by Sophie Stern
Before we can do anything, Lawrence checks to make sure we’re in the clear. He rounds the building, floor by floor, careful to stay as silent as possible. Any movement or sound could set off an alarm, so we have to be as discreet as possible tonight. He has a device strapped to him that will let us know exactly what we can expect.
Are we walking into an ambush?
Or are we going to be able to defeat this beast tonight?
For such a long time, we’ve lived in fear. Now, thanks to the slow unraveling of information we’ve been able to gather, we’ve learned where they are and where we can hit them the hardest.
This is it.
After tonight, they won’t be able to hurt us anymore.
“The building is clear,” I hear Marta in my ear. “The tech we strapped to Lawrence is showing that there are no heat signatures inside the building.”
I growl quietly in response. I know that everyone else heard her, too, so we begin to circle the building.
Then we flame.
At the same time, we open our mouths and that’s it. Our fire comes out in a huff. With all of us circling the building, the flames hit the building from all sides and instantly, it’s on fire.
It’s burning.
It’s being destroyed.
This is it, I realize, and my heart suddenly feels both relieved and happy. For a little while, I didn’t think we were going to be able to do it.
For a little while, I didn’t think we’d be able to accomplish this.
The headquarters of Providential is carefully guarded. Lucky operates under the umbrella of its parent company and although they’ve done some very terrible things, they’ve managed to stay out of the spotlight until now.
Now, things are over.
Now, things are finished.
Now...
Pain hits me in the chest and I shift instantly and start to fall out of the air. What hit me? I don’t know what got it. I look around as I fall, trying to see anything I can, trying to shift back to my usual self, but I can’t. I can’t change back.
I reach for my chest and pull out a little dart.
Dirty fuckers.
I see Erin Allison, the president of Providential, on the roof of the building as I fall by. She waves at me and glares before flipping me the bird. I don’t even get to fight her before I’m too busy falling to my death.
And this is it, I realize.
This is how I go.
I lived a good life.
I had a lot of wonderful experiences.
I did more than a lot of people ever get to do. I made choices that might not have changed the world, but that changed the lives of the people around me, and mostly for the good.
I got to love a wonderful woman and I was able to raise a family. I got to fall in love for a second time and I made an incredible new friend. I wanted to do more, though. I wanted to see Sabrina grow old with me and Reece. I wanted to love them as our own, new family.
I wanted so many things.
And I don’t get those.
Then again, we can’t have it all, and I knew it was a risk when I took off this morning. So, I close my eyes, and I fall, and I feel the air rush around me. Any minute now, I’m going to hit the ground. Any moment, I’m going to die.
And it’ll all be over.
I wait, but nothing happens.
Am I dead already?
I didn’t hear myself hit the ground.
I didn’t feel anything.
And then it hits me.
Or, more accurately, I hit something hard.
It’s not the ground, though, it’s...shit. It’s Cameron. He catches me on his back and wraps a wing around me momentarily to help me catch my balance. Then he lowers us both to the ground. As soon as we hit the road, he shifts to his human form.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I say.
“What happened?”
“She hit me.”
“Who hit you?”
“Erin Allison.”
“What?”
“She was on the roof. She shot me with a dart.”
Cameron shakes his head.
“Fuck!”
“What?”
“The building was clear. How’d we miss her?”
“She wasn’t actually inside the building,” I point out.
“Still,” he growls. “Now we have a serious problem.”
The other dragons are still circling the building. My earpiece still seems to be working, so I speak up.
“Time to go home,” I say. “Don’t try to get the bitch. Go home, everyone. Mission over.”
Instantly, the dragons take off into the night. Under the cover of darkness, they’re nearly invisible. Nothing can see them. They need to get out of here before Erin spots them in the rays of moonlight and tries to shoot them, too. I don’t know how much range she has on that dart gun of hers, and I don’t want to find out.
“What about us?” Cameron asks.
“Boys, the video is live,” Marta says into our ears. “Get your asses out of there. It’s about to go down.”
I look up at the building that’s on fire. Flames lick at the sides, and I realize that we’ve accomplished our mission. Even with backups, Providential is going to lose a lot of research, a lot of weapons, and a lot of money today.
Hopefully, it’ll be so much that they won’t be able to recover.
We have a choice to make now, though, and it’s not an easy one.
We could go to the roof and fight her. Cameron could fly us up there, set her on fire, and fly away into the night like nothing happened. I don’t know how the hell she’s planning on getting out of the building before it burns down. She probably has a helicopter coming. We could help her avoid all of that trouble, though, just by slaughtering her now.
Or we could wait.
We could be patient.
We could let the world punish her for her crimes against shifters.
We could let everyone see, when they watch the revelation film, just how terrible of a person she really is.
I don’t know what the right answer is.
“Wilson,” Cameron asks again. “What do you want to do?”
It’s my call.
I know this.
I would love to let Erin Allison watch her company burn to the ground. I would love for her to see that the world doesn’t want anything to do with Lucky or Providential or any of her products. To me, that would be perfect.
But then I think of Reece.
And I think of what she did to him.
And I realize that there is no way in hell or heaven that we can allow her to walk free from this.
Sure enough, I hear a helicopter in the distance, and I know that our time is up.
“Top of the building,” I say, motioning for Cameron to shift. “We need to stop the bitch once and for all.”
“As you wish, Captain,” he says.
Cameron shifts and I climb on his back. We fly up quickly to the top of the building and as soon as we’re there, we spot Erin. She’s on her phone, obviously trying to salvage what she can of her company. When we reach the top of the building, she spots us and she turns, glaring at us.
“I thought I killed you,” she screams at me.
“Fuck you,” I say.
It’s the stupidest damn thing to say to a supervillain, but I don’t even care.
A big fuck you feels really, really good to scream in her face, and so I do.
She raises up her dart gun and I realize she’s going to try to shoot Cameron. Not today, Satan. That’s so not happening. She moves her finger and is about to pull the trigger when I scream, “Now!”
And Cameron opens his mouth and releases his inner-flame.
And he ends it.
Once and for all.
Chapter Fifteen
Reece
It’s the middle of the night and I hear footsteps in the hall.
Sabrina hears them, too, and she sits up in bed.
>
“It’s him,” she says, shoving the blankets off. She jumps to the floor and runs into the hallway. “It’s him!” She screams this time. I hear her kissing Wilson, and I get out of bed, too. I go to the hallway and see him standing there, and I realize that things didn’t go as planned. He’s safe, and he’s in one piece, but the attack on Providential didn’t exactly happen the way he wanted it to.
“You’re back,” I say.
“I am.”
“Are you okay?”
He looks up at us and shakes his head.
“What happened?” Sabrina asks, cupping his cheek.
“Everything,” he says.
Then he sits down in the center of the hallway and he drops his head into his hands. Wilson tells us exactly what happened when he left our home. He talks about the flight, the fires, and Erin. He tells us about getting shot and how he almost let her go. He tells us about everything, and then he looks up at us, and Wilson starts to cry.
My heart cracks.
It doesn’t make a sound physically, but it hurts.
Hearing my best friend in pain is the most horrible thing in the world. Knowing that he’s hurting and there’s nothing I can do about it is absolutely awful. For a minute, I start to panic. If Wilson is crying, I need to comfort him, but I just don’t know how.
Then I remember when I came to him.
He took me in.
He believed in me when nobody else could.
He was the one who worked to have Sabrina brought here.
He went above and beyond for me, and now I’m going to do the same thing for him.
I grab Wilson and I pull him close, giving him the bro-hug of a lifetime.
“Hey, everything’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not,” he shakes his head. “We were so close to losing.”
“But we didn’t lose,” Sabrina says. “You did it, baby. You saved the dragons. You saved Fablestone.”
“It took a team,” he says, and I know it’s true.
Finding Lucky was a team effort that took a very, very long time. It all started with Cameron’s sister escaping from a Lucky facility and then it spiraled out of control. Over time, we’ve found out more and more information about these fuckers and everything they’ve done to the people of Fablestone and in the shifter world in general.
Me?
They took me.
They captured me and tortured me and hurt me, and I feel absolutely no sadness to know that the woman responsible for hurting me is dead.
In fact, it makes me feel downright pleased, and for the first time in a very long time, I feel free. This is something I haven’t felt in months. Maybe even in years. I feel free and I feel safe, and I feel an overwhelming sense of comfort and wonder.
Everything is going to be wonderful after this. Oh, our relationship is going to be tricky. A dragon, a tiger, and a human won’t manage a long-term relationship without endless work and effort. There will be fights and tears and hurt feelings, but as long as we’re in this together, everything’s going to be okay.
And it’s comforting to me to know that Wilson didn’t just protect the clan.
He didn’t just protect his bride.
He protected me.
His friend.
Despite everything he’s gone through, he fought to save me, and that’s something truly fantastic.
“You had a good team,” she agrees.
“The best.”
“Did everyone make it back okay?”
“All in perfect condition,” he says. “Except me.”
“You still can’t shift,” she says, and it’s a statement: not a question.
“Nope.”
“You tried.”
“I tried.”
Wilson looks like a broken man.
A devastated man.
And I know how he feels.
“Wilson,” I whisper, and I take his hand. I don’t have romantic feelings for Wilson. He’s like a brother to me. Sharing Sabrina as our mate feels fucking fantastic, but I don’t have any sort of romantic desire for my friend. Still, I’m not about to sit by and let him willow away. I’m not going to let him hurt on his own.
He looks up at me.
“I know how you feel,” I say. “When I was captured by Lucky...”
Sabrina holds her breath.
I know why.
This part of my life is something I so rarely talk about. I almost never reveal the details of what happened to me because it was a horrifying experience. For the first time in my life, I felt weak.
I felt helpless.
I felt broken.
And for the first time in my life, I felt like nothing was going to be okay.
“They gave me medication that made it impossible for me to shift.”
“They did?”
“They did. It was horrible,” I tell him. “And it hurt.”
“That’s how this feels,” he says.
“It’s probably the exact same thing they gave me,” I tell him. “But mine was through an IV: not a dart.”
“You can shift now, though,” Wilson points out, and I detect just the slightest sliver of hope in his voice.
Good.
That’s what my brother needs.
Hope.
He’s been through so much and he needs to remember that not only are we all rooting for him, but that he has so much hope right now.
“I can shift now,” I tell him. “It took awhile, but all of my abilities returned. What they gave you isn’t permanent, brother. It’s going to wear off, and you’re going to be good as new.”
“Promise?” He whispers.
“I promise,” I tell him.
He squeezes my hand and closes his eyes.
“Thank you,” he mouths.
“Of course. And now that all of the sappy stuff is over, I think it’s time to get your mind off everything that happened tonight. What do you think, Sabrina?”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” she says.
I look at Wilson and I stand. Then I offer him my hand and I pull him to his feet. Sabrina takes his other hand and together, the three of us walk back into the bedroom and we close the door.
Tonight is about us.
All of us.
And our beautiful tomorrow.
Epilogue
Sabrina
Magic.
It’s what every little girl dreams of, and somehow, despite all of the odds, my dreams managed to come true.
I’m not under any sort of false impression that loving two men is going to be easy in any not. Not by a long shot. What I do know is that my two men? They’re totally worth it. They’re worth the trouble. They’re worth every tear I’ve ever shed. They’re worth all of the worrying and the pain. They’re worth it all.
And I couldn’t imagine living without them.
Fablestone is a magical place. Life among the dragons is a complicated, wonderful, endearing, and difficult experience, but it’s worth it. It’s so, so worth it.
After months of fighting, of struggling, of feeling the pain and the horror that comes from fighting something as terrible as Lucky, my friends in the clan – no, my family – has finally found freedom.
And with that freedom comes incredible strength.
With that freedom comes magic.
THE END
Author
Sophie Stern loves cowboys, soldiers, and shifters. When she’s not busy writing, she’s got her nose buried in a book. Sophie lives with her husband and two little boys who are always keeping her on her toes.
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The Wolf’s Darling
Want more shifters? I have a series out called The Wolfe City Pack. Check out an excerpt from book one: The Wolf’s Darling! You can also visit your favorite online retailer to get your copy!
Chapter 1
Amy
The rattling sound my engine is making can’t be good, but I ignore it. I’m excellent at ignoring problems. If you ignore something long enough, it goes away. Isn’t that right? Yeah, I think that’s right. I ignore the sound and keep on driving, keep on moving. It’s not something that I can do anything about right now, so I’ll just keep going.
That’s what you do when you’re having trouble.
You don’t quit. You don’t give up. You don’t stop. You just move. You have to move or you’ll die. You have to move or everything will fall apart. You have to move or nothing will make sense anymore. You have to move.
Tears slide down my face as I try to focus on the road. I shouldn’t be running away from my problems, but I am. I totally am. I know that, and I know it’s a bad idea, but I’m doing it anyway because I’m nothing but a big, fat coward who can’t tough it out when things get hard.
I’m nothing but a loser.
A failure.
A huge disappointment.
I put on one of my favorite songs from my angst-driven teenage years. Down by Something Corporate starts blaring through the speakers and I lose myself in the tunes for just a little bit. For just a little while, I lose myself in the song. I lose myself in the music. For just a little while, I forget what I’m running away from and think about what I’m running toward.
Freedom.
Hope.
Something new.
I peek at the GPS on my phone to see how much further I have to go. It’s just another hour to Honeypot, Colorado. My cousin Hope is graciously allowing me to stay with her and her family for a little while until I get back on my feet, until I figure out what I’m going to do with my life. She knows what it’s like to lose everything and have to start over.