Bloodrunner Dragon (Harper's Mountains Book 1)

by T. S. Joyce

  Harper froze. “How do you know that word?”

  The corner of Kane’s lip lifted in a feral snarl. “I know lots of things, Harper Keller. But I don’t know any Wyatt James.”

  “See, lots of humans think we can tell a lie from the eyes, from the inability to hold our gaze and say the fib. Your voice gives your lie away, though.”

  “Or maybe I don’t care if you catch me lying. I owe you nothing, Bloodrunner.”

  She swallowed down a growl. “Don’t call me that. That’s not a term for humans.”

  He set his dry glass on the countertop at the end of a row of clean ones “How about this?” he murmured in a dangerous voice. “How about you and I arm wrestle?”

  Her face went completely slack. “What?”

  “Arm wrestle me, Bloodrunner. If I win, you turn back around and leave my town the way you came.”

  Harper shook her leg in quick succession. She wanted to char this asshole for using the name of her ancient clan. “And if I win?”

  “I’ll point you in the general direction of Wyatt James.”

  Dumbass human, thinking he could best a shifter. “All right. Deal.”

  “Carl,” Kane called, making his way from behind the bar. “This nice lady wants to arm wrestle me. If she wins, you can have your free round.”

  Carl swayed on his feet like a tranquilized bull. “Aw, man! She got skinny arms.” He sat heavily into a chair, crossed his arms over his paunch, and pouted.

  “But she has a dragon eye,” Beergut called from a few tables down. “She’s a match for Kane.”

  And then the betting started. Not well, because alcohol plus math equaled disaster, but some five dollar bills were handed around as Harper sat across the table from Kane.

  Kane smiled an empty expression, then settled his elbow on the table and offered his hand. Gripping his warm palm, Harper blew out a steadying breath and nodded when he asked if she was ready. Beergut said, “Ready, steady, go,” and Harper was shocked to her bones when she tried and failed to slam Kane’s hand to the table.

  He was strong. Inhumanly strong, and she scented the air again as she strained against him. No fur. A bird of prey shifter perhaps? Gritting her teeth, she growled a deep rumbling sound as the dragon surged with power inside of her, and at least now he looked like he was trying.

  Kane’s arm muscles strained against his sweater as she moved him closer to the table, but he countered and brought them back up to even again.

  “What are you?” she gritted out, pushing with all her might against his hand.

  Kane yanked his glasses off, revealing two blazing gold-green eyes, both of which had elongated pupils. “I’m a Blackwing.”

  Harper gasped, and he slammed her hand against the table. A Blackwing Dragon? No. No, no, no, Marcus’s line didn’t exist anymore. Harper’s grandfather, Damon, had killed him. Only Bloodrunners remained.

  She yanked her hand out of Kane’s and stood so fast the chair behind her toppled backward.

  “I win,” he said through a hollow smile. “Now get out.”

  The small drunken crowd cheered and booed around them, but the sound was muffled compared to the volume of her pounding heartbeat. She rubbed her throbbing hand where he’d gripped her too hard and whispered, “Wyatt was mine once.” Because Kane should know who she was. Not the Bloodrunner ancestry that ran through her veins, but the real her, the one who had loved Wyatt once upon a time.

  Kane’s face faltered, and some emotion slashed through his unnerving eyes too quickly for her to decipher before his mask of disdain was back in place again. “This place isn’t what you think,” he said. “You should go for your own safety.”

  Harper dared to hold his gaze for a few seconds more, then nodded and made her way to the door. She’d lost the bet, and she had to live with that. She’d underestimated Kane and let him surprise her into losing, and that was her fault. She was walking out of here with no clues on Wyatt because she’d let her guard down.

  A Blackwing. She couldn’t even wrap her head around that. Kane was an ancestor of one of the last immortal dragons, turned mortal in a war with her grandfather. His entire lineage was poison, and what the fuck was Wyatt doing living in a town where a Blackwing had set up territory? The Unrest doubled her over in the rain. The humming was so heavy in her chest it was hard to breathe. One minute of hell was all it took to snap her out of hating Kane’s ancestor.

  And when she sucked that beautiful oxygen back into her lungs, Kane was standing against her car, directly in front of her, arms crossed and head canted like he’d been standing there for the entire show. “Yours how?”

  “What?” she rasped out.

  “You said Wyatt was yours once. Yours how?”

  She shook her head for a long time. How did she explain what they used to be without exposing the deep fissure in her heart? How did she tell it to this unfeeling Blackwing without her voice shaking? Just say it.

  “How?” Kane demanded louder, his eyes flashing with impatience.

  “He was everything to me. I wasn’t the same to him.”

  Kane dipped his chin to his chest, but his eyes didn’t leave her. “Fuck,” he murmured. Scratching his forehead in what looked like a gesture of irritation, he stared off down the dark street and said, “You’ll find Wyatt’s cabin off Old Sycamore. Third drive on the right. He’ll be into something you aren’t ready for. You picked the wrong night to come for him. He won’t be your everything anymore.” Kane sauntered off toward the bar. “Try not to die tonight, Bloodrunner.”

  “So you can kill me yourself?”

  Kane turned and walked backward with a cocky gait and a bright grin. “Something like that.” And then he spun back around and disappeared inside.

  Under the thick fabric of her sweater, Harper’s arms were covered with gooseflesh. Kane might have done her a favor by telling her where Wyatt lived, but there was something very wrong about him. He felt dangerous and had her dragon clawing to escape her skin and defend herself.

  Harper rubbed her arms, desperate to get warmth back into them, then got into her car and locked the doors.

  Behind Kane’s cocky smile was the devil in disguise.

  And now Harper got the distinct feeling that the third drive on Old Sycamore was a trap.

  Chapter Three

  The autumn leaves were turning, and if Harper was here for pleasure, she would take a moment to enjoy the vibrant reds and oranges illuminated by the occasional street light along the black asphalt road. As it stood now though, with her instincts kicked up, these woods looked haunted. Little tornadoes of dried leaves swirled around the street as she coasted by, and the creaking branches of the towering trees that lined the road arced across, creating a dark funnel for her to drive through.

  The third drive on the right had a mailbox with the door hanging open and was stuffed with junk mail as though no one had checked it in weeks. The asphalt changed to dark gravel as she turned, her headlights shining on the thick woods. She imagined for a moment that she saw Wyatt’s chestnut-colored bear through the trees, but when she stomped on the brake and scanned the forest, nothing was there.

  She huffed a disgusted breath. How many times had she done that over the years? How many times had she imagined him near her? An embarrassing amount since her dragon couldn’t let people go. She couldn’t move on to protect her own heart. Instead, her dragon was fine wallowing in what-ifs. What if she had been good enough? What if the November of their eighteenth year had never happened? It’s getting cold outside.

  A wave of The Unrest washed through her, but was gone in an instant, and thank God for small blessings. She had to keep her head right now. So close. She was so close to Wyatt. He was home. She could feel that old pull from when they were kids, that old excitement.

  She tamped it down and reminded herself he was a stranger. She didn’t know him anymore, and he didn’t know her.

  Easing onto the gas, she gripped the steering wheel so hard it creaked in her clen
ched fists. Her windshield wipers scraped a wave of water off the glass, and that’s when she saw something unfathomable.

  The clearing, the small cabin, and the woods made sense. Harper leaned over the wheel as horror filled her. There was a man doubled over, on hands and knees in the mud. He was holding his throat as a trio of suited men with pale, glowing skin beat and kicked him. A woman dressed in figure-hugging black lace stood to the side, chin lifted high as she watched with a plastered smile on her crimson lips. Another man held an umbrella over her, protecting her from the raindrops. There were bats everywhere, swirling, circling, washing this way and that like billowing smoke.

  When the man on the ground dragged his blazing blue gaze to Harper, a soft, pained sound wrenched from her throat. Wyatt.

  Fury blasted through her veins, and a long, deep snarl rattled her chest. The nerves evaporated, her pulse steadied, and her middle heated with the molten lava that said her dragon was about to bring hell to earth.

  Numbly, she kicked open the door and got out. The car was still running, and the headlights reflected strangely in Wyatt’s eyes as he tried and failed to scream something at her. His fingers were dripping red as he clutched his throat.

  “Hallooo,” the woman in lace called. “Who do we have here?”

  “It’s time for you to leave,” Harper said in a much calmer voice than she felt. Right now, her dragon was roaring inside of her, filling up her head with a death chant.

  “Here is where I belong,” the woman said, angling her face in an animalistic gesture. She wasn’t baring her neck like she should’ve been right now, but instead, she was daring Harper to come for it. “Wyatt is mine to do with as I please. And this pleases me.”

  “Harper, leave.” Wyatt nearly choked on the words, and his eyes were so raw. So pained.

  Harper dragged her gaze to the woman in lace. “Final warning, bitch.”

  The woman lowered her chin and smiled a challenge. And then she disappeared into a plume of thick, dark smoke.

  Harper’s instincts blared the moment before pain slashed across the back of her neck, but she’d expected a dirty fight. Vampires were like that. No honor. Harper hunched inward, then let her dragon explode from her middle. She wasn’t as big as her grandfather, but she had the fire. Stretching her wings, Harper leaped off the ground and pushed the blood-sucker down with the wind she created. More smoke, and the others were in the fight now. Good. Two clicks of her fire-starter, and she whooshed gas out of her middle. Fire rained down on the clearing, and magma dripped from her curled lips. She arched her back at the top of a gust of wind, coasted for a moment, and then dove for the fleeing vampires. They couldn’t disappear completely. Not when she was in this form and could see heat registers, and cold. Corpses on the run, and she could see them blurring around the smallest one, hurrying their queen on, protecting her. Fucking vampires thought they ran the world after shifter rights were established. Harper would need wooden stakes to do permanent damage, but she could blister and char them, and it would take them weeks to heal from her dragon’s fire.

  She maneuvered through the trees, tucking her wings at tight places, working her way closer to the cold blue apparitions blurring, disappearing, reappearing a few yards away. She let off a roar to tell the woman in lace she had no power here. Not anymore.

  One last stream of fire, and she heard it—the pained screech of an undead queen.

  Harper’s instincts urged her back to Wyatt in case one of the bloodsuckers had stayed behind to finish him off, so she caught a cool gust, stretched her wings wide, and blasted upward through a break in the trees. Bowing her back, she turned around and pushed against the currents, faster and faster until she could see it again—Wyatt’s cabin.

  He was there in the yard, but now he was as she’d imagined all those years. A rip-roaring chestnut grizzly bear was locked in a battle with one of the men who’d beaten him. Snarling, roaring, slashing with his dagger-like claws. His eyes were fierce, flashing a fiery blue, his muzzle snarled up in the promise of death.

  There was the Wyatt she remembered.

  She landed hard in his yard, her claws sinking into the mud as she made her way in a tight circle near the fight. Even injured, Wyatt could handle himself, and Harper wouldn’t dare her fire this close to him.

  Wyatt’s arm snaked around the man in the soggy suit, and he tried to disappear, but the bear had him now. Rain pelted down, and a flash of lightning crackled across the sky, illuminating the splintered porch stairs. One long plank jutted upward, the end broken and sharp. Wyatt pulled the vamp from the thick smoke and slammed him down onto a long spike of wood with a sickening sound. The man’s mouth opened in a scream of agony before his face fell away in ashes as fire flared up his body. And then he disappeared in a firework of sparks that covered the porch like tiny fireflies in the early spring.

  A long, satisfied rumble filled Harper’s chest, because yes, the beast in her required a boon for the blood Wyatt shed tonight. One down and the whole damned coven burned, so why was Wyatt looking over his massive shoulder with sparks of fury in his eyes?

  With a warning click of her fire starter and a soft hiss of pain, she shrank back into her human skin.

  Wyatt followed suit, but he was shaking and smelled of rage. “You shouldn’t have come!”

  Harper huffed a shocked laugh and stepped back. He had some nerve. “I think you mean ‘thank you.’”

  “I’m not ready for this!”

  She held her palms up. “For what?” she yelled, her voice echoing through the mountains.

  Wyatt inhaled deeply, gritting his teeth as he held his bleeding neck. He angled away, and now she could see it. There was pain in his eyes that he’d been masking as anger. He dragged his gaze down her naked body and back up to her eyes. “I’m not ready for you to be here yet.”

  He turned to go inside, but she didn’t miss the fact that he stepped carefully over the thin layer of ash that remained of the vampire he’d staked. Harper stood in the rain as he slammed the door behind him. Pools of water gathered in her outstretched palms as she stood there, completely and utterly baffled on what just happened.

  Maybe she should leave.

  No. She’d come this far and would never make sense of this battle if she didn’t get answers from him now. Why the hell was a coven of vampires after him in the first place, and why was he facing them alone? Shifters didn’t work like that. Wyatt should’ve been an alpha of a crew by now. If he was, his crew had failed him epically.

  She’d let him go before without explanations, and it had tortured her. Not tonight. Tonight she needed answers.

  Harper bit back a curse and strode for her rental car. She pulled her duffle bag from the back seat and shouldered it. On the porch, she dressed as fast as she could with shaking hands.

  She was here, and just inside was the man who had enamored her since she was a kid. Memories of people were tricky. It was easy to forget the bad and hold the good on a pedestal. And Wyatt Andrew James had been too far up there for her to settle for another man since.

  It was time to let him go.

  She pushed the hem of her shirt over her jeans and shoved the door open. Inside, it was much warmer and would’ve been homey if it weren’t for the disaster on the floor. His television lay face-up next to the fallen TV stand. Papers, books, broken glass, and shredded couch cushions littered the floor. Carefully, Harper righted a coat rack and hung the single jacket she found on the floor onto one of the pegs.

  “Don’t,” Wyatt growled from the kitchen. His back was to her, and he was scrubbing his neck in the sink. Was he using soap? He was a shifter. Infection wasn’t a possibility. Wyatt’s shoulders tensed as he retched. “Fuck,” he said shakily as he rested his forehead on his crossed arms on the counter.

  His skin was too pale, and the jeans he’d pulled on hung loose around his hips, but he was still a massive man. So different from the boy she remembered. As he turned slowly, an accidental smile curved her lips.

>   “What?” he asked, his brows lowering into a frown.

  “I just thought…” She shrugged helplessly. “This is so weird, speaking to you after all this time. Outside, when I saw you fighting that vampire, I thought for a moment I recognized you. Your eyes maybe. But standing here in the light…it’s just strange seeing your eyes in this body.” She gestured to him as her cheeks flushed with heat.

  Wyatt straightened his spine and rested the heels of his hands behind him on the edge of the counter. It made the hard curves of his arms look even more massive. Wyatt wasn’t a boy anymore. A slash of pain filled her. She’d missed everything.

  His choice.

  “Look at me,” he murmured.

  Harper closed her eyes for a moment, sighed, then blinked them open and dared to hold his gaze. The boyishness had left his face completely. Now it was all chiseled lines and facial scruff. His nose flared slightly, and when he swallowed, his Adam’s apple dipped low into his muscular throat. His eyes were still the color of frost, and his dark hair was damp, spiked up from where he’d run his hand through it. Probably in frustration. He’d had that habit when he was a kid, too.

  He shook his head, and Harper was helpless to decipher the look in his eyes now.

  “This isn’t how I planned this. It’s not what I want.”

  “You messaged me. You sent our code. Are you really surprised I showed up here?”

  “After everything? Yeah. Hell yeah, I’m surprised.”

  She offered a pained smile. “Everything. That was a long time ago. Are you going to tell me why you are at war with a coven?”

  “I’m not at war.” Any softness that had been in his face disappeared when he snarled up his lip. “I’m their pet.” His eyes tightened at the corners. “I’m not like you remembered.”

  “Yeah, a Blackwing Dragon named Kane said the same thing.”

  “Chhh.” Wyatt shook his head and busied himself with righting a couple of chairs that had been toppled near the splintered kitchen table. “Kane is no one you have to worry about.”