by T. S. Joyce
Wyatt looked up at the dark sky like he was praying for patience, but she could still see it there—that little smile. “First off, the parking lot of Drat’s isn’t romantic in any way, and you should really lift those standards, Harper. Second, you’re wasted—”
“Tipsy—”
“And when I do make a move on you, I want you to remember it. As it stands now, I don’t think you’ll remember this conversation tomorrow, much less a quickie fuck in the parking lot, and where are your shoes?”
Harper looked down at her bare feet. Damn, her pedicure still looked foxy. But really, where were her flip flops? She looked around, trying to desperately remember where, and why, she took them off.
“Okay, don’t worry,” Wyatt said in that manly sexy voice of his. “They’re probably still inside. I’ll grab them and some water for you. I’ll round up the boys while I’m at it.”
As he disappeared inside, Harper murmured, “But I’m not thirsty.” For water. She was definitely thirsty for Wyatt’s lips. She’d been thinking about them non-stop since he pecked her on the head earlier. And now she was completely inebriated on the sexy smiles he’d been casting her way all night. Those and tequila.
The wind kicked up, and goosebumps rose in waves across her arms despite the warm sweater she wore. Dragon shifters ran hot, hence the comfort with flip-flops on this chilly autumn night. The world was fuzzy as she scanned the parking lot and narrowed her eyes at the trees that lined the street beyond. The leaves and limbs were perfectly still, but it was so windy near her that dust from the parking lot lifted in little cyclones.
And then she heard it. The squeak, squeak of bats.
With a gasp, she bolted for the door, and just as her fingertips brushed the handle, she was blasted backward. She was thrown into a tornado of chaos as she spun and fought. Harper hit the side of a truck with a deafening crash and then was pinned there against the mangled metal. Dragon! Where the fuck was she? Slashing pain stung her arms as she blocked punches too fast to be human. A long hiss filled her head as something cold wrapped around her neck.
Change, Change, Change!
Harper gasped for breath as the smoke solidified into Arabella, surrounded by her guards, her hand wrapped unwaveringly around Harper’s throat. Too drunk. Harper was too drunk to summon the dragon. But she could still blow fire if she could suck in enough air to set off her fire-starter.
“You took my toy from me,” Arabella rasped out in an icy voice that bounced around inside of Harper’s head, each word echoing and overlapping. The side of Arabella’s face was melted like metal warped in a fire from where Harper had burned her last night. Her gray eyes turned cold and dead in the moment before she opened her mouth, exposing razor sharp fangs, and sank her teeth into Harper’s neck.
Harper clawed at the vampire’s wrists to try and loosen her grip and thrashed as the outer edges of her vision collapsed inward. She scrabbled and kicked against the truck behind her, and then in desperation, she socked Arabella with a balled fist over and over. It was like punching a stony cliff face. The crack of Harper’s bones was loud as pain seared up her arm.
There was chaos behind Arabella now. Fighting. Bats. Thick purple smoke. Ryder. Weston. Aaron was Changed into his grizzly bear and laying waste to everyone in his way. Not fast enough. Help me!
“Harper!” Weston screamed, his veins bulging in his neck as he fought the smoke and tried to reach her.
It wasn’t enough. Not enough time. Not fair. Frost crept through her veins as Arabella drained her. Please Dragon. Where are you?
Like an apparition, Wyatt appeared through the smoke, his eyes white as snow and promising death, his teeth bared.
Beside him, the bats solidified into a vampire, but Wyatt grabbed him by the throat before he was solid and threw him with mesmerizing force.
“Wyatt!” someone yelled. Kane?
Like a spear, a pool stick came straight for Harper’s face, but Wyatt caught it without looking, and in one smooth, blurred motion, he cracked it across his knee and rammed one jagged end into Arabella’s back.
Arabella jerked backward, and her grip around Harper’s throat loosened. Her crimson lips formed a silent screech of pain and shock as fire blazed up her body. And in an explosion of sparks, the Queen of the Asheville Coven collapsed in a pile of pungent ashes.
Harper fell forward, but Wyatt was there, holding her, telling her, “Breathe, baby. Just breathe.”
Harper dragged air into her crushed windpipe. The adrenaline in her system had burned off most of the alcohol, and she could see everything so clearly now. The splintered, scorched pool stick in the middle of the ashes. The bats and smoke fleeing the parking lot and blending in with the darkness beyond. Aaron’s blond grizzly pacing between a row of cars, his eyes wild and his neck torn open. Weston and Ryder, chests heaving, staring at her like she was already dead.
Kane was standing near the bar in the thinning smoke, but as she tried to thank him for helping her, he spat on the gravel and disappeared inside. A sob escaped her as she clutched to Wyatt’s sweater and sucked sweet air.
Her dragon was here now, too big, violent, wanting more death because she was scared. Because she hadn’t been able to wake up in time. Stupid tequila. Stupid. “I didn’t know,” Harper chanted over and over just for something to say. Just to hear her own voice and convince herself she was still alive.
“It’s okay. Everything’s okay,” Wyatt said in a gravelly voice. But he had eased back enough to look at her throat with an expression that said he wanted more death as recompense, too.
“Wes,” Wyatt said low. “Her hand.”
“Yeah,” Weston said, lifting her ruined fingers gingerly. It hurt so bad, like someone had shoved her arm into a fire.
His eyes were the pitch black of his raven’s when he lifted them to Harper’s. “This’ll hurt.”
“Do it,” she gritted out. Waiting and mentally preparing wouldn’t work. It would only make it worse. Shifter healing was fast. Too fast sometimes for broken pieces.
Wyatt pushed his weight against her, pinning her to the side of his dented truck. And just as she let out a scream at the pain of Weston resetting her bones, Wyatt kissed her, hard.
It wasn’t the sweet kisses from when they were kids, or the passionate ones they learned about when they were old enough for intimacy. This one was fear and anger and loss all wrapped up into one breathtaking instant. Weston was done, and tears of pain streamed out the corners of her eyes, but Wyatt didn’t release her. His lips softened, and he moved them slowly against hers, drinking her in until the pain eased and Harper went limp with exhaustion in his arms.
Wyatt bit her bottom lip gently, then disengaged and rested his forehead on hers. His breath was shaking, just like hers, and his eyes were closed tightly. And now she wanted to cry for reasons other than pain. She’d never thought she would get a chance to be held by him again, much less kissed. And it felt so good, so right. His lips were like a homecoming after a long trip.
Her cheeks heated with shame. “My dragon wasn’t there.”
“I know. It’s okay.” Wyatt folded her into his arms and strode around the back of his truck, the others following slowly.
“Aaron, Change back,” Wyatt clipped out. “We need to leave.”
A grunt of pain sounded from behind them, and Harper looked around Wyatt’s wide shoulder to see Aaron limping after them, holding his torn neck together. I’m okay, he mouthed.
That was close. Too close. She could’ve lost so much tonight.
Ryder yanked open the passenger door, and Wyatt set her inside, buckled her quickly while the boys piled in the back. And when Wyatt was behind the wheel, he slammed the door, revved the engine, and gunned it out of the parking lot as sirens sounded in the distance.
The law wasn’t lenient on shifters. It never had been, not since they’d established rights over twenty years ago. No damage had been done except for Wyatt’s dented truck and the final death of the Queen of the Ashev
ille Coven. Law enforcement should give Wyatt a damned trophy for making the area safer from her fangs, but they wouldn’t. They would cage him if they figured out what had happened in the parking lot of Drat’s. Vampires had secured their rights like shifters had. Regardless of how long a vampire had lived, or what evil deeds they’d done in the shadows, a death was a death to the police.
The air was too heavy in here, and when Harper looked in the back seat, Weston was pulling off his shirt. He wadded it up and pressed it against her bitten neck, staunching the warm wetness that had been trickling from the wound.
Ryder had his face buried in his hands, and Aaron was naked from his shift, staring out the window with a haunted look.
And Wyatt…Harper wanted to hold his hand to silently tell him she was okay, but he felt so heavy right now she couldn’t move an inch closer to him.
“Cut it out, man,” Aaron muttered.
Wyatt didn’t answer. The only sound was the acceleration as he hit the gas on a straightaway.
“Wyatt!” Aaron yelled. “I said cut that shit out or I’m going to Change again!”
Wyatt snarled a feral sound. When he tossed Aaron a shut-the-fuck-up glare over his shoulder, his eyes weren’t human at all.
“I couldn’t find my animal. I’m sorry,” Harper murmured. Her skin was cold, but on the inside, she was burning. Maybe she was in shock.
“It was the alcohol,” Wyatt growled out. “And you’re a fucking dragon, Harper. Stop apologizing.”
Weston adjusted his shirt on her neck, applied more pressure. “You shouldn’t have left her unprotected.”
“He was going back in for my shoes,” Harper said. “It’s not his fault.”
“Bullshit!” Weston barked out. “This is all his fault.”
“Wes,” Ryder drawled, relaxing back against the seat. “Cut him some slack.”
“Why the fuck should I? Wyatt, you disappeared. You bolted. You pushed us all away for all these years, and do you know who you hurt the most by that?”
Wyatt twitched his chin and winced, like Weston’s words physically burned him.
“Harper!” Weston bellowed.
“He’s made his apologies,” Harper murmured.
But Weston wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. “You got her pregnant. You almost killed her. You almost took her away from all of us! And then you ran and did even more damage. You gave her The Unrest, Wyatt! You! She bonded to you. You were her fucking treasure, and you ditched her.”
“Weston!” Harper yelled, yanking his shirt from underneath his hand just to make him stop touching her. He was speaking about personal things that he didn’t understand. “That’s enough.”
“And then you bring her here and force her into some fucked-up war with the vamps. That’s what this is, right? We just killed the queen of a coven. The queen. And I saw that look in her eyes, Wyatt. That vamp wanted to kill Harper. And judging from the scars on your neck, I’d say that’s on you, too.” Weston rammed himself backward against the seat and crossed his arms. “We should’ve never come here.”
Such pain slashed across Wyatt’s face, Harper couldn’t bear to look at him. Couldn’t bear to see the heartbreak there.
He swallowed audibly. “You’re right, Wes. I’ve fucked up my whole life, and it hurt Harper. It hurt you and the people back home. I hurt everyone I care about. But I want to be better. I need to be.”
Ryder leaned forward and gripped Wyatt’s shoulder, shook him gently, then relaxed back against his seat.
“Why couldn’t you just leave him alone, Harper?” Weston asked so softly she almost missed it.
She bit her lip and stalled on answering because, if she was honest with him, Wes might hate her. Not because he was jaded, but because he’d always worried over her. But if she didn’t draw her line in the sand and tell them exactly where she stood, they would never really get it. None of them would.
She gave a helpless shrug. “Because I love him.” She didn’t dare look at Wyatt when she admitted that out loud, though she could feel him glance over at her.
Weston huffed a disappointed sound. “Bad choice, Harper.”
Harper wrapped her arms around her middle and rested her cheek against the headrest, stared out at the night woods that lined the road. “You’re wrong, Weston.”
“Yeah? About what?”
She tossed a sad smile to Wyatt’s faint reflection in the window. “You’re wrong about love being a choice.”
Chapter Eight
Harper massaged her palm with the thumb of her other hand. It still tingled from where her bones had healed. It would probably feel sore for a few days, but Weston was good. The crew he was born into, the Gray Backs, were notorious for fighting each other. Bone-setting was a skill they all possessed.
She touched her lips as she remembered the kiss Wyatt had given her against his truck. Nothing in her entire life had felt bigger. Perhaps it was because of the moment he had chosen, when she was in pain and in need of a beautiful distraction, when her emotions were soaring, and she was so relieved to still be breathing. Maybe it was because of that.
But more likely, that kiss had felt completely consuming because it was Wyatt, and she’d been suffering away from him. Her dragon felt whole in that moment, like nothing could break them apart again.
But as much as she wanted to bury herself in the shadow of safety Wyatt cast, she had a life away from here. She worked for her grandfather as his in-house lawyer. She had family and friends in Saratoga. There, things were easy and comfortable, while here, over the course of thirty hours, she’d experienced every emotion imaginable. Dragons weren’t built for that. They were steady-eddy and cool, calm, collected. Swinging emotions got people burned and the earth scorched. Her ancestors had waged war on each other and killed off nearly every single immortal dragon. Now, only mortal halflings like her walked the earth. Maybe that’s why she’d always struggled to fit in. She’d had a law practice down in Saratoga for a couple of years before she accepted the position overseeing all legal documentation pertaining to Pop-Pop’s businesses. And in that two years, she’d made an effort to find something outside of Damon’s mountains. She’d made friends, but as hard as she tried to build lasting bonds with the humans she spent time with, she was always other. She’d started wearing a brown contact over her dragon eye so people would stop staring and so she didn’t have to smell their fear anymore.
And then Derek had come along, and she’d thought maybe he was the one she was supposed to find. She didn’t feel as passionately about him as Wyatt, but he had been there for her, up until the day she saw him in the local coffee shop sucking on some skank’s earlobe right there for everyone to see. She, Harper Keller, dragon-shifter, lawyer, powerhouse…hadn’t been good enough. She, Harper Keller, vessel for The Unrest, displaced shifter, confused soul…had come in second to the trail of Derek’s mistresses that drifted out of the woodwork after that.
She’d closed down her practice, let go of the relationships with the humans she’d been grasping at, and went back to the mountains where she almost belonged.
Everything had been perfect before Wyatt had left. Everything. It was home, little league baseball games on the weekends, school, family, crews, and safety. She could fly everywhere and never worry about being judged. But when she’d given up on Saratoga and gone back to the mountains, the air she flew felt different. Colder. Empty. The joy was gone because Wyatt’s bear wasn’t strolling the evergreen woods below her anymore.
And now she was here, and all those feelings were flooding back. All those memories. Shifting in the woods with the boys, Wyatt always let her Change first so he could watch her dragon emerge. Birthday parties with all the crews, treehouse rendezvous, Friday nights helping her surrogate mother, Riley, make furniture in her shop, and Wyatt bringing them dinner when they got so caught up in the work they forgot to eat. Homecoming dates and Ryder and Wyatt stealing a bottle of peach schnapps from one of the Gray Backs. The first time Wyatt held her hand,
the first kiss. And the second kiss because he’d told her, “I can do better.” And the first time they slept together…
Harper blew out a shaking breath and wrapped her arms around her stomach. Now he was different, and somehow even more enamoring to her than when they were kids.
With every hour she spent here, Wyatt felt more and more like her fire-starter, just waiting to ignite her.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” Wyatt murmured from the corner of the house.
Harper startled slightly, but offered him a smile. “There are three grown-ass shifters sleeping on the floor of your little house, and one of them is snoring like a freight train. I couldn’t sleep. You?”
Wyatt shook his head and leaned against the logs of the cabin wall. He wore a pair of black, low-slung sweats, but no shirt. The blue moonlight illuminated his taut torso in alluring shadows and highlights, and his abs flexed with each shallow breath he took. With a sigh, he padded over to her and sat next to her on the top porch stair. “I needed to Change.”
“And think. By yourself.”
Wyatt smiled and rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands in front of him. “Yeah. I had a lot of thinking to do.”
“You’re used to being alone.”
“That I am. I forgot how it was, you know? I forgot how everyone talks about everything, and calls everyone out on their shit. I got used to just me beating myself up.” The corners of his eyes tightened as he stared at the full moon above the tree line. “Weston’s right, you know.”
“Wyatt—”
“No, just let me say this. I made so many mistakes with you. With myself. With everything. Growing up, my dad was always telling me how to be a good alpha and a good man, but somewhere along the way, I got so caught up in my own head I messed up. I veered off this easy path I had laid out for my future and went hiking in the damn brambles. And you…you paid for my mistakes.” Wyatt arced that bright blue gaze to her, held her trapped there as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Harper. For all of it, I’m so sorry.” He pulled a glossy, folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her.