Prologue

Growing up is when you go from using drugs for fun to using them just to function like a normal human being.

-Food for Thought

Nikolai

Alright, Jean Luc. You know what to do, I said telepathically to my spotter.

Jean Luc hit the lights and the entire surrounding area went dark.

I blinked, and then suddenly I was seeing in shades of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.

There’s a man in the back room, left corner. Gun. There’s a man on the right side of the front room, in front of the television. Gun on the table. One more on the back porch smoking a cigarette, no gun, I relayed to my men who were surrounding the building.

10-4, was echoed amongst them, and I started to creep forward on my hands and knees.

I had no clue what kind of security they had out here, but with my ability to control my body temperature, I hoped that whatever infrared/thermal cameras they had out here would be rendered useless with all the power I was expending.

Slowly, we all converged at once, moving stealthily through the long grass.

Perdita was overhead, circling closer and closer, looking at her own version of a thermal heat camera.

Perdita could do wonderful things, but one of the best things was her ability to manipulate her energy.

She could appear hot, cold, or even dead. Whatever she wanted you to see is what you saw.

I also had that gift.

It was a gift that not even my older brother, the badass King of the Dragon Riders, had.

I could sense heat like a…well…dragon.

My bonded dragon, Perdita, was very unique, and from all places, across ‘the pond’, as she put it.

She was from Ireland, and over eight hundred years old.

She’d never bonded to anyone but me; something that was the same for most dragons and their bonded dragon riders.

I had not understood the depth of Perdita’s powers until we’d been bonded for over four years. She’d given me short lessons on how to harness the powers that she’d passed on to me, but I’d not been able to do so at first.

Mostly because I’d bonded with her at the young age of nineteen, instead of twenty-one.

I’d still been a boy, and hadn’t really understood the enormity of our connection until my brother had sat me down and explained that not even he had bonded until he was twenty-one.

So it’d been a wakeup call to realize that Perdita hadn’t been completely honest with me until I’d accidentally used her gift on her.

Perdita was the queen of illusions and was excellent at appearing harmless.

And apparently, so had I. I’d finally gotten sick of how she’d been treating me, and had thrown her so far into an illusion that I didn’t know how to get her back out. Mostly because I wasn’t sure how to get her out of it, and partly because I was still mad at her.

After she managed to get out of it herself, she’d apologized, and then had explained that I’d shown her her worst nightmare. Something in which to this day, she still hadn’t told me about.

Something inside of me stilled, and all my warning receptors started to clang at the same time.

Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Ian, and Dorian stopped when I hissed out a warning the second I saw the first trip wire.

There’re explosives. Be vigilant, I ordered.

Do you want me to disable them, Boss? Ian asked.

Negative. If we have to leave in a hurry, I don’t want them to be able to come for us at a quick pace. It’s best if they think they’re all inactive. It might prove useful later, I explained to the men.

10-4, Ian confirmed.

So we kept moving until we had about four feet in between us and the house.

Alright, Perdita. Do your thing.

Yes, Sire. You’ve got about ten minutes until I will no longer be able to hold it, Perdita expounded.

Perdita was so good.

All Perdita—or me for that matter—had to do was send out what was similar to a movie toward the men in the house.

However, she was more selective than I was.

When I wanted to play the mind games, everyone within my immediate area saw the same thing.

The only ones immune were my brothers.

And they didn’t even realize things were different before, or after, Perdita and I played our mind games.

I wasn’t sure what she was showing them, but not one of them reacted as I moved into the house like I owned the place.

My limited telekinetic abilities enabled me to open the doors without breaking anything, then walk straight up to the first man and take him out with a sleeper hold.

He never even realized I was there, nor that I was choking off his air supply.

He stayed pliant in my arms until he passed out from lack of oxygen.

Then, with the utmost care, I dropped him to the floor at my feet.

With the first man taken care of, I moved into the main room and started looking around.

After taking care of two more men, I came to the room where Brooklyn was being held and immediately started to get queasy at the horrid condition she was in.

She looked like death warmed over, and I wasn’t sure she’d even be alive long enough for Keifer’s mate to see her best friend again with the shape she was in.

Her hair was in dark clumps of brown around her dirty face.

She was in a bra and bike shorts that accentuated how skinny she’d gotten since she and Blythe had graduated from nursing school only a few weeks before.

Bruises ran the length of her arms and legs.

A cut above her eye looked like it could’ve used stitches when she’d received it.

Now the only thing that would fix it was plastic surgery of some sort.

The icing on the cake, however, was the tear streaks that ran the length of her cheeks.

None of that stopped me from picking her up as carefully as I could into my arms and walking with her out of the house.

“Let’s go,” I murmured quietly once I reached the front door.

“You want me to take her?” Alaric asked softly.

I shook my head, trying to fight down the irrational surge of rage that shot through me at the mere mention of him taking this woman from my arms.

“Alaric and Jean Luc, follow us home. The rest of you need to stay to make sure we make a clean exit. If I don’t get her to my sister soon, she won’t make it,” I ordered hurriedly as Perdita hovered above us.

The moment Perdita and I made it a mile away, they would no longer be under her spell.

And that could possibly spell trouble for us getting away, unless the rest of them stayed to make sure we weren’t followed.