by Ava Mason
I gasped for air, scrambling to pull Carrie between me and the wall, but it felt like magic was being forced down my throat every time I tried to breathe.
“No!” Elizabeth shouted at Hunter. He was on all fours on the floor, shaking his head. His skin had transformed into a thick scaly mess. His eyes were pure dragon, and his muscles bulged underneath his clothes, shifting and moving, the bones in his body popping and growing only to shrink again. Hunter was fighting it. The tug of war between his magic and the magic of Lizzy’s baby was clear as day. He was stuck in an ever-changing form that hung between human and dragon.
Carrie tried to push away from the wall but I grabbed her, holding her tight to me. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Get off me,” she screamed, swiping at my face. Pain tore through my body and I let her go in shock. Her nails had transformed into wolf claws. She didn’t stop to check on me, but fought against the magic swirling around the room, trying to get to her Alpha.
I watched in awe as every one of Elizabeth’s pack tried to get to her, even though she didn’t seem to be in any danger. No, the danger was all around us - shattered bits of wood and glass, blue wind whipping at anything and everything. Power surged from my own body, my dragon trying to claw its way out again, and I fought against it.
Hunter was losing the battle on his shift. Wings had started sprouting on his back, but it wasn’t the way I had seen it before. They were deformed, strange. He was still trying to fight back. Easton wasn’t struggling with his change but he was fighting against the wind, throwing his power into reaching Lizzy, fighting the baby so that he could get to the woman he loved.
The three of them fought the storm that had grown in the room. It was as if we were all inside a hurricane, and Lizzy was at the very center, the baby was the eye of the storm.
Eyes wide, I struggled against my shift, my mind whirling. They all loved their Alpha, would sacrifice themselves to get to her.
“What’s going on here?” An elderly woman walked into the room, untouched by the magic that roared around us. Carrying a shopping bag from Herbal Concoctions, a popular herb shop in Aerwyna, she walked to Lizzy, passing by both Carrie and Easton.
“Oh, heaven help us," she muttered as she took in Hunter’s scaled form, then stepped over him as she walked towards the bed. She he had the same caramel colored skin that Carrie had, with the same dark, brooding eyes; this must be Carrie’s mom.
She touched Lizzy’s hand.
I felt the magic protest, pull back as if it tried to yank away from the woman’s touch. The wind died down to a gentle breeze and Carrie jumped off the wall, then ran towards her mother. She joined in, stroking the back of Lizzy’s hand with her thumb, mumbling. Her other hand was on Lizzy’s belly, stroking the baby. Their words wove together as one as they chanted in harmony, slowly pulling the magic from the room.
As Carrie and the woman kept chanting, all the magic was sucked back in to Elizabeth’s stomach. Hunter and Easton jumped up and ran towards Elizabeth. Her face was slick with sweat, her hair clinging to her forehead, and her eyes were faded. She looked like she was going to pass out.
Easton crawled into the bed and pulled her into his lap, cradling her in his arms. Hunter was on his knees at the edge of his bed, cooing at Elizabeth’s stomach, tracing his fingers over it smoothly. Carrie and her mom were still chanting, their eyes closed.
Everyone ignored me; they were too preoccupied with making sure their Alpha and the baby were okay. My eyes strayed to Carrie and respect and awe for her swelled in my chest. She was beautiful, loyal, and strong. She was different, and it was exactly the kind of different that I needed in my life. I’d tried to treat her like every one of those fake girls that live around here but that was wrong. She deserved more than that.
She would fight for those she loved, and every bone in my body, every muscle, every pore in my skin wanted her to fight for me.
She opened her eyes and stared at her mom. They grinned at each other and I could feel the love, palpable between them.
Fuck, I wanted that.
And I wanted her to look at me like that.
I heard a door slam, then footsteps crunched down the hallway towards us. They stopped right outside the door and a deep voice called out. “What the hell is going on here? I could feel it from the parking lot.”
I turned towards the door to see an unremarkable looking man staring around the room, his mouth open in shock. “I certainly hope you have insurance to cover this.” His voice was higher now, an almost nasally pitch.
Hunter ran his hand over his face. “Just… don’t worry about it Harry. We’ve got it covered.”
“I certainly hope so.”
I pushed myself off the wall, groaning and stretching; every part of my body ached. At the noise, Carrie’s face snapped towards me, then it twisted in anger. She jumped off the bed and ran towards me. “You. Get out. I don’t trust you anymore.” She grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “I meant what I said. I never want to see you ever again!”
She didn’t give me time to explain, or even to try and convince her otherwise.
Easton and Hunter exchanged glances, and her mom gave me a stern look.
Carrie pushed me out the door, then Hunter joined her, grabbing my arm. He yanked me away from Carrie, then dragged me down the hallway.
“I don’t know what the hell you did, but if Carrie wants you to leave, you’d better do it and never return again.” His eyes were dark as we got to the door. He reached into my pocket, pulling out my keycard, then shoved me outside. He slammed the door, not bothering to look at me as he turned back around and rushed towards his clan.
17
Denver
“Denver. Come in, sit.” I did as ordered, and sat in the stiff seat across from Max’s desk. It was firm and uncomfortable, not meant for settling in. He finished typing on his laptop, and I wondered why he’d called me in so early in the damn morning. I didn’t even know he came in to work so early. He finally shut it quietly, staring down at me. The last time I’d seen Max, he was yelling at me about Tallon bringing Carrie into the Authority’s dungeons without the proper authorization.
Of course, we did shit like that all the time, but this time they’d got caught in a bad way.
Someone had to take the heat.
And, of course, that someone was me. Max had gone on for a full two hours about how I was in charge and needed to keep my dragons in check. That I shouldn’t let some pretty woman lead my guys around by their dicks.
The next time I saw Tallon, I wanted to smash his face in, but not because I got in trouble. It was for hanging out with Carrie without me and doing stupid shit together. That was my department.
If he touched her, I was really going to beat his face in.
But I couldn’t outright ask him because I was the one who left them alone; I’d gotten so pissed off at the awe on Carrie’s face while she watched Blaze, I had to show her he wasn’t the only awe-inspiring dragon she knew.
Besides, I didn’t think I had to warn Tallon not to touch her. He knew better. Didn’t he?
Tallon knew my feelings for the girl - I didn’t have to say them out right because of his stupid gift, so ignorance wasn’t any excuse. It seemed like she’d put him in his place anyways, since she wasn’t responding to any of his attempts to call or text her. And Tallon wasn’t talking about it.
Unfortunately for me, she was avoiding me as well. She was avoiding all of us as if we were the plague.
Us. Dragons.
The wolf was avoiding the most majestic creatures on this earth.
“It’s been four days since Tallon found the dead wolf.” Max’s bark broke me from my thoughts. His scowl revealed that he was pretty pissed about the situation. That meant that they hadn’t really found anything useful.
“And? How is that my problem?” I folded my arms across my chest.
Carrie had got away with her little stunt, scott free, since she was with Hunter�
��s entourage, and the Queen’s guests. But my team was officially grounded, leaving Tallon and me with nothing left to do but bark at each other in the gym.
Scowling, Max rubbed his face then looked up at me, wearing a stern expression. “I’m not in the mood for your shit today, Denver, so just cut me some slack, okay?”
I huffed, looking away but saying nothing.
“That guard was my responsibility, and so far, we can’t find any evidence of the existence of the wolf. He had no registered fingerprints or face match. Of course, we couldn’t find any identification on him either. I need your clan to go back to the cave you found him in and see if you can find anything else about him.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “So, you’re saying we’re no longer grounded?”
“Let’s just say this is punishment for that stunt Tallon pulled. But,” he leaned back, rubbing his beard, “if you do well, then I’ll put you back on your regular duty.”
I tried to think of a way to spin this to my benefit. “What if we can’t find anything? Are we allowed to use the wolf to catch his scent again?”
He scowled, his face growing dark. “First of all, you little shit, her name is Carrie, not ‘the wolf’.”
I folded my arms across my chest, affecting an I-don’t-care attitude, and tipped my chair backwards. “And?”
Max stood up, sighing and ran his hand over his face, then down to tug on his beard. “Just get the hell out of here, or I’ll be officially replacing you as commander of your clan.” He straightened, smirking. “We might give Tallon a try; he’d make an excellent team leader, I think.”
I got up. “Yeah, good luck getting him to do your little side projects.” I walked towards the door. “By the way, Blaze is missing.”
That wasn’t necessarily uncommon. Every once and a while, Blaze took a break from life, and just disappeared. Except this time, the timing really wasn’t fucking convenient, considering the shit show going on here. But I found it best to leave him alone when he was in one of those moods.
Max huffed, waving me off. “That’s fine. I’m not worried about you two getting into trouble. Besides, your clan bond with Blaze is strong if you get into trouble.
I paused, halfway through the door. “And the wolf?” I smirked. Knowing that it bothered him that I didn’t use her name only made me want to call her by her shifter status even more.
He sat down and opened his computer, already mentally moving on. “If you need Carrie, and can convince her to help you, then yes, you can use her.” He looked up, catching my gaze before he left the room. “But beware, Denver. You know the Queen is on this one personally. If you or anyone in your clan do anything to harm the girl, it’s your ass on the line. And I’ll happily deliver your head to the Queen on a platter if she asks me.”
Keeping my smirk in place, I gave him a nod, as if I wasn’t concerned, at all, and shut the door loudly behind me.
“Where’s Blaze when you need him?” Tallon kicked at a rock, sending it flying across the cave. It landed against the wall, splintering into tiny pieces.
I grunted, my only response, because Tallon was right. Blaze was our best tracker. With his powers, he could trace magic, and was damn good at it. He was also good at finding trails - little things Tallon and I would miss like little broken twigs or barely recognizable prints in the ground.
Sighing, I left the small cave and studied the ground around the entrance. There was a thick tension between us, but we refused to address the elephant in the room. What was Tallon doing with Carrie that day? And why was she refusing to speak to us? I just wanted to grab him and shake the answers out of him.
Did he betray me by kissing her? I snarled at the next thought. Did he fuck her?
If he fucked her, I was going to kill him. Normally, I didn’t care that much, though I preferred to have a woman first. But Carrie was different. She was mine.
I stood there seething as my eyes roamed the woods, trying to find the answer to why the hell we were in these damn woods instead of at home, having a nice mid-morning shot of whiskey.
After a while, Tallon joined me and we split off, looking for signs of any other activity. The woods were littered with small holes in the ground, made by forest animals, but nothing big enough to fit anything as large as a wolf, or a dragon, for that matter.
There had to be something we were missing.
This was much bigger than just one scrawny wolf. It had been confirmed that the teeth marks on the woman were definitely wolf. And Carrie said that the wolf we’d captured was the same from the crime scene. So, why stick around and wait for us to find him?
It didn’t make sense.
Unless he was waiting for someone to come get him, and they never showed up.
“Tallon,” I yelled out. I heard his footsteps before I saw him.
“Yeah? Did you find something?”
I turned towards him. “Are there any roads near here?” Tallon loved to hike these woods, like the half breed that he was.
He paused to think. “There’s one.”
“Where does it go?”
“It leads into the city.”
“Any other ones?” That was too vague.
He shook his head. “Not that I can think of.”
I threw my hands up, frustrated. There was no way in hell I was going back to Max empty handed. Determined to find something, I walked back to the cave and followed it all the way to the end. Then I slowly walked along the back edges of the cave, using my dragon eyesight to peer into the darkness. Tallon walked slowly behind me, his eyes on the ground.
“Hey, Tallon.” I turned and hit his shoulder, then pointed towards the far end. “Does that look new?”
Tallon stepped ahead of me, heading straight for it. The far end of the cave was covered with a rock slide. Rubbing his jaw, he studied it, then turned to me. “I can’t tell. Everything in here is just dirt and rocks. Do you think it’s something?”
I shrugged. “Could be covering something up.”
“Well, let’s find out then.” He took in a deep breath and, kneeling down, began to dig.
It took us an hour to get through the rocks but when we did, we discovered a hole large enough for us to slip through. Slowly edging ourselves through it, we dropped down into a passageway. It took a few seconds for my eyes to transition from my human eyesight to my dragon one in the darkness. The stone walls were narrow but barely wide enough for a large man, like me, to pass through. And if you had supernatural vision, or a damn flashlight, it’d be easy enough to see. There was no indication that someone else had been this way, except for the fact that it had been so close to where we found the wolf. Was he waiting for someone to return for him? Did they close off the entrance to keep him from returning - or from leading anyone to the rest of the group?
I led the way through the narrow passageway with Tallon close behind me. My instincts screamed that we were on to something, and my instincts were never wrong. So we pressed forward, only communicating in grunts as we squeezed through. After an hour, the walls widened and it became easier to move, until finally we stepped into an open space.
My eyes immediately went to the large pentagram painted in red in the center of the space. It was outlined by black stones and in the center, a pile of rocks glowed green. Each part of the pentagram had something inside - leaves or feathers. Bones, even, some large enough to be human, some small enough to belong to mice or rats.
The magic filling the room was malevolent, and so dense that it sunk into my skin, chilling me to the bone. The whole place disgusted me - I wanted to burn everything in here to the ground. A voice whispered in the back of my mind, drawing me towards the center of the pentagram. There was something there - I was sure of it. The magic in the glowing rocks held the answers to who was involved. If we could discover what kind of magic it was, and if there was any magical signature, then we could trace it back to the original witch. We’d have to pull Blaze out of whatever he was going through - we needed his gi
fts in on this.
Several identical backpacks lined the outside of the cave and, ignoring the call towards the center of the pentagram, I went for them first. Tallon stepped up beside me, yanking stuff out of the backpack he chose. I grabbed one and opened it. There was a plate and silverware set, mosquito repellent, deodorant. At the bottom sat a set of clothes, and they smelled like wolf. My eyes met Tallon’s.
Wolves being so close to the killer? This wasn’t a coincidence. And there was at least one witch involved with them.
We went through all of the backpacks, finding the same sort of items, but nothing to really identify who was in the group, or what their plans were for the future. We piled everything up, intending to take them out of the caves - maybe we’d missed something. When we were done, we both turned towards the pentagram, almost as if we were drawn to it.
I didn’t know much about this kind of magic - yet another reason to get Carrie involved. I moved forward, stepping towards the edge of the circle, taking it all in. I kneeled down, and without touching it, studied the pentagram. The rocks were smooth, maybe from a creek bed. The red paint was dark and had a coppery smell - it was blood. I shivered, queasy.
It smelled like rabbit blood. At least it wasn’t dragon shifter blood.
The magic in the room grew stronger, pressing into me, and the glowing neon rocks in the middle flared, like a fire. It danced across the cave wall, causing shadows to flicker along it. I needed to know the source of the magic.
I stepped over the painted line and Tallon yelled out, “Wait!”
There was a high pitched knelling noise, and the walls trembled. The ground shook under my feet as stalactites dropped from the ceiling, shattering into pieces around us. I jumped back out of the pentagram but the shaking only grew worse until the whole cave rocked.
