by Amelia Jade
“Why is what like that with me?” she asked dangerously.
“Always getting riled up. You need to calm down,” he told her, holding up his hands to placate her.
Around them the four shifters were just standing there, trying to understand what was going on.
“Calm down?” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Don’t you tell me to calm down!”
The Order shifters closed in while the two bickered.
“I’m done talking to you,” she said abruptly, looking away from Ferro. The movement caused the shifters to bunch up to one side of them.
“Oh, you are, are you?” he said, his voice filled with sarcasm.
“Yes.” Her voice was firm.
“Okay.” Ferro’s voice suddenly changed.
Without warning they went on the attack. Their mock “argument” had allowed them to recover, take stock of their opponents, as well as group them all together. Flexing her muscles and not pulling any punches, she leapt into the fray.
***
“How did you know I was faking it?” she asked him as they lounged between the cars of a freight train.
Ferro had his arm hooked through the steel bar forming a ladder rung leading to the roof of the car. “Never before have you raised your voice at me,” he said. “I knew the moment you did that you were up to something. So I played along.”
It wasn’t exactly luxury travel, but they didn’t have that sort of time anymore. Shifter on shifter combat wasn’t unheard of in human society, but it was very much frowned upon in many places. The residents of Genesis Valley had come to live with it, knowing they lived among many of the shifter world’s worst. But out in the rest of the world, they had to go through a lot of paperwork once dead bodies started turning up. Now that the pair had returned to something resembling civilization, they couldn’t stick around once bodies started piling up.
The police would figure out they were shifters soon enough, and after putting in the bare minimum of time, they would stop caring. It didn’t speak well to the relationship between humans and shifters at large, but that was the way it was. For now, it worked in their favor, and Ana was okay with exploiting it.
“The real question is how did they know?”
Ferro grimaced and looked away, his eyes unfocused as he stared out over the landscape. He was stubborn and hated to admit when he was wrong just like anyone else, but she felt a stirring of pride as he worked his jaw and spoke. “Either they captured him and he spilled the beans, or he was playing us all along,” he said at last, referring to the junior member of the Order they had let go at their last encounter.
Ana nodded. “We never told him how we were going to deal with them though.”
His eyes snapped over to her. “That is a good point. How would they have known exactly where to find us?” he asked, though the question wasn’t directed at her.
“Someone had to have been watching the exit,” she said at last.
Ferro nodded. “If that is the case though, they saw us get on this train.”
She moved her leg so that it could rest on top of his. Every time she was in contact with him, she felt lifted up.
“Ferro, I need to tell you something.”
His eyes focused on her intently, and Ana knew he had picked up on the change in her tone.
“Anything,” he assured her.
“We’ve spent a lot of time together over the past two weeks,” she began, then shook her head. “Gah, that sounds so formal.”
He smiled gently, not saying a word, giving her time to figure it out herself.
“Oh, screw this,” she said. “I’m no good at this, so here it is: I’m in love with you.”
Ferro’s only reaction was to blink.
She looked at him sideways as the silence grew. “Not exactly the response I was hoping for…” she said, trailing off.
“What? Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I just did not expect to hear those words from your mouth any time soon. I have been wanting to say them for some time now, but I did not want to scare you off.”
He stood up and carefully straddled the distance between the two cars, lowering his head so that it was close to hers.
“I love you too, Aneksi,” he said softly, using the birth name her Egyptian parents had bestowed upon her so many years before. She rarely used it now, and Ferro had never called her that. Yet somehow, despite the negative memories associated with the name, the way he said it and the way it rolled off his tongue made her blush with happiness.
She kissed him. Hard.
“I wish it hadn’t taken us so long to find each other,” she said with a laugh.
Ferro nodded, moving back to a more secure position. “Agreed. But I am just grateful that we did. Now we can spend the rest of our lives together.”
She felt both her heart and her stomach flutter at that. It was a war between her old self and her new self. Ana’s old personality wanted to run for the hills at the concept of settling down and spending her life in one spot.
But she would get to do so with him, and that just made everything worthwhile, killing any concerns she may have had.
“Ferro,” she said, meeting that eerily beautiful silver-gray gaze of his.
“Yes, my love?”
“These Order dicks are starting to piss me off.” Her voice was harder than steel.
“I agree.”
“I think it’s time we flipped things on their head even more.”
He arched an eyebrow at her.
“I say we storm the damn Blood King’s Castle,” she growled.
Ferro’s eyes glowed with silver as his lip curled back in a snarl.
It was time to end this.
Chapter Fourteen
Ferro
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked as the cargo van hit another bump.
There were a few mumbled words from the back seat, but she ignored them. There was a metal grate between him, Ana, and the rest of the occupants. It muffled most noises quite well he found, meaning he didn’t have to tell them to shut up and let Ana drive.
“Of course,” Ferro said from the passenger seat.
“What are we going to do, you know, after?” she said awkwardly, as if unsure of how to approach whatever she was after.
“After?” He gave her a confused look.
“After this is over,” she said forcefully, gesturing all around them.
“I thought we were going to make a life together?” A tendril of doubt wrapped itself around his stomach as he looked at her.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, looking distinctly unhappy at having brought the subject up. “I just wanted to make sure,” she added lamely.
Ferro looked at her, trying to understand. Something was bothering her, he could tell, but she didn’t know how to bring it up?
Couldn’t she have waited until after?
They had made contact with Merlin again, and he had arranged a meeting between as many dragons loyal to the Council as he could. There had been a grand total of eleven, only six of whom had volunteered to fight. The others had said it was a suicide mission. Ferro could understand their reluctance, even if he didn’t share in the sentiment. They didn’t know everything he was capable of, but even then, it was still a very risky proposal.
There had been no further intelligence on who was leading the Order. With Luthor, Karthorax, and Parlanah—his three eldest children—all dead, he knew it had to be a powerful dragon. But he just did not know who, and neither did anyone else. If he knew who it was, then he could use that knowledge to predict how they might go about defending the ancient castle.
It was ironic that they had decided to make use of the castle where he had once ruled as a tyrannical despot. It would be a chance for him to set things right, perhaps make amends for some of the things he had done in his early life. They couldn’t have known that’s how he would view their occupation of the castle.
Or could they? Perhaps the decision was made on purpose.
>
It wasn’t as if the building truly deserved the label “castle” anyway. It was a square-sided structure with walls that at their peak were fifteen feet high and only three feet thick. These days they weren’t anything close to that. There was enough room inside for twenty, perhaps thirty people to live comfortably. Ferro had kept it restored over the years, mostly through his own hard work. It was in the middle of nowhere, and barely known by human civilization these days.
“I wonder if this was their plan all along,” he said aloud, partially to get other opinions, partially to change the topic.
“What do you mean?” Ana asked, her voice tinged with concern.
“I think whoever the leader of the Order is chose their headquarters on purpose. To send me a message.”
Ana glanced back and forth between him and the road. “You’re just mentioning this now?” she yelped. “We might be driving into a trap?”
He shook his head. “Maybe. I have my doubts on that though. This would have been done long before I got involved in the world again. They could not have known I would choose to do anything either. No,” he mused, “this was more of a middle finger by whomever is their leader.”
“I see.” Ana didn’t sound convinced.
Ferro knew he needed to get her head back in the game. They were currently en route to the castle. After much talking, they had decided that a frontal assault would be their best bet. The Order would never expect them to do it on foot either. They would be watching the skies for their dragons, and that’s what the Order would be prepared to repel.
So when they came storming up through the secret passage Ferro had had installed, the hope was they would catch them by surprise.
He reached out and laid his hand on Ana’s leg, giving her a reassuring squeeze that was just as much for her benefit as it was his. Ferro wasn’t scared about the upcoming assault for himself. He was utterly petrified that something would happen to Ana.
“Please do not do anything rash in there, okay?” he pleaded silently.
Ana frowned. “Have I given you the impression that I’m going to?” she asked quizzically.
He shook his head. “No, you have not. But that is your personality,” he said bluntly. “Brash, bold action, making decisions without much thought.”
Ana’s face grew darker as he spoke.
“It is what I have come to love about you,” he said softly. “It is also what I fear will be your undoing in the end,” he finished, his voice no more than a whisper.
“I’ll be fine, Ferro.” She shrugged. “As fine as any of them,” she said, tilting her head toward the rear.
“I hope so,” he said. “I could not bear to lose you. Not after just having found you.”
She blushed at his words, and for just a moment it looked like tears started to form in her eyes, but she blinked swiftly and then it was gone.
“I have many years of making you nervous that I don’t intend on missing out on,” she promised him.
Ferro laughed, a big, belly-shaking laugh that filled first the cabin, then the entire van. He knew the other dragons in the back were staring at him like he’d lost his mind, but he didn’t care.
She was perfect. Perfect!
“We’re here,” Ana said suddenly, having reached the forest that separated the castle from view of most people. The roughly hewn road led through the forest, but they were taking a different path. Ferro’s secret passage lay in the hills off to the right of them.
“Move out,” he commanded as his mate killed the engine.
His mate.
It was the first time he had thought of her like that, but he wasn’t startled at it. He fell in step next to her, casting repeated glances at her as they jogged through the field to the first of the hills.
“Watch your back, my mate,” he whispered.
The way her eyes blazed with pride and love at his words stirred Ferro’s heart.
The Order had no idea who they were messing with.
***
The tunnel was pitch black, making it hard for even the dragons to see. Their eyesight worked best by amplifying the light around them. It made seeing at night easy. In a completely sealed tunnel, it was much harder.
Though many people did not know it, the human body was actually bioluminescent. That is, it glowed in the dark. The light given off was thousands of times weaker than a human could pick up, so nobody really talked about it. A dragon shifter’s eyesight could pick that up, however, and it gave them all enough light to see a rough outline of the tunnel around them along with the other shifters. Ana, he noticed, seemed to be moving easier than any of the others. He wondered if her eyesight functioned differently.
In front of him, the tunnel ended abruptly. He reached back and clasped the next dragon on the shoulder, squeezing twice to let him know they’d arrived. Ferro would be the tip of the spear when they emerged from the tunnel.
Ana had argued violently when he told her she wasn’t following him out, but was instead going to have to wait behind several others. He had wanted her to be last, but had in the end relented, and she was in the middle of their attack line. It still made him uneasy, but she hadn’t been relenting, and none of the other dragons were going to side with him.
Smart ones, the lot of them.
Shaking his head, he waited until he received a two-squeeze reply. Everyone was ready. Ferro took a deep, audible breath. It was their pre-arranged countdown signal. After three seconds, he reached out and pulled the lever.
The wall in front of them simply dropped out of sight, taking a split second to fall as the restraints holding it in place were removed. Ferro charged out through the dust cloud that followed, managing to collide with another figure.
His hands snaked around their neck and he flexed, silencing the guard before he could cry out an alarm.
“Spread out,” he ordered, and the dragons pelted down the hallways, his layout of the building ingrained upon their minds.
The assault on the Order had begun. Following his own command, he crept down the hallway as all around him he heard shouts, often followed by cries of pain as his team got the drop on the Order.
Ana padded along silently behind him as he avoided the main barracks area, where he caught a glimpse of four of his men engaging with an equal number of Order shifters. He passed the window swiftly, not wanting to get drawn into the melee.
Much of the Order were young bloods, dragons who would be superior to any other race of shifter in strength and speed, but would be highly outclassed against his team. He didn’t worry about them.
It was the leader he was worried about.
He paused at an intersection, listening for noise. Behind him he could feel Ana’s solid presence.
“We must be insane,” he whispered quietly.
“What?”
“Look at us. This is the headquarters of a group of very bad people. People that have killed many of my family. Yet, you and I have just waltzed in here to eliminate them. It feels so…surreal,” he said, shifting his stance until his back was against the cold stone wall. Around them oil lamps lit the hallways. Ferro had never bothered to run electricity to the place.
“Are you serious?” Ana hissed. “This was your idea!”
He looked at her. “Actually no, I think it was yours,” he said.
She blinked, her eyes unfocusing then refocusing. “Okay, so maybe it was. But isn’t it your job to make sure I don’t allow us to make stupid decisions like this?”
He shrugged. “They were annoying me too. I have no intentions of turning back, but I just had to say how ridiculous this is.” He met her eyes. “Though I am glad to have you by my side.” He kissed her hard before she could respond, then darted around the corner, knowing she would keep up.
The hallway was empty in front of them. On the right were several doors that led to waiting rooms where Ferro had kept visitors if he didn’t feel like speaking to them right away. The doors were closed at the moment, and they crept past them. T
heir focus was on the big set of double doors at the end. That was where the throne room was, and where they suspected they would find the leader of the Order.
Ferro raised a finger to his lips, telling Ana to be extra quiet as they passed the first of the doors. She just rolled her eyes at him. He paused just before the opening in the stone wall, listening for anything.
Satisfied, he tiptoed past. There were five feet between doors, and he stopped just shy of the second one, motioning for Ana to follow.
His mate nodded and moved forward at the same moment he heard a noise.
“Back!” he shouted suddenly, but it was too late.
The door exploded outward, catching Ana in the side and sending her flying across the corridor until she collided with the wall on the other side. She slumped down to the floor, unmoving. A huge gash ran from her cheek all the way down to the top of her leg where the door had ripped her open. As he watched, the dark red of her blood stained her platinum hair, killing the luster it had always had.
Ferro’s vision blurred with rage.
The door in front of him crashed open as well and four shifters emerged, two from each doorway. Two of them had the smoothness of motion about them that told him they were experienced enough to give him a problem.
He needed to do something, and do something fast.
“Stay away from her,” he snarled as two of them took steps toward Ana. She still hadn’t stirred from her slumped sitting position against the wall.
Ferro moved to stop them, but the other pair circled around to intercept. He eyed them both critically. There was one young blood, and one older.
“If you do not get out of my way,” he said slowly, his voice low and threatening. “I will move you myself. It will be the last time you ever move. This I promise,” he finished.
The younger one opened his mouth.
“Should have done as I said,” Ferro told him regretfully. Then he moved.