by Juniper Hart
3
“What we’re doing here is revolutionary,” Anatoli told him. “We’re going to change the course of the world with our work.”
His wings beat harder against the night sky, his massive form well above any visibility from the earth below as he drove his body across the Atlantic. He was already moving much faster than he should have been without breaking but he wasn’t tired in the least. He was well motivated by anger and worry for Sabine.
I believed her, he thought angrily. I believed in the mission and I believed in Anatoli.
Dex forced the director from his mind and focused his attention on Sabine. There was so much emotion coursing through him that he barely knew which end was up, a combination of memories and sensations overtaking him like the heavy slap of his wings against the night.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Sabine, head cocked back to stare at him in her teasing, alluring way, her delicate features stealing his breath as they had from the moment he had first laid eyes on her. Even there, sailing above any living being, he caught a whiff of her feminine scent, as if she had seeped into him by osmosis.
How many times had I felt like we were one, like she was my mate?
The thought made him swallow hard.
Had he made another mistake in trusting her also? Dex could not imagine anyone less likely to defect than Sabine, but how well did he really know anyone?
The only person you should ever trust is yourself. That way, you’ll never get hurt.
He knew it was a thought born of confusion and consternation, one that would have never crossed his mind before Anatoli had created doubt inside him.
Dex thought of the last night he and Sabine had spent together, a night not unlike that one with gray skies and the heaviness of rain about them. He had held her in his arms, knowing it was the last time he was going to be near her for a long while—if ever again.
“We knew this was going to come to an end eventually,” Sabine told him lightly, sensing his darkening mood. “Why don’t we just enjoy it instead of moping about what could have been?”
How can she do that? he thought. How does she play it off so easily when she knows she’s never felt anything like this either?
“You don’t have to go,” he murmured tersely, inhaling the scent of her skin and committing it to memory. He knew what her response was going to be, but he would be remiss if he didn’t speak his mind aloud.
“And what?” Sabine joked. “I’ll stay here in Virginia and we can continue to sneak around behind everyone’s back? I’m sure Anatoli already knows about us, even if she hasn’t said anything.”
Dex had considered the words thoughtfully. He couldn’t imagine that the director would condone such a relationship, but who could ever really know with Anatoli? Her mind always worked at much different levels and speeds than anyone else he knew.
She might let us go if we ask. He didn’t dare speak the thought aloud.
Even then he knew he was being ridiculous.
“Has it been that bad over the past eight months?” Dex demanded. Sabine sighed and pulled herself out of his grasp to study him with intense eyes. Whatever she read in his expression made her face soften. He knew she was putting on a brave face for his benefit.
“Being with you is what’s made this training bearable,” she reassured him. “If not for you, I doubt I would have lasted a month, let alone nine.”
“That’s not true,” Dex replied quickly. “You have the strength and perseverance to overcome anything. That’s why you’ve done as well as you have.”
“Well, I tap into my strength from somewhere,” Sabine replied, raising her head for another long, sweet kiss. “And I would love to sneak around with you for the rest of eternity, but let’s be honest, it would be a waste of good training. Don’t you think?”
Disappointment welled inside Dex’s heart but he smiled through, knowing that she was speaking the words she had been trained to speak. She was right—they had always known that their affair was going to have an expiration date but that didn’t mean it made it any easier for him to bear. He should have known better than to get involved with a recruit in the first place, but it was far too late for regrets now. They had had their time together and it was coming to a painful, abrupt end. What he hadn’t expected was to find his mate when it had all begun.
“Maybe I can find out where you’re placed and come visit you,” Dex said. Sabine’s smile faded and her eyes clouded over.
“Dex, you know you can’t do that,” she said firmly. “It’s too risky for everyone. Promise me that you won’t look for me.”
“It might not be risky,” he insisted, knowing he was sounding like a kid grasping at straws. “I can gauge the danger—”
“Please stop!” she snapped, pulling back to glare at him. “You’re making this much harder than it needs to be. If I’d known you were going to do this, I would have never allowed it to get so far.”
Contrition overcame him and he nodded, lowering his eyes in shame.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She sighed heavily and dropped her head back against his chest.
“I’m sorry too,” she mumbled. “That was harsh. You know exactly how I feel about you but…”
Sabine paused and inhaled.
“But this is impossible and you know it as well as I do.”
They held onto one another for a long moment, listening to the sound of each other’s hearts until Sabine spoke again.
“I know this isn’t easy and we probably shouldn’t have let it get this far, but you have to promise you won’t do anything to compromise my mission—or your own safety.”
“I won’t,” he agreed quickly, knowing he would never put her in danger. He had been speaking off the cuff, not sincerely contemplating such a careless move. There was a reason that placements were kept top secret. Anatoli had foreseen fraternization between the recruits and the instructors, even if it had been strictly forbidden. Anatoli was no fool. She understood the nature of the beast better than anyone.
He forced his brain back into the present, gnashing his spiky teeth together.
And now, I’m on my way to Germany to find Sabine. What if she’s there and she sees me? She’ll be furious, thinking I backtracked on my promise.
There were ways for him to handle the situation without her being any wiser, he knew, but he also wondered if he would be able to resist making his presence known once he laid eyes on her. He decided he would play out the situation and see the best way to approach it.
The combination of concern and excitement propelled him faster, the swoosh of his blue-gray tail sweeping behind him to expedite his arrival. In less than an hour, he would be on the street where Sabine was supposed to have been living. He wondered what he would find.
Had she simply up and disappeared? It wouldn’t be the first time that a recruit had tried. Until then, Dex had never much considered how Anatoli had found them.
Why hadn’t I thought about that? Why didn’t I realize that she was tracking them in some way? Was I just too blinded by my loyalty to Anatoli to notice?
Dex didn’t want to think badly of the woman he had come to trust implicitly for more than a decade. He had been among the first ones to join her cause, the sentiment behind the Sleeper program one that was very dear to him. He had lost his entire family to the War Between the Shifters over a hundred years earlier. He was the last remaining dragon in his pack and while he was no longer hunted, he didn’t want to live in a world where everyone was against everyone.
The humans think their politics are bad, he thought. They have no idea what’s happening right under their own noses.
The bitter irony of it all was that for all the destruction the humans caused upon one another, they were bound to be the first casualties of another shifter conflict. The humans would never last among such a bloodbath.
At first, the idea of unity for all had made Dex laugh. It was impossible in that climate. While there were no open
wars to speak of, he knew that each group was working behind the scenes to destroy the next. It was impossible to keep up with who was on the attack of whom anymore. Yet Anatoli had reminded him that once upon a time, all the magical beings had existed in harmony. It wasn’t until the humans had learned of their existence that the higher powers decided it was politically beneficial to pit everyone against the other.
“We can attain peace again,” Anatoli had insisted and Dex had fallen under her spell just as everyone else did. He wanted so desperately to believe in her words that he had dismissed all his prior doubts, but suddenly, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
His inner radar told him that he was flying over German terrain and along the Ebbe Mountains, he swooped down for cover. It was still quite a distance before he reached Bremen, over a hundred and seventy-five miles, but it was the closest he could get in his dragon form without being detected. He’d made hundreds of journeys through Europe and around the world in his four hundred years on the planet. He didn’t require a GPS in most areas, regardless of how remote. He would rent a car in Dortmund and head northeast until he reached the city where Sabine had been last seen.
Why did Ana wait so long to say anything?
It was just another question that would have to wait until he had answers about Sabine’s whereabouts.
He landed seamlessly in the nature reserve encompassing the mountain, his black eyes glittering against the darkness to watch for any potential witnesses. At that hour of the night, no tourists were wandering the hillside looking for adventure. He was in the clear.
A hundred or more times he’d made covert operations exactly like this. It was one of the reasons that Anatoli had selected him, for his black ops training. Of course, those missions had been considerably different, his loyalty to the human military stinting his powers considerably. He hadn’t had the option of shifting to fly in his dragon form halfway across the world while working with the US Marines.
Is this better or worse than that? he mused grimly. Yesterday he would have said better. Today, he had no answer.
Through the cover of night, he walked to Herscheid, an hour and a half away. The town was barely a hamlet, but it had what Dex needed—unattended vehicles that didn’t require hotwiring. Not that Dex was inept at hotwiring. In fact, there was very little he couldn’t do. Between his military training and shifter abilities, Dex was a formidable force. He sometimes wondered why Anatoli didn’t utilize him in the field more than in training.
It was just another reason for him to be annoyed with Anatoli—and himself.
The old Opel already had the keys in the ignition and while Dex could have hoped for a quieter vehicle, he couldn’t argue that it did the trick. He only needed it to take him to Dortmund where he would ditch it and find a rental but the walk to the city was just too long and without being able to fly, well, his options were limited.
He couldn’t say why but he’d known from the moment Anatoli had told him about Sabine that something was wrong. The woman he had grown to know and love wouldn’t have simply walked away from her life as a Sleeper, not when she had given up so much to be a part of that world.
Besides, she wouldn’t escape the Sleeper program without him.
Perhaps that was the aspect that propelled him the most. He had no doubts about the way Sabine felt. If she was going to defect, she would have come to him first, of that he was certain.
He reasoned that it was possible she had learned about the tracking chip and gotten so angry that she’d removed it, but would she really have just disappeared?
He was determined to find out.
It wasn’t yet dawn by the time he arrived in Dortmund, his fake passport in hand ready for the desk clerk at the Dortmund Airport. The rental car area was opened twenty-four hours, a fact that Dex had been banking on, and by the time the sun struggled over the massive pines, he was on his way to the address that Anatoli had provided in Bremen, almost three hours away. If he played his cards right, he’d be there before Sabine had her morning coffee.
With two cream, one sugar, he thought automatically. His heart twitched at the memory. How many times had he envisioned their lazy, too-early mornings together where they would lie naked, tangled up in one another, drinking coffee until they reluctantly scattered in opposite directions to start the day?
He made his way down the quiet street, parking in front of the townhouse at a safe distance. For the moment, he would only watch for signs of life inside the residence and hope that all this had been for nothing but as the morning wore on, he knew he was going to have a problem. From what Anatoli had told him, Sabine worked as a yoga instructor during the day. He had been forwarded a copy of her work schedule and Sabine was supposed to have had a class that morning.
Unless she didn’t spend the night here last night.
The idea made his stomach churn, but he silenced the burst of jealousy shooting through him. Sabine owed him nothing, least of all loyalty. They had said their goodbyes but that didn’t change the fact that she should know better than to get involved with anyone, especially so soon after her placement.
The fact that she might compromise the mission wasn’t what really bothered him, though. The thought of Sabine wrapped in another man’s arms made his stomach cringe.
Gritting his teeth, he reached for the burner cell he’d picked up en route and found the number to Namaste Schule des Yoga on Hollerallee.
“Guten Morgen, Namaste Schule des Yoga,” a bright voice chirped out from the other end of the call. For a moment, Dex’s heart stopped but he immediately realized it wasn’t Sabine’s voice.
Hers is huskier, softer. Certainly not as grating. I know that because I replay her voice in my head too.
“I’m sorry, but do you speak English?” he asked in a halting Spanish accent. He spoke German fluently as well as six other languages, not to mention several lost shifter dialects, but he didn’t want to run the risk of Sabine learning he was there unless absolutely necessary. He would use disguises, accents, fake names until he was sure there was no danger to speak of.
“Ja—yes, sir. How may I help you?” the receptionist chirped with a heavy accent.
“I had yoga instructor with black hair,” Dex began, wracking his mind for a cover story. “She’s very good. Sabrina?”
There was a slight pause and when the woman spoke again, the friendliness was gone from her tone.
“Sabine.”
She almost spat out the name.
That didn’t sound very downward-facing dog. What was the story there?
“Si, si, Sabine. Does she work today?”
“No, sir. Sabine is no longer employed here. There are several other instructors who offer her services, however. I can arrange for you to join one of their classes if you like.”
“No, I like Sabine,” Dex insisted, his pulse quickening. “When will she return?”
“No, sir, you don’t understand. Sabine does not work here anymore. She simply decided not to come into work one day.”
More alarm spiked through Dex’s veins. Something was very wrong.
“Oh no!” he cried with mock gusto. “How long ago?”
There was a slight pause.
“I would say a month. Are you sure another instructor wouldn’t—”
Dex disconnected the call before the girl could finish her sales spiel. He’d heard all he needed to hear.
A month. Around the same time that Ana noticed she was missing. Damn you, Anatoli. Why didn’t you say something?
Dex dropped his head back against the head rest, his eyes fixed on the front door of Sabine’s house.
Where the hell was Sabine?
4
The morning rush gave way to a lull before lunch, giving Sabine a few minutes to catch her breath. Her legs were aching from all the running around she’d done and her body was exhausted.
I would kill someone for a nap right now, she thought uselessly. She still had hours to go before she could think about sleeping.<
br />
“You seem tired today,” Hans commented, giving her the same look she had gotten to know well. “Are you sick?”
“Nein, nein,” Sabine assured him. “It was just busy.”
“It’s always busy,” Hans insisted, his eyes still narrowed as he studied her face. “You should see a doctor.”
Sabine bristled at the mention of a doctor again. All week, Frau Schiller had been on her about the appointment she’d promised to make and now Hans? It was becoming tiresome.
You should make the appointment to get them all off your butt, Sabine thought. She suspected that was the only way she would get some reprieve.
“I’m fine,” she insisted but made a mental note to make the appointment after she was done working.
“You better be. You have tables,” Hans told her, nodding toward the door. Sabine lifted her head and watched as a handsome young man entered, the blue of his eyes stealing her breath when his gaze rested upon her. A peculiar sensation shot through her, freezing her in place as they held each other’s stare.
Do I know him?
He gave her a wry smile but there was nothing in his expression that indicated familiarity and Sabine had no choice but to shake off the feeling and start toward him.
“Guten tag,” she said brightly, handing him a menu. “Can I get you something to drink?”
The man turned his head toward her, his eyes gleaming as he studied her face.
“Guten Tag…” he said slowly. He paused as though he was contemplating his next words carefully. When he spoke again, his question chilled her slightly. “Sprichst du Englisch?”
For a moment, Sabine wasn’t sure how to answer. His German was flawless and everything about him seemed to indicate he was European. Why was he asking her if she spoke English?
Automatically, she shook her head. Her instinct screamed at her to lie.
“Nein, es tut ens leid,” she said apologetically. She had stepped back from the table without noticing, the scrutiny of his eyes penetrating her deeply.
“It’s fine,” he replied lightly in German, his beam widening. “I was just looking for someone to practice with. I’m taking a night class at Bremen University.”