Lawrence
“What the hell is this?” Wilson and Cameron are standing beside the main Fablestone office when I land. The girls slide off my back and I shift back, tired and worn out from the flight.
“It’s a long story.”
“They aren’t shifters,” Cameron says. “Why is one of them blindfolded?”
Julie and I exchange looks. Yeah, I heard everything Nicole said and I think it’s fair to say I may have jumped to conclusions about her. Oh, Bernie seemed like a raving psycho and so did Nicole, at least at first. When she was talking to Julie on the flight, though, she seemed…normal.
Is it possible that she, too, was being drugged?
She’s only been with Lucky for a week and Nicole honestly doesn’t seem to know they’re evil. From what she was saying, they were trying to capture sick shifters in order to help them. Does she really believe that? I get the vibe that she does.
“It’s a long story,” Julie says. She removes the blindfold from Nicole and starts to untie her arms. “I’m sorry if you’re sore,” she whispers, lowering her voice.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nicole instantly starts rubbing her arms.
“And who is this?” Wilson looks from Julie to me and back again. Then he fucking growls. “Are you shitting me? A mate? First Cameron, and now you? That’s it. I’m not letting any of you go to the stone tower again. No single dragons can go. Only dragons who already have mates and aren’t going to go catching humans and bringing them back.” He throws up his hands in the air.
“Julie is…ah…she’s a teacher,” I say slowly. “And she’ll be staying with me for a little while. For a…uh…visit,” I finally say. It’s super lame. We haven’t talked about the whole mate thing yet, though, and I’m not interested in scaring her.
“And Nicole is with Lucky,” Julie says, dropping the news on the clan like a fucking bomb. Instantly, Cameron and Wilson both start talking at once, but I hold up my hand to silence them.
“There’s a problem,” I say. “She was in the forest with her friend trying to catch a dragon.” The guys go stiff. “She was told there were sick shifters in the woods and she was supposed to help them,” I continue.
“What?” Cameron looks confused.
“That’s right,” Nicole says quietly. “We make medicine. We can help.”
“You need to tell her,” Julie whispers.
“Nicole,” I say. “Lucky isn’t helping shifters, love. They tricked you. In fact, Lucky is known for running medical experiments on shifters, especially in this area.”
“What?” She goes pale.
Yeah, she didn’t know.
She had no fucking clue.
“I know you didn’t know, and we aren’t going to hold that against you,” I say. “But there is the matter of Bernie.”
“What about her?” Nicole whispers.
“You…killed her, Nicole. I saw her.”
“What? No, I didn’t. I shot her with one of the darts.”
Cameron and Wilson are listening intently, but wisely not speaking yet.
A dart?
“You mean, she’s not dead? Wouldn’t the dose kill her?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “The medication inside of it causes temporary paralysis, but it’s not fatal on any level. You had the ointment, so you were able to recovery pretty quickly. She didn’t, but she’s definitely fully recovered by now. Probably went back home to work.” Nicole sighs. “I probably shouldn’t have shot her with the dart, but I was so pissed.” She shakes her head, then turns to Wilson and Cameron. “She tried to drug Julie. I thought Bernie was being a fucking weirdo, but even I couldn’t believe she went to such lengths.”
Nicole fidgets, moving from one foot to the other.
“So…can I go now?”
Wilson, Cameron, and I all look at each other. If she’s being honest – and her scent doesn’t smell like fear or tension that would come from lying – then not only is Bernie still alive, but she’s likely back at Lucky headquarters. She’s undoubtedly filled them in and told them that Nicole is a traitor to their team.
I don’t know if Bernie was going to introduce Nicole to dragon hunting or if she, too, wasn’t sure why they were trying to capture shifters, but I do know that when it comes to Lucky, they don’t like loose ends.
Nicole?
She’s a loose end.
“You can’t go back,” I say.
“What?” Her eyes dart to me. “Why not? You’re going to kill me, is that it? Oh, fuck.” She sinks to her knees and lifts her hands to her eyes. Then she starts to sob. “I never should have taken this fucking job,” she cries. “I just needed something not-shitty in my life. For once.”
“You aren’t going to kill her, are you?” Julie asks, looking from me to Cameron to Wilson and back again. “I mean, you can’t.”
“Of course we aren’t going to kill her,” Cameron rubs his forehead. He’s obviously getting a headache. We all are. This situation is messier than we’d like it to be. “But Lawrence is right. She can’t go back. Nicole, do you understand what you just told us?”
She stops crying, but doesn’t look up.
“Lucky doesn’t fuck around,” Wilson says. “If your ‘friend’ really went back to work, she told them you left. She might have even said you had met another girl and ran off with her. I don’t know. Either way, they’re going to be looking for you. Oh, I don’t think they’re going to waste a search party on you. They might be hoping you’ll get lost and die in the woods, but if you go back, that’s going to be the last time anyone ever sees you.”
Nicole looks up at them.
“What? Why?”
“Because,” Wilson squats down and lifts her chin. He stares at her hard, and then he tells her the cold, hard truth. I hate that she’s learning it this way. No one should have to learn the truth like this. “Lucky hates shifters. The entire corporation is built on hurting us. If they think you’re going to turn on them or that you have friends who are shifters or even that you have friends who know shifters, they’re going to gut you for information and then they’re going to kill you.”
Fear radiates from her, but she doesn’t move.
“Wilson, I’m going to take her to my mother’s place,” Cameron says. Cameron’s mother is a veterinarian who sometimes moonlights as the clan doctor when Donald needs another hand. While he was away, she handled things on her own. She’s been more than happy to offload some of the responsibilities that come with caring for an entire clan. “She looks dehydrated and she’s going to need some help. Maybe some therapy?” He looks at the clan leader. “I don’t want her going into shock. I’m taking her.”
Without another word, he pulls Nicole to her feet, takes her hand, and guides her away. Nicole doesn’t look back, and my heart fills with sadness.
“Is she a threat?” Wilson asks me when they’re out of earshot.
“I don’t think so,” I tell him.
“She hurt you?”
“Yeah, she shot me with a dart. Julie?”
Julie reaches into her bag and pulls out the dart gun, the darts, and the antidote.
“There’s a cream that works to minimize the effects of the drug,” she tells him. “I used it on Lawrence and he recovered fairly quickly.”
“She thought I was a threat,” I tell him. “I don’t think she’s going to hurt any other dragons.”
“She better fucking not,” is all he says, and then Wilson turns and marches away. No doubt he’s going to assign guards to Nicole for awhile, as he should. Bringing strays to the clan isn’t the best way to ensure our survival as a species, but sometimes these things can’t be helped. Nicole can’t go back to Lucky.
I brought her here to be punished, but things aren’t always as they seem. Part of being a leader means knowing when I’ve made a mistake and how to correct that mistake. With Nicole, maybe she’ll go on to live in another city: one far away from Lucky. For now, though, we’ll keep her close and find out what else she knows. Maybe she can tell us where their main headquarters is.
Maybe she can help us fight for freedom from them.
“Lawrence?” Julie says, looking up at me. “What are we going to do now?”
“Let’s go home,” I tell her. “I just want to go home.”