He turned back toward the cabin on the side of the mountain and glimpsed something in the sky above it. At this distance, Dillon could make out the shape of a dragon, but couldn’t see the color of its scales. His first thought was of Gavin, making Dillon’s beast gear up for a fight. Then he wondered if it was Erik.
Dillon sighed and headed back.
* * *
Isabella marched outside. She stomped up to the small grove with the picnic table and cupped her hands around her mouth. Dillon had to be somewhere around here.
She called his name, shouting into the sky. He would hear her, and he would show his face. If she felt the way she did for Dillon, then the chances were that he felt the same for her. They had a bond, one that would pull them toward each other no matter where they went.
A part of her wanted to call it a mate bond, but she wasn’t convinced. Were she truly Dillon’s mate, she never would have been so horrible to him. This wasn’t the kind of love that Evangeline and Casey had, but it was still love.
“Dillon!” she shouted. “We need to talk. I know you can hear me. Come over here so we can talk this out!”
She spun in a circle, checking the woods, the sky, and every other direction. He would come. He had to. If he heard her…he would come.
But the moment stretched on, and she began to worry that Dillon was well and truly done with her. He’d ignored all her texts and voicemails for the past three days. She shouldn’t have expected this to go any differently.
She put one hand over her mouth and another over her stomach as she choked back a sob. She’d ruined everything. Her life had been great. She’d been so happy, and yet she’d thrown it away over a few words.
A shape appeared in the sky, growing closer and closer by the second. Her heart tripped over itself. She’d never seen any of the dragon men in their dragon forms. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would be the size of houses, or that she would feel a trickle of fear upon seeing them approach her.
She told herself that it had to be Dillon. While she’d never seen his dragon form, she couldn’t think of who else would answer to her calls for him.
The beast hit the edge of the cliff that hung over the cabin roof. His tail slapped the house as he turned a predatorial grin on her. This dragon had a sleek muzzle lined with tiny horns. When his lips parted, she saw rows of razor-sharp teeth like a shark.
It took only a heartbeat for her to realize this was not Dillon.
She took a step back. Fight or flight had misfired, and she was left with shock. It numbed her from head to toe before her body flooded with the cold of true fear.
The dragon before her shrank into a human shape. An unfamiliar human shape. Isabella blinked and prayed this was Casey’s sister, but the form that appeared was definitely male.
“Aren’t you a pretty little thing,” the man purred. “I’m sorry if my landing frightened you. My beast can be a little…overwhelming.”
The clan hadn’t mentioned inviting anyone else to their cause. They had, however, warned that Zander would keep sending dragons after them. She’d gone outside to find Dillon and walked into a trap.
“If you take a step closer, I’ll call…” she faltered. Her first instinct was to call Dillon, but it was painfully obvious to her and her uninvited visitor that Dillon was not answering her calls.
“Ah,” the visitor said. “So, I take it that means no one else is home? That means they won’t mind if I take you out. They shouldn’t leave such a pretty lady all on her lonesome all day.”
Though his words seemed kind, there was an edge to them. She’d never had a blade held to her throat before, but she figured it must have felt something like this. The dragon man on the edge of the cliff could move faster than her. If she tried to run, he would catch up to her.
She didn’t know if this man would hurt her, but she couldn’t take the risk. Her body was not completely her own. There was another life inside her that she had to put first.
“What do you want?”
“I thought I made that clear,” he said, casually stepping closer. “You and I are going to take a little trip out on the town. I’ll make sure you have everything you could ever want, but you won’t be able to contact your friends here. I’m sure you understand. This is war, after all.”
She swallowed.
Before she could find a way to leave a note or a warning, the man lunged. His form shifted mid-leap. Air blasted her from the sudden change. She threw her hands up to shield her face, so she didn’t see the beast when it reached for her.
Claws wrapped around her middle and her feet lifted from the air. Her heart went into overdrive. As they ascended, she gasped for air, but she couldn’t pull any of it in. It was as if the very air was being ripped away from her.
Only when they stopped rising and the dragon coasted on the air could she breathe again. She gulped down mouthfuls and tried to ease her frantic heart.
Isabella regretted being unable to warn the clan. She didn’t want them coming for her. This man had taken her hostage, but it seemed like he didn’t want to hurt her. Taking her was probably a way to intimidate the clan. If only she could have found a way to warn the others that she would be fine, then this man’s plan would fail.
But she couldn’t lie to herself. If this man’s plan failed, then there was a chance he would resort to hurting her. She had to find a way to escape him on her own.
30
Dillon pulled his wings into his body, but even that couldn’t make his bulky form fast enough to catch up to the dragon ahead. He recognized the scent on the wind as a dragon from Zander’s clan. The dragon had landed near the cabin and then lifted back into the sky barely a minute later.
Dillon’s only thought was of Isabella, still in the cabin even though she’d told Gavin she would move. If the dragon had done anything to her, Dillon would make sure the dragon would never fly again.
He gave up on trying to be sleek and pumped his wings with all the power of the hot rage simmering in his chest. Dillon’s dragon was bulky. It was made for taking enemies down quickly and holding ground against attacks. The dragon ahead had been sent because its form was built for speed.
His confidence wavered until he saw a small form in the dragon’s grasp. Isabella waved her arms. Alarm surged through Dillon. He tried to fly harder, faster. He needed to get to her, but he began to realize that she was not waving for his attention.
Isabella’s gesture told him that she wanted him to back off. She pushed her hands out then pointed down at the cabin.
He realized that she would not withstand an aerial fight. Humans could heal broken bones, but if she lost the baby, she would never be able to get that little soul back. He knew just how badly she wanted the child. It was her reason for moving forward. Dillon couldn’t risk her and the child.
Against his dragon’s will, Dillon turned back toward the cabin. He slammed into the ground, his beast folding back, so he could pummel the earth with his fists. The ground folded beneath his fury, but it did nothing to make him feel better. Trapped inside Dillon now, his beast thrashed.
It told him to track her down, to do anything to get her back. She was their mate. No one else meant as much to him. Dillon reasoned with the beast, but the argument made him stagger as he got to his feet. He felt pulled in all directions.
On one side, his anger and honor told him to go after. On the other, logic kept him rooted to the ground. Dillon grasped the sides of his head and fought the beast back until he could find a moment of silence.
His first move should be to call everyone. He didn’t belong to a clan so he could babysit their asses all the time and get nothing in return. They were a family, so they could protect one another.
Dillon stumbled into the house while his beast fought against him. Its only thought was of Isabella. It chanted her name, the sound growing deeper and more desperate by the moment. Dillon ran past Isabella’s room and into his own so he could grab his phone from the nightstand. It had a dozen
texts and missed calls from her.
His stomach dropped. Guilt tried to take its place, but he shoved it aside to focus on the task. He fired a message to Casey before calling Gavin. Casey would forward the message to Erik once he got it.
The phone rang. His heart refused to beat as he waited for Gavin to answer. For a minute, Dillon thought Gavin would ignore him—or that Gavin had lost control to his beast again even though it’d been a while since Dillon had to track him down.
“What do you want?” Gavin breathed into the phone once he finally answered.
Dillon snarled. “Nate is in town. He took Isabella.”
Silence made the line buzz. Then, Gavin hissed and hung up. Dillon had thought that Gavin would want more information, but that seemed to be enough.
Dillon’s dragon told him that the need to be human was now over. The beast pressed against the inside of Dillon’s skin, making him feel as though he would burst. He ran back outside and scanned the skies, wondering if more dragons would come.
Just as he was about to unleash his wings and let his beast take to the sky again, his phone screen lit up. An incoming call flashed Nate’s name. Dillon hadn’t even realized he had Nate’s number in his phone. They’d been in the same clan; it shouldn’t have been surprising.
Yet, Dillon had never interacted with Nate. The wide berth everyone had given him had made him feel alone and empty. The threads that had bound Dillon to his own clan had trapped him in a cage. He wasn’t that trapped beast anymore. Dillon was a man with a family and a clan to protect.
“Give her back,” Dillon growled the second he answered the phone.
Nate laughed. “It’s good to hear from you, too. You know, we’ve missed you back home. Everyone has been asking when you’re coming back.”
“There’s no point in lying,” Dillon said. He knew better than to think anyone in that clan had thought of him once he left. If anyone mentioned Dillon’s name, they wouldn’t have remembered who he was.
“I was trying to make you feel better,” Nate said. “If you don’t want to play nice, you don’t have to. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be a good boy. Your lady friend is unharmed. I’ve got her sitting pretty with a room service menu and all the television channels she could ever want.”
* * *
While the visitor wasn’t lying, Isabella held back the urge to chuck the room service menu at the man’s head. She could hear Dillon’s voice on the other side. She hoped her mate would stay smart and wait for her to escape.
She glanced around. It couldn’t be that difficult to get out of a hotel room. Right?
She only had to wait for the dragon man to leave so she could sneak out and run back. She wouldn’t run all the way back to the cabin. That would leave her vulnerable and out in the open for too long. Isabella had other options. Evangeline’s shop wasn’t far. If Evangeline wasn’t there, then Nellie would be. Nellie would be able to hide them both.
Then Isabella would be able to call Dillon and tell him that she was safe. He would come and pick her up from the shop and protect her.
But how could she protect them?
She ran her finger over the sharp laminated corner of the menu as she watched the stranger. The man hung up the phone and shoved it into his pocket as he shook his head. When he turned back to her, there was a soft smile on the corner of his mouth as if he found this to be all fun and games.
“Why do you care if these men get on with their lives?” she asked. “They’re not doing anything wrong out here. Just go home and leave us alone.”
He raised a brow, his expression telling her that he thought what she said was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. “You haven’t met my boss. If I don’t get Gavin to head home and face his punishment, then I have to face that punishment.”
She knew this wasn’t about a father wanting to spank a petulant child. Zander hadn’t bargained with his son to bring him home. The man hadn’t even tried to reason with Gavin. If anything, she could tell that Zander was threatened by Gavin. Zander wanted to wipe his son off the face of the earth for simply being the better version of himself.
“Why give power to a man who will treat you like that?” she asked. “Even I know when to leave an abusive relationship. If you stick around a man like that, he’ll end up being the death of you.”
“You really think escape is that easy? Another dragon tried to escape three years ago. Zander brought us the dragon’s horn and threw it at our feet to show us what happened to traitors. That man died. Now Gavin is courting death, too.”
Isabella swallowed. This guy didn’t seem awful. If anything, he was scared.
She straightened her spine. “I hope you know Gavin doesn’t care about me. Just because I was at the cabin doesn’t mean I’m important.”
The man tapped the phone in his pocket. “It’s too late to try that tactic. Dillon already gave himself away. That man is head over heels for you. I’d say congratulations, but Dillon won’t fare much better than Gavin once everyone is brought home.”
She shot to her feet and marched toward the dragon man. “If you think you can sacrifice them to save your own skin, you’re wrong. A man like that is always going to be looking for threats. Good luck lying low, because eventually he’ll empty the room and it will be just you and him and you won’t be able to escape him anymore.”
The man glared at her for a moment too long. She saw the twitch in the corner of his eye and how his clenched jaw loosened as if he might refute her but was at a loss. He looked away and refused to meet her gaze.
Isabella didn’t back down. Not while he stepped around her. Not while he flung the door open and slammed it behind himself. Through the door, she could hear him telling the staff to keep an eye out for her as he wove a story about her damaged memory and how she would need to be redirected back to her room no matter what.
She stuck her tongue out at the closed door but was grateful that he’d left. The man would likely cause trouble for her clan of dragon men, but his absence was her opportunity.
She ran for the window and threw open the curtains. The ground below seemed to shrink. She should have known there wouldn’t be a fire escape outside her window. The dizzying height was too much to dare jumping. Maybe if she had a witch around, then she could do something.
Isabella let out a laugh and spun around, heading for the phone on the side table. She refused to call the dragon men, but her girlfriends could help. When she lifted the phone to her ear, she expected it to be dead, but the dragon man hadn’t thought of everything.
Instead of calling a cell phone, Nellie called the tattoo shop’s landline. That way, the unfamiliar number wouldn’t appear and confuse her friends. Isabella knew they all had a bad habit of ignoring numbers they didn’t know. But, when the phone rang and rang, Isabella began to worry.
She questioned if the shop was even open. Maybe Dillon had alerted the others, making Casey and Evangeline close shop for the day. Of course, Casey would want to protect his mate, too. The unfamiliar dragon man might go after Evangeline next.
Isabella cursed just as someone picked up the phone.
“The Grumpy Sailor Tattoo Parlor,” Nellie droned, clearly exhausted.
Isabella heaved a sigh of relief and immediately launched into an explanation and a breakdown of her plan before the line could get disconnected. She was lucky the dragon man hadn’t thought to tell the hotel staff that she couldn’t be trusted with a phone either.
“I can’t believe these dragons,” Nellie said. “I’ll be over in five minutes to clean up their mess.”
Isabella spent the five minutes fiddling with the window, trying to get the glass panel to move aside so she could push the screen out of the way. Yet, Nellie didn’t show up outside the window. She knocked on the door.
Nellie quickly stepped inside when Isabella opened the door. She passed Isabella an iced chai latte, explaining that she needed to stop at the coffee shop for caffeine and sugar anyway. Isabella was stunned that Nellie had pul
led it off in less than five minutes.
“I’ve been holding a cloaking spell for weeks now,” Nellie said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Isabella noticed that a white streak that hadn’t been there a week ago now decorated the front of Nellie’s brown hair. While Isabella thought that perhaps Nellie had stopped dying her grey hair, Isabella also couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen any greys on Nellie to begin with. Besides, had it happened naturally, a streak like that would have appeared slowly, over time.
Nellie’s continual use of magic had drained her. Isabella felt a twinge of guilt for calling on her friend when she was already overtaxed. Still, Nellie took her hand and explained that as long as they were holding each other, no one would notice Isabella as they walked out.
So much for Isabella’s plan to jump out the window. She really had jumped to the most extreme option instead of calling Nellie and simply asking for help. Isabella marveled at the woman she’d become. Had this happened a month ago, Isabella would have fallen into a panic.
She wouldn’t have realized she could call for help. Instead, she would have waited for someone to rescue her, which would have caused more problems.
Each face they passed in the hall made Isabella’s heart thump. No one spared her a glance. Nellie even had to tug Isabella out of the way of a few maids because Isabella was too distracted by the evidence of magic. She knew about it, but she’d never seen Nellie use it for anything other than salves, which were so passive.
They stepped out onto the street together, both sipping iced drinks as if nothing was wrong with the world. Isabella scanned the streets, waiting for the unfamiliar dragon man to leap out and drag her back to her hotel room. They made it back to the tattoo parlor before anything could happen.
“That seemed way too easy,” Isabella said.
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