by Tessa Adams
“Your guilt is eating you alive, Caitlyn. You’re dragon. Powerful, strong, practically immortal, and yet you didn’t see this coming. Worse, you didn’t stop it.
“That failing, that utter inability to protect the people you are charged with protecting—the people you would die to defend—is like acid, eating away at your soul until it’s all you can think or feel or comprehend.
“The darkness is all around you and you can’t find a way out.” His voice drifted off, but he didn’t release her—not her arms, or her gaze, which he still held captive with his own.
She trembled, shocked at Dylan’s ability to put everything she was feeling into words. Horrified at the knowing—the responsibility—that was reflected in his eyes.
“You’ve done everything for us, Dylan,” she began, wanting to comfort him for the very thing that she refused to take comfort for. “You’ve done everything you could, everything you know how—”
“And so have you.” There it was, the gotcha she’d been waiting for all along. “Listen up, because I’m only going to say this once. You know how this touchy-feely crap gives me hives.
“You’re one of the best sentries I have, Caitlyn. Strong, smart, fast, willing to take on anyone or anything to keep our clan safe. I’m proud of you. More than that, I respect you and everything you’ve done for the Dragonstars. Your promotion is totally earned. And more, it’s necessary for the safety of the clan. The safety of my mate and unborn child. I’m putting you in charge of creating new clan safeguards from the ground up, safeguards that no one has ever seen before. These safeguards will protect our clan, and others—even stronger—will protect my family. You’re the only one talented enough to do it, and if you turn the position down, then you’re not only defying my wishes and a direct order from your king, but you’re also leaving us vulnerable. Leaving them vulnerable. Open to another attack. You won’t do that.”
Dylan spoke matter-of-factly now, as if what he was saying was nothing more, or less, than accepted truth. But it wasn’t. She knew better. She blamed herself for Callie’s betrayal because the blame rested squarely on her shoulders. Dylan might not be willing to accept that, but she was. And so were the other sentries, many of whom looked at her like she was a stranger these days. She couldn’t stand it, though she knew she deserved it.
“I was so sure you called me to the War Room to talk about my failures,” she admitted so softly that Dylan never would have heard her without the dragon’s sensitive hearing. “I was prepared for that, understood the necessity of it. But this—” Her voice broke. “I think this is so much worse. I don’t know if I can do it.”
Dylan stepped away then, the last of the softness and comfort dropping away so suddenly that she blinked. “You don’t have that luxury,” he snapped. “You are a Dragonstar sentry, sworn to protect the clan, your allegiance sworn to me. You are the newest member of my High Council and you will do that job. There is no other choice, and failure and self-pity have no room in the job description.”
His tone, even more than his words, had her back straightening. Her spine—and her will—stiffening. Now that she was being called on the carpet, getting what she deserved, she didn’t like it. Particularly Dylan’s implication that she was a coward. She might be a failure, but she wasn’t afraid. Not of doing her job, anyway.
“I understand.” When she spoke, her voice was as hard as Dylan’s.
“You’d better,” he answered. “Now let’s move it. The meeting was supposed to start fifteen minutes ago and it’s not like we have time to waste.”
He upped his pace and she ran full out to keep up with him as he raced through the desert. She was still reeling from the trust Dylan was putting in her—and the dressing down that had cut to the quick of her pride—when they finally made it to the entrance of his cave.
Following him down the long, winding hallways loaded with stalagmites, Caitlyn did her best to wrap her head around the new developments. It wasn’t as hard she would expect it to be—maybe because she had something concrete to work on. A surveillance and protection detail for Phoebe that would keep her safe against any and every threat. The Dragonstar queen would hate every second of it, but Caitlyn couldn’t afford to let that sway her. Not after everything she had already done. A part of her wondered if that was why Dylan had chosen her—because he knew she would rather die than fail him ever again.
As she settled onto the wide, flat rock that had long been her favorite perch in Dylan’s War Room—one section of the huge underground cavern that served as his lair—a sense of rightness, of resolve—settled over her. She wasn’t sure she belonged here anymore, wasn’t sure she deserved a place in this beautiful room with its gorgeous stalagmite formations and jewel-encrusted walls, but Dylan thought she did. She wasn’t going to let him down again, wasn’t going to mess up when so many lives hung in the balance. When the clan’s two most important lives hung in the balance
She had screwed up once, but that wasn’t going to happen again. She wouldn’t let it, even if it killed her.
Chapter Three
An hour later, she thought it just might. All of Dylan’s highest ranking sentries—Quinn, Gabe, Logan, Shawn, and now her—were gathered around one end of the long table that stretched nearly the length of the cavern’s right wall, and they were all arguing harshly with one another.
Gabe pointed to the map stretched on the table. “We need to widen the perimeter,” he ordered. “There are too many areas of vulnerability in the desert, too many areas the Wyvernmoons can hide. They can’t be allowed to get in here, not again. We need to patrol it all.”
“Don’t you think we all want that?” Shawn demanded. “But there just aren’t enough of us. Not to mention it just isn’t feasible. Not unless we want to turn this into a military compound like the Wyvernmoons live on.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Logan demanded. “They’re a hell of a lot safer than we are, obviously.”
“They’re safer because we aren’t sociopathic and don’t spend all of our time trying to wipe them out of existence,” Shawn countered.
“And why aren’t we doing that?” Gabe asked. “It would solve a hell of a lot of our problems if we just went in and slaughtered them all.”
His suggestion hung in the air, no one quite knowing what to say to it. Caitlyn searched his face, looking for signs that he was kidding, but she was deathly afraid that he wasn’t. The Gabe she used to know would never have suggested wholesale murder of civilians, but that was before the Wyvernmoons had killed his mate and child. This new Gabe was ten times harder than he used to be and less compassionate than she could ever have imagined.
“As that kind of widespread murder isn’t an option for us right now—” Shawn began, but Gabe interrupted him.
“Again, why isn’t it? Why don’t we go over there and end this once and for all?”
“Because we are not murderers.” Dylan’s voice cracked like a whip. “We are not evil. And we will not become what we despise the most just to end things.”
“So we’ll just roll over and die instead?”
“No one is suggesting that,” Quinn told him. “We’re working on curing the damn virus once and for all. And you know as well as I do that we’re formulating a plan to bring the Wyvernmoon Conseil to its knees. But I will not be a party to killing innocent civilians, innocent children, simply because our enemies are okay with it. We are not monsters and we will not become monsters, not even for this.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Gabe retorted. “You get to go home to your mate every night.”
Caitlyn gasped at his words, felt everyone around the table recoil as well. Wild fury filled the air as Quinn jumped the table in one leap, landing inches from Gabe. “That’s right. I do get to go home to Jasmine. Thank God.” He was up in Gabe’s face, his hands clenched into fists. “But I almost didn’
t get that luxury. I almost lost her. And I am sorry that you lost your family. We all are.
“But you aren’t the only one suffering here. Your mate was Dylan’s sister. Your daughter, his niece. My brothers are dead because of the Wyvernmoons. Shawn has lost family. So has Caitlyn. Everyone sitting here has lost someone they love to those bastards, and I promise you, Gabe—I promise you—we will take them down. But not by becoming indiscriminate killing machines. Not by murdering children.”
Caitlyn waited, breath held, to see how Gabe would respond. To see if he would lose it and lash out at Quinn as it looked like he wanted to do. As she waited, she wondered if Dylan would step in and reprimand him. Their king was notoriously lax with his Council, allowing argument and debate from his sentries that his father never would have tolerated, but that didn’t mean he would let this go on. At the same time, Gabe and Quinn were his best friends. Quinn was obviously right, but would Gabe see it that way? Or would he see Dylan’s support of Quinn as just one more blow?
Knowing that he would—and knowing that she couldn’t stand to see him hurt more if there was a way to prevent it—she too leaped the table. Insinuating herself between the two angry shifters, she stroked a hand down each of their backs. While a talent with magic was her main gift, her second talent was an ability to manipulate emotions. In this case, to bring calm where it was so desperately needed.
“It’s all right, Gabe.” She deliberately kept her voice low, soothing. Used it to add another layer of serenity to the emotions she was already projecting. “We’re going to end this. We’re going to protect the clan. I promise.”
“How?” he demanded.
It was a good question, and one that they all needed to answer. As she searched her brain for something reassuring, Logan stepped up and said, “We’re going to train more sentries, get them in the field as quickly as possible. And we’re going to fill the last vacancies on the Council. Get things as close to normal around here as we can get them.” His voice didn’t waver, but Caitlyn felt the words—and the pain that lay beneath them—like a blow. As did all of the sentries. Logan’s closest friends, who also happened to be Quinn’s brothers, had both been on the Council. Both of them were dead now. One to a Wyvernmoon attack. The other to the deadly virus that had ravaged their people for far too long.
His words had Quinn looking away, his body rigid with pain and an acceptance that she knew had to have been hard-won. How could he stand it? she wondered suddenly. Quinn was brilliant, the most powerful and talented healer the Dragonstars had ever had. How did he handle the fact that he’d been unable to save his family? Dylan’s family? All of the other dragons who had fallen victim to the plague the Wyvernmoon’s had lambasted them with? Maybe if she could understand that, if she could figure out how the others dealt with their guilt, then maybe she could find a way to cope with her own failures.
“If we stop the Wyvernmoons from coming in?” she began, working to cover all of the men with her gift. To soothe all of their pain. It was difficult though, as they were incredibly strong-willed and powerful. But so was she, she reminded herself. And she was one of them now. Time to step up and act like it. “Do we also stop the virus?”
Quinn’s jaw was granite hard when he looked at her, his eyes narrowed. But he was calm and that was something. It had been less than a month, after all, since his mate, Jasmine, had nearly died from the insidious little bug.
“We’re still working on that. Obviously, we’ll be able to stop people from being injected with the virus, but will we be able to stop the airborne cases? The ones that spread from dragon to dragon randomly? We don’t know that yet.
“Phoebe’s managed to isolate the most recent strains, and we’re studying the differences in the ones that are customized to individual dragon DNA and the ones that are broader, that anyone is susceptible to.”
“Not anyone, right?” Gabe spoke up again, but he too sounded much more controlled. “You’re immune––”
“So far, I’m immune,” Quinn corrected. “Jazz and Phoebe are working on the why’s of that right now. It’s a breakthrough, obviously, that I was able to save Jasmine through an infusion of my blood, but we don’t know if it worked because she was my mate or if it would work on anyone.
“Plus, this virus is biological warfare, remember.” His voice was grim but not defeated. Caitlyn took comfort from that as best she could. “As we find ways to fight it, they will find ways to make it work. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“We have to eradicate it,” Logan said flatly, firmly. “We have to find a way to wipe it off the face of the fucking earth.”
“Believe me, I’m trying,” Quinn snapped. “It’s not as easy as you make it sound.”
“He wasn’t accusing you of anything, Quinn,” Caitlyn said, using every ounce of power she had to keep him calm. As she smoothed her hand from his back to his shoulder she half-expected it to be bitten off—the beast was riding him hard these days, even after finding his mate—but after a moment of taut stillness, Quinn relaxed a little. She counted it a sign of Jasmine’s influence that he could back down even that much. Quinn wasn’t known for his give.
“We’re training new sentries.” Dylan’s voice was final. “More sentries will help us do what we need to do to defend our clan. Shawn and Paige will be in charge of the new program, but even if they start tomorrow—which they will—it will still be a while before the new recruits are ready. In the meantime, I have a couple of ideas to fill the other vacancies on the Council. After I speak with them, we’ll talk more.”
“That’s all well and good,” Gabe said, tapping the map emphatically. “But we need to close our borders, now.”
“How can we do that?” Caitlyn asked incredulously. “We live in the desert. There are hundreds, thousands of caves out here, miles of nothingness. We can’t patrol it all.”
“And we sure as hell can’t fence it.” Shawn flashed her a quick smile and she beamed under the praise implied in the look. For the first time since she’d sat down, she felt like more than a little girl playing at the big kids table. At least until she remembered Matthew and how she had let him disappear without so much as a word to her clanmates.
“We should fence it,” said Quinn.
“But humans have had free passage in and out of here for two hundred years,” Logan responded.
Not that many had utilized that passage. Sure some came through town, stayed a little while. Some even tried to set up shop. But the safeguards were such that most humans never felt overly comfortable among the dragons. Or maybe they just realized the unpredictable nature of the men who roamed the streets with them. Whatever the reason, humans had a tendency not to last too long in their little section of New Mexico desert.
“How do we suddenly account for the change?” Logan continued.
“If we’re dead, we won’t have to account for anything,” Gabe snarled. “We have to cut off access somehow. And the safeguards aren’t working, no matter what Dylan says.”
“We’re not cutting the access off.” Dylan’s look said he had had enough. Gabe opened his mouth to argue, but a quirk of Dylan’s brow had him reconsidering the situation. Everyone else backed off quickly as well. They might not be a Council that stood on ceremony, but they all recognized a royal decree when they heard one. And since no one wanted to challenge the king on an issue he had taken very much to heart since he’d mated with a woman who had been raised human, and who still considered herself human despite her dragon blood, they all found somewhere else to look.
Quiet reigned for long seconds before Shawn said, “So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to patrol these boundaries.” With a finger, Dylan traced a line around the desert outside of town that covered about thirty miles more in every direction than they were currently patrolling. It also encompassed all the outlying caves, including ones that weren�
�t occupied by Dragonstar clan members. “Shawn will work with Caitlyn to design safeguards to keep anyone with dragon blood out.”
“Anyone?” Logan asked incredulously.
“Anyone,” Dylan answered firmly. “It will be an inconvenience to Dragonstars who head into the city regularly—”
“Not if they have the code to the safeguards,” Gabe said. “We can—”
“No one will be able to break those safeguards except the people in this room.”
The silence was absolute as everyone absorbed his words and the meaning behind them. Gabe finally spoke, his voice loaded with contempt. “So, instead of taking on the Wyvernmoons once and for all, we’re going to become a police state.”
“I will not risk the safety of my people at the hands of another traitor. I. Will. Not.” Dylan looked each of them in the eye in turn. “I trust the five of you implicitly. At this point, you and Phoebe are the only ones I can afford to trust. I will not police my people—they can go where they want, when they want, without answering to me. They are free to leave any time. But to get back in, they must be let in by one of you. We won’t ask where they’ve gone, what they’ve been doing—I don’t care about that. But they will not have the chance to rip our safeguards apart and let in anyone that we do not want let in.”
“Is it even possible to create safeguards that strong?” asked Logan. “I’ve never seen ones so powerful that no one can unravel them.”
“We’re going to make it possible. Next to me, Shawn and Caitlyn have the strongest magic in the clan. Together we’ll find a way.”
“All right then,” Shawn said with a grin that said he was looking forward to the challenge. “We’ll get started on that. In the meantime, how are we breaking down the patrol? That’s a lot of land to cover.”