“Do you trust me?”
Isaac ran his fingers through his curls, pushing the mess of it away from his face to reveal his strong cheekbones and piercing eyes. Quinn wanted to pull that face down to hers. She wanted to devour his mouth before they took to the skies. But, she stayed where she was standing and waited for a response with baited breath.
“Well, fuck,” Isaac said with a breath. “You know I do.”
A smile overtook her face and she leapt toward him to plant a kiss on his lips. They had no time to spare. They took the bike over to hide behind the gas station where she could reclaim it on their way back. It also made a convenient place for Isaac to shift into his dragon form. Watching the transformation was always mind blowing. Isaac’s change was no different.
The man disappeared and in its place sat a hefty beast with scales that mimicked the color of the sky above. His spine was marked with spikes of bone and the ridges of his brows mimicked the pattern with small horns. He would have looked threatening as he stood to his full height had he not been Isaac. Being the man that he was, he lowered his massive head and bumped her gently in the chest, a sweet little gesture.
Then, something amazing happened. His scales rippled with color. They morphed and changed until the great, beastly form before her disappeared. But, that wasn’t quite what happened. Isaac’s dragon hadn’t gone invisible. If Quinn looked close enough, she could see the faintest outline of the dragon form.
His scales had changed color to match his surroundings, much like a chameleon. Her stomach flipped. This was the product of GOE experimentation in the States. There had never been another dragon like this in the States, at least, not as far as Quinn knew. There was a great number of dragons in her family, each of them a different species from somewhere far around the world. She had a pretty good idea of what the world offered in regards to dragons and this was not one of them.
Isaac held his mate in his claws, terrified with every beat of his wings that he might drop her, or worse, crush her if his fingers so much as twitched. It was an anxiety ridden experience for Isaac. In his claws, Quinn seemed to be having the time of her life. She’d donned her motorcycle helmet to guard against the raging winds as he pushed his speed.
Below them, the road twisted as it marched forward. It bent in on itself in places, small sections that Isaac could pass right over as he flew. It would save them time. They hadn’t taken much time to calculate where the agents and the captured dragons might be as they’d lost time with their frolicking the night before. Isaac kept his eyes on the road below, while his mind retraced the events of the night before.
The small woman in his grasp, a human with a spirit much larger than her body, went from being the mate of another dragon to his mate in the short time he’d known her. Isaac was already head over heels for this fireball, in love with her scent or the way she would press her lips together as she thought about serious subjects.
But, the night before, Quinn had expressed serious hesitation in regards to sleeping with him. He wasn’t going to pretend that it didn’t hurt. He could hot wire a car, could reprogram a computer, could take on a room full of GOE agents, but he couldn’t bear the pain her rejection had caused him. His first thoughts had been selfish. Isaac had wondered what about him had been repulsive. He feared that his own mate wasn’t attracted to him.
As the night moved forward, Isaac had come around. He’d seen what had his mate so frightened of intimacy. It had a lot to do with a mother that’d left her life at an early age. He wished he could tell her that he believed that who someone was had a lot more to do with their life experiences than it did with some flimsy DNA passed down by another fallible being.
So far, the woman he was getting to know didn’t seem like a flight risk, as she called herself. Quinn, if anything, had a dogged determination that kept her on a path until she’d seen something through. She was in his hands, thousands of feet above the ground in search of GOE agents because of some promise she’d made with little thought. That was the woman Isaac saw himself loving for years to come.
Even if she left for her work, the distance might drive him wild, but he knew she would find herself back in his arms again before long. It was a feeling that settled itself in his stomach and comforted him until they saw the first sign of a possible GOE truck.
There were only two problems. The first being that the possible GOE truck was clearly unmarked. While it looked as if it could carry a pair of weak dragons in the back, there was no way for them to know for sure until they cracked it open. If they were wrong, if that was an innocent truck with nothing to do with the dragon abductions, then Isaac would be carving a bad name for dragon kind in such a precarious time.
His beast rumbled. There was only one way to know, it told him before dipping down. While his beast was dead set on the truck below them, Isaac was aware of a second problem. He kicked himself for not checking the weather radar while Quinn had been gone. He’d been so upset when he’d found her gone and then his leader had called him with the upsetting news and all thoughts of storms had been chased from his mind.
There was a shelf of black clouds bearing down on him from the west, pumping chill air in their direction and disrupting the air currents he was currently riding. His wings began to waver, his body rocking from side to side in his descent.
Panic struck Isaac, but the woman in his grip laughed. It was a sound he could barely hear over the wind roaring around his ears. At first, he thought it was screaming, but his beast huffed a laugh with her and Isaac realized what it was. She held onto him like he was a theme park ride and let her head tip back.
She was crazy, he thought with a smile. She was crazy for thinking she could track down GOE agents. She was crazy for trying to help her fellow family members during the last storm he caused. She was crazy and he loved her.
The truck below came into view. Isaac felt his stomach lurch. This had to be it, the told himself. That feeling, the one that hit him like a ton of bricks, was the silver they lined the carrier with. The dragons were in the back of that truck. But, the storm system to the west was quickly bearing down on them. The air grew chill and began whipping around them. It tossed Isaac’s body to the side just before his back claws hit the truck.
His beast growled and he let himself fall back. He couldn’t circle in front of the truck and let them know they were there. He couldn’t risk Quinn like that while she was still in his grasp. If it had been just him, that would be one thing, but she was liable to get hit if the agents started taking shots at him.
He let the truck get a quarter of a mile ahead of him before he darted forward. He planned on turning the vehicle on its side. If they could free the dragons from the silver lined compartment, then they could move out before the storm to the west struck. Quinn said that Mother Nature wanted him dead for what he was. Isaac was something unnatural, a dragon made into something else by GOE scientists. He had no memory of it, but there was a part of him that knew it was the absolute truth.
His claws sank into the metal, grinding as he closed his back feet around it. The wheels lifted off the ground as he pumped his wings. The wind from the west hit him and this time it served to help. His body staggered to the side and the truck went with him, tipping over harder than he’d wanted. It crashed to the ground, the sound of metal crunching and bodies thumping. He cringed, but it was the best he could do.
They needed to move fast.
Quinn jumped from his grasp and ran over to the truck doors. The agents were climbing out the only door available to them. They grunted with the effort, but wasted no time in pointing their weapons at Isaac. Quinn struggled with the lock on the truck doors, but silver bullets careened through the air and kept him from helping her. He had to shoot into the sky and leave his mate on the ground.
His heart clenched. It was a bad idea, he told himself. He had to get back to her. To the west, the storm was approaching. It creeped toward them like a shark through water. Isaac dove back down. He took a
chance and let his beast fold back. Human feet crashed into the ground. Pain rocketed through his ankles and shins, but the back of the truck provided cover while he gripped the lock.
It crumped and broke beneath his grasp. The door swung open and his mate darted forward. The sound of footsteps alerted Isaac to the GOE agents as they appeared around the side of the truck. He didn’t want to hurt them. It was the last thing Isaac wanted. It would hurt the reputation his people were trying to build. Liana would tan his hide and Dane would let her.
He had to come up with a plan and quick. Quinn was inside the truck, her shaking hands pulling at the cages her friends had been locked in. Isaac took a chance to protect her and slammed the doors shut before launching his dragon form into the air.
Think, he needed to think. This situation wasn’t about brute force. He needed a plan where everyone walked out of this alive. But, how could he do that when the agents on the ground were firing silver into the air?
Isaac dove down. His claws grabbed one of the agents by the shoulders, sharp points digging in. Isaac’s brain was in overdrive. He didn’t think about how the agent could still shoot him while Isaac held him. The bullet went through Isaac’s wing. He roared with pain. It stung and sent a burning sensation through his entire wing that made it nearly crumple. He dropped through the air, but not before dropping the agent into a group of trees.
The human plummeted into the foliage. Isaac didn’t stay to check on him because, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the truck door swing open and his mate stumble out. The GOE agent on the ground wasted no time. He grabbed the unaware Quinn and pulled her into his body, one arm barred over her chest.
Isaac felt more wrath than he’d ever known in his life. Luc had pissed him off with more than a few of his pranks and Isaac was angry with his empty past, but nothing compared to the feeling of seeing his mate in the arms of the hostile GOE agent.
His power crackled inside of him. The thunder overhead echoed in response. The storm was bearing down on them. Electricity crackled inside of Isaac’s throat, but he had no safe target yet. He needed to get Quinn out of the man’s arms before he destroyed him.
Two shapes staggered and fumbled out of the truck. One, a tall and thin shape, ran. The other, a smaller and rounder figure, paused and turned toward Quinn. The figure hesitated as if it wanted to help, but didn’t know how. They had a chance to escape. Isaac could easily grab both of them and whisk them to safety. Quinn bought them more time. She raised the heel of her steel bound boot and brought it down on the agent’s instep.
Isaac felt a surge of pride, but he could do nothing as the agent raised the gun in his hand. The shot rang out and the world stopped. The form before Quinn and the agent slumped to the ground in a heap. Quinn’s scream pierced the world. The trees shook. The storm beside them shook.
Then, the skies broke open. Rain fell like a sheet of water and didn’t let up. It dripped into Isaac’s eyes and crashed against his wings. Since the silver bullet had gone through his wing, it was already beginning to heal but the dull ache of what happened still remained.
Quinn brought her elbow up into the agent’s head and he fumbled backward. Isaac saw the opportunity and took it. His dragon form plummeted toward the agent, now several steps behind his mate. His claws hooked into the man’s shoulders and he cried out in pain. Isaac didn’t care. He wanted the man to suffer for touching his mate.
Isaac rose into the air before letting the man go. His body twisted and tumbled through the air before hitting the ground with a sickening sound. Isaac spun around and unleashed the crackling electricity building in his throat at the truck. It hit the vehicle with a force that sent it careening sideways, away from his mate. The corners were singed black and the metal crumpled and folded around the heat. No one would be using that truck to steal dragons anytime soon.
He dropped his dragon form and launched into a run toward Quinn. His mate was on her knees beside the fallen dragon woman. Her hands shook as she tried to roll the woman over, tried to assess her pulse. Isaac could tell, just from looking at her, that the dragon woman had passed. His stomach clenched. Quinn whipped around, her eyes burning with anger and hatred.
“You could have rescued both of them,” she snapped. “You could have grabbed them and gotten them to safety.”
Her body shook, the rain chilling her down to the bone, so cold that not even her anger at him could warm her.
The thought had crossed his mind. He knew it was the right decision, but the moment he saw the agent touch Quinn, he became something else. His concerns had not been about others. It’d been about the only thing that mattered to him.
His mate.
Isaac’s jaw clenched. He would not apologize for the need to protect her. He’d been waiting for his moment to strike. Had he done what she wanted and left with the two dragons, Quinn would have been left in the arms of the GOE agent. There was no way of knowing what a GOE agent willing to kidnap dragons would have done to a human woman willing to rescue said dragons. She could be mad at him, she could be furious at him, but at the end of the day, his mate was alive and that was what mattered.
Perhaps, later, he would feel some remorse, but in that moment his beast wanted nothing more than to grab her and pull her into their body so they could feel her body, feel her alive and in one piece. But, he stayed his ground. He could tell she wanted nothing to do with him. He’d give her time. He’d let her heal before he touched her again. That was the least he could do.
He turned away, trying to ignore his own need and distracted himself with the truck he’d attacked in his rage. The back compartment was lined with enough silver to keep a dragon in their human form. He had no plans of investigating that space. Instead, he looked into the cab of the truck to see if the agents had anything of use that wasn’t destroyed or fried by his anger.
There was, in fact, a laptop lying on the far window. He reached in and pulled it out, along with a radio attached to the dashboard. It would be convenient to listen in on their radio channel later to see where they were taking Luc and Marc’s mother.
Dane must have had his hands full with the twins. Luc would be ready to break down doors like he had with his human mate and Isaac knew, better than some, the true depths of Marc’s anger. Isaac fully believed that quiet and zen appearing Marc would have given rage filled Noelle a run for her money. The two of them would burn entire worlds together.
They were pretty lucky the two of them didn’t end up as mates.
“The other dragon ran away. We should try to find him,” Isaac suggested, his hands full of GOE’s belongings.
Slowly, Quinn picked herself up from the ground. She didn’t look at her mate and it struck Isaac like a physical blow, but he told himself to be patient. Quinn needed someone to be mad at and the GOE agent that killed the female dragon was already dead.
Isaac knew that had been a mistake, dropping him from the air like that, but he hadn’t been himself. That was something he would need to work on, he thought as he scratched the back of his head. He glanced toward the trees where he’d dropped the other agent. The bushes below them were trembling and he heard the snapping of twigs. It wasn’t the other dragon, he knew that.
“We need to go,” Isaac said as he nudged his mate.
“I can’t just leave her here,” she snapped.
But, the dragon was already dead and there was nothing they could do to help her. All Isaac wanted was his mate safe and sheltered out of harm’s way, but he knelt and hauled the dragon’s body over his shoulder and began in the direction he’d seen the other dragon run in.
This wasn’t what they’d planned. He looked into the sky, fighting against the rain falling down on them. It was washing away the red evidence of their failure, both of the dragon and the agent that had died in this mission. It’d gone wrong in more ways than he could count. He should have been smarter about it, he should have tried to prevent the losses they now faced.
Instead, there was a dead agent tha
t’d been, without a doubt, killed by a dragon, and a dead dragon who should have returned home to her family. Isaac only hoped they could find Casper before he, too, got hurt.
He glanced sidelong at his mate. She walked stoically beside him, as if the rain wasn’t freezing her to her core.
***
Quinn blamed herself. She was, after all, only human. What had she expected of herself in that fight? She’d been nothing more than a liability. She hadn’t been able to open the back of the truck to free her friends and when she’d ushered them out, all she’d managed to do was get grabbed by a GOE agent. Now, that agent was dead, a GOE truck was totaled, another agent was probably groaning in a tree, and…
Ruby…
Quinn tried her hardest not to look at the corpse her mate was carrying. It broke her heart. Maybe, Ruby didn’t have that many good days left in her, but Quinn couldn’t bear the weight of her guilt. All she could do, for the moment, was tuck it away and keep her eyes peeled for Casper.
He would be difficult to spot. The dragon man was thin and quiet. He was adept at not being seen if he didn’t want to. She could have let Casper find his own way, could have let him run, but she didn’t know how far he’d make it on his own. He was still fragile from his time with GOE. Casper’s soul was fractured around the edges, his voice cut in half.
If they left him out here, she didn’t know what would become of the dragon man, but if they could get him back to the family then she would know for certain his future was safe. Quinn cupped her hands around her mouth, but her voice stuck in her throat. They were carrying a dead body down the side of the road. Should she really be proclaiming their presence by calling out Casper’s name?
The rain pelted her face. It was cold and stinging, much like the night Ruby and Casper were taken. It chilled Quinn down to her core. Or, perhaps, that was the guilt.
The Dragon's Lover (Elemental Dragons Book 2) Page 10