by Olivia Ash
“Shut up, Irena, and let him help you,” I demand, standing. “We're moving. Go, team! Go!”
Squad One slips into a tight formation, every gun raised while the eight men at the center once again carry the cases through the now-cleared asphalt road toward the anti-dragon guns.
It's not usually smart to go toward the thing that's trying to kill you, but in this case, we have very few other options.
I pause at the corner that will lead us to the nearest artillery gun. As I carefully peek around the edge, I find a familiar man standing in the center with his gun already raised toward me.
Diesel.
He fires off several rounds into the corner of the building, no doubt hoping it'll go through the siding and clear into me. The facility has been shot to shit so far, and it’s probably not going to hold up much longer.
I dart backward out of the line of fire, cursing under my breath. If he's here, that means Zurie’s not far behind.
“We have to get out of here!” I say tensely as I glare at Jace.
“Yeah,” he says with a short nod. “There's no other option.”
“Russell, where are you?” I ask into the comm line.
“Nearly there,” he answers with the grunt of effort. “We encountered some difficulties along the way, but we're handling it.”
“Get ready to fly,” Jace orders through the comm. “The moment those anti-dragon guns are destroyed, we're out of here. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” dozens of voices say through the line.
“Rory,” Diesel shouts in a singsong voice. “Did you ever think this would be how you die?”
I reload my rifle and rack it. “I could ask you the same thing, Diesel.”
“I never would have guessed it,” he admits. “I always figured you’d die by drowning, to be honest.”
That’s… remarkably specific.
If I had to guess, I would say he was probably the one drowning me in those messed up daydreams of his.
What a charmer.
With my rifle in my right hand, I summon my magic into my left. White light flutters across my skin, glimmering like the Northern Lights as I prepare to give Diesel a fight he will never forget.
Before anyone can stop me, I summon a massive blast of magic into my hand and round the corner. The plan is to use myself as bait, and sure, that’s risky—but I only do it because I’m faster than him. I want him to stay in place so that I can use my magic to blast him to hell.
Diesel's finger hovers over the trigger, about to fire at me yet again, but I don't give him the chance.
My magic burst and crackles in the air above my skin, and I let it free. The beam soars through the storage facility—not at him, but at the anti-dragon gun sitting in the storage locker behind him.
It explodes.
A cascade of fire shoots into the air, billowing and smoking into the sky. The blast knocks the nearby Spectres off their feet, and even Diesel falls to his knees, rolling across the asphalt from the force of the explosion.
With him dazed, I aim my rifle at his head and fire. Since he’s a moving target and I'm doing this one-handed, my aim is a little off—I only catch him in the bicep.
He grimaces and darts for cover, taking refuge behind a nearby building as I race toward him.
Soldiers flood out behind me, a swarm of fury and bullets that takes out every Spectre they see.
I, however, am focused on Diesel.
This is my chance to end him, and I won't miss it. If he gets out of here alive, that's bad news for me. That's bad news for everyone I love.
My gun runs out of ammo, and I curse under my breath. I duck for cover, hiding behind a building seconds before Diesel emerges and shoots. His bullets ricochet off the walls as he stalks toward me.
His footsteps thunder across the ground amidst the patter of gunfire in the war zone around us, ever closer.
Tucker, Levi, and Jace fight nearby, while Drew guards Irena. My sister grimaces in agony, holding her side and trying to keep from bleeding out.
To my horror, Tucker goes down. He groans in pain, grimacing as he holds his shoulder. Jace covers them while Levi pauses to check on the former Knight. My ice dragon pauses to fire off a few rounds as he kneels beside his friend, checking the wound.
My team is losing.
The people I love are getting shot, and with every passing second, there's a greater chance one of them is going to die.
I can't allow this.
I want to kill Diesel, but it's more important that we get out of here. Diesel's gunfire stops, but I can hear his footsteps getting ever closer. He's probably just reloading. If I can blast him with my magic and then head toward the guns—
Before I can even finish the thought, a massive explosion rocks the building across from me.
The force blows me backward, and I roll across the ground, sliding to a stop as Diesel rounds the corner with a rocket launcher on his shoulder.
“Bye, Rory,” he says, grinning.
I summon my magic and fire at him, but he manages to duck out of the way with seconds to spare. My blast hits the roof of the storage facility across from us instead, lighting it ablaze.
Fine. I meant to kill him, but I can use it as a distraction instead.
I grab the edge of the roof and hoist myself on top of the building, knowing full well it could put me in greater danger depending on who else might be up here. However, for the moment, I just need to get out of his line of fire. I need him to not know where I am, even if only for a second.
From this vantage point, I can spot the other two anti-dragon weapons and the additional Spectres beginning to file into the storage facility. If there's backup, that means Zurie could come at any moment, and I need to get us out of here.
The other two anti-dragon guns are aimed in the general direction of the rest of my team. I still don't have eyes on Russell, and I hope he and his team aren’t dead. He's probably stopping additional Spectres from filing in, and right now, that's the best we can hope for.
Any longer in this mess, and we're all going to die.
I scan my team, trying to think of a plan, and I catch sight of the four bomb-laden crates we came here to get. They’re lined up beside Irena and closely guarded by soldiers.
After all, that’s why we’re here.
We can’t exactly let those get blown up.
I have an awful idea, but at this point, we're desperate.
I run across the roof toward my team and dive, rolling as I hit the ground and join them. I would have loved to break Diesel's arm or shatter a leg or just outright kill him, but I don't have the time to indulge such a thing right now.
Besides, he's never going to let me get close enough for a fistfight, not with a rocket launcher.
I kneel beside Irena as she grimaces in pain.
“Which crate is the least important?” I ask.
“They're all important,” she says through her gritted teeth.
“Pick one. If you had to sacrifice one of them, which one?”
“Rory, no,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me as she arches her back in pain. “We came all this way!”
“And we're about to die because of it, so pick a damn crate!”
She groans in frustration and even a hint of grief. Given everything she must have gone through to get those crates together, I understand why she doesn’t want to sacrifice even one of them. I can only imagine what she had to do, who she had to kill, and what she had to sacrifice to make it happen.
And I'm about to blow one of them up.
“That one,” she says, pointing to the second crate.
I tap Drew and Jace on the shoulder. “Guys, I need you to throw this between the two anti-dragon guns.”
“What?” Jace asks, his brow furrowing.
Drew laughs. “You've got to be kidding.”
“Do it,” I shout, summoning my magic. White light races across my arms and burns in my hands like fire.
Jace fires off a
few rounds into the fray, pausing only when his gun runs out of ammo. “Rory, what—”
“Do it!” I roar.
“Fine,” Drew snaps, though it's clear he's not convinced this is a great idea.
The two men grab the crate, and I hover near the corner, peeking into the firefight as I wait for a good shot.
“Jace, the moment we throw it, I need everyone to shift and get out of here. We can't leave anything behind. No bodies, no weapons, no tech. That clear?”
“Clear,” he nods. “Did everyone hear that?”
“Yes, sir,” dozens of voices say through the comm.
“Get ready,” I say, scanning the open path between buildings as several Spectres reload the dragon guns. “Aim right in the middle.”
“We got it,” Drew says.
“Now!” I shout.
The men hurl the massive crate into the center of the two guns, and I watch with bated breath as the massive bomb flies through the air. With the enemy distracted, I take the moment to step into the open path, aiming at the crate, tracking where it's going to go.
Just as I step into the path, Diesel does the same, lifting his rocket launcher and aiming it toward me.
Now or never.
I fire off my magic. It seeps from me as I let the full brunt of my power free. I barely try to control it, and the blinding white light that streams from me is possibly the most massive blast I’ve shot thus far. It tears through the air toward the crate and, in seconds, hits.
A massive explosion rocks the facility, shaking the very ground and making the buildings themselves tremble. Fire and smoke billows into the air, swallowing everything around it—including the anti-dragon guns and the Spectres who were managing them.
The blast throws Diesel to the ground as the missile launches from his rocket launcher, throwing off his aim. It explodes above us like a firework, and the rocket launcher slides across the asphalt.
I'm tempted to grab it. I'm tempted to run over there and shoot him. To destroy him. To make sure he's dead.
I don't get the chance.
A black thunderbird wraps his claws around my waist and lifts me into the air. I look up as Jace carries me through the sky, the blue light glowing in his wings and along his chest, and I know he didn't want this. He didn't want it to come to a shift because, if any of this can be traced back to him, the Fairfax family will face the full brunt of a world desperate to go to war with them.
By leaving behind no trace, we mitigate that risk. If all goes well, the Spectres will be blamed for this. Not dragons.
As sirens near the chaos, all of Jace's dragons are already in the sky. The blue and red lights flash across the road, but we're too high to even see.
And if all went right, we left no trace we were even there.
Chapter Eighteen
I pace the living room in Jace's suite, slowly circling the sofa as I bite my nails.
Everyone is injured in some fashion, and it's chaos down in the medic ward. The nurses ordered me up here, and I can't sit still.
All I can do is think about everything happening just a few floors below me—and all the ways I can't help.
I hate waiting.
Irena and Tucker were immediately wheeled into the emergency operating room. As the chaos devolved, Levi was helping a soldier who had nearly lost his foot and somehow also ended up in a surgery room, though he was thankfully assisting instead of being operated on.
I caught glimpses of a furious Drew trying to bat away his doctors, insisting he was fine despite the deep gash in his chest. Jace, of course, was directing everyone through the ocean of heads and shouting, coordinating the chaos and keeping it from devolving into something worse.
And yet, I’m stuck up here.
Even though I tried to help, there simply wasn't enough space. It wasn't long before I was shooed away.
With everything going on, I could have probably put up a fight and stayed to help, but I would rather the nurse's attention be focused on making the people I love healthy again, rather than trying to deal with me.
The door to the hallway opens, and an exhausted Jace enters. He rubs his eyes as he closes the door, and for a moment, it seems as though he doesn't even know I'm here.
Deep within my chest, my dragon curls with longing, aching to be closer to him. Though I’m still pacing and restless, I stop mid-stride. I tense, watching his face and waiting for an update.
Given everything he's endured tonight, I don't want to push him, and I certainly don't want to hound him for answers.
Without a word, he walks toward me. Only in the final few steps do his eyes land on me, but just as my dragon sensed him, his probably senses me.
He pulls me into his powerful arms and hugs me tightly, cradling the back of my head with his massive hand. He kisses the side of my face and breathes me in, drinking in my scent like he wasn't sure he was going to see me again.
My traitorous body impulsively relaxes into him, and I wrap my arms around his waist.
We simply stand there for a while like this, just him and me. Enjoying the silence and the fact that we're all still alive.
“Everyone's fine,” he says quietly, without moving a muscle. “Irena and Tucker will both have full recoveries. They're sleeping off the anesthesia right now, as their surgeries were pretty intense. I'm fairly certain Levi has stolen the heart of everyone in the ward with his willingness to do anything and help anyone who's hurting,” Jace adds with a small chuckle.
“That sounds about right,” I admit, grinning with pride.
“Drew’s being an asshole, of course,” Jace says, the humor dropping from his voice. “He's trying to tell the nurses to leave him alone so that he can figure out what happened and what went wrong.”
“I already know what went wrong,” I admit, my grip impulsively tightening on his shirt. “Someone betrayed us. Specifically, someone betrayed Irena.”
“I think you're right,” he admits.
“I’m grateful everyone else is fine,” I say, leaning backward until I can see his face. “But how are you?”
He hesitates, his eyes darting between mine as his mouth opens. It's clear he wants to say something but hasn't found the words yet, and for a moment, he just struggles to think of how he wants to phrase this.
It's strange to see Jace speechless, and I'm not sure what's about to happen. My fingers tighten around his arms, both out of comfort and curiosity as I study his face.
“I'm impressed,” he admits after a moment, his hands falling to my waist. “And confused.”
“What?” I ask, admittedly baffled.
He doesn't answer right away. Instead, he gently brushes his knuckle along my jaw as he studies every inch of me, like he's seeing me for the first time. Every curve. Every freckle. He drinks it in as if he's amazed by every detail. It's like he's building a map of my face in his mind, and I'm not really sure what to make of this.
“You saw something I missed back there,” he finally says, breaking the silence. “You saved my life when that Spectre attacked. I didn't see him coming.” Jace pauses, his jaw clenching, and I figure admitting that is a bit of a wounding blow to his pride. But he's man enough to learn from his own mistakes, and I respect that.
“Oh,” I say, shrugging. “Sure, Jace. I mean, I'm not going to let you get hurt. I know Spectres, and I knew we weren't alone. I was ready.”
“So was I,” he points out, a somber look crossing his face.
I pause to really look at him, to really study the subtle changes in his expression.
There's something… different.
There's been a clear shift, though I'm not yet sure what it was and what it means. There's something in the way he looks at me that's changed.
He's looking at me like he looks at Harper. Tucker. Levi.
He's looking at me like I'm his equal.
“I won't lie to you,” Jace says quietly, briefly looking at the floor. “I have always thought of you as a treasure to hoard, as something
to stow away and protect. And as often as you made fun of me for it and as often as I denied it, that's the truth,” he confesses. “I thought I knew this world better than you, that I knew the risks better than you. But Rory…” he hesitates, his gaze serious and focused as he watches me. “Rory, I was wrong.”
“Be still my heart,” I say, fanning my face as I make fun of him. “I didn't know you could even say those words.”
Jace laughs, his eyes crinkling a little with the joy of the moment. Gods, I love it when he smiles.
“So, what does this mean?” I ask, not entirely sure where he's going with this. “What does it mean for us? For the dojo? For this choice you have to make?”
He takes a step, closing the already small gap between us as he towers over me. For a moment, I think he's actually going to answer me, even as his mischievous gaze rakes over my body.
Without a word, his lips brush mine. It’s tender, at first, more so than I expected from a man as dominating and authoritative as him. Ribbons of delight weave through me with every breath of his that rolls across my face. He holds my arms tightly, pulling me close as the kiss deepens.
“Use your words, Jace,” I chide between kisses, grinning as I poke fun at him.
“This is more enjoyable,” he answers.
With that, he lifts me into the air. My stomach churns as I lose my balance, and I arch my head back with laughter and delightful surprise. He sets me gently on the couch, laying over me as he kisses me yet again. His fingers weave through my hair, caressing me with fierce passion.
I open my mouth to speak, to crack a joke or make him laugh again, but he presses his lips against mine to silence me. I have no choice but to give in to him, and I love it—his possessive grip on the back of my neck, the way he presses his hips against mine, the way the bulge in his pants grows as I wrap my legs around him.
I very much like this new and improved Jace Goodwin.
He abruptly stops, his hot breath rolling over me as his grip on my neck tightens. It’s soothing, his strong fingertips against my skin a reminder of his power. His strength. His devotion.
His lips hover an inch above mine, taunting me at how tantalizingly close they are.