Asher saw what Cole had done and pounded the ground with his feet excitedly. Tendrils of flame slipped out from between Asher’s teeth. He turned the flames on another water-beast, the fire lasting a bit longer than Cole’s had. When he was done, the water-beast was a cloud of steam rising into the sky.
Together, they destroyed the last beast. The water-beasts were gone, only their wreckage left behind. The back of Jude’s cabin was a mess. Cole could see right through to the front door. It was a problem, but not enough of one for him to linger.
Cole galloped to the waterfront. His beast retreated, but Asher stayed in dragon form. The proud, icy-white beast watched the water’s surface as Cole dropped to his knees. For a moment, Cole thought about praying. He’d never been the praying type, but now seemed like a good time to start.
He was ready to pray to whoever was listening to keep him safe when he jumped in, but the water rippled. Bubbles broke the surface. His heart filled his throat. He expected the worst.
Then, a familiar shape appeared. Jude flung her hair back, coughed, and dropped beneath the water again. Cole leapt forward, slipping over the rocks to get to her. She reappeared and kicked toward the shore.
Her brow was furrowed. Cole searched her for wounds, but she seemed unharmed. If she fought Alistair, she’d come out on top. A strange feeling overcame his stomach. A gut feeling that the unexpected had happened.
“You’re totally not going to believe this,” Jude said between coughs. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and leveled her gaze on Cole. There was a quirk of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “It’s not Alistair locked in the bottom of that lake.”
Her smile vanished as she scanned the trees around them. Cole knew what that meant. Alistair was somewhere else. He was free in the world.
And he had been for the last ten years.
Dread punched him in the gut. Cole had wasted ten years on this shore, protecting it from the wrong person. He should have been out in the world, searching for Alistair, trying to stop the maniac.
“Wait,” Asher said. “If Alistair isn’t the one in the prison, then who is?”
Her brow furrowed once more. “Like I would know. I…wait!”
Naked, she scrambled to her feet and ran for her cabin. She only paused for a moment upon seeing the state of her cabin. Cole heard her sharp curse before she ran into the front door. A second later, she’d reappeared with her laptop.
Cole wanted to smile as he watched her breasts bounce, and he did cover Asher’s eyes now that he’d shifted back, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrong. It tainted everything. Cole couldn’t escape the worry that he’d messed up. He knew Sybil was the one to place the spell, but Cole had watched over this shore. He should have known something was wrong.
Jude opened her laptop, made a noise of annoyance as it booted, and then turned it to him. On the screen was an old photo that he remembered well. It was of Cole’s family aboard the boat Asher had crashed an hour ago. The newspaper had been celebrating the opening of their tourism business.
After searching the photo for a second, Jude pointed to a young shifter in the boat.
“Zane?” Asher croaked.
Cole’s stomach dropped. It splatted against the ground. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He shook his head. “No. There’s no way. It had to have been an illusion. Alistair has tricks now.”
It couldn’t have been baby Zane in the lake. There was no way the shifter could have gotten mistaken as Alistair. Unless…
“Sybil betrayed us,” Cole said, breathless.
He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. The woman who had helped them had betrayed them. His lips curled as anger ignited in his chest. The flames were hotter than the ones he’d used on the water beasts.
“Get dressed,” he told everyone. “We’re paying a witch a visit.”
Asher trudged back toward the cabin. Jude stayed beside Cole as he looked into the lake. His friend had been trapped in there this whole time. The magic had changed Zane into something else. Something angry.
“He hates us. Doesn’t he?”
Jude hesitated. Then she nodded. “He asked me to pass on a message. It’s not nice.”
Cole clenched his fists. He’d wanted to protect his family, but he’d failed one of them. Zane had been trapped by a spell for ten years. Ten very long years. Cole knew because he’d been there. He’d watched over his friend’s prison.
Jude touched his arm. “There was no way for you to know. How could you have known?”
Cole didn’t have an answer. Only a feeling in his soul that he could have done better. Cole had been given a second chance. His mate had come into his life. Asher had returned, too. There was a chance at a life of happiness.
While Zane was trapped.
“We can still help him. Don’t give up, Cole.”
He looked down at his mate, her shoulders squared, and eyes filled with hard determination. He wondered what would shake her. She was his rock. No, she kept him above ground. She kept him from sinking too deep into grief and guilt.
Resting his cheek on the top of her head, he felt some small amount of hope. They could find Zane a mate and free him from the lake. It would take work and time, but they could do it. What Zane wanted to do after they freed him was another story. Like Jude implied, Zane wanted them to pay for their mistake.
“You told everyone to get dressed! Why are the two of you still naked?” Asher cried out.
19
Sybil lived in a small cabin on the edge of the lake. The back end of it was covered in windows that looked out over the water. They found her standing near them, an unlit cigarette hanging between her lips.
Jude crossed her arms over her chest.
It’d been Sybil who told Jasper about the clan that once lived here. Sybil had offered Jude the cabin next door to Cole’s. It was hard for Jude to believe that Sybil was behind Alistair’s disappearance. That this woman had imprisoned an innocent shifter for ten years.
Jude’s chest vibrated with anger. Her growl filled the room with a menacing sound. Cole touched her back, but his own growl was growing louder.
“I see you all handled Zane’s tantrum,” Sybil said without turning to face them.
“You knew it was the boy all along?” Jude couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to.
Sybil deflated. She looked like she would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. All they had to do was throw the water of truth on Sybil and poof, she’d be gone. If they did away with the traitorous witch, then maybe Zane would be able to break free.
“I was a fool in love,” Sybil confessed. “Alistair had me charmed. He was larger than life. The way he spoke, he could make you believe everything.”
Jude’s lip curled. “Alistair’s own clan knew he was full of shit.”
Cole moved his weight from one foot to the other. While he blamed himself for originally siding with Alistair, he’d come to his senses. Cole fought against Alistair and served as his guard for a decade. Of them all, Cole had done the most to keep Alistair from harming the world.
Sybil ducked her head before shrugging. “I know now that what I did was a mistake. I can’t say I’m sorry, but I can assure you that I hunted Alistair down. He’s still living, but I used a chunk of my soul to make him into someone new. It was black magic, the kind that I never should have touched, but it left a good mark on the world. Alistair is living as someone named Bob…or Joe. I can’t remember which.”
Jude instinctively reached for her mate’s hand. He was as stiff as a board and hot as coals. He seethed at the witch. Jude feared he would breathe fire right then and there. This wasn’t Jude’s argument to quell, though. This was between Cole, Asher, and Sybil.
And whoever else she had betrayed.
Zane, the creature changed by her power.
Heath, who she assumed had lost someone dear.
“I’m trying to fix my mistakes now,” Sybil assured them.
“It’s a bit late
for that,” Asher snapped. He flung his hand toward the lake outside. “My best friend is in that water and I didn’t even know it. I thought he’d died. Do you hear me? Everyone else thought Zane just left. I knew he wouldn’t do that to me, that he wouldn’t up and leave me without a word. So, I assumed that Alistair had murdered him.”
Asher’s shoulders hunched as he spoke, one hand cradled to his heart like he could hold it together even though it was crumbling all over again. Jude ached for the clan that had suffered here. She wanted to pull them both into her and hold them tight. Her beast growled and hissed at anyone who thought to threaten them again.
They’d lived through enough.
With things the way they were, these men were about to live through so much more. All Jude could do was keep them together while past wounds tried to tear them apart again.
“What are you doing to make amends?” Jude asked Sybil, keeping her voice hard.
Asher said nothing. The look on his face told her he wouldn’t believe a thing Sybil said. Not now that they knew the truth.
Sybil looked thoroughly apologetic, not that it meant anything. Action meant more. Jude looked between Asher and Sybil.
“I figured with the clan back together the way they always should have been, that there was a chance you could free Zane…and save his mind.”
The cruelty Jude had felt in the water, the way Zane had aimed it at his old clanmates. That’s what she was talking about. Zane would stop at nothing to make those he thought betrayed him pay. Jude had only survived to tell them who waited in the lake. Now that Zane knew she wouldn’t be able to free him and that she belonged to Cole, she wouldn’t be so lucky.
Bring it, her cocky beast growled.
The growl echoed in her chest. Cole touched the small of her back. She hadn’t even realized what she was doing. Her cheeks heated, and she flashed a half-smile. Cole grinned back at her. She didn’t know what caused the sudden change in his demeanor.
A moment ago, he’d been miserable. She thought he would burn the cabin down around them and now he smiled down at her like she was the only thing in the world.
“Eat shit, Sybil.” Cole looked at his mate as he spoke.
Asher cut in and added, “Eat shit and die, witch.”
“We have a new leader and she’s going to help us get through this. We’ll save Zane from your mistakes,” Cole announced.
Jude backed up and held out her hands. “Hold on. Are you talking about me?”
Jude thought she’d imagined it. There was no way Cole and Asher had announced her as their leader. Yet, when Asher turned toward her and nodded, without even sparing a moment to think, she felt the reality of it set in.
Her beast rocketed toward the surface and shared its pride. The beast was pleased. This was what it’d been waiting for all along. A gold dragon needed a family. Not just a family to keep the beast company, but to give the creature something to protect. Her beast was more than capable of leading.
It was Jude who doubted herself. Since her parents shipped her to boarding school, her dreams of becoming a clan leader had died. Here she was, though. With two dragons pledging themselves to her. There was no legacy for her to fulfil. No crown and court.
It was just her and these fools, one of whom happened to be her forever mate.
Jude threw her arms around Cole’s neck and captured his lips. He embraced her in return, lifting her off the ground. When they broke the kiss and Jude could see Sybil past him, the witch’s grin made her stomach turn.
Sybil was trying to make things right. The witch had gone to lengths to get the right people here on the lake’s edge. This wouldn’t be the last of the witch’s meddling. Not as long as the witch lived.
“When we get Zane out of that lake, I’m sending him to your doorstep first,” Jude promised her. “You can tell him about how you had to sacrifice someone to help Alistair. You can tell him how you changed your mind, but never let Zane out.”
“I can’t,” Sybil tried to add. “The spell…it doesn’t. There’s no way to break it without a mate.”
Asher growled, stalking toward the witch. “Or I could kill you right now and see if your magic goes along with it.”
“No,” Jude declared.
Asher whirled on her. His eyes were red from tears she hadn’t seen him shed. His lips parted, ready to argue with her.
“You aren’t a murderer. Let her cancer kill her. That’s why she’s doing all of this now. She isn’t afraid of Zane or Cole or you because she knows her time is limited already.”
The unlit cigarette hung between Sybil’s fingers. The spell she’d worked over Alistair to change his personality had taken a part of her soul. That kind of loss had weakened her. The cigarette smoke had filled the empty space and prompted a cancerous growth.
Witches were usually immune, but black witches always died faster. When they ripped apart their soul for power, they needed the souls of others to replace the power or they suffered the consequences. Jude had seen it at her boarding school once.
A girl bent on having the most power used the black magic to the point where she couldn’t stave off her depression any longer. That kind of image, death by the girl’s own hands, was burned into Jude’s mind.
Sybil had let the cancer in by using black magic. It wasn’t the fitting end any of them wanted, but it was the end that Sybil would get nonetheless. All they had to do was let time take her. Let her own mistakes end her life.
Both Cole and Asher bristled. Jude could see the tension vibrating Asher’s bunched shoulders. He wanted to pounce on Sybil and make her pay for his pain. Jude wouldn’t let her clan sink that low. They would fight to protect their own, but hurting Sybil was like hunting a deer with a broken leg.
When they left Sybil, the mood was dour. Everyone was silent. It was the kind of night where they should have gone out to celebrate Jude’s new leadership position with drinks, but that felt wrong. They didn’t have much to celebrate when one of their own was trapped in the lake.
They retreated back to the cabins. The row of cabins looked worse for wear, but Jude’s was unlivable for the time. The back half of her cabin was in ruins. She could probably close off the bedroom, but that left nowhere to sleep. The cabin wasn’t exactly a house. It was only a short-term rental.
“You aren’t sleeping on your own anymore,” Cole informed her.
She smirked, and shot a teasing quip back at him. “And who are you to tell me what to do?”
“Ah, I see power has gone to your head already. Should I call Jasper’s mate and ask what’s it’s like to live with a gold dragon?”
Jude snorted. “I’m far worse than my cousin. He might be a raging dick, but I’m the most stubborn ass you will ever meet.”
Tall, dark, and grumpy was no longer all that irritable. Sure, as Jude sidled up to him to let him wrap her in his arms, she could see the dark circles weighing his eyes, but she also saw a new light in him. It was joy. Happiness. Hope.
Cole was holding onto hope that they could make everything right. Jude knew she would work tirelessly to make sure that happened. As Cole led her back to his cabin, she started formulating a plan. It meant putting her short-lived detective skills to work, finding the last member of this clan and a way to bring him back to the lake.
If she could get them all together, then maybe there was a chance they could help Zane find peace. She hated to think about what would happen if they failed, if Zane chose to attack them for vengeance. That was also why she wanted as many dragons on this shore as possible. She would recruit new dragons if she needed to. Anything to keep these shores safe.
Her territory.
Her home.
20
Cole slapped the dusty piece of paper in front of her. Jude stared down at it, trying to make sense of it as Cole pushed a pen toward her.
“It’s the title for the property,” Cole filled in. “The land this cabin and your cabin sit on. Plus some more that wraps around the lake. Since this is y
our territory, it would only make sense that your name be on the title.”
There were a few other names, Cole’s old clan. One name was missing. She assumed a new title had been issued after Alistair had fled. It put the clan’s territory in all their names.
“We will go have it notarized tomorrow.” Cole swiped the paper away from her after she signed it.
“Tomorrow?” she asked skeptically. “It’s Monday. Why can’t we get it notarized today?”
His back was to her as he filed the paper away, but he tossed a wicked grin over his shoulder. It made her core clench and her groin grow wet and warm. Though she’d had her way with him the night before, the hunger never quite went away. She found herself reaching for him if he was near. She grazed his buttocks, his spine, his fingers. Anything just to feel him.
Tall, dark, and all hers. He never seemed to mind. If anything, he leaned into her. He sought out her touch like a heat seeking missile.
“Okay. So, what are we doing today?”
“Going to a courthouse.”
Jude cocked her head. “If we aren’t getting the land title notarized, then why are we going to a courthouse?”
Stress had finally cracked her mate’s mind. She didn’t know what had gotten into him. For a long moment, she stared daggers into the back of his head as if they could cut through his mind and reveal whatever he was hiding.
But, he left the room without another word. Jude followed him into the kitchen. A bowl of waffle batter had already been prepped. While she mused about Cole’s secret, she heated some peanut butter to pour over her waffle. Cole had started to stock up on it when he figured out it was her favorite flavor.
The microwave beeped, but she leaned her back against the counter and watched her mate work. He hadn’t yet put a shirt on, but a black apron covered his chiseled chest and left his tattoos bare. She usually liked to explore them and the small clues to his life that he’d hid in them. She was too distracted now.
“Do you have to get a divorce? Is there a secret marriage that you aren’t telling me about?”
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