by Juniper Hart
Even if it takes the rest of my eternal life, Landon thought, watching the siblings with relief. He knew Wren had been terribly worried about her brother, and not being able to see or hear from him had not alleviated her distress.
Brother and sister embraced and stared at each other in disbelief.
“You look great!” they chorused in unison. They turned to Landon and looked at him gratefully.
“You brought him back,” Wren sighed, encircling her arms around Landon’s back. “Thank you, honey. We owe you so much.”
“No one owes anyone anything,” Landon corrected. “Although we do need to get to the ball before they throw me off the Council for being late.”
“Will they do that?” Wren asked in disbelief.
“Of course not,” Landon chuckled, ushering the group out into the corridor. “What would they do without me on the Council? I’m Landon Burke.”
Guardian Dragon
Council of Seven
Prologue
Rain drove relentlessly through the greying skies, the wipers on the car working furiously to combat visibility through the windshield. Drake barely had it under control with his penetrative vision.
“I hate the damned rain,” Raven grumbled, shaking her sleek, black hair away from the angular lines of her face. “I would rather drive through the snow than the rain.”
“It’s fine,” her partner insisted, but even Alec could see Drake was having a difficult time seeing through the storm, his hands clenched firmly at the steering wheel. His blue eyes were glowing fully, like little fog lights in the interior of the vehicle. Alec said nothing from the back of the car, knowing his words would do little to help the situation. Speaking out of turn wasn’t really Alec’s style—he saved his words as if he was a mortal counting his breaths.
He wished he had opted to fly home after the council meeting, but it was too late for that option now. He was stuck in the back seat, waiting for the demon to navigate the way, despite the worsening weather outside.
There’s a reason you’re supposed to listen to your gut instinct and not take rides with demons.
Drake grunted slightly, and beneath them, the car hydroplaned across the backroad, swerving narrowly to miss the embankment at the side of the country road.
“Shit! Be careful!” Raven howled at her lover. “We just had the car serviced, Drake!”
“Yeah, thanks,” Drake retorted sharply. “My main concern was not getting us home in one piece but a mechanic bill.”
“We can heal. The car won’t,” she reminded him, and Alec almost laughed. Raven had a valid point, after all. Still, her morbid worldview was as dark as the hair on her head.
“Anyway, if we crash, Alec can just fly us home,” Drake reminded her, regaining control of the car.
“I have no interest in getting soaked,” Raven scoffed. “Just focus on the road, honey.”
Alec turned his emerald eyes toward the water-streaked window and looked into the blackness beyond. It was a fitting end to the night. As always, the Council had been long-winded and unnecessary. It was exhausting, even if Alec had had little to offer throughout the course of events. He just wanted to go home and rest. Even though dawn was approaching, there was no sign of light on the horizon.
He idly considered that catastrophe inevitably struck following a council meeting. It was almost like clockwork, a mocking of fate that something bad was bound to happen to one of the Seven after a night of discussing motions and charges. As the words floated through his mind, Drake slammed on the brakes, causing the Challenger to swerve wildly.
“What the hell…?”
Alec whipped his head back toward the front of the vehicle, a flash of headlights nearly blinding him as he did.
It seemed to take an hour for the car to stop skidding, but when it did, it was only because it ended up in the ditch Drake had tried so hard to escape.
“Son of a bitch!” Drake howled. “Those idiots!”
“What happened?” Alec demanded, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he immediately sensed danger. Before he could jerk his head back around to see out the back windshield, the doors were wrenched open and strong hands were upon him. He heard the hiss of both demons as they, too, were wrenched from their spots, but through the intense drive of rain above, Alec could barely make out what was happening.
They were mortals—six, as far as Alec could sense—and he steeled himself from shifting, despite his inherent desire to scare the daylights out of his would-be kidnappers.
Don’t shift. Don’t shift. Don’t latch your teeth onto their jugular veins. The outcome for performing such a feat would only result in trouble for everyone. Alec knew that he could hurt—or kill—all six of the thieves with ease, but he was so angry, he couldn’t do it without exposing his dragon form. He didn’t want to kill them, so he decided to remain calm.
“What do you want?” Alec growled as rough hands pushed up against the Dodge, frisking him.
“Shut up,” one man growled, snatching Alec’s wallet from his back pocket. The water seeped through Alec’s clothes as his Rolex was stripped from his arm.
“Don’t move,” a woman instructed from nearby, but Alec cast her a peripheral look. His eyes rested on Raven, whose face was twisted in a fury. The dragon silently willed her to be still, sensing her desire to turn on the assailants with the same fury he felt.
It’s only a robbery, Raven. Nothing we can’t recoup. Exposing their true nature to a band of thieves, on the other hand, was not something they would easily come back from.
Not unless we kill them and dispose of their bodies for no one to find. The thought was nakedly Raven’s. She was livid, her thoughts pouring through him like they were his own.
Alec closed his eyes, hoping that she would keep herself together. Doing what she proposed was not as easy as she made it sound. They all knew that.
“Did you get everything?” another voice called. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Check inside the car,” the man who had Alec against the car instructed. “Hurry up before someone comes. I want everything!”
“You won’t get away with this,” Drake snarled, struggling from his spot against the hood. To Alec’s horror, he watched the demon’s face take on the unearthly parlor of the underworld. Alec’s eyes shot toward Raven and shook his head vehemently.
Stop him! he yelled at the councilwoman. Don’t let him shift!
Raven seemed to have seen her lover’s reaction at the same time, and she delivered a stunning blow to Drake’s face, causing him to lose his demonic glint, his eyes losing the blazing glow of fury.
“Tough guy, huh?” one of the captors jeered. “Your woman knows what’s what. Smart girl.”
Alec steeled himself, knowing that the words were not sitting well with Raven any more than they were with Drake. For his part, there was a cold ire flooding through his red-hot blood, but he was powerless to stop it. At least for the moment. There was always time for retribution later.
“Come on!” someone yelled. “Let’s get out of here!”
As quickly as he had been captured, Alec was released, and he spun around to watch the crew running back to their van with the property they had stolen.
“What is wrong with you?!” Drake howled, the crack in his ego apparent as he glared dubiously at his wife. “How could you let them get away with that? Both of you!”
“Get in the car,” Raven instructed, her voice oddly flat. Alec had already scrambled back into the rear of the vehicle, a combination of heat and coldness rushing through him as he tried to focus his thoughts rationally.
“How can you two just let them go?” Drake roared, his face again contorting into his demonic one. “They just robbed us!”
“Get in the car, Drake,” Raven ordered icily, pushing her lover toward the passenger side as she claimed the driver’s seat. “Get in before I leave you here.” She slammed the door as Drake continued to stand in the rain, staring at them in disgust.
> “You’re both on the Council! It’s your job to protect us! What’s the point if you sit back and do nothing when we’re being attacked?”
“Is he going to go on a tirade now?” Alec snapped, his patience expiring. Drake’s desire to hold his wife’s place on the Council was hardly a secret.
“DRAKE!” Raven spat. “GET IN THE CAR! Don’t make me tell you again!”
Drake finally seemed to acknowledge the sense of following her instructions and begrudgingly took the passenger seat, though the animus remained clear on his face.
“What the hell is the point of being Enchanted if we can’t react when we’re threatened?” he snarled, slamming the car door with more force than necessary. “We stood there like idiots when we could have ended them! No one would have ever found them!”
“You know full well we couldn’t have done a damn thing, unless we wanted to kill them afterward. Do you really want blood on your hands tonight? I’m exhausted,” Raven replied evenly, but Alec could hear the quaver in her voice.
The helplessness in her words was not lost on the dragon, not when he felt it just as intensely. He couldn’t expect Drake to understand, even though the male demon knew the rules as well as anyone. After all, his mate had been on the Council for five thousand years, and they had been together just as long.
Without another word, Raven started the car again and backed out of the ditch with surprisingly little effort. They were not stuck, but the feeling of ineptitude which enveloped them was something else entirely. They were in shock, paralyzed by what had happened.
“What did they take?” Drake asked after a few minutes of silence. His tone was much calmer, as though the quiet time had cleared his mind somewhat.
“Everything,” Alec replied softly. “Wallet, watch.” He watched Raven’s back tense, and at precisely the same moment, he realized what else the robbers had gotten their thieving hands on.
“The cell phones. We need to call the Council and warn them,” Raven sighed.
“All right,” Alec said calmly, his ire slowly melting away. “It’s all stuff. Who cares?”
“I care!” Raven growled unexpectedly. “I care that I was violated on the side of the road by a bunch of mortals. I care that they stole my wedding band.”
“What?” Drake cried. “They took your wedding ring? They took mine, too!”
Alec exhaled slowly. He knew the significance of those bands in more ways than one. Their bands were ancient, artifacts that predated recorded history as modernist knew it.
Good gods, he sighed wearily. If they try to sell those items, scrutiny will be on us. The Council is not going to like this at all. Maybe we should have reacted more strongly.
He felt a pang of sympathy for the couple, knowing that for an unsentimental pair, they had been kicked precisely where it hurt them the most.
“We’ll get everything back,” Alec offered weakly, wondering how exactly they were going to accomplish such a feat. He had barely gotten a look at the robbers. If he happened to chance upon them on the street, he might recall them by scent well enough, but in a photo array, he would have no idea.
“You’re damn right we will,” Raven agreed, steering the car carefully onto another side road where the lighting was even worse. “Not only will we get it back, but we’re also going to make each one of those miserable mortals suffer a thousand deaths.”
“How?” Drake scoffed. “We have no idea who they are.”
Raven was quiet, but Alec caught a glimmer of smugness in her brilliant blue eyes through the rear-view mirror.
“What?” he demanded. “What did you see?” Raven raised her head to meet his stare in the glass, a small smirk touching her lips.
“The license plate,” she replied. “I got their license plate number.”
A flood of relief washed through him, and Drake whooped gleefully.
“Of course you did,” he muttered, leaning across the center console to kiss Raven’s cheek. “You’re the brains of the operation.”
Assuming that the license plate belongs to the car, Alec thought. A band of thieves might have switched up a plate before using their own vehicle. On the other hand, they didn’t exactly seem like the most organized group of criminals. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
The car slowed before the gated house in the middle of the country road, and Alec leaned to roll down the window and open the entranceway with his key fob.
“Come inside,” he urged the couple. “We’ll call the Council together and hunt down the bastards before they can try to pawn off our stuff.”
The gate slowly opened, revealing the grand, gothic house which Alec had called home for over two hundred years.
Amidst the blustering storm, he looked up at the gargoyles leering down from the eaves of the highest point of the mansion, their wide, devious eyes slick with water. Inexplicably, Alec found himself fixated on the stone, his mind whirling slightly.
“Come on, Alec,” Drake urged, and the dragon tore his eyes away from the statues, realizing that the demon couple waited for him to join them.
A strange, unsettling feeling washed through him, but he dismissed it as the aftermath of what they had endured. After all, it had been years since he had been put in such a vulnerable position, caught off guard at the hands of anyone, let alone mortals. He slid out of the backseat, and the trio raced toward the overhang under the doorway, where Alec unlocked the massive, heavy door. They stood dripping in the foyer as the housekeeper, Alicia, appeared, her eyes wide with shock.
“Mr. Petlier!” she gasped. “You’re soaked.”
“We’re going to need some alcohol, Alicia,” Alec instructed the Lycan. “Lots of it.”
“Is something wrong?” Alicia demanded, her eyes wide with worry.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Raven replied, stalking past the entranceway, her coat trailing water along the marble floors as she moved.
Again, Alec was consumed with a sense of foreboding as he watched her move toward the library, her gait purposeful. She didn’t glance back to see if her mate and Alec followed.
Without warning, an image of Miriam Aldwin popped into his mind, and confusion clouded Alec’s vision, causing him to freeze in his place. Miriam? Why?
“Alec,” Drake muttered. “What’s wrong with you? Did they hit you in the head?”
Once more, Alec shook his head and shuffled forward after Raven, trying to make sense of whatever it was he was seeing.
“No,” he replied, but he wasn’t sure he spoke the truth. Something was clearly amiss; something was troubling him. The problem was that he had no idea what it was, and his brain felt cloudy as a result.
Miriam was calling to him from beyond the grave, warning him, but about what? Even when she had been alive, before Lane had taken over her seat on the Council, Alec had not been close enough with the witch to warrant a post-death visit.
“Raven is waiting for us,” Drake reminded him. “You need to call on the Council and tell them what happened.”
Alec didn’t argue, but the closer he got to Raven, the more his apprehension mounted. It was as though his sixth sense was telling him to leave well enough alone and forsake the incident which had occurred on that desolate road.
That’s stupid, Alec snapped to himself. Of course they need to be brought to justice. They can’t get away with what they’ve done. I owe it to Raven to get her justice. It’s a public service to everyone.
He wondered why, then, he could not shake the sickening lurch in the pit of his belly which screamed at him to stop.
1
Briar’s head was thudding when she woke up, and even before she opened her eyes, she knew it was raining. Hard. A headache was always a forewarning of the weather outside, and sometimes, Briar cursed her sensitive disposition.
Too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy—something in her body would reflect the weather for every occasion. In this case, the headache indicated rain. She reasoned she would prefer it to the pain of a ba
ckache, but that was Briar Baker: eternal cockeyed optimist.
No matter how much it hurts, she thought, blinking against the grey light barely filtering in through her flimsy bedroom window.
“Colton?” she called without quite parting her lids. “Are you home?”
There was no answer from the inside of the apartment, and Briar grunted, lifting her throbbing skull from her pillow. She wasn’t sure why she would have expected her brother to be around—staying out all night was more or less his specialty. Her long legs touched the ground, and Briar’s jaw locked as she rose from her spot.
I need drugs. The harder, the better. She blinked her sky-blue eyes, the remnants of sleep replaced with pain, and she grunted, making her way toward the bathroom across the hall from her bedroom.
The apartment was almost eerily quiet save for the rain pelting against the windows of the eighth-floor apartment. They were old, cracked in some places, and Briar was certain they would not survive the next hurricane. She hoped they would survive this rainstorm.
Because God knows if they break, the landlord will take his sweet ass time coming to fix them.
Sharing the apartment with Colton was bad enough. Sharing it with flamingos was not an option. Suki, the black heathen cat, mewled at her from atop the toilet seat when she entered.
“Morning, you little shit,” Briar said. Suki hissed in response while purring simultaneously. Briar reached out to stroke her silky ears and was instantly rewarded with claws to her arms. “Every damn time I fall for it,” she muttered, disgusted with her own gullibility. She hated that cat and all it represented.
I should have left her in the apartment when I left, Briar thought bitterly, but even as she did, guilt flooded her. It wasn’t the stupid cat’s fault she was born wretched. She had never been cared for before Briar had entered the picture. It was why Briar had taken her when she left Jack. She couldn’t bear the thought of the cat being neglected at the hands of her ex anymore.