“All right, you fucking bastard, talk!” A rough hand shook Rurik in the chair he was tied to. Rurik could feel the tranquilizer leaving his system. If he could delay whatever torture they intended just a few minutes longer, he might be able to break his bonds and then…

“You want me to talk?” he replied with a grin. “What shall we talk about? How about the cowardice of the Brotherhood? You seem well acquainted with it.”

The man who’d shaken him cocked a fist, but the door opened and a second man entered. This was the one Rurik recognized—Damien MacQueen. The younger man resembled him so much that he had to be Jason. Charlotte’s brothers.

“Stand down, Jason.”

“Let me do this,” Jason insisted. “Just one little punch.”

“I would barely feel it.” Rurik chuckled, flexing his hands against the chair arms. “So you’re Charlotte’s infamous brothers.”

“Infamous? Only to some.” Damien’s expression didn’t bode well, but he kept calm, whereas Jason looked ready to explode.

“Guys, I don’t mean to interrupt,” a dark-haired man in the corner of the room said, “but he’ll be getting his strength back any minute now. Should we dope him up again?”

“Not yet. I’ll handle this, Nicholas. Go check on my sister. Tamara’s given her something to help her sleep. Make sure she doesn’t have a bad reaction to the truth serum,” Damien said.

His words filled Rurik with rage. “You drugged your own sister?” he bellowed, jerking violently against the chair. “Where is she? I demand to see her. I want to know she’s all right.”

“Demand?” Damien laughed. “You don’t get to make demands here, Barinov.” He pulled out a syringe. The green liquid was something Rurik recognized all too well. “You know, all I wanted was to talk. Russia’s got a power vacuum right now. It’s a powder keg ready to explode, and you seem to be at the center of it. We tried to talk to you, but you refused.”

Rurik snorted. “Talk? Sending your other agents to lure me into a trap? That is how you talk?”

“We don’t exactly trust your kind to keep your temper,” Damien countered. “And the fact is, you have the advantage over us. So what if we took that advantage away?”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Rurik roared, his body starting to push past the sedative’s effects.

“Fuck, Damien. Look at his eyes,” Jason said. Damien saw swirls of bright gold starting to fill them. “The tranq’s wearing off.”

Damien jabbed the needle into Rurik’s neck. The serum hit his blood instantly, burning through him. Whatever he had imagined it would feel like to suffer the effects of this drug, he couldn’t have imagined it would be like this. It was like his breath had been knocked from his body and someone had sapped all of his strength. It was like half of him was being torn away and locked into an impenetrable safe.

Damien checked his watch. “We’ll let it take full effect, and then we’ll talk.” The brothers moved away from him, consulting quietly by the door.

A few moments ago, his enhanced hearing would have picked up everything they said, but now it was as though he had cotton in his ears. Everything sounded muffled, and the voices seemed tinny. Mortal hearing…and mortal sight. Fuck, he’d never known how good he’d had it as a dragon.

The door opened, and a dark-haired woman whispered something to Damien. Whatever she said made Charlotte’s brothers look at him. Then Damien took out a vial, this one with a clear liquid.

“Now let’s see what truths we can get out of you.”

Rurik remembered Charlotte’s story about her brothers drugging her prom date. In a weird way, here he was facing the same fate. It was almost funny. Rurik tensed as the second needle plunged in. A low growl, horribly human sounding, escaped his lips.

Damien and Jason stared down at him, but Rurik had faced worse than them before. They didn’t scare him.

“Did you use pheromones to seduce Charlotte?”

“What the fuck is it with you guys and pheromones?”

“But you seduced her,” Damien added.

He tried to hold back what he knew would be a damning response, but it came out anyway. “I guess I did.”

Jason backhanded him. “You piece of shit!”

“Jason!” Damien caught his arm. “Do that again and I’ll have you removed.”

Blood trickled down Rurik’s chin, and he licked his split lip. His chin and cheek on the left side throbbed. Normally it took a blow from another dragon before he felt pain like this.

“Did you know she was our sister?” Damien asked coolly.

“No. She admitted it to me after we slept together.”

“She says you are mates. Is that true?” Damien’s hazel eyes lacked Charlotte’s warmth. His gaze was stony.

Jason stared at his brother in horror. “What?”

“Answer me, Barinov,” Damien said. “Is it true?”

“She is mine. My true mate,” Rurik said through clenched teeth. “I have claimed her.”

For a second nothing happened. It seemed like Damien was holding himself back. For a moment it seemed like he was reaching for his pistol, but his hand froze as it touched the holster.

“How do we undo it? How do we break the mating bond?”

“How do you undo love? The bond only occurs because the feelings are true. I belong to her and she to me as long as she’s alive. When she dies, I die.”

Jason frowned. “I thought that was only with other dragons. This works with humans too?”

“Barinov, answer the question,” Damien said.

“Dragons mate for life. The bonds are…” He tried to swallow the words, but they bubbled back to the surface. “When a dragon loses its mate, the dragon dies of grief. It always kills the human part of the dragon, because one cannot live without the other.” He didn’t know how to explain that dragon mythology of his people, largely because so much of it had been lost over the millennia, to the point that no dragon alive knew how much of it, if any, was actually true.

“But does that happen to humans too? If you die first, will Charlotte…” Damien didn’t finish the thought, but Rurik knew what he was asking.

“No, at least I don’t think so. She isn’t a dragon, so I don’t think mate grief would kill her.”

Rurik sighed heavily. His limbs ached, and the iron cuffs cut into skin that could no longer heal properly.

But he knew the serum’s limitations. This would last a day, at most, and then he’d come roaring back to himself, and he could deal out some serious retribution to the Brotherhood. Then he would rescue Charlotte and get the hell out of there.

Assuming they didn’t kill him first.

* * *

Charlotte lay on her side in the back of an SUV, her head pounding. She tried to sit up, but her body ached. She blinked, her brain foggy. She recognized the two women in the front seats of the vehicle.

“Tamara, Meg, what’s going on?” She didn’t immediately remember what had happened, but when her gaze met Tamara’s in the rearview mirror, the last few hours came flooding back to her.

“Rurik!” She gasped and scrambled to reach for the car door.

“Charlotte!” Meg spun around in the front passenger seat. “Calm down, okay? Tamara and I are working on a plan. But first we had to get you somewhere safe.”

“A plan?”

“Yeah. We both think your brothers are a bit unreasonable at the moment. Damien especially. I know it’s going to piss him off, but I know what I saw between you and Rurik tonight. I’ve seen enough shifters in my day to know what a mating looks like. But the fact is we’re never going to get your brothers to calm down by flying off the handle. So just relax, okay?”

Charlotte tried to calm herself, but it wasn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t helping to have her blood pounding through her head.

“God, what did you guys give me? I feel like shit.” She moaned, her stomach churning.

“Sorry,” Tamara said. “I had to give you a sedative. Damien was watching. But I didn’t give you the full dose.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Charlotte couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Did you see Rurik? Was he okay?”

“He was okay when I saw him. Your brothers were questioning him about your relationship. I swear if anyone else had been involved in this but you, Damien would have reached an understanding by now. It’s almost like he doesn’t want to.”

Charlotte frowned. If they hurt Rurik, she would destroy them. It didn’t matter that they were her brothers. Their overreaction was unforgiveable. When Rurik’s brothers had found out who she was, they had panicked, sure, but they hadn’t drugged her and tied her to a fucking chair.

No, only my family does that.

“What’s your plan?” She sat up properly in her seat and buckled herself in. They were driving through Moscow now, but it was clear she’d slept most of the journey because they seemed to be almost out of the city.

“They wanted us to take you to the airport. Don’t worry, that’s not happening,” said Meg.

“We’re taking you to a safe house the Saint Petersburg branch has out here,” said Tamara. “By the time we get back, they’ll probably want Rurik taken to the airport for transport. We’ll make sure he ends up at the safe house with you instead. That should buy us some time to talk sense into those numbskulls, give them a chance to cool down before they do something they can’t undo.”

“Don’t worry,” said Meg. “We’ll get you through this. Even if your brother fires us.”

Tamara grinned. “I don’t know about you, but I definitely have some serious vacation time accrued.”

Charlotte smiled. They were going to help her. Everything was going to be okay—

Twin headlights appeared on the driver’s side of their SUV a millisecond before they were T-boned. Everything exploded in a spray of glass. Metal screamed, and the world around her flipped over and over. Charlotte gasped as the car finally stopped rolling. It landed on its right side, smoke billowing from the engine. Something trickled down her nose into her right eye. Charlotte raised a shaky hand, wiping at her face. Her hand came away bloody. She stared at the red smear on her palm, and between her splayed fingers she saw the front of the car where Tamara and Meg were hung like rag dolls, their seatbelts keeping them locked into place.

Charlotte fumbled with her seatbelt, wincing as she fell out of it onto the car roof. She tried to crawl toward the front seat, but two booted feet appeared in front of the shattered windshield. She froze, holding her breath as a man knelt down and peered at her through the shattered window. He had caramel-colored skin, dark hair, and black eyes, like two gleaming shards of obsidian.

The man smiled wolfishly, revealing a set of bright teeth. “Olá, chica.”

Charlotte didn’t move, didn’t speak. She slowly looked between Tamara and Meg, not wanting him to know what she was doing, or more importantly, what she was hoping to find.

There. The butt of a Glock stuck out of a holster on Meg’s right side. If she could grab it—

“Take her,” the man barked. “Before she does something stupid.” The car suddenly tilted a few inches as something heavy moved above her. She glanced up to see the left door above her jerk open. Silhouetted against the setting sun, she saw the shadow of a man, his eyes swirling gold as he reached toward her. She shrank away from him, but he grabbed her arms and hauled her up out of the car.

She balled a fist and punched him. Pain exploded through her hand, and the man snarled and tossed her to the ground. She hit the asphalt, biting back a cry of pain. Someone hauled her to her feet. She now faced the man who had greeted her through the shattered window. He was tall and lean, but she could feel the power rippling off him.

“So you are Damien MacQueen’s sister?” The man reached up to cup her chin, then trailed a finger down her cheek. “Not exactly my type, but I can see why Barinov broke his vow never to mate.” He leaned toward her and inhaled. “You smell sweet.”

Charlotte may not have been a hunter, but she’d been trained to protect herself. She pulled her head back and threw it forward, head-butting the man on the bridge of his nose. He let out a string of Portuguese curses and stumbled back, clutching his face. The man behind her smacked her on the back of the head hard enough that white dots burst before her eyes.

“Take her to the car,” the man rasped as he clutched his nose. He might have been a dragon shifter, but bone still beat cartilage in a fight.

She was dragged to a black SUV and shoved into the back seat. Three other men climbed in with her. She was almost certain these men were dragons. Damien’s voice fluttered up from her survival lessons. “Stay alive. Do whatever you have to do, but stay alive. Honor doesn’t matter. You breathing is what matters. We will find you.”

It was something she’d always remembered. Do whatever it takes. Grovel and beg if you have to. These men knew her brothers were in the Brotherhood and that she was mated to Rurik. It was obvious they wanted to use her for a trap. The man she’d head-butted sat beside her, and his gaze made her flesh crawl.

“You think you are brave?” he asked.

Charlotte studied his cruel smile and swirling gold eyes that had settled into twin black pools. He was definitely a dragon.

Her head ached, and her heart pounded like war drums. “I’m not brave,” she replied.

“Good. I don’t like my women to be brave. I prefer them screaming for mercy as I take what I want.” He gripped her throat, squeezing. “I will take you, and I will extinguish the light behind those pretty eyes. Do you want to know why?”

When she didn’t answer, he gave her a rough shake, choking her until she gasped and clawed at his hand.

“You are MacQueen’s sister, and that would be reason enough, but you are also Rurik Barinov’s mate. We have waited so long for him to show weakness. Now he finally has.” The man let go of her throat, and she sucked in sweet, precious air.

“Who are you?” she gasped.

“I am Luis Silva, head of the Silva family of Buenos Aires.”

Ahh… That explained the Portuguese at least.

“So what’s your plan?” she asked, all too aware that minutes ago she’d asked her friends the same thing under very different circumstances.

Luis laughed. “You say that like I am a Bond villain. Eh, whatever. You will die, and we will convince the Brotherhood that the Barinovs did it, then convince the Barinovs that your brothers killed you to kill Rurik. A sacrifice play.” Luis was smug. Charlotte was in no mood to point out that Damien would never do that. Sure, Damien had drugged her—and she was going to throttle him for that—but he would never really hurt her. Still, it didn’t matter what she knew, only what the Barinovs believed.

“You’re not doing it here?” she asked.

Luis shook his head. “No. No. There is someone who is dying to meet you first. He has waited even longer than I have to see the Barinovs fall. It is he who will choose when you die, though I have claimed the pleasure of killing you myself.”

A shiver shot down her spine. “Who are you taking me to?”

Luis’s smile grew malevolent. “Dimitri Drakor.”

The only surviving member of the other Russian Imperial house of dragon shifters. The one dragon who had come closer than anyone else to killing Rurik.

Oh God…