“I don’t know.”
She nodded, but she didn’t say anything. Didn’t feel or smell impatient. She was just… there.
He wanted to explain to her about everything, but he didn’t know where to start. She didn’t push him, just rubbed her hands slowly up and down his back, occasionally dropping a tiny kiss onto his neck.
“Sometimes I envy you,” he said quietly. “The way you’re so determined to go out and live, now that you’re free.”
She made a soft encouraging noise, still rubbing his back, waiting while he searched for more words.
“Sometimes I feel like I never really escaped. That the people who—who did all that shit to me are still holding me prisoner.”
She snuggled even closer to him, holding him in her warm embrace, surrounding him with her love.
“When I saw that the Bradleys were still alive, it—” He shook his head. “I just kept thinking, what if it had been my parents? If they’d been in that one fucking cell, all these years, and I didn’t know? No one knew. No one looked for them.”
“I know.” Her hands moved rhythmically over his back. “I know.”
“I know you think it’s stupid, for me to keep saying I should have saved people. But if I couldn’t have, then…”
If he’d admitted he couldn’t have, if there was never anything he could have done, then he’d have to face the fact that he was totally helpless. And if he’d ever let himself believe that, even once, he would have died. That much hopelessness would have destroyed him.
Pretending that he could have done something was the only scrap of pride and strength he had left in him. But he would never, ever say that out loud, not even to Mayah. Especially not to her.
He needed her to see him as strong. Not as a creature to be pitied.
Instead he said, “It made me feel like something was under my control.”
“It gave you hope,” she said.
“Something like that.”
“People matter to you,” she said. “I love that about you. I don’t want you to change that. Just let us help.”
“You help me every day.”
She ran her fingers up and down his spine. “I wish… I wish someday you could have your life back. That you could really live, like we talked about. Go to Bali. Explore the world.” Her fingers stopped. “Have a family, even. Be happy.”
He knew that was never going to happen. But he would dream about it, just for a little while.
He said, “Maybe if we take down Gen-X, the world will be safe for white wolves.”
“The world is never totally safe,” she said. “We just have to live in spite of that.”
She stroked his back again. “You are the bravest, strongest man I’ve ever met. You never give up. I know that if anyone tries to hurt me, if anything ever happens to me, you will do everything humanly possible to save me. That’s all anyone can ask.”
“But what if I don’t?” he whispered. “What if I can’t?”
“Hopefully, nothing will happen to me,” she said. “But if it does, you will.”
Making love with Tristan this time was different. He was slow, deliberate, intent, touching her as if he had to memorize every part of her, remember every moment.
Like he was storing her in his hoard of memories, forever.
The way he sucked on her breasts with total concentration, like there was nothing else in the world. The way he stroked her skin with two fingers, like he was memorizing the feel of it, and watched her shiver at the feathery sensation.
And smiled, like he was watching something amazing.
The way he followed every touch with slow sensual kisses. The way he stoked the flames inside her, gradually making his way to her core. The way he explored her with his tongue, kissing her clit over and over, until she forgot everything but the fire of his loving.
He made her come again and again, until she was trembling with pleasure and want and need, and then he slid inside her and lay there, skin to skin, looking down at her with those blue, blue eyes.
He took her hands, turning each one over and kissing it before intertwining his fingers with hers. And then he slid their joined hands up over her head and moved inside her, closing his eyes and making a small growl of pleasure as she moved her hips to meet his slow thrust.
The feeling of him deep inside her roused something primal in her, and she moaned. He captured her lips with slow kisses that made her hotter and wetter, made her desperate to have all of him, forever.
I love you, Princess Mayah, he said in her mind as they moved together. I will love you until I die, and beyond.
You are my wolf, she said in reply. Mine forever, and even longer.
And then there were no more words, only feelings, as they rose together under the stars and expanded into the galaxy before floating gently back down to earth.
Chapter 21
The next morning, Flynn called a videoconference with the Greystone brothers—Wild Dragons who lived in Oregon, only two hours from the facility where the prisoners were being held.
They were hoping the brothers would agree to help in the rescue of the white wolves. Them and their mates—two powerful witches and an ice dragon.
On the Bad Blood side of the call, besides Flynn, Tristan and Mayah, were Kira, Sloan, Caitlyn, Xander and Tank.
Flynn laid out the situation, and the little they knew about the target facility so far.
“It would be ideal if we could go in there with a portal and take them out that way,” Thorne Greystone, the oldest and most powerful of the brothers, was saying. “Or with one of your space/time doorways, although that’s riskier for the prisoners.”
“Agreed,” his brother Tyr said. He was their healer and historian. “White wolves are known to be mentally unstable, and there’s no telling what’s been done to them in captivity. Add the effects of traveling through the spirit world on top of that, and there’s no telling the damage that could be done.”
“Well, there’s no sense in fucking around talking about what we’d like to do,” Flynn said. “Kira says that place is warded up almost as tight as your lair. Or mine. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way—with a strike team.”
Thorne frowned. “Without any intelligence? From what you say, Kira and the others only saw the inside of the facility, where the prisoners were kept. At least, some of them—there could be more in other areas. We could do a flyover to get the general layout, but if there are multiple buildings, we’re screwed.”
His brother Zane chimed in. “It’s not like we’re trying to get only one person out of there, either. How many prisoners did you say there were? Twenty? Thirty?”
“More like thirty,” Mayah admitted. “And there are bound to be guards. Maybe even sorcerers, considering the kind of magical wards they had.”
“I could break in there.” That was Rebel, Thorne’s mate. Besides being a witch, she was a professional thief. “I can get through just about any wards they have set up, and bring back the intel.”
“Sounds risky,” Flynn said. “You might be able to get through the wards, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t set off any alarms.”
Rebel looked offended. “Bite your tongue, Lion. I’m a professional.”
Flynn snorted. “Still, you’re only one person, trying to map what could be an entire complex of buildings in the shortest possible time. We not only need to know where the prisoners are, we need to know about guards, shift changes. Where the main power lines are, if we need to cut them, and whether there’s generator backup.”
“How they’re powering the magical protections,” Thorne put in. “Whether it’s local spells that need to be dealt with separately, or if they’re using a power sink that can be destroyed and blow them all at once.”
“Guys. This isn’t my first rodeo,” Rebel said, looking amused.
“I’d also like to find out where the computer servers are,” Thorne added. “We can’t pass up the opportunity to get ahold of G
en-X’s files and database. The amount we could learn about their operation… not to mention other facilities where they may be holding other prisoners…”
Tristan was getting impatient. “We need to focus on the prisoners,” he said. “Any help or resources you could put together, we’d be grateful for. But we don’t want to lose sight of the main objective here.”
Sloan said, “Zane’s right, though. This evacuation is a logistical nightmare. Thirty people, including kids? Even after we break them out, we have to transport them, with all of Gen-X potentially on our tails. This place is what, two hours from your lair by road?”
Thorne nodded. “More or less.”
“Okay,” Sloan said. “Trucks or buses will be vulnerable that entire time, and can be tracked from the ground or from the air. Wherever we go, they can follow us. And take us out.”
“With dragons guarding them?” Zane asked.
“And leaving a potential trail of destruction the whole way? Do you know how much attention that will attract? Human cops, news helicopters…”
“And we still have the recon problem,” Caitlyn added.
Tyr said slowly, “I have an idea about that. If Tristan and Mayah are willing to revisit the facility in the spirit world, I may have a way to allow them to move beyond the area where the wolves are. But you’d have to come to my lab to do it.”
Mayah glanced at Tristan, and he nodded. “Okay,” she said. “We can at least give it a shot.”
“Good,” Flynn said. “Better intel will help. Now we just need transport.”
“Um, hello,” Kira said. “Dragons?”
Everyone went silent. “Duh,” she said. “We potentially have ten dragons. Me, Mayah, and the four of you, plus Emon and the other three Wild Dragons in Emon’s clan—if they agree to come. Each dragon could carry three or four people. That’s enough to get thirty or more people out of there, easily. And once we’re cloaked, they can’t follow us, even with helicopters.”
Xander said, “Plus, however big this place is, with ten dragons we could totally fucking annihilate it. So there’s that.”
Zane began to grin. “I really like this idea,” he said. “A lot. I’m in.”
“Yeah,” Thorne said. “Except, as a representative to the Shifter Council for the Wild Dragons, how am I supposed to explain to them why ten fucking dragons descended on a human-owned science lab and annihilated it? Even if they were holding shifters hostage there?”
Flynn said, “We’ll hit them at night, and we’ll bring explosives. Enough to explain the damage to any humans sniffing around the wreckage afterwards.”
He gave Thorne one of his crazy crooked grins. “We’ll just make it look like an accident.”
Everyone else left the conference call, but Tristan and Mayah stayed on the line to talk to Tyr.
“Tell us more about how we can get past the wards in the spirit world,” Tristan said.
“And if it has to be both of us,” Mayah put in, with a sidelong glance at him. “Tristan did some damage to his brain during that battle with Gen-X, and—”
“I keep telling you, I’m fine,” Tristan snapped.
“He has headaches and nosebleeds,” Mayah said.
Fuck. Why did she have to tell Tyr that?
Tyr frowned. “I might be able to help with that,” he said. “But unfortunately, I’m thinking it does have to be you two. Not only did the wolves reach out to you individually, they were able to make a clearer connection when you were together. It’s interesting that Mayah has such a strong rapport with the white wolves. It tends to bear out the theories about the Al-Maddeiri Draken.”
Tristan and Mayah exchanged confused looks.
“What do you mean?” Mayah asked.
Tyr said, “Of course, you probably wouldn’t know. In academic circles, it’s generally acknowledged that the Al-Maddeiri dragons were the ones who gave the white wolves their powers, centuries ago. Also the other white shifters, quite likely, but they were particularly interested in wolves. It’s believed that one of the Al-Maddeiri sorceress dragons actually experimented with magical gene splicing, focusing on a pack in Alaska. It’s quite fascinating, really. I studied the pack myself, as part of my healing studies…”
Tristan broke in. “You knew the Winterhome pack?”
Tyr paused, blinking at him. “Yes, years ago. Did you?”
Tristan said slowly, “My parents were born there, but my grandparents left back when the pack split. Like, forty years ago.”
Of course, Tyr was a dragon, and was over a hundred years old. He could have been there in Tristan’s grandparents’ time.
“Damn,” Tyr said. “I knew Duke Adams, the old alpha, and his son Justin.” His face clouded. “But the last time I went up there, about ten or eleven years ago, they were all gone, and the village was destroyed. I never found out what happened to them.”
“Shifter hunters,” Tristan said grimly. “It’s a long story, and I’ll tell it to you sometime over a bottle of whiskey. We’re pretty sure the wolves in this facility are ones whose families left during the split, but I’m wondering if some of the other voices we’ve been hearing are from Winterhome survivors.”
“Damn,” Tyr murmured. “If they’re out there, I’d love to help you find them. Duke and Justin were good people, and I always wished I’d been there to help them.”
Tristan said, “I was there. I barely escaped. We could have used a dragon, come to think of it.”
“I’m sorry,” Tyr said. “One day, I’ll buy you that whiskey and hear that story.”
Tristan nodded.
“In the meantime, I’ll do anything I can to help you on this mission. I have some artifacts that should help you get through the wards and look at the rest of the facility. You won’t be hampered by the time restrictions that Rebel would have if she tried to do it physically.”
“Thank you,” Mayah said. “We really appreciate it.”
Tyr said, “Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do with them after you rescue them? I’m willing to help with the healing and psychological side of things, but we don’t have housing suitable for wolves. They need wilderness, and freedom to roam.”
“I know,” Mayah said. “What I’d like to do is take them home with us. We have plenty of space in our domain, and in spite of the fact that Gen-X managed to get through to the castle that one time, I think it’s safer for them than Earth. As a matter of fact, I want to go back there and talk to Emon about it before we come to you. Would tomorrow afternoon be all right?”
“That works,” Tyr said. “I’ll be ready.”
Chapter 22
That afternoon they traveled back to Emon’s domain. Tristan had another private talk with Tank before they left; he didn’t tell Mayah what it was about, but he was quiet and thoughtful for quite a while afterwards.
They met with Emon and told him about Kira’s plan. He agreed immediately to help with the rescue, and the destruction of the facility.
“If it’s those Gen-X fuckers, I owe them,” he said. They’d broken into the castle less than two months ago, thanks to Emon’s former Head Steward, Grange, who’d been their inside man.
“Don’t we all,” Tristan said, reflexively touching his upper lip. Mayah knew what he was thinking; she was thinking the same thing. If it hadn’t been for Gen-X attacking, he wouldn’t have fried his brain, and wouldn’t be having all these headaches and nosebleeds.
Hopefully, after this mission he could rest it for a bit. Maybe Tyr would even know of a way to heal him.
On the other hand, she couldn’t help but think that if it weren’t for the damage he’d taken, making it impossible to keep his ghosts at bay, they might not have ever realized who they were, and had the chance to rescue them.
Emon hesitated, then went on, “But I’m not sure about the red dragons. Even though they’re part of the clan, I can’t require them to go to another world and take part in a mission this dangerous.”
“We wouldn’t
want you to,” Tristan said. “Tell them it’s strictly voluntary.”
Emon grimaced. “That’s the thing. They’re used to my being their jailer, not their clan leader. They had to do what I said. Even if I phrased it as a request, they might feel like they don’t have a choice.”
Mayah got that; no matter what Emon said, the other dragons had to feel like they were on shaky ground with him. Especially because he was so damn grouchy. They didn’t know yet what a soft heart he really had.
“I’ll ask them,” she said. “They don’t answer to me, so maybe they’ll believe me when I say they don’t have to come.”
Although she was going to do everything she could to persuade them, short of using her mind powers on them.
Emon gave a little huff of laughter. “Good luck with that.” Then he put his hand on her arm. “Whatever they say, I’m totally behind you, little sister. And I know Trish will be too.”
When Mayah couldn’t find Zakerek in any of the usual places, she knew where to look. Or anyway, what to look for.
“Okay,” she said to Tristan. “If you were a dragon with an illicit man-cave, and had a whole castle to choose from, where would you put it?”
Tristan considered. “Someplace nobody goes, obviously,” he said. “The problem is, there are entire floors of this place where nobody goes.”
“I know.” Mayah chewed her bottom lip, thinking.
Man cave… Man cave… Dungeon? Good for brooding and hoards, but she wasn’t sure this could be considered to be a hoard exactly. Although maybe it was to Zakerek.
They checked the dungeons and came up empty. She turned to Tristan. “You’re from Earth. What do they have in man caves? Besides pool tables?”
Tristan laughed. “Not exactly an expert, but… TV, music, beer fridge, game tables, foosball, neon beer signs—maybe even pinball machines or arcade games, depending on Emon’s credit limit.”
Mayah rolled her eyes.
“Anything else?”
“Well, possibly he’d want access to some kind of patio or outdoor space, with a grill. Because grilling is considered to be extremely manly.”
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