For the first time in a thousand years, I punched one of the cave’s interior walls. Nothing in all that time had ever taken me to the point of blinding, searing rage.

Nothing until her.

You cannot let her die! The dragon roared in no uncertain terms. He would make sure I heard him—and listened.

Only nothing he said made the first damned bit of difference if she refused to go along.

“She’s the one who wants to die,” I snarled before tightening my hand into a fist and slamming it into the rock again.

It did little to ease my anger and certainly did nothing to harm the wall.

I heard Miles and Fence talking as they came back from salvaging the truck.

“We could use a little help here,” Miles grunted as he carried two boxes full of meat to the kitchen.

I followed, along with Smoke and Gate.

“You sure that’s still safe?” Smoke asked.

“Oh, yeah. It’s cold. But I guess we could always have Pierce go back for more once the road’s clear,” he joked. His smile faded when he saw the obvious tension between Gate and me. “What did I miss?”

“I’ll leave this in the walk-in for now.” Gate carried the meat to the walk-in refrigerator.We needed something that big to contain the amount of meat the six of us went through.

“Coming through!” Fence dropped two boxes of various supplies on the floor. “Whew. That mudslide was no joke. I’m sorry, buddy, but your truck’s a total loss. It was up to the windows and starting to seep inside.”

“There’s a bigger issue right now.” Smoke threw a glance my way.

“You could say that.” Gate came in rubbing his hands together to warm them.

“I wish you would keep your opinion to yourself until everybody has a chance to hear the story,” I growled.

“What story?” Fence looked around the room. “I swear, you go out to salvage what you can after a mudslide, then come back to something like this.”

“I’ll cut right to the chase. A girl was trapped in the mudslide. I saved her before her car went over the edge and brought her back here.”

“You what?” Miles’s jaw dropped.

“Yeah, yeah, it was a no-no. You don’t have to tell me.”

“But you did it anyway?” Fence looked around like he was trying to make sense and hoping one of them could help him. None of them could.

“I hope you don’t think you’ll keep her here like some sort of pet,” Miles said, eyes narrowing dangerously.

“It’s worse than that,” Gate chimed in. “He wants to heal her, rather than just letting her die.”

“What if she lives and she reveals us?” Miles moaned, slapping his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“It’s worse than that,” I confessed. “She won’t try to reveal us—at least, I don’t believe she would—because she has secrets of her own which she’s trying to keep.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that she’s fae.”

The kitchen erupted. “You rescued one of them?” From Miles’s voice, he might as well have been talking about a rodent.

“You know as well as I do that there’s no way to tell just by looking, and vice versa. I didn’t know she was fae until…” I realized I’d just incriminated myself, but it was too late.

“Until when?” Gate’s whisper was cold, menacing.

I squared my shoulders and looked each of them in the eye as the dragon in me roared in defiance.

Let them try to punish us, he growled, straining for a good fight.

We hadn’t been in a good fight in far too long, and it didn’t matter that we were facing our family. He wanted to draw blood over the girl.

“Until I tried to heal her, just now. When we were alone again.”

It was as if I’d just dropped a bomb. The four of them stared at me, slack-jawed.

Smoke was the first to recover. “Why would you do that?”

I could see how hard he worked to keep himself under control. His dragon wanted justice just like mine wanted blood.

Gate exploded before I had the chance to reply, hurling himself across the room.

Miles barely caught him in time to prevent a brawl.

“Let him come!” I shouted over the chaos.

Smoke reached my side in an instant.

“Calm yourself,” he warned.

I shook off the arm he threw in front of me.

“No! He’s the one who needs to be calm!” I looked across the room to where Miles and Fence had Gate cornered. “What is it with you?”

“With me? You’re the one putting our lives at risk, and you’re asking me what my problem is?”

“Gate, come on,” Smoke called out. “It’s not that serious. Not yet. We have to cool ourselves off if we want to move past this.”

“There is no moving past this!” he exclaimed with a laugh.

“That’s up to you.”

“Come on,” Fence said, glancing my way. “This isn’t the end of the world. Pierce was doing what he thought was right.”

“You’re on his side now?”

“I didn’t know there were sides. I thought we were all in this together.”

“I thought we were, too,” Gate sneered. “Until one of us started making major decisions without asking any of the others what they thought. Bringing outsiders in here after all this time. What have we been working to protect, then, if this is possible? Why have we held ourselves back from the rest of the world all this time if things were always going to come to this in the end?”

For the first time, I heard the desperation in his voice.

It never occurred to me that some of us might’ve taken our solitude better than others. Would I have rather been with others every so often?

Yes, but not enough for it to get under my skin and stay there.

Gate clearly didn’t feel the same.

I nodded to Smoke in reassurance that I wouldn’t start a fight.

He backed away to give me room to move.

“Listen,” I said, holding my hands up in a defensive gesture but also to show him I meant no harm, “all I know is that the girl needed help. You know how it is with us. You wouldn’t have been able to let her go over the cliff any more than I would. None of us would’ve stood idly by and allowed another person to die that way. There wasn’t any time to think.”

I sighed, letting my hands drop. “But it’s more than that. There’s something… something about her. I don’t know what. My dragon seems to know, or at least have an idea.”

“You mean…” Fence’s eyes lit up. “Your mate?”

“Impossible,” Miles shook his head. “It’s been too long for that. We’re all too old.”

“We’re still breathing. We’re not too old. And hey, I don’t know that I believe it any more than you. Truly. But the dragon wanted this. For us to save her. To heal her. In the moment…” I shook my head, looking at the floor rather than looking any of them in the eye.

We didn’t exactly hang around, discussing feelings all the time. It was new for me to share with them how I felt on a deeper level. I had to search for the right words to explain something I didn’t fully understand.

“In the moment, there was nothing else to do. I felt desperate. Like everything hinged on her living.”

“And now?” Gate didn’t sound any less furious, but at least he wasn’t challenging me to a brawl.

“Now? I still feel the same way.” My mind went back to her in the cell, suffering. “Only there may not be anything else I can do for her. Did any of you know that our blood is toxic to the fae?”

“You mean, you’ve poisoned her?” Smoke asked.

“Something like that. I’m not sure. She says I did, and her shoulder looked worse than it had when I left her. Not that it matters,” I added with a growl. “She wants a healer. I’ve already told her there’s no way for her to leave, but when I offered to bring somebody here, blindfolded even, she refused that as well. She won’t tell us where they live.”

“Just like we can’t let anyone know where we are,” Miles mused. He looked sorry for me. I wished he wouldn’t.

“If she won’t allow you to help her, there’s nothing you can do.” Gate shrugged. “I’m sorry. I am. But maybe this is the way things are meant to be.”

“Can’t you see it’s impossible for me to accept that?”

“You may not have a choice,” Smoke pointed out, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, but you can’t force her. If the prospect of death isn’t enough, what is?”

“I wish I knew.” I looked around, desperate for them to understand. “I wish you knew what it means to go through something like this. I’m powerless, but the dragon won’t let her go. He keeps telling me there’s got to be some way to save her, because she’s ours.”

“It means that much to you?” Fence asked.

“You would know if you’d ever been through it. I can’t shut him up. It’s never been like this before.” I held my head in my hands, as if that would block out the incessant demands of the beast within me.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl in the cell, her big, luminous green eyes staring straight into my soul. That morning, I hadn’t known she existed.

Standing in the kitchen with my family, I knew in a deep and unfamiliar part of my heart that the world wouldn’t be the same without her in it.

“I could talk to her, see if there’s any way we can meet in the middle—though I can’t imagine a middle ground right now,” Smoke mused. “It’s one or the other. Live or die.”

“No. I don’t want you involved in this—not that I don’t trust you or believe in you,” I added when a frown touched his face. “If she dies before we can get help to her, I wouldn’t want you to feel like it was your fault. I brought her here, and I’ll handle the consequences.”

One corner of Gate’s mouth quirked up in disbelief. “Easy for you to say right now.”