by Amelia Jade
Riss lay there, her ass still up in the air, exposed and available.
She figured Zander would likely collapse to the ground next to her, but astonishingly, a few minutes later, she felt the tip of his cock press up against her wet opening.
“Are you serious right now?” she asked in disbelief.
“I’m shocked too,” he said with rumbling laughter. “But the sight of you like this just triggered something in me. Is that okay?”
Riss giggled. “What’s not okay is you just teasing me like that,” she told him, waggling her hips suggestively.
“Let me see about fixing that,” he growled, and any more words Riss might have had were lost in the ensuing cries.
***
Zander
Something was wrong.
He sensed it the moment they reached the halfway point of their journey. After spending the rest of the weekend in bed with Riss, taking only the occasional sleep or food break, the pair of them had woken up in a tangle of covers Monday morning only to realize they needed to get back to the real world. She had to work, and he needed to report in to Guardian HQ to see where he was posted for the remainder of the week. Zander had been hoping for a border patrol assignment while he walked Riss to work.
But as they entered one of the frequent alleyways between buildings, his senses began to scream at him with an urgency that caught him by surprise. Warily he looked around, peering into every nook and recessed doorway, behind trash bins and up along fire escapes and roof ledges. Anywhere and everywhere his training told him something could lurk, he explored as they walked.
Muscles were tense, reflexes poised on a razor’s edge as he waited for whatever was going to happen, to happen. At one point, nearly three-quarters of the way to her work, Riss finally picked up on his change in attitude.
“What is it?” she asked in a low voice.
There was only one word, the one his senses were screaming at him.
“Danger.”
Riss stiffened and almost stopped walking, but he used their linked arms to ruthlessly encourage her along.
“Don’t stop now,” he whispered. “That’s the worst thing we can do. They haven’t shown their hand yet, which means they either aren’t ready, or something went wrong.”
“They?” she hissed.
“Yes. Multiple sources, but I can’t pinpoint them. They’ve been tracking us since we turned off Medway Drive.”
“What the hell is going on, Zander?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly and truthfully. “But the shop is just up ahead. If they’re going to make their move, they’d better do it soon. Otherwise you’ll be inside, and they won’t attack you there.”
“They won’t?”
“No. That would make it an official Guardian issue. In the streets, it could be ruled that they thought you were a human intruder, instead of here legally. A slap on the wrist, maybe some community service. No, if it’s going to happen, it’ll be shortly.”
The door to the shop appeared sooner than he expected. They hurried up to it, and as Riss began to fiddle with the key and lock, he spun around with his back to the door, eyes roving the surrounding building. But still he could see nothing, no movement or signs of anything. But the danger was there. Of that he had no doubt.
“Got it,” she said.
“Okay, get inside. I’ll figure this out,” he said.
Riss hesitated, then leaned back and kissed him on the cheek. “Be safe.”
She darted inside and closed the thick wooden door behind her. Zander waited until he could hear the sliding of the deadbolt and another lock. Then he strode from the door into the middle of the alley and raised his hands.
“If this is gonna happen, let’s get on with it. I’m getting impatient,” he called out to the empty air.
A head appeared on the roof of the opposite building. Then another.
And another.
Two figures appeared at the mouth of the alley behind him, and another pair came around the corner from the direction he’d just come.
Seven then.
The figures on the roof began to leap down, landing with a smooth grace. They moved toward him, not so much walking, but as prowling.
“Panthers,” he spat. “I should have known.”
Nobody liked panthers. Thugs, mercenaries, and troublemakers almost to the last, they were the constant source of problems for the Guardians.
They also had no issues with breaking the law. Which meant he was in for a fight.
Three between him and the alley. Four blocking him from reaching the street that ran in front of Challer’s. Any one shifter was no match for a dragon, even the biggest grizzlies and polar bear shifters, though they would be a handful. Even three panthers was a laugh. Five was a fight.
But seven?
Zander wasn’t sure he’d ever been quite this outnumbered before. He needed to even up the odds, and quickly.
The panther shifter gang circled up around him, and it looked like the leader was going to say something. He was of average height, but a little more muscled than the others. That, and there was also the way the rest kept looking at him for instruction. That was what gave him away more than anything else. Panther shifters were notorious for strict obedience to their alpha, even if in the wild they weren’t pack hunters. In fact they were quite the opposite.
Before he could speak though, Zander went on the offensive. They had arrayed themselves in an arc from his left to right by this point. He labeled them one through seven, with the leader being number four.
Six had come too close though. He was the first to die. Zander’s hand flashed out with fingers so strong they may as well have been titanium. He crushed the panther’s windpipe beyond recognition.
The angry dragon, his temper flaring incandescent at the knowledge that they were here to attack Riss, went on a rampage. A grin spread across his face as he waded in, using the dying Six as a shield while his left hand blocked blows and returned them.
Having drawn them in, Zander suddenly whirled, right hand outstretched. The almost-limp Six, on his last legs before darkness closed in, went whirling around like a club, his feet knocking shifters aside and scattering them. Finishing his movement, Zander threw Six at the second closest shifter, Five, and closed in on Three, who had the unfortunate luck to be knocked down almost at the dragon shifter’s feet.
A booted heel rose and slammed into the man’s face. Bone and cartilage cracked and blood began to spew from Three’s nose. Zander hit him again, and broke the man’s orbital bone. He pulled his foot back, and kicked as hard as he could. Three’s neck snapped back and he went abruptly still.
“You’re dead now,” Four, the leader, spat as he and the others got back to their feet and closed in.
“Now?” Zander scoffed, laughing in their faces with the confidence only a dragon shifter possessed. “You must be joking. We all know why you’re here.”
“You have no idea why we’re here,” Four replied. “And now you never will.”
They charged as one, and there was no more time for words. But the odds had tilted in Zander’s favor with his unexpected and unprovoked attack. By lashing out before they had a chance, he’d eliminated two of their number.
There were still five opponents, but he felt more confident in his ability to take them now. Especially as his fist landed in Seven’s face and the man spun to the ground with a whimper. Clearly not all of them were first-class fighters.
Blows rained down on Zander, but he shrugged most of them off and began to laugh through the pain, an evil, mocking sound spurred on by the blistering rage inside of him. An arm wrapped around his throat from behind, squeezing off his airway.
With a growl, using the last of his air, Zander reached behind him until he could find his opponent’s face. He had no idea who it was, but he found what he was looking for, and stiffened thumbs dove deep into the attacker’s eye sockets. Something popped under them and a scream pierced the air.
&nb
sp; The arm disappeared from his neck.
Now there were but three, though the fourth looked about ready to reenter the fight.
One, Two, Four, and if he got himself together, Seven.
Which meant he’d just taken out Five’s eyes with his move.
“Still want to go on?” he taunted, feinting at One, who backed off quickly.
Zander laughed, and then it was his turn to charge. He grabbed Seven by the collar, as he was too slow to move, and physically hurled him at the far wall. The shifter yelped as he flew through the air, hitting the brick face-first, upside down. The blow stunned him and he fell the ten feet to the ground without a reaction, hitting head-first.
There was a sickening crunch as he landed, and Seven lay still.
The Gale Dragon was still on the attack, however.
Two turned to run, but he caught up to him in two strides. A hammerblow to his back froze the panther shifter’s spine. Before he could fall, Zander shifted his weight onto his back foot and delivered a brutal kick square in the center of his spine that sent Two cartwheeling through the air and into the street beyond, where at least one passerby jumped to avoid being hit.
Something hard slammed into Zander’s side and he half-fell half-rolled out of the way as Four took another swipe with the metal pole he’d found. The blow missed, and Zander reached out to catch it on the backswing.
A feral grin crossed his face, made even worse by the blood he knew was splattered on it, some of it his own, but most of it the panther’s.
“My turn,” he said and wrenched the pipe from the other man’s grip.
Four’s eyes went wide, and then rolled back into his head as Zander slammed it against his temple. The leader dropped to the ground limply.
Only the last shifter, One, remained on his feet. His eyes were wide, showing Zander the whites as he began to panic, his friends either dead, dying, or unconscious around him.
“You can’t escape me,” Zander said, walking purposefully toward the last of his ambushers. “So you might as well try to beat me.”
One looked left and right for any sort of escape, but there was none.
That seemed to click in at last, and he ran straight at Zander with a scream.
“That won’t work,” he laughed, and at the last second stepped forward abruptly, throwing One’s timing off.
His fist connected right between the panther shifter’s eyes, and he went down. Hard.
“Ow,” Zander swore, shaking his hand. There had been a lot of force on that blow, and something had popped. “Too many punches I guess,” he muttered, the hand still tingling.
Okay. Well, that’s over. May as well head on over to HQ now and file a report for this, among other things.
Other Guardians would arrive in a few minutes, he was sure. There was no way a fight like this would go unreported. They could handle the cleanup, thankfully.
“Zander?” a shocked voice asked.
He spun. Riss had emerged from the shop, her eyes wide at the carnage strewn around.
“Go back inside,” he said, reaching out to stop her, realizing only too late that his hand was covered in blood.
Her eyes flew open in terror and she backed away from him rapidly.
“Riss?” he asked, dropping his hand, both in surprise and because of the blood.
“What have you done?” she asked. “Why did you attack them like that? What was that all about?”
“I didn’t attack them, they attacked me,” he said.
Riss’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she said. “I saw the whole thing.” She pointed up, and Zander saw a window there. “You attacked them, unprovoked.” She shuddered. “And you laughed about it as you killed all these men.”
Zander threw his hands in the air in helplessness. How did he explain to her that he had known they were going to attack? That they were panthers, and that’s what they did.
“Riss, listen,” he started, but she shook her head.
“I’m not sure I can look at you right now,” she said softly. “I thought I was getting to know you. But this,” she paused, lost for words. “This shows me how wrong I was.”
“Riss Levion,” he ground out. “These men were not here for me. They were here for you.”
Her eyes focused on him at that. “How do you know that?”
“Who walks along this alley?” he said. “They only picked us up halfway through the walk. They were waiting for you. There was no way for them to know I was with you. That was why they didn’t attack right away. They were going to do something to you, as a message for what I did to their friend the night before, is my guess.”
“Your guess?” she asked. “You didn’t even let them speak before you attacked, did you?”
Shit.
“You need to get over that, Riss. You’re in danger now.”
“Because of you!”
“Yes, I’m sorry I stopped you from being mugged, and that your boss clearly can’t accept that. But it’s only going to get worse. You should come with me. I can protect you.”
“If this is your idea of protection,” she said at the bodies lying in the alley, “I want nothing to do with it. My life has had far too much violence in it since you came around.”
“Let me stay,” he urged. “At least until I can talk to your boss.”
“Oh, you’re going to talk to him now, are you? Listen, Mr. Barnesworth may be an asshole, but he would never attack me! Now please, Zander, leave me alone.”
His short temper betrayed him once more.
“Fine!” he snapped. “Good luck dealing with him on your own.”
He turned and strode out of the alley, leaving her standing there.
Two Guardians stopped him five paces down the sidewalk.
He spoke before they could even open their mouths. “Seven bodies, panthers, in the alley. They ambushed me, and paid the price. I’m going to HQ.” He nodded at them curtly and strode off as they moved past him.
“Holy shit,” he heard one of them say, but Zander didn’t turn back.
His angry strides took him through the streets, shifters moving away from the blood-soaked apparition in their midst, providing him with a clear path.
But Zander’s mind wasn’t on the fight anymore. He’d already pushed that past him. No, he was focused on the way Riss had looked at him. Not with the passion, desire, and happiness of the weekend. That had been absent when he’d turned around, and replaced with something else.
Terror.
It was a look he’d seen on many people’s faces when he confronted them. Not many shifters wished to face a dragon, especially a Guardian. But it wasn’t something he’d ever expected to see on her face. Not directed at him, at least. That was what hurt the most. Knowing she was terrified of him. Of what he had done.
Seeing her flinch away from his touch had been the final blow, and something inside Zander had broken at it. That also surprised him, because he hadn’t thought his feelings for her to be that strong. Clearly, however, he needed to do some reevaluation of things to figure out where he fit.
He wasn’t too sure he was going to like the answer he came up with.
Chapter Eight
Riss
“What the hell happened out there?” Miranda asked as Riss walked into her work room and closed the door behind her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She felt like it too. Growing up in Cadia, Riss wasn’t completely unused to death. She’d seen dead bodies once or twice, and more fights and blood than she could care to count. That wasn’t what appalled her so much, though such a brutal scene was more than she’d been used to.
It was the fact that she’d watched it happen, and also that she knew who had caused it.
Not Zander, fighting to protect her or to defend himself. But a monster, a laughing, leering monster who reveled in the bloodshed, who enjoyed it. Who took pleasure in wringing the life from his enemies with as much force as he could.
“A fight,” she said absentminde
dly, sitting down on a pile of boxes, eyes staring off into nowhere.
“Umm, what?” Miranda asked, reaching out to lay a hand on Riss’s arm. “Just a fight?”
“Zander and some shifters. It was bad.”
“Oh my goodness,” Miranda exclaimed. “Is he okay?”
“Is who okay?” Riss still wasn’t entirely focused on the present.
“Zander!”
“Oh, yeah. He’s fine. I think. The others aren’t.”
“Did he kill them?” Miranda asked.
“Not all of them. Only some.”
And then the tears came.
“Oh, honey, it’s okay.” Miranda comforted her, moving around her table to come take Riss into her arms, the ultra-petite woman doing her best to soothe the larger human.
They didn’t last long, and in a few minutes’ time Riss was beginning to compose herself.
“Death happens,” Miranda said at last.
Riss shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I mean, it was unsettling, sure. But I’ve lived here all my life. It’s not as bad as I hear some of the other shifter territories are, but I’ve seen death before, and blood. None of that is going to overwhelm me anymore. Bother me, sure. But I’m used to how cavalier shifters are with killing. No,” she said softly. “It was something else.”
“What?” Miranda rubbed her shoulders.
“I think it was the way Zander did it. He attacked them, unprovoked. He didn’t just kill them, Mir, he executed them. It was so fast it was practically in cold blood. They didn’t stand a chance. They just stood in front of him, and then he went after them. He laughed during it, Mir. Laughed in their faces, because they didn’t stand a chance against him.”
The tailor looked at her. “Riss, you have to remember, he’s a dragon. Part of that comes with the job, especially as a Guardian.”
“I know, but it was just, just, so unlike him. That wasn’t the Zander I know. It was like an entirely different part of him took over. A meaner part. Brutish, almost. He fought like he was an—” Riss’s voice died as she realized what she was about to say.
