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Praise from Gavin was unexpected. The bridge of my nose still stung every now and then from the scar he had left me with, but I supposed he suffered the same from the scar across his eye, his eyelid hanging heavy.
All of our wounds had come from my father fostering hatred within us. But tomorrow night, we would bring an end to his reign of terror. He would pay for everything he took from us.
Chapter 23: Kiara
I
thought we’d be going straight to the city of Gunnison from Everett’s place, but instead, Sebastian took me into Grandbay, to the hotel where the surviving operatives in his team were staying. There was still police tape strung up in front of the hotel room that David and his dragons burst into a few weeks ago, the night they kidnapped my mother and killed Aislin’s father. The stench of blood and burning oil permeated the walls even though the hotel staff vigorously tried to wash it away.
In the hotel room, I hovered uncomfortably while Sebastian and his colleagues packed up their things. “You can take a shower while you wait,” he suggested. “In fact, I recommend you do.”
“Why do I stink?” I drawled.
Sebastian hesitated, implying to me that I did, although my unicorn lineage tended to remove the worst of my body odor. “We have special soap and shampoo that dilutes your scent. It might help you avoid getting tracked.”
I shrugged and did as he suggested, removing my clothes in the bathroom and indulging in a steamy shower. Actually, I couldn’t remember the last time I had a nice hot shower. Usually, I bathed in rivers or lakes outside without soap. Even at Everett’s place, I wasn’t comfortable enough to shower. I closed my eyes and relished the steam coiling around my body, scrubbing shampoo and conditioner through my long, silver hair. After, I wrapped up in a towel in front of the sink, the bathroom fan working tediously to remove the fog on the mirror. As I dried my hair, I noticed brown streaks coming through alongside the silver, my wolf lineage contending to make itself known.
It was dark outside by the time I was clean and dressed again. The operatives had finished packing up, so I followed Sebastian back outside and climbed into the back of one of the SUVs. “Where in Gunnison are we going?”
“We’ll be going to another hotel,” said Sebastian in the passenger seat. “It’s a fairly busy hotel, so your scent should be masked by the large number of people there.”
“Are there shifters? Another wolf pack?”
“We’ve already contacted them to warn them about a shifter we’re hiding there. They won’t bother us.”
Good, I thought. The last thing we needed was another wolf pack sticking their noses into our business. I couldn’t help but wonder how much outside packs knew about what was going on here in these three towns, but clearly, whatever they knew, it wasn’t enough to send them in to help us. Not that I expected strangers to risk their lives coming to our aid.
The caravan of Mythguard vehicles pulled out of Grandbay, hurtling southwest out of the Gunnison National Forest.
I leaned back and got comfortable for the drive, searching within myself for the emotions and sensations that might belong to Colt. We still shared those feelings mirrored through our fated bond. It might have given me more security to have the telepathic connection of being marked—we both would have become stronger, reaching our maximum potential—but it was too much of a leap of faith to do that with Colt right now. I still wanted to know how he felt, so I focused on interpreting the rises and falls of emotion that didn’t belong to me, empathizing with whatever he might have been experiencing. The feeling of displacement among people that rejected him. The small victory of some kind of revelation, I didn’t know what, but there was hope and satisfaction that gave me confidence in Colt.
The other human occupants of the SUV suddenly shouted, the urgency in their voices ripping me out of my reverie. I sat up just in time for the SUV to jostle sideways by a vehicle coming up beside us in oncoming traffic. I bristled with alarm, looking wide-eyed at the Mythguard operatives. “What’s happening?”
“This asshole is trying to run us off the road,” said Sebastian, reaching for a handgun at his side.
“They’re dragons,” said another operative.
I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the occupants of the other vehicle, a black truck smeared with dried mud. “There’s only one of them. We’ll be fine, right?”
Sebastian twisted around to look through the rear windshield. “There’s more coming up behind us.”
“How did they know we were driving out?”
“I don’t know, but they probably had eyes on the hotel. Our caravan makes it kind of obvious.”
“I thought you said the soap would hide my scent.”
“Well, it doesn’t make you invisible.”
The truck swerved against us, scraping metal, wrenching my heart up into my throat. I clutched the back of the seat in front of me, feeling useless as we endured attacks from the truck. If I was on my feet, at least I could run, but there was nothing I could do except just sit here! A flurry of car horns surrounded us on the highway. Sebastian rolled down his window, standing up in his seat and leaning out into the night air. He aimed the handgun, but before he could fire, he retracted into the seat and shouted, “Everyone hold on!” barely a second before I saw an oncoming car veer toward us.
This was a calculated attack from the dragons. They knew what they were doing.
The truck beside us and the oncoming car forced us into the ditch. The SUV was flung off the shoulder and into the wet trench beside the road, its trajectory launching it back up until the front end crunched viciously into a tree. It all happened in the blink of an eye. I barely had time to brace myself for the crash before my body was rocked, my neck jerked, and my head slammed against the window, which cracked the glass and smeared it with my blood. My ears were ringing—I didn’t even register when we had stopped moving, only that when I ebbed back into awareness, the SUV was still and smoking, and everyone else in the vehicle was silent except for light groans and an errant cough.
At least the SUV was still upright. I sat up, dizzily clutching my head and wincing into the night, turning to look at the people beside me. The operative in the seat next to me was still alive and groggily trying to blink himself awake. In front of me, the driver was slumped forward and peppered in glass shards. Sebastian hadn’t made it completely back into the car. His body leaned limply toward the window, his head, shoulder, and arm outside and twisted unnaturally. Immediately, the stench of blood flooded the air. I didn’t want to get a better look at Sebastian—I already knew from the grotesque contortion of his body that the impact with the tree had killed him.