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Numbness took over. I sat there for a moment, wondering what to do next. My first instinct was to wait for some outside source to rescue me before remembering what had caused the accident in the first place. The dragons. No doubt they would be approaching the SUV any minute. I had to get out of there. Blinking back to reality, I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the door, yanking hard to slide it open. The metal screeched as I forced open the door, then fumbled into the grass, wincing as I hit sharp wedges of glass that had fallen from the windows. Pain sparked through me as I sat up on my knees, looking at the shards embedded in my palms.

Then a pair of feet stepped in front of me. I looked up at a dragon, recognizing the cut across his eyebrow and the fanged tattoo on his arm. It was the guard I had attacked. He sneered down at me but didn’t look pleased to be doing this. In fact, he looked more like this whole operation was an annoyance to him. Like he’d rather be doing something else.

“Please just let me go,” I slurred through my agony.

“I can’t,” he said.

The crash rattled my body. I wanted so badly to just lay there and let them take me, but the last vestige of my strength and willpower urged me to resist. As he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to my feet, I pushed him away, only to cry out as the glass in my hands cut deeper and poisoned me with my own blood.

The dragon deftly avoided my attack. As others gathered around us, he grabbed my wrists and mercilessly plucked all the glass from my hands, leaving me bleeding profusely. I blearily watched another shifter step up beside us, firing into the SUV. Whoever was still alive after the crash was dead now. They’d make sure there were no survivors to come crawling after us.

“The Inkscales won’t get away with this,” I warned them, my voice hoarse with pain.

They dragged me alongside them, out of the ditch and into the bed of the black truck. The tattooed dragon sat beside me, avoiding my eyes but keeping a firm grip on my wrist. “They don’t care what happens to the Inkscales. In the end, what matters is that dragons are made known to the world. What matters is that we won’t have to hide anymore.”

That would fundamentally change everything in the world. Humans weren’t equipped to handle the realization of dangerous shifters among them. It would cause mayhem. “You can’t…”

“We can.” The dragon met my eyes, expression hard. “Be grateful that you won’t be alive to see it.”

My head and heart both thundered. More than ever before, I felt useless. There was nothing I could do but sit here as they drove me to my fate.

Chapter 24: Colt

S

hortly after we had finished preparing the feather darts, my heart plunged into my stomach with such intensity that I felt sick. Blanched with nausea and inexplicable fear, I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the nearest window, fighting to keep myself from hyperventilating. “Something happened.” 

Everett looked suspiciously at me. “What do you mean?”

“Something happened,” I repeated with mounting anxiety. Standing up, my legs trembled, although I hadn’t exerted myself at all that day. I barely made it to the window and stared outside into the night as if I could see the very source of the trauma that suddenly struck me. But the mountainside was quiet that night. Deep within me, I knew something was wrong. My fated mate was experiencing intense fear, and now pain radiated through my head and into my body, exploding through my hands like I was impaled by a hundred teeth. “Kiara’s in trouble.”

Still sitting at the table, Everett and Gavin exchanged looks. Aislin and Billie had gone to bed, leaving just us three keeping guard, but I wished I had Billie by my side again for her familiar reassurances. I expected Everett and Gavin to tell me to relax and sit back down.

Surprisingly, Gavin rose and came to stand next to me. “What do you feel?”

I peered down at my hands, shaking and reddened as though I was the one enduring some kind of impact. “It feels like my whole body was just thrown against a wall. And there’s something in my hands, stabbing like needles. My head is pounding. It has to be Kiara. Nothing like this has ever randomly happened to me before.”

“Call Sebastian,” Gavin suggested to Everett.

He already had his phone up to his ear. “It’s ringing. Usually, Sebastian answers right away.”

“Keep trying. Is there anybody else we can call?”

“I have Brad’s number. I’ll try that next.” Everett took his phone away and scrolled through his contacts for the next number. We waited silently for him to begin speaking, but Brad didn’t answer the phone either. “Let me keep trying,” he muttered, searching for more Mythguard connections.

The longer we went without contact with the Mythguard, the worse I felt. Foreboding sat heavily within me, the sense of something wrong worsening with each second. I wasn’t just imagining this. Anything Kiara was feeling, I could feel it too. Her pain was unimaginable, her uncertainty and dread resonating through me. I paced, growing restless until finally, Everett’s voice broke the silence.

“Where’s Kiara? …A car accident? …Yes, that’s definitely the dragons. That’s David’s truck. …Shit, okay, hurry. Call me back when you get to it.”

Each word drove a stake of fear deeper into my heart. I held my breath until Everett raised his eyes to me.

“The dragons attacked the Mythguard on their way out of Grandbay. They targeted the SUV that Kiara was in and ran it off the road into the ditch. It hit a tree. The operative I spoke to said it just happened a couple of minutes ago, and they’re going to check it out right now.”

I swore under my breath, running my hand through my hair. “I knew it. She should have let me mark her. No, I should have gone with them. I should have insisted.”

Gavin clapped a hand on my shoulder. “They would have attacked whether or not you were with them. The difference is that you’re still safe and able to act instead of possibly dead in a car accident. You can still feel Kiara through the connection—that means she’s still alive.”

“But she’s in danger, and I’m not there to help her!” I could do nothing except stand there fretting.