Nero staggered through the gate, pain screaming through his body from the gunshot wounds in his chest and the knife in his gut. His foot hit solid ground, his wind stuttered, and Becca wrenched away, taking the knife with her, just like she’d planned.

Raven dropped her book and stood. She’d been sitting in a chair beside the cot with the new intake — a young man whose yellow aura burned Nero’s eyes just glancing at him. They were in the puzur’s primary safe house, the secure set of rooms in the back of a warehouse held by one of Nero’s many anonymous holding companies. It had been fitted with a bathroom, two hospital cots, basic medical supplies, a kitchenette stocked with food, and a monitor with the feeds of two security cameras trained on the areas outside the front and back doors. Everything Raven needed to help the humans they rescued stay sane and safe during the awakening of their earth magic.

What? No, I— Becca gasped. Something rushed across Nero’s mind. It felt like a blast of mental wind, howling with sudden force, then vanished. She jerked back, putting both Nero and Raven in her line of sight, as if she’d sensed Raven’s presence behind her. Which meant there was a possibility her mental abilities weren’t just connected to him.

“I said, get out.” Becca’s gaze jumped to the man in the cot. “And let me guess. This is how you plan to help me?” Torture first, then kill. That’s what the other monsters did.

“I’m not the other monsters.”

Raven frowned.

One of the bullets — one that had gotten trapped in his body — popped from Nero’s chest and clattered to the concrete floor.

Becca’s eyes flashed wide. Oh, my God. She tightened her grip on the knife, even though her thoughts recognized stabbing him wouldn’t kill him.

“You’ve been shot?” Raven’s frown deepened.

“Already healed.” Mostly. He raised his hands, palms up, the universal sign of harmlessness. “Becca, we need to disable that implant.”

“There is no we.”

The mental wind swept through his head again, and he gasped. So did Becca.

“Nero?” The muscles in Raven’s jaw tightened.

“I said I wasn’t going back. Not there, not to the hospital again, and not with you.” She lurched toward the man on the cot. “And I’m taking him with me.”

“They’ll find you. Let me at least deal with the implant.”

“Like you’d actually help me.” She staggered another step toward the cot.

Raven tensed and her mouth opened — likely to hiss her power word and summon her wind magic.

Nero gave a tight shake of his head. He needed Becca calm, needed her to see reason. Mother of All, needed her.

She barked a harsh laugh. “There’s no reason in a nightmare. It doesn’t make sense. Just like popping a bullet out of your chest.”

The mental wind swept through him again. She groaned. Pain burned over his face, down his neck, and into his chest. This wasn’t the pain of the gunshots. That was mostly healed. This was her pain, her broken bones and the shattering of her mind.

How the hell was he going to convince her this was real? How could he convince her he wasn’t going to hurt her?

You can’t. “You’ve already tried to kill me. You shouldn’t have hesitated.”

I had no choice. Mother, it hurt just thinking he’d tried.

“Bullshit.” Becca inched back another step. The back of her thighs hit the cot and she glanced down.

Nero followed her gaze. Ah, shit. The new intake had been restrained. With how ferociously his power had been threatening to manifest when he’d sent Diablo to bring him in, it wasn’t a surprise. Earth magic often required a word and a gesture, and only a few highly experienced drakes managed to eliminate the need for one or both. Restraining the young man helped ensure Raven’s safety when his magic fully appeared, in an attempt to eliminate the gesture aspect of summoning the power.

Another blast of mental wind and another groan in unison.

“What’s going on?” Raven asked, her body tense, ready to attack.

“Your boss here thought I’d be an easy target.”

Now, that doesn’t make sense. “I’m trying to help, and if we don’t deal with that implant, those men from the facility will find you again. I don’t know how much time we have.” If their dragon master can create a gatelock, that dragon can make a gate, as well.

“Gates and locks?” The agony swelled, and she pressed her palm to her temple. “I said get out.” No, I’m getting out. “And taking him with me.”

She yanked open the restraining cuff and grabbed the young man’s wrist as his aura flared blindingly bright. White lightning shot through Nero’s head and Becca screamed. They dropped to their knees. The muscles in his chest seized and people, a horde of people, yelled, screamed, howled, whispered, hissed, roared in his head— no, her head.

Raven rushed toward him. “No, Becca. Sedate her.” It was the only solution. Knock her out, deal with the implant, then deal with her… somehow.

“I’m not going back. I won’t be your prisoner again.” Never again.

The last words pounded into him, crushing his essence with their force.

Raven snatched a pre-loaded syringe from the drawer in the cot. She hissed her power word and snapped a lasso of wind around Becca’s arms, pinning her to the floor.

“I won’t go back!”

Raven shoved the sleeve of Becca’s hospital gown up and jabbed the needle into her biceps.

“Half dose,” Nero gasped. “Already been dosed with something.”

Raven bared her teeth in disagreement but obeyed. Thank the Mother. He didn’t know what he’d do if he lost another inamorata. He didn’t even know Becca, and with her stabbing him, she clearly wasn’t inamorated back — she’d have hesitated like he had — but a second loss would surely shatter his soul. The Mother only knew how he’d survived that first loss.

Becca wrenched against Raven’s wind and screamed. Her agony, physically and mentally, seared through him, stealing all breath and thought, and then, between one heartbeat and the next, a weight flooded her and she collapsed.

Raven glared at him. “What the hell was that?”

“Complicated and not anywhere out of the woods.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Capri.

“Anaea said Tobias had called you into Court,” Raven said.

“He had.”

“What?” Capri asked over the phone.

“Where’s Gig?” He was the only drake Nero could think of who, with his ability to magically control technology, would be able to quickly deal with the tracker implanted somewhere in Becca’s body.

“Gig?” Capri’s tone turned wary.

Raven glared at him.

“You owe me.” He didn’t want to get Gig involved with his puzur — the fewer drakes who knew about it, the better — and he had no idea if he could trust Gig. But Grey had said the young silver drake had stood by him and Capri to help Hunter, even knowing Hunter had broken dragon law and body-shared. With luck, Gig wouldn’t have the rare ability to see the difference between human mage and dragon auras and everything would be fine.

“Is this coterie business or Court business?”

“I’d go through the proper channels for Court if it was. Where is he?”

“Here, at headquarters, in the communal living room.”

“Is Swipe there?” The other member of Capri’s team.

“No.”

“Good. Tell him I’m coming.”

“Nero—”

He hung up before Capri could argue and summoned a gate underneath him, so he wouldn’t have to stand. His power swelled, burning with mental agony, and enveloped him. God, even with Becca unconscious, his head still hurt. He straightened, using the woolly black weightlessness to help him stand, and staggered into the communal living room of the North American Clean Team headquarters.

Gig, a drake in a vessel barely twenty years old, the youngest vessel the Handmaiden would ever put a drake’s soul into, stood on the other side of the room. He wore a black, blue, and silver T-shirt with the depiction of a dangerous-looking dragon curled on a bed of human skulls, and his eyes were wide, as if he hadn’t expected a gate to materialize in the middle of the living room wall. Capri stood beside him glaring at Nero, her phone still in her hand.

“Less than two minutes, and I’ll return him.”

Gig flashed a goofy grin and strode toward Nero. “Cool.”

“He’s not some tool you can borrow from your neighbor.” Capri’s expression darkened. As team leader, she was responsible for him, and while she might be caught up in Nero’s puzur because her inamorato was human, Gig had nothing to do with this mess. A mess that was surely going to get them all on the prince’s wanted list sooner rather than later — especially if Nero couldn’t figure out what to do about Becca.

“Less than two minutes. I promise.” Nero summoned another gate without waiting for confirmation of Capri’s permission, Becca’s pain straining his ability to control his unanchored magic. Now he knew how Grey must have felt when he’d staggered into Nero’s living room yesterday, barely having survived a grenade explosion… God, had that only been yesterday?

They lurched back into the safe house. Raven was propping Becca into a sitting position against the foot of the cot and had handcuffed her to one of the lowered guardrails. The knife lay forgotten on the cot beside the young man’s knee. Here was hoping everything was mostly dealt with and the cuffs were removed by the time she gained consciousness. There’d be no way he could convince her he wanted to help her if she woke while still cuffed.

Mother, it hurt to just look at her. Unconscious, the woman looked even more vulnerable and fragile than before. The ferocious adrenalin that had to have been keeping her upright during the fight outside the facility was gone, and now the horrors of what she’d experienced were clear in her gaunt features and matted hair. He ached at the idea of how much she’d suffered and boiled with the need to fix this, protect her, bring her meat, so she was strong enough to properly rage her defiance against those who’d wronged her.

Gig shifted away from Nero, his attention sweeping over the room. “What is this place?”

Nothing anymore. Nero was going to have to destroy this safe house as well as the other one, to keep his activities secure. Even if he thought he could mostly trust Gig, he couldn’t risk the young drake accidentally saying something to the wrong dragon.

“Over here.” Nero strode to Becca and knelt. The aura on the new intake flared, and Gig’s eyes widened. “Watch the yellow drake. Don’t touch him. He’s… sick and having trouble with his earth magic.”

“And the red drake you’ve got handcuffed to the bed?”

“None of your business,” Raven growled.

Gig raised his hands. “Hey, no need to get all angry. You invited me.”

“The red drake is the job.” Nero knelt beside Becca and fought the urge to brush her hair back from her face. Any sign of tenderness could expose his unwanted condition. It was bad enough Raven had probably already figured out Becca was the source of the convulsions he’d been suffering the last few days. It could only get worse if she knew not all options to deal with a soul-sick human mage were on the table. “She has a GPS tracker implanted somewhere on her body, and I need it disabled.”

“Who the hell would implant a tracker on a drake—?” Realization flashed across Gig’s expression, and for a second he looked more like the ancient drake Nero had known before the Handmaiden had rebirthed him and unexpectedly shoved his soul back into the same human vessel. “I knew it’d come to this. Hunter has—” Another flash of realization and Gig snapped his mouth shut before he could utter treasonous words in front of the prince’s favorite dragon.

Nero cocked an eyebrow, testing Gig’s recovery of the situation.

The color drained from Gig’s face. “Well, you know… Hunter has created a real problem. Yes, he has.”

“Mother of All.” Raven rolled her eyes. “That was pathetic.” A hint of wind flickered around her hand. “I think he should never return to Court.”

“I think Capri and Tobias would have something to say about that,” Nero said.

“And Capri knows you took me. She—” Another flash of realization across Gig’s face that turned to horror. “She let you take me.”

“Just deal with the tracker, and I’ll get you back to the Clean Team’s headquarters.” Nero would deal with the fallout from Gig later. Hopefully much later, although he had a sinking suspicion that everything was going to come to a head soon. “Can you fry the tracker or something? I don’t want it to work again, not even accidentally.”

“Pinpointing where it is would be nice, too.” Raven tipped Becca’s head back and brushed her hair from her face — the move Nero yearned to make. “Even if it’s broken, I’d want it out.”

“Well…” Gig crouched beside Nero and placed a hand on Becca’s ankle. His gaze grew unfocused, and he tilted his head to one side. “The implant is in the back of her right shoulder, just under the skin. Nasty place to put it. Hard to see and get out by yourself. And—” His attention jumped to the door on the other side of the cot. “It’s talking to a smart phone that’s approaching fast.”