Cameron
We go to Wilson’s office at dawn. He’s already up and waiting, along with the dragons who typically handle security and safety for the clan. If I had to guess, I’d say he didn’t sleep at all last night.
“You need coffee?” I ask, but he shakes his head.
“Scouts returned an hour ago,” he says. “They’ve confirmed spotting a woman at the Lucky location we know about who looks like your sister. I’m sorry, Cameron. We’re going to do everything we can to get her out of there.”
“I know,” I pat his shoulder. “You’ve got this, Wilson. I trust you.”
He looks at me with surprise on his face. So maybe I haven’t always been the best companion for a dragon shifter clan leader. I’ll admit it. There have been plenty of times when I’ve questioned him and not very many where I’ve been kind or understanding.
It’s time for that to change.
This isn’t all about me.
This entire battle isn’t all about me.
It’s not even about Ellie and David.
Nope.
This is about saving our kind. This is about saving the dragons. This is about the fact that a little human took a dragon’s oath in order to save us and we owe it to her to do our part.
“What’s the plan?” I ask Wilson, and that seems to propel him into action.
“Ellie didn’t give us much to go on. I don’t know if the Lucky scientists have found us or if they just think they have. I wish she’d given Peggy more information on that point, but whatever.” He shakes his head, and I know what he’s thinking.
He’s hoping Ellie is okay.
He’s hoping it wasn’t the dying message of woman with nothing left.
If the scout was right and she is at the facility with David, though, there’s hope.
I have to believe there’s hope.
“At this point, I think it’s time for us to make a move. We didn’t launch this huge rescue operation to save David because we wanted more intel. We wanted to do things as safely as possible. That was a mistake. We should have gone in, guns roaring, and showed them who we are. Today’s our day to do that.”
“So we’re going to attack the facility.”
“I’ve reached out to Thunderstorm and they know of a Lucky facility close to their clan home. They’re going to attack it at midnight: the same time we’ll be attacking the facility we know about.”
“Smart,” I tell him. Then I turn to Peggy. “Thunderstorm Clan is one of our greatest allies.”
“They’re dragons, too?”
“Yeah,” Wilson says. He doesn’t look up. “They’re ferocious. Fighters. They love a good battle. This is the kind of shit they live for.”
“So what’s the plan?” I ask Wilson.
“We’ll leave at dusk. That will give us time to get there and get into place. At midnight, we’ll have coordinated attacks on the two facilities. We’ll get the center we know about and they’ll get theirs. Lucky could have more buildings and they probably have a headquarters somewhere, but that’s not the point. Our goal is to seriously maim them and inhibit their ability to do anything. We want to get David, Ellie, and any other captured shifters out alive.”
“And what about the Lucky scientists who work there?” Peggy asks quietly.
Wilson meets her gaze. His eyes flash yellow.
“We’ll take no survivors,” he says, and I breathe a sigh of relief. This isn’t the time to be heroes. We don’t need to be moral. We need to be fierce.
Hang on, Ellie. We’re coming for you.
*
Once we’re all in position outside of the facility, we wait. For a secret experimental laboratory, the security here is lax. It’s understandable. Lucky scientists believe they’re untouchable. They think there’s no way the dragon shifters of the forest can ever find them. They think there’s no way anyone could ever take them down.
Well, they’re wrong.
Now they’re surrounded on all sides by shifters from our clan. We might be big and bulky in our dragon forms, but right now, we’re slinky and cautious. We’re nearly invisible as we hide among the trees that surround the facility.
The building itself is a two-story facility surrounded by a high fence. It’s probably electric, but that’s to keep out forest animals: not shifters. No shifter would get within twenty feet of this building, anyway.
Not if they were smart.
There are several cars parked out front, but it’s a lab. It’s not an Army base. There are no tanks, no planes, and no armored vehicles. There’s just a beat-up Impala and a couple of busted-up looking Saturns. There is one single blue Mustang, and I make a mental note to flame that once I shift.
Fuck whoever bought that, and fuck whoever stole my sister.
If we were planning on being sneaky, we would steal keycards and break in through the main doors. That’s not the plan this time. We’ve stayed away from Lucky because up until this point, they’ve never really bothered us. We’ve heard rumors, but nothing serious, and rumors aren’t a good enough reason to destroy an entire building.
Besides, we wanted to be sure they didn’t have any weapons they could use against us: weapons that might prevent us from shifting, from fighting.
Now we’re pissed off enough that we don’t care.
Still, we didn’t come completely unprepared. We’ll enter in two waves. The first wave will shift and destroy the building. The second wave will stay in their human forms and enter with guns and anything else they need to clear out the rest of the building and get our people to safety.
Wilson signals from beside me. He lets out a long, low cooing sound. He sounds like a baby bird, but we all know better. We all know it’s time.
Now’s the time.
I take a deep breath, and I leap out of the tree where I’m hiding at the same time Wilson does. Together, we shift and head toward the roof of the building. Once I’m directly above it, I realize that the Lucky team members aren’t as stupid as they seem. There are traps on the roof to catch anyone who might think of landing there. In the darkness, they’re almost invisible.
Good thing our eyesight is impeccable.
Wilson notices the traps, too, and he growls. Then he breathes out a long, deep flame and douses the top of the building with his breath. The flame doesn’t stick. That’s not the point. The point of the flame is just to destroy any pathological agents that might be accompanying those traps. Then two of the dragons swoop down, lift the traps with their claws, and toss them off the roof.
One problem down.
Wilson lands on the now-clear roof and jumps. Two other dragons do the same. The roof begins to crumble, and the rest of us begin flying in and breaking off pieces of the roof. An alarm sounds, but we ignore it. In a matter of seconds, the top of the Lucky facility is completely gone, and we’re able to see what’s inside.
And what’s inside makes me sick.
We should have come here long ago.
We should have been brave.
We should have fought against this forever ago because the cages of shifters on the top floor are devastating to see. Quickly, I jump into the building and shift to my human form. Then I start hauling the cages out of their rows and motioning for the dragons to come lift them. We have plenty of shifters with us. They don’t have to haul the cages all the way back to Fablestone right now. They just need to get these shifters out of the Lucky building.
One-by-one, the dragons lower themselves, select a cage, and lift it. They carry the cage off into the woods, probably to a clearing, and leave it there. Then they come back. Within minutes, the second floor of the room is almost empty.
That’s when Lucky decides to join the party.
Four scientists in white lab coats enter the room.
“What the fuck are you doing?” A tall man growls at me. He sneers and then raises his hand. He’s holding a weapon, and he fires it at me, but I’m ready for him. I’m not scared, and I shift easily into my true form. I breathe out fire at him, and he instantly dies.
His teammates don’t back down, though. They ignore him, instead choosing to try to circle me, but they’ve forgotten the fact that I’m with friends.
With family.
With dragons.
They don’t realize the second wave of dragons sneaked in downstairs and are coming up behind them.
I shift back.
“You stupid humans,” I say. “You only had four of you watching this facility?”
“Four is more than enough for what we were doing,” a petite woman with bright red hair says. “And you never even noticed until now. Who’s the stupid ones now? You shifters don’t even notice when a stray goes missing from your pack. You don’t even do anything about it. You just carry on because you don’t want to give shifters a bad name by attacking a scientific building.”
“Those days are over,” I tell her.
“What are you going to do? Kill me?” She laughs, raising her weapon, and she shoots. Before whatever she’s firing can hit me, though, I’m knocked to the floor and something lands on me.
“What the fuck?” I groan, and then I look up to see a familiar face.
A face I’ve been searching for.
“David?” I ask, looking up at my brother-in-law. “What the hell?”
“You came,” he says with a smile, and then he lands on me.
Carefully, I push him off of me and look at him lying on his back.
“David?” I ask. What the fuck? He took a bullet or a syringe or something for me, and I don’t know what the fuck those assholes put in it, but it doesn’t look good. “David, stay with me.”
I ignore the hell breaking loose around me as the rest of our team makes their way to the second floor and surrounds the scientists, as the dragons continue to save the locked-up shifters, as everything continues to unfold.
I ignore all of that and just hold my brother-in-law and as David’s life begins to fade away, I start to cry.