by Joyce, T. S.
Death.
Now, Death rarely actually meant that someone would die, and more often indicated the need to be open to change. It was more of a transformation card. But pulling it twice in a row on Damon’s future had her hair standing on end.
The resounding knock reverberated down the marble hallway again, so she scooped up the cards, shoved them into her back pocket to think about later, and jogged toward the front entrance. “I’m coming!” But before she pulled open the door, she wised up and asked, “Who is it?” Because she sure as hell wasn’t dumb enough to just open the front door for Fuck Face Marcus.
“It’s Creed and the other alphas, here to meet with Damon at his request.”
With a grunt for her efforts, Clara pulled a giant potted plant across the floor, and in front of the door stood on the pot and stared out the stupidly tall peephole. Sure enough, five men stood outside, and two of them she’d met before.
When she finally pulled the heavy doors open, they greeted her with somber smiles and Creed introduced her to the striking blue-eyed alpha of the Ashe Crew, Tagan, and the dark-haired alpha of the Boarlanders, Harrison, and lastly to a giant of a man with shoulders as wide as a redwood. His dark eyes crinkled as he offered his hand for a shake. “I’m Kong of the Gray Backs and the Lowlanders.”
“Kong?” she asked through a grin as she shook his hand. He just about rattled her bones. “You don’t smell like a bear, King Kong.”
“Gorilla shifter,” he said with a nod, confirming her suspicion.
Oh, she bet he was a beast when he Changed. “You’re the first gorilla shifter I’ve met,” she announced. “Damon is straight down that hallway on the left. He and Mason are in the office.”
Creed gave her a sideways hug as the others stepped into Damon’s house. “How are you holding up?”
Apparently word spread quickly when anything dramatic happened in these mountains. “I’m okay. Just worried about Damon.”
“Your mate?” he asked low.
Heat flushed her cheeks, and she hugged his side tightly and nodded. “My mate.”
“Glad to hear it, Grandma.”
“Eee, I hadn’t thought about that. Ha! I would be your…step-grandma? Weird. I’ll be sure to send you birthday cards with five dollar bills in them.”
Creed pumped his fist and hissed, “Yes.”
With a laugh, she swatted his arm and told him, “Go to your meeting before Damon eats you.”
Her chest rose and fell deeply as she watched the four alphas saunter down the hallway. Tagan made sure to splash Creed with the fountain water that spewed from the naked Grecian man’s penis as they passed.
Clara turned to the final visitor, who lingered at the threshold. “Hi Beaston.”
He ducked his head respectfully. “Mate of the Dragon.”
The title brushed over her skin, lifting gooseflesh in its wake. “Do you want to come in?”
“In there?” he asked, his dark eyebrows jacked up and his eyes blazing an inhuman seafoam green. “Fuck no. Too many ghosts.”
Clara turned and narrowed her eyes at the shadowy figures who lined the hallway. Honestly, she’d gotten used to their presence as she imagined Damon had gotten used to them over the centuries. That or Damon couldn’t see them. But apparently, Beaston could.
“You see beyond the veil, too?”
He backed away from the door. “Like my Mom did. I have a gift for you.”
She stepped out the door and shut the huge wooden barriers behind her. Then she sat beside Beaston on the porch stair.
“I was going to wrap it pretty, the way girls like. Glittery paper and ribbon and fancy shit, but I need to tell you why I’m giving you this, and I don’t write good.”
“Okay.”
He pulled a long knife from his belt, the blade gleaming in the sunlight. “I’ve made knives for all my Gray Back girls, and I know you like things that match.” Beaston swallowed hard and shook his head as he handed it to her, hilt first. “I wanted to make it small like theirs, but you have a big job to do.”
“What kind of job?”
“I had a dream.”
“About me?” she asked, her voice nothing but a shocked squeak.
“No,” he murmured, leveling her with his wild eyes. “About her. About your job.”
“Her?”
“He’s going to ask you to leave, Clara. Don’t go. Stay here. Fight. Fight even if you think it’s over. Fight until you’re dead. Fight until she’s dead.”
Clara stared down at the long, sharp blade of the knife in her open palms. He’d etched her tattoo into the silver near the handle and had carved D + C along the curve of the dragon’s spine.
“Damon and Clara?” she whispered.
Beaston nodded and ran his thumb under her eye. He frowned at the drop of moisture on the pad. “Soft bear. Soft and full of tears. So soft you’ll bring our dragon to his knees.” He lifted that inhuman gaze back to her. “Save him.”
Beaston stood and strode for a tree where a shiny, feathered raven sat on the lowest branch.
“Save him?” she called.
Beaston didn’t turn around or answer. He simply held his forearm out for his Aviana to wrap her small talons around, and then he disappeared into the woods with his mate.
How could she save Damon from Marcus? How could she save anyone? She was a sometimes-defective clairvoyant grizzly shifter—not a fire-breathing dragon.
Clara felt completely helpless to fight against the force that was coming, but Beaston had given her a twelve-inch blade and told her to do just that.
She wiped her still damp lashes on her shoulder and picked up the fine leather sheath that sat in the exact place Beaston had. After sliding the blade safely inside, she clutched it to her chest and stared at the place the half-wild bear shifter had disappeared.
She’d felt a connection to the man from the first time she’d met him at the barbecue with the Gray Backs, but maybe her intuition of his brokenness didn’t lie.
Perhaps Beaston really was crazy.
Chapter Fourteen
“Have you seen him?” Clara asked Mason, who sat at the kitchen island, sipping a mug of steaming coffee.
Damon hadn’t been in bed when she’d woken up an hour ago, and he hadn’t shown up while she was readying for the day. And after searching all his favorite haunts in the house, he was still a no show.
“He’s out on the terrace.”
“There’s a terrace?”
Mason chuckled and stood. He made a second cup of coffee and handed it to her. “I wanted to say something to you.”
“Oh God, what did I do now?”
He laughed, and a blanket of relief slid over her shoulders. She wasn’t in trouble then.
“You’ve done nothing but good. Listen, I know you didn’t like me much for bringing you up here on false pretenses, and I wish I had a good excuse why I did it. All I can say is that you felt important. I went back to your file over and over for the last year, and I got chills every time I read it. And I want to say I’m sorry, but I also want to say I don’t regret what I did.” Mason canted his head and murmured, “You brought him back to life, Clara.”
She took the offered mug of fragrant coffee from his hands and leaned onto the island. “I was really mad at you at first, but I already forgave you days ago. You brought me to Damon. You brought me to these mountains.” She shrugged. “I get chills here a lot, too. The good kind. The kind where I feel like I am right where I’m supposed to be. So I guess what I’m saying is I’m glad you brought me here, and I’m glad you’ve been there for Damon. He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“We should come up with a crew name,” Mason teased.
Clara snorted. “It needs to be badass.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
“A pig, a bear, and a dragon walk into a bar…”
“Don’t finish that joke,” Mason said, stifling a smile.
“The Pork Rind Crew.”
“I’ll take you to the terrace now.”
And he did. Mason led her down past Damon’s bedroom, down the dark halls with the old fashioned lanterns, down a narrow walkway surrounded by rock walls, and through a set of dark double doors to an opening in the cliffs. There were no windows separating the smooth rock floor from the woods below. And standing on the edge was Damon, a striking silhouette in his dark suit with his hands on his hips as he looked over his domain. He’d removed the bandages from his right hand, and from here, it already looked half healed, though scarred. More scars, and how many would his body bear before this was through?
Mason squeezed her shoulder and left her there.
The wind whistled through the opening, hard enough that it would likely blow her over if she got too close to the ledge, but Damon stood as if the wind did not affect him. As if he was part of the stone here. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.
“You weren’t in bed when I woke up.”
“Were you worried?” he asked softly, though his voice sounded like gravel and was punctuated with a long rumble.
“A little,” she admitted. He’d drawn into himself over the last week, and she hated that he was pushing her away. “I worry about losing you.”
“You won’t.”
“No, I mean, I’m worried you’ll push me away.”
Damon turned slowly, his eyes glowing silver in the shadows of the cave terrace. “I…” He blinked slowly and turned his back on her again. “I think you should leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s not safe for you here—”
“It’s not safe for me out there! Damon, you tried hiding your people before and it didn’t save them. It didn’t protect them. I’m staying here, with you.” Clara touched the knife on her belt just to reassure herself. She wore it everywhere now. “I understand why you sent the crews away. I do. But I’m not part of their crews, Damon. I’m part of yours. Don’t send me away.”
He huffed a single, humorless laugh. “I knew you’d refuse.”
She approached slowly, wrapped her arms around his middle, and rested her cheek right between his shoulder blades. “Then why did you even ask?”
“Because I had to try, Clara.” His hand slid up her forearm and rested against her hands, keeping her touch there, just over his heart. His voice rang hollow when he murmured, “This place feels empty without them.”
She understood. He’d grown to care for the crews. The Ashe Crew and the Boarlanders. The Gray Backs and Kong’s Lowlanders. They had become a part of Damon’s mountains just as surely as the trees and forest animals.
“When this is all through, they’ll be back.” She hoped so because the pain and loneliness in Damon’s voice had cracked her heart open.
“And what if it’s never over? What if Marcus waits for years to come for me? To come for you? I’ll miss their entire lives. I’ll miss the babies growing up.” Damon swallowed audibly and squeezed her hands as if her letting go right now would hurt him.
Shadows danced across the walls in the glow of the lanterns, and Clara cast them a frown. Restless ghosts, uncomfortable with this kind of talk.
Damon turned in her arms, and his lips crashed onto hers. These weren’t the sweet kisses he used to tell her wordlessly that he loved her. This was allowing her to see the pain he was in. His lips were unforgiving as he deepened the kiss and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He let off a helpless sound and walked her backward. She gasped as her back hit the cold cave wall. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she bit his bottom lip and kissed him back so he could see how scared she was. He should see how determined she was to stay by his side despite that fear.
Something brushed her neck. A soft mist, like a tendril of fog, skittered across her skin, lifting gooseflesh. Clara jumped and pulled her mouth from Damon’s.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Clara stood frozen against him, breathing heavily as something sat just above her senses. A vibration out of place, or a change in the wind. She looked to the lantern shadows on her left, and the shadowy figures that had been so restless before were melting into the walls. Damon followed her gaze as another tendril of air curled over her shoulder.
“Clara, what are they saying?”
There was a soft whisper of something. A word. So soft, she had to strain her sensitive ears. Fear pounded through her veins as she lifted her horrified gaze to Damon.
“Your ghosts are telling us to run.”
A shadow covered the mouth of the opening, blocking out the sun, and Clara screamed as the massive head of a black dragon reached its long neck into the cave and opened his mouth. Rows of razor sharp teeth reached for them as the first clicks of a Firestarter echoed through the cliff opening.
“Go!” Damon yelled, shoving her toward the hallway.
Time slowed. Damon ran behind her, shoving her forward and shielding her with his back. She pushed her legs as hard as she could and screamed as heat blasted from behind them.
“Faster,” Damon ordered. “Don’t look back.”
Flames filled the hallway just inches behind them and coming fast. She ran for her life. She ran for Damon’s life because every instinct in her body screamed that he would never leave her to save himself.
Mason was there, waiting at the double doors. “Hurry!”
Clara’s legs burned and gave out the second she passed through, and she watched in horror as Damon turned and helped Mason close the doors against the fire. Flames licked through the cracks, and Mason gritted his teeth in pain as the metal decorated bands on the door heated and turned red against his hands.
Clara looked down at her body. It was betraying her. The inner grizzly she’d always been able to rely on when she was scared was curled up in a ball in her middle, and her arms and legs were tingling as if they’d fallen asleep.
Damon slammed down a wooden bar over the door and yanked her up, then hauled her down the hallway to his bedroom. “I have to get to open air. It’s too tight to Change in here.”
But just as he turned the corner to his bedroom door, the sound of shattering glass turned deafening.
Another scream lodged in Clara’s throat as she got a glimpse of Marcus’s long onyx-colored claws raking across the bedroom, destroying everything. A stream of fire and magma spewed through the room an instant after Damon and Mason had dragged her across the open doorway.
Work legs! She felt as if she were floating. As if her body wasn’t under her control anymore.
They missed fire by inches as the monster followed them room to room, clinging to the outside of the house, destroying it in his quest to get to them. The white marble hallway was the last barrier between them and air, but the fire was too close behind them, following them, singeing Clara’s skin. Where was her fucking bear?
No good. The hallway stretched on and on, and they weren’t moving fast enough to escape the flames blasting around them.
“Damon!” she screamed just as the fire reached her back because, dammit, this was the tragedy. One week with him. One week of happiness. One week of feeling like she finally, finally belonged somewhere, and she was dying by dragon’s fire with the two men who’d become her crew.
“Hold on!” Damon ordered as he scooped her and Mason by the waist.
Power pulsed against her, stealing her breath as Damon’s battle cry turned into a bellowing roar. The space was too tight for him to Change, but that didn’t stop the enormous blue dragon that burst from his skin. Tucking them tight to his stomach with oversize claws, he exploded from the mansion and drove his powerful wings against the air, lifting them as the house shattered behind them. Marcus’s flames blasted around Damon’s exposed back as he shielded her and Mason and dropped them low to the ground. The drop was still too high. She and Mason tumbled end over end and Clara screamed out in pain as she slammed into a tree, arm first.
Struggling to her feet, she ducked as Damon collided with Marcus against the side of the destroyed house, blas
ting glass like bullets across the clearing. Clara held up her arm to shield her face as pain slashed across her skin. Mason yanked her backward a moment too late and hugged her tight as dragon’s fire filled the air. The roar of the battling dragons rattled her head and made her dizzy, and still, her bear was buried too deep to reach.
Mason was yelling something she couldn’t understand. Yelling. Yelling. I don’t understand! She couldn’t take her eyes off the warring dragons as they beat their wings against the air and lifted off the ground, clinging to each other’s claws as they blew streams of flaming lava.
Searing pain rocketed up the nerve endings in her arm as Mason jerked a broken bone into place. “Fuck!” she screamed in shock. A power she didn’t understand pulsed from her body and blew Mason twenty yards away. He landed on all fours and slid backward through the dirt before he came to a stop, eyes locked on hers.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, looking at her tingling palms. The lines on her hands were glowing orange, and now when she tried to close her fists, she wasn’t in control of her body enough to do so
Let me in. The words whispered across her mind. Let me save him.
What the hell was happening to her?
A slash of pain built just behind her eyes in the same headache she’d been fighting off and on her entire life. This time it was different though. This time it didn’t throb or fade away. It grew and grew, brighter and more agonizing until she was nothing at all.
Mason was on his knees in the dirt, bleeding from a hundred places where the glass had damaged him and staring at her with blazing blue, inhuman eyes as if he’d never seen her before. “Feyadine?”
Chills blasted up her body with the rightness of that name. I’m here.
“Change, Mason. I’ll need you.” She flicked her fingertips at Mason, and a massive, black boar with long, curved tusks and blazing, furious eyes burst from his body. He was as tall as her, much bigger than any wild boar. Coarse, long fur spiked up over his powerful back, raised with his fury, and as he lifted his attention to the sky, he dragged a massive hoof through the dirt, ready for battle. All this time, Mason had been hiding a monster inside of him, too.