by Zoe Chant
He shook his head. “No. Otherwise I wouldn’t have…” He made a vague gesture, indicating both himself and her. Then he let out a short, ironic laugh, rubbing his forehead. “And quite likely would have gone another twenty years certain that I’d destroyed our bond past repair. I truly am an idiot.”
“We agree on one thing, at least,” Rose muttered.
“Rose.” He dropped his hands again, fists clenching. He looked at her at last, eyes burning with intensity. “What I did was unforgivable. I know that. But if there’s a chance, no matter how small, that it can be undone—”
His cellphone went off.
Rose had never heard Ash swear before. Even Chase would have been impressed by the way he blistered the air now. His hand automatically flew to his cellphone, but he checked himself before drawing it out of its holster.
“No, go ahead,” Rose said as he hesitated. She sighed. “I know that’s your work ringtone.”
He snarled out a last bitter profanity, but answered the call. “Fire Commander Ash.”
The words This had better been an emergency hung unspoken in the air. From the way Ash’s face went utterly expressionless, it was.
“Understood,” he bit off curtly. “On my way.”
“I take it something’s burning,” Rose said as he slid his phone back into his belt.
He nodded, standing up. “Apartment block. It’s giving even Alpha Team trouble.” He hesitated. “Rose—”
“Of course you have to go,” she interrupted him. She grimaced, pinching the bridge of her nose. She still had a literal headache from the new memories jostling for her attention. “And to be honest, I really need some space from you right now. You’ve had twenty years to come to terms with this. I haven’t.”
He let out his breath as if he’d been punched in the gut. Before she knew what was happening, she found herself pressed back against the wall by his hard, scorching body. His hand cupped the side of her face—infinitely gently, but with a leashed strength that took her breath away.
“I will never walk away from you again,” he whispered, lips brushing against hers. “Never.”
Then he was gone.
Our mate is gone. Her swan keened in grief. Not our mate, not anymore. Our mate is gone.
The room seemed suddenly cold and barren. She couldn’t bear to even look at the rumpled bed, let alone make it.
She fled to her living room, but that was just as bad. The two chairs opposite each other, the two empty glasses on the table, even the pictures on the walls…everywhere she turned, she was reminded of him.
Memories glittered in her mind, sharp and jagged, threatening.
“Tea,” she said out loud, to fight back the rising whispers. “That’s what I need. A nice cup of tea.”
That was what you did when the world was falling apart around you. You made tea.
The first step down the darkened staircase nearly undid her—she stumbled, suddenly seeing another staircase, a descent into the unknown. She caught herself on the banister, clenching her fingers around smooth, worn wood.
Not cold metal. She wasn’t back there. Wasn’t searching through that terrible prison, feeling the pull of the mate bond with every beat of her heart…
“Tea,” she said again, her voice thin and panicky in the dark.
Her swan wrapped comforting wings around her. Holding onto her animal like a child clutching a teddy bear, Rose staggered to the kitchen.
Mug, kettle, teapot. The familiar ritual was soothing. This was something she could do without thought.
She couldn’t think. Didn’t want to.
She wrapped her hands around the hot mug—
His heated palm pressing against her own, fingers intertwining—
—and dropped it.
China smashed on the tiled floor. Scalding liquid splashed, only just missing her bare feet.
Her swan hissed at the crowding memories, driving them back. Rose drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Then she knelt to pick up the shattered pieces.
She was just wiping up the last of the spill when she heard the front door creak open. Her heart lurched—but then she caught a swirl of jumbled emotions from whoever had entered the pub. It couldn’t be Ash. She’d never been able to sense him.
Except, of course, she had. Twenty years ago, he’d been the only person she could sense. He’d changed that, changed everything. She’d gained her strange empathic power at the exact moment he’d scorched her soul. Ever since she’d lost the mate bond, her flailing mind had been desperately trying to connect with someone, anyone, everyone…
She shuddered away from the realization. She could have reached out with her empathic sense to identify her visitor, but she abruptly never wanted to use her twisted ability ever again. Hastily scrubbing her hands across her face to dash away the betraying tears, she rose.
“I’m sorry,” she began as she went into the main room of her pub. “But I’m closed tonight—Wayne?”
She wasn’t entirely sure for a second it was him. His back was curled in a painful-looking hunch, his stiff hands nearly at the same level as his knees. His shabby hat hid his eyes, but couldn’t conceal the distorted line of his jaw. Jagged, protruding teeth forced his mouth into a permanent, half-open snarl. Drool trickled down his matted, graying beard.
“Wayne, what’s happened?” Rose hurried round the bar, reaching out to him as he swayed. “Sit down. You need a doctor, a shifter doctor, right now. I’ll call Hugh.“
“No!” It came out as more like a bark than a human voice. “Rose…I’m sorry.”
He raised his head, and Rose gasped, recoiling. Wolf eyes shone yellow in his half-shifted face, filled with shame and agony.
“Run,” Wayne gritted out, his fangs cutting his lips. “Run!”
Too late, she saw his bared right arm…and the intricate tattoo twining around it.
Bristling black runes, edged with crimson where they cut into his skin…
She knew those marks. Now she knew them.
She tried to turn, to flee, but her feet were stuck to the floor. Scarlet ropes of light twisted around her ankles, holding her fast. Wayne moaned in pain as the glowing coils rapidly spread to bind her whole body.
Her swan beat inside her heart, but the magical cage held her trapped in her own skin. She couldn’t shift, couldn’t move so much as a muscle.
The front door of her pub creaked again.
A man stepped through. He was tall and lean and old, with thin white hair brushed back from a high forehead. Behind his scholarly spectacles, his gray eyes were cold as a winter sky. Blood-red light wove around his left hand, the runes running up his arm glowing with power.
She’d never seen him before…but she knew who he was.
“The Phoenix’s mate,” Corbin said. “We meet at last.”
Chapter 16
“Report,” Ash snapped, the moment his boots touched the ground.
“It’s a bloody mess,” Hugh said succinctly, not glancing up from his patient.
Ash cast a practiced eye over the scene. The entire ground floor of the low-rise apartment block was aflame, thick black smoke pouring out of heat-shattered windows. A fire of this magnitude turned out the whole department—three full crews were already battling the spreading blaze. Behind Hugh, several other paramedics were frantically triaging a dozen shaking, shocked victims.
Fortunately, all the non-shifters present were far too preoccupied to have noticed his abrupt arrival. The current officer in charge—a solid, capable, and completely human firefighter—had his back turned, busy barking orders into a radio. Ash knew that he could be trusted to coordinate the mundane efforts to douse the flames.
But the officer didn’t know about the other efforts.
Ash reached out with his mind. *Report,* he said again, but this time not out loud.
The storm-swift swirl of Chase’s mind touched his. *Griff and I have cleared the upper floors. We’ve been flying people out.*
“Which is why
I’ve got six casualties down here having screaming meltdowns because they were swooped through the air by invisible monsters,” Hugh muttered under his breath, clearly eavesdropping on the telepathic conversation. “We’re going to have a lot of clean-up later.”
Ash repressed a grimace. He always hated having to wipe the memories of ordinary people who’d witnessed Alpha Team at work. *Chase, is the building clear?*
*No.* Chase’s tone was uncharacteristically grim. *I can sense two people trapped on the second floor. They’re completely surrounded by fire, we can’t get to them even with protective gear.*
Ash broadened the psychic channel. *Daifydd?*
“Here.” Dai’s soft Welsh voice came, unexpectedly, from next to one of the ambulances. He waved off the paramedic who’d been working on him, coming over. Soot streaked his face. One side of his uniform jacket was in blackened tatters.
“I already tried to reach them.” Dai indicated the nasty burn showing through the scorched hole in his turnout gear. “You can see how well that went.”
Long habit kept Ash from showing any alarm. But now he knew why he’d been summoned so urgently. As a red dragon shifter, Dai was immune to any normal fire. For flames to be able to scorch even him…
“Are we dealing with a rogue dragon here?” he murmured, pitching his voice low in case any of the nearby victims were more alert than they seemed.
Dai shook his head, mouth set in a worried line. “It’s too intense even for dragonfire. Could be hellhounds, I suppose, but…something about this doesn’t feel right, Commander. It’s not behaving like any fire I’ve ever seen. And John can’t call down the rain.”
Ash picked out John’s towering form, backlit by the fierce orange glow. The sea dragon appeared to be busy laying hose for the front line firefighters, but Ash knew that his real focus was on an entirely different task. He was too far away to be able to make out the words John was singing, but he could tell from the tense line of his shoulders—not to mention the fact that the sky was still clear overhead—that the sea dragon’s magic was not going well.
Ash decided not to break John’s concentration for now. The first priority had to be to rescue the trapped victims. After that they could worry about containing and eliminating the blaze.
“I will clear the way,” he told Dai. “Are you fit to carry the victims out?”
Dai’s jaw tightened with pain as he flexed his burned arm, but he nodded. “Ready when you are.”
Ash released his control.
The Phoenix burst from his soul, brighter than the inferno. Hugh shielded his eyes with a muttered curse, though none of the nearby humans reacted. Mythic shifters could always see each other, but in this form he was invisible to mundane eyes unless he willed it.
He preferred to be discreet when he had to use his powers. It wasn’t exactly desirable for the regular firefighters to see their Commander stroll unprotected into a burning building, after all. He had a hard enough time enforcing safety regulations as it was.
He swooped through the air, passing unseen over the heads of the firefighters still struggling to control the flames. They glanced up uneasily, feeling his heat even through their safety gear. Dai pushed past them, taking advantage of the distraction to enter the building unnoticed. The dragon shifter disappeared into the billowing smoke.
The fire whispered to him like a lover. He knew better than to try to resist.
Instead, he spread his wings wide, embracing it.
A team of firefighters scattered, falling back, as the fire leaped up anew. His own burning feathers flared too, echoing the triumphant flames. The inferno’s fierce hunger was just a pale echo of his own. To transfigure dull matter into light, to blaze bright in the darkness, to burn…
Ash focused his will—but not on the fire.
He didn’t control fire. He never had. All he could control was himself.
That was what no one had ever understood, not even Corbin. He was the Phoenix, and the Phoenix was the flame eternal, and so he was the fire.
He forced down his own raging desires, and the inferno grudgingly died down as well. He calmed himself, and the flames calmed too, allowing Dai to sprint through them.
It was harder than normal to hold onto his control. At first he thought it was just due to his unsettled mind…but it wasn’t just the intoxicating memory of Rose’s body against his that was making it difficult to maintain his discipline.
Dai was right. This fire was strange. It fought him, hissing in malice. It sent out sparks into his soul, trying to rekindle his own destructive instincts. It was as if it had a will of its own.
Or as if someone else’s will was driving it.
Someone else’s will was driving it. A will that he recognized.
How could he not, when it had bound his own for so long?
*Hurry,* he sent to Dai, battling the rage and terror rising in his heart. *This isn’t a fire. It’s a distraction.*
Chapter 17
Rose couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle as Corbin walked round her. The warlock’s lips pursed as though she was a particularly perplexing piece of modern art.
“Not quite what I was expecting,” Corbin said. Rose’s skin crawled as his left hand closed around her right wrist. “But you will serve my purpose.”
The warlock glanced across at Wayne. “You, on the other hand, are no longer useful.”
The tattooed runes on the wolf shifter’s arm flared red hot. Wayne’s half-transformed maw gaped wide in a howl of agony—but only briefly.
Held motionless by Corbin’s magic, Rose couldn’t even close her eyes. All she could do was watch, helpless, as Wayne collapsed in on himself, shriveling as though all his vital fluids were being sucked dry. Within seconds, he was nothing but a handful of ashen dust.
Corbin drew in a sharp breath as Wayne’s empty clothes crumpled to the ground. He closed his eyes for a moment, like a smoker savoring the last drag of a cigarette.
Then his thin mouth twisted with dissatisfaction. “How quickly it fades.”
The runes on his left arm were indeed dimming, turning back into mere inked lines on his skin. The glowing ropes holding her were fading away too. She could move her fingers, her toes. She tensed, straining against the slackening restraints—
But before she could break free, Corbin’s hand tightened around her wrist. “Let us see what you contain, Phoenix’s mate.”
A searing pain wrapped around her arm, but it was nothing compared to the agony that ripped through her soul. It felt as if the warlock had cracked open her chest, plunging his hand into her heart. Her swan shrieked in terror as the warlock’s will closed around it like a fist.
Corbin’s eyebrows rose. He looked at her as though only truly seeing her for the first time. “So strong. Interesting. Though perhaps I should not be surprised.”
He opened his hand again, releasing her arm—but not his grasp on her mind. Wrong, wrong, to have someone else touching her animal, touching her soul. This wasn’t the mate bond, a willing sharing of strength. This was someone reaching in and taking, greedily latching onto her swan like some vile parasite.
Corbin held up his left hand, flexing his fingers experimentally. Rose gasped as a thousand needles bit into her right arm. Her swan thrashed in panic, only cutting itself further on the sharp-edged runes binding it. Every beat of her heart felt like it was pumping her blood into someone else’s body.
“Very interesting,” Corbin murmured, studying the smoky, pitch-black darkness winding around his fingers.
Rose fell to her knees, gripping her burning wrist. The runes were barely visible against her deep black skin, but she could feel every sharp edge pressing into her flesh. Her swan keened, trembling.
“I advise you not to fight,” Corbin said in a disinterested tone, as though it made no difference to him whether she did or not. “You will only hurt yourself. I am the only man ever to bind the Phoenix, after all. Holding you is child’s play in comparison.”
Rose
licked her dry lips, struggling to form words. It was hard to think with her swan’s distress shaking the foundations of her mind.
“You’ve made a mistake,” she croaked out. “I’m not his mate.”
“Indeed not.” Corbin leaned against the bar, considering her thoughtfully. “Not a flicker of fire within you. He truly did destroy your bond. Well. I suppose any animal will chew its own leg off to escape a trap.”
“That’s right.” Rose drew on all her pent-up feelings of betrayal and anger, praying that they would give strength to the lie. “There’s nothing between us. You’re wasting your time. He won’t come for me.”
Corbin’s mouth curved in the thinnest of smiles. He turned away from her, facing the door.
“He will,” he said. “He has.”
Rose had seen Ash in his shifted form before. She’d seen him freed, soaring across a summer-blue sky. She’d seen him unbound, rising in fury from the prison that had held him.
But she’d never before seen the Phoenix truly unleashed.
The old oak door exploded as if hit by a meteor. The entire front wall of the pub simply vanished, stone vaporized instantly by unimaginable heat.
He came like a falling sun, like the wrath of heaven, like the end of the world. Even shadows burned away to nothing before him. He filled the room with white-hot fury, his wings curving round to trap Corbin in a circle of flame. The great beak opened, blasting the warlock with a wordless, blistering shriek of rage.
The warlock tipped his head back, facing the Phoenix without flinching. The edges of his robes smoldered. “We will speak when you can do so as a man rather than a beast, Blaze.”
Fire swirled, condensing down into human shape. Ash stood there, backlit by the inferno. The flames were so bright that he was just a dark silhouette, face hidden.
“Release my mate,” he said.
“No,” Corbin replied, quite calmly.
Rose tried to move, to call out, but the runes bit into her arm. Corbin didn’t so much as glance at her, but her jaw locked tight, bound by the warlock’s will. All she could do was watch.