“Skye,” he said, running his hands over my hair and holding me close. “I’m so sorry, Skye.”
“She’s dead, Daiki,”
“I know,” He rested his chin on my head and petted my hair slowly. I let out a long breath and felt myself melting into his embrace as he repeated over and over again: “I’m sorry,”
Finally, I pulled away. “The police spoke to you?” I asked.
He nodded grimly. “I don’t think that they think I had anything to do with it. I mean – you gave me an alibi,”
“Did I?”
He nodded, and then hesitated before asking: “How much did they tell you? About what happened?”
“Just that she was – oh, god – just that she was beaten,” I felt my lip tremble. “Who would do that? Who would hurt her?”
Daiki sighed. “Come on,” he said, pulling at my elbow. “Let’s sit down,”
He led me into my bedroom and sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, pulling me with him. We sat for a moment, holding hands in silence, until he cleared his throat. “I’m going to tell you some things,” he said, speaking in a low, soothing voice that made me think of lullabies and warm blankets. “Stop me if it’s too much, okay?” I nodded and leaned down to rest my head against his shoulder. “Terry died from blunt force trauma to the head, but the police said some things that made me think that wasn’t the whole story. So I asked. They said that Terry was tortured before she died.” I squeezed my eyes shut at that, but I couldn’t block out his words. Poor Terry, I thought. “It would have taken a while, and that’s what ruled me out as a suspect – I went straight back to your place after I dropped her off. But that’s the worst part.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We shifters have heightened senses,” Daiki said. He kept his voice low and soft but I could hear a faint hint of worry in his tone now, as though he was dreading what he was about to say. “I went to her apartment and, well, sniffed around.”
“Did you find anything?”
He shifted and I felt his chin rest on the top of my head again, his arm wrapping around my waist. “I recognized a scent. From Chicago,”
“Not –” I choked on the word because I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t even want to think it. “Hunters?”
I felt him nod. “I think so,”
“But why would they want to hurt Terry? She’s human – isn’t she?”
He nodded again. “Definitely. I don’t think they planned to hurt her. I think they planned to hurt me.”
I pulled away to get a good look at him. His face shone with sorrow, regret, and guilt. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I think they tortured her because they thought she would lead them to me.” He tore his eyes away from me and stared down at his lap. “They must have seen me drop her off at her apartment and thought that we were friends. I’m so sorry, Skye,”
I stood up and started pacing, trying to work off the sudden flood of restless energy in my system. “But how did they even find you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean – unless you told someone –”
“The only person who knew we were seeing each other was Terry,” I snapped. “And I certainly didn’t tell her that you’re a mythical creature!”
He stood up and held up his hands, palms facing towards me, in a classic gesture of surrender. “I didn’t think you would tell anyone about me,” he said. “I just had to be sure.”
I allowed myself to calm down a little. I reminded myself that Daiki had no reason to trust me and that he’d been burned before by the women he trusted. I kept pacing and felt my heart constrict at the thought of how much Terry must have suffered before those hunters had finally killed her. If Daiki was right, and they’d tortured her for information, then the fact that it had taken so long meant that she had wanted to protect Daiki. I wanted to cry all over again.
But then another thought crossed my mind, which made me freeze. They’d killed her eventually – had she finally had enough and told them what they wanted to know? She hardly knew anything about Daiki. All she really knew was that he and I were seeing each other. The only real connection had to him was me.
“Get out,” I said, turning on Daiki.
He looked confused. “Skye, I’m sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t mean to accuse you –”
“Would you just go?” I said. I stepped away up until my back was pressed against the wall, putting as much distance between us as I could so I that wouldn’t be tempted to comfort him. “I just – I need time to think. About the part you played in Terry’s death.”
His shoulders slumped and he looked at the ground. He looked so hurt. It broke my heart to see him looking like that. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want. I have to tell Oji-san. We might need to leave town in a hurry,”
“Whatever is best,” I said, ignoring the aching pain in my chest at the idea of him leaving town – leaving me. But if it was a choice between my pain and Daiki’s life, it was an easy choice.
Daiki looked sharply at me, wounded and disbelieving. “Right,” he said. “Goodbye then.”
He stepped past me and let himself out. I heard the front door click shut and slid down my bedroom wall, curling into a ball and sniffling. I wanted to cry, but no tears would come. I just stared at the half-finished portrait on the easel next to my bed and let the soft sounds of the city lull me into a trance.
Chapter Four
I was still sitting against my bedroom wall when the hunters came for me. I was surprised, actually, by how long it had taken them. I didn’t know how long I’d sat there but I knew it must have been hours. Terry must have not have given them my address. I felt a surge of pride and affection, tempered with guilt.
I’d thought about packing a bag and leaving, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And what if the hunters ended up targeting my family when they couldn’t find me to question? No, I decided. The best thing I could do was let them come for me, and then hold out long enough for Daiki and his grandfather to run for it.
The hunters broke through the lock on my front door and came barreling inside. There were three of them; tall men with shotguns and masks over their faces. They found me in my bedroom.
“Grab her,” one of them shouted.
I didn’t put up a fight as they shoved a burlap sack over my head and lifted me by my elbows, dragging me out the door. I wondered vaguely why they were taking me away – they hadn’t taken Terry, after all – but the way their fingers dug bruises into my biceps distracted me from any coherent thought.
They took me downstairs and threw me into a van parked in the alley. They worked together with remarkable efficiency as they slid zip ties over my ankles and wrists and slammed the door closed. I felt the van shake as they climbed into the front of it. I tried to keep track of the turns they took as they drove, but I quickly lost focus as the reality of what was about to happen to me came crashing down. They were going to kill me, I thought. I was about to die.
I pictured Daiki’s face. I thought about the way his eyes glowed gold in the throes of passion, the way he’d sign off his text messages with a smiley face, and the way his eyes had lit up when I’d asked him to stay after our first night together. For some reason, my mind flashed to a new image – of him sitting in his grandfather’s restaurant with his head in his hands, and Ichiru looking sternly at him. Then the image was gone and I was left to wonder why my mind had conjured it.
I could have loved him, I realized as the van ran over another bump. It would have been so easy to fall in love with Daiki Hamada.
The hunters pulled over and the streets were quiet. I could hear the sound of my heart pounding in my chest. I felt, rather than heard, the van doors open.
“Bring the bait,” one of them said.
My heart stopped. Bait? They weren’t planning to torture me?
They carried me for a while. I heard their footsteps echoing. Then they tossed me down on the hard ground and pulled the bu
rlap sack off of my head.
We were in an abandoned warehouse. I was sitting in the center of a room with high concrete walls and chains hanging from the ceiling. In one corner was a complicated-looking harpoon contraption, like the kind Daddy and his friends took fishing when they were drunk, and in another corner was a cage. A massive, steel-barred, black cage. The harpoon was pointed squarely at the entrance, with a long line of wire stretching between the door and the trigger.
“Oh, you’ve done it now Skye Louis,” I muttered to myself.
One of the hunters, the shorter one, leaned against the harpoon. “Relax sweetheart,” he said. I realized he was from Texas, like me. “We’ll be outta your hair in a little while.”
It’s a trap, I thought. It’s a trap, it’s a trap, it’s a trap!
I felt a sudden jolt of electricity, the way I felt whenever Daiki touched me, and fear and anger washed over me. They felt foreign, as if someone had high jacked my brain and was broadcasting their own emotions through me. I could also feel the ghost of wind against my cheek. I glanced around, but there were no open doors.
One of the hunters had set his shotgun down on a table next to the door. I stared at it. Daddy had taught me to shoot before he’d taught me to ride a bike. All I needed was to get my hands on it. But the hunters were all staring at me, like wild cats circling a lame bull, and I knew that even with my legs unbound I’d never reach it in time.
“How did you know he was here?” I asked. “He was so careful,”
One of the men snorted. “Nothing careful about people showing up in the hospital with burn marks shaped like handprints,” he said. “You’re lucky, sweetheart – he would’ve burned you alive. They’re all just animals at the end of the day,”
“I know animals,” I said. “He’s not an animal. And the people he hurt? Muggers. Rapists. Murderers. Men like you,”
“Maybe that’s what he told you.”
“That’s what I saw!” I shouted. “I’ve seen him protecting people, protecting me. He’s not an animal – you are!”
The hunters didn’t respond. Suddenly, there was a massive crash as the doors burst open. The harpoon fired but there was nothing there. The doorway was empty.
The hunters reached for their weapons – the one without a shotgun pulled a knife from the holster on his hip – but before they could fire any shots the doorway blazed with a wall of flames. Two figures flew through it on wings that stretched over four feet wide. They raised their arms and rained fire down on the hunters.
The men screamed and shot into the air as they tried desperately to hit their targets. I recognized Daiki turning and twisting in mid-air, launching balls of fire at the hunters as Ichiru circled closer to me. His usually kind face blazed with fury. He landed next to me and paused, like he thought I was going to flinch away. Instead, I offered him my bound wrists.
“It’s a trap!” I told him.
“We know,” he replied, kneeling down and lighting his finger like a candle. He held my wrists still and melted the ties enough that I could pull free. “You told Daiki through the link.”
“I did?” I asked incredulously as he melted off the ties around my ankles.
He nodded. “The link is very useful,” he said.
I realized that the image I’d seen of Daiki and Ichiru at the restaurant was real. Somehow, I’d reached out to him. And just now, as I’d chanted it’s a trap over and over in my head, Daiki had gotten the message. My mind was still reeling as Ichiru helped me to my feet. He was shorter than me by about a head, but he his wing span made me feel like a tiny child.
“Run now, Skye,” he said. “Daiki and I will give you time.”
He shoved me towards the door before I could protest. A sharp cry of pain cut through the air. Ichiru and I both turned to see Daiki fall from the ceiling, landing hard on his back. One of the hunters had finally hit him. Ichiru threw his head back and let out an inhuman screech so high and loud that I had to cover my ears. Without another word he turned and flew at the hunters like a rocket, seizing the closest one and flying up to the ceiling, and then dropping him to the floor with a sickening thud.
The second hunter fired at Ichiru as he circled around. The third, the one with the knife in his hand, stalked towards Daiki.
I was running before I even realized what I was doing, sprinting towards the third hunter and tackling him from behind. All those years of watching football with my friend Annabeth Casey had finally paid off. We fell together in a heap and I rolled away before he could grab me. Daiki was clutching his arm and shouting for me to run. Regaining my footing, I stood between Daiki, laying prone and helpless on the ground, and the hunter who wanted to kill him.
“Come on, sweetheart,” the hunter said, standing tall and brandishing his knife. “All we want is the shifters.”
Over his shoulder, I could see Ichiru picking up the second hunter and dragging him, screaming, up to the ceiling.
“You want him?” I asked the hunter, tossing my hair out of my eyes and staring him down. “Come and get him.”
The hunter lunged forward and I felt the electricity again. I felt my arm come up to block his attack while my other hand jabbed forward, hitting him hard beneath the solar plexus. He winced and came at me again, but my fingers curled into fists and thrust into his neck. I tried to stop myself, tried to pull away, but I couldn’t. My hands were moving without my consent.
I turned to stare at Daiki. His eyes were glowing gold and burning into mine.
The link, I thought. Before I could react, I heard a scream behind me and turned in time to see Ichiru seize the last hunter. His dark wings, not quite as luscious and strong as his grandson’s, beat wildly as he dragged the hunter high into the air. When he’d almost reached the ceiling, Ichiru let him go. I turned away before I could see the hunter land, but the hard squelch of his body hitting the concrete floor made me cover my mouth and heave.
“Skye,” Daiki said, still clutching his arm in pain as he pushed himself to his feet. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
I laughed, almost hysterically. “I’m fine,” I said. “You’re the one who got shot.”
Ichiru landed next to me and said something in rapid Japanese. He took Daiki’s injured arm and rubbed it, muttering. I watched in awe as Daiki’s bullet wound slowly faded away.
“What?” I said, staring at the patch of flesh where the bullet wound should have been. There was nothing there. “How –”
Ichiru nodded towards me and said something else. Daiki answered, then he took my hand and led me towards the doors, which were still smoldering from the dragons’ attack.
“Oji-san will take care of this,” Daiki said. “I have to get you home.”
“He healed you!” I said.
Daiki shrugged, glancing back at his grandfather. “Some shifters can do that,”
“Can you?”
He shook his head as, behind us, Ichiru began burning the bodies of the hunters who’d taken me.
Chapter Five
Daiki drove me to my apartment in the hunters’ van. He left me there with strict instructions to take it easy, and promised to return when he and his grandfather were done ‘taking care of things’. I wondered how many times him and his grandfather had needed to take care of the bodies of hunters who’d tried to kill them.
I should have been upset. I should have been horrified that Ichiru had killed those men, and was probably disposing of the evidence while I sat in my kitchen with a glass of water in my trembling fingers. I just felt relief. In a way, I was glad. Those hunters had killed Terry, and although they’d claimed that they didn’t plan to hurt me I’d known on some level that I wouldn’t make it out of that warehouse alive. Daiki and Ichiru had done the world a favor. Now, they couldn’t hurt anyone else.
That didn’t stop me from grimacing every time I thought of the sound their bodies had made when they’d hit the ground. Or feeling a sudden shiver run down my spine at how easy it had been for Daiki to take cont
rol of my body. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit.
The sun hadn’t even set yet. There was a low, golden hue to the sky outside my window, and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. No wonder I was so shaky and tired. I could just imagine what Mama would say if she knew I’d neglected to feed myself: “Now you listen here, Skye Louis, no man wants a girl who’s all skin and bones. It’s bad for childrearin’. Now you pull your head outta those sketchbooks and put something in your belly like a good girl.”
I quickly made myself a sandwich and chewed on it without tasting it. I thought about calling Mama and Daddy, just to hear their voices, but I didn’t know if I had the strength to hide my problems from them. Everything that had happened that day came rushing at me like a tidal wave. The police coming to my door, Terry dying, getting kidnapped by hunters, watching them get slaughtered by an elderly dragon, seeing Daiki hurt. I couldn’t believe it had only been one day. It felt like a lifetime.
Someone knocked on my door. I sent a silent prayer to whoever was listening that it wasn’t more police. I pushed myself off of the kitchen counter and trudged reluctantly to the door.
“Who is it?” I called.
“It’s me.”
Daiki. I opened the door and ushered him inside. “How did it go?” I asked.
“Alright,” he said. He smelt a little of smoke and ash. There was no trace of the bullet wound on his arm. “There’s nothing left of that warehouse, though.”
I led him into the kitchen and offered him a glass of water. “How’s Ichiru?” I asked.
Daiki sipped slowly and frowned. “Alright,” he said. “I think. It’s not the first time he’s… well,” He paused and looked at me carefully. “Sometimes it’s kill or be killed, you know? Those three weren’t the first. I think it does affect him on some level. I just can’t say for sure,”
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: The Unforgettable Billionaires: The Complete Collection Boxed Set 1-12 (Young Adult Rich Alpha Male Billionaire Romance) (Alpha Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) Page 70