It had been difficult to turn Calder into an exhausted, snoring mess, but Andrea had managed to do it after three hours of intense sex. It was 3 AM, and she was lying next to him, staring at the ceiling, carefully listening to the palace itself, trying to catch the smallest hint of a sound. She hoped they were all asleep. She had given them two hours after her and Calder’s heated session of lovemaking to settle down, forgive them for all the inappropriate noise, and fall asleep. She was pretty sure everything was going according to her plan, but she waited 20 more minutes. Then, gently, she slipped out of the bed, tiptoed into the dresser, grabbed her things, and made her way out of the bedroom. She left the door of the dresser ajar. She had thought about this moment long and hard, and she was trying to minimize the amount of movement needed to get through this night.
When she saw herself outside of the bedroom, down the stairs, and in front of the door to the cellar, Andrea allowed herself to stop for a second and breathe in relief. She didn’t let her guard down, thought. She shivered slightly, as she was only wearing a rather skimpy pajama, and fluffy socks on her feet. It had been weird to put the socks on, and Calder had laughed at her, but she had managed to convince him her feet always got uncomfortably cold during the night. She didn’t have time to change her clothes now. Once she was in the car, miles away, she could stop for a minute and put on the clothes and shoes she had prepared beforehand and stuffed inside the bag. For now, she’d have to forget about the piercing cold, and move on.
Slowly, she opened the door and started on the way Calder had showed her two weeks before. She knew someone would be guarding the vault, and for that someone she had prepared a secret weapon: her old perfume bottle, filled to the brim with mandrake-spiced water. She would use it as one would use a pepper spray, and then hope it would do the job. She was pretty sure it would, thought. Calder had told her mandrake could injure a dragon-shifter badly, and the wounds would take much more time to heal than literally any other type of wound. She already felt sorry for the poor dragon who was on duty tonight, but there was no going back now. She had made her decision, weighed the consequences, and now she was ready to be done with all this madness. The sooner she got out of there and forgot Calder and his clan, the better. She would miss this place and the people, yes, but time healed all wounds. It was something she had been repeating to herself like a mantra for the past few days. She was starting to believe it.
The corridor was just as well-lit as the first time she had been down there. This made Andrea conclude that it was always lit, no matter the time of day. Well, it made sense. The guard couldn’t possibly stay in the dark. She knew the dragon would smell and hear her way before she reached him. She just hoped he would be too curious about the person coming to the vault at this time of night to have the presence of mind to sound whatever alarm he probably had at his disposal. She had to move fast. She only had one shot to confuse the guard with some silly story as she got close enough to spray the entire contents of the bottle in his face.
Andrea bit the inside of her cheek and focused on breathing evenly. The least she could do was to control her heartbeat, so the dragon guard wouldn’t notice her nervousness. There was no point in walking slowly now. It was better to walk at a normal pace and approach the guard as if nothing weird was happening.
Five minutes of walking down the long corridor, and everything was going smoothly. That was… until Andrea turned the last corner and saw who was leaning against the steel door, a heavy book in hand.
“Andrea? What are you doing here?”
Sylvia closed her book and looked at Andrea, her silver brow arched in confusion. She had smelled her the second she had set foot on the corridor, and that was why she hadn’t panicked in any way. Maybe her stepmother couldn’t sleep and wanted to spend some time with her? But then again, how had she known Sylvia was on duty? Only Calder knew his dragons’ shifts, because he was the one who made the schedule. Maybe he had told her? Very possible… Andrea did have access to the vault.
Andrea tried to suppress a gasp. “Shit! Why did it have to be you?” She couldn’t believe Sylvia was guarding the clan’s treasure. Wasn’t her position as Kaden’s Annarr too important to be given such a lousy job? But Andrea’s curiosity had to wait. She had to pretend like she knew Sylvia was going to be down here. It was her only chance to get close enough to… “Fuck! I hope this doesn’t hurt too much. I hope it doesn’t leave scars.”
“Hey!” Andrea smiled broadly and kept walking towards her stepdaughter and friend. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d check up on you. Figured you must be bored out of your mind.”
Sylvia didn’t smile back. No matter how much she liked her father’s new bride, all her alarm bells were going off. She was still holding the book in one hand, so she used the other to reach for the phone in her back pocket. All she had to do was press a button, and the entire Grimmr Clan would be down into the corridor.
“Err… what’s up with the bag?”
“Oh, this?” Andrea lifted the bag and stared at it as if she just saw it for the first time. She kept walking. She was close now, she only had to stall for a few more seconds. “Well, it’s stupid, actually. I don’t know how to tell you. It’s embarrassing.” She did her best to laugh, but not too loud. She didn’t want to alert the dragons in the palace. The fact that shifters had such an amazing sense of hearing was inconvenient. “You’ll laugh at me.”
Sylvia’s whole body tensed. She wasn’t sure what to do. This was highly unusual. On the one hand, this was Andrea, and Andrea had access to the vault. So, in truth, Sylvia had no reason to be reaching for her phone to alert the other dragon-shifters. Her fingers hovered over her back pocket. On the other hand, why was Andrea caring a bag with her?
“I won’t laugh,” the silver-haired woman said reluctantly.
Andrea could see it in Sylvia’s eyes. She had no idea what was happening and how she was supposed to react. She was standing right in front of her now. The bag had a small pocket on the right side, and Andrea reached for it.
“Okay, if you promise…” She pulled out the perfume bottle.
Sylvia’s eyes widened in surprise. It was just a perfume bottle. Alien. Thierry Mugler. She rather liked that fragrance. Heavy, intense, filled with passion. It was meant to be worn in the evening, for a cocktail party or a crazy night at a strip club, as a gift for your boyfriend’s birthday.
Andrea held the bottle in front of Sylvia’s eyes. She even wiggled it a bit. The dragon-shifter had no clue what it really contained. That stupid, stinky perfume covered the smell of mandrake perfectly.
“I give up,” Sylvia said. “I don’t get it.”
Suddenly, Andrea’s eyes were filled with sadness and remorse. Unfortunately, Sylvia had no time to react to that subtle change, even with her shifter speed.
“I’m sorry,” Andrea said just as she pressed the vaporizer. Once, twice, three times, four… until the bottle was empty.
Sylvia screamed, jumped back, dropped the book, and raised both her arms to cover her eyes. It didn’t help. The first spray hit her eyes, making them bleed. The second and the third one hit her bare wrists, and she couldn’t help but wave her hands like mad, away from the deadly poison. Burns appeared on her wrists and palms, where the mandrake spray had touched her. She turned her head and continued to back away, but Andrea just kept moving towards her, bottle in hand, spraying the deadly solution on her cheeks, hair, neck, and chest. Sylvia couldn’t even speak. The mandrake had burned her lips, and she hadn’t been clever enough to close her mouth. She had screamed, felt the taste of mandrake on her tongue, and then had been completely silenced by the intense burn that quickly spread to the inside of her mouth and throat. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her, and when the evil spraying finally stopped, she fell to the floor. She was mildly aware of Andrea dropping the bottle and running to the steel door, using her fingerprint to enter the vault. Slowly, carefully, doing her best not to rub her wounds on her jeans more than necessary, Sylvia took her phone out of her back pocket and pressed the button on the side. Then, she fainted.
Andrea didn’t waste another second. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and her adrenaline was through the roof. As she entered the vault, she was drenched in sweat and gasping for air. She felt sick. Bile rose in her throat, and she was on the verge of throwing up. She swallowed heavily, and pushed through the horrible feeling. She had no time for that. And she had no time to think about Sylvia.
“She’s okay,” she whispered to herself. “She’s fine. She’s an ancient dragon-shifter. The burns will heal.”
There were no words to describe what she was feeling. Guilt, nausea, disgust… Andrea had never thought this would be so damn hard. On the surface, her plan was perfect, if not brilliant. It was going way better than she could have hoped for. It was almost too easy to rob Clan Grimmr blind. However, as she was stuffing everything she could easily lift inside the bag, Andrea was dying inside. Not just dying, rotting. She had hurt Sylvia – her friend, Calder’s daughter, the Annarr of the Emerald Wing. She had betrayed the man who had trusted her, taken her into his home, and shared everything with her without asking for a thing in return. But none of this hurt more than the realization that, above all, Andrea had betrayed herself.
She wasn’t the same person who had applied to become a mail-order bride. She wasn’t the same person who had used Miss Delacroix’s dating advice to make Calder want her. She wasn’t the same person who had told Jade to keep her secret. She wasn’t the same person who had silently criticized the grandeur of this palace, the person who had convinced herself that she hated shape-shifters, the person who believed in the Machiavellian saying: “The end justifies the means.” She was none of that anymore, and she had just tarnished herself in her own eyes by sticking to a perspective and a dream that did not represent the woman she had become in these past two weeks.
Who was she? What did she want? What the hell was she doing?
Andrea swallowed down more bile and promised herself she would stop to throw up in the garage. She zipped up the bag and threw it on her shoulder. She almost lost balance when the bag proved to be much heavier than she had intended to make it. No matter. She had no time to unzip it and throw away some of the stuff. She would have to push through this one last part of her master plan, and make it to the garage. She could do it. She was a strong woman.
She headed to the exit. Just as she was getting ready to step over the threshold, she screamed, dropped the bag, screamed louder when it almost dislocated her shoulder, then took a couple of steps back.
Calder, Kaden, and Jared were blocking Andrea’s way to freedom.
Calder’s eyes were filled with tears.
Kaden’s golden orbs were throwing daggers at her. His arms were crossed over his chest, his feet were placed firmly on the ground, and he looked like he was ready to tear her to pieces.
Jared was harder to read. His features betrayed something between anger and regret.
“How could you?” whispered Calder, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You pathetic…” Kaden said between gritted teeth. He stopped himself before he called her something that would hurt his father. He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t please me to say this, but I was right. I was right to set this trap.”
Andrea looked at him, confused. She opened her mouth to ask the obvious question, but nothing came out.
“Yes, this whole thing was a trap. It took me some time to convince my dad to let me set it, but he eventually agreed.”
Calder ran his hands through his long, silver hair. He took a step back. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t know how to feel. When his son, Kaden, had come into his office the evening he had brought Andrea home, there had been no way of making him shut the hell up. Kaden had wanted to test his new bride because he had a bad feeling about her. Finally, he had managed to convince him with the argument that it wasn’t fair for Calder to bring a stranger into their home and trust her when so much was at stake. He was the Dragon Councilor, and Clan Grimmr sat on the greatest, most ancient treasure in the entire Dragon Faction. Whether he liked it or not, Kaden thought Calder’s bride needed to be tested first. And she had failed. Miserably.
“Do you really think we set guards every day and night?” continued Kaden. “Well, we don’t. There’s no other way of reaching the vault, except from the inside of the palace. And we trust every single person who lives here. Only dad, Sylvia, and I have access to the vault. So, yeah… our traditions say we must share everything with those who become part of our direct family, so dad had to give you access. He trusted you, but that didn’t mean I had to trust you, too. Although… you did have me fooled for a second.”
Andrea was breathing shallowly. She couldn’t believe she had fallen for Kaden’s trick. She stole a glance at Calder, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. How much of a part had he played in this whole thing? Probably, he had just agreed to let Kaden do whatever, then chose the people who were to guard the vault for a while. For how long, though? Maybe, if she had waited one more week, or two, or three, then Kaden would have deemed her trustworthy and pulled the guards. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered.
Kaden went on and on about what a terrible human being she was, about how she had played them all, and how she was going to pay for having attacked Sylvia. Andrea tuned him out. Slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements, she reached into her cleavage. The tight quality bra she was wearing could hold anything between her round breasts. She pulled the bottle out and unscrewed the cap and vaporizer before Kaden or Jared realized what she was doing. Calder was still not looking at her. Without a word or another second of delay, she drank the contents of the bottle. She had no idea if it would work on her, but it had to, right? Mandrake was highly poisonous, even to humans. It didn’t have the effect it had on dragon-shifters. Whatever effect it had, it would have to do.
“What the hell are you doing?!” yelled Kaden. He ran to her and caught her just before she hit the ground. “What did you just drink? What is this?” He sniffed the bottle, and immediately jumped back, almost letting Andrea’s body hit the stone floor. “Mandrake.”
Kaden’s alarmed voice brought Calder back to reality. He felt so tired and disappointed that he didn’t want to deal with anything, anymore. He couldn’t stand to look at Andrea. He still loved her deeply. He still believed she was the woman he had been looking for, and his inner beast still recognized her as his mate. But looking at her, talking to her… It was all too much. He couldn’t do it. However, when he saw Kaden holding her weak body on his knees, Calder ran to her side.
“I think she just fainted,” said Kaden. There was worry in his voice, although he would never admit it. “It must have been the stress and the rush of adrenaline. Mandrake doesn’t have this kind of sudden effect on humans. Does it?” He looked up at his father.
“I… I don’t know.”
Calder took her from Kaden’s arms and lifted her up.
“No, wait,” said Kaden. “Where do you think you’re taking her?”
“Upstairs.”
“You’re kidding, right? You saw what she did to Sylvia’s face. Sylvia is your daughter!”
Calder had started walking towards the exit of the vault. He turned around to face his son.
“And what do you want me to do? Let her die?”
Kaden’s jaw tightened. He kept silent as his father took Andrea up to their bedroom. Did he hate Andrea? Yes. But when he had hold her, he had felt the way her skin was burning with fever. She had been sick before she had drunk the mandrake concoction. So, did he want Andrea dead? That was something Kaden had to sleep on.