While I wished for nothing more than to lay beside Addison reveling in the afterglow of our love, I had a job to do. In the grand scheme of things, I was right. I was right that the Anthros were up to something and that we needed to attack. But I had to admit that if I’d listened to Preston and gotten more intel, there might have been a better way to find out what they were up to. There wasn’t time to go back to the Heads of Clans to tell them what Eric and Shaw were up to. Aya certainly didn’t want to wait.

The sun set quicker than I had anticipated as she knocked on the door signaling for me it was time for us to go. The expression on Addison’s face tore into me. I didn’t want to leave her here, but she’d done all she could to help Aya and myself get into The Rock undetected. The map she drew us was perfect. Since that was it, I kissed her softly on the lips and with a single wink I told her, “Just watch out for the fireworks. We’ll be right back.”

I left before she had a chance to say anything. I didn’t want some long drawn out goodbye because I knew that I’d be right back. While I understood the danger set out before us, going in with Aya by my side put my nerves at ease.

The tide was low as we stepped out of Aya’s dwelling under the docks. Rolling my neck around, back and forth, I flexed to begin scaling, but I stopped. I stopped to watch Aya. There was something spectacular happening right in front of me, and I couldn’t move until she was done.

Aya stepped into the water with her bare feet. That honey brown complexion glistened in the setting sun as the winds picked up her sheer gown, revealing an amazingly built body to accompany all of that hair trailing down her back. Her curls spun and twisted themselves into a long braid while the gills around her neck grew exponentially around her and down into a V over her breastplate. Silver and teal scales erupted all over her body as thick shimmering pearl colored wings sprouted from her back. The tail of white hair matched the same hues as its Anthro form while a trail of gold scales covered her underbelly.

In a flash, she spit a beam of white fire out into the darkened waters of Black Harbor, illuminating her way as she dove into the tide and swam out toward The Rock. I couldn’t help but scale and follow her. There was no way I’d catch up to her swimming. I was barely keeping up in flight. My wings were tired but nowhere nearly as exhausted as when I’d brought Addison back.

By the time we reached the station, it was quiet. There weren’t any alarms sounding, and there wasn’t any activity like that when we left. The animals were milling around their pen. The door near the cliff where Addison fell was left ajar like she said it would be. According to her, the animal caretakers didn’t take heed of Shaw’s security measures because they never expected anyone, especially Scalers to break inside.

With our scales tucked away, Aya kept behind me as I led the way to Addison’s lab first. The door slid open, and the lights came on. There wasn’t anyone working. It still smelled the same. The room they were working on was still under construction. Aya walked over to the place where the girl was held when I initially arrived. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she bent down feeling the ground outside of the barred entrance.

“May you find more peace in the sublime space beyond the tangible plane of your body,” she whispered through her tears. She reached into a pouch and tossed a powder down onto the floor. She drew a symbol similar a flame over a triangle as she continued to chant, “May your scales rest in solace and your death not be in vain.”

I let her mourn the loss of the woman who was held there while I walked around the lab placing pouches of explosive dust around the room. When I was done setting the fuses to ignite them, she was on her feet moving around the lab. She ran her fingers over the counters and around the test tube openings. She licked her finger.

“Aya, don’t!” I warned her. The last thing I needed was for her to be affected by the serum like I was. She shook her head no to me with her finger held up telling me to be quiet. I did as she wished, but still motioned toward the door telling her we had to leave.

Aya continued to follow me through the station until we reached the hallway where Eric’s lab was located. There were two soldiers standing guard in front of the door. I held Aya back telling her, “I’ll distract them. Here.”

I handed her the map Addison drew for us with Eric’s code written across the top. Aya nodded as I took off running toward the soldiers. They never expected me, so when I punched the first one in the face, he went down clean and easy. The other, not so much. He took the first punch pretty well as we got into a brawl right outside the door. Aya punched the code in and walked into the room.

By the time I finished with the guards, Aya had already placed a few pouches and their fuses around the room, but the door closed, and a screen turned on.

“I knew you’d be back,” Eric’s gleaming face spoke to us from another location. “Unfortunately for you, I’m already in Black Harbor, while you’re stuck out there. I’d wish you good luck, but instead, I’ll tell you good riddance.”

The screen shut off and those nozzles that were in the pit began spewing that awful gas. Tanks around the room also went off sending more of the teal fumes into the air. I immediately started coughing, gagging, but Aya was unphased.

Her scales flashed, her gills flared, and she shot her white flames at the gas, igniting the entire room. I never knew I could scale so fast. Shielding myself from the fire around the room, I broke through the wall, and the alarms sounded. That was fine by me. I flew around the building and scaled down to finish placing the rest of the pouches. I could see everyone fleeing down the cliffside toward the docks. There was a set of stairs carved into the crag. I wished that would have been pointed out to Addison and I before we decided to take a nosedive off the cliff.

Aya and I torched the place. Red and white flames burst through every open window, doorway, crack, and unsealed surface as we flew around the station. We circled and flamed the place until the sound of the pouches began to explode. Bursts of destruction sounded into the night as the Anthros fled and we reduced that station to ash and cinders.

Aya wasn’t done. She didn’t want them to be able to duplicate anything, so she charged the boat. A split shot of fire sent the Anthros into the cold water and swimming back toward the dock they just left. We left the animals, and most of the forest was still standing. They were lucky we left them with their lives, they’d have to rebuild.

We made our journey back to Black Harbor with the flames and destruction of The Rock crumbling behind us. I desperately wished Eric and Shaw were there, but I knew we had to go after them. Whatever work he’d done with Addison and the work he’d done behind her back, I was certain that he was doing it elsewhere. He wouldn’t let something like that go.

Burned out didn’t even begin to describe what I felt as I flapped endlessly to get back to Black Harbor and Addison. I had the docks in my sights. Aya had already reached the shore, slicing through the water faster than one of my motorcycles across land. I could barely catch my breath as I landed on the edge of the docks.

Something looked out of place. There was a heavy duty, armored vehicle about a hundred feet in front of me, near that abandoned warehouse. Addison. The wind carried her scent to me as I shook off my fatigue and took off running. I didn’t have enough energy to scale. The gas, plus the flight back, took more out of me than I realized.

It’s almost as if he waited. He waited for me to see her. He waited for me to see him mushing her pure black hair, and blazing green eyes into the back of that vehicle before smirking at me and ducking inside himself.

“ADDISON!” I called to her as it peeled off.

“MAVERI-” her voice was muffled as Eric’s beaming smiled replaced her face in the window.

I was going to kill him.