Firefighter Phoenix

by Zoe Chant

  “Safe,” he echoed, as if it was a foreign word. “You really think that your country will grant me asylum? I am—”

  “You’re not dangerous,” she said firmly, cutting him off. She hesitated, but she had to be honest with him. “They might have…conditions, though. I’ve only heard of a few shifters with your sort of elemental power. The sea dragon Pearl Emperor, for water, and the Queen herself, for earth.”

  His hand tightened on his knee. “I will not be used for harm. Not ever again.”

  She put her hand over his, rubbing her thumb in gentle circles over his hot skin. “I won’t let that happen. If the British government tries to harness your abilities, we’ll go somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where we live, as long as we’re together.”

  He was quiet for the next hour or so, lost in his own thoughts. Rose left him in peace, the mate bond reassuring her that nothing was wrong. He just needed some time to breathe, and be.

  They stopped at a tiny roadside diner for lunch. Blaze stared down at the single-page menu in frank alarm, clearly paralyzed by options, so Rose ordered for both of them. Nothing fancy—fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans—but Blaze treated the food like a revelation. She enjoyed his astonishment, and ordered four types of dessert.

  “What did they feed you in there?” she asked, as he gazed at a forkful of apple pie as if it was a work of art.

  “Military rations.” He turned the fork, feeding her the flaky morsel. “Nothing like this.”

  She licked her lips, tasting cream and cinnamon as if for the first time. The light of the mate bond glowing in her soul made everything fresh and new, reborn.

  Even the sun-faded diner, the scratched plastic tabletops, the worn linoleum floor—they were all perfect, beautiful. Young lovers had carved that heart into the table. The scuffs on the floor were from weary feet, finding a place to sit down and rest. The old diner’s imperfections were like laughter lines or stretch marks. They were scars of love.

  “I’d like to have a place like this,” she said wistfully.

  Blaze’s eyebrows shot up. “A restaurant?”

  She snorted. “Believe me, no one would want to pay for my cooking. No, not a restaurant. But a place where people could come to be together. A safe haven, somewhere to relax, just for shifters. A pub, maybe.”

  From his quizzical look, this was evidently one aspect of English culture he hadn’t picked up from Corbin.

  She patted his hand. “Another thing that will be easier to show you than explain.”

  A heated gleam lit his eyes. His leg slid against hers under the table. “Will I enjoy it as much as the last thing you showed me?”

  She laughed, feeding him another bite of pie. “Maybe not quite that much.”

  His wicked expression faded as he chewed and swallowed. She thought at first that he was just lost in flavor again, but he put down his fork rather than scooping up another mouthful. She sensed a slight darkening down the mate bond, something shadowing his thoughts.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You have a dream.” He looked down at his plate. “I don’t know how I fit in with it.”

  “You’re my mate. You are my dream.”

  “Yes, but…” He let out his breath, running a hand through his hair. “You have a life, a place you come from, family. I don’t know…any of those things. All I know is fire and destruction. What can I do, in your world?”

  Reflexive reassurances sprang to her lips, but she held them back. He needed more than empty platitudes. He looked so lost, so out of place, this creature out of legend dropped into mundane life. What would he do?

  “Firefighter,” she said firmly.

  His gaze jerked up, startled, as though he hadn’t actually expected her to come up with an answer. “What?”

  “You know fire. Better than anyone. You can use your powers to control it.” A slow smile spread over her face as she realized how perfect it was. “To save lives, rather than destroy them.”

  “Firefighter,” he said softly. “Yes. I would like that.”

  She leaned over the table to kiss him. “You’ll be the best firefighter ever.”

  She never knew what had warned him. Mythic shifter senses, perhaps, even keener than her own. Or just greater wariness, from his lifetime of captivity.

  One moment she was snuggling up against his side as they walked back to the car—and the next she was down on the tarmac, his body covering hers. A crackling lightning-bolt of green energy sizzled through the space where her head had been.

  “Warlocks!” Blaze shouted, a ring of fire roaring up to shield them.

  Another bolt shot overhead, passing clean through the flames, but at least their attackers couldn’t get line of sight on them through the roaring inferno. Blaze pulled her to her feet, shoving her in the direction of the car.

  “Go,” he said, his voice crackling with power. Flames haloed him, spreading from his back like wings. “I’ll deal with them.”

  She knew better than to try to argue. Rose ran for the car, her heart hammering, fumbling in her pocket for the keys. Behind her, she heard the crack of another lightning bolt, and a piercing scream—but it wasn’t Blaze’s voice. Heat washed over her back.

  She screamed herself as the air in front of her split in two, parting like a curtain. She had a glimpse of foam-flecked fangs and maddened eyes lunging at her out of the portal.

  Instinct took over. She flung herself flat, rolling. A stinking, furry body passed over her, jaws snapping shut on thin air. She scrabbled to hands and knees as the wolverine turned, snarling—

  And went up in flame. Between one breath and the next, it was simply gone, no more than embers on the wind. The portal blinked out, cutting off a human howl of agony. Somewhere, a warlock had just lost his shifter, and his power.

  “Not the shifters!” she cried out, covering her head as another jagged blast of energy shot past. “Blaze, don’t hurt the shifters!”

  “I have to!” He turned, and she saw the agony in his eyes, behind the black flames. “They’re linked—”

  He broke off, spinning round. A wolf bounded across the car park, leaping for him. Blaze dodged it, instead throwing fire at the warlock who’d just stepped out of thin air. The unfortunate man didn’t even have time to scream before he turned to ashes.

  And the wolf—just stopped. It collapsing in mid-stride, like a puppet with cut strings.

  “They die together,” Blaze finished, stepping over the fallen shifter. His hand closed around her arm, pulling her up. He shielded her with his own body as he turned, ready to fend off any further attack.

  Rose stared into the wolf’s glazing yellow eyes. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought it looked relieved.

  A sound of frantic chanting came from behind a nearby fence, but no lightning bolt followed. Blaze bared his teeth, thrusting out one hand as if throwing a ball. The wooden fence vaporized, revealing a crouching warlock desperately sketching the shape of a portal in mid-air.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Blaze growled.

  The warlock screeched, doubling over. The half-formed portal flickered out, glowing lines fading into nothing.

  “Try that again and you lose both hands at the wrist.” Releasing her, Blaze stalked toward the man.

  Cradling his burnt fingers, the warlock turned to flee. A wall of fire blazed up, stopping him in his tracks. His eyes flicked desperately left and right, searching for escape. Rose recognized his face…and the ocelot cringing at his feet.

  “Not him!” She ran after Blaze. “She helped me, don’t kill him!”

  “I won’t.” Not entirely suiting actions to words, Blaze seized the warlock by the throat. The man made a strangled scream as Blaze lifted him off his feet with no apparent effort. “But I can hurt him a great deal without harming his shifter.”

  “Please,” the man choked out, scrabbling at Blaze’s fingers. “I’ll tell you—anything!”

  Blaze opened his hand, allowing the man
to fall to the ground. “How did you know where we were?”

  “Corbin,” the warlock wheezed. Livid red burns ringed his throat. “Spent years—studying—the Phoenix. Knows how to—track it.”

  Blaze went very still. “He can find me?”

  “Always.” The warlock spat on the ground, a hint of sadistic satisfaction breaking through his terror. “How do you think he ever found you in the first place, as a child? Your beast burns so bright, he could see you on the other side of the world. Run all you want. You can’t hide from him. You or your bitch.”

  “No, Blaze!” Rose grabbed his arm, digging her fingernails into his rock-hard muscles. “His shifter, remember?”

  Blaze’s hand unclenched, the fire around it fading. He stared down at the cowering ocelot for a second, then turned to her, his face bleak. “I can’t let him live, Rose.”

  “But she helped me,” Rose said again, throat closing up. “She’s innocent.”

  She knelt, holding out her hands. The warlock glared, but didn’t stop the little cat from creeping forward. Rose stroked it, her tears dappling the soft, spotted fur. The ocelot’s shivering body relaxed a little.

  “Can’t we make him release her?” she asked Blaze.

  The warlock spat again. “I’m dead anyway. If I’m going down, might as well take the mangy beast with me.” He bared his teeth at her, eyes glittering with malice. “Since it hurts you.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer. Fire engines, or police, responding to the disturbance. Rose knew they didn’t have much time.

  “There must be something we can do,” Rose said, hopelessly.

  Blaze stared down at the ocelot in her hands. It looked back at him, and something passed between them. Not telepathy. Just understanding, between two souls who’d shared the same torment.

  “Are you sure?” he asked it, very quietly.

  The ocelot’s thin flanks rose and fell in a long sigh. It turned its head, exposing its throat in submission.

  Blaze leaned down and touched its head.

  Fire flared.

  “No,” Rose sobbed—and then realized that she could feel bare human skin.

  The woman sat up, her long, tangled hair her only cover. She turned her hands over in front of her own face, looking at them in wonder.

  “No!” howled the warlock—and was gone, in a flash of heat.

  “Thank you,” whispered the woman. She seized Blaze’s hand, pressing it to her forehead. “Thank you.”

  Blaze nodded. His own face had gone stark white. He swallowed, hard, before he spoke. “We have to go. Will you be all right?”

  “Yes.” The woman turned toward the direction of the approaching sirens. “Hurry. I won’t tell them you were here.”

  Rose cast a last backward glance over her shoulder at the woman as they hastened away. She didn’t seem hurt…and yet Rose couldn’t shake the feeling that she was.

  She is, her swan whispered. It hadn’t been frightened during the fight, but now it was cowering in her heart, frozen as a mouse in the shadow of a hawk.

  “What did you do?” Rose asked Blaze in a low voice. “How did you free her?”

  He stared straight ahead, his mouth set in a sick, flat line. “I burned away her animal.”

  Chapter 11

  “My mate?” It was so far from anything she’d expected Ash to say that for a moment Rose wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “What about him?”

  “Your mate is the reason I never said anything about…my feelings.” Ash’s head made the tiniest jerk, as though he’d started to look down but then forced himself to keep holding her gaze. “And he is the reason why I cannot be with you.”

  “Ash, we’ve already been over this. I refuse to let my life be dictated by a man I never met. It doesn’t matter to me that you aren’t him.”

  “He is the reason I cannot be with you,” Ash repeated, more forcefully. “Not why no one can be with you.”

  His face was utterly unreadable, as closed and expressionless as she’d ever seen. She looked at his hands instead. That was how Ash betrayed emotion, she knew.

  Right now his left hand was clenched tight over the scar on his right forearm, knuckles white. His nails dug so deep that she feared he was about to slit his own wrist.

  She reached out to him, to make him break that shaking grip, but he jerked away.

  “Do not—” He stopped, closing his eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath. “Don’t touch me. You would not want to, if you knew what I have done.”

  And suddenly, she did. It was an impossible, ridiculous conclusion, but she knew, knew that it was right.

  “You knew my mate,” she said.

  He had the face of a dead man, gray and frozen. Very slightly, he nodded.

  It was like a candle kindling in her mind, throwing new light on piles of shadowy memories. Innocent, perplexing mysteries about him, suddenly illuminated.

  Suddenly made monstrous.

  “You.” She could barely force the words out past the hurt and betrayal tightening her throat. “You had something to do with his death.”

  “I did not kill him.” His hand twisted on his wrist. The old scar stood out stark white against his tanned skin. “But I might as well have done. In any event, I am the reason you don’t have a mate.”

  “How?”

  He flinched as though the word had been a gunshot. “You know that I was imprisoned, once.”

  She did, though he’d never explained how on earth anyone could have shackled the Phoenix. It had taken her over a decade to tease out the barest facts—that he’d been a captive of a secret military program in America, that he’d grown up there, that he’d eventually escaped and sought asylum in England.

  “Your mate was there.” His eyes met hers for a fraction of a second. “Do not ask me how I know. There are things I cannot—will not—tell you. But he was there. And when I destroyed that place, I also destroyed your future. Your happiness. And so I destroyed us. What chance we might have had.”

  She felt cold inside, cold as ice. She picked up her glass, draining the whiskey in a single swallow. It might as well have been water. The burn didn’t touch the numbness in her chest.

  She’d never told anyone the date of her mate’s death, the exact moment when she’d felt that shock of loss. She wouldn’t have been able to stand having people creep around her, pitying, uncertain of the correct protocol. She’d always pretended it was just another day.

  But now she realized that Ash had always been there. No matter whether the date fell on a weekday or weekend, he’d made sure she wasn’t alone at that hour.

  He’d known.

  “All this time,” she said, through the ringing in her ears. “All this time. Would you ever have told me, if I hadn’t forced the issue?”

  “No.” His tone was flat, final. There was no hint of apology in it.

  Distantly, she wondered if she should be angry. If she should throw him out, ban him from her life, never speak to him again.

  But he was still Ash, her friend. Even now, with her soul raw and bleeding, she simply couldn’t believe that he would ever hurt her. That he could hurt her.

  “You didn’t tell me for a reason,” she said slowly, things connecting in her head. “And not just because you didn’t want me to hate you.”

  He stopped breathing. She’d never seen anyone so utterly motionless.

  “Do you hate me?” he said, after a moment.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said, honestly. “This is—it’s—damn it, Ash, talk to me! Tell me why you didn’t tell me this before.”

  He stared down at his knees. “Because I knew that it would bring you nothing but pain. And I could not bear to hurt you any more than I already had.”

  She digested this for a moment. “I have questions.”

  He straightened his spine, shoulders setting. He looked like a prisoner facing a firing squad. “As I said, there are things I cannot tell you. But I will answer what I can.�
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  A million questions whirled through her mind. She rubbed her palms across her face, trying to organize her racing thoughts.

  “Did you know him well?” she asked.

  “I thought I did.” He made a sharp, hollow noise, somewhere between a laugh and a gasp of pain. “The older I get, the more of a stranger he becomes.”

  “Who was he?”

  He looked at her, and said nothing.

  “You won’t even tell me that?”

  “I will tell you nothing,” he said softly, “that would only hurt you.”

  Ash had been held captive. He’d never spoken about what had happened to him, but she knew it had been brutal. An experience so traumatic that it had frozen him into the man he was today.

  Her mate had been part of that. And Ash did not want to tell her anything about him. Because it would only hurt her.

  “Was he…” The word evil stuck in her throat. “Was he…complicit, in what happened to you there?”

  He didn’t say anything for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But just as she opened her mouth to ask something else, he said, “Yes. For a long time. He meant well. But yes.”

  No, her swan cried in her soul. No. Our mate was good and strong and kind. He would not hurt anyone, not ever, except to protect and defend. He was our mate.

  But bad people could have mates too.

  If she’d found him…would she have been horrified? Tried to redeem him, to pull him away from that dark place?

  Or would her animal’s instincts have overpowered human morals? Ash had said her mate had had his reasons. Would she have listened to them? Found her own excuses?

  Would she have become one of Ash’s tormentors too?

  We would have stood by our mate, insisted her swan. Never left him. Always loved him, always, forever.

  “You’re absolutely certain he was my mate,” she whispered.