LOGINI didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I jolted awake on the couch, the sun hadn’t even risen yet. The front door cracked open, and Everett spoke quietly to somebody just coming in. Gavin was still dozing beside me, with Billie beside him and Aislin on the other end of the couch. Craning my neck, I looked past the couch and saw a few men clad in black step inside, then met Everett’s eyes.“The Mythguard is here,” he said. “Wake everyone up. We’ll begin planning while the recon team visits the mine.”Aislin was already unfurling her limbs and blinking sleep out of her eyes, which was fine. I didn’t want to get near her. I gently shook Gavin’s arm, then tipped forward to my feet while he and Billie stirred, looking up at the people coming inside. Everett welcomed a swarm of strangers into our space, looking focused and hardened while we sagged with exhaustion and dark circles under our eyes.After a quick breakfast, we sat around the table with five Mythguard representatives. Anothe
My consciousness flickered in and out after I was dragged away from the accident. Bumping along in the back of the truck, I slumped forward and let exhaustion and pain whisk me into fluttering half-sleep, but it didn’t feel so much like sleep as it was just shock that blinded and numbed me to all else. I had a vague sense of where I was being taken, assuming that we were plunging back into the mountains to the silver mine. But when the truck rolled to a stop, and I looked up, I was surprised to find trees closing in around me and, ahead of me, the monstrous facade of Hexen Manor.“Why are we here?” I groaned.The dragon guard grabbed my arm and hoisted me out of the truck bed. My legs nearly gave out as I hit the ground.“Does it matter?” he grunted.Somebody handed nylon rope to the dragon.“Wrap her up real good, Kipling.”Nodding, Kipling took the rope and wound it tightly around my wrists behind my back, all the way up my arms to my elbows. He circled the rope so firmly around my
Shortly 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 gon
I never 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 t
I never thought I would find it in myself to actually give Colt a chance, but spending that day and the following night with him felt like exactly what I needed. In the evening, Billie visited us with something to eat. I snipped the zip ties around Colt’s wrists so that he could use his hands. As night fell, we lay in the bed with my temple on his shoulder, his hand on my side, gently stroking my hip under my shirt. What I felt for him wasn’t love. It was too soon to call it that. But gazing back into his cool blue eyes under the dark hair hanging over his brow, tracing the scar across the bridge of his nose, watching the way his eyebrows twinged every now and then with his thoughts—I found myself appreciating this docile side of him.Surprisingly, I managed to fall asleep and wake up again that next morning before sunrise. Colt dozed peacefully beside me. He hadn’t made any attempt to harm me during the night, and I had no urge to run away.After everyone was showered and dressed—the
As I watched Kiara leave, the taste of her kiss lingered on my lips. She would be all I’d think about for the next couple of days. Was it selfish of me to have wanted to mark her so soon after she’d lost her mother? I meant it when I suggested that it was just to be able to communicate telepathically because the Mythguard taking her away from me made me feel useless—like, despite all my promises to protect her, I would once again be reduced to just watching everything happen from the sidelines.But I would respect her wishes.I stood by the window and watched the cars pull away. Through their tinted windows, I couldn’t even see Kiara, and with each yard of mounting distance, my fated mate's bond thinned like an elastic band until I knew inevitably Kiara would come crashing back into me. I just had to be patient. Turning around, I found Everett, Gavin, Aislin, and Billie looking at me with varying degrees of judgment.“You really asked to mark her,” Aislin accused.The hair on my arms







