The Panther's Rival

by Emilia Hartley

  Everett crossed his arms over his chest and pushed his feet apart. It was a sure sign that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “We have to fake a terror attack from the dragons. Wilson wants us to destroy a GOE building and make it look like a dragon attack.”

  She felt her stomach hit the floor. The feeling made her queasy. She set the beer on the table beside her and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. Did she really hear him correctly? Wilson was asking her to destroy part of her own job? Hell, he was asking her to throw away her career if she was caught.

  “No.” She shook her head. “We are not doing this. Do you realize how many lives that puts at stake? Sure, the woman was just one life in the face of many, but this could potentially hurt hundreds if not thousands.”

  Everett shook his head. “We’re going in during the wee hours of the morning when no one will be there. We place several small explosives near appliances that will create fire and then we get out. The building will go down without harming the ones around it.”

  “You’re talking like I’ve already agreed to this.”

  “Are you saying that you’re not going to help your father? He’s facing time in prison because he wanted to help humanity. He was trying to be a noble knight of GOE and this is how they want to thank him. I won’t stand by and let them do that to him. Why would you?”

  She dropped her head into her hands. She had no choice, really. She owed Wilson everything that she had. She would do anything for him.

  “Alright,” she said. Her voice was small. She didn’t want to be a part of this, but if this plan was what it took to set things right again she would follow orders. She was a knight of GOE, too. There would always be choices that would weigh on her conscience. All that mattered was that they made the world safer for humanity. “I’ll do it. Drop the plans off tomorrow night, but don’t tell me when it’s happening until the night of. I don’t want to know much if anyone questions me.”

  Everett nodded. “Good soldier.”

  Was she, though? Was she a good soldier? The idea of following through with Wilson’s plans dropped a heavy weight on her shoulders that made her reluctant to step forward. Regret over what they did to the human woman made her nights sleepless. Everything they did was in the name of protecting humanity from a danger that could easily wipe out cities. Yet, here she was letting one invade her private thoughts at each turn.

  She was no longer the soldier that Wilson had groomed for GOE, but that didn’t mean she would turn her back on them. She would live with the guilt and pain if it meant a safer world.

  At least, that’s what she told herself as Everett saw himself out. There was a time when he would have stayed the night. Before Raph arrived on the scene, she and Everett slept together after most missions. The sex released the pent-up tension and adrenaline that built during the job. Now, she was afraid that he could see what she had become, that it disgusted him.

  Chapter Three

  After GOE tried to kidnap and murder Dakota, the shifters were allowed a bit more freedom. The exception was meant to escort Dakota to and from the hearings at GOE. She was understandably reluctant to appear in a roomful of the people that tried to kill her.

  Gareth, on the other hand, took the exception as a way to leave the territory when he normally shouldn’t have. He was restless with everything that was going on. Every time they stepped off the territory there were cameras in their faces and people shouting questions. There were women by the sides of the roads, lifting their shirts in exuberant display to perhaps become a dragon’s mate. Wes didn’t see any of them. Not that he’d been the kind to openly gawk at women before meeting Dakota. Gareth sneered at them.

  Maybe those kinds of women would have been fun to roll around with fifty years ago. Gareth had changed. His soul hardened each time he realized that he would live a long life with no one in it. That was probably for the best, he thought.

  Gareth was low on the chain when it came to the dragons. That was his own fault. Honor was what bound and drove every dragon shifter. It commanded their actions and their relations to one another. Drystan led them because his honor was far above any other dragon he’d ever met. His own honor had systematically been destroyed through his youth by his own hands.

  He snuck out of the territory or started fights with his brethren. He couldn’t help it. The fire that burned inside of him was too great at times. He feared that if bound he would unleash a fire on the whole territory. Instead of burning down his home he picked fights he knew he would lose with Elgar the old. He rutted with women he would never see again, knowing that none of them would ever be his mate.

  So, when his beast burned with the image of Rhiannon, Gareth decided that he had to put his body into motion. He drove his beat-up truck around the city of Bangor while the unusual scent of that woman haunted his senses. His beast pulled it back to the forefront of his mind each time he thought to push it back and forget about it.

  His knuckles tightened on the metal steering wheel. The thing was already bent in several places from Gareth’s anger. Living with another creature inside one’s head was not a pleasant experience when they could not agree. Perhaps that was where his fire came from. It was the two of them constantly butting heads.

  Find her. The beast thought to command him.

  You are not in charge here, Gareth told his beast.

  I could be if I wanted to. Go find her. She needs us, even if she does not know it.

  His beast was full of himself. She was a GOE agent. She was off the tables for the greedy beast. He didn’t know how to explain that to something that was built on urges and desires.

  Still, he found himself rolling down the window of his truck. Cool, night air flooded the cab. It filled the truck with a myriad of smells, ranging from car exhaust to rotting trash. Mixed beneath it was the scent of an unfamiliar dragon.

  Not only that. It was a female dragon.

  His brow furrowed. Why would a female dragon be wandering this Welsh city alone? They were fierce creatures, but Wales was a bed of fear and fascination when it came to their kind. Didn’t she know that?

  Gareth found himself following the scent of the female dragon as he drove through Bangor. It never seemed to grow any closer. Instead, he lost the scent. A new one tickled his nose and drove his beast into a shuddering frenzy.

  The woman is nearby.

  Stuff it, he thought, even though he turned the steering wheel in the direction of Rhiannon’s scent. It led him to a small, single story house with two cars parked outside. From the days of sneaking out of the Territory in his youth, Gareth knew how to be careful. He drove around the corner and parked on a side street to avoid suspicion.

  In the dark of the night, Gareth hopped the fences that cut the space behind homes into small, personal segments. Light glowed in the window of the home that smelled like the frustrating Rhiannon. He didn’t know exactly what he thought he was doing here. It was an odd place to find himself when he should have been hunting the female dragon so that he could take her to the safety of the Territory.

  Gareth slunk beneath the kitchen window. He knew it was the kitchen from the scent of mildew beneath the sink that was behind his back. Closing his eyes, he could focus in on the voices in the house.

  “We have to fake a terror attack from the dragons. Wilson wants us to destroy a GOE building and make it look like a dragon attack,” a male voice said.

  There was a long pause before anyone spoke again.

  “No. We are not doing this. Do you realize how many lives that puts at stake?” Rhiannon’s voice was familiar, even through the wall. For a moment, he thought she might actually have a soul. Then she spoke again. “Sure, the woman was just one life in the face of many, but this could potentially hurt hundreds if not thousands.”

  “We’re going in during the wee hours of the morning when no one will be there. We place several small explosives near appliances that will create fire and then we get out. The building will go down with
out harming the ones around it.”

  Was Gareth actually hearing what he thought he was? The GOE agents that kidnapped his cousin’s mate were planning on attacking one of their own buildings with the intentions of blaming it on him and his family. When would they stop? When his family was bound in silver or dead? They had done nothing to Wales. Not for a century. Not since Elgar’s mate died.

  He sat for a long while, head against the building. Gareth knew what he’d seen in her eyes earlier that day. It was a true emotional response; it was regret. This woman, Rhiannon, could be sensible, he thought. Gareth could confront her and talk some sense into her. He could try, at the very least.

  He cursed his relative for all that happened a hundred years ago. He cursed Elgar for the wrath that he’d brought upon them when his family only wanted to live their lives in peace.

  The sound of an engine rolling over brought Gareth away from thoughts of the Occurrence and back to the present. As he listened to the car leave, he pushed himself to his feet. Rhiannon was not going to like him and that was okay. All he had to do was talk some sense into her. He might not have been the best choice for this. It was a job better left for Drystan, but his leader wasn’t there right then.

  It was just him. He snorted, knowing that this was going to go south very quickly. He was about to walk into the home of a GOE agent. He would be lucky if she didn’t try to kill him right away.

  “What are you doing on my porch?”

  It seemed that he didn’t have to knock. She found him. A light flicked on to backlight her athletic form. He couldn’t see her face, but he was fairly certain she was glaring menacingly at him. She did it well. She looked like violence barely contained in skin-tight pants and a neat bun. He wondered what she would be like when she let her hair down and slipped out of those skin-tight pants.

  He would bet good money that the violence in her stance translated to wild love making. She would mark him with her teeth and nails, coming close to drawing blood. Her dark, red hair would feel like silk over his bare skin.

  “What are you staring at?”

  He snapped back to the present and realized he was, indeed, staring at the woman on the porch. He shook his head to expel the racy thoughts that clouded his mind. He shouldn’t be thinking of a GOE agent that way. She would sooner slit his throat than sleep with him. Even if she did deign to sexual relations with him, she would most likely kill him in his sleep.

  The conversation he overheard came back and the fire of anger filled him again. This woman was tasked with starting a war between humanity and the dragons here in Wales. He couldn’t afford to let his thoughts slip into affection when it came to her.

  Something is wrong with this one, his beast whispered into his mind.

  Yeah, she’s the enemy, he told the beast.

  He envisioned the beast shaking its head. No. Something is wrong with her. She smells… not right.

  Gareth swallowed the sigh of irritation that threatened to rise. He had no idea what his beast was trying to tell him. The thing couldn’t tell him exactly what was wrong with her, of course. It could only state the same thing over and over again, to grate on Gareth’s patience.

  “I heard what you were told to do,” Gareth confessed. “Your boss wants you to destroy one of your own people’s buildings so that they can call us terrorists.”

  “You were eavesdropping on me?” Her voice was a growl, slithering out from between her clenched teeth. She stepped closer to him, completely unafraid of his much bigger form.

  “Truthfully, I came to pop in and say hello to my favorite GOE agent, but I saw that you already had visitors. I thought I would wait until you were finished.” Sarcasm dripped from his lips.

  “Leave,” she commanded.

  “Absolutely not.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not moving from this spot until you tell me that you won’t participate in this man’s plans. Tell me you see the wrong in what he asked you to do and I will leave you in peace.”

  Her eyes burned with fire. “It may be wrong, but if it gets us closer to our end goal it is a sacrifice that I’m ready to make.”

  “Oh, yeah? What is this wonderful end goal that has you wanting to destroy your own? How noble is it?”

  “We seek to remove you from Wales once and for all. It was your family that attacked us. It is your presence that threatens humanity day in and day out. Once GOE gives us the go ahead we will see that you are wiped out of Snowdonia so that humanity can sleep better at night. So, they can live without the worry that a dragon will burn down their home or kill their parents.”

  “That’s awfully specific of you,” Gareth said, brows slanting together as he studied her face. “For the last hundred years we have lived peacefully in silence, bound to a small piece of land. Before that, we lived an unassuming life so that no one would know we even existed.”

  “Lies. I know your kind for what they really are. The Guardians of Existence have always known you for the monsters that you are. It’s why they’ve existed for as long as they have.”

  “Then why are you trying to blow up one of your own buildings? And, don’t forget that I know one of your dirty little secrets. There was a white dragon fighting on your side the day that you kidnapped Dakota. I highly doubt the fella appeared out of nowhere and attacked a red dragon for the fun of it at that precise moment.”

  Rhiannon’s mouth snapped shut and he knew that he’d hit the nail on the head. He had never before seen the white dragon until its maw was wrapped around his cousin’s neck. It was beyond him why a dragon wanted to help GOE do anything, but it clearly had.

  “You really seem to hate us. I would almost believe a dragon personally stabbed you in the back if I didn’t know better. We’ve been kept on quite a short leash during our life and when we can leave the Territory, we’re more concerned with putting a woman on her back than putting a knife in her back.”

  “Dragons killed my parents,” she hissed.

  Gareth took a step back. His mind rolled through the many years that he’d been alive, much longer than this human woman. “Not here in Wales, they didn’t. I would remember such a thing in your lifetime.”

  She closed the space between them to shove a finger into his chest while she looked up at him. She was imposing for such a small figure. He didn’t back up, but he felt a spike of thrill shoot through him. It would be nothing to lean forward and capture her mouth with his own. She would fight him, but he would have already stolen a kiss from her.

  “Don’t lie to me. I know that you’re going to try to talk me out of my mission, but the words of a dragon are going to do nothing for me. Get off my porch.”

  Gareth shook his head. “Not going to happen. I can’t let you hurt my family because you’re confused. I think I’m going to stay right where I am until I know that I’ve foiled your precious mission.”

  He watched her face turn pale in the dark.

  “No. I cannot have a dragon camping out on my back porch! It is out of the question.”

  “I believe, if I heard correctly, you were stripped of your weapon as an agent of GOE. What are you going to do to get rid of me? Call animal control? Hit me with your broom?”

  Rhiannon let out a sound of frustration, hands clenching in the air between them. She spun on her heel.

  “Sleep well tonight, lass. Know that I will not hurt you, no matter what you think of me and my kind. Know that you have hurt one of my family and still I promise no harm upon you. In fact, I think my beast kind of likes you. Maybe he just likes a challenge.”

  She paused at her door, regarding him with somber eyes. Gareth stood still, trying to look as peaceful as possible. It wasn’t something that he was very good at. Brooding and fighting, now those were two things he was great at. This was a new playing field for him and he was more than a bit out of his element.

  When she disappeared inside, Gareth let out the breath that he was holding. He was an idiot. Had he really just promised to camp on this woman’s ba
ck porch. He looked around, forlorn, for a place to settle down. Thankfully, there was a folding lawn chair crammed into a corner. He pulled it out and unfolded it into its long form. It wasn’t as nice as waking up beside a woman, but it also wasn’t the worst thing that he’d ever slept on.

  ***

  Rhiannon lay in her bed, acutely aware that there was a dragon sleeping outside her house. The worst part of it was that she could barely get him from her mind. Her mind brought her back to his square jaw and how she thought of dragging her teeth along it while she looked up at him. Worse, during their argument, she wondered what it would be like to feel the press of his bare skin on hers as they lay together.

  She blamed Everett for not staying the night. It had been a long time since she’d laid with another man and it must have left her a bit crazy. That was the only explanation for the way she thought about the dragon man on her porch.

  The night was filled with tossing and turning. Not even the beer could help her slip into a comfortable sleep. When she rose in the morning, she grumbled toward the kitchen for a cup of black coffee. The strong, bitter drink would snap her awake. At the sink, she saw the dragon man sprawled out on her chaise. She could hear his snoring through the wall and even spared a laugh.

  What was she going to do? Everett and Wilson were going to call on her at any moment. She couldn’t do her job if there was a dragon watching her every movement. She had to find a way to lose him. Their sense of smell was incredibly strong, so she knew that if she tried to duck him he would just track her down again.

  She had to lie to him, Rhiannon realized. If she convinced him that she believed him and agreed that her mission was wrong, he would gladly leave and skulk back to his territory.

  Yes, that was it.

  With her warm mug in hand, she slid open the glass door and stepped out into the cool morning air. The dragon man was already awake, his eyes trained on her. She startled, coffee sloshing over her hand.

  “I heard you in the kitchen,” he confessed. “Sorry to scare you like that. I live alone so any sounds of other life tend to wake me. Even the footsteps of small women.”