His attention had dropped to her lips. The beast told him to take her into his arms. It growled that she would be safe in his arms. Zane wouldn’t be able to touch her so long as he held onto her.
Alec couldn’t keep her. No matter what his beast said.
He would only end up hurting her again. Alec couldn’t fix what he’d done, but he could keep himself from making her life worse. He owed her that much.
With distance between them again, Alec put the truck in drive. He couldn’t remember the last few turns he’d taken, but the trees looked familiar and he could still see the lake through them. All he had to do was follow that water.
Charlie hadn’t told him who wanted her home by Wednesday. She’d skirted around the subject, turning it to Zane. Alec still wanted to know who was bothering her. If she would tell him, he would go out and fix it for her. She wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.
No one was allowed to hurt her. Anyone who dared touch a hair on her head would have to hear from him. Alec could feel the heat of his flames rolling over his tongue. Anger boiled inside him. At whoever was hurting Charlie. At Zane. At Sybil.
The witch was still missing. No one could find her. Jude told them time and time again that the witch had probably crawled away to die alone, but Alec still wanted to see her. Both he and Heath wanted to have words with her. Sybil was stealing that chance away from them by hiding like a coward.
“Want to hear something weird?” Alec asked. The cabins appeared ahead, six little houses of varying sizes all tucked up against the shore.
“What’s that?”
“I knew a girl like you once. She was young and a little dumb, but feisty as hell. I missed her when she moved away, but I’m grateful she didn’t have to live through any of that. Heath, my clanmate, thought he had his forever mate back then and our clan leader…he killed her.”
Alec glanced toward Charlie, hoping to see fear on her face. He knew that scaring her away was rude and that she deserved better, but he was desperate. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be to see her go. He wanted to urge her to leave the car behind and fly home.
But not even her home life was safe. There was nowhere he could tell her to go that she would be safe. He wanted to punch the steering wheel, to feel it bend and break beneath his hands, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Charlie would still be in the way of danger.
“I knew a guy like you, too,” Charlie said. She brushed away the dried mud on her knees. “He was a hell of a lot cheerier than you, though.”
She got out of the truck before he could get it to a full stop. He tried to call out to her, but her name never made it past his lips.
7
Charlie now knew everything about what happened in her absence. Alec could say he was grateful she hadn’t been there all he wanted, but she wished she could turn back time and fight alongside them. Maybe she would be a different person. There might be shadows in her eyes, like some of them carried, but she wouldn’t be the pushover that she’d become under Norman’s boot.
Reluctantly, she checked her phone. Norman had left four text messages for her and two voicemails. He must have been getting bored of the other women in his clan. His focus was entirely on Charlie now. Was it fun for him as he broke her spirit? Did he take pride in every soulless woman wandering around his house like a ghost?
Probably. Charlie resisted the urge to chuck her phone into the lake. Maybe, if she asked nicely, Zane could give Norman a call and leave a creepy message. This monster that was the boy she once knew didn’t seem to hate her the way it hated everyone else. Of course, she hadn’t been around for the fight that ended with his imprisonment.
If she had, then maybe Zane wouldn’t be trapped at all.
Charlie went to sit by the lake. She dipped her toes in, unafraid of the man lurking in the waves. Zane wouldn’t hurt her. She knew exactly who was trying to hurt her. As she sent quick replies to all of Norman’s texts, she hoped that Asher was faring well.
She’d sent him into battle for her, another cowardly move. Charlie couldn’t believe the woman she’d become. This wasn’t who she thought of herself, but the longer she lingered with this clan, the more she realized her own truth. Charlie was a coward.
Everything she thought she was no longer described her. She wasn’t a stubborn and strong dragon woman. She was just a coward. One running from an old man. One using her friends to fight her battles for her. Coming here to find true love had seemed romantic, but it was only a roundabout way of escaping Norman.
She could do it on her own, if she wanted, but she was afraid that she wouldn’t win that fight. Not alone. Alone, it was a pointless battle. Norman and his male dragons would haul her back every time. Even this vacation was quickly coming to an end because he wanted her home.
Charlie drew her knees to her chest. If she could break Zane out of the lake and take him to Norman’s doorstep, she would. Zane had nothing better to do. The clan here, though. They seemed like they were all starting new lives.
Even Heath, who supposedly lost the love of his life years ago, had found his mate.
Like her thoughts had summoned her, the small dragon woman’s scent greeted Charlie’s senses. She glanced over her shoulder to find Buffy standing a few feet behind her.
“You’re a brave one, sticking your feet in the water.”
Charlie shrugged. She could have told Buffy that she wasn’t in any danger, but that would have meant telling the whole story. Charlie couldn’t let anyone else in on her secret. So, Charlie just shrugged and mentioned that she’d grown up somewhere similar.
Buffy shuddered. “I’m trying to get over my fear, but I grew up very landlocked. Even swimming pools scared me. I went for a dip in the lake not too long ago and that…kind of helped, but I still don’t like it.”
Buffy sat down on the grass, still keeping her distance from the water.
“Are you new here?”
“Yeah. Heath and I bonded not too long ago. Jude invited me for a relaxing vacation that turned out to be anything but. A lot happened. I even found out that I had family that used to live here.”
“Family?” Charlie tried to remember faces from fifteen years ago, but she couldn’t tell who might have been related to the small and submissive shifter. There hadn’t been any submissive shifters when Charlie left.
Only Alistair and the guys. The old clan leader was the only one old enough to have children their age, but he’d been such a strong and dominant dragon that he couldn’t have been Buffy’s sire.
Still, Charlie thought she saw a resemblance between the two. No, it was only because she was thinking of it. She was seeing similarities because she was forcing herself to, not because Alistair was actually Buffy’s sire.
That would be weird. Charlie couldn’t imagine this clan letting Alistair’s child join them. Not after what Alec told her.
“He’s not here anymore, but I can say that I’m glad I missed the opportunity to meet him.” Buffy had a smile on her face the whole time. She was a little ray of light, even though Charlie was starting to suspect that Buffy really was talking about Alistair. “Come on in. I was about to make lunch and my mate went off to go find Asher.”
“Asher?” Charlie asked in a panic. “What does he want Asher for?”
Buffy had gotten to her feet. With her eyes on the lake ahead of her, she said, “They have something they should be working on. Kind of like a family project, but with higher stakes.”
“Family projects have high stakes?”
“I take it you never helped your parents remodel a farmhouse from the eighteen hundreds. Let me tell you that my mother was very lucky that not only was I a dragon shifter, but I’d found another one while going to school.”
Charlie laughed, momentarily distracted from her panic. She followed Buffy inside the cabin, where it smelled of her and Heath. The interior was warm and welcoming. It practically reeked of their love for one another.
Out the front window, Charlie could
see Alec bent over her car once again. She’d forgotten to replace the missing fuse. Charlie had planned on changing the problem with the car every so often, that way even if Alec found the problem, there would be another. She’d been so busy, knee deep in everything that had happened around the lake land that she’d forgotten about her primary reason for staying.
“I have a habit of making way more food than necessary…” Buffy went on, pulling out tubs of food and piling them on the counter.
This clan might seem a little ramshackle, but Charlie had never come across a nicer bunch of dragons in her life. Norman’s clan was rigid. So long as a female dragon didn’t have a mate, she belonged to him. The men in the clan protected Norman and his house of unmated women.
Here, everyone was their own entity. They came together and helped each other out like family. Asher didn’t have to do what Charlie asked of him, especially not so happily, but he did. He treated her like a sister and not an object. Charlie wasn’t used to this kind of compassion.
Her heart ached. Knowing that she would have to leave if this didn’t work out, Charlie realized that this would be what broke her. While Norman pushed her into his bedroom, she would know that there were clans that didn’t work like that. She would know that her fate was particular, her own personal hell.
Alec made sure Buffy had Charlie distracted before he started to go through the compartments in Charlie’s car. In the center console were snacks. Everything from peanut butter cups to kettle chips. He laughed at her snack hoard, but that wasn’t what he was looking for.
The license plates on the car were from Washington state. The state was too large. Last he heard there was more than one clan there. Alec wanted to know where she lived so he could get a better idea of which clan she belonged to. Having lived in the east for so long, his understanding of the clans in the Pacific Northwest was minimal. He didn’t know anything about the leaders or their ways of life.
Just as he reached for the glove box, someone slapped the roof of the car. Alec startled, a growl ripping from his lips. It was Jude who stared down at him from the driver’s side door, her hands on the roof of the car as she leaned in.
“What are you doing?” She bounced back and forth, not at all aggressive even though Alec had just growled at her. She was a clan leader, and yet she blew off insults like they were nothing.
To be fair, she had startled him. It was her own fault. Maybe she understood that.
“Spying on your childhood girlfriend?” Jude pressed.
Alec checked to make sure Charlie was still inside with Buffy. “Who told you?”
“Asher is an incessant blabber mouth, which works out well for me. He makes sure that I know everything that happens around here.”
Alec’s lip curled. “Charlie can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”
Jude sighed. “It isn’t, but are you sure you can part with her?”
Instead of answering the nosy woman, he snapped open the glove compartment. Documents and napkins spilled out into his hand. Jackpot. He set the napkins aside and flipped through the documents. Charlie had an old stash of expired insurance cards, like she never threw out the old card before putting in the new one.
He found her address on the insurance card. Jude let out a hiss.
“What is it?”
“Last I heard, the clan leader in that area was an old dragon. Some suspect he might be one of the last immortal dragons. Not a nice fellow, either. My grandfather had a few run-ins with that guy. Norman VanAlstyne.”
“Not nice, how?” Alec knew that Jude had seen the country’s clans. She was the Colorado king’s eyes for a short while. He sent her all over to check in on clans across the states. If anyone knew about this guy, it would be Jude.
“I never made it up there,” she confessed. “Rumor has it he keeps women like a harem, and I didn’t want to get caught up in that kind of crap. I can hold my own, but if I started a fight with an immortal dragon it wouldn’t end well for the clan. I had no intentions of staying. That wasn’t where I belonged.”
Alec made Jude move out of the way as he exited the car. Tucking the insurance card and address into his back pocket, he was grateful that he hadn’t said any pledges to Jude yet. She might be a clan leader, but she wasn’t his leader.
Not yet.
“I’m going to Washington. Don’t try to stop me.”
Jude’s brows shot upward. When she started to speak, Alec cut her off.
“I’m not part of your clan. There’s nothing you can do to keep me from seeing this through.”
Jude didn’t growl or snarl. She didn’t raise her voice or shove him back into the seat. She didn’t have to use a power move. “You see that woman inside with Buffy? She’s right here. Right now. Are you going to leave her and throw your life at the feet of an immortal dragon? While Charlotte is here with us, you’ll be dying alone. You might think you’re a big, bad dragon, but one dragon can’t take on a clan all by himself. Do you think Charlotte came all this way just to lose you again?”
Alec was quiet, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. The beast inside him still squirmed. It wanted out. It wanted to take care of the issue now. With nothing else to do, Alec found himself full of restless energy. There was nowhere to direct it. Nothing he could do that would make him feel better.
“If you think she came all this way for fun, then you’re blind.”
“I ruined her life,” Alec whispered.
Jude made an exasperated sound. “Does that look like a struggling dragon shifter? No. Charlotte just looks like a lost woman. I would know. I saw a lost woman in the mirror every day of my life until I came here.”
“I hate you,” Alec muttered.
“You say that now, but I’ll have you pledging your loyalty to me in no time. And don’t worry about her clan. I’ll have it taken care of.”
His attention snapped to Jude. “What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged and turned to walk away, but not before stopping to throw a maddening grin over her shoulder. “Don’t you worry about it. For now, you keep your mind on Zane and Charlotte. They need you the most right now.”
Alec couldn’t trust Jude. Not if she was going to keep secrets. He needed to know exactly what she had planned. How else would he be able to relax unless he knew what was going on? Instead, Jude left him standing alone by Charlie’s car.
He could still go. Washington would be a long flight, but he could make it before Wednesday rolled around. Then he could stop whoever was making Charlie’s life miserable. But if Jude was right and it wasn’t just one man, but a clan, could Alec take them all on by himself? He didn’t know. What he did know was that he had to do something.
Alec needed to fix what he’d done. Charlie wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for him. She wouldn’t be a dragon if he had controlled himself. She wouldn’t be wrapped up in a dangerous clan.
Heath’s truck came to a stop on the other side of Charlie’s car. The dragon shifter made brief eye contact, nodded, and went to the back of the truck. Alec followed what Heath and Cole were doing and found a picnic table in the back of the truck. It was solid wood, a burning hazard, but he remembered that the tables with metal supports didn’t like it when too many of them sat on one side.
The table became a seesaw if no one sat on the other side. The wooden table, while it might become ashes, was safer to sit on.
But what were they doing with a picnic table? Zane was still trapped in the lake. The danger that hovered over their heads had not yet been dealt with. How could any of them think about good times when Zane could rise and ruin it all? Their mates were in danger. Their secret could be outed at any moment.
But Heath and Cole hoisted the picnic table out of the truck and carried it over to set it between Cole’s cabin and the one they’d placed Charlie in. Alec peered in the back of the truck and found other party supplies. There were twelve-packs of beer, Christmas lights, and what looked like a toolbox in the shape of a h
amburger.
“Where the hell is Asher?” Heath snapped once they set down the table. “I can’t find that idiot anywhere. Of all of us, he has nothing to do with his life. I thought he’d jump at the chance to help us.”
Cole snorted. “If we let him pick out party supplies, he would have gotten a cage for dancing.”
Heath looked thoroughly confused. “But there’s nowhere to suspend it. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. No one ever said Asher was smart.”
Alec hadn’t seen Asher all day, either. But when the cabin door opened and Charlie followed Buffy out, all thoughts vanished from Alec’s mind. His world narrowed down to Charlie and only Charlie. The sun, starting its descent toward the lake, illuminated the gold strands in her brown hair. The pink strip fell over her face and she reached to brush it back, revealing a smile.
His heart stuttered. There was a dimple in her left cheek that he desperately wanted to trace his thumb over. He wanted to feel the small indent made by her joy. For a moment, he let himself wonder what it would be like to see that smile every day. His beast growled with satisfaction, pleased that Alec was finally on the same wavelength.
Jude had taken a bowl from Buffy, but her eyes were on him. She flashed him a thumbs-up under the bowl she was carrying. The new clan leader said that she had things taken care of. This big, bad, gold dragon Cole had summoned out of thin air made a promise. The least Alec could do was enjoy the few moments he had with Charlie.
While the others were preparing for what had to be a nighttime cookout, Alec caught Charlie’s eye and jerked his head toward the gravel road. She looked at the bowl in her hands, at the picnic table and the others, then back at him. He thought she would stay, but she bounded toward the table to drop off the bowl and then slipped away from the party.
Alec took her hand in his and a sense of becoming whole rippled over her. He didn’t want it to end. Was this what Cole felt with his gold dragon woman? Did Heath experience this when Buffy laughed? Alec didn’t know if he would be able to let go of her.
Alec (Keepers Of The Lake Book 3) Page 6