Chapter Twenty-Three
Kase
He held his breath while he waited for an answer.
Eventually, he had to breathe, because she was just taking too long. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“So you spent millions of dollars on the lab…for me?” she asked, rubbing her face wearily.
“Yes. I…I wanted you to be happy, Michelle. You’re so smart, you needed to be putting that brain to good use. I don’t have the brains you do, but I have the money you don’t. It seemed like a good way to put both to use.”
“Except that you broke my heart five years ago, then lied to me this entire time.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I just…I just thought it would be best for you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been suffering, too, haven’t you?”
“Every day without you has been agonizing. I hate it, even more now that I look back and realize I was lying to myself this entire time when I was saying I didn’t want a mate. I can only think of the time I wasted, that I could’ve had with you. The things we could’ve done together.” He was getting choked up now, unable to continue.
“I should be furious at you.” She crossed her arms. “I am furious at you. But…I don’t hate you.”
“I can make this right,” he assured her.
“You came here to do just that, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Everett threatened your life if I didn’t give him the backup data.” He blew out air between his lips. “It was him, you know. That mystery person I thought worked in the lab, and then the person who broke into my house that day? That was him.”
“Was he the one who trashed the lab as well?”
“I would assume so. Maybe some of his goons, but I’d bet it was Everett.”
Michelle bit her lip. “So, are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Going to give up the data?”
Kase shrugged. “That depends on your answer.”
“My answer? Answer to what?”
“You know the question,” he said gently. “You just need to find the answer. Your answer.”
Michelle looked away, chewing on her lower lip some more. Her head bobbed up and down idly while she thought. Kase heard footsteps coming back down the hallway. Everett was returning.
“Do you have your answer?” she asked as he stood up.
Kase smiled at her, a sad, almost haunted thing. “Michelle, I’ve had my answer for years. I was just too scared of myself to admit it.”
“Well this is touching,” Everett said, sarcasm dripping from his words as he mocked them. “But I think your time is up. Give me the data or she—oomph!”
Everett fell back as a blob of quicksilver took him in the face unexpectedly.
“My answer, Michelle, is that I’ve always loved you. Now I’m going to prove it.”
She frowned. “But how? We’re in a prison, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Kase smiled. “By giving in,” he said softly, his skin brightening from pale-yellow until it began to glow silver, turning shiny. “By embracing my inner demon, not fighting it. Just as I’m doing with my feelings for you.”
He turned toward the bars of the cell as his body turned to quicksilver.
“H-how!” Everett gasped through the burned flesh that remained on his face as he flung away the last of the quicksilver.
He did so just in time to watch Kase flow through the bars, his body melting and reforming around them, until he emerged on the outside, his skin hardening until he was made of pure quicksilver from head to toe. A metal man.
“Because I’m in love,” Kase snarled, and lunged.
Everett wasn’t about to go down without a fight, however. He spat a ball of gas at Kase, but the sleeping mist had no effect on him in his current state.
Kase connected with a fist, rocking the other dragon back. Everett spun with the impact, wheeling around and delivering a kick to Kase’s midsection. Kase flew back, smashing into the cell with a violent Bing! The metal reverberated and he felt it on his body as he got to his feet and started forward.
Everett snarled a challenge and scales erupted down his body like a bird flattening its feathers, falling into place. A copper helmet flowed up the sides of his head, molding to his cheekbones and hardening. Kase ducked a vicious punch, noting his fists were now covered in a vast array of scales, sharp edges all pointing out. Getting hit by one of those would suck.
The punch turned out to be a fake and Everett’s right fist caught him in the shoulder. Quicksilver shrieked and peeled off him in slivers from the blow, even as he was driven to the ground once more. Kase was getting mad. He hadn’t planned on losing this fight. He was supposed to be saving Michelle!
Lashing out with the palm of his hand, he caved in Everett’s knee, and shot to his feet with a brutal two-handed uppercut that smashed teeth. His opponent stumbled back, twisting off balance and falling to the ground.
At the same moment Kase punched his fist in the air in triumph, his vision flashed, strobe lights went off, and brilliant white light began to glow from every surface.
“No,” he whispered in anguish as the room flickered back briefly before returning to the new norm. “Not now. Please not now.”
“Kase?” Michelle called from the cell. She must’ve recognized that something was going wrong. “Kase, you can fight this. You can do it! I have faith in you.”
He looked over his shoulder, meeting her eyes as light poured in from all sides, threatening to overwhelm him. “I can’t!” he shouted, closing his eyelids, though it did nothing at all. “It’s too much.”
The sound of someone moving over rock warned him of Everett’s return. He lashed out with a booted foot, giving his foe no warning at all. Everett’s eyes went wide and he flew back, smashing into the far wall before he and chunks of rock fell to the floor. The dragon shifter lay still, working to regain his breath.
Kase, meanwhile, was close to fainting from the pain of his vision. He wanted to tear out his eyeballs, to do anything to stop the brightness and pain from lashing out at him. It was growing hot as well. Too hot. The heat—he couldn’t handle it. He needed to get out. To make it stop. To run. To—
Soothing calm wrapped around one of his hands. A moment later, his opposite bicep sagged in relief. Opening his eyes, he saw Michelle pressed up to the bars, her arms outstretched through them. She was barely brushing his skin.
“Come closer to me, Kase,” she shouted over the roar in his head. “Please!”
His body wasn’t listening. It tried to pull him away. Darkness was bad! It was evil.
No. Darkness is my friend. The light is a lie. I need her. She needs me. We’re two halves. Neither can reign supreme. Too much light is just as bad as too much darkness. We need…shadow.
Which was what he saw where they met. Screaming as he fought for the slightest control of his body back, Kase did the only thing he could. He yanked his hands out from under him. The lack of support pitched him backward—and put his head in reach of Michelle.
She lunged for it, wrapping both hands around his temples and stroking gently. “You’re okay now, Kase,” she whispered into his ear as blissful shadow swirled out from where she touched him, blasting through the light and taking a firm hold of him. “I’ve got you now. I’ve got you.”
In the corner, Everett got to his feet, a ball of gas forming in his hand. Kase knew that if he made it concentrated enough, the gas became lethal. It wasn’t corrosive, like that of the onyx dragons, but it simply put a person under, and they never woke up. If he hit Michelle with that, she wouldn’t recover.
The light grew stronger, surging forth in renewed battle. He thrashed violently, throwing Michelle’s hands free for a moment, but she fought back, holding him tight as she leaned in close and kissed him on the forehead with ultimate tenderness.
“You’re okay now, Kase. I have you, and I’ll never let go.” She hesitated. “I love you.”
Something burst inside Kase. A damn he’d never known existed crumbled and he began to shake. It took him several moments to realize he was crying.
“I love you,” she repeated.
He lifted a hand to his head, gripping hers in it. “I love you, too,” he replied.
She wiped away a tear. A human tear, clear and watery. “Now go kick his ass.”
Kase grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
Quicksilver pooled underneath him as he opened himself up to his power and let it flow.
“Better get back inside the cell for a minute if you don’t mind,” he said, noting Everett almost ready to throw his weapon.
Michelle yanked her arms back a moment before the quicksilver flowed up the bars and across it, forming a solid wall that easily deflected the thrown ball of gas.
“You just tried to kill my girlfriend,” Kase said, getting to his feet.
He hurled a spike of quicksilver at Everett. The other shifted dodged, but the spike penetrated the wall and kept going. There was something behind it. Kase tossed several more, and eventually part of the wall caved, revealing a large cavern behind.
Running forward, he tackled Everett and the two of them went through the wall. Rock exploded everywhere. They bounced and rolled. Kase jabbed up, his fingers flat, calling quicksilver to him. It coated his hand in a knife-sharp edge, and he stabbed it deep into Everett’s gut.
The other shifter howled in pain and kneed him in the balls. Kase rolled off him, holding his quicksilver dick and nuts in one hand as he shuddered with agony.
“Cheap shot,” he managed to gasp.
Everett opened his mouth to reply, and Kase shoved a quicksilver spear through the opening and out the back of his neck. Blood poured everywhere. He yanked the weapon out. Everett sank to his knees, a look of shock in his eyes as his copper armor darkened, stained with blood.
“Don’t ever threaten my mate,” Kase snarled, whipping his arm around and plunging the tip of his makeshift dagger deep into Everett’s ear.
The copper dragon’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
Kase wanted nothing more than to sit back and relax, but a rumble from above him had him getting to his feet in a panicked rush.
“Stupid load-bearing walls,” he muttered, waving away the quicksilver obscuring the cell as he dashed back through where the rock wall had been.
“COME ON!” he shouted, freezing the lock on the door and shattering it.
Michelle was through it a second later as the first rocks clattered down around them.
“Run,” he urged as they made their way back up the long corridor. The entire complex was crumbling behind them.
Up ahead, the ceiling started to fall. Kase surged forward, spreading his arms wide. Quicksilver filled the gaps, turning his back into a giant saucer that caught everything. Michelle didn’t hesitate, diving to her knees and crawling under him while he supported the load.
With her safe, he flung himself clear, got to his feet and caught up with her. The roaring grew louder, and he started to panic. They didn’t know where the exit was.
Think, Kase. You can find it. Think.
He lifted his nose suddenly, testing the air. “This way!” he shouted as they reached a cross corridor, taking her hand and pulling her along.
She was too slow; the cave-in was catching up to them.
“Sorry!” he said, snatching her roughly into his arms and charging down the tunnel at breakneck speed. Smaller rocks and debris fell on them constantly. A mighty rumble signified that they were about to be buried.
Ahead, he saw darkness, and stars in the distance. Beautiful, beautiful stars.
“Kase?” Michelle asked, looking over his shoulder. “Run faster!”
“Hold on!” he hollered.
Something clipped his ankle, and he fell forward, curling his body around Michelle. They bounced and flipped several times, but every time he managed to keep her from hitting anything but himself, until they rolled to a stop.
A cloud of dust exploded out of the tunnel behind them as the entire complex crashed in on itself, burying Everett and everything he had with him.
“We made it,” he said, coughing as the cloud around them slowly dispersed.
“Did you?”
“Huh?” He looked up to see the remaining wolf guards standing in three clusters nearby. There was almost a dozen of them. “Don’t you mutts ever stop inbreeding? Where do you keep coming from?” he asked, tiredly getting to his feet.
“You’re going to pay for that comment,” one of them said, stepping forward.
“Whatever you say, you flea-bitten mongrel. Just bring it on already.”
The nearest cluster started to fan out. At the same time, a shape dropped from the sky behind them. Kase had a moment to frown in confusion. Then a beam of fire the size of his wrist lashed out at the wolf guards. It didn’t burn them. It was too intense for that. The sheer power acted like a laser, bisecting the guards.
As the other two clusters turned to look in surprise, a second beam lanced out, severing arms, heads and torsos indiscriminately. The third group had a second to dive for cover, scattering so they weren’t all clumped up.
“It makes no difference,” Coltaine said, and with a flick of his hand, the five remaining wolves self-combusted.
There was no other way to describe it. One moment they were there, the next their bodies were burning to ash from the inside in one of the most gruesome and terrifying displays of power Kase had ever seen. Five piles of bright embers dropped to the ground, and that was the end of it. It was over.
“Sorry I’m late,” the head Magistrate said as a second dragon fell from the sky, shifting as it came. “But someone let themselves be knocked out by a two-bit copper dragon and its laughing gas.”
Jerrik walked out of the shadows, glaring at his boss. He didn’t, however, speak up.
“Everything all settled here?” Coltaine asked casually.
Kase looked at Michelle, lifting her from the ground and holding her tight. “Everything is perfect here,” he said. “Now, can we just go home? I’d like some time with my mate. We have a lot to discuss.”
“And a few things to do,” Michelle added suggestively.
The group shared a laugh.