Izzy laughed as Noah winced.
“I thought you were Mr. Tough Guy,” she said. “Looks like you can’t even handle a bit of rubbing alcohol.”
“That was more than a bit,” Noah protested. “I think you dumped half the bottle on that gauze strip.”
“Oh, stop your whining and hold still,” Izzy said. “All you men are the same. Tough as nails until you have a little boo-boo, or, worse, a man cold. And god forbid one of you gets the flu. You’d think the entire world was ending.”
Noah glared at her, but Izzy just laughed. She wasn’t easily intimidated when she was in doctor mode. Here, tending to Noah’s many minor wounds, she was confident and in control. She was the expert now. Her skills as a soldier might not be world class, but no one could tell her that she wasn’t a talented doctor.
“Sit still!” Izzy commanded again. Noah huffed but did as he was told. Izzy worked for several more minutes in silence, forcing herself to concentrate on her work instead of how gorgeous Noah’s eyes were as they looked up at her. He’d shaved before they left on their mission, so his face was smoother than it had been in the VIP meeting room a day ago. But already, a hint of dark stubble was starting to reappear. Izzy resisted the urge to lift a palm and run it across his cheek.
Things had changed between them, in ways that would have seemed impossible just a few hours ago. They had started out this mission on shaky ground, and then they had saved each other’s lives. They had survived, together, and everything was different now. Izzy bit her lip gently remembering for a brief moment how Noah’s lips had felt on hers.
Had his kiss meant something, or had it been just a byproduct of the adrenaline-drenched moment they’d both been caught up in? Izzy wanted to ask, but she was afraid of the answer. She wasn’t even sure which answer she wanted. She hadn’t been looking for love. She’d only been trying to make it through this war in one piece. And yes, she’d been a bit of a coward, shying away from Saul. But, in the end, her cowardice had saved Noah’s life, so he couldn’t be too angry about that anymore, could he?
“All done,” she said briskly, standing straight up a little too quickly. Her back, a bit sore from the fight, sent little shivers of pain across her left side in protest of her rapid movements. She rubbed at the worst spot on her lower spine, doing her best not to wince. It wouldn’t do to show pain when she’d just teased Noah for the very same thing. She gave him a smile that she hoped was convincing, but faltered a little when she noticed that he was staring at her. They were in one of the cabins now—the one that had been least damaged by Saul’s army. According to Noah this cabin used to belong to Grayson. It was small but cozy, and something about the setting felt a little too intimate, especially with Noah looking at her like he could see right through her.
“What?” she asked. The intensity in his emerald eyes unnerved her. His hair was mussed up after battle in the same way it had been during the red-alert meeting. That meeting felt like another lifetime now.
“Nothing,” Noah said finally, looking away. “We should eat something.”
He stood slowly and crossed the room, reaching for his backpack, which now had tattered straps since he’d been wearing it while he shifted. He dug in and pulled out a meal replacement bar. He frowned at the bar, then let out a resigned sigh and sat down at the small kitchen table to eat it. Izzy felt her heart go out to him a bit. She knew he was now regretting his choice to pack in a hurry and only take along simple food like meal bars and stale peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It would serve him right if she spread out all her carefully packed, delicious food and ate it up without offering him any. A few hours ago, that’s probably what she would have done. But, as she’d already realized, things were different between them now. He owed her his life, and she owed him hers. She couldn’t very well sit here and feast without inviting him to join.
Silently, she stood and went to her own bag. She carried it to the table and slowly pulled out packages of food. She arranged the grapes, cheeses, and berries in neat rows, using the paper they’d been wrapped in as a sort of makeshift tablecloth. She pulled out a package of gourmet crackers, and another small package of mixed nuts. Then she pulled out her last sandwich, a deluxe ham and cheese on a baguette. She could feel Noah’s eyes on her as she tore the sandwich in two, then held one of the halves out to him like a peace offering.
“Here. Eat. And help yourself to all of this, too,” she said, sweeping her hand in a wide gesture to indicate the food spread across the table.
Noah looked hungrily at the sandwich, but didn’t reach for it right away. “You don’t have to share just because we had a battle together, you know.”
“Stop being a stubborn male for three goddamn seconds and take the sandwich,” Izzy replied, exasperated.
Noah shrugged and gave her a sheepish grin, but then reached out to take the sandwich. For a few minutes, silence hung over the room as they both ate greedily. Izzy spoke first.
“Should we risk a transmission to Falcon Cross now?” she asked. Noah didn’t answer right away. He drummed his fingers on the table, considering. Finally, he shook his head no.
“We should wait at least until morning,” he said. “I want to make sure there isn’t anyone else, or anything else, hiding out here. If there are more enemies nearby, they’ll likely attack tonight, under cover of darkness. We’ll sleep in shifts for the rest of the night. If morning comes and we still haven’t been attacked, we’ll take another look around. As long as we don’t see anything else suspicious, then I’d say we’re pretty much home free. We can tell Falcon Cross that the Redwoods Base Camp has been recovered.”
Izzy nodded. She would have liked to send word back to Falcon Cross right away, but Noah was right. Better to wait until they knew for sure that things here were safe and secure. The message they sent to Falcon Cross would be short and cryptic, in case it got intercepted. All it would be was a code word, letting the wizards and dragons back home know that the Redwoods Base Camp was recovered. As soon as Falcon Cross got word of this, an army of wizards would start heading here to gather up the ancient artifacts that the Redwood Dragons Clan had been stockpiling over the years. Izzy and Noah could not send word until they were certain that it was safe for the Falcon Cross soldiers to come.
They had looked around as best they could in the darkness, before coming into this cabin to clean up their wounds. As far as they could tell, the place had been deserted, except for the strange creature they’d unwittingly disturbed when they walked into the camp. The cabins were all damaged in some shape or fashion, some worse than others. But all of them had clearly been abandoned for weeks. Layers of dust covered every surface, and what little food remained in the fridges was rotting and moldy.
“Any idea what that creature was?” Noah asked as he reached for a handful of crackers and several slices of cheese. Now that he’d gotten over his initial hesitation about sharing Izzy’s food, he wasn’t at all shy about helping himself. She was glad for that. She’d brought plenty, and the berries and cheese were better eaten fresh. They could probably forage for more food tomorrow, provided the area did prove to be free of enemy soldiers. Besides, it gave her heart an undeniably warm, happy feeling to see Noah enjoying himself so much.
“I’m pretty sure it was a shifter altered by dark magic,” Izzy said. She felt her stomach turn at the thought of the creature, and she reached for her water bottle to take a long sip. The cool liquid didn’t calm her nerves as much as she would have hoped, however.
Noah looked over at her in confusion, pausing with a cheese and cracker sandwich held in mid-air. “What does that mean?” he asked.
Izzy shuddered. “It’s…disturbing, just to warn you. But I suppose nothing is more disturbing than seeing a monster like that in real life. There are dark magic spells that allow wizards to turn any shifter into a state of being permanently between animal and human form. Except, as I’m sure you saw tonight, it’s not a normal animal or human form. It’s some sort of deranged human mixed with a monstrous beast. The spells were created centuries ago during one of the great shifter-wizard wars. Wizards were scared that shifters were going to take over and destroy wizards completely, so some of them created these spells. They wanted to create these inhuman shifter monsters out of captured shifter prisoners, and use the monsters to fight against attacking shifters. The spells were quickly outlawed, because the high wizard councils ruled that they fell squarely under the category of dark magic—”
“I can’t imagine why,” Noah interrupted.
“Right,” Izzy said. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that turning someone into one of these monster creatures is evil in the purest sense. But, as we know, Saul has no qualms about using all sorts of different dark magic. I’m sure this was his work. What I wonder is whether he created that monster and left it here to guard the place after moving his soldiers out, or whether he just let the monster loose and it killed off all the soldiers.”
Noah looked up at her in horror. “Why would Saul allow his own soldiers to be killed?”
“Why would he do any of the awful things he does?” Izzy asked.
Noah sighed. “True enough. It’s just still hard for me to believe that anyone could be so awful. The man has no soul.”
“Well, you’re actually more right about that than you know,” Izzy said, shuddering. “I’m sure you’ve been briefed on how dark magic works. Each dark magic spell requires a bit of the soul of the person casting the spell. Someone like Saul, who has been doing these deep dives into the world of dark magic, likely doesn’t have much of a soul left to speak of.”
Noah frowned as he slowly chewed a mouthful of cheese and crackers.
“Why did the, uh, monster, smell so awful?” he asked. “Was it because he killed people? And why didn’t I smell him until he was right on top of me?”
Izzy made a face. “He would have smelled like that whether or not he’d killed anyone. It’s a hallmark of those creatures. They produce this slime as a byproduct of the dark magic, and that’s what smells so bad. They can emit pheromones to mask their scent when they’re sneaking up on someone, though. That enables them to take enemies by surprise. Once they have their enemies in their grasp, they let their awful stench come back through. As you know well by now, that smell is enough to suffocate a person. The creatures are dangerous, but also kind of dumb. They do whatever their creator tells them to do without really questioning anything, and if they don’t get orders they wander around aimlessly destroying things.”
“You know an awful lot about these monsters.”
“Yeah, well, growing up as a wizard we were constantly warned about the dangers of dark magic. Monsters like this were always used as examples of what awful things evil magic was capable of. As wary as wizards might have been of shifters, we still have morals. We didn’t want to be part of anything that would turn human beings into these awful shells of themselves. I hate to even use the word monster, because it’s referring to someone who used to be a person. It almost seems disrespectful to call them a monster. But, then again, the creatures are quite monstrous, and they don’t really bear any resemblance anymore to who they used to be.”
“I know what you mean,” Noah said sadly. “I feel awful that I killed a shifter. But he wasn’t really a shifter anymore, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
Izzy and Noah sat in silence for a few minutes, chewing on their food and lost in their own thoughts. Izzy was wondering just how far Saul would be able to take his dark magic when Noah spoke up.
“Why are you so afraid of him?”
Izzy didn’t have to ask to know that Noah was talking about Saul. She tensed up a bit, but there was no animosity in Noah’s tone this time. He sounded genuinely curious. Concerned, almost. Still, she felt ashamed to admit to her fear. She looked into the emerald pools of Noah’s eyes, wondering whether she could really trust him. They had shared an intimate moment out by the corpse of the monster, true. But did that single instance really make that much difference?
Izzy didn’t know Noah well. She had no idea what his personality was really like, and his actions over the last day, on the whole, had not left a very favorable impression. But what did she really have to lose by giving him a second chance? He already knew she was a coward, so telling him about Saul wasn’t going to make things worse between them. If, by some chance, he actually listened to what she said, then maybe he would soften his attitude toward her. Maybe he would realize that courage isn’t always a black and white attribute. Izzy took a deep breath, and decided to talk about Saul. She hadn’t really done so since she’d helped Myles and Harlow escape from one of Saul’s minions, and she found her voice shaking slightly as she began to speak.
“I guess you could say that, before this war, I’d lived a fairly sheltered life. I grew up in a small clan on the east coast, where life was pretty rosy and calm. I had heard tales of old wars, of course, but all of that seemed like distant history. I thought dark magic and evil shifters and wizards were things of the past. That all changed the day that Saul invaded my clan’s little town.”
Izzy paused to steady her breathing. Her palms were growing sweaty and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest at the memories, but she had said too much to stop talking now.
“I was out with friends when Saul and his army came. One minute I was sitting there at a restaurant, laughing over beers and loaded nachos, and the next I was being pulled to the ground and everyone around me was screaming. Saul’s dark wizards came flying through the town, shooting off random attack spells and laughing at the terrified chaos they were causing. After several minutes of this, Saul flew overhead, in dragon form. He started yelling at all of us that we had to join his army or die. I had never seen a shifter before, and just the sight of a dragon flying overhead was enough to horrify me.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, the dark wizards rounded everyone up in the center of town. There, each person was brought before Saul one by one. He gave us each the chance to either join his army or die. I watched as my clanmates refused, one after the other. People I had known my whole life—friends, relatives, neighbors—were all killed in an instant when they spat in Saul’s face and told him they would never join his cause. I stood there, shaking, waiting for my turn to die. And then, I had a thought. What good did it do me to die? I couldn’t help push back the forces of evil if I was dead. But maybe, just maybe, if I pretended to side with Saul, I could do something to harm his cause from the inside. I had no idea what I might be able to do, but I decided that it was worth a shot. When my turn came to stand before Saul, I told him I would join his cause. I was terrified that he might be able to somehow read my mind and see that I wasn’t actually intending to help him, but I guess even dark magic has its limits. Saul took me at my word, and seemed pleased to have recruited a new soldier.”
“What did he do with you then?” Noah asked.
“He had his wizards put me through all sorts of tests to see what I was capable of. I didn’t tell him I was a doctor. I didn’t want to have to use my medical skills to help any soldiers of his who might be wounded. Unfortunately, though, I don’t have many talents outside of being a doctor. I’m horrible at one-on-one combat, I don’t have much endurance, and I’m not very strong. With each passing test, Saul grew angrier and angrier. When I didn’t live up to his expectations, he would slice my stomach with one of his claws. I was already weak and tired. Losing so much blood from the wounds he was creating made it nearly impossible to perform any of the physical tasks he was asking of me. I thought he was going to kill me, and I began to regret not just spitting in his face and dying quickly. Finally, though, he asked me to show him my broomstick flying skills. That’s something I’m actually really good at, and, mercifully, he seemed impressed after watching me fly. He sent me to an outpost in northern Montana, where I served as a guard and waited for a chance to help the side of good. The dark wizard in charge of that outpost often tortured me, presumably at Saul’s command, but I held on to hope that things wouldn’t be that way forever. I’d heard rumblings that there was a resistance force, and when Harlow was captured I knew I had to help her. Thankfully, after helping her and Myles, Peter agreed to take me in as a member of the Falcon Cross Clan.”
Izzy met Noah’s eyes as she finished her story, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Once again, in true dragon style, he was doing a damn good job of hiding his emotions. She could feel her hands trembling, and she kept them hidden under the table in her lap. She already felt vulnerable enough after telling him about her experiences with Saul. She didn’t want him to see her shaking, too. Izzy knew that many did not agree with her choice to pretend to join Saul’s army. There were plenty of wizards who thought that doing so had been cowardly. They thought she should have died honorably instead of acting like she was willing to help the side of evil. But Izzy felt deep down that her choice had been a good one, even if it had been cowardly. After all, Myles and Harlow might very well have died without her help, and then the dragon amethyst would not have been recovered. Izzy stuck her chin defiantly out in front of her, almost daring Noah to tell her once again that she had no spine and would never be a true soldier. But when Noah finally spoke, his voice was as tender as she’d ever heard it.
“I was wrong about you, Izzy. I’m sorry.”
Izzy blinked at him, not quite sure how to interpret the statement. Luckily, he kept talking and explained things further.
“Maybe you aren’t brave in the traditional sense. You’re not rushing eagerly into battle and wanting to meet Saul head-on. But you’re brave when it counts. In that moment when the monster had me in its claws, you came through for me. I know you never asked for this, Izzy. You just wanted to live your calm, settled life and be a doctor. And it sounds like Saul and his minions tortured you something awful. Despite everything you’ve been through, you’re still standing tall and still helping the side of good, even when your head is telling you that you should be scared out of your mind. You’re following your heart, and I think your heart tells you that you have what it takes to make a difference.”
Izzy blinked again, this time to blink back tears. Hearing Noah say those things filled her with a rush of emotion. She wasn’t sure exactly how to label that emotion, but if the warmth spreading through her core was any indication, she was feeling something dangerously close to desire. When Noah leaned across the table to put his lips on hers, that warmth turned into a burning hot fire.
He tasted like the berries he’d been eating a few minutes before. His lips were sweet, and surprisingly soft. Izzy’s mind screamed at her that she still didn’t know Noah well, and that kissing him was a foolish idea. But her heart told her that this was right, and that there was something special about him. And, as Noah had already observed, Izzy was pretty good at following her heart.
Her heart felt pretty disappointed when Noah pulled abruptly away from the kiss and started cleaning up the remnants of their dinner. Still, Izzy couldn’t help but smile when she licked her lips and tasted the sweet berry flavor that lingered there from Noah’s lips. She had a feeling that the fire between them had only just begun to burn. More heat was in her future.