“He will,” I said in a tight voice. “He doesn’t care about anything. If you aren’t useful to him, he’ll kill you without batting an eyelash.”
“Exactly,” snarled Alastair. “Now put on the bracelets.”
“No,” said Lachlan. “If you put those on, he might just slit Connor’s throat anyway.”
That was a strong possibility. Alastair didn’t give a crap about Connor.
“My word as a dragon, he’ll go free,” said Alastair. “Put them on.”
“Penny.” Lachlan’s eyes were wide. “There’s got to be another way. What about other dragons? He used dragon sacrifice. Is there some sort of ruling body, a council of magic or something, someone who could stop him?”
“I’ve never heard of a dragon doing a dragon sacrifice,” I said. “It’s too horrible to even imagine.”
Alastair laughed. “Such is my love for you, not that you deserve it, bitch. I can’t exist without you. Since you left, I’ve felt your absence chipping away at my sanity. I had to fix it. I had to have you back, no matter the cost. You are my mate.”
“You don’t love me,” I said.
“Maybe not,” said Alastair. “But I need you, so it’s all the same in the end, isn’t it? Put on the bracelets. You’re killing him.” The knife bit into Connor’s neck a little more.
I picked up the bracelets and turned them over in my hands.
“No,” said Lachlan.
“I have to,” I whispered.
“No,” said Lachlan.
I put the bracelets on in one movement. They shrunk immediately, so that they were tight on my wrists and impossible to get off. “I’m sorry,” I said to Lachlan.
He seized me. He sunk his teeth into my neck.
And I felt us enveloped in magic—so bright, so strong, so intense—
But the bracelets were stronger, and they were yanking me away from him.
They pulled me inside the house, tearing my neck from Lachlan’s teeth.
I shrieked.
He cried out.
And Alastair shoved Connor out the door and opened his arms to me. “Welcome home, darling,” he jeered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I was shaking. My collar was covered in dried blood from the wound that had been made when I was ripped away from Lachlan. I stood in the living room, all the way across the room from Alastair, who was sitting on the couch and glowering at me.
We had been this way for nearly an hour. Just facing each other off, neither speaking.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “This is what you want? Having me here against my will?”
“Your will can be molded,” said Alastair. “It will take time, as you’ve built up walls against me, but I will find a way to make you compliant and sweet again.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “And I’m not touching you again. I came in here to save Connor, that’s it.”
“I don’t want to touch you,” he said, looking disgusted. “It’s only the dragon bond that wants you.”
“Funny,” I said. “Truth is, I don’t feel very attracted to you right now.”
He stood up. “No?” He slowly tugged his shirt over his head, exposing his bare chest.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked away, disgusted by myself.
“And you,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You’re disheveled and bloody and I can smell the scent of that vampire all over you. And still I want you. I hate that I want you. I hate it.”
“Well, I hate it too,” I said.
“Look what you’ve done to my life.” He gestured around him. “It’s so tawdry, being caught up in a scandal like this. We’ll never recover our image, even after you drop the charges.”
“You’re a murderer, Alastair,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if I do drop the charges. And after all the cops out there that you killed?” I gestured. “You’re going to be locked up.”
He looked a bit alarmed, as if he hadn’t considered this possibility. “I suppose we’ll have to leave the country, then. And I’ll have to resign from the company.” He dragged a hand over his face. “You fucking, god damned whore. You have destroyed me.” He stalked across the room and seized me by the throat. He put both of his hands around my neck, and he started to squeeze.
I choked, struggling for air.
He squeezed tighter.
I closed my eyes, reaching for my magic. I concentrated, and I threw him away from me. I wanted to throw him all the way across the room, but he was too strong for me. I only managed about a foot.
Still. He wasn’t strangling me anymore.
I panted, rubbing my neck. Then I ran down the hall to the bedroom and locked myself inside.
He wanted to kill me. He hated the dragon bond. He hated me. Killing me would break that bond. I couldn’t let him do that. But I couldn’t get out of this house either.
I looked around.
I saw the telephone.
But who could I call for help?
On the phone’s body were a list of handwritten names. Elizabeth’s cell-1. Mom and Dad Home-2. Mom’s cell-3. Dad’s cell-4.
I snatched up the phone and hit the number 1.
It rang.
“Hello?” answered Elizabeth.
“Elizabeth, it’s Penelope,” I said. “Your brother’s trying to kill me.”
“What?” she said.
At the same time, Alastair burst through the door, coming for me.
I thrust the phone at him. “Talk to your sister.”
Her voice filtered through the speaker. “Alastair? What’s going on?
* * *
Talking to Elizabeth calmed Alastair down enough that he wasn’t murderous.
After he hung up with her, he told me I could sleep in the guest bedroom until he figured out what to do with me.
I was pleased that he didn’t seem interested in trying to force me to have sex with him anymore. There seemed to be only loathing in his eyes when he looked at me, and the feeling was mutual. I wouldn’t be disappointed if he never wanted to touch me again.
I couldn’t sleep, though.
I paced the room, trying to figure out what it was that I could do.
Hours went by. I was exhausted and terrified.
Mentally, I had listed my few advantages, which were that my magic was intact and that I wasn’t under compulsion and I was alone here in this room.
But I was trapped in the house, and I couldn’t get out of here. Even Lachlan’s and my magic hadn’t been enough to override the magic in the bracelets.
I knew that what I had told Alastair was true. After killing so many police officers, there was no way that the department was going to let him go. They were going to attempt to arrest him again, and maybe if I just sat tight and waited for them to do it, everything would be okay.
I didn’t think, however, that they were likely to be successful at arresting Alastair. He was too powerful.
Still, there were a lot of them, and only one of him, and they would figure something out. Maybe they’d pump gas into the house, like Waco.
I shivered. I’d get gassed too, then, wouldn’t I?
And besides at Waco, the whole place had burned down. I didn’t think that was typically thought of as a good solution these days.
But, maybe they would come up with some kind of solution. Maybe they would get to him.
Of course, by then he might have already killed me.
There was no doubt about it. If I remained here in this house, my days were numbered. Alastair would kill me, sever the bond between us, and free himself. He thought the bond was making him crazy, but the truth was that he was simply insane and possessive and murderous anyway. The bond wasn’t at fault. He was.
Still, I couldn’t stay here. I would not survive if I stayed here.
But the bracelets kept me inside this house, and there was no way—
Wait a second.
What had I just been thinking about burning?
CHAPTER TH
IRTY
I crept out of the guest bedroom, tiptoeing past Alastair’s bedroom. The door was closed, but when I got close, I could hear him breathing steadily. He was asleep.
He had told me that there was an adjacent door to the master bathroom, and that must mean that it was down this hallway somewhere.
I padded over the carpet, searching.
Ah, yes.
There.
I pushed open the door. I crossed to the other side of the bathroom and pulled the door to Alastair’s room shut.
It made a loud clicking noise.
I swallowed. Had he heard?
Nothing. At least not yet.
I reached out for the light switch and then stopped. This was going to be noisy enough as it was. Turning on the light would mean that there would be a brightness shining under the door into his bedroom. That might wake him up.
So, I just went over to the bathtub and turned on the hot water full blast.
I would have done this in the guest bathroom, but it only had a normal-sized tub in it. The master bathroom had a full-sized jacuzzi tub. Since there was no pool in this house, and since I couldn’t get outside to go to the bay, this was my only option. I only hoped the tub would be big enough.
The faucet whooshed and the water babbled as the tub began to fill.
I went to the door closest to Alastair’s room, listened for the sound of his breath.
All I could hear was the water running.
Damn it.
I opened the door a crack, peered inside.
I saw Alastair’s shadowy hulking form on the bed, swathed in blankets.
So far, so good.
I went back to the tub and touched the water.
Ow!
Damn it, I’d only turned on the hot water. I adjusted the temperature, turning on the cold as well. I didn’t want to give myself blistery burns. Geez.
Then I waited.
The tub was filling.
It was dark in the bathroom. I could see the shadowy outlines of the stand-up shower, which was across the room, next to the sink. It had a clear glass door with translucent shell patterns decorating the middle part, for modesty.
Next to the shower was a rack of towels. All of them looked dark blue in the scant light, but I imagined they were shades of pastel. This place was all done in pastels. The bathroom wasn’t different.
I’d been in here before, of course, but I hadn’t paid any attention to the towels.
I was pretty sure they were pastel, though. Maybe even peach and sea foam, like the living room.
But why was I worried about that?
Here I was, thinking about crap like this, and I wasn’t being aware. Alastair was probably awake, and he’d probably sneaked out of the bedroom, like he’d done before, the time he met me at the front door.
I went over to the door again to check.
No.
He was still in bed.
I went back to the tub. It wasn’t full yet.
God damn it. How long was this going to take?
I began to pace. I walked back and forth up and down the length of the bathroom, thinking about what I was going to do if I got out of this.
Lachlan and I had to figure out our magic. If I was free, Alastair would still be a problem, and we had to find a way to get him locked up, where he belonged. Our magic was the only thing that stood a chance of doing that. But I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know how to use it.
Everything with Lachlan seemed to be moving at warp speed, anyway. Our relationship was new, but I felt very close to him now, entwined with him, like we were part of each other.
I wasn’t sure how that had happened so quickly. I guessed it was going through so much together or something.
It scared me, if I was honest about it. I didn’t know how I was supposed to deal with everything being so intense between us all of the sudden.
But I didn’t want to think about this either.
I went back to test the tub.
It was mostly full. Full enough. I was going to displace water when I got in anyway.
I really hoped this would work.
I took off my clothes and stepped into the jacuzzi tub. I lay down, face up, letting the water close over my head.
And I allowed the shift to overtake my body.
I had to keep my wings in tight—couldn’t spread them out. There wasn’t room. But since my dragon form was essentially the same size as my human form, it worked. I shifted.
And then I climbed out of the bath, unwieldy in my dragon form.
My wings shot out, knocking over everything in my path. Loud clattering noises.
I wasn’t going to make it through the doorway with my wings.
Well. That didn’t matter. I was burning this place to the ground.
I breathed out a tongue of flame and caught the door on fire.
These bracelets kept me in this house? Well, if this house didn’t exist anymore, there was nowhere to keep me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Alastair, woken by the noise, lumbered out of the bedroom, flinging open the door to the bathroom, which was now burning.
I turned, spreading out my wings and knocking towels off of shelves. I blew fire at him, and he stumbled backwards.
Everything caught. The doors, the walls, the towels, the wood paneling surrounding the mirrored medicine cabinet.
“What the hell are you doing, Penny?” Alastair yelled through the sound of crackling flames.
I breathed fire at the floor, a circle that surrounded my feet, burning through the floor, so that I fell down to the story below.
He yelled from overhead, but I didn’t care.
I needed to burn down this entire house, and that meant starting at the bottom level. I got to work, moving from room to room, breathing fire wherever I was, turning the lower level into a blazing inferno.
I met Alastair again coming up to catch fire to the second level of the house.
He was in the living room, staring out the window, and I saw that he was using magic to lift water out of the bay.
He was going to drench my efforts.
I couldn’t have that, so I tackled him, claws in his back, and we both went down against the floor of the living room.
It was already full of smoke. The fire in the bathroom was spreading, and the fire from below was spreading. The house was going up like a tinder box.
He used magic to throw me off.
I flapped above him, my wings knocking paintings off the wall, more originals by Elizabeth no doubt. I breathed more fire.
His robe went up in flames. He screamed.
On the other side of the room, the huge picture window that overlooked the bay suddenly shattered, glass exploding outward.
Alastair took off running and threw himself out the window. He landed with a splash in the bay.
Damn it, that meant he could shift. In dragon form, his magic would be fully unleashed, absolutely unbound.
And I still couldn’t leave this stupid house.
I gnawed at the bracelets on my dragon wrists, tried to get a tooth in there.
Didn’t work.
I tried a claw. I tore my skin a little as I slid it between the bracelet and my wrist.
But my claw couldn’t loosen them either.
So, I went back to my original plan of burning the place down.
I caught the couch on fire. The easy chair. The carpet. The end table. Then I moved into the kitchen and blew fire into the cabinets and the breakfast bar and its stools. By the time I got to the dining room, my work was already done. The chairs and table were ablaze, and the wallpaper was peeling and bubbling in the heat.
I burned a hole in the ceiling and ascended to the top level of the house.
Not much here except for Alastair’s office.
I peered out the window at the bay.
Where was Alastair? Why hadn’t he come back? I peered at the bay as the house burned below me, waitin
g and waiting for him to resurface, to streak up into the sky in dragon form, to come and fight me in the sky, like the dragon wars of the past, both of us clawing and burning and biting each other until one fell.
I waited.
And the house burned to cinders.
When the roof went, I felt the magic in the bracelets collapse. I rose in the air, hovering there and flapping my wings, testing my freedom.
There was nothing keeping me there anymore.
So, I took to the air, leaving the smoldering pile of blackened wood behind me, heading home to my hotel.
* * *
When I got there, the hotel was dark and quiet. There were holes in the walls, after all. I was fairly sure I didn’t have any more guests. And recovering my hotel’s image from all of this mess was going to be quite the feat.
I alighted on the pavement of the parking lot, folding in my wings and surveying it.
I could do it. I would fight until my hotel was everything it was meant to be.
The first problem, however, was to stop Alastair once and for all. I had been half afraid that he would be waiting for me here, possibly flying in dragon form with Felicity in his clutches. Or Connor. Or Lachlan. I had been afraid that he’d be here to hurt me and my loved ones.
But it was quiet.
Except for a light behind the hotel. Next to the pool. It looked like someone had put on the outdoor lights there.
I took to the air again, flew over the hotel and set down behind it, next to the pool.
There they were. Felicity, Lachlan, and Connor. Oh, and Jensen. He was there too, but whatever. Truth was, lately, being around me had been more dangerous for Felicity than being with him.
They were engaged in some kind of animated conversation, but I didn’t hear anything they were saying, because they all got up and looked when I came into view.
“Penny!” yelled Felicity happily. She recognized my dragon form.
I dove down into the pool, submerging myself in the water. And I shifted back to my human form.
I surfaced, sputtering.
They were all crowed around the edge of the pool, talking at me in excited, animated voices.
“What happened?” said Connor.
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