by Sophie Stern
“Nicole? What is it?”
“She hired me, Lee,” Nicole looks at me. “It was her. She’s the one who brought me on board, and she’s the one who sent me into the woods. She and Bernie...they were close, Lee.”
“Am I missing something?” Jeremy asks, cocking his head.
“They sent me into the woods on purpose,” Nicole says. “They didn’t plan on bringing me back at all. They planned to let me get hurt or, if things went wrong, they planned for me to take the fall. I was the fall guy.”
“Ouch,” Jeremy lets out a long whistle.
“Nicole, it’s all over now. You’re safe now.”
“But I’m not,” she shakes her head. “Don’t you see? None of us is safe, but especially not me. If they find me, Lee...” She starts crying, and then she takes off running. I go to move after her, but Marta grabs my arm.
“We can take it from here,” she says. “If you two need to go be alone, do it. Take care of her, Lee. She’s...she’s fragile.”
“Thank you,” I tell Marta. I’m glad I can always count on my team for help. I’m glad I can always trust them to be right by my side when things get rough. Then I take off running out the door.
It’s time to catch myself a human.
Chapter Nine
Nicole
I run as fast as I can into the woods. I know he’s behind me, somewhere, but I don’t care. I just need to get as far away as I can. I need to run until I can’t run anymore, and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll figure something out.
But before I even reach the cover of the trees, I feel him. I look up in time to see Lee, in dragon form, reaching his talons down and grabbing me by the shirt.
“What are you doing?” I screech, but he lifts me effortlessly and takes off flying. At first, I scream and yell, but then I remember just how futile that is. No one in the clan really likes me, anyway. They could care less if someone grabs me and hauls me off to the ends of the Earth.
They don’t give a shit.
Or do they?
A little voice at the edge of my mind asks me whether any of these things I’m thinking are true. They didn’t have to take me in, but they did. They could have killed me. They could have tossed me into the woods. Instead, they gave me a job. They gave me a home. They gave me safety.
Am I letting my emotions get the best of me?
Because when I was talking with Marta and Jeremy and Lee, none of them seemed to judge me. Even when I revealed that I did something terrible, that I got involved with someone who was married, albeit without my knowledge, they didn’t condemn me.
They didn’t judge me.
They didn’t tell me how terrible I am.
They just accepted it.
They accepted me.
Maybe I’ve been too caught up in my own sadness to realize the good around me.
Maybe I’ve been too caught up in my own life to realize that I completely messed things up with Lee.
I should have said yes to him.
I try not to cry as he flies me...somewhere...but I do. I have a big, long, ugly cry and I try not to think about the fact that I’m literally hanging from a dragon’s claws. He’s carrying me somewhere like he’s caught me, like I’m some sort of meat, and he doesn’t seem to mind the fact that I’m sobbing my little heart out.
My life is not what I wanted it to be.
I did not end up where I wanted to go.
None of this is what I wanted to happen.
Yet here I am.
This is what I am.
This is who I am.
And the reality is that I do live with the dragons now. I live with them. They are my life. They are my peers: my companions. I will probably never return to the “normal” human world. I think those days are past, and it’s time for me to accept my reality: I live with the dragons.
We might not always get along and we might not like each other, but until today, they’d never harmed me. In fact, they did everything in their power this morning to keep me safe when Reece attacked me.
I relax my body and try to enjoy soaring over the treetops. Lee lowers us so we’re flying just above the treetops, and when I see civilization up ahead, I realize why. We’re close to Storm Dawn. I’ve heard of this town, but I’ve never actually been here before. Still, it’s easy to recognize. The buildings are quite unique and carefully designed. Besides, it’s the only town within a day’s flight for the dragons. It couldn’t possibly be anywhere else.
Are we going to the town?
Lee swoops lower and lower, but doesn’t go near the town, instead, he moves around the outskirts, careful to stay out of sight, and then goes behind a mountain where we completely disappear from prying eyes. He stops, carefully drops me on the ground, and shifts back.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Come,” he says quietly. He offers me his hand, and this time, I don’t make him wait. I just take it. I’m ready to follow him anywhere. No matter where he wants to take me, I’ll go. Whatever we’re about to discovered together, I can handle it because Lee is with me. He won’t ever do anything to hurt me. He’s not going to injure me. He’s not going to damage me.
He’s just going to help me.
We’re in this together.
We walk up a little path. Lee is naked after his shift, but the twigs and small rocks on the dirt path don’t seem to bother him in the least. They don’t seem to hurt his feet. I suppose that’s another one of those great things about being a shifter: small annoyances are just that: annoyances. They’re not something you have to worry about or stress about.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him as we walk. The trees narrow over us and the path becomes smaller. I can see why he shifted for this part of the journey. Wherever we’re going would be hard to reach in dragon form.
“For what? Running? You don’t have to be sorry. It’s been a long fucking day, Nicole. You deserve a break.”
“Not for that,” I shake my head and stop, looking up at him. “I’m sorry for not being thankful that the dragons helped me. Your entire clan...you didn’t have to take me in, but you did. Nobody locked me up. Nobody kept me prisoner. If anything, you gave me a semblance of normalcy by letting me work at the bakery. Thank you.”
Lee just looks at me for a long minute, and then he places his hands on my face.
“Nicole, you are important. You may have fucked up, but you are important. You have value. You know this, don’t you?”
“Maybe I used to,” I whisper. “But that is not something I’ve heard in a long time. Probably not since we were dating, actually. You used to say that all of the time.”
“I meant it.”
“And now?”
“I still mean it.”
“Lee, when I told you no...”
“I thought there was someone else,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I thought you didn’t want me. That wasn’t it at all, was it?”
“No,” I shake my head as the tears start to come again. “I was just young. I was scared. I didn’t know you were a shifter and I certainly didn’t know you wanted to be with me forever. It was just a lot of information to take in at once. I should have reacted differently.”
“I should have given you time,” he says quietly.
“We can’t change the past,” I tell him. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Nicole,” he says, and his lips are closer now, hovering over mine. I can feel his breath on my mouth as he whispers. “We can’t change the past, but we control the future, sweetheart. The future...that’s ours. This,” he whispers. “This is ours.”
And then he kisses me.
Lee the Dragon kisses me softly, and then quickly, and then everywhere in between. He kisses me like nothing else matters and right now, nothing does. The years we’ve lost seem to disappear as his tongue presses against my lips, gently nudging them open, and then I’m completely lost.
Enveloped in his arms, I forget everything around me.
The sadness disappea
rs and is replaced with something else: something stronger.
Passion.
Joy.
Contentment.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t feel afraid anymore. I feel protected and cared for and safe. And I know that right now, nothing can touch me because Lee has my back.
He stops kissing me, then, reluctantly, and takes my hand once more.
“Come on,” he whispers. “We’re almost there.”
“Where are we going?”
“My cabin,” he tells me.
“You have a cabin?” My head is still spinning from the kiss. Now there’s this extra knowledge he’s throwing at me, too. “In Storm Dawn? Do you come here to be alone?”
“Yes.”
“To meet women?” I ask, curious. Why else would you have a secret cabin off in Westrbridge Forest?
He laughs loudly. “No,” he tells me “It’s just for me. When I need a place to unwind or to think, I come here.”
We come over the top of a small hill, and I see it suddenly. The little wood cabin is nestled between some trees. There’s a little bench on the porch, but nothing else. There’s no driveway here. No one could come here to camp unless they knew the way. Roads are non-existent. There’s only this little path and it leads right to the house.
“It’s lovely,” I tell him honestly.
“I got it a few years ago,” he says as we head toward the front door. “It’s been my own private haven. Not that Fablestone isn’t wonderful, but sometimes it’s nice to have some down time.”
“When was the last time you were here?” I ask. The grass is a little overgrown and the sides of the cabin look a little worse for wear, but it’s cozy. Comfortable. It’s the type of place you could go spend an entire weekend if you just wanted to go stare at the stars. I imagine there are creeks or even lakes nearby you could go swimming in. It’s just...comfortable.
“A few months,” he frowns when he says it.
“What’s wrong?”
“The last time I was here,” he lowers his voice and pauses. I stop walking beside him. “I was calling Lucky.”
“What?” I practically screech. “What do you mean?”
“Shh,” he grabs me and pulls me behind a tree. “Something’s wrong,” he says.
“What?”
“When we first became aware of the dragon abductions, Lucky lost a baby they’d kidnapped. They went door to door trying to find it and stopped by Peggy’s house. That was before she was Cameron’s mate. They gave her a business card.”
Understanding dawns on me. “She was supposed to call them if she decided she had information for them.”
“Bingo,” he says. “But she didn’t call them. She gave the card to me, and I called Lucky.”
“From your cabin?”
“Yeah,” he says. “From my cabin.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t want them tracing my call,” he whispers, peering out from the side of the tree. He’s back almost as fast and he shakes his head.
“Is someone in your cabin, Lee?”
“Someone’s in my cabin,” he agrees. “Damn. I should have scented them from the path. Their smell is all over this place,” he looks disgusted.
“But you were distracted by me,” I whisper.
He was distracted by my crying, and then, by our kiss.
“It’s not your fault, Nicole.”
“I know,” I tell him.
This time, I do.
“What do we do?” I ask him.
“We? We don’t do anything. I’ll go assess the threat.”
“Lee, wait.”
“What is it, Nicole?” He peers at the cabin again.
“I’m here, Lee. I’m on your side. Let me...let me help, please,” I whisper.
Let me redeem myself.
Lee looks like he’s about to say no, about to refuse my request, but something shifts in him, and he nods. “Okay,” he says. “But you listen to my instructions precisely, okay?”
“Of course.”
A few minutes later, I run up to the cabin, careful to make plenty of noise as I do.
“Hey!” I bang on the door. “Hey! Is anyone here? Help! Help!” I knock frantically, loudly, and kick the door. I jingle the doorknob. “Can you hear me? Please! I need to talk to someone!”
After just a minute, I hear movement inside, and then the door cracks open.
“What do you-“
Her voice cuts off when our eyes meet, and she shifts from being annoyed to being pissed. Out of all of the people I expected to find holed up in Lee’s place, Bernie was the one I least expected.
“B-B-Bernie,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” She glares at me. I don’t miss the way her eyes flick behind me, seeing if I’m alone. “How the hell did you find this place?”
“I could ask you the same question,” I ask. Lee is nearby, and he’s undoubtedly hearing this entire exchange. He can rush in at any minute, but I know that when he does, this is all going to be over, so I realize what I need to do. I need to get her talking as much as possible. I need to find out exactly what Bernie knows and how she knows it and why she’s here.
What does she want from these creatures?
“I live here,” Bernie says slowly. “This is my cabin.”
“Oh, wow,” I tell her. “That’s really interesting. I thought you lived in Havenworth.”
“I was ready for a change of pace. You know. After you shot me with that dart, I had a lot of time to think.”
“So you haven’t forgotten about that, huh?”
“Not at all.”
“What made you decide to come out here? It’s kind of close to shifters, isn’t it? I thought you didn’t like them.”
“Now why would you say that?” Her voice is sickly sweet. “I thought we were coming into the forest together to do some good: to help the shifters.”
“We both know that isn’t true, Bernie,” I lower my voice. “I tried to find you. Where did you go?”
“You didn’t try to find me,” she hisses. “You sent me back without you, without my dragon, and without anything at all. I was left to fend for myself, so of course, they gave me the shittiest assignment possible: all thanks to you.”
“This is an assignment?” I look around in mock surprise. “You didn’t come here for fun?”
“Unless you think sitting around for fucking months in case a dragon happens to show up is fun,” she growls. “Then no, it’s not.”
“A dragon? What the hell? What do you need a dragon for?”
“That’s none of your concern,” she says, seemingly realizing she’s given me too much information. She has. She’s basically revealed that she’s been sitting around, waiting for someone to show up.
Lee.
She’s been waiting for Lee.
That’s when I look behind her and see the set-up she has in the cabin.
“What the fuck?” I push past her.
“Get out of here, Nicole.”
“What the hell is this stuff? Guns? Weapons? You weren’t waiting for a dragon. You look like you were about to skin one.” I don’t know what half of the stuff I’m looking at actually is, but I know it’s not good.
“You’re. Supposed. To. Be. Dead.” She grits out the words, and I turn around to look at her.
“Excuse me?”
“I told them,” she says, shaking her head. “I told them you were dead. That the dragons had killed you.”
“Why would you do that? You didn’t know that for sure.”
“Because that was the mission, you stupid bitch.”
It cements things in my mind now, for certain. I was sent into the woods to die. Erin didn’t want me around. No: she couldn’t risk me around. Not after my relationship with Micah. Not after she found out. Although, I’d be willing to bet she knew about me for a long time before he realized she knew.
Erin is a woman in power.
She wasn’t going to let me walk gently into the night.
“Why did they want me dead?” I still have to ask, still have to find out what she knows. This isn’t going to end easily. One of us isn’t going to walk away from this situation. I can already tell. I move back toward the doorway, but Bernie blocks me.
“Sorry, kiddo,” she says. “You know I can’t let you go.”
“What? Why not? You already said everyone thinks I’m dead.”
Maybe Bernie can be saved, too.
Maybe it’s not too late.
But when she reaches for a gun and holds it out, pointing it at me, I realize that it’s absolutely, definitely, too late.
“You should have stayed dead, Nicole. It would have been better for everyone. Now I’ve still got to catch a dragon, but I’ve got to hide a body, too. You’ve always loved making extra work for me. She shakes her head. “Any last words?”
“You should have ducked,” I say.
“What?”
That’s when the ceiling of the cabin comes crashing down. I dive backwards into the corner and roll under the bed. It’s not a lot, but it’s going to minimize the impact of the splintering wood and any loose nails or glass that might go flying. The bed is exactly where Lee warned me it would be and, as promised, it’s both sturdy and tall. I have plenty of space to roll beneath it. I hear Bernie scream as he lands, but I close my eyes. I don’t look. I don’t need to know what happens next.
She had a chance to turn, and she didn’t.
She had a chance for redemption, and she didn’t take it.
I stay beneath the bed for what seems like hours. Her screaming stops and I hear Lee fly away. Bernie is definitely dead. There’s no way she survived the ceiling crashing in on her or the dragon who made it happen. Besides, if what he said all of those years ago is true and we really are mates, then he’s not going to take the chance that she could hurt me again.
He’s not going to risk anything.
I wait quietly with my eyes closed. After a long time, I hear noises in the cabin and someone pushing away the pieces of wood that have fallen. There are little bits of roofing tile all around, lots of dust, and lots of debris.
“Come on, princess,” he says. “It’s over now.” I allow Lee to pull me out from under the bed. He lifts me.“Keep your eyes closed,” he warns me, and I listen to him. He sets me down outside. I open my eyes.