by Abigail Owen
Sera blinked at him through tear-filled eyes. Then nodded. “These are friends. They’re helping me,” she said.
The guy, all boots and muscles, eyed them dubiously. Finn did his best to keep his gaze lowered, hiding the blaze that hadn’t died down, and probably wouldn’t until he found Delaney.
“Really, sir. I got some…bad news about a friend. Thank you for checking, though.”
Still distrustful, the man finally stepped out of the way.
They made it back to the car without further incident, and Finn sat straight up in the front seat, trying to contain himself as the drive out of town, though not far, took eons.
Finally, Levi pulled off the road. Finn jumped from the car and sprinted into the woods, running until he came to a clearing large enough for him to shift. He was in the air before every part of him had made the change.
Midday meant he’d have to fly high. The scales along his underbelly would reflect the sky above, and blue dragons camouflaged during the day better than any other breed of dragon, but even humans could see the weird movement and occasional flash of wing if he was close enough.
High meant it’d be harder to scent anything. But he had to try.
He gained altitude quickly and started his search over the town, flying in ever widening circles. After half an hour, Rivin and Keighan joined him. As white dragons, they were next best at camouflaging during the day. With every passing minute, desperation took a stronger fistful of hold on his gut.
“Boss,” Levi’s voice broke through the rush of wind around him. He caught the flash of amber-gold above him, higher up. “We’ve located her cell phone signal. Follow me.”
Please the gods, let it be that easy. Let Graff be that stupid.
The trouble was, the man hadn’t shown signs of being stupid so far. Finn followed Levi northeast from where Delaney had disappeared, first over the farms and orchards and wineries of Apple Hill and then farther out into the wilderness where the Sierra Nevada mountains rose more steeply.
Then he caught it. A whiff of her sunshine scent, as well as a hint of Graff’s soured smoke. Finn pulled in his wings, arrowing for the ground, his goal to get there as fast as possible. At the last second, before he plowed into the hard rock and pine trees, he flared his wings, bringing his momentum to a halt. Then he dropped to the ground and shifted. Heart in his throat, he ran for the spot, the scent stronger as he neared, but nothing caught his attention. No flash of color from her clothing. No movement.
A glint of something reflecting sunlight caught his attention, and Finn swore. He knew what it was before he got close enough kneel beside it.
Delaney’s phone.
That bastard wasn’t dumb at all. He’d known they’d track her.
Finn.
He jerked his head up. That whispered voice was unmistakable. Delaney.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
All three men, who’d followed him to the ground, frowned and shook their heads.
Fuck. Now he was hearing things. Finn tucked her phone in his back pocket as he rose to his feet—and froze.
That sunshine scent was drawing him in a specific direction. Following the elusive trace in the air, Finn walked slowly, then faster, breaking into a jog.
“Where are you going?” Levi called after him.
“Can’t you smell her?” he called back, not stopping in his pursuit of the trail.
“I don’t smell anything.” No doubt his Beta was exchanging worried glances with Rivin and Keighan. Finn never did anything without deliberate thought and a backup plan.
But he could smell her, and he wasn’t giving up.
This was also going too damn slow. As soon as he hit a small clearing, he shifted and took to the air again. His dragon had a keener sense of smell and could fly a hell of a lot faster than Finn could run. Hovering above the trees, to the point where he snapped off the tops of a few of the taller ones, Finn followed the trail. His men shifted and followed but remained silent—trusting and letting him work.
Miles away from where he started, her scent suddenly strengthened. Finn dropped to the ground and shifted. This time, he found one of her shoes.
“That’s my girl.” She was leaving him clues to follow.
He held it up for the others to see.
“Holy shit,” Levi muttered.
Rivin and Keighan both scowled. “Graff must be doing his disappearing thing over and over,” Rivin said.
Teleporting most likely, though Finn still had no idea how that was possible.
“How are you following them, boss?” Keighan asked.
“No fucking clue.” He sniffed around to discover the trail had changed direction, angling more to the north. “This way.”
He leapt back into his dragon form and took off.
Four more stops like that one, with more and more of Delaney’s clothes left behind. Another shoe. Both socks. A ripped piece of shirt.
Then he spotted it. A small cabin, probably only one room with no amenities, tucked into the steep side of the mountain. Her scent led directly there.
“Found her,” he aimed the thought at his men.
“What’s the plan?” Levi came back immediately.
“I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“Effective. How?”
“We’ll have to land farther away and higher up, so he doesn’t hear us coming. Climb down to the cabin and flank—”
An unmistakable scream rent the air and panic split Finn into a thousand pieces only to come back together with a rage that meant he wasn’t waiting for the fucking plan.
He threw his body toward the cabin, the wind whistling past his head as gravity helped him gain even more speed.
“Finn!” Levi yelled.
He ignored him.
I’m going to rip that bastard in two.
Chapter Twenty-Three
He was going to kill her. Right here and now, and she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. The second he’d shoved her inside the rough shack of a cabin, Delaney’s gaze landed on a brand new queen-size bed nicely made up with… Were those fucking satin sheets? Seriously?
She didn’t have time to think beyond that when something hard came down over her head. Sharp pain, the sensation of falling, then nothing. Blackness.
Until she woke up with her hands tied to the bars of the iron headboard and Graff trying to pull off her jeans. He already had them unzipped and halfway down her hips.
She kicked out, using all of her training. No way was she going to make this easy on him, dammit.
He lit on fire. “You will be mine.”
He’s going to mate me and I’m going to burn to ash because we’re not destined.
Delaney couldn’t hold back the scream that ripped from her throat if she tried. This was her life about to end.
She went wild, thrashing and kicking and bucking, trying to stay out of those flaming hands. Graff took a heel to the nose and swore, but he didn’t stop, snagging her by the ankle. The flames didn’t burn, though.
Delaney paused in her struggles. Wasn’t she supposed to die in agony now?
Graff smiled. “Told you so.”
No. Revulsion writhed inside her, vomit burning her throat, sour in her mouth.
He took advantage of her momentary stillness to grab the other ankle.
But before he could do more, the shack—hell the mountain itself—shook, a boom ringing out as something huge slammed into the structure. With the deafening sound of splintering wood, the roof flew off the top of the shack, and a massive blue dragon stared down at them.
“Impossible,” Graff muttered.
With a snort, the beast snatched Graff out of the room, its jaws snapping around his middle. Delaney only heard Graff’s grunt of shock and pain before he was gone. After that, she couldn’t see anything as dragon and man disappeared from sight, blocked by the walls of the structure she remained trapped inside.
Pain ripped her focus from the skies to the bed. The sheets wer
e flame-resistant, but her jeans were not. They had caught fire by her feet and she could feel it now. Not the pleasant warmth like when Finn touched her, but a scorching heat. Her ankle was singed already. With a gasp, she yanked her feet up, then scrambled, doing her best to wriggle out of her pants, scooting her ass along the mattress, anything to get the flames away from her body.
“Help!” she yelped. She beat at the flames with her feet, trying to put them out that way.
Oh God, she was going to die while Finn was busy killing Graff.
A roar burst through the air above her. Did that mean he’d won?
She sucked in a breath to yell for help again, but choked on the smoke now filling the room, coughing hard as her eyes watered.
“I’ve got you.”
Delaney sagged against the bed, still coughing. Relief poured through her at the sound of Finn’s voice. A rush of sound, somewhere between a wheeze and a rumble, had her lifting her head. Finn stood with black smoke swirling around him, in what had once been a doorway. As she watched, he absorbed the black tinted flames into his body in the strangest way, as if he was gravity, drawing it to him, pulling it away from her. He didn’t stop until the fire was out, which only took seconds.
When the last tendril of flame disappeared, he paused, then looked around, probably to make sure he got everything. Those blue eyes zeroed in on her, and he grunted, as if someone had punched him in the stomach.
Before she could smile or say thank you or anything, he was across the small room. “Hold on.”
He gave a yank and the metal cuffs on one hand snapped loose of the headboard. Another yank and she was free. Strong arms surrounded her as he hauled her up against his chest. He buried his face in her hair and just breathed.
For her part, Delaney was happy to stay that way for a bit and process everything that’d happened.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured. He snaked a hand under her hair to massage the back of her neck.
“Is Graff…” She couldn’t say dead.
“No. He disappeared before I could finish the job. Though he’ll probably bleed out.”
“Good.”
“But until I know you’re safe from him forever, no more shopping.”
Delaney snorted a sob. “You’ll get no arguments from me.”
“And I need to be touching you at all times. If he tries that shit again, he’s taking me with you.”
The situation leading up to being taken surfaced. Finn didn’t want her anymore. Delaney frowned and pulled back. “Can you? Without…?”
Based on the way his jaw tightened, he caught the gist of the question. “We’ll figure it out.” Then, as if he too realized that holding her this way might be inappropriate given how he’d basically broken up with her this morning, he unwound his arms and sat back. “Are you hurt?”
“My feet.”
His expression went from mild curiosity to black rage in a millisecond as he looked over her burns. For her part, Delaney was happy that it didn’t look nearly as bad as she’d feared. Although… She fingered the scar on her neck. That hadn’t hurt for almost an hour before pain like she’d never known had set in.
“Mostly second degree,” he pronounced. “We’ll have to treat you back at the house, though. Can you hold on until then?”
“Um… How are we getting back?” She couldn’t be sure how far Graff had taken her, but she knew it had to be more than a hike.
“Levi is going to give us a ride.”
“I am?” came the familiar gruff voice from outside.
Delaney smiled, but it disappeared when Finn stood and scooped her up. “Yes,” he called as he carried her out the door. “I’ll hold her on. She should try to keep her feet raised.”
“This’ll be a first,” Levi muttered.
Getting onto Levi’s back was an adventure of its own. He shifted higher up the mountain, then flew down to perch beside the house Graff had brought her to, the granite screeching a protest as his talons gouged deep. Finn managed to climb on, despite carrying her and navigating the precarious angle. Finally, he had them settled between Levi’s wicked looking spikes, her in his lap.
“Hold on to my neck,” he said.
If they hadn’t been in this situation, she would’ve suspected him of setting things up. She knew that wasn’t the case, though, and so slipped her arms around his neck.
Serious blue eyes captured her gaze. “The drop is going to feel out of control, but I have you. Okay?”
“Okay is a relative term.”
His jaw tightened, obviously not appreciating her flippant answer. “Delaney?”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” Maybe flippant wasn’t the way to go right now.
“Levi. We’re ready.”
Dark gold wings, shimmering in the sunlight, spread wide. Then his body slithered and turned in a soft rustle of scales and the crunch of trees and boulders underneath them as he launched himself off the mountain. Delaney’s stomach decided her throat was a better place to be for a second, the same sensation roller coasters used to give her when her family went to theme parks.
A giggle with a hysterical edge rose up her throat, and over the rush of the wind, she felt more than heard Finn’s grumbling.
“You like it?”
“This is great!”
Levi’s wings rose and fell in several hard beats that lifted them higher, then he leveled out, soaring over the wilderness below.
A thought snuck in through an almost numb haze that had overtaken her. “If I mate, do I become a dragon?” She had to yell over the wind.
He stiffened beneath her. “Yes.”
Which meant she’d get to fly like this one day. “What color will I be?”
“Depends.”
What? He didn’t want to talk about this. Too damn bad. She did. “On what?”
“The type of dragon you mate.”
If she mated Finn, she’d be blue. Not that he wanted her.
Would she be the same shade as her mate? Would her eyes change color? All the questions she’d been drowning in all day before Graff snatched her from her false safety rushed back. Her feet started to ache, maybe triggered by the pressure of the wind against them. She shivered as the brisk fall air, colder at this altitude, buffeted her. She sat in the arms of a man who didn’t want her now that she was one of his own.
But…she wanted him to want her.
Delaney didn’t blame him for his vow never to mate again. If she’d witnessed what he had, lost what he had, she probably wouldn’t want to try again either. But what if his past was pinning their future down, forcing them into lives not meant to be?
Damn. Could things be more complicated?
They made it back to the headquarters, the landing both surprisingly soft and as bumpy as one would expect on the back of a creature that had to get all four feet on the ground while maneuvering with wings.
Was it easy to do? Or would she crash and tumble the first few times?
Finn carried her down Levi’s side, and the gold dragon and both white dragons shifted—the process silent and hazy, like watching a mirage as their forms shrank and remolded into the men she knew.
“Whose car is that?” Finn rumbled against her.
Sure enough some kind of classic muscle car, all black and in pristine condition, sat in the dirt parking lot.
Aidan ran out of the open garage door at the side before they got more than a few steps closer. “They found you.” His smile told her he was glad about that, but he immediately turned flat eyes to Finn. “We have a…problem.”
“What now?” Finn asked.
“Some guy just showed up. Dragon shifter.” He paused and glanced at Delaney. “A rogue.”
A rogue came into a den of enforcers? Damn, the guy had balls.
Finn had to physically stop himself from shifting and flying away with Delaney. Common sense prevailed. Mostly.
Rune had warned him someone was coming, looking for an unusual fire creature by the sounds of it. An
d Delaney, a dragon mate without a mark, was certainly that. Whatever this guy was looking for, he was sure as hell not taking Delaney.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.” Delaney’s quiet words pulled his gaze down to her sweet face.
The woman in his arms had been kidnapped, almost been raped, almost burned alive, and had flown here on the back of a dragon. But this was the first time she’d appeared truly shaken—face pinched, freckles dotting her pale face. The way she watched him, he knew his reaction was driving hers.
Could a heart be shredded by a simple look?
Finn adjusted his grip, lifting her higher. Pulling her closer, if that was possible. “Who says I’m worried?”
She cocked her head, then ran a hand over his brows. “I can tell.”
Fuck.
Mixed up didn’t even begin to describe him, as his head fought with every other part of him. He wanted Delaney, and he should trust in the system to find her a mate. Hell, his entire job was protecting that system, among other things. He couldn’t risk mating her, and he couldn’t let her go.
“Let’s find out what this guy wants.”
As soon as he carried Delaney into the house, a tall man with dark blond, shoulder-length hair stepped into his path. Dark gold eyes, indicating his clan, assessed the two of them in a fast sweep.
“My name is Brand Astarot,” he said in a deep growl. He didn’t offer to shake or say more.
Finn glanced at the man’s hand. Sure enough, no brand linking him to his king and clan showed. “Rogue. I should kill you where you stand.”
The man in front of him showed zero concern. Just lifted a single, unimpressed eyebrow. “I’m here at the order of King Ladon Ormarr.” He leveled a hard stare on Finn. “Your king.”
“Bullshit.”
“Call him.”
Finn bit back a string of swear words. Anyone that confident was legit. What the fuck was going on? A king hiring a rogue? Ladon must be desperate. But why?
“What do you want?”
No emotion showed in the man’s hard facade. Not a crack of vulnerability. “I’ve come to meet Delaney Hamilton.” He flicked his glance at Delaney, who’d remained quiet. “I assume that’s you?”