Anya stopped dead in her tracks. 

The sound of clapping echoed around them. Lights flared to life. Anya had to hold her hand up against the glare while her eyes adjusted. Luc was lighting fast, planting himself between her and the source of the clapping.

“Very well done,” a familiar voice said.

Anya leaned to peer around Luc’s wall of a body and felt her stomach drop through the floor. Andrea Backus, the head of the local GOE facility, stood at the far end of the room. There was a demure smile on her lips and an ease to her shoulders that spoke volumes to Anya.

They’d done exactly what Andrea wanted.

How, though?

Another voice screamed through Anya’s mind. They were trapped. If Andrea Backus was here, then Luc and Anya were trapped inside the experimental facility. It wasn’t an abandoned facility. No, they only wanted the world to think that while GOE continued what they were doing beneath the old facility.

And, Anya had led her dragon mate right to them. In front of her, Luc grew stiff as if he was thinking the same thing at the same moment. Anya’s thumb rose to her lips by instinct alone. How was she going to get them out of this?

“You’re wondering why I knew you would be here,” Andrea began as she claimed a desk chair. “Right?”

Neither of them said anything. Anya was still playing scenarios in her mind, trying to find one that led to their escape. Could they get out of this mess without having to pull her trump card? But, Andrea didn’t give Anya a chance to decide. The facility director raised her hand and flicked her fingers in an unspoken command. From the shadows of the far hall appeared two more figures.

Anya cried out when she saw the state of her father’s face. One eye was swollen shut and his lower lip was cracked open so that blood trickled and dried down his chin. He walked with a limp, led by a figure she was growing to hate. Beauchamp smiled wide while he led Nathan Forrest into the open light. His eyes met Anya’s and her stomach flipped.

“Now,” Andrea began, dusting off her skirt. “You may think those files accidentally found their way into the folders you were to transfer from our facility to the Embassy. You may think you were doing the right thing by telling the dragons, think that you were acting of your own free will.

“I’m here to tell you that you were wrong. What you did for us, Anya, was hit two birds with one naïve little soul. You see, we knew there were some rumblings on the Territory about missing dragons. We needed someone to smoke them out and this new venture of theirs was the perfect opportunity. You landed in our lap, this voice of equality for humans and dragons, and made it all the easier. I knew if we fed you a spoonful of information that you would run and tell the dragons. In turn, that would bring us this little morsel.

“I take it, you’re the dragon crying about missing monsters?” Andrea Backus said as she sized up Anya’s mate. “I had a feeling it would turn out to be you. Your father caused quite a bit of trouble for us, so I guess it would make sense that you would, too. It worked out perfectly for us.”

“You can’t keep us here,” Anya said, bravely. “The whole Territory knows what you’re doing now.”

Andrea pushed her chair back and stood, closing the space between her and Luc like she wasn’t afraid. The woman should have been terrified of a cornered dragon, especially with no weapon at her hip. Andrea thought she had the advantage.

More agents flooded the room, weapons and cuffs in hand. Anya opened her mouth to argue, but they were faster than she was. The agents wrangled the helpless Luc into the silver cuffs. He could barely stand as they yanked and jerked his shoulders into place.

“It really helps keep the animals in line when the building is lined with silver,” Andrea said, flippantly, like she hadn’t just called Anya’s mate an animal.

Her stomach sank. If it came to a fight, Luc wouldn’t be able to hold them off. His beast would be tempered and trapped by the silver around him. Normally, only silver on or in their skin would do the trick, but Anya would bet that everything used to build the basement had a fraction of silver on it. Luc wasn’t helpless, but he was essentially human.

Anya only had one option left. If she didn’t use it, Luc would be strapped to a table and torn apart by their so-called scientists. Her father would be… she had a sinking feeling the director and her agents would have Anya and her father killed. It was the only option that kept their secret safe.

“Were you hoping that the rest of the Territory would roll over in fear?” Anya blurted out as the agents tore Luc from her. She turned her hot glare at Andrea Backus.

The woman’s expression faltered, just a fraction of a second as her convictions slipped. The dragons on the American Territory weren’t animals they could cage in by fear. They weren’t lab rats to be dissected and inspected for their weapons. The dragons would stand and take action. They would fight against these injustices.

And Anya would help in whatever way she could.

Her hand slipped into her pocket and her thumb pressed a small button. She prayed the basement didn’t block her signal, prayed the dragon on the other end heard her call for help. Isaac had given her the walkie talkie before Luc woke that morning when she came to him for help. She asked him, if anything were to go south, to post all the information they’d found to the internet.

Anya’s only hope was that Isaac was listening.

“If we don’t get out of this building in one piece, the dragons on the American Territory are prepared to release the information you so graciously leaked.”

Andrea’s mask of victory slipped. “That is a blatant lie. The dragons don’t know how to use our technology. They live in primitive cabins on the territory.”

Even while held captive by the human agents, Luc laughed. The laughter was contagious enough to catch Anya’s lips, too.

“Do you really believe that?” Anya truly wondered if Andrea had fed herself this lie so completely. “Do you really consider them cavemen incapable of handling a simple cell phone? You really need to get out more.”

Andrea’s face turned red at the mockery. Anya didn’t give a shit anymore. They were going to walk out of this building, together, and then Anya herself was going to leak the information. She wanted to bring down this corrupt institution.

“Don’t bet your career on your belief that dragon shifters are caveman, Ms. Backus. It really isn’t a good career choice.”

A long moment passed, Anya and Andrea staring one another down, waiting for the other to back away first. Then, Andrea straightened herself. She tugged on her blazer and turned toward the agents holding Luc. Her small hand gesture had them marching away with her mate.

Anya screamed. Memories of Lucia Avila’s file flashed through her mind. She couldn’t bear to see her mate put through anything like that. She would fight tooth and nail to set him free. Even if it meant attacking her own people.

“The people will understand that dragons are nothing more than dangerous animals. We did what we had to in the sixties to protect humanity.” Andrea raised a brow, waiting for Anya to understand what she was implying.

“You’re going to tell me as I stand here in the building that the experiments stopped in the sixties? You’re going to tell me that the experiments aren’t still running?” Anya felt a hitch in her voice as it rose. That was why the information they’d leaked was so old. It was to cover their own asses.

The Guardians of Existence could easily claim they’d made mistakes fifty years ago, just like a great number of governments and organizations around the world had in that same decade. The world isn’t perfect now, but it certainly wasn’t back then. It opened a great breadth that was easily filled with forgiveness by the public.

Anya cursed herself. Tears burned her eyes, more from anger than anything else. She wouldn’t give in to the helplessness that was trying to grip her. She wouldn’t give in as she watched the agents drag her mate away.

Another agent came running up to Andrea. There was a nervous look on his face as he handed a phone to his boss. He looked like he expected the world to fall in on him. Anya wondered who was on the phone until Andrea took it and held it away from her face. She held it sideways, her whole body growing still when she saw whatever was on the screen in her hands.

Anya’s own phone buzzed in her pocket. She had stopped giving any kind of crap about the agents around her and reached for the buzzing phone. There was a single message:

You need to see this.

In that same message was a link. Anya pressed the blue text and found herself watching a live video. It was filmed with a handheld, the screen shaking and swaying side to side as it captured a strange occurrence. Her eyes rose and caught Luc’s.

He once told her that he was one of only two Quetzalcoatl in existence. She had a strong feeling Marc would not be this stupid. Her mate? Sure. Seeing as Luc was standing before her, she had no idea who the coatl on the screen, attacking the nearby GOE facility, was. Anya watched helplessly as the coatl descended upon the structure. But, Anya noticed something. The scales of this coatl were not a brilliant rainbow iridescence. The scales on this creature were ashen, like burnt coals. The dragon with ashen scales used all four sets of claws to tear it apart, brick by brick as it howled its frustration into the skies.

This was bad, Anya thought. It was bad press. This attack made the dragons on the Territory look like monsters. Anya’s hope sank. She felt her dreams deflate. There was no chance for her to change the world if this was how it was going to be.

On the small screen, Anya watched more dragons descend upon the building. Her hands started to tremble. Or, was it the camera man’s hands that were trembling? Anya didn’t know. She watched the other dragons, a whole hoard of mismatched creatures touch the ground and assume their human shapes. They stood in a broad circle around the facility building with their heads held high. Each of them bore scars.

“These people tore us apart,” a voice cried out. The camera man couldn’t get through the crowd to see the speaker. “They opened us up. They tried to see what we were made of so that they could kill us, but we survived! Now, they have my son and his mate.

“I don’t do this to hurt anyone. I do this to get my family back.”

Anya felt the phone slip from her hands. She looked up and her eyes met her fathers. He smiled, a weak gesture given his condition. His nearly imperceptible nod told her all that she needed to know. While she and Luc were getting to know one another’s body in the summer cottage, her father had taken it upon himself to find the dragons from the file.

Maybe, they’d come to him. Whatever had happened, Anya knew he had a hand in this takeover.

“How are you feeling about this now, Andrea?” Nathan Forrest asked through his split lip.

His elbow came up and crashed into Howard Beauchamp’s chin. Blood spurted in the air and Anya cried out. It wasn’t a cry of fright, but the kind of cheer football players get when they land a tackle. Beauchamp staggered backward while clutching his bloody mouth. 

Anya didn’t spare a moment. She ran for Luc. The only thing was, by the time she got there, he was already uncuffed. The agents that had held him were ushering Luc and Anya back through the hall and up into the first floor. Anya felt a surge of surprise rush through her. It made her take the stairs two at a time until they burst into the open air.

The agents that appeared to be on their side, led by her father, helped them get into the Jeep and out of there. Luc collapsed into the passenger seat, still too weak from the silver in the building. He watched the video on his own phone, Anya’s forgotten in the chaos. He grew still, his face turning nearly white if that was even possible with his dark skin.

She glanced in the rearview mirror every few moments, waiting for the GOE patrol cars to descend upon them at any moment. They’d managed to escape Andrea’s ploy in a moment of chaos. The attack on the public facility had been a big enough distraction for the good guys to burst into motion. Anya still couldn’t believe it.

She couldn’t process anything that had just happened.

Anya was driving sixty down the highway when Luc nearly toppled out the door trying to get out. She hollered at him, her hand gripping his shirt to yank him back into the cabin. Trying to keep the car steady and out of other lanes, she managed to find a pull off and parked.

Luc fumbled out of the car. “That’s my parents,” he said, his voice slightly slurred.

Anya bit her lip. They were alive, his parents. She had a feeling his father spoke from the crowd on the ground while his mother was the dragon tearing the building apart. It explained the ash colored scales. She’d been through hell and back in that basement.

But, it didn’t explain how. How had Lucia Avila survived that basement and its experiments? There was no way for either of them to answer those questions just then.

“I need to find them,” Luc said, his voice growing desperate.

“Go,” Anya told him. “Go get them before they disappear again.”

She gave him one long kiss before letting go and pushing him to leave. He looked back with longing. She could tell he was split. He didn’t want to leave her in that moment, but they’d never been closer to his family before. Anya could handle herself. 

 

***

 

Luc’s beast erupted from him as his form shot into the sky. He had to convince both himself and the beast that Anya could take care of herself. It helped when he saw a familiar truck pull into the rest area with her. Isaac would take care of her. He would protect her.

Marc was probably in the air by now. His twin had to be doing the same thing Luc was doing. Their parents were alive. It was a hope beyond all hopes they’d never tried to hold on to, and yet, it was true.

Luc sped through the skies, using his control over winds to speed himself towards town, his heart racing with anticipation the whole way. Yet, when he made it to town, his hope sank.

The dragons that had been sitting on the public GOE facility were gone. It would have been like they’d never been there if it weren’t for the holes in the building ahead. Another, familiar, form dropped down beside Luc.

“Do you believe it?” Marc asked, his own eyes glued to the wreckage before them.

“Believe what? That they’re alive?”

“Do you believe they appeared and disappeared without as much as a hello?”

Marc’s voice was bitter and barely restrained. Luc glanced to the side to see the anger contorting his twin’s face into a snarl. He did all he could do. He pulled his brother into his arms and hugged him. His brother’s hands rose and gripped Luc’s arms to the point of bruising.

It hurt, arriving only to find them gone again. Luc hoped they had their reasons. It was plain to see they still cared about their children. Their parents had staged a takeover of a GOE facility to warn the world about GOE’s actions, about how they’d trapped Luc. It’d offered him the chance to escape. He only wished they could have stuck around.

“Let’s go home,” Luc suggested.

“I’m going to find them,” Marc growled into his brother’s chest. The twin pulled back, his lips still twisted in a scowl. “I’m going to find them and I’m going to get answers.”

Luc nodded. He understood. This whole time, Luc thought it was all about uncovering dusty secrets and old graves. He never once thought that this mystery would be about still breathing dragons, a whole family of them. He never thought they would have to hunt down their still breathing parents, but Luc would help him. He knew Isaac would too.

The curly haired dragon protecting Luc’s mate probably had answers to his own questions hiding in this mess. Together, they would figure out why the family of dragons had left. Together, they would put an end to the experiments on their people.