by Zoe Chant
Thankfully, she seemed to understand his slurred words. She dashed off, her bare feet slipping on the tiled floor in her haste. Griff locked his jaw, curling into a tight ball as another wave of pain wracked his muscles. Only the thought of waking Danny up kept him from screaming.
Let him stay asleep, he prayed desperately. Don’t let him see me like this…
“I’ve got it, Griff!” Hayley flung herself back down next to him, his heavy leather jacket in her arms. “What am I looking for?”
“Inside pocket,” he gasped. “Box. Hurry!”
“Where—oh! Is this it?” Hayley’s eyes widened as she freed the small, slim case from his jacket. Stark yellow biohazard and poison warning stickers covered the black steel. “It’s locked. Griff, what’s in this?”
“Medicine,” he lied. “Key.” He scrabbled at the thin chain around his neck, his own claws cutting his skin. Breaking the chain, he dropped the small key into Hayley’s waiting hand. “Open. Carefully.”
“Okay.” Gingerly, Hayley extracted a syringe, holding it in the tips of her fingers. “You want me to inject you?”
“Yes.” He screwed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate, struggling to keep his human mind intact in the maelstrom of animal instincts. There was something else she had to do first, something critically important…“No! Wait!”
Too late.
He didn’t even feel the tiny pinprick of the needle through the storm of torment—but then the wyvern venom hit his veins.
The pain of uncontrolled shifting was as nothing compared to that.
Black ice raced through his blood, shattering every cell in his body in its wake. His lion and eagle screamed together, once, as the terrible void swallowed them all.
“Call Ash!” he said, or tried to say, with his last breath. “Call-”
Everything stopped.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hayley
“Ash?” Hayley shook Griff’s shoulder. “Griff! Who’s Ash?”
His whole body rocked under her touch, rigid as a statue and just as unresponsive. His limbs were still twisted into impossible configurations, but at least he didn’t seem to be transforming any further. Between one breath and the next, the vicious spasms ravaging his muscles had completely stopped.
That has to be a good thing…right?
Hayley had a horrible certainty that it wasn’t. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
“Who’s Ash?” she repeated futilely. It had to be important, from the way he’d suddenly yelled the name…
Struck by sudden inspiration, she pawed through Griff’s jacket again. Her hand closed on the thin hard rectangle of a cellphone.
It was locked, protected by a fingerprint scanner—she glanced at Griff’s twisted, half-animal hands and immediately dismissed that possibility—but a small button at the bottom of the screen read Emergency Contact. Praying, Hayley touched it.
Dialing Ash, read the screen, and Hayley’s breath whooshed out of her in an explosive gust. “Please pick up, please pick up,” she pleaded as the phone rang in her ear. “Oh, please-”
“Griffin?” said a calm, cool male voice.
Hayley could hear laughter and clinking glasses in the background, as if the speaker was in a restaurant or pub. “Are you Ash?”
“I am Fire Commander Ash, yes.” The man seemed perfectly unperturbed to be called by a complete stranger using his friend’s phone. “Who is this?”
“Griff said to call you,” Hayley blurted out, too panicked to even tell him her name. “Oh please, you have to come, he’s collapsed and I gave him the medicine but I don’t think it’s working!”
“Medicine?” Ash sounded nonplussed—and then his tone abruptly sharpened. “You gave him the syringe? The one with the warning stickers on it?”
“Yes, he-” Hayley found herself talking to a dead line.
He hung up? But I didn’t even tell him where to find us!
She frantically jabbed Redial, but the phone just blinked Caller Unavailable at her. “You can’t be unavailable!” she yelled at the phone. “You’re supposed to be his emergency contact! Griff, what do I do now?”
He didn’t respond. He was motionless.
Completely motionless.
He wasn’t breathing.
Hurling the useless phone aside, Hayley flung herself to her knees next to his rigid body. She pressed her fingertips to his neck, feeling for a pulse. His skin was freezing cold. He was as stiff under her hands as if he’d been dead for hours.
Chest compressions, she thought, suddenly icy calm. Griff needed her, now, and there was no time for any emotion but the single-minded need to save him. The CPR procedure sprang into her mind with crystal clarity, as if the textbook was open in front of her.
She pumped his chest, hard, counting the rhythm under her breath. At the right moment, she paused to give him mouth-to-mouth, not caring that his protruding fangs cut into her lips. It didn’t matter that he was twisted and stretched, half-beast. This was Griff, her Griff, her mate. She knew that he was still there, a spark of life hidden deep inside that still, barely human form. And she would not let that life slip away.
Compressions, ventilations. Compressions, ventilations. Focus, Hayley. Keep the rhythm.
Hayley cursed herself for throwing Griff’s cellphone away, out of reach. She knew she needed to call an ambulance, but she didn’t dare leave his side yet. He needed her to be his heart, to be the air that he breathed…
Fiery light flooded suddenly through the window. Acting on pure instinct, Hayley flung herself across Griff’s body, trying to protect him as the glass imploded inward.
An eye-searingly bright shape hurtled into the kitchen, white-hot flames streaming behind it like the tail of a comet. For a split second, the vast, bird-like form spread fiery wings over them both, its eyes as fierce and lethal as the heart of the sun.
The bird-shape vanished, leaving a man standing where it had been. He looked to be in his mid-forties, but he was still muscular and broad-shouldered, military training clear in his straight-backed stance. Wisps of smoke rose from the scorched floor around his feet.
Hayley gaped at him. “Who—what-?”
“I am Ash.” He was already kneeling, his calm gaze sweeping over Griff’s motionless form in assessment. “When did you give him the venom?”
“Venom?” Hayley said blankly.
He glanced up at her, briefly, and she rocked back on her heels as the power behind those dark eyes struck her like a blow. “The wyvern venom. In the syringe. When?”
“I—I don’t know,” Hayley stammered. Poison? He said it was medicine! “Not more than ten minutes ago.”
Ash’s expression stayed completely unreadable, but his breath hissed through his teeth. He looked at the window, as if he was waiting for someone.
Or possibly, something. Hayley stared in disbelief as a horse stuck its long, black head through her kitchen window. A…winged horse?
The pegasus retreated a little, folding its wings. Someone scrambled off its back and through the window—another man, much younger than Ash even though his short hair was a pure, brilliant silver. He didn’t spare Hayley even the most cursory of glances as he shoved her aside to get to Griff. From the unerring, expert way his long fingers swiftly assessed Griff’s vital signs, Hayley guessed the newcomer had to be some sort of medic.
“You fool,” the white-haired man snarled savagely, apparently to his unconscious patient. “I warned you this was an idiotic idea. If I ever get my hands on that bloody wyvern-!”
“Is he going to be okay?” interrupted an anxious Irish voice. Yet another man climbed in through the window, this one lean and agile with a shock of wild, curly black hair. “Hugh, can you heal him?”
“Who are all you people?” Hayley demanded.
“Get her out of here, Chase,” the white-haired man snapped without looking up. “I have to work fast if I’m going to have any chance of saving this moron.”
“What? No!” Hayley t
ried to twist away, but the Irish man—Chase, she assumed—was inhumanly fast. He seized her wrists, bundling her out of the kitchen despite her kicks and protests. “Let me go! I have to stay with Griff!”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t.” Chase elbowed the door shut behind them, still effortlessly restraining her. He was a lot stronger than his lean physique suggested. “Hugh won’t shift if you’re watching, and right now he’s Griff’s only hope.”
“He’s a shifter?” Hayley stared at Chase’s windswept hair, suddenly making the connection. “You’re all shifters. You were the pegasus.”
“Yep.” He flashed her a brief, strained grin, though the rest of his face was still set in grim, worried lines. “Chase Tiernach-West, at your service. The two back in there are Hugh Argent and Fire Commander Ash.” He cocked his head to one side, as if suddenly hearing someone call his name. “And…just landing outside are the last two members of our team. We’d better let them in, or else John will kick your door down. Or possibly your wall.”
“Team?” Hayley said, towed helplessly in his wake as he headed down the hallway. “Landing? What?”
“We’re firefighters. Alpha Team. And Griff’s still one of us.” Chase opened the front door. “He’ll always be one of us. And we look out for our own.”
Hayley’s breath froze in her throat.
There was a dragon in the road.
It looked exactly like an illustration from a fairytale book—horned, winged, with a long, sinuous tail and glittering crimson scales. There was a man astride its broad neck, and he could have stepped straight out of a fantasy novel too. His long, braided blue hair and fierce, rough-hewn features made him look like some barbarian warrior.
“They’re in plain sight!” Hayley exclaimed. British people might be good at politely ignoring each other, but surely none of her neighbors were going to overlook a huge red dragon in the street. She looked wildly around at the surrounding houses, but no one’s curtains had so much as twitched. “Why isn’t anyone noticing?”
“It’s a mythic shifter thing,” Chase said. He waved at the dragon and its rider. “We have a kind of mind-trick we can do, which stops ordinary people from seeing us in our animal forms. Comes in handy.”
The man jumped down from the dragon’s back. The instant he was clear, the dragon’s bulk shimmered, condensing into a red-headed man. Even though the dragon had been the size of a bus, in human form he barely came up to the long-haired man’s shoulder. The two men strode toward the house.
That’s weird, Hayley thought inanely, still half-numb with shock. Who’d have thought a dragon shifter would be…so…little…
Oh.
The dragon shifter wasn’t little. In fact, he was even taller than Griff.
It was just that the man next to him was motherfudging enormous.
“Where is he?” the giant rumbled as he squeezed himself through her front door. He couldn’t even stand up straight inside. Despite his bulk, there was an intelligent, noble look to his chiseled face that meant Hayley couldn’t feel afraid of him.
“With Hugh and Ash. We’re to stay out of the way,” Chase said, shutting the door. Turning to Hayley, he pointed at the red-headed dragon shifter. “This is Daifydd Drake—but you can call him Dai, he accepts that the rest of us find Welsh names unpronounceable.” His finger swung to the giant. “And this is John Doe, whose real name is literally unpronounceable if you’re breathing air, so don’t worry about that. Dai, John, this is…” Chase hesitated, looking down at Hayley. “Actually, I haven’t the foggiest idea who you are. Sorry.”
“I do,” said John Doe. His voice had an odd, musical quality, and she couldn’t place his accent at all. He sank gracefully to one knee in front of her, bowing his head. “My lady. I am the Walker-Above-Wave, Knight-Poet of the Order of the First Water, Guardian of the Pearl Throne, Seeker of the Emperor-in-Absence, Firefighter of the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, and Griffin’s sworn oath-brother. If by my life or my death I can serve you, I will.”
Hayley blinked at him, completely lost for words. From the startled looks on both Chase and Dai’s faces, she wasn’t the only one.
“Uh, John?” The red-headed dragon shifter—Dai—tapped John’s massive shoulder. “Care to explain what’s going on?”
John got to his feet again, keeping his head tilted to avoid hitting it on the light fitting. “She is my oath-brother’s mate, kin-cousin. As he would defend me, so will I defend her.”
“She’s Griff’s what now?” Chase exclaimed, staring at Hayley in astonishment.
“Mommy?” To Hayley’s horror, Danny stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing sleepy eyes. “I heard noises.”
“Holy sh-” Chase started. Dai elbowed him hard in the ribs, silencing him.
Danny flinched back, hiding behind the banister. “Who’re they? Mommy, where’s Mr. Griff?”
“It’s okay, baby.” Hayley twisted out of Chase’s suddenly slack grip. She hurried up the stairs. “These are—these are some of Griff’s friends.”
Danny peeked round her at the three huge men. “Mr. Griff’s dragon friends?”
“That’s right.” Hayley tried to block his view of the hallway, terrified that at any moment the kitchen door might open. “Mr. Griff’s dragon friends. We’re just talking. You go back to bed now.”
“Hey,” Chase protested. “I’m not a dr-”
This time both Dai and John elbowed him. He wheezed, shutting up.
“Why’re they here?” Danny dragged his feet, resisting as she tried to hustle him back toward his bedroom. “Why’re you all funny-looking, Mommy? Are you crying?”
“No, of course not.” It was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, but she managed to paste a convincing smile onto her face. “Everything’s fine. Come on, you’ve got school tomorrow and you need your sleep.”
By the time she’d gotten Danny resettled in bed—which involved a trip to the bathroom, a glass of water, two lullabies and finally making him pinky-promise to really, really go back to sleep now—and returned downstairs, the firefighters had moved Griff from the kitchen to the couch. Her small front room seemed completely filled with broad shoulders and beefy arms, barely able to hold so many big men.
Hayley only had eyes for Griff’s limp body. Although he was still deeply unconscious, he’d finally relaxed from that tormented, curled position. His chest rose and fell with his shallow breathing. All the breath rushed out of Hayley’s own lungs with relief.
“Oh, thank God.” She pushed her way through the wall of muscle to his side. “Is he stable? Is he going to be okay?”
“I’ve neutralized the poison. That was the hard part. Now I’m healing the carnage it did to his heart.” Hugh was resting his bare hands on Griff’s exposed chest with a look of intense concentration. He glanced up at her, his handsome, finely-drawn face pale and exhausted. “At least you did the right thing, starting CPR right away. It stopped him from getting permanent brain damage.” He scowled back down at his patient. “Not that any of us would have been able to tell the difference. Idiot.”
“The poison did do what he hoped it would,” Dai pointed out. “It paralyzed his body and knocked out his animals. It stopped him from shifting further.”
“Yeah, because it practically killed him,” Chase retorted. His fists clenched. “That psychopathic wyvern shifter is a fucking menace. We should have flung her into prison and thrown away the key when we had the chance. I am going to kick her scaly little-”
Ash cast Chase a quelling look, and the pegasus shifter subsided. “Thank you for calling us,” the Fire Commander said to Hayley. His tone was still perfectly level, his face betraying no sign of the tension in the other men’s expressions. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but we cannot take him away yet.”
“I don’t want you to take him away!” Hayley anxiously studied Griff’s distorted face. His ears were still sharply pointed, his mouth almost a muzzle. “If you’re healing him, why isn’t he going back t
o human form?” she asked Hugh.
“I can only fix what’s damaged.” Hugh adjusted the positions of his fingertips, his jaw clenching briefly as though he was somehow drawing pain out of Griff and into himself. “Not what doesn’t know it’s broken. His body thinks that this is the way it’s supposed to be. He has to make it shift back on his own.”
Dai hissed what sounded awfully like a swear word in Welsh. “You know he can’t, Hugh. There has to be something you can do.”
“I’m a paramedic, not a bloody miracle worker,” Hugh snapped, which seemed a bit strange coming from a man who was currently healing a damaged heart with his bare hands. “If Griff wants to be human, he’s going to have to take care of it himself.”
“Not entirely,” John rumbled. He looked at Hayley. “Call him back to us, my lady. You are his mate. He will always come to your call, across fire, across water, across death itself. Call him back.”
Hayley hesitantly started to put her hand flat against the side of Griff’s face—and then snatched it back, remembering what had happened last time. “I can’t. I tried to help before, when his seizure started, and I only made it worse. I don’t dare touch him.”
Dai and Chase exchanged uneasy glances. “Maybe she’d better not, John,” Dai said. “He’s alive and stable now. It doesn’t matter what he looks like.”
“You think his face is messed up, you should see his pancreas,” Hugh muttered. “I’m with John. The worst she can do is kill him again.”
Hayley put her hands behind her back. “I’m not risking that!”
“You are his mate,” John insisted stubbornly. “You cannot harm him, no more than he could ever harm you. You must try. You are the only one who can.”
All four firefighters glanced at Ash, and Hayley found that she too had turned in his direction. The Fire Commander had such an air of quiet authority, it seemed only natural to look to him for a decision.
Ash met her eyes calmly. “Try.”
Feeling self-conscious under the weight of all their stares, Hayley put her hand against Griff’s cheek. She cringed a little as her palm brushed his skin, half-expecting him to cry out again in agony—but he just made a small sigh, turning fractionally into her touch.