45
45
“No,” said Lothair. “That whelp may have rallied the dragons against me, but he doesn’t know how to lead worth a damn. They have pledged their allegiance to the one who offered them a chance to become Lycan alongside him. The Inkscale dragons now serve David Hexen.”
A growl rumbled out of Gavin. “Guess it just goes to show how righteous the dragons really are. They aren’t doing this for some honorable reason, for freedom. They just want carnage!”
“My dragons do want freedom!” Lothair bit back. “They’ll serve whoever will give them what they want.”
“Yeah. That’s why it was so easy for you and your dragons to slaughter my parents, wasn’t it?”
Lothair narrowed his eyes. His lip curled, exposing a sliver of his fangs. “Our priorities never changed. David promised us he could achieve freedom. We do what we have to do.”
In a swell of anger, Gavin charged toward Lothair, ripping the baby out of his arms and roughly handing her to me. Then he grabbed Lothair’s shirt collar and punched him, knocking the dragon onto his back. “I should just beat you to death right here,” snarled Gavin.
Coughing, Lothair leered up at all of us. His eyes briefly went to his daughter in my arms, then detached from her for good, fixing back on Gavin. “I am the only one who sees that David is leading my dragons astray. I’ve realized that we’ll never achieve the freedom we want. Dragons will never be free to embrace their true forms; the day will never belong to us. David is using us for strength in numbers,” he said hoarsely. “I was always prepared to turn my back on David. Why do you think I suggested he and his pack hide in the silver mine?”
Everett grabbed Gavin’s arm and pulled him back, curiosity piqued. “What are you talking about?”
“My dragons used this as a hideout long before Dalesbloom occupied it. I had nitroglycerine dynamite hidden throughout the tunnels, ready to be triggered at a moment’s notice. I was never going to allow David to become Lycan alongside me. If he had chosen to stay here, then tonight, as he and his pack prepared for the ritual, I was going to collapse the silver mine on them. If the cave-in didn’t kill them, the silver poisoning would have. They had no idea that nitroglycerine is even here. The silver prevented them from smelling it.”
My eyes widened. All this time, Lothair had planned to kill my father for us. And if I hadn’t broken away from my father, I would have been one of the casualties alongside him. This entire tunnel was rigged to collapse on Dalesbloom. I didn’t know whether I wanted to attack Lothair or praise his ingenuity. But Dalesbloom was still my pack—I wouldn’t stand for any more needless deaths, even of my own callous packmates. “Do the other dragons know about it?” I asked.
“No. It was mine and Sibyelle’s little secret,” said Lothair. “I’m sure they smelled it, but they wouldn’t have known what it was. Unfortunate that my trap has been rendered useless.”
“Where are they now?” demanded Gavin.
“I don’t know,” said Lothair. “Wherever they are, I can guarantee they will perform the Lycan ritual tonight. There is but one reason David may return to the mine in the midst of his massacre. He will want to kill me before the Inkscales to assert his dominance as their Alpha. He left me alive so that he could do so as Lycan, to demonstrate his ability to keep his cognizance.”
“Where’s the trigger for the dynamite?” asked Everett.
The stoicism on Lothair’s face was alleviated by a thin, conniving smile. “Undo my chains, and I will see to it that the mine collapses when David comes for me.”
Hesitation caused Gavin, Everett, and I to reconvene with Billie and Aislin. We shared what Lothair had told us, and nobody trusted the dragon, but we knew he wasn’t about to give up the trigger on his own. When we returned to him, Everett stepped forward with a large rock in his hands and smashed the padlock on Lothair’s chain.
“This the wisest decision you have made yet,” said Lothair, slowly standing up. His attention went back to me, holding the infant on my hip. “Keep her safe. I have no reason to pursue you or her anymore. My clan is gone, and my mate is dead… anywhere I go, I will be a wanted man. So I will keep my word as long as you promise to protect my daughter.”
Lothair could just as easily deceive us, but what choice did we have? Crushing David in the mine was just one solution of many, and we weren’t going to give up that chance. There wasn’t anything Lothair could do to screw us over besides allow us to corner David in the mine once he inevitably turned up to kill Lothair, anyway. I nodded.
His expression softened. “I have decided on her name,” said Lothair. “It’s Nefrit.”
The baby girl stirred and yawned as though the first iteration of her name woke her from a dream.
“You better keep your word,” warned Gavin. “I won’t hold back next time.”
Lothair said nothing. He merely watched as we retreated from the mine with his daughter, leaving him awaiting his destiny.
Chapter 27: Kiara
H
ours in the refrigerator left me approaching hypothermia. My teeth chattered, and my muscles shivered without stopping. Pain from exposure to all the meat in the room radiated through me. All I could think about was the relief of warmth, but with the way my body was strung up, I couldn’t warm up my hands or feet, cover my bare skin, or even move to generate heat. A few times, I thought David had made a mistake in leaving me here to freeze to death, and I found small satisfaction in the idea of him coming to retrieve me only to find me a corpse. But as the hours dragged on, I continued to live. Through sheer force of will or simple misfortune, I didn’t know.
Then my body became numb to the cold, and I stopped shivering. At that point, I knew my condition was deteriorating toward the point of no return. Once hypothermia set in, your body stopped feeling cold—in fact, your blood vessels dilated, and you felt warm instead. I still felt sluggish, but as my thoughts deviated away from my situation and toward fanciful reveries, I realized that I didn’t have much time left. I had to focus. With a sharp breath in, I peeled open my eyes and looked around the room. What could I do?
Jerking my body only resulted in me swaying helplessly where I hung. They had left my feet unbound though, which meant maybe I could reach something. With my bare feet, I stretched toward the nearest carcass, swinging my body until I made contact. The ice-cold meat stung my toes, and I lost my grip the first time. The second time, I endured the pain, angling my body laterally until miraculously, the hooks around my bound wrists came loose and clattered away. Without the chains suspending me, I instantly dropped to the ground, landing hard on my head with an ‘oof.’
The excitement of freedom brought me back to life. I shivered again, rolling onto my knees and sitting up. While most of my skin had darkened from the cold, the bottoms of my feet were red, almost as if they’d been burned from the meat. Next, I had to find a way to undo these ropes.