Darius thumped his chair forward, making the woman jump. He walked to the door and knocked for Scott to open it. “Place the Vietnamese ambassador and his mate in separate holding cells.”
“What?” the wife sputtered. “This is beyond outrageous. I have an important meeting, and I can’t sit in a cell all day!”
A hot rock massage at four o’clock, Darius saw in her file.
“Madam, you can and you will,” he said, as the guards pulled her from her seat and led her to a smaller cell. “My staff would be happy to notify your masseuse that you’ve been detained in a security matter, if you would like?”
The woman looked startled that he knew about her appointment. Quick recognition crossed her face that the taint of being involved in something improper wouldn’t be good for her or her husband. She sniffed and walked stiffly in front of the guards to the cell.
“Do you need me to do anything?” Scott asked.
“Yes.” Darius looked over his shoulder at the Chinese man, holding his stare. “Take the photo of Bo Quan to Mei. She should be in her office. Ask her if she recognizes him.”
Chapter Fifteen
Darius reentered the room and sat across the table from the Chinese ambassador. He removed his glasses and set them on the table, pushing a button to record the conversation.
“Mr. Wang, I understand that a man in your position could expect platitudes and niceties, but I don’t have time. I need some information, and I need it fast.”
Wang nodded, and Darius continued. “A splinter group is arriving from the Crescent Islands in the South China Sea for the gala tonight. They’re not showing up in the Book of Dragons.”
“Are you certain?” Wang gasped and unfolded his hands to grip the edge of the table. “Some dragons have updated their names from the ancient language.”
“I’m quite certain.”
Mr. Wang swallowed, alarm clear in his open stare. “What can I do to aid the king?”
“What do you know about these islands?”
Mr. Wang glanced left before replying. A sign that he was recalling from memory and not fabricating. “The humans contest the ownership between China and Vietnam, but the islands are supposed to be uninhabitable. Barren and rocky, unable to sustain life. It’s a paper fight, no more.”
Wang’s double shoulder shrug and use of contractions convinced Darius to trust him with more information. “What do you know of water dragons?”
“Water dragons?” Wang whispered and leaned toward him across the table.
“They are extinct.” His deliberate enunciation should have given credence to the words, but only raised a red flag to Darius.
Darius stared for several seconds until Wang dropped his gaze.
“The water dragons were a dishonorable time in our history,” Wang added. “One we try to forget.”
Darius understood the subtext. For the Chinese dragons, being forgotten in death was the worst that could happen. Wang was saying they preferred to forget they ever existed.
“I know what the Book of Dragons says,” Darius said. “I want to know what you may have heard. Rumors, even unsubstantiated, could be helpful.”
Wang mummed his lips together as if holding a secret inside.
“There will be no retribution, as long as no help has been given to them,” he said. When Wang did not again deny their existence, but looked thoughtful instead, Darius knew he had him.
“When I was just a fledgling, there was talk of some water dragons being spotted in the ocean, but the talk was dismissed as crazy. My fold commander ruled the sighting as whales.”
“None of the dragons in the Chinese fold have the ability to dive under the water, do they?”
He shook his head adamantly. “We are all ice dragons, like you. We would waterlog and sink.”
“Where were these sightings?”
“In the South China Sea.” Wang’s laced fingers gripped so tight, his knuckles appeared white. “How can this be?”
“I don’t know,” Darius said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Wang looked up sharply. “Please assure the king that they’ve received no assistance from us. We didn’t even know they existed.”
The direct look and vehemence in his words told Darius he was being truthful. But, he wanted to dig a little further. “It is hard to believe you knew nothing. They were under your nose.”
“Geographically, they’re much closer to the Vietnamese than us.”
The proverbial finger point that said “not me, not me”. Darius gave a closed mouth smile, satisfied it was all the man knew. “I’d like for you to reach out to your contacts in the Chinese fold. Find out what you can and let me know.”
“I will.” Wang said.
“You can use our resources here in the surveillance center.” It was a genteel notification that Wang wasn’t being released.
He took it well, nodding his understanding and agreement.
Darius picked up his glasses, stood, and left the room. He let the outside guard know to have Wang work with a security analyst.
He entered the Vietnamese ambassador’s wife’s cell and sat down. “You can remove the helmet,” he told her. The walls were padded to prevent mind speak anyway.
“You just wanted to offend me.” The woman unsnapped and removed the clunky helmet and placed it on the table with shaky hands. In the way of all dragons, she was lovely, coal black hair not yet streaked with gray. Her piercing black eyes regarded him apprehensively.
“You must first take offense to be offended,” he said. “The action and reaction are yours alone.”
She looked chagrined. “I apologize for my outburst earlier,” she said. “I am eager to help the king. However long it takes.”
Lies. But then he’d expected them.
“Good.” Darius pulled her hand across the table, placing his thumb to her pulse. The woman widened her eyes but didn’t object to the contact. “Tell me what you know about water dragons.”
He felt the mad leap of her heart before she recoiled and pulled her hand back. He stared hard while she looked down and to the right, evasive. Then deliberately, unflinchingly, she met his gaze.
“They’re rumors only.” Her nose scrunched in a micro-snarl, giving away her feelings. She was not calm, not at all. That, plus the fact she’d not given the expected “there are no water dragons retort” told him he was on the right track.
Steely anticipation bubbled through him. He loved this part: when the person, or in this case, the dragon, didn’t yet know that their lies were exposed.
Now he had the satisfaction of picking them apart. With all the finesse and the style he employed when working through a tough code or hacking into a secure system, he let the silence stretch, and then leaned forward conspiratorially, inviting confidence.
“Rumors,” he said. “I understand.”
The woman looked relieved that they were talking now as “friends”.
“If they’re still alive.” She glanced at him for confirmation, and he nodded. “They’re awful to the women,” she whispered. “Keeping them like slaves and forcing them to marry. They never tell them about their true mates.”
“Slaves?” Anger bubbled through him, and he looked over her shoulder to steel his expression. Son of a bitch water dragons.
Slaves.
“Yes.” She dropped her hands to the table, showing him the damage she’d done to her nail polish in the short time she’d been in the security center. She was as ready to spill what she knew as a capped soda bottle given a hard shake.
“The women are bound in marriages of political convenience to keep them from trying to leave,” she said. “They don’t want them to mate with other dragons, because then they would be discovered.”
Ah. The why of it all made sense now. They couldn’t have fledgling water dragons turning up all over the world. So they’d conspired to control their births through the women.
An isolated group, controlling all the women, wh
ile the men ran amok with power and control. It was an old set up, repeated through time. No reason to believe it wouldn’t be the situation now, given their complete isolation and control.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Darius said, “how would they continue their line if they keep to themselves?”
“They have enough true mates among themselves, I guess.” The woman shrugged, then shuddered. “Any child born who is not a water dragon is killed.”
The idea of killing a fledgling dragon was reprehensible. Fury shot through Darius anew, and he resisted the strong urge to yell at the woman for knowing about it and doing nothing.
She leaned back in her chair, her face watchful and apprehensive at what she saw in him. “They never wanted to cross breed anyway. It was why they were first exiled.”
Darius forced nonchalance to his expression.
The Book of Dragons was clear: dragons were to look to other elemental types first to find their mates. It was where most found success, and it increased their strength and viability. To reject the sharing of a whole race was unforgiveable. Mei had likely been treated like chattel. No wonder she had escaped and never stopped running.
Anger, barely banked, surged along his veins, and his dragon pulsed to escape and fight. He could easily find their plane in the air and rip it to shreds. Destroy them before they ever landed.
He exhaled hard. Taking down the plane, which would also have innocent humans aboard, would only make matters worse. “You certainly seem to know a lot about just rumors.” Darius hardened his tone. It was time to close the net on the secrecy and deception and find out who had helped them build their bank account and exist for so long undetected.
The woman looked scared and started chipping her polish again. A small pile of pink enamel littered the table.
“Tell me.” Just like that, he popped the top on the soda.
“My daughter.” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “They took my daughter because she was the true mate to one of those beasts. It’s why we got sent here, so we wouldn’t try to get her back.”
Kidnapping, too? Motherfuckers. What crime hadn’t the water dragons committed during their exile? All the bad they had done would make it even harder for Alec to allow them to join the kingdom.
“Why would they come forward now?” he asked.
The woman sobbed silently, and then wailed her answer. “I don’t know. I just want my daughter back.”
Darius stood. “You and your husband will have to stay here. I’ll get you moved together, though, and into a more comfortable cell.”
“My husband has no involvement with any of this. He is a good man. He would never go against the king. Even for our daughter.” Her last word twisted with bitterness.
Darius shut the cell door. In the control center, he was glad to see Wang already working with a security analyst.
Scott walked back into the center and rushed straight to him, alarm stretching his face. “It’s Mei. When I showed her the photo…” An uncomfortable pinch set in below Darius’s ribs and squeezed his diaphragm, making it hard to breathe.
“Tell me.”
“She took off.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Give me a minute.” Darius walked away feeling like a wind tunnel closed in on him. He found himself alone, back in cell one, pacing.
Mei had run after all.
His human brain struggled to put a reasonable perspective on her actions, but it was hard when his beast felt…insulted. It galled him that she hadn’t trusted him enough to stick it out together. This was their future he was fighting for.
Now he would have to fight for both of them.
Maybe it was better this way. Given what he knew now about the water dragons, it was understandable that she would be fearful. He didn’t know, after all, what she’d endured on the islands.
He fixed his mind to non-judgment and turned his thoughts to his next steps.
Alec wouldn’t be able to welcome Mei and her treacherous people without overriding the law of the dragons. He needed to be able to give him a good reason to rule in Mei’s favor. No easy feat given their atrocities.
Mei hadn’t done herself any favors either while in the king’s sanctuary. Her abrasive and curt manner might have hid a soft and loyal soul, but he would wager no one but him and Jane and Tee knew it. Mei would be the other dragons’ only example of what a water dragon was today.
A commotion sounded outside the door, and Leo, head of Casino Operations and Tee’s mate, pushed his way into cell one.
“Not now.” Darius’s dragon bristled under his skin, on full alert and ready to fight.
“Now,” Leo said, and Darius registered that Leo’s fire dragon was in a fury. His concerned staff pressed their faces to the cell door’s window, and he shooed them away.
“I’m in the middle of a crisis.” He and Leo had always rubbed each other the wrong way. It was expected. Ice dragons and fire dragons didn’t get along very often. Ice dragons thought fire dragons were hot headed and impetuous. Fire dragons found the ice dragons aloof and condescending.
“I don’t care.” Leo stalked toward him, fire flashing red in his eyes.
Darius reached into his core for ice and raised his hand, throwing up a blockade. Leo hit the transparent wall and stopped. Darius quickly extended the barrier, behind and over, so Leo was caged inside.
It would only hold for a minute, but he only needed a minute to gain the advantage.
“Where’s your bloody mate?” Leo banged against the thick ice encasing him. He placed a hot hand on the surface that cut through the wall. “Tee finally told me why she’s been so upset. Your bloody mate threatened her.”
Darius grabbed Leo’s protruding hand and wrapped ice around it so he was handcuffed to the ice cage.
“Calm your ass down, and we’ll talk like civilized creatures, or we can take it to the skies.”
“She’s crying.” Leo rotated his hand and easily broke the icy block. “She never cries. I want to know where in the hell Mei is, and I want to know now.”
“She’s gone.” Darius said. “Left the casino.”
Fire shimmered around Leo’s head, as if he hadn’t heard Darius’s words; so rampant was his anger. “She can be pissy to everyone else in the casino, but she’d better get her bloody ass back here and apologize to Tee.”
“Did you ask Tee what she did to make her mad?” Darius had an idea but thought throwing a little sand on the fire dragon might settle the flames.
“What Tee did wrong?” Leo looked like he had spoken a foreign language. “Mei is the universal bitch here, not Tee.”
“Do. Not. Call her a bitch,” Darius’s dragon chilled ice through him, and his wings beat at his back. The skies would be good. Maybe they should just fight it out.
His human interjected with calm reason. “You don’t know what she has been through.”
“What do you mean?”
Darius shook his head. “We have a credible threat from a group in Asia.”
Leo immediately stopped trying to break free and cast a level glance at him. “I’m not done with you or your mate.”
“I’m shaking in my boots.”
“You aren’t wearing bloody boots.” Leo punched the ice wall, and it shattered to the floor. He rolled his shoulder backward several times, visibly pulling his dragon nature back inside himself. Slowly he stood, unhunching his hulking six-foot frame, inch by inch.
When he was calm, he glared at Darius. “Tell me what you know.”
“A group of dragons are arriving in a few hours for the gala. They sent the request directly to Mei and called the king by his given name.”
“It could be an oversight. Some of the far-reaching folds have no clue how to interact in the dragon sanctuary.”
Darius nodded. “These are unregistered. A group of water dragons.”
“Water dragons?” Leo rubbed the bridge of his nose and took several moments. “Does Alec know?”
He had to gi
ve the fire dragon credit— he didn’t deny or question his sanity. “I haven’t told him the latest.” It was a major misrepresentation of facts, but Darius kept his eyes level. “He has increased security and added guards to Lucy.”
“That’s good.” Leo walked to the table and sat down. “How long do we have?”
Darius blinked and flipped his glasses to the time. “Two hours.”
“Start at the beginning,” Leo said.
“Mei is a water dragon, too,” Darius sat and leaned toward the fire dragon, knowing he would need the support of Leo, Alec’s oldest friend and top lieutenant, when it came down to the nut cutting. Better to bring him in now so he didn’t feel betrayed. “She escaped from them years ago.”
“Bloody hell.” Leo gave him a you-got-to-be-shittin’-me look.
Darius quickly brought him up to speed on all he knew.
For several minutes, Leo sat still, processing all the information. “It’s an act of war to stay unregistered,” Leo finally said. “Alec can’t just welcome them with open arms, it’s political suicide. Plus, the Vietnamese who’ve had knowledge of the water dragons will have to be punished.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it is the start of a new diplomatic relationship that would bring them back into the kingdom.”
“Nobody, not me or any fold in the world, will want that.” Leo gave a dismissive hand wave. “It’s only your agenda because of Mei.”
“Yes.” Darius stood, stepped to the reinforced windows, and looked out, pleased to see the perimeter flying dragons already increased twofold.
“We need to decide how we’re going to deal with them.”
“You mean Alec has to decide.” Leo said the words as a statement, and Darius didn’t argue the fact, only nodded in agreement.
Leo stared at the blank wall and then stood. “Let’s talk to the Chinese ambassador first, see what he knows after talking to his sources.”
Darius opened the door and motioned for Wang to join him and Leo back in the cell.
Dragon Her Back Page 11