His mother climbed out of her car, mouth open to yell at him until she saw the look in his eyes. She quickly snapped her mouth shut and turned a grim expression toward the cottage. An angry man appeared in the cottage doorway. Fists clenched at his sides, the man was well over six feet tall. His dark red hair was growing white around his sideburns, but no one would have dared to look him in the face and call him an old man. Shockingly blue eyes scanned his wife to make sure she was safe before they narrowed and turned to his son.
Wes was struggling to reign himself in, his breathing coming heavy. His hand curled into tense claws, every muscle in his body aching with the potential for violence. His father’s gaze falling on him cut through the madness in his mind like a hot knife. For a second, Wes had clarity. The beast pulled back and his eyes shifted back to steely blue. His body let go of some of the tension that filled him and dropped to one knee before his sire, letting his head fall toward the ground.
Honor was the only thing that bound their society. It was the unspoken law that allowed them to survive. Wes’s father stood at the very top of that power. While it granted Wes a good deal of power for himself, it meant the lines that he walked were much narrower. For Wes to lose face would be for his father to lose face, and that would destroy what his father had built.
Never before had Wes wanted to challenge it. The longer he stayed down on one knee, silence hanging in the air all around them, the more his rage rebounded. His shoulder ached and he knew it was no pain of his own that he was feeling. No, what he felt was Dakota’s pain. Someone had hurt her and he could not be there.
“What the hell is going on?” his father’s voice growled.
“Shove your attitude somewhere the sun doesn’t shine, darling.” His mother rounded her car to stand between her husband and her son. “Wes found himself a mate and if we don’t move soon, I fear something will happen to her. She’s one of ours now and we can’t afford to waste time.”
Wes looked up through his hair. Drystan Taniff looked from his wife to his son. The beast inside of Wes fed him a nearly all-consuming rage. The beast’s tail thumped and the ground behind him cracked.
“Put a silver binding on him,” his father growled.
Wes shot up from where he knelt. “Don’t you dare.”
The older man closed the space between them until his face was nose to nose with his son’s. He spoke through clenched teeth. “I have a few calls to make. I cannot have you destroying everything in your path before we get off this territory. In order to live as free as we are, there are rules that we must follow. Let me do what I can before you ruin us all.”
Wes growled, a rumble thrummed through his chest before he could pull it back. His father searched his eyes for a long moment. No doubt, he saw the gold of his beast swirl back toward the forefront.
“Go.” Wes spoke through clenched teeth. “Do what you have to.”
Drystan nodded. He turned to his wife. “Call Gareth and Cameron. They’re going to help us.”
Wes knew that his cousins weren’t being called in to help find Dakota. They were being called in to prevent Wes from doing anything stupid while he searched for his mate. Feeling the unending restlessness that coursed through him the longer he sat still, he understood his father’s precautions. Maybe Drystan understood better than he thought, he knew what it was like to have an impulsive mate that liked to get herself into uncertain situations such as bringing students to the edge of the Snowdonia territories.
Wes wanted to give in to his beast and let the change take him so that he would be prepared to fight if it came to it. Instead, his mother returned with the silver arm band that his father had demanded. She slipped it up his forearm and he felt the beast recede into the back of his mind. It helped to clarify his mind, but it also cleared another path.
He could feel Dakota’s terror and anger like a knife, one that cut right into his heart. She needed him.
Now.
***
Dakota sat in the cold metal chair that the Guardians had provided for her. A metal cuff chained her to the chair. As the Guardians talked amongst themselves about the ways that they should kill her, she tested her cuff. Her wrist burned from trying to slip it over her hand. It was too tight for that, she decided. Thankfully, Dakota realized that the chair wasn’t attached to the floor.
If she had to, she could grab the chair and run. Of course, it would be cumbersome, but it was better than sitting where she was. They had patched up her bleeding shoulder. It hadn’t been a bullet that had hit her, but a not so tiny electrical dart that had punctured her muscle and rendered her arm useless. Once they removed it and she had time, the feeling slowly returned to her arm.
Listening to the Guardians talk of her death was draining her spirits little by little. If they succeeded in their plan, Dakota would never feel Wesley’s touch again. It startled her to think of how badly she would miss something that only just came into her life. She poked and prodded the new ache inside of her that came from the realization of loss, loss of the way that Wes made sure she was happy, loss of the laughter she could have shared with him, loss of a relationship she had previously turned her back on.
Did he know that she was in trouble? Probably not. There was no way that he could know, she reminded herself. Wes would be at the tower, working in his small forge. He wouldn’t know what happened until it was too late.
She raised her eyes to glare at Wilson. She couldn’t let this happen. She’d been working so hard to have a future that she wanted, but had eschewed some of the things that would make her the happiest like love. She didn’t know if she loved Wesley. They had only just met, mates or not. Still, she knew that the chance was there and that she was going to fight for it as hard as she’d fought for everything else in her life.
Letting her head fall back, she looked out the warehouse window while she tried to devise a plan. She had not been expecting to see a face looking back at her, let alone the female professor from school. The woman’s face split into a shark-like smile when their eyes met. The woman pointed into the sky and Dakota followed to find four, massive red bodies flying through the air.
Dragons.
That was a lot of back up for just her. Relief was an odd feeling when looking up at dragons twice the size of tour buses.
Dakota nodded and looked back at her captors. Apparently, they had decided on something while she had been looking out the window at the incoming dragons, because Wilson was coming over to her. He looked down at her with a sneer twisting his lips.
“The public can’t know we had anything to do with your death, no matter how helpful it is to them in the end,” he said as he crouched beside her with a clammy hand on her knee. “It has to look like you killed yourself to avoid being taken captive by your dragon. The good news about that is you now get to choose how you die. There are several options for you to choose from.”
Dakota didn’t respond. Instead, she spat in the man’s face. Her wet spittle splattered in his eye. She watched his jaw clench with anger. He didn’t hit her or even yell. Slowly, he reached up and wiped it away. Dakota tensed.
The squeak of an old window broke the tension. Wilson looked up in surprise as a small canister flew arched over their heads. People screamed all around her. The tiny canister bounced across the concrete floor before hissing and emitting a stream of colored smoke. Red smoke filled the warehouse across from Dakota. It obscured the other Guardians in the room.
Taking advantage of the distraction, she shot up from her seat, grabbing the chair in the process, and swung it at the man’s legs. The hard metal hit his knee and she watched it buckle beneath him. He gritted his teeth and reached for the weapon at his hip. Dakota felt the surge of fear fill her, remembering how it felt last time they’d shot her, and she brought the chair around again. This time it connected with his temple. He fell over in a heap.
Behind her, a door creaked open and the woman’s face appeared again. She motioned for Dakota to follow. Carrying the
chair she was currently using as a weapon, Dakota darted forward. The woman’s face grew familiar in a different way as she came closer. Now, she could see the resemblance between the professor and her dragon man.
As soon as Dakota burst into the open air, the woman slammed the door shut. Red smoke trickled out of the open window of the warehouse behind her. She turned back to the woman beside her.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “You’re related to the dragons. Aren’t you?”
The professor nodded with a smile on her lips. She reached back and grabbed a pair of large pliers from the bag at her hip. The pliers snapped through the chain of the cuffs at her wrist.
“What else do you have in that magic bag?” Dakota felt the exhaustion of constant fear setting in. She was safe.
The world shook beneath her feet. She looked up, her heart pounding. The body of a white dragon crashed into one of the red dragons above. Dakota felt her stomach turn. The white dragon’s teeth clamped around the red dragon’s neck, it’s clawed feet sinking into the red scales. The two bodies sank in the air, the red dragon unable to beat his wings in the white dragon’s grasp. She knew exactly who was fighting above her.
Wes and Raph.
Chapter Sixteen
Distantly, Dakota and the professor heard the squealing of cars halting as their passengers stared up into the sky. Wes twisted in Raph’s taloned grasp, but he couldn’t break free. Two of the other dragons touched the ground with human feet at the end of the alley. When the Guardians spilled out of the warehouse, the two unfamiliar dragons were waiting for them. They were blurs of muscle and red hair as the dragons rushed the Guardians. The fight on the ground ended quickly once the Guardians were disarmed. Their weapons skittered across the paved ground.
She didn’t have time to concern herself with the fight on the ground. She was more concerned with Wes. The white dragon had to be Raph, she knew it in her bones. He hated the red dragons and Dakota didn’t realize at first. As she watched the second red dragon enter the fray, she remembered the story of Dinas Emrys that Wes had told her.
The red dragons had chased the white dragon from the Snowdonia territory centuries before. Raph must have thought that their home was his. Starting a war between the red dragons and the Guardians would give the Guardians a reason to exterminate the territory. Then, it would be free for Raph and any other white dragons to move in.
“We have to stop them,” Dakota said to the professor. “The Guardians want the dragons to break the law. They want a reason to attack your family.”
The professor squeezed her arm. “My husband made a few calls. He and his are in the right and no one can argue otherwise. Don’t worry so much, child.”
Even as she told her not to worry, the woman lifted her eyes to the sky, her lips pressed together. That was her family up there, being attacked by the white dragon. Wes let loose a roar that shook the buildings around her. Her heart gave one, hard thump. His head twisted backward and his giant jaw clamped down the white dragon’s wing.
Like a dog with a toy, he shook his head and pulled. The leathery expanse of the white wing gave way beneath his teeth. The second red dragon lashed out to bite into the other white wing. The white dragon narrowly avoided the attack, pulling his wing into his body. The two, fighting beasts crashed into the ground. The two women clung to each other to keep standing. Ahead of them, the second dragon tucked his wings into his body. He dove toward the ground.
Dakota rushed forward, feeling her shoulder burn. Her eyes fell on the weapons that had been forgotten on the ground. She ducked down as she passed, grabbing the horrid stun gun she’d been shot with earlier. Behind her, the professor shouted, but she ignored the calls. She had no idea what she was doing, but she knew that she had to do something.
Gruff hands caught her by the arm. She hissed in pain as the wound on her shoulder pulled. Dakota was spun around and brought eye to eye with a red headed dragon man. His auburn hair was pulled back from his face, tucked behind his ears. His brows pushed his icy-blue eyes into a glare and his jaw was tight as he spoke through his teeth.
“We did not risk everything for you to run out into a fight and get yourself killed.” His grip on her arm wasn’t tight, she noted. “Do you think that little gun can stop a dragon? Do you think you can avoid shooting my cousin?”
“It won’t matter if you let Raph kill him, either.” She jerked her arm out through the weak point in his grip and ducked under the incoming grasp of his other hand.
The dragon man screamed at her as she rushed forward, but the second dragon pulled him back. Dakota didn’t hear what his friend said, but it kept him from running after her.
The fighting dragon shifters were killing one another. Her Wesley was one of those dragons. The thought of it made her stomach roll. She burst into a small intersection. Cars had been stopped in all directions. People gathered on the sidewalk, pointing and shouting at the dragons fighting in the center of the road. Raph’s back had crashed into a number of empty cars, but he still clung onto Wesley’s body, using him as a living shield. The second red dragon pulled up from his dive, avoiding Wesley’s red belly.
The second red dragon arched back into the sky, roaring with anger. There was nothing that he could do without hurting Wes. Dakota slid to a stop at the edge of the street. She held the stun gun up like her father had taught her years ago, only it had been a rifle last time, not a handheld stun gun. She told herself she knew how to fire it, but doubt wedged itself into her mind. A golden dragon eye fell on her. Wes was wrapped in Raph’s grip, the dragon’s jaws still clinging to his neck.
She leveled the gun at Raph’s head. It wasn’t a real weapon, but GOE carried it. She hoped that meant it would affect the dragon more than she thought. The bang filled the intersection. Her arms bounced, vibrating with the power of the small gun.
Raph’s head jerked. His teeth left Wes’s neck and she could see the stun device in the side of Raph’s head. He shook his massive head as though he could shake it loose. Wes took the free moment to twist his head around. His teeth sank into the soft flesh of Raph’s exposed neck. It made Raph loosen his grip on Wes’s body enough so that he could wriggle free. Wes’s wing’s beat at the air, his giant body rising above the white dragon.
All at once, several vans squealed to a halt from all directions. Men and women dressed in black uniforms spilled into the intersection, weapons trained on the chaos in the center of the intersection. The second red dragon, a creature much larger than Wes, landed on the street. The pavement cracked around his entrance. He placed a taloned hand over the white dragon’s neck. Now free, Wes took to the air.
When none of the weapons trained on the dragon fight rose to Wes, she felt relief flood her. A set of hands grabbed her from behind. She spun around to come face to face with the professor again. The woman held her finger to her lips in the universal sign language for be quiet, using her eyes to gesture to the uniformed Guardians all around them. The woman pulled her back down the alley that Dakota had run from. She was confused, but complied because she didn’t want to become the center of GOE’s attention again.
In the alley, Dakota spied a familiar form. It rushed toward her, gathering her up in his arms. Wesley tucked his face in the crook of her neck and breathed her in. Reflexively, she wrapped her arms around him in return. She held him tight, reliving the past few moments over and over again. He was no longer in Raph’s grip, she told herself. This man, a man you barely know, is safe.
Eventually, the painlessness of adrenaline faded and her shoulder started to throb beneath Wes’s grip. She groaned and he jumped back. His eyes were wide with worry as he searched her up and down. They fell on the bandage.
“I only hope that it hurt Raph even more,” she said, putting on a brave face.
He made a strained sound, before his grip tightened and she could see how he fought the urge to pull her close again. Raph had claimed that she was Wesley’s mate. In their conversation in the truck, Wesley had confessed t
hat a dragon’s mate was their only chance for happiness. She wasn’t sure if that went both ways.
“I hate to intrude, but I have to go help my husband,” the professor said. “He’s a good leader, but without a pretty face next to him he can look a bit menacing.”
“We’re going home,” Wesley growled.
Dakota looked to the man that was supposed to be her mate. His body was tense as it wrapped around her, protecting her from anything that might step near them. His hands were tense and his gold colored dragon eyes darted around the alley. He wouldn’t be normal again until he knew that she was safe.
“Take her away from here. No one needs to be a part of this shit show.” The professor turned to Dakota. “You might have to make a statement later, but don’t worry about your classes. You will be re-enrolled next semester as you’re going to have a lot on your plate for the next month or so.”
Dakota pulled away from Wesley for a moment. She could feel his reluctance to let her go, but he didn’t fight her. “I don’t mean to be rude, Ma’am, but I’m going to be sent home. There’s no way I’m going to be able to stay after this.”
The woman’s eyes reflected defiance and a smile turned up the corners of her lips. “I’m the head of Dragon Human relations in Wales. It would be a slight if the school refused to allow a dragon’s mate to finish her schooling. If they see it otherwise, consider yourself my new assistant until I can make them see it my way.”
“We have to go.” Wes’s rumble of a voice was strained. He stepped back and she watched the most amazing thing she’d ever laid eyes on. His human form disappeared while scales snapped into existence. They flowed like water, smaller scales flowing to form a tail and limbs. Finally, the dragon she’d first met in the field outside Snowdonia stood before her. He lowered his head to the ground, steam rising from his nostrils. When he opened his taloned hand, Dakota stepped inside it. The talons closed around her, and for some silly reason all she could think about were amusement park rides.
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