by T. S. Joyce
Logan eased out of her and then back in until he pressed against her clit. He lowered his lips to her neck and worked her skin, right over the hickey he’d given her. This bruise he was giving her would last longer than him, and that thought killed her.
She rolled her hips, meeting him stroke for stroke as he sped up, his back flexing under her hands with his movement. She was trapped against the wall, and she’d never liked that in sex before, but she would give anything to stay trapped by Logan always. He didn’t scare her anymore, not even a little.
Logan grunted and pushed into her faster. Pressure pulsed within her on every thrust. She was so close. Panting his name, she closed her eyes to the world and rode a wave of ecstasy only Logan could give her.
He clamped his teeth on her neck just how she liked and slammed into her deep, froze and shot warmth into her center, heating her from the inside out with each spurt of seed. Her orgasm exploded through her. Winter’s body throbbed with pleasure as she raked her nails down his back.
Suddenly, Logan stopped moving within her, pulled her away from the wall, and just hugged her. He inhaled deeply and buried his face against her neck. He was shaking.
And now she was crying again. This shouldn’t be the end.
It should’ve been their beautiful beginning instead.
Chapter Sixteen
Winter ran her fingertips across her lips as she watched Logan sleep. She was knelt beside the bed in the blue moonlight that filtered through the slats in the blinds. He’d slept here in her arms as a final gift, but she wasn’t ready to quit. Not until he drew his last breath.
He was lying on his back, his face relaxed in his sleep, dark eyebrows smoothed out, dark lashes resting on his cheeks, jaw un-clenched. He looked like an angel fallen to earth. Perfect and scarless.
She was determined to change that, but she’d done this before.
Winter ran her fingers through her hair and gripped the base of her neck as she really considered this. She’d tried to save a sick man before and failed. She’d bit into Dad’s forearm, and his response had been almost immediate. Blood had poured from the bite, poured from his mouth, from his eyes, from everywhere. He’d looked at her so scared, so confused, and all she could do was hold him as he died. Because of her.
This is different, her panther reasoned. Logan is like us. He won’t die. Not from our bite. We could save him, bind his bear to us even more, make him fight for his life…for us.
Winter swallowed hard and tried to imagine biting him. She still remembered the feel and smell and taste from when she’d bitten Dad.
Could she even do that again?
To save Logan? Yes.
To make him want to fight? Yes.
Even if it was just her way of saying “I love you” back before he went? Yes.
She wanted him to be hers no matter what happened today. She needed him claimed if she was going to pull this off.
She had to do it fast, or he would yank away, so without thinking about it another moment, she lurched forward, grabbed his arm, and sank her teeth into the same place she’d bitten Dad. This time would be different. It had to be for her to be okay. For them both to be okay.
Logan flinched, and his eyes flew open, but he didn’t move after that. He just watched her bite down as hard as she could. He didn’t show pain, or anger. Instead, the corners of his lips curved up in a sad smile as she claimed him.
With a sob, she released his torn flesh and spat red onto the white sheets.
Logan held his bleeding arm out for her, and she crawled into the safe place he created, right against his ribs. She wiped her mouth on his skin, smearing crimson as a tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Logan’s lips were pressed against her forehead, his hand stroking her hair.
“You love me, too,” he whispered against her hairline.
Her voice would come out all weak and heartbroken if she spoke, so Winter nodded and cuddled closer.
“You’re going to be okay, you know.”
She didn’t answer because he was wrong. Winter had reached the peak of what one person could handle, and now she had nothing left to lose. She couldn’t go back to Red Havoc, couldn’t face Brody, couldn’t join the Blackwings, couldn’t do anything. She was stuck in purgatory until she knew Logan was safe again.
And a shifter with nothing to lose was the most dangerous creature on the planet.
Logan didn’t know it yet, but today she would go up against the Blackwing Dragon himself as a panther doomed in a war she couldn’t win against a fire-breathing dragon.
There was no other choice, though, because she couldn’t sit by and let her mate burn to ashes.
****
Winter blew out a long breath before she got out of her truck. It was early, just at dawn, and the sky was still gray and not yet blue. Logan was still sleeping back at the motel, but Winter was in front of Kane’s territory about to “yank the tail of the dragon,” as Ben called it.
She hadn’t bothered to clean all the dried blood from her mouth as she’d readied in the dark because Kane would need proof.
The hairs rose on her neck. Careful, her cat warned. Winter turned her head toward the woods and frowned at a flock of birds that sprung into the sky toward the east. The woods didn’t feel right. Perhaps the dragons were out for an early morning walk or…something.
She narrowed her eyes at the silent woods before loping toward the front porch to get to the house faster. She didn’t like the woods at her back right now, which made no sense because the woods were her most comfortable place.
Leaves rustled at the tree line, and Winter instinctively crouched on the porch, hissed long and loud.
The door behind her opened, and Rowan stood there in a baggy sweater and bell-bottom jeans. Her blond tresses were up in a messy bun that looked better than anything Winter could ever manage. Put-together, she may look, but her eyes were worried and darted to the woods, then back. To the woods, then back.
“What’s wrong with this place?” Winter asked, scanning the woods.
“I don’t know,” Rowan whispered. “Kane and I felt the same. He left a few minutes ago, but he hasn’t returned. He told me to stay here.”
Rowan smelled of fear, but why? She was a dragon. Clearly there was more to the Blackwing Second than Winter knew.
“You’re bleeding,” Rowan murmured as she came to stand beside Winter.
“It’s not my blood. It’s Logan’s.”
Rowan shot her a shocked look, but Winter had expected it and was already drawing up her shirt sleeve to show her the claw marks. “He’s mine and I’m his. I can’t join the Blackwings without him. I can’t let Kane put him down.”
Rowan shook her head. She looked pale, almost sick in the dawn light. “Well, now I can’t either.”
Hope bloomed inside of her chest. Rowan was her last hope at actually surviving Kane and saving Logan, too.
When Rowan frowned at the woods, Winter followed her gaze to Kane who was making his way out of the tree line. He looked odd, lurching this way and that, his soft brown eyes locked on his mate.
Behind him, the A-Team melted from the woods one at a time, appearing from behind trees like ghosts.
“Kane?” Rowan asked, panic tainting the word.
“R-Roe. Run,” he slurred.
“What?” Rowan asked, stepping down the first stair.
“Run!” he yelled as he tripped and spun. When he hit the ground hard, Winter gasped. There were a dozen feather-tipped darts in his side, maybe more.
“Oh, my God,” Rowan gasped, bolting for him. “Kane!”
Shit! Winter sprinted after her and yanked her back just as she reached Kane, but it was too late. Rowan’s body jerked again and again. She turned in Winter’s arms, her eyes wide and terrified. Now that her body was covered in darts, her eyes morphed from gold with elongated pupils to blue human eyes. Her dragon was going to sleep inside of her.
“No!” Winter yanked furiously at the darts to try and help h
er, but they were empty. “Rowan, Rowan, listen to me,” she rushed out as the bright-eyed shifters breached the clearing. “Call them. Call them now before you lose her completely.”
“Who?”
“The Bloodrunners and the D-Team.” Winter yanked Rowan’s hair, arching her head back. “Do it, Rowan. I’ll keep you and Kane alive until they get here.”
Rowan rolled her eyes back in her head in a slow blink. “Don’t leave us,” she begged in a whisper.
The A-Team ran toward them, flooding from the woods like a violent tidal wave, yelling their war cries.
“I won’t,” Winter promised. “I need back-up though. Call for help.”
Rowan clicked her firestarter and parted her lips. Winter angled her face away from the heat when Rowan blasted a fireball into the sky.
As Rowan went limp in her arms, Winter set her furious gaze on the closest attacker who had morphed into a tiger shifter.
Her animal roared to get out of her, and when Winter let the beast have her body, she released a hellish fury in a way she had never allowed her cat to have before. Because now she needed to kill. She needed to give into her predator instincts and bleed the assholes to survive. To protect the dragons.
She ran a few steps and leapt, clashing with the Bengal tiger.
And then, over the rush of rage and adrenaline and the deafening sound of roaring animals, there was pain.
Chapter Seventeen
Kill them.
Logan startled awake. Breath ragged, he stared up at the ceiling of Winter’s motel room. His bear was restless, and the edges of his vision were tinged in red. He only got like this when he was about to kill.
He sat up fast and scanned the room for Winter. God, let her be safe. Safe from me. Safe from…
Kill them.
Logan frowned and rubbed his hands over his eyes. A truck engine started up outside. He recognized it as Winter’s. Old, wheezing engine that needed work. That truck was so her. She clung to things with a vice-like loyalty.
Logan padded to the window and pushed the curtain aside just in time to see her driving away.
Hurry. Kill them.
Fuck, he really was losing his mind. Broken bear, broken Logan, but soon it would be all over. A vision of Winter mourning his death flashed across his mind. He hoped she would be okay.
Where was Winter going at the crack of dawn, and without waking him? Maybe she was leaving so she didn’t have to say goodbye. He wasn’t good at goodbyes either.
Her suitcase was open, her clothes scattered, but he’d memorized her things in the way he’d been trained to do. He had memorized every detail about this place, about his room, the office, the cars and license plates of the D-Team and the A-Team.
Fucking kill them.
Logan shook his head hard. Something felt wrong. Off. His skin rippled with gooseflesh, and he had the urge to move. To do something. Anything.
Desperate for a chore, he readied for the day in a rush and glared at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. His eyes were the brightest he’d ever seen them, but why? Because today was his last day on earth? Maybe.
“No. Kill them,” he growled around the toothbrush.
What the fuck, his bear could use him to talk?
“Logan, save her. She needs us.”
All his hair lifted on his body. With only a moment of hesitation, Logan spat in the sink and rinsed as fast as he could. He grabbed his keys off the table and bolted out of the room.
Winter was going to see the dragons. She was going to plead for his life, or try to kill Dark Kane…something. He had to protect her from them. Fire, teeth, claws, ashes, ashes.
“Come on!” he yelled as his truck skidded around a turn.
The mountains were beautiful in the morning light, and he would’ve taken a moment to enjoy the last dawn of his life if there wasn’t some bone-deep instinct telling him he was going to be too late.
Hurry.
“I’m fucking hurrying!”
Woods and rich greenery blurred by as he wound the mountain roads beside the snaking river. Almost there.
Kill them.
The dragons? God, how could he kill dragons?
But to protect our Winter?
Logan gripped the steering wheel so hard it bent under his grip. He had to keep his skin until he escaped the truck. He had to hold it together until he got to the dragons.
Through the thick tree canopy, a ball of fire shot up into the sky and exploded as it reached the clouds. A line of smoke was all that remained. Why would one of the dragon’s blast a fireball up into the heavens? Unless…
Unless it was a call for help.
“Fuck!” Logan sailed down the steep entrance to Kane’s land and over the bridge. He felt like he was going in slow motion. He gunned it up the last gravel hill and then slammed on the brakes when he hit the clearing.
What he saw made no sense. Two Bengal tigers were circling a battle, one white tiger lay on the ground, matted with red, staring vacantly. And in the center was a pair of grizzly bears, brawling, roaring, clawing at—oh, God.
A sleek black panther with ferocious gold eyes was fighting for her life. No, not just her life. She was poised over two limp bodies. She was crouched above Rowan and Kane, trying to keep the grizzlies from them. She slapped viciously, ripping into one of the bruin’s necks. She was a weapon in motion, enraged, desperate. His loyal Winter was going to die for the dragons.
Logan slammed on the brakes and shoved the door open before he even put it in park.
Rage pumped through his veins as his bear ripped out of his skin.
Kill them. Kill them all.
He charged, every step fueled by hate and bloodlust. Winter was bleeding. He could smell it on the air. He could practically taste it, and for every drop of her blood they’d spilled, he would make them pay in agony.
One of the tigers hissed and leapt at him, but he swatted it away like it was nothing. A tree in the woods cracked loudly with the force of the asshole’s body, but Logan was already focused on the next. He gave his back to the second tiger in desperation to rip the grizzlies off Winter. Pain raked down his back, but he didn’t give a fuck about anything but the pitch black bear he’d zeroed in on. The one with his teeth deep in Winter’s shoulder.
Logan barreled into the attackers, pulling them with him and away from Winter and the dragons. Everything smelled like blood. Winter had done good, hurt them, punished them, and now he would end them. Not cleanly, but like they deserved instead. Dishonorable deaths for dishonorable monsters. He raked his claws down the belly of one, spilling his guts and rendering him helpless. The next got a jugular shot, deep into the muscle, nearly severing his damn head so his shifter healing wouldn’t work fast enough to fix him.
Logan’s head was filled with the sounds of pain and the scent of blood and fur. He moved onto the next before one was expired because he knew the kill shots. He knew they were dying in piles behind him, one by one until there was a single wolf in the woods that remained. He had the bright green eyes of one of the A-Team. He turned to bolt, but fuck no to that. Logan chased him down, pounding his feet faster and faster behind him until her leapt on the back of the gray wolf. Logan snapped his neck in two, then shook his powerful head and tossed him into a pile of nothing on the ground. After the wolf’s eyes dimmed with death, Logan stood on his hind legs and roared as long and as loud as he could to expel the rage still built up in his bloodstream.
****
When Logan’s roar shattered the woods, Winter flinched from her pacing and lowered to her belly in fear. Oh, his bear was the monster she remembered, but even more terrifying. Now she truly believed his claim that he wouldn’t have killed her. If he’d really wanted to, Logan could’ve ripped his truck apart panel by panel until she was in a bloody mound like the rest of the A-Team. The massacre had taken only seconds. Logan had been swift, skilled at killing. The last living grizzly, the black one who had ripped into her shoulder in an attempt to g
et to the dragons under her heaved one final breath and went still.
Logan had been so fast he’d blurred from one death blow to the next.
Rowan and Kane were bleeding from the claw marks Winter hadn’t been able to protect them from. She needed to Change back so she could care for them, but the panther didn’t want to give up her body yet.
Logan had saved her. He’d saved the dragons. She wanted to meet his animal face-to-face in this braver body she had right now. The one with claws and teeth and weapons.
Logan lumbered from the woods, more massive than any grizzly she’d ever seen, wild or shifter. His chocolate-colored fur shook with each powerful step, and his long black claws dug into the earth as he strode toward her.
He. Felt. Terrifying.
Be brave. He’s ours. He won’t hurt us.
Crouching, she approached him slowly, but not directly. She slunk this way and that, keeping her neck exposed, but he didn’t slow at all. In fact, he sped up. Would he charge? Would he kill her, too? Was he still wrapped up in the bloodlust she’d seen in his eyes when he’d single-handedly put down the A-Team? All but the white tiger. That kill was hers, and it would haunt her.
When Logan picked his pace up to a trot, she lowered to her belly and waited for him to eat her. He didn’t, though. He stopped in front of her and ran his head down her side with such force, she toppled over.
If she could cry with joy and relief in this body, she would’ve. But all she had in her repertoire was a soft mewling sound as she pushed up on her hind legs and wrapped her paws around his neck. She extended her claws into his thick neck to steady herself and ran her tongue up his face, cleaning the blood, showing him the affection he deserved. She was still breathing because of him.
He wrapped a massive paw around her back and stilled, allowing her to clean the other side of his face. And when she was finished, he pressed his nose against the bite mark on her shoulder and the claw marks up her back. They would scar, but they weren’t fatal. Already her shifter healing was working to cinch up her skin.