Gabriel Nash.
“What’s the plan?” Iszak spoke, and Gregor looked up at him. He’d forgotten that he and Julia were even in the room while he’d been talking to Nash.
“He wants to meet with me alone, in the same place where you confronted Julia’s father. He thinks his hunter friends will be there to help him spring his trap.”
A smile flickered on Iszak’s face. “But they won’t be.’
“No, they won’t. And if he thinks I’m going to go there without backup, he’s crazy. Get Andor and let’s finally end this once and for all.”
Gregor turned and walked out of the room. He was ready for this to be over. And once Nash was dealt with, he was going to tell Elle that he loved her.
The reason she was in this mess was because he’d been too afraid to tell her how he felt, that if she knew she would turn away from him. Knowing that she was in the hands of his enemy had given him a whole new perspective. She was his woman; he loved her and he would sacrifice his life right this minute if he thought that doing so would keep her safe.
He got to the front door of the house and was eager to get this confrontation done and over with so he could get Elle back. It didn’t take long for his brothers to join him.
“This place where we are meeting, it has a lot of places to hide. We must go in quietly.” Iszak knew the place where they were going, and a deadly smile crossed Gregor’s face. He was certain now that Nash had picked such a place because he thought his hunter friends could lie in wait for them. He was about to learn just how wrong he was.
“We will have the advantage then if you two hide well enough that he doesn’t know you’re there. Now let’s take care of this hunter scum.”
The three of them walked out the door, and within moments all had transformed into their dragon forms and took off into the sky.
As Gregor flew with his brothers at his back everything became sharper and clearer to him. His dragon side knew what it needed to do, and satisfaction settled deep in the pit of his belly. He would kill the hunter and get his woman back. He would prove his love for her and she would finally, after centuries of waiting, be his.
Elle sat in the car next to Gabriel, her hands clenched her lap. The further they drove away from Waldron Valley into the unknown, the more her fear rose up to choke her. Over and over that was a litany in her head, telling her to get away from him. Already she could see that he was becoming unhinged. The conversation he had with Gregor had injected a reckless insanity inside him that she could see in his eyes. The farther away from civilization they got, the faster he drove. Perhaps they wouldn’t be arriving at the meeting place at all if he wrapped the car around a tree. Their safety wasn’t helped by the fact that he was repeatedly trying to call someone on his cell phone.
“Maybe you should put the phone down and concentrate on your driving.” She wouldn’t be at all sad if he died in a crash but he would also take her with him, and that she didn’t want. Knowing that very soon she would be reunited with Gregor made her want to live more than anything else. It was the only reason she’d stuck with him.
His guarding of her had become lax once she’d fooled him into believing that she wanted to be with him. There had yet to be an opportunity to run, but as soon as one presented itself she would take it. Gregor could not focus on taking care of Nash if she was there as a distraction. She only hoped that if she escaped that she found Gregor before Nash did.
“Worried we’re going to crash?” Nash threw his phone aside. “Change of plans anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Panic settle in Elle’s belly. Had he changed his mind about trapping Gregor? If they didn’t go where they were going, how was she going to escape him?
“The two hunters I was traveling with aren’t responding to my calls.” A scowl drew his brows together, and Elle’s panic subsided.
“It’s because they're dead.” The hunters he was talking about must be the ones who had set fire to her shop. What other ones could he be talking about?
He twisted his head toward her, his expression darkening. The car swerved and Elle let out a startled cry. Nash turned his attention to the road and his face smoothed out although his hands kept their white knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m more than a match for that monster, especially since I have you. He won’t want to risk you getting hurt, and that will make him vulnerable.”
This was exactly what Elle feared. She wanted Gregor’s focus to be solely on surviving this fight, and she knew that as soon as they stopped she would have to get away from Gabriel. She loved Gregor and if he died at the hands of this man, who had already taken so much from her, it would devastate her. She would bide her time until the opportunity to flee came her way.
She remained silent, and now that he knew his partners would not be joining him, Nash paid all his attention to getting them where they needed to go. He slowed as he traversed the winding gravel road and a dead end sign came up on the right.
He kept going right until the end. He stopped the car and turned off the engine.
“It’s important that you do exactly as I say.” He pulled the gun that he’d had tucked in the waistband of his pants and pointed it directly at her. “Don’t think I didn’t know what you were doing back there in the motel room. You’ll pay for not wanting me once the dragon is dead.”
Elle’s heart thumped heavily, but she forced herself to remain calm. Her cause would not be helped if she fell to pieces now. Now more than ever she needed to get away from him. She quietly undid her seatbelt so she would be ready to bolt out of the car if she had to.
“You won’t live to do anything to me.” They were bold words, but she had to believe them, and it would put him off balance if he believed them too. “He will kill you.”
“Shut up.”
She could see the anger build him in, and he took the gun off her for a split second as he raised his han
ds to his head, as if he could block her words. It was the chance she was looking for and she yanked on the door handle and dove out of the car. She didn’t stop to look at what he was doing. Her entire focus was getting as far away from him as possible. She had a slight advantage in that it would take him a second to undo his seatbelt and get out of his side of the car.
She ran toward the trees on the side of the road and kept running. Despite his shouts behind her, she refused to turn to look to see if he was pursuing. She knew that he would be, and as Gregor had told her last night, looking would only slow her down.
A shot rang out behind her and bark splintered off a tree to her left. She dodged to the right and kept running. She kept up the zig-zag pattern so that he would have a harder time hitting her, and she reckoned that if he took the time to aim he would have to slow down.
The muscles in her legs burned about as bad as her lungs did, but she kept going. She shot out of the woods to a clearing and ran as fast as she could. Without the cover of trees she was more vulnerable, and she could hear the heavy thud of his boots hitting the ground behind her. Up ahead the ground dropped away as the open field ended on a cliff face. She skidded to a stop, and her stomach churned when she saw how far down the drop was.
She turned and raised her hands. This was it, the man who had killed her husband was going to kill her and there was nothing she could do about it. Her only consoling thought was that Gregor would deal with him and not kindly.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“Because you were supposed to be with me.” Nash was panting from his exertion just as much as she was. She took a tiny step back and she could hear the clatter of rocks spilling down the chasm behind her. She hoped it was only her imagination that made it feel like the ground was loose beneath her feet. She was trapped between the drop and Nash’s gun, and it only made her angry.
“Life isn’t about getting what you want all the time. Sometimes you want someone and they don’t want you back. Only an insane person would kill to have them. How did you think this was going to work out? That you would reveal that you killed Ian, that I would watch you kill Gregor in front of my eyes and that I would willingly go with you?”
“Stop talking.” Gabriel raised the gun and Elle braced herself for the impact of the bullet that he would surely fire at any second.
“Elle.” Gregor’s shout came to her from the edge of the trees and relief poured through her. The man she loved was here, and everything was going to be okay now.
She shifted her weight, and the ground crumbled beneath her. A scream escaped her as the ground fell away and she felt her body falling.
17
Gregor burst through the trees just in time to see Elle standing in front of a cliff’s edge with Nash standing in front of her.
“Elle.” He called out to her, intending to warn her about her precarious position, and there was a look of such relief on her face that it made him hopeful that they would get through this and be together.
Nash turned slightly and Gregor’s stomach turned sour when he saw the gun in the other man’s hand. He was careful not to make any sudden moves because to do so might cause him to shoot Elle.
His eyes darted to Elle’s as Nash turned, and he saw the moment when the ground fell away from beneath her feet.
“No.” His shout echoed in the air as he ran forward just as she fell out of sight.
“Gregor.” Iszak had caught up with him, and he shouted a warning just as a shot rang out. A bullet whizzed by his ear, but he ignored it. He needed to get to Elle, it was all that mattered.
He came abreast of Nash, and he was the only thing standing between him and his woman’s safety. He didn’t take the time to speak, to vent his rage at the man whose actions may very well have killed his woman.
“You—” It was the only thing that Nash said before Gregor grasped both sides of his head in his big hands and twisted. Nash’s lifeless body fell to the ground when he let go.
Gregor walked carefully to the edge where Elle had fallen, and he braced himself to see the sight of her broken body at the bottom of the cliff. If she was down there dead, then fate really hated him since it had taken her away from him in exactly the same way a century ago.
He looked over the edge and relief poured through him. Elle was there, scraped up and clinging to a small scraggly tree that was growing out of the rock. She looked up at him, her eyes wide as if she couldn’t believe that she was seeing him.
“Just hold on, I’m going to help you.” Just as he said that, the tree she was clinging to slipped a little and tiny rocks tumbled down the face of the cliff.
“I don’t know how much longer the tree will hold me. Gregor, I’m scared.”
Probably not as scared as he was with the thought of watching her fall to her death. That would not happen. He heard a sound behind him, and saw his brother’s standing there, ready to help.
“Don’t come too close to the edge, the ground here is not that sturdy and I don’t want to knock anything loose that could cause her to fall.” Gregor got down on his belly and shimmied toward the edge. He reached down with his hands, but he could not reach her to pull her up. Even if she held on to the tree one handed and try to reach for him, there was no guarantee that she could grasp his hand. He would have to think of something else.
“I’m going to get to you, just hold on.” He scooted back from the edge and looked at his brothers. “I can’t reach her.”
“Do you want me to go back to Nash’s car and see if he has any rope in there?” Andor made the offer, and Gregor shook his head. There wasn’t time for that, he needed to get Elle on solid ground and he needed to do it now.
“What if one of us held on to your ankles and lowered you down to her?” Iszak proposed this idea, and for a second Gregor tested the idea in his head to see if it would work.
“I don’t know if the ground would take our combined weight.” Damn it he had to think of a way to get her out of there.
“The ground won’t need to take your weight if you’re airborne. I can change into my dragon form, and grasp you by the ankles and hover with you. We could then lower you down until you can grab her. I can pull you both up and then Andor can take Elle from you and get her far enough away from the edge so that she doesn’t fall again.”
Gregor didn’t know if what his brother was proposing would work, but they had little choice but to try. Elle would fall to her death if they didn’t get her to safety and without ropes or anything that they could use to get her this was their best option.
Gregor nodded at Iszak as he and Andor moved further away from the edge. His brother was well away when he transformed into his dragon form, and he was firmly on solid ground so there was no danger of the ground crumbling beneath him and endangering Elle.
“Elle, we have a plan to get you, just hold on for a few more minutes.” Gregor called to her and silently prayed that this would work. He lay on the ground face down and the talons of his brother’s front appendages dug into his flesh as he grasped him. Gregor didn’t care and focused his attention on what he needed to do to get Elle to safety. He would endure any pain if it meant that she would be saved.
His brother’s leathery wings flapped in the air and Gregor could feel himself rising slowly off the ground. The blood rushed to his head as he dangled in the air and his brother slowly moved him to the edge. He could see Elle looking up at him as she clung to the tree. Her eyes widened when she saw him hanging in midair above her. His did his best to give her a reassuring smile as his brother lowered him closer to her. His flapping wings created a wind that stirred the dirt around them and ruffled her hair. Iszak’s progressed seemed so slow and while Gregor wanted him to rush, he knew that they had to be cautious so that ground wasn’t disturbed too much.
“I’m going to get hold of you. You'll be safe and I won’t let you go. All you have to do is trust me and let go of the tree.”
Elle nodded, and he reached for her. It was awkward
with him hanging upside down but he got his arms around her waist and held on to her tight.
“Let go of the tree.”
She let it go and Iszak raised them up at lot faster than he’d lowered Gregor originally. They flew away from the edge of the cliff and he could feel Elle trembling in his arms. He was so proud of how brave she was. He wanted nothing more than to tell her how much he loved her but until she was safely on solid ground, she was not safe.
Iszak slowly lowered them, and Gregor put her into Andor’s waiting arms and his brother turned her around so that she could not see Gabriel Nash’s dead body. She would know that Nash was no longer a threat, but she didn’t see him laying on the ground with his neck bent at an angle and his lifeless eyes staring at her.
“Let me down.” He needed to get to her and hold her. Iszak must have understood because he went down to the ground and let him go. Gregor hit the ground with a muffle thump and he was on his feet in seconds.
He rushed to where Andor was standing with her, and his brother moved away. He pulled Elle into his arms and closed his eyes.
“Oh Gregor, I’m so sorry I ran.” She sobbed against his chest, and he made soothing circles on her back with his hands.
“It’s okay. You’re safe now and that’s all that matters.” He buried his face in her hair and breathed in her scent. He wanted to tell her everything that was in his heart but this was not the place for that. “Let me get you out of here. Let me take you home.”
Elle had the random thought that she could get used to flying around on the back of a dragon. The second time doing it was much less disconcerting than the first. It was a good thing too, since if Gregor would forgive her for running from him, she planned to stay with him for the rest of their lives.
He said nothing as he changed out of his dragon form, took her hand and escorted her into his home. He led her up the long staircase, his hand warm and comforting in hers as he led her to his bedroom.
