by Cecilia Lane
Lola’s stomach rumbled again. She eyed the food, then the woman holding the squirming child.
Luca pulled Rafe aside during the food standoff. She knew they were talking about her from the way they glanced at her far too casually. Her lips pursed and she strained to hear them. She'd never been able to read lips and Penelope talked too much.
“I know this is a difficult time. But you’ll see, we’re not bad people.”
She stayed silent. She wasn’t sure what to say to the woman. She was responsible for her still breathing, but somehow a thank you didn’t seem appropriate. She may still be alive, but she was also a prisoner. Lola picked up the spoon and took a taste of her soup.
Penelope’s face split into a triumphant smile. She didn’t comment on Lola eating. “Even if we can’t send you home, maybe we can open the lines of communication. We’re in a new world. It’s time to set aside these ancient animosities.”
Good luck with that, Lola wanted to say. It wasn’t as simple as agreeing to disagree on whether tacos or pizza were the better food. The dragons had shed too much blood for her people to set aside their differences.
But the slayers also shed blood, hadn’t they? They weren’t innocent. Rafe’s words haunted her.
Her brothers would be right to leave her with her captors. Three days of their treatment and she was ready to turn her coat.
Too soon, the men finished their talk. Penelope gave her another smile to add to her growing doubts and swept out of the cafeteria with Luca and the baby.
“What was that about?” Lola asked as Rafe settled back into his seat. The sandwich that looked huge in her hands seemed tiny in his.
His eyes flicked over his sandwich and then back down again. It was the first question she asked him since she broke down the first night. She held her breath and didn’t know what to expect.
It felt odd to try chatting with him like she wasn’t a prisoner of his people. But what other option did she have? Penelope had convinced her to cave on her small hunger strike and there was no rescue in sight. She should get used to the idea of living in the tower.
“Just checking up on Dragonsworn duties.” Rafe shrugged.
She arched an eyebrow but let it slide. She knew there was more he wasn’t telling her. She also knew he wouldn’t tell her unless he wanted. Prisoners had no right to demand information. She doubted her brothers would allow a shifter to be mouthy toward them.
She didn’t think Rafe would be violent toward her, though. Even if she pressed him for more. Still, it was best to proceed with caution. Watch, listen, and learn.
The dragons confused her more than anything in the world.
They finished eating in silence. Lola felt Rafe’s eyes on her and caught him watching her on more than one occasion. She filed those looks away as well.
She didn’t try to fight him when he stood and cleared away their trays and plates. She followed after him. “Where to next?”
His eyes slid to her before looking ahead. She liked that she was putting him off simply by asking him questions. There was definitely merit in changing her resistance strategy.
“I’m teaching a hand-to-hand combat class today.”
He packed her into the elevator again. She noted the floor. Higher than the cafeteria level that she’d snuck in, but still lower than the residential floors. She hadn’t been on his chosen selection before and was surprised to find the elevator opened into a large gymnasium.
The floor was sectioned into four parts by a low wall. Lockers lined one wall outside of the elevator, while the other side contained a whole other room that she assumed were for showers and restrooms.
Rafe led her directly toward the back. The quadrant nearest to them housed exercise equipment. Another section was severely quiet as a gathered group danced slowly through specific forms. An instructor moved through the group and corrected arm and leg placements.
Rafe nodded her toward the corner and she made herself comfortable. He stripped off his shirt and tossed it next to her. She sucked in a breath and looked away. He was too fit for his own good and it made her body respond in ways she never experienced before.
Her attention slowly focused on the class. Most of them studied her with curiosity and whispers hidden behind their hands before Rafe clapped once and gained their attention.
Lola had never been allowed to train as a fighter. Her brothers always shooed her away if she even tried to enter their frequent bouts of playful wrestling when they were children.But the dragons didn’t have such distinctions. Women were allowed to fight and they fought well.
Rafe directed everyone to pair off. There were as many mixed gender pairs as same, which shocked her. It didn't seem to matter to anyone, as long as they were determined to participate in the instruction. The men didn't go easy on them, but the women didn't need it. They were as tough and skilled as the men.
One small girl tossed her opponent to the ground every time he came at her. Most of the other pairs struggled for a bit and both were on the ground. The girl took her bumps, but not nearly as often as anyone else. The man kept grinning and complimenting her, instead of growing angry at being bested so often.
Her entire upbringing was formed around the idea that shifters—dragons, especially—were horrid monsters hellbent on destroying humanity. They wanted to savage the land and the people in it. She'd seen the damage a shifter could cause when her father lost his leg on a dragon hunt and again when a werewolf prisoner had managed to escape the pit. Lives were lost that day and days after when some of those attacked fell ill with a fever.
But Lola hadn’t been attacked. Hell, the dragon queen had the deciding vote in Lola’s fate. The woman wasn’t afraid to speak out and she was heard instead of being told to quiet down and go back home.
Perhaps dragons weren't as backward and terrible as the slayers considered them. The thought made her head hurt.
With another clap and motion, everyone in the class changed position. Chaos reigned as they all started attacking one another. Rafe bounced on the balls of his feet and faced off against multiple opponents. He easily dodged blow after blow. He moved fluidly from one stance to another. She found herself rooting for him, even though she knew it was simply training and he was in no real danger. She still wanted him to win.
She became increasingly aware of just how powerful a man he was. He tossed his opponents to the ground with ease and picked them back up with an offered hand. Her cheeks flushed at how easily he could toss her over his shoulder and…
She pushed that thought to the back of her head. She was already in dangerous territory recognizing his skill. She didn’t need to harbor any indecent thoughts of him. He was her jailor.
And she slept just down the hall from him. It would be all too simple to pull up his shirt while they passed by one another and trace the lines of his abs with her tongue.
Lola shook her head and cleared away the fog just as Rafe turned into his opponent and tossed the man over his hip.
Slowly and by rules she couldn’t comprehend, the mass of limbs and blows thinned out. Those knocked out formed a circle around those that kept fighting. She noticed a newcomer on the edge, not quite in the circle of class participants. She thought she recognized him as Brody, one of the others that worked closely with Rafe. He hadn’t been there the night she was captured.
Rafe eyed Brody and excused himself from the fight. He stepped off the mat and flashed her a reassuring smile that made her insides melt. His chest heaved with his exertion. He grabbed a towel and wiped his face as he approached Brody.
Again, she knew she was being talked about. Rafe and the other man glanced her way. Brody was clearly upset. She thought she could see his eyes changing from human to dragon and back again.
She needed to be prepared for whatever came next, even if she had no idea what that could be.
“There’s been an incident.”
Brody’s brisk accent was even sharper than usual. Rafe could smell the unease rolling off him. He wiped at
his face again, as much as to dry himself as to give him something to do.
“What happened?”
Brody’s eyes focused over his shoulder before bouncing across the room. He was eyeing Lola in a too casual manner. Rafe bristled.
The white of his eyes were consumed by the black of his dragon. His voice was thick when he spoke. “There was a murder. Dragon slayers.”
Rafe inhaled. He’d just spoken with Luca about needing answers from Lola. It’d been clear from the night she was given her reprieve and he volunteered to watch over her that he would be expected to try digging into her secrets. The pressure would become even more fierce if a slayer had taken a dragon’s life.
"The King wants her brought downstairs for questioning," Brody growled.
He nodded. It was expected. They’d try to spook her into turning over everything she knew. Hell, he was already thinking of eight different ways to get her running into his arms.
He blinked. That was not the thought he should be having. She was off limits. She was a prisoner of the dragons. She was an enemy of his people. Even if she smelled like his mate and his dragon wanted to sink fangs into her skin. She wasn’t his to touch.
“I’ll get her down there right away. You have any other details for me?” He needed to cool himself down. Bathing in the cold reality of a murder should be sufficient to take his mind off Lola.
Brody let out a long breath and his eyes flashed over to Lola once again. Rafe’s dragon wanted to push forward and warn the unmated male away from their mate. “It was Jessica Desousa. Her body was found this morning by one of the flight groups searching out the dragon slayer camp. You tutored with her, didn’t you?”
The flight groups were checking the areas surrounding the city in a grid pattern. They were looking for anything that didn’t seem right. The trouble was the city had a large amount of farmland close to the mountain range and an even larger desert range beyond that. Towns dotted the spaces between. So an inside group was comparing public records to the reports from the flight groups to see if anything out of the ordinary popped up.
It'd be so much easier if Lola would give them the information. The royal family was willing to give her time to trust them, but it was slow going. She'd only just broke her silent treatment after three days of nothing. He could almost respect her stubbornness if he didn’t think that her silence led to the death of a dragon.
“Yeah, about a year. She got a different placement after her parents heard she was running wild in Rome.” Rafe sighed and the last of his unbidden desire faded. The loss of a dragon was anything but sexy.
He glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. “I’ll take her downstairs now.”
Chapter Five
"Lola, come with me," Rafe said after he padded back over to her.
The heat faded from her body as surely as if she’d been sprayed with cold water. She glanced over his shoulder at the other man. Their faces were too serious.
“I need to take you downstairs. There’s been an incident.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “What kind of incident?”
He ignored her and pulled his shirt on over his head and laced his shoes back on his feet.
As soon as the elevator door closed, she turned to him and asked, “Will you tell me what happened now?”
He stared at her reflection. “There was a death. One of our own. It looks like a dragon slayer did it.”
“Oh.” Her face blanked. It’d been years since her compound had successfully killed a dragon. Her imprisonment was too much of a coincidence. Had her brothers banded together with another cell to take down one of the dragons?
Were they really going to attempt a rescue mission? For her?
They rode the rest of the way in silence. The chiming of the door opening sounded too loud in her ears. The buzzing only increased when Rafe’s hand pressed against her lower back. Heat blazed through her again and she took a quick step forward and away from his troubling touch.
She stopped as the first door came into view. The hallway was harshly lit and the rooms on either side had glass windows to peer inside. The compound had a similar setup, though they had much more silver in the way of bars and dimmer lighting.
She shook her head. “No.”
Rafe’s hand pressed against the small of her back and urged her on. “We just need to talk. No harm will come to you.”
She shook her head again and panic clawed at her. That was exactly the kind of thing to say right before the knife sliced across her throat.
He continued, “Jared is in there now. He’s one of our security team. He has some questions for you. Now, I know you couldn’t have done anything because you were with me when it happened. But maybe you know who did it. We need to know anything that could help.”
Her eyes widened. It was just as she feared. They’d lulled her into a sense of false security before bringing the knife down. They’d torture her for the information.
“I’ll be watching from here,” Rafe said. He pressed at her back again and she took a step forward into the room.
As he said, there was a huge man already inside. She tried to make herself as small as she could against the wall as she passed him. She didn’t meet his eyes when she took a seat opposite him. Her hands shook and she pressed them firmly against the table to still her movement.
There was no preamble, no gentle beginning. The man—Jared—eyed her. His voice was harsh when he spoke. “One of our dragons went missing a day ago. Her body was found this morning. Fangs and claws were removed. Scales torn away.”
Lola swallowed hard. Fangs and claws were trophies. Scales could be fashioned into armor, sometimes. She used a few herself to test out her weapons.
Rafe and the other shifters had her so mixed up and confused. She should be happy for the slayers. They’d finally taken down a dragon. Word would spread through the compounds and they would gain honor from a successful hunt.
But she glanced toward the glass window. It only showed her a reflection of herself. She looked small and scared and weak. She had no honor. She had been taken captive and she felt sorry for the one that had been killed.
And some part of her worried Rafe would think less of her.
Her interrogator snapped his fingers in front of her face. She glared at him. “We need to know where your people are located. We need to find who did this.”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t.”
Lola jumped when his hand slapped the table. The chair scraped loudly as he stood to loom over her. “You will tell me.”
“I can’t let you hurt them,” she whispered.
The man snarled. “But you can let them hurt us, is that it? I ought to cut a piece off you for every one of my people that have died because of you bastards. Won’t be much left when I’m finished.”
The door banged open. Rafe stepped into the room. He growled, “Let it go, Jared.”
“The King wants to know.” Jared crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t blink.
“I know what he wants and this isn’t it.”
They glared at each other for what felt like an eternity. She could almost feel them sizing each other up. But from what she'd seen earlier, Jared stood no chance if he tried to get physical with Rafe.
Shaking his head and grumbling under his breath, the man left the room and slammed the door behind him.
Rafe took the seat occupied by Jared only moments before. He stared into the reflective glass with a hard look. He softened only a fraction when he focused on her.
“I won’t tell you where it’s located, either,” she told the table.
“I know. Let’s talk about something else. What did you do for fun when you were there?”
She snorted. “Fun? There was no fun. There was just work. Working to survive and fighting for our lives.”
“What about movies? See anything good lately?” He turned his attention to his fingernails, frowning at one and then attempting to smooth down a sharp edge.
&n
bsp; "Not really. Sometimes someone rents a movie and we all watch it. But usually, we're too busy. Working."
“What did you do?”
She rubbed at her upper arm. If she pressed hard enough, she could feel the little capsule under her skin. All members of the compound were given a tracker. She’d implanted more than a few herself since she took over the lab. They lived dangerous lives. The men courted death on every hunt and the women knew they could be hauled away by monsters. The trackers would lead the survivors to where their people had fallen. They could gather the dead and exact revenge.
She didn’t say a word about it. It wasn’t difficult to figure out the dragons were making a home in the city. She didn’t expect a rescue in the middle of them. But the signal she sent into the ether would tell others she was inside and the dragons were not to be trusted as long as they held her captive.
She tried to recall exactly what she’d told him the night she was captured. She’d gone a little hysteric and said more than she intended. If she changed her story now, he’d surely know. It was best to go with the truth, she figured.
“I managed the weapons lab after my father died. No one else knew how to do everything, so my brothers let me stay there instead of forcing me into the kitchen with the other women.”
She nearly missed it, but Rafe stiffened slightly. He was relaxed again within the next beat of her heart.
“What kind of weapons?”
Lola frowned and studied her hands on the table. She needed to give them something, didn’t she? They’d let her live instead of killing her. And with her gone and no one else to run the lab, it wasn’t likely that her brothers would succeed where she’d failed. It’d be useless information. She could share what she’d worked on instead of giving up the location of the compound.
“I created a poison that would potentially weaken a shifter. Early trials were successful. We hadn’t taken a dragon in years and needed to improve our weapons beyond the usual silver bullets. Those are fine for regular shifters, but you dragons are a challenge.”
Rafe shrugged and smirked. “It wouldn’t have worked.”
