by Ashlee Sinn
“No,” he whispered again, stumbling backward and clutching at his chest. “How could you do this to me? To your family?”
“Because it is my choice, father.” She pulled away from me again. “There is nothing here for you. Please, take your half-breeds and go home.”
“How dare you?” Anton growled. He started to remove his long jacket and I got a sudden pang of fear. “How dare you?” he repeated. “You will pay for this,” he said, glaring at me.
“Father, don’t!” Danika shouted. “Don’t do this!”
But it was too late. Anton Drakov was already shifting into his dragon. His bones cracked and stretched while his body increased in height. I watched in awe as the massive black dragon broke free and didn’t tear my gaze away until Danika shoved me backward.
“Zane! Run!”
“What?”
“Run now!”
The fear in her voice turned my blood to ice. She wasn’t afraid for her, no, she was afraid for me, and that wasn’t good. I looked at her wide eyes and shook my head. “I can’t leave you.”
“Go!” She already started to change, her face looking less like a human and more like a lizard. “Zane,” she called out, dropping to the ground on her knees as her back expanded, “please!”
She screamed into the air at the same time her father’s dragon stood on his back legs. Almost twice the size of Danika’s dragon, his animal was a great beast. I knew I should listen to my mate, but I simply couldn’t leave her. I sucked in a breath and let the grizzly have my skin. My jeans ripped as he blasted from my body.
But before he could even get all four paws on the ground, I saw a massive black wing come at me from the side. In an instant, I was flying through the air like a bird, landing a hundred yards away from where I started. The impact was rough on my hip and I thought I felt something break. I tried to roll to my feet, needing a moment to make everything stop spinning. And as I did, I heard the animal cries of the other shifters, knowing there was no stopping the battle now.
I looked back toward Danika and roared in rage. Pinned to the ground by one massive clawed foot, was my mate’s beautiful iridescent blue dragon. Anton had all his weight on her neck as she thrashed and kicked beneath him. I stood and shook my head, ready to pounce again. But Brandt ran up beside me and chuffed a command—I would not attack without his permission. My bear and I didn’t like that, especially when we watched Danika struggling against her father.
I took a few steps forward and Brandt bit my haunches. I turned and growled at him but immediately dropped my head to the ground when he bared his teeth. Fuck him for forcing me to stay back. I hated him right now and I hated that I was such a submissive bear. The sounds of Danika fighting against her father filled my ears along with the pounding of my heart.
And as Brandt held me in place, I felt a little piece of me break each time I heard Danika gurgle for air. No, this couldn’t be happening.
I couldn’t lose my mate.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe and my father didn’t care. The dead in his eyes told me that he was prepared to kill me. I knew me telling him I was pregnant would set him off, but I had underestimated just how angry he would become.
My dragon had barely left my skin before he got the upper hand. When he knocked Zane away, I’d been distracted. And that was all it took. One second of weakness and my father pounced. So now, here I was, underneath his clawed foot, struggling for air as he crushed my throat.
Roaring into the sky, I used my foot to push up against his chest. It was just enough that he loosened his grip around my neck and I was able to swing at him from the side. My claws slashed through the back of his leg, the scent of copper instantly filling the air. I rolled to my right and found my footing before he could react. He licked the wound and glared at me.
How dare he gave me that look. Lifting my chest into the air, I sucked in a deep breath and let the fire escape. Dragons using fire against each was considered impolite. But rough times called for an asshole move. The fire singed his side, if his cry was any indication, but before my flames could do any more damage, he flapped his wings twice and lifted up into the air. Screaming down at me, I thought he might fight back with his own fire. And while his chest glowed red in preparation, he turned mid-flight and rushed back toward his soldiers instead.
No! My dragon would not let him turn his back on us.
I pumped my wings and soared over the shifters all waiting for my command. Looking back and forth between the human hybrids and my friends, I decided that we couldn’t let the science experiments leave here today. There would be bloodshed and death, but my father should not be allowed to keep his subjects. They were not human and they were not shifters. They were stuck someone in between and that kind of cruelty should be stopped.
I glanced down at Zane who appeared to be fighting Brandt’s command to wait. Trying to convey my message through my eyes, I told him that I loved him and that I was doing this so we could be free. So, with a great roar into the bright sky, I told my friends to attack. Brandt stood on his hind legs while Scarlett howled. Marcus dropped into his coyote, the others quickly following behind. Major and Fiona’s white tigers nestled against each other and then lifted their hind quarters into the air, getting ready for the sprint. And even Calvin, still not completely healed, had shifted into his cougar and paced like a caged animal about to be set free.
With two quick flaps of my wings, I led us forward. The animals below me looked like a powerful and deadly pack ready to destroy anything in their sight. I skimmed the earth, my stomach feeling the dampness in the ground. With narrowed eyes and one objective, I sped toward my father. He was still flying away from us, but when I roared after him, he circled back around to meet my beast.
His human mutants surged forward, most with guns in their hands. So much for a fair fight. I wanted to warn the shifters, but it was too late. As the sounds of bodies colliding filled the din, I was forced to focus on my father. He met me mid-flight and snapped at my head with his massive jaw. Being smaller than him, I was able to maneuver away quickly enough, although his hind leg caught the tip of my wing and ripped a hole in it.
Shouting in pain and annoyance, I pushed up into the sky and flipped around backward so that I could face him full on again. My father hovered over the battle, watching with a smirk as his humans fired off shots at the shifters. One of them ran beneath me and then dropped to his knees. He hefted a large, tube-like weapon up onto his shoulder and shoved something inside. Taking aim at Major, he steadied his hands. In a flash, I reacted. Spewing a stream of fire from my jaw, I watched him burn and enjoyed the sound of the weapon shriveling into nothingness.
Major, in his tiger form, jerked his head around to the burning body writhing on the ground. Then he looked up at me. I gave him a quick nod before focusing my attention back to the grizzlies. Where was Zane? Was he okay?
As though hearing my thoughts, my mate emerged from a cloud of dust and caught one of the mutants by the arm a second before he could get off a shot. Zane dropped him and rolled, the two of them tumbling into the weeds. The human was strong, and managed to hold back Zane’s snapping jaws a way a regular human wouldn’t have been able to. But Zane was a good fighter, and he used all four legs to rip into the man’s skin. Both of them were shouting in their own way, until Zane managed to get a hold of the guy’s neck. With one quick thrust of his jaw, the man stilled and Zane looked up at me.
I felt the love in his stare, until I saw his eyes widened. He growled at me but it was too late. My father slammed into my side, knocking me to the ground so hard I almost blacked out. Once I finally stopped rolling, I shook my head and slowly crawled back up to my feet. The silhouette of the black dragon was already all the way across the field, spewing fire and laughing into the air. I wanted to take him out once and for all, but what I heard next stopped my need for revenge.
Sutton was trapped. Surrounded by my father’s men with their guns pointed at
her head. Calvin lay at her feet, not moving and bleeding from a gunshot wound in his side. She spat curses at the men, her own gun jerking from body to body as she held it out in front of her. Tears wrecked her face, but she was not giving up without a fight.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a small group of coyotes circling the men. But they weren’t going to make it in time unless I did something. Running forward with wings extending wide, I opened my jaws and let out a warning howl. The man closest to me turned and fired off five rounds into my chest without hesitation. The bullets stung, but I had a natural armor and all he succeeding in doing was piss me off. I grabbed his body with my teeth and lifted up into the air. Circling back around in time to see the coyotes attacking from all sides, I threw the limp piece of flesh back at a man still focused on Sutton. He didn’t even see the body flying at him, and when they smacked together, I heard his head smash open upon impact.
Sutton dropped to the ground beside Calvin and spoke to a coyote as I flew away. Enough of this shit. It was time to finish this once and for all. I soared over the battle, content to see that most of the mutant humans had been killed. While the shifters finished off the rest, I also tried not to focus on the handful of animal bodies lying motionless below me. We’d lost some of our own today and that made me furious.
My father once again hoovered in the air, seemingly waiting for my final attack. The sirens in the distance let me know that there would be no coming back from this kind of media nightmare, but they also reminded me that we needed to finish this now. I grazed my father’s wing when I zipped by him, easily dodging his fire. I dipped below his legs and then up over his head, each time I passed by, I managed another nip or scratch against his body. He roared and I felt my dragon’s urge to submit. But we were done taking orders, and the moment I got a chance at the back of his neck, I took it.
My teeth sank into the weak spot just above his wings. In this position, he couldn’t bite at me and he couldn’t reach me with his claws. So instead he tried to knock me free by spiraling out of the sky and driving us closer to the ground. My eyes flashed with visions of my time together with Zane and of the tiny baby growing inside my belly. A house full of little Zane’s. That’s what I wanted and that was why I couldn’t let go.
My back scraped against the dirt as my father tried to shake me loose. But I held on. I held on as tight as I could…until his skin ripped free. The flesh in my mouth tasted like blood, the scales crunching against my teeth. But because I’d ripped a chunk out of my father’s back, I no longer had the upper hand. As I pushed my wings to stay in the air, I saw him coming for me. Blood dripped to the ground, and he favored his right wing more than the other. But the determined and ferocious look in his eyes, meant he only cared about one thing right now. Revenge.
I tried to dart out of the way, and I managed to save my neck from his outstretched claws. But the two left feet of his made contact with my stomach and sliced a gash in my body from my hips to my chest. I dropped from the sky, in too much pain to move my wings. My back slammed into the ground and knocked the breath away. The dead bodies I’d landed on cracked beneath me, digging into my skin even more. Trying to curl my head around to see the wound, a sharp pang of fear clenched my heart when I saw the injury. There, right where my tiny baby should be resting, my father had nearly gutted me. The dragon skin flopped to the side in pieces as blood poured out of the wound. Broken scales and shreds of muscles jutted up out of the surface like a shattered mirror. I was amazed I couldn’t even feel the pain, until I tried to roll to the side.
“Danika!” Zane’s human voice overpowered the ringing in my ears. He ran at me, naked and scared, jumping over the pieces of human flesh and sliding on the ground beside my stomach when he finally reached me.
“No, no, no!” he cried. His hands hovered over my shredded stomach as though trying to figure out where to start piecing me back together. “Anton!” he screamed up at the shadow flying over us. “Look at what you did!”
I managed to catch my father’s eyes and something unexpected happened. His chest stopped glowing red and his wings slowed. Settling himself onto the ground a few hundred yards away, he watched me and Zane closely. I could feel the deepest parts of my wound starting to heal, but I still couldn’t stand. And being on the ground in front of a dominant dragon would only encourage my father’s animal to put me out of my misery.
I tried to roll to my feet again, almost crushing Zane in the process. But the second I pushed my upper body off the ground, I could feel the gash tear some more.
“Danika, don’t move, baby. Please don’t move.” Zane spoke to me but was looking over my body at the humans running toward us. Fiona, Major, and Bo had all shifted back and sat down next to Zane to study my injury.
My father stayed put, observing us closely while they worked to pull together the pieces of my body. I cried out, hating that I couldn’t control the pain better. But it wasn’t even the pain of the wound, no, it was the pain that I might lose our baby. Slowly letting my dragon rest, I pulled my human form forward. And when I did, the agony subsided just a little as the healing power of a shift started to take effect.
Lying naked on my side, I reached out for Zane. He crawled on all fours, scrambling to get to my face. Kissing me fast and hard, he kept brushing my hair back while telling me he loved me over and over again. I cried against him, worried that I’d failed. “The baby?” I whispered. He never responded. In fact, he didn’t look down at my stomach again.
And that crushed my soul.
I’d lost our baby.
“Help me up,” I asked him.
“Danika? No,” he replied.
“Zane, help me up.”
“You are in no shape to—”
“I need to speak to my father,” I cut him off.
Zane looked behind us at the massive dragon sitting there watching us. The police and ambulance sirens were getting louder. I could hear the grumblings of passerby’s commenting on the dragon and snapping pictures as my father stood still.
“Please,” I begged my mate.
He glanced down at my ripped-up stomach and then looked back into my eyes. “You need to be careful. You’re not fully healed yet.”
With a nod I agreed and then I let him pull me up. The pain tore through me, causing me to hunch over and limp slowly toward my father. Each step brought a new round of agony, yet I couldn’t bring myself to look at the injury again. If my father killed my baby…well, I couldn’t even contemplate what my dragon would do.
As humans, Zane and I barely reached my father’s elbows. Anton sat there, like a dog, cocking his head to the side each time another flash went off in the distance. His body was full of scorch marks and smaller gashes, and the blood from the wound on his neck still dripped slowly onto the ground with an uneven patter.
I let Zane hold me on my feet while I looked up into my father’s dragon red eyes. “You need to change.”
He snorted and focused on the gathering crowds again.
“This is why I didn’t want to fight you,” I cried. “What did this accomplish? Nothing!”
No response.
“Listen to me, father!” I screamed. “It’s over. Your experiments are dead! My baby is dead! And now the whole world knows what you are!”
I didn’t know if it was that comment or the baby comment that finally caught his attention. But he glanced down at Zane and me and abruptly shifted back to human. The rapid transition caused him to stumble, yet neither of us made a move to help him. “Danika,” he whispered. “I am so sorry.”
Something heavy and powerful squeezed my heart. He was sorry? I’d never heard him apologize before. And that distracted me so much, I couldn’t even flinch when he stumbled forward and pressed his hands on my stomach. Zane growled beside me but didn’t push my father away.
Instead, Anton Drakov spoke quietly in Russian while his hands warmed against my skin. I recognized the words, a blessing from centuries ago.
A
blessing for a child.
“She will live,” he mumbled before limping away through the grass and toward the arriving officers with his hands in the air.
“What was that?” Zane whispered, still holding me so tight I could barely breath.
I rested my hand on my stomach, amazed by how much I could feel. There, deep inside, there was an extra little source of heat. And that heat grew the longer I touched it. My face broke into a smile, tears streaming down my cheeks as I looked up at Zane.
“She’s okay,” I breathed.
His eyes focused on mine and then darted to my father’s back. “Did he? Did he just do something to you?”
I shook my head and nestled it against Zane’s chest. “His element is earth, and he helped her,” I whispered.
“Her?” he blurted. “We’re having a girl?”
The excitement in his voice squeezed my heart in a whole new way. “We are,” I said.
Zane wrapped me in a hug and kissed my face over and over. Even as the police, state troopers, and national guardsmen walked toward us with guns raised, we relished in the happiness that not only had we survived, we were going to be a family.
The nightmare had only just begun.
For over an hour, we waited in that field, naked and freezing while Brandt, Scarlett, Marcus, and Major worked their magic. At first it looked like they wouldn’t be able to talk their way out of this. We’d all had guns pointed at our heads, even as we sat still in the open field. Danika shivered next to me while her body focused on healing her injuries. Sutton sat with Calvin, recovering from his own gunshot wound. At one point, Fiona joined my side and told me to take a break.
“I’m not leaving her,” I growled.
“Zane, it’s okay. Maybe you can find our clothes?” Danika smiled up at me, her hand never leaving her belly. I couldn’t explain it, but it seemed as though she was a whole new person right now. Perhaps it was because she was going to be a mother. Or maybe it was because she’d had some type of closure with her father. Either way, I vowed to let her enjoy this moment because the second she went back to work, I had no doubt her life would become more stressful.