The video didn’t make sense.

All she could do was stare at the man in the grainy footage, on his hands and knees and coughing rivers of blood, every muscle flexed, a look of agony written on his face until he finally fell over on his side, crimson streaming from his mouth and nose as he stared blankly at the video camera. He’d been talking to her in his head while he’d been going through this.

“I need help,” he said out loud, his body convulsing. “Guards,” he said a little louder. “Help.”

Rage racked her body at how long it took for the hangar doors to open. Two of the frontrunner guards shot him with darts in the back as he lay there, not fighting. Three more guards lifted him into a seated position on the bed, and one threw a white towel at his face. It fell in his lap, but Vyr didn’t move to clean himself up. He wasn’t done bleeding yet.

Riyah stared at that clenched fist of his, resting on his knee, his hand shaking so bad as a crew cleaned the blood on the floor.

And what had he done? He’d reassured her so she could stay home safe and go to sleep. He was in agony, and yet he’d talked to her like everything was okay.

Vyr was the strongest man she’d ever met.

But the witch inside of her burned to crush the guards down here. She couldn’t even breathe for the red rage inside of her.

A squeaking noise sounded as Emmitt kicked the toe of his shoe against the tile floor. “They call it The Sickening. We had to force it a bit because Vyr wasn’t showing signs yet. He’s old enough that he should have started it already. He never settled with a mate, and they tend to start getting sick if they don’t find a treasure in their late twenties. This one’s different, though. He’s the son of Damon Daye, and he’s an original. An ancient. Vyr is stronger. A different breed perhaps. So…we took him from his mountains, and we gave him meds to kickstart The Sickening.

“You don’t have a problem with any of this?” she asked, straitening up and looking Emmitt dead in the eyes.

“Nope. I’ve seen the video of him burning Covington. I have no problem saving the world. I’m a goddamn hero.”

Riyah shook her head slowly and gave him a ghost of a smile. Someday, she was going to get revenge for Vyr. And she was going to start with Emmitt, the pretend hero.

“How long has it been since he Changed?”

“Since number seventeen. Three weeks ago. He’s about due again, but it’s a big production. You’re here, though.” Emmitt matched her empty smile. “That’s part of your job, Princess. Make the Changes manageable when they have to happen. Keep him in control with your psychotherapy mumbo-jumbo bullshit like everyone seems to think you can do. We just need him to Change and sit quietly in his cage like a good little pet dragon until he can Change back into a human again. So far, there’s been too much fire when a Change goes down.”

“Why don’t you just kill him and get it over with?”

“Can’t. We’ve tried. Each time we try, the Red Dragon comes out and people get hurt. We need him weaker. Weaken him, Mercer. That’s why they’re paying you the big bucks.”

She wanted to puke. Right here in Emmitt’s observation room, she wanted to vomit.

The door opened, and a tank of a man with dark hair, a dark beard, and icy blue eyes leaned in. He had on the same guard uniform as Emmitt. He jerked his chin at the head guard. “Hey boss, they’re pulling us in for a meeting.”

Emmitt sighed. “Riyah Mercer, this is Hank Butte, and he is on the lower level team. He helps me run security down here. He came in six months ago with the Red Dragon. He was responsible for bringing the monster in.”

Hank Butte was a shifter. She could tell from the churning, inhuman blue of his eyes and from the awful feeling in her gut she got when he looked at her. He was very dominant, very powerful, and a bad man with loyalty to no one. There was a chip missing with him. She couldn’t sense any empathy from him at all. He was just a shadow. Empty. No feelings. Dark. But then, he would have to be if he was a shifter and could watch what was happening to his people down here. This douche-nugget brought Vyr in? Oh good, now she was justified in instantly hating him.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said, not even trying to sound sincere.

“Yeah, I don’t give a fuck about meeting you either, lady. They want us in that meeting in ten—” He returned his attention to Vyr. “Oh, shit!” The towering man startled and his eyes went wide as he looked at the window behind her.

When Riyah turned around, Vyr was standing right up against the window, a feral smile on his face, eyes locked on Butte. He looked like a damn demon, his eyes both silver with that elongated pupil.

“I don’t think he likes you,” Riyah murmured, crossing her arms.

Vyr’s smile widened, his predatory gaze still on Butte.

“Better hope he never does a jailbreak, boys. I don’t think you two would be safe from his fire.”

“Fuckin’ creepy dragon,” Emmitt muttered, shoving Butte out the door. Before he left, he turned back around and jammed a finger at her. “If you go in there, you make sure there are six in the observation rooms and a team on standby to get you out of there if you need help.”

“You care,” she said with a too bright smile.

“Nope. I just hate when this place stinks like burning human flesh. Makes it hard to eat lunch down here for a week. Don’t die, Princess.”

After the metal door swung closed behind him, she flipped him off. When she turned around, Vyr was still there. He was looking at her with a sexyboy smirk. His eyes were still both silver, but he lifted a hand slowly and pressed it against the glass, locked his arm like he was just leaning against a wall.

Before she could change her mind and chicken out, she approached the window and pressed her palm against the glass, too. His palm was so much bigger than hers.

“Don’t get caught alone with Butte. If you ever do, call me. Call the dragon. If I’m still strong enough, I’ll fix it.”

Just in case the room was bugged, she didn’t speak. Instead, she nodded and hoped he would sense it. She shouldn’t feel safe with Vyr, but she did. And right now? She didn’t really care what that said about her. She believed him. He would burn this place to the ground to protect her. It made no sense to trust a man like this. To trust the baddest shifter on Earth, locked in the lower levels of a high-security prison. But as she watched him straighten his spine and his hand slip from the smooth surface…as she watched him make his way to the bed, she knew she trusted Vyr a hundred times more than she trusted the “hero” guards here. The wrong bad guy was locked up.

She used the intercom that was connected to the other observation rooms and checked them one at a time, made sure there were six in there and an extraction team. She would mind Emmitt’s rules. For now.

And then she used her card to get through the two steel doors into Vyr’s cell. He lifted his smoldering gaze and tracked her progress across the cavernous room. Formally, he gestured to a plastic chair in front of the bed. “You look sexy as fuck,” his voice rumbled in her head. Out loud he asked innocently, “Back for more interviews?” A slow smile stretched his face as he dipped into her mind again and murmured, “Blue. You’re wearing blue Vyr-panties. Right?”

“I told you yesterday I wasn’t good at these, but I guess this is my life now. At least you don’t suck at interviews too bad.” She hid a smile. “You’re making me blush red.”

“Red Vyr-panties. Fuuuuuck. Red for my dragon, right? Say yes.”

“And yes to more interviews. It’s part of my job, to study what you’re going through and help you through this transition.”

Vyr’s smile turned hungry, and when a deep rumble shook the room, she sat in the chair in a hurry so she didn’t lose her balance.

“The dragon wants out. It’s been too long. I won’t have control much longer. If you’re taking requests on what will make this easier? I need to Change.”

Riyah wrote that down word for word on the lined paper she’d attached to her clipboard. “Anything else?”

“Conjugal visits. Watch that wicked smile, woman, we are being monitored.”

Riyah wiped her face clean of a smile and cleared her throat as she looked at him again. “How are you feeling today?”

“Like shit. I had a rough night. I think you know that, though. How did you like that footage?” Something hard flashed through his silver eyes.

“I did watch it—”

“I asked you not to.”

“—because I need to see what living in here is really like for you.”

“You’re going to watch me break, Badass Princess.”

“I need to ensure you make it to the end of your sentence, and that means being involved in every stage of your transition here.”

“Riyah—"

“It doesn’t make you weak,” she said, cutting off his thoughts rattling around in her head. “But I need to see everything. For me. It helps.”

“Helps how? Seriously, how could watching me damn near bleed out every night help you?”

“You are a very powerful creature, Vyr Daye.”

“So?”

She glared at him. “Me, too.”

The cameras in the upper corners popped and sparked, and the lights went out. She was immersed in total darkness, and she could hear the guards yelling outside the hangar doors, as if they couldn’t open them. What the fuck?

“We have thirty seconds. What do you mean?” Vyr asked in the dark.

“Watching you suffer feeds my power. I fucking told you I’m not letting you die. If I have to step in, I need to be at the top of my game. Fuel me with your suffering, Red Dragon.”

A hand gripped her forearm in the dark, and she was yanked forward. And then his lips crashed onto hers. There was a powerful, vibrating rumble that rattled straight through her, but she didn’t care. Desperate for the last few seconds with him, she parted her lips and let him thrust his tongue inside her mouth. He slid his hand up her bare leg and under the hem of her dress to her panties. He made it to her upper thigh and gripped her so hard she gasped at the pleasure and pain. His fingers dug into her skin as he kissed her. Chaos reigned with the sounds of yelling and panic outside the hangar doors, but for this moment, it was just her and Vyr.

He bit her bottom lip hard and released her suddenly. “Compose yourself. You’ve got five seconds.”

Breath hitching, she straightened her dress and licked her bottom lip in case it was bleeding. She didn’t taste iron, though. She stood and picked up the chair, and when the lights came on, she was poised like a lion-tamer, keeping a big-cat away. Vyr sat on the bed, relaxed, hands unclenched as he watched her jab the chair legs at him.

“What just happened?” she screamed as the hangar doors blasted upward and a team of four wearing fireproof gear came slinking in, rifles trained on Vyr. “Who did that?”

“Technical glitch, ma’am,” one of the guards murmured as he grabbed her around the waist and dragged her back toward the open hangar door. “You’re okay. Everything’s okay. We’ve got you.”

And in the second just before the hangar door slammed closed, Vyr gifted her with a wicked smile.