by Zoe Chant
“Oh.” Raluca swallowed, her eyes brimming. “I am so glad we found each other.”
She closed her eyes and let him kiss away her tears.
Nick could have happily held her all night. But a gust of frigid wind made him shiver. And if he was cold in his jeans and leather jacket, Raluca must be freezing.
“Let me give you my jacket,” Nick said, reaching for the zipper. “And then I guess we should be getting home.”
Raluca caught his hand. “I am not cold. I carry my own heat within. But I am a little tired.”
“Me too. Think you can find the nightclub from here? If you can’t, we could just fly back to Protection, Inc. and collect my car tomorrow.”
“I’m not certain,” Raluca said. “Let me look around.”
They walked toward the edge of the roof. Raluca looked around, frowned, then stepped closer, peering down. Nick grabbed her elbow.
Raluca smiled. “Nick. I can fly.”
“Oh, right.” He released her, and stood watching as she paced along the edge of the roof, turning her head this way and that. “Collect the car tomorrow, huh?”
“Wait. I do not know your city well, but I can usually re-trace my flight path.”
“I know the city. Not from above, but, if you give me a second, maybe I can spot it.” Nick went in the opposite direction, keeping farther from the edge than her as he scanned the city below. He wasn’t afraid of heights, but he couldn’t fly and they were at least twenty stories up.
“Nick!” Raluca shouted.
He whipped around. She was pointing upward, into the empty sky.
Baffled, Nick said, “What?”
“A dragon!”
He took a step toward Raluca, but she flung out her hand to stop him. “Get back! He’s landing!”
Nick jumped back, hoping it was far enough to avoid getting squashed.
A whirlwind of brilliant sparks lit the air between him and Raluca. For a moment, Nick thought it was Lucas. But they weren’t quite the right color. Just as he realized that, the sparks vanished and a huge brass dragon crouched between them.
Three men rode the brass dragon. They had their backs to Nick, but even so, one’s silhouette looked vaguely familiar. But before Nick could figure out why, they scrambled off, then vanished again in another whirlwind of sparks.
The brass glitter blocked his view of Raluca. Worse, it blocked him from Raluca. He wasn’t sure they were enemies, but they were acting suspicious as hell. They’d landed right between him and Raluca, so Nick didn’t reach for his gun; the bullet might go through one of them and hit her.
That had to be deliberate.
“Who are they?” Nick shouted.
“My cousin Grigor!” Raluca called back. “I don’t know the others.”
That didn’t tell him much. “Is he a friend?”
“I don’t know him very—” Raluca began.
The sparks vanished. Now Nick could see Raluca, on the opposite side of the roof, with four men between them, all with guns already drawn. Two faced him, and two faced her.
One of the men facing Nick was a complete stranger, but the other looked vaguely familiar. After a puzzled moment, Nick recognized him as a waiter from the white tie ball, the one who had pushed his chair in. And presumably also picked his pocket and dropped poison in Raluca’s wine. If it wasn’t for the guns, Nick would have gone for him then and there.
But the weird thing was that the “waiter” wasn’t the one with the familiar silhouette. Nick had only seen the guy once before; enough to recognize his face, but not a body seen from behind. Of the two men facing Raluca, one had glinting metallic hair and was presumably Grigor. The other, a big bruiser whose dark hair was flecked with gray, was the one who still looked hauntingly familiar, even from the back...
The big man turned around, leveling his gun at Nick’s head. “Hands in the air.”
Nick’s blood went ice-cold with shock, then boiled with rage. Not because of the gun, but because of who held it.
“You motherfucker!” The words burst from Nick’s lips without thought. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“How dare you!” Raluca shouted. “I will —”
“Freeze!” Grigor yelled. “I can shoot faster than you can shift.”
Nick’s heart lurched. Lucas had said that dragonsbane could force a dragon to shift instantaneously, but it was very painful and dragons couldn’t shift that fast of their own accord. Grigor’s threat was real.
“Raluca!” Nick called out. “Don’t do it!”
To his immense relief, she didn’t attempt to shift. Instead, she folded her arms across her chest. Whatever emotions she felt vanished behind her chilly princess mask. “Who is the man who threatens my mate?”
Price smirked. “His alpha.”
“The fuck you are! You were never my alpha, I was yours!” But as soon as the words left Nick’s lips, he realized that he had to calm down. He could square off with Price later. Right now, he had to protect Raluca.
His thoughts spun in frantic circles. His gun was still in its concealed shoulder holster. Price would shoot him if he even reached for it. He might be able to shift faster than Price could fire. But not fast enough to get to Grigor before he could shoot Raluca.
But Nick had his phone in his jeans pocket. The emergency alert button was recessed to prevent accidental butt-dialing, but he should be able to hit it through his jeans. He let his hand drift toward his pocket, as if it was naturally going to rest on his hip...
“I see that!” Price yelled. “Hands in the air right now, or I shoot!”
Gritting his teeth, Nick put up his hands. He’d been so close!
“Grigor, I do not understand what is happening,” Raluca said. “What are you doing here? Who are these men? And however did you find me?”
Her mask cracked as she spoke. She looked and sounded frightened and bewildered. Pain stabbed through Nick’s heart. She was so helpless, so scared...
...Or was she?
Nick made sure his face didn’t betray anything but his very real concern, fear, and anger. But behind his own mask, his mind raced. Raluca had gone back to her chiming princess voice. She’d been trained to conceal her emotions, her voice, her very self. Nick bet she was doing it right now.
“Ah. Allow me to enlighten you.” The condescending smugness of Grigor’s tone made Nick certain that Raluca was playing him to buy time. She knew him, so she must have known he was the kind of self-satisfied asshole who would jump at the chance to explain how smart he was.
Come to think of it, Price wasn’t all that different. There was no way he’d kill Nick without gloating over his victory first. That had to be why neither Price nor Grigor had killed them yet. All Nick had to do was figure out how to get the better of them before they decided they’d had enough sadistic fun and it was time to dispose of him and Raluca.
He had no fucking idea how to do that.
Nick had been so busy thinking, he hadn’t been paying attention to Grigor’s speech beyond “Blah blah followed you here, blah blah tracked you there, blah blah hired surveillance experts and hackers and assassins because I’m so fucking rich.” Nick made himself tune in, hoping something in it might give him an idea.
“As for how I found you in America to begin with, all I needed was logic,” the pompous asshole was saying. “Who is the only person who you know and can trust to not want your throne? Lucas. Where does Lucas work? Protection, Inc.”
“You want my throne?” Raluca interrupted, as if the idea had only now occurred to her. “But I gave it up. You don’t need to kill me to take it.”
“Yes, you simpering fool,” Grigor snapped. “Of course I want your throne! And I do need to kill you. How could I ever trust that a pampered princess like you would give it up for good? Once you got tired of doing your own hair, you’d come running back home.”
Grigor seemed easy to bait. Nick already knew Price was. Those two were obviously brothers under the skin: manipulative, mu
rderous, smug assholes. Maybe Nick could use that.
“What I want to know is how you got involved,” Nick said to Price. “Since when did you start hobnobbing with foreign fucking dragon princes?”
Price shot Nick a contemptuous look. “Since one offered me the chance to get some of my own back.”
Grigor raised his voice, sounding annoyed at the interruption. “When I learned who was guarding the princess, I looked up his background and found a chance to kill two birds with one stone. I wanted the princess dead, Price wanted the bodyguard dead, and while both of us are recognizable to our respective targets, my hired men and the newer members of Price’s pack were not.”
“Cut to the fucking chase,” Price snapped.
“Excuse me?” Grigor said icily.
Nick had bet those two were working together purely for convenience and didn’t get along, and it looked like he was right. If he could get them pissed off enough at each other, it might distract them enough to drop their guards. He only needed a second...
With his free hand, Price indicated the fake waiter. “I taught Jim here everything I know about pickpocketing. He’s not as good as me, but he’s plenty good enough to dress up as a waiter, drop some poison in the princess’s wine, and get something out of Nick’s pocket.”
“You motherfucker!” Nick clenched his raised hands. Price’s gun hand didn’t waver, but his gaze lifted for an instant, from Nick’s face and body to just his fists.
Nick met Raluca’s gaze from across the roof. He had only a split second, but it was the first time they’d made eye contact since Grigor had begun monologging.
Be ready, Nick tried to convey.
He thought he saw understanding in her silver gaze. But he had to instantly look away from her and at Price, so he couldn’t be sure. And just in time, too. Price’s gaze moved down from Nick’s fists to his face.
Smirking, Price added, “Not that getting one over on Nick was much of a challenge.”
Grigor raised his voice. “As I was saying —”
So did Price. “Can you shut the fuck up for one —”
“JUMP!” Nick yelled, and flung himself backward off the roof.
He plummeted down, tumbling toward the distant streets below. The world spun around him.
Time seemed to slow. He could hear his own heartbeats thudding in his ears, with what felt like long pauses in between.
Boom. Had Raluca understood? He’d had to jump before he could see if she’d leaped too. If she’d hesitated for even a second, Grigor would’ve shot her before she could follow Nick. Had Nick gotten her killed?
Boom. Even if she had jumped fast enough, had she had enough time to transform?
Boom. The streets were so close. He’d be dead in another second. If he’d saved Raluca, it’d be worth it. It seemed so fucking unfair that he’d die without even knowing —
Something snatched at him, jerking him violently to the side and arresting his fall.
Nick gasped. With the rush of cold air into his lungs, the surreal sense of slowness came to an abrupt end. He was no longer hurtling toward the streets, but moving along and just above them. He craned his head, and saw that he was held in silver claws.
Silver talons.
Raluca’s silver dragon had caught him in mid-air. She’d had to come so close to the ground to reach him, she must have almost crashed into it herself.
Nick tried to look past her, to see if anyone was shooting at them from the roof, but he couldn’t tell which building they’d fallen from. They were in a maze of skyscrapers and streets, flying very low. Too low. Raluca was dangerously close to the streets and light posts and buildings, and moving far too fast to land.
“Look out!” Nick yelled.
As Raluca swerved to avoid one office tower, another loomed ahead. Her great wings beat hard, straining upward, trying to fly over it. She gained some height, but not enough.
“Left!” Nick shouted, his voice cracking with the force of it.
A wall of glass loomed before them. Raluca veered to the side, whipping one wing up.
They hurtled past the building, so close that Nick could have touched it. Then they were past it, and into open air. Raluca soared upward, her wings beating powerfully, heading for the sky.
Nick closed his eyes with relief. They’d made it. He’d saved his mate, and she’d saved him. They knew who was behind the plot. All they had to do now was go back to Protection, Inc. and tell the team. Everything would be all right.
The grip on him vanished.
Nick dropped like a stone.
A scream tore through the air. Raluca was a woman now. And she too was falling. Instinctively, Nick grabbed her, pulling her close as they both plummeted toward the ground.
He smelled dragonsbane. She must have been shot with a dart or spray gun or something, forcing her to shift in midair.
The streets seemed to rush up toward them.
Shane had told him what to do if his parachute failed to open. Nick twisted to direct his fall. But not as Shane had taught him, to save himself. Nick moved to take the full force of the impact, cushioning Raluca with his own body.
The ground struck him like a fist.
Chapter Ten
Raluca
Raluca had expected to die.
Once she’d caught Nick and soared into the sky, she’d been filled with the joy of flight and survival and love. She’d been so proud of herself for understanding Nick’s plan and reacting fast enough for it to work, and of him for coming up with the idea and having the courage to carry it out. All she had to do was fly them both to safety, and everything would be all right.
Then a small, hard impact had hit her wing, like a thrown rock. It broke open against her hide, splashing her with a tiny amount of liquid. The unmistakable acid burn of dragonsbane seared her skin and wrenched her from dragon to woman in a shocking, agonizing instant.
As they’d fallen, Nick had clutched her tight. In the stretched-out moment before they hit, Raluca had hoped that holding her would give him some comfort in his last moments. But she felt nothing but a bitter rage at the universe.
Hasn’t he been hurt enough? Raluca thought. He deserves to live and be happy.
And then, as the pavement rose up to meet them, she thought, And so do I.
At the last second, she closed her eyes.
The impact jolted her, but nowhere near as hard as she’d expected. She lay still and stunned for a moment. Then she realized that she’d hit the ground, and was still alive.
Impossible.
Dazed, she opened her eyes. She was lying on top of Nick. That must have protected her —
No. He’d protected her. Raluca abruptly recalled how he’d twisted around in midair. He must have deliberately moved so he’d hit the ground first and take the brunt of the fall.
“Nick?” Her voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
His head was turned aside, his face in shadow. He didn’t move or answer. His body lay still, sprawled on hard concrete with his right arm and leg twisted beneath him.
The fear that she hadn’t had time to feel when they’d been falling struck her like a blow, taking her breath away. She didn’t know if he was dead or alive, and was terrified to find out.
Then she realized that she was still on top of him. If he was alive, her weight might be hurting him.
She scrambled off him, as gently as she could, and knelt beside him to peer at his face. His eyes were closed, his skin white as bone.
Raluca reached out a trembling hand to touch his cheek. It was cold. “Nick?”
He didn’t stir.
She had to force herself not to grab and shake him, which might worsen his injuries. Instead, she bent over and put her ear to his chest. For a terrifying instant, she could hear nothing but her own pulse throbbing in her ears. Then she heard the steady thud of his heart, and felt his chest rise and fall.
Nick was alive.
Her mate had protected her, but not at the cost of his own li
fe.
Tears welled up in Raluca’s eyes, making burning tracks down her cheeks. But they were tears of relief. Nick was badly hurt, but he’d survived terrible wounds before. He was tough. She just needed to alert Protection, Inc., and they’d save him.
When she heard approaching footsteps, she thought with puzzled relief that the team had somehow arrived already.
Then she saw moonlight glint on metallic hair. Grigor was approaching, with Price right beside him. They were backed by not only the other two men from the rooftop, but eight or nine more with the same look: hard and mean. They had to be more of Grigor’s hired assassins and Price’s gangster wolves.
Raluca looked around wildly. She and Nick had fallen into a dark alley between two tall buildings. There was no one in sight but their enemies. The dragonsbane still burned on her arm, so she couldn’t shift.
Grigor, Price, and their henchmen began to close in on her and Nick.
Those men meant to kill her mate. And her too, of course, but that seemed unimportant compared to the threat to Nick. He was wounded and unconscious, unable to protect himself. Even if he woke up, he’d be unable to fight with one leg and his dominant hand disabled.
If nothing else, Raluca could place her body between Nick and his enemies.
She leaped to her feet. Her dancing heels clattered against the concrete. Grigor laughed, reminding her of how absurd she must look in her corset and miniskirt. How helpless.
A blazing rage flamed up within her soul, searing away her fear. Raluca stood over her wounded mate, and her voice rang out to the rooftops with protective fury. “BEGONE, OR I WILL BURN YOU TO FUCKING ASHES!"
Several of the henchmen took an involuntary step back, and two flattened themselves against the walls. Price froze.
Grigor gave them all a scornful glance, then turned to Raluca with another contemptuous laugh. “With what? A cigarette lighter? You’re nothing but a spoiled princess. You can’t shift. You can’t fight. Give it up. You have nothing.”
A voice spoke from behind her. “She has a mate with a gun.”