Damon King

I didn’t want to have to force her to stay here. I didn’t want to have to muzzle her. Most of all, I didn’t want Miguel’s fears to be realized.

But, here we were.

Audrey’s eyes widened in shock and then narrowed in suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean? You want to keep me here against my will now? Bind and gag me?”

“Of course not,” I said, trying to smooth things over. “I think you can understand where my worry stems from.”

“I do,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t mean that I have to stop living my life because I discovered your secret. Let’s just say that if there are several dragons from the Fanged Serpents that are going around slashing people to death, that others will find out about the dragons.”

“It’ll be the last thing they ever find out,” I pointed out.

Her face blanched. “I need to get out of here,” she said.

She rushed past me, and I didn’t stop her. I could smell that Francesco was right around the corner. He was dying to talk to her face to face, and he deserved to. Maybe her savior would be able to talk some sense into her.

As for me, I was beside myself, sick with worry. An icy dose of fear was trying to douse my inner fire, but I would never allow that to happen.

A low growl formed at the base of my throat, but I suppressed it. It could too easily give way to a howl. Yes, dragons howl too, not just wolves. A howl right now would only frighten Audrey all the more.

Her fear. I felt it as keenly as my own. Giving her my blood meant that we had bonded. I had been too afraid to mention that part to her. In a few days, my blood would pass through her system. That bond would either strengthen or fade away. Either she would love me or hate me. Honestly, I was fine whichever way the chips might fall.

Or so I told myself. She might be a human, but she had some power to her, an inner spark of her own. She wouldn’t lie down without a fight, and I had a feeling that when she did return home, she’d make sure to go nowhere without her gun. Not that she would have much luck with a gun against a dragon. Our hides are too thick. Bullets can’t penetrate them. A grenade might possibly do some damage. Our claws are made of a material that isn’t found anywhere else in the world. Only that can slice through us. Well, they say diamonds are the Earth’s strongest mineral, so maybe a diamond blade could kill us. Possibly.

The hum of faint voices came to me from the hallway. Audrey and Francesco were talking, as I suspected they would. Good.

I left her room. In the hallway, Audrey glanced at me. She already looked more calmed down. I fumed to myself. Why had I been the one to set her off? I hadn’t meant to upset her. She took me off guard. I couldn’t think around her. She made me worry about her. I wanted to protect her.

But she doesn’t want your protection.

Too damn bad. Nothing was going to happen to her.

A look crossed over her face, one that I couldn’t understand. She and I were still staring at each other. Francesco was still talking. That guy never stopped.

I nodded to her. She shrugged, but she did offer me a small smile at least. Maybe she wasn’t so angry with me anymore. I hoped that was the case.

Stupid. I was being stupid. There were fifty dragons within my clan. I had to worry about them first and foremost.

Was it possible that the blood bonding went both ways? I wouldn’t have thought that possible, but clearly, something was there. There was something simmering beneath the surface between Audrey and me. She had to feel it too. For whatever reason, I longed for her. I wanted to hold her, take away her worries, kiss her, rip off her clothes…

I had to readjust as I stalked down the hall. Miguel was in the study, drinking some scotch. I gestured for him to pour me some, and he gave me a double.

“Good man,” I said. I swallowed half in a single gulp.

“She seems to be…”

“Reckless?” I suggested. “Dangerous? Irrational? Eager to get herself killed?”

Miguel’s jaw dropped open, and he shook his head. “Maybe she was different for me, but she seems… amazing. What a chica.”

I shook my head and downed the rest of my drink. “I doubt she likes being called that.”

He shrugged. “So far, no, but it will grow on her. She will love it as she will love me.”

It was a good thing I hadn’t stared to pour more scotch out of the decanter because I would’ve spilled it.

“Love?” I repeated, shocked.

“Why do you look as though you have swallowed a fly?” Miguel slapped me on the back.

I brushed him away, poured that scotch after all, and drained my glass for a second time. Then I slammed the glass onto the ground, not hard enough to break it, and walked over to the impressive floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city.

“She knows about us,” I said.

“Clearly. She was attacked by one of our kind and recused by another.” Miguel crossed over to join me. He carried over his drink. He was nursing his. Then again, I didn’t know how much he’d had before I’d entered.

I curled my hand in an angry fist and gently tapped that fist against the window. “No. Not one of our kind. The Fanged Serpents aren’t dragons. They’re a menace, a blight. They’re an infection that is blighting the world. They leave chaos and destruction in their wake. No more. No longer.”

“You’re finally willing to fight them?” Miguel asked with a grin. He had always wanted to jump in head first, wings spread, to dive bomb and attack the others.

I, on the other hand, wanted to take a different approach. I thought that we needed to end the Fanged Serpents once and for all. It truly wasn’t only because Audrey had been caught in the cross-claws that I wished to destroy them.

Francesco had been torn. As such, we hadn’t been able to reach an agreement at all. Miguel, in the hopes of having the war sooner rather than later, had volunteered to go and seek out other nearby clans to see if we couldn’t end them for once and for all.

But Miguel told me that none were willing to. He now had so many stories of the horrors they had committed. They had tortured dragons. Chopped off their wings or tails. Forced them to stay in that form for months. Then, they had allowed them to transform back to humans, and they had missing arms or legs or were paralyzed. The wounds on their dragon bodies affected their human counterparts as well. This had been known for centuries, but that knowledge had not been gained from such terrible amputations.

Two clans at least had been wiped out by the Fanged Serpents. Two entire clans. One had nearly double the number of ours. It was insane to contemplate.

From what Miguel had told me, the Fanged Serpents would first learn the weakness of whichever clan they had targeted. Then, they would exploit them.

With the first clan, the Fanged Serpents had poisoned their pond. That clan had lived in Arizona, in the desert. The pond had been where they could drink while in either form. They all died off one by one.

As if emboldened by their success, the Fanged Serpents then went to a Seattle suburb. There, they killed the dragons by burning them to death. Yes, even though we each contained fire, we could die from the flames. It would take at least three dragons’ flames to kill one of us, but it was possible.

To turn a strength into a weakness took a great deal of power.

I shook my head as a terrible idea came to me. We needed to know more about the Fanged Serpents ourselves. We must know their motivation. Better yet, we had to learn their weakness for us to exploit it.

And who better to do that than an investigative reporter? Because I was looking up reporters who were named Audrey in Philly, and only Audrey Wright came up. I wanted to get to know more about her, and sometimes the direct source wasn’t always the best way to get info.

No. I would never put her in the literal line of fire like that. Miguel already fancied himself in love with her. Francesco most likely did as well, based on the way he had been so damn protective of her from the get go.

As for me, well, I wouldn’t say I was falling for her, but, fuck me, I was falling for her too.

I didn’t want anything to happen to her. She had to stay here where we could protect her. If she went out into the world smelling like dragons, she would definitely become a target. There was no doubt in my mind that the Fanged Serpents would find her and kill her.

That could not and would not happen. Even if it meant that Audrey would hate me, I’d rather that than for her to be killed.