While they’d been bantering, her beast had settled. Bree sucked in a breath and felt it reach every inch of her lungs, like the beast no longer pressed against them.
“Feeling any better?” Erik asked.
“A lot better, actually.” She stood and scanned the town, wondering where they should check next.
Erik didn’t follow her, though. She peered back at him and found him wearing a grim expression
“I was serious when I told you to go home,” he said. “If your beast can’t handle the anxiety right now, then it’s safer for everyone if you go home.”
Bree pressed her lips together if only to keep them from curling. She refused to sit on the sidelines while her mate went searching for a fight. He wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t need to go into danger by himself. Couldn’t he tell how badly she wanted to help?
He wouldn’t budge, though. No argument she made seemed to have any effect on his stance. Desperation tried to overwhelm her, but she staunched it before it could take hold.
“What am I supposed to do then? Sit at home and dream of a future I might not get because you’re out here alone and unprotected?”
He stood, his movements stiff, and tried to reach for her. She darted away from him because she didn’t want her hurt washed away by his tenderness. She wanted to feel her rage and let it empower her for a while longer.
He let his hand fall uselessly against his side. “I promise I’ll come home tonight.”
“So, you’re the witch now? Since when can you predict the future?” Her tongue had become barbed. She flinched at the sound of her own venom-laced voice. She clenched her jaw as regret slithered down her throat like ice-water. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean…I’m not saying you’re weak.”
He hugged her. With his warmth and tenderness surrounding her, the stabbing cold of her regret slowly faded away. He ran his hand up and down her back, a gesture she would never tire of.
“I know you want to make sure I’m safe. You’re a fierce protector,” he whispered. “I love that about you. You’re not all fury and sound like Evangeline. You’re not soft with hints of steel like Isabella. You’re a force to be reckoned with. I know you need more time to adjust to your beast, though. I don’t want to throw you into the deep end. We have to do this right.”
“I don’t like it when you say nice things and make sense,” she mumbled into his shirt.
“That’s just because you’re still mad. Will you listen to me and go home now?”
Bree let the lie roll off her tongue far too easily. “Yes.”
He cupped her face with both hands and kissed her like he would never see her again. The longing and broken promises in it made her desperately cling to his shirt. After a kiss like that, there was no way she would let him patrol these streets alone.
* * *
Erik didn’t want to leave Bree behind, but he couldn’t risk her beast overpowering her. They were out to stop a shifter from exposing them as dragons. If Bree lost to her dragon and shifted in town, then they would be doing exactly what the shifter wanted. As much as he wanted to keep patrolling with Bree, she would be best off if she went home.
People on the street gave him an even wider berth without Bree beside him. It was as if they could tell that he harbored not just one, but two dragons inside himself. He wondered what they saw the day of the fire, which made him wonder what the unwelcome shifter would have in store for them next.
This war had to end, soon. Erik wondered how the others could deal with the constant fear now that they had mates. Perhaps Erik’s fear was a little more intense because of Bree’s nature. She wanted to help in every way possible, even if that meant entering the men’s room while a dragon shifter was having a breakdown.
Erik wanted her as far away from this nonsense as possible. Gavin seemed to think that once they had the numbers, Zander would stop harassing them. Erik had never known Zander to give up on anything once he put his mind to it. Right now, Zander wanted to push Gavin and his clan off this mountain to destabilize them. Once they were without a home, then Zander would pick them off one by one, most likely starting with Erik. Gods, how he hated Erik.
Erik had always thought that he was broken, that his two beasts had created a schism in him that was beyond repair. Being around Bree made him realize that wasn’t true. He’d been made to feel that way his whole life, so he’d adopted the thought as his own. The two beasts didn’t make him weak, though.
They just made him different.
The heavy guilt and shame he’d carried around for so long didn’t weigh down on him as much. Bree had knocked some of it off. He owed her for that. He owed her a long and happy life with whatever she wanted. If she wanted kids, he would try to be the best father he could be.
His thoughts were interrupted by a whiff of the scent he’d followed the other day. Erik halted and tried to figure out which way it’d gone. When he took another step, it vanished. Backing up, he found it again, but another step back and it was gone. The scent seemed to exist in a small bubble and nowhere else.
He kept backing up, his eyes on the street while his mind reeled. He didn’t understand how a scent could be in one place and nowhere else. If the shifter had walked through here, there should have been some sort of trail. There wasn’t even anything on the ground that could have been thrown.
Erik’s gut churned nervously. He pulled out his phone, ready to partake in a weird game of phone tag.
“What the hell do you want?” Evangeline snapped.
Apparently, she was still angry about how he’d changed Bree. He’d overheard her not long ago. She confessed to Casey that it wasn’t just that Erik had changed Bree, but that he’d done it against her will. Erik wished that Evangeline would direct that anger at him and not Bree, but that was a conversation they needed to have another time.
“Can you ask Nellie if there’s a magical way a shifter can cover their scent? Oh, and if it can, ah, glitch out every now and then.” He didn’t know how else to explain the pocket of scent.
He strode forward and caught the trail another fifty feet away. This trail would be impossible to follow if he could only find it every fifty feet. He peered around and wondered which direction he should go.
Evangeline agreed to his request, promised to text back soon, and hung up. While he had his phone out, Erik texted Bree. She should be halfway to the cabin by now. He should have called her a cab or one of those new ride-sharing services. What a great mate he made.
Bree didn’t reply right away. A trickle of unease made its way through him, but he brushed it off. He worried because of the war slowly taking over his life, but Bree was a capable and reasonable woman. She was fine.
The green beast snarled at him and called him useless. The blue beast, which usually backed up Erik, agreed with its twin. Erik grumbled at the both of them and turned his attention to the spotty scent trail. Why did his beasts suddenly decide to start working together now of all times?
Just as he caught the trail again, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, expecting a response from Bree. Instead, Evangeline confirmed his suspicion. The shifter hiding in town was using magic to cover his tracks.
Erik either had to find a way to follow the disrupted scent or wait for the shifter to strike again. If the shifter had used his fire breath in front of humans, Erik didn’t want to know what he would do next. This guy wasn’t from Zander’s clan. No one recognized his smell, meaning he had to be some sort of cheap hire. And from the way the guy had been peering into Isabella and Dillon’s window, he most likely had more in mind than what Zander had asked for.
When the trail proved impossible and time consuming, Erik cursed. His head ached from the barrage of other aromas around town. From Bree’s faded presence to the old croissant package fluttering in the gutter, the combination of everything was quickly becoming too much to bear.
“Looking for me?” a gruff voice asked.
A forearm pressed against Eri’s throat. He
snarled as someone tried to yank him off balance. At first, Erik could smell nothing. Then he caught it, the shifter’s scent.
Erik got his feet underneath him again and threw his weight forward. The shifter behind him made a sound of surprise. Good, that was what Erik wanted. He grabbed the forearm against his throat and clawed at it with the talons he’d let grow while off balance.
The shifter roared in pain. “I’m going to tear your pretty little dragon girlfriend into a million itty bitty pieces.”
Fueled by hot rage, Erik slammed his elbow back into the shifter’s gut. The green dragon purred with approval when the shifter released Erik. He stumbled away and spun, his green dragon preparing for a fight. His stomach hit the ground at the sight of the empty space. The green dragon hissed.
He searched for the shifter but couldn’t see nor smell him anywhere. It was as if the guy had vanished into thin air. The shifter’s angered threat now held true weight. Erik lurched forward before remembering that Bree had promised to go back to the cabin.
Hands shaking, he fumbled his phone before opening it. He still hadn’t gotten a reply from Bree. His beasts rioted until every bone in his body ached. If anything happened to her, he wouldn’t be able to hold both of them back. They would both fight their way out of him until he was some horrible combination of both.
He sucked in a steadying breath through his nose and called Bree. When she didn’t answer, he tried to reason with himself. She could be taking a nap. Fighting one’s beasts took a lot of energy.
Instead of bothering Evangeline again, he called Dillon. Unfortunately, Dillon informed him that he hadn’t seen Bree since Erik had left with her. Erik cursed and hung up.
Bree hadn’t listened to him. He didn’t know why he’d expected anything less. His beasts wouldn’t stop thrashing, making every step shaky, but Erik pushed forward. He backtracked to the bench where he and Bree had spoken last. Her scent still lingered in the air like a reminder that she could be taken from this world all too easily.
No amount of reassurance that she was a strong woman calmed his beasts. They berated him for leaving her alone. He had one duty, and it was to her. The green beast warned Erik that he had to stop worrying about his past and start paying attention to his future.
47
Bree walked in the direction of the cabin, though she had no intention of climbing the hill toward it. Instead, she sniffed the air for a hint of the scent she’d caught the night she wanted to fly to Erik. She could smell trash, tobacco smoke, and old coffee grounds, but no shifter.
She shoved her hands into her pockets and tried not to worry about what her future had in store for her. If this war took Erik from her, then she would have nothing. He’d become integral to her. Where once she thought she could have a happy life alongside him, she now knew that their lives were one and the same.
That was what it meant to be mated. Their souls were bonded, in a strange way. If one perished, the other would live only a half-life.
Her thought paused when she caught a familiar scent on the wind. She couldn’t be quite sure if this was the unwelcome shifter, but she didn’t want to leave it to chance, either. Pivoting, she followed the scent down an alley. No one could see her, but she could hear the shuffle of footsteps not far away.
After following the alley for a minute, she realized that her hearing changed the definition of not far away. At least the scent never faded. It was easily followed to the back entrance of a small restaurant.
Bree paused and wondered why she would catch the scent of the intruder at the backside of a restaurant until she remembered what many of the cooks at her work did on the side. She thought she could follow the scent past the door, but it seemed to lead inside. Because she wasn’t about to enter through an employee-only door, Bree crouched behind a stack of produce boxes and waited for the shifter to show up.
She listened to the familiar sound of dishes clanking in the sink, to the chatter of line cooks going about their day and wondered if this shifter would ever reappear. After what felt like forever, she realized she should have texted Erik to tell him what she’d found. When she reached for her phone, the door cracked open.
Going absolutely still, she watched a familiar face step out. The guy she’d run into shortly after her change wore a white apron and had a trash bag hoisted in one hand. He chucked it into the nearby dumpster and spun around. She thought he would head back inside, but he froze.
He heaved a sigh and said, “Just leave me alone. I don’t want anything to do with you or your family.”
Bree shot out of her hiding place. “That’s a lie!”
The man slowly spun around. He looked her up and down with one notched brow raised. She narrowed her eyes at him, not liking how he sized her up.
“You again,” he said.
“Why did you set that house one fire?” she asked before he could say anything else.
His upper lips curled in a snarl. “I had nothing to do with that. Go home, baby shifter.”
Baby shifter? She wasn’t a baby. She was a grown woman!
The guy held up his hands. “I’m not the one you’re looking for.”
“Don’t even try pulling mind tricks on me,” Bree snapped.
Looking exasperated, the guy motioned her forward with a wave of his hand. “Sniff me. Tell me if I smell like the guy you’ve been hunting down.”
Bree recoiled before remembering that she would likely be able to tell by his scent. Sometimes, the difference between her human life and her dragon life snuck up on her. This shifter could also try to overpower her if she got within his reach.
Bree wasn’t going to be fooled. “If you aren’t working for Zander, then what are you doing in this town? Why are you hiding from the clan?”
“I was here first,” the shifter said. “I figured if I lay low and kept to myself, we could co-exist. Guess that’s not going to work if you assholes are going to blame me for everything you bring upon yourselves.”
Bree sniffed the air, uncertain if she would be able to get enough of a scent to tell the difference between this guy and the one they were hunting. The tell-tale aroma of smoke gave him away as a dragon shifter, but Bree had to focus to tell the scents apart.
Doubt crept into her mind. “I’ve never seen you before. I should know, I’ve lived here all my life.”
He huffed, clearly annoyed. “That’s because I don’t want to be seen. Go, get on with your life. Just leave me out of it.”
He turned to leave. Bree wanted to continue the conversation, but his back to her told her that it was over. There was one more thing she needed to say.
“The clan needs more shifters,” she called out. “They aren’t the most sociable bunch. I watched the leader try to throw a table across my bar once. But they are welcoming. I don’t think any one of them even thought to refuse me when I showed up.”
The nameless shifter stopped. She thought he would say something. Before she could hear his response, something slammed into her from the side.
* * *
Erik couldn’t find Bree. He’d tried her phone, but every call went to voicemail. His beasts grew restless. Both demanded to know where his mate was. Everything he was trying to protect meant nothing if he lost her.
He wanted to shift and fly over town to get a better look, but this wasn’t Zander’s home base. This was the sleepy mountain town that knew nothing about dragons. If Erik exposed their existence, then he would be doing exactly what the unwelcome shifter wanted.
Though his head ached from trying to follow the shifter’s trail all day, Erik found Bree’s scent at the bench and traced her path through town. His heart pounded an uncertain rhythm, almost as fast as the slap of his feet on the sidewalk.
People darted out of his way and shot him angry looks. He should have tossed out apologies to keep up friendly relations in this town, but he could think of nothing other than Bree. His beasts snarled in unison at every passing face, like the pedestrians were obstacles keeping Erik f
rom reaching Bree in time.
Her scent stopped, and Erik’s heart nearly imploded. He thought the shifter had grabbed her and that the magic around him had covered Bree’s scent. Reeling back, Erik saw a narrow alley that led behind the local business fronts. Though the rank alley smell slapped him in the face, he caught the barest hint of Bree among it all.
His hopes lifted, but his urgency remained the same. It only banked when he heard Bree’s voice ahead. Erik thought, for a moment, that he’d made it in time. Then Bree’s words cut off. A small thud followed.
The green dragon’s roar filled Erik’s ears like the din of drums. He raced forward to find her face down in the dirty alley. A dark-haired dragon shifter stood over her. The green dragon urged Erik to attack. Power pumped through Erik’s veins and into his muscles.
The stranger bore a look of confusion. He glanced at Erik and issued a low growl of warning. Erik’s throat vibrated with the growls of two beasts, making the man’s brows rise.
Bree cried out again. Something had her by her hair. Erik could see the clues now, a hand shaped imprint in the back of her shirt, a crunched bottle as if someone stood on it. Zander’s shifter was hidden behind a veil of magic. Bree hissed in pain, and Erik launched himself forward.
He thought he would hit a solid surface, but instead, he flew over Bree. A laugh echoed down the alley. Bree cursed and rolled back onto her feet. Erik moved to shield her with his body while she turned so her back was to him. He should have known his mate wouldn’t run. She had scratches on her face and dirt all down her front, but she stood by him.
“Don’t even say it,” she grumbled.
“What? That this wouldn’t be happening if you’d gone home?” Erik fired back.
“Yeah, that.”
“Uhh,” the dark-haired guy said while scanning the alley. “I don’t think right now is the time for your marital argument.”
Rogue Dragons Series: Box Set Books 1-5 Page 39