But—
His gut reaction was to continue embracing the intimate connection, but he knew that could only put her in more danger. Now more than ever, he had to protect her. She would be no match for Zed given the state he was in, and neither would the other Amoveo. He shut his mind to her and kept his attention on his brother.
If the curse was truly being broken, then Zander would be able to fight fire with fire, and for the first time in his miserable existence, the beast might save the man.
* * *
The fog of the dreamrealm rolled around Rena in lazy, billowy clouds, and for the first time, Rena wasn’t afraid—not even a little bit, because she knew Zander would be there waiting for her.
“Zander?” Her voice sounded funny in this space and echoed around her like a ball bouncing wildly in a rubber room. “Are you here?”
The fog lifted, and Rena found herself in Zed’s hibernation cave, but Zander was nowhere to be seen. Zed was still buried in the wall of quartz. Unlike the last time she was there, he didn’t look like he was moving. But there was a crack running up and down the length of the quartz wall, and that gave her pause.
Her sense of safety began to ebb away. What would happen if Zed started to wake up and Zander hadn’t gotten there yet? Wearing only the bedsheet, which was wrapped around her like a towel, Rena grew acutely aware of her nakedness and exactly how vulnerable she was in here.
She arched one eyebrow and glanced down at her state of undress.
“Well, this is what I wore to bed, sort of,” she mumbled under breath. “Zander? Seriously, where are you? If you’re trying to teach me something, can you just come out here and tell me what it is? I’m starting to freak out a little.”
“He’s not here.” The voice, while it wasn’t Zander’s, was familiar, but she sure as hell didn’t expect to hear it in the dreamrealm.
“Vito?” A smile covered her face as she looked around the rocky cave, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Rena focused her efforts and sought out his energy signature. Sure enough, within seconds, she detected his energy pattern, the one with the funny hum of static. “I know you’re here, and I know that you’re Amoveo. It’s okay. Zander told me everything—about me and you and him and…Arianna.”
“Did he now?” Her friend’s voice bounced around the cave, leaving her unable to pinpoint his location. “You mean he’s learned something after all these years? Like how to tell the truth, for example? Too bad he and his bastard brother couldn’t tell my daughter the truth. They led her on and allowed her to believe—”
A chill rushed over Rena and raised all the hairs on her bare arms. There was something about the tone of his voice that made her uneasy. Ugliness laced his words, and Rena wished like hell that Zander would hurry up and get there. He had fallen asleep next to her, hadn’t he?
“That’s not true, Vito.” She kept her voice calm and even, not wanting to upset him but at the same time needing to set him straight. “Arianna played them against each other.”
“She was only a child,” he shouted. “Too young to understand what kind of danger she was in or the power she was toying with.”
“Where are you, Vito?” Rena pleaded. “Please come out where I can see you. I’m new to the dreamrealm stuff, and I don’t really know what I’m doing. Come on, you’re scaring me.”
Silence hung in the cave like a lead blanket, and Rena turned around, frantically searching for him. A sense of foreboding crawled over her skin, and she swiped at her neck, as though a bug lingered there.
“I’m right here, girl.”
When Rena spun back around, she almost laughed out loud with relief. Vito was standing on the other side of the pool, directly in front of Zed’s hibernation chamber. He looked like he had when she’d first met him almost ten years ago, and this was the first coherent conversation they’d had in a long time. He stood tall and proud. His thick shock of white hair was neatly coiffed, and he was wearing one of his blue suits that he had always liked so much. But it was his eyes that stood out the most. They were glowing amber…just like hers did.
They were the eyes of his clan.
“Wow, you look great.” Laughter mixed with tears and threaded her words. “And you sound great too! I’ve missed you, Vito.”
Rena started to walk around the narrow edge of the pool, but he held up one hand and shook his head abruptly.
“No. Stay there, Rena.”
“What?” Her brow furrowed, and she tugged the sheet tighter around her. “Why? I don’t understand.”
“I know.” He was fiddling with the large, gold ring he always wore on his right hand. The one that had once belonged to Zander’s family. “I’m sorry, but this was the only way.”
“What are you talking about?” Confusion fired through her. “How are you even here? I mean, you sound great, but when I saw you a couple days ago…you know…the dementia. I though Zander said that you lost all of your powers?”
“Walking in the dreamrealm is all I have left of my Amoveo gifts. This is the only place I feel at home anymore.” He lowered his gaze to the ring and pulled it from his finger before holding it up. “In the earthly plane, I’ve been lost. Confused. But when I saw him again, with you, the ring woke me up. It brought me back so I could finish what had been started.”
“Vito?” Rena’s voice shook, and she inched around the edge of the pool. “That ring, it belongs to Zander’s family, doesn’t it?”
“It did once.” He nodded solemnly, and tears fell. “I took it after the dragon slayer killed their father. This is when they’re most vulnerable, you know. When they emerge from hibernation and at sunrise, of course. Their transition isn’t as easy as it is for our people. They’re limited to the night. That’s how the dragon slayers were able to destroy them. Once they knew where the lairs were, the rest was easy enough.”
“Vito…what’s going on?” A sense of foreboding shimmied up her spine.
“The witch told me that I could use this if the boy found a way to lift the curse before—”
“The five-hundred-year mark,” Rena whispered. “It’s tomorrow.”
“I never really believed I would need it. All I had to do was live long enough to make sure the curse was never broken and that they were never freed. How could I let them go unpunished after what they did to her? They have to pay, Rena. You must understand that.”
His face, etched with deep lines of bitterness, pain, and regret, was bathed in the eerie reddish glow from Zed’s cocoon. Rena’s vision blurred, and her heart broke for the only family she had ever really known.
“But they have paid, Vito.” Rena let out a curt laugh. “Believe me. Zander is covered in scars from more injuries than I could count, and Zed has been completely tortured. Hell, Zander is worried that even if Zed does wake up from hibernation, his brain might be totally fried or something. Trust me. Your curse worked. These two men—not boys, by the way, men—have been paying for the consequences of their foolish, impulsive behavior for the past five hundred years. Come on, Vito. Isn’t that enough?”
Vito shook his head, and it was obvious to Rena that he hadn’t heard a word of what she said. Or maybe he had but it didn’t matter to him. All he seemed to care about was finishing off Zander and Zed.
“But then, I saw you, Rena, and I knew that it would happen all over again. You looked so much like her, like my Arianna. You aren’t her, of course, but so like she was.” He sniffled and swiped at his eyes but kept his gaze locked on the ring between his fingers. “You were of the Fox Clan too, and I knew that if I had found you…so would he. He would be drawn to you, like he was to her.”
“I’m not Arianna, Vito. Zander knows that.” Dread curled in Rena’s chest as her heart broke. “Is that why you took me in? Because you wanted to use me to lure Zander here? You were just using me this whole time?”
“No!” His rage-filled sh
out ricocheted around the cave, and his eyes blazed orange. “I wanted to protect you. From him and his selfish, savage nature. I knew if he came for you, it would be your undoing. He will destroy you, just like he did Arianna. He took her from me. But I can stop it. I can stop it all.”
He turned his now-human eyes to hers and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Before Rena could ask him what he was talking about, Vito turned around and slammed the ring into the crack of Zed’s hibernation cave. A brilliant bloodred light flashed, and Rena had to shield her eyes from the power of it. She cried out when the earth began to shake, making her stumble backward. With the cave rumbling around her, Rena grasped the edge of a nearby rock for balance and forced herself to look toward the light.
A scream, one she barely recognized as her own, tore from her lips.
Vito lay motionless. His vacant, lifeless gaze stared out from beneath a pile of stone. She wanted to go to him, but movement above him captured her attention as the earth began to tremble with more force. Rena’s breath came in sharp gasps as she slowly trailed her gaze up the jagged fissure in the quartz wall.
The dragon twitched and writhed, like a butterfly trying to emerge from its cocoon, and with one final rumble, the beast’s tail unfurled, sending a wave of quartz and dirt into the pool of water. Rena shielded her face from bits of flying debris. When she turned her gaze back to the beast, it had stopped moving. She held her breath for several beats of her heart. With the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears, Rena waited, uncertain of what to do next.
But when the eyes of the dragon opened and zeroed in on her, Rena backed away slowly and repeated one thing over and over again:
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
Rena hadn’t learned much about the dreamrealm, but she knew enough to know that if Zed had awakened here, everything was about to blow up on the earthly plane. The Amoveo were going to find out just how real the Dragon Clan was.
Rena shot out of bed and tumbled to the floor with an undignified thud. When the cottage started to shake, she thought she might still be in the dreamrealm, but after a few seconds, she regained her bearings. She rose to her feet on unsteady legs and immediately realized that Zander was nowhere to be seen.
Zander! Answer me, you big jerk!
Get Kerry and the others to the council’s meeting chamber. His curt, gravelly voice cut into her mind forcefully. Right now, Rena! It’s the only place you’ll be safe.
But—
Like a door being slammed shut, Rena was cut off from Zander’s mind.
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered.
He said he had a new plan but never got around to telling her what it was. Perfect. The quake finally stopped, and Rena quickly dragged on her jeans, boots, and a sweater from the duffel bag. She knew what she had to do, and when another rumble rippled through the earth, Rena had zero questions in her mind about what was causing it.
She had to warn the others.
She raced downstairs, and without thinking about the consequences, she focused on Kerry and reached out to her with her mind.
Kerry! Rena’s voice sounded shakier than she would have liked. We have a problem.
No shit. Kerry’s blunt response was no surprise, given what Rena knew of her already. We’re in the field behind your cottage.
A modicum of relief fanned through Rena’s chest, but she didn’t respond, because she still wasn’t sure how she was going to explain all of this. Rena tugged open the slider and raced outside to find five sets of glowing eyes staring at her from the waning darkness.
Rena stopped on the deck and took stock of the bizarre menagerie. By her count, there was a massive tiger, a fox—one that was much larger than she was in her clan form—a hulking wolf, a sleek black panther, and standing on the railing was an enormous bird of prey with glowing, dark eyes that conjured images of the moon.
“Holy shit,” Rena said with a rushing breath. “Where’s the ark?”
Now is really not the time for jokes. William’s clipped tone shot into Rena’s mind, and the falcon screeched as it fluffed its feathers. Where is your mate?
The earth shook again, and Dominic let out a bone-rattling roar in response.
There’s something wrong. His voice, more of a growl, touched their collective minds. We’ve never had earthquakes here, and is anybody else picking up the strange spike of energy in the mountains?
“It’s Zander and his twin brother, Zed,” Rena blurted out. “They’re dragons, okay? Cursed dragons, and one of them is all kinds of screwed up.”
That explains the tattoos I saw, Kerry chimed in. But what about—
This is crazy. Dante snorted. There’s no Dragon Clan.
That is not entirely accurate, William began. There was, but we believed they were extinct.
You knew about this? Dominic leaped through the grass and roared at William. The tiger’s eyes blazed with fury, and he lifted his lip, showing a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. I thought you and the prince told us all of the Council’s secrets.
Why would it matter? William ruffled his feathers again, and his sharp gaze flicked to Dominic. We believed they were extinct.
The earth shook again.
Not so fucking extinct now, are they? Dominic snarled.
“The Council chamber,” Rena interjected. “Zander said you would be able to find shelter there.”
We’re not leaving the ranch exposed, and we sure as hell can’t let a damned dragon get near the human population. Dante’s voice, calm but firm, joined the conversation. But Kerry should take you and Tatiana to the chamber.
“No offense,” Rena said with a curt laugh, “but you guys don’t stand a chance. Trust me. I’ve seen Zed up close in the dreamrealm. He’ll eat you for a midnight snack.”
You all need to calm down. William’s aloof tone was more than a little irritating. If memory serves, the dragons were limited with their shifting ability. Once the sun rises, he will be forced into his human form, and at that point, you can dispatch him easily, Dominic.
“He’s right about the sun. Listen, we don’t have time to debate this, and nobody is getting dispatched.” Rena trotted down the steps and pointed to the mountain. “That rumbling you feel is Zed breaking out of his hibernation cocoon. He’ll be in his dragon form, and he’s completely confused from being stuck in the dreamrealm like that for five centuries. And since the sun isn’t going to be up for a little while, we are about to have a serious problem.”
How the hell are we supposed to fight a dragon? Kerry asked, her lithe, sleek, black-furred body practically invisible in the dark, but those yellow eyes of hers were tough to miss. I never got that chapter in the Amoveo training manual.
“I guess we’ll learn by doing,” Rena murmured. “I’m going to help Zander, but maybe you guys should go to the chamber.”
As the others all started speaking at once, Rena closed her eyes and pictured her clan form. Within seconds, static electricity crackled over her skin in a prickling blanket as her body shifted. She dropped to all fours and shook her furry self, trying to acclimate as quickly as possible.
Stay or go. Rena touched her mind to the group and glanced over her shoulder at them. Zander’s my mate. I have to help him, but I can’t ask the rest of you to put yourselves in danger.
Another massive quake shook the ground, and William took off into the air. Rena’s heart sank because she assumed they wouldn’t be coming with her.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
I’ll do a sweep of the mountain. William’s voice, proud and sure, came through loud and clear as he soared high above. And provide recon from the air.
When Rena went to look for the others, they were no longer behind her but flanked her on either side.
Roger that, Dominic’s growly, gritty voice chimed in. Watch your six.
That’s mi
litary speak for watch your back, Tatiana added.
Well, since the dragons can breathe fire, Rena said shakily, keep an eye on your sevens, eights, and nines too.
If we have to, we’ll use the distract-and-confuse technique. It works really well on a toddler temper tantrum. Kerry sidled in next to Rena, her yellow cat eyes glowing brightly in the night. Dragons are big, but we’re fast. We can use visualization to confuse the shit out of him. The old disappearing-and-reappearing act will come in handy tonight.
I have no idea what that is, but we can use all the help we can get.
With her friends surrounding her, Rena actually believed they might stand a chance in a fight against Zed. Maybe their sheer presence and numbers would distract him, and they could keep him at bay until the sun rose. It was a long shot but the only one the group seemed to have. They all made their way toward the mountain, but when the ground shuddered even stronger this time, Rena’s hope began to dwindle. They moved faster, running through the tall grasses toward the frightening source of the unnatural quakes.
Hold. Dominic’s deep voice stopped them all in their tracks. I see a light where there shouldn’t be one. Up to the left side of the mountain face—ten o’clock.
Everyone stilled, and Rena’s heart beat in rapid-fire pulses as her gaze skittered over to the eerie glow he was referring to. Before she could confirm to the others what it was they were looking at, the side of the mountain exploded in a deafening eruption of rock, dirt, and trees. They all ducked as the debris rained down on them, but it was the massive shadow blotting out the moon that sent terror directly to Rena’s core.
The beast was loose.
Okay, that is a big damn dragon. Kerry’s quivering voice whisked into Rena’s mind. What the hell are we going to do?
Fall back, Dominic growled. Now! Tatiana, Kerry, Rena. All of you, now!
He’s right, Dante interjected.
What we need, Kerry said with a sidelong glance to Rena, is another dragon.
My thoughts exactly, Rena murmured. Zander, where the hell are you?
Undiscovered Page 28
