5. Chapter 5
Tatta-tat-tat.
Daxton’s fingers thumped a repetitive, irritation-induced staccato against the leather armrest. Clouds rolled by the window of his private jet as he and Sarah flew toward Memphis where Miss Tagalong needed to return.
He rubbed another dusty spot on his pants.
They’d been in such a rush, he hadn’t been able to change. Sarah still wore her scrubs.
Though the plane came equipped with ample comfortable chairs, a daybed, and a bar, the space suffocated him.
He preferred to spread his own wings, something dragons rarely did.
They were visible to the naked eye, and the few humans who knew of their existence hunted them.
To keep their kind a secret, the Centurions around the globe made the joint decision to forbid shifting outside dragon capitals or while on the hunt.
A phone chimed from his seat’s cupholder. His eyes jumped to Sarah, who sat across from him. Taking a deep calming breath, he answered the call. “Percy?”
The chief of Wilgon Territory demanded, syllables punctuated, “What emergency do you have that requires Right of Passage to my territory?”
Rebellious dragon dominance clouded Daxton’s mind with swirling heated thoughts. He clenched his jaw as he restrained his retort. If he wanted to stay a chief, he’d have to act like one. Sarah shifted in her seat, squeaking against the leather.
For chiefs, gaining the right to another’s territory was arduous. Daxton’s Dyamur Territory only included most of the New England states and two provinces in Canada, so Tennessee lay outside his jurisdiction. Sneaking in would have raised too many questions if they caught him.
“I have a dire situation with one of my construction projects.” Daxton grabbed the pad of paper from his side desk. Earlier, he had scribbled down the name of a project that someone had contracted Prater Properties to oversee in case Percy asked.
“Something your CEO can’t handle?” Percy said.
“If he could, I wouldn’t have called and left you a message.” Daxton thumped the chair again.
“I don’t like last-minute calls, Daxton. They make me suspicious. I’m surprised you didn’t have Keiran demand the Rights for you. Did you have a falling-out? Or are you trying to hide something from him?”
Daxton leaned back and glared at the overhead buttons.
He couldn’t understand Percy’s fascination with drama.
But he was right. Daxton didn’t want to speak to Keiran—their Centurion who governed over Canada and the United States.
Keiran’s dominance could make Daxton confess everything about Miss Tagalong.
Something possessive breathed inside him, wanting to keep her to himself.
“This is time-sensitive,” Daxton said. “I wouldn’t bother the Centurion with something if I believed I could deal with it myself. But if you insist on holding me up, I will go above you.”
“I’ll send an escort.” The line died.
At Sarah’s questioning gaze, Daxton set the phone down and pursed his lips. “We’re clear.”
She huffed and leaned back in her chair. She knew just as well as Daxton how conniving Percy could be. Percy had once spread a rumor that one of Sarah’s friends had a relationship with her chief that interfered with their duties. Keiran had relocated Sarah’s friend to another territory.
Daxton couldn’t risk Percy discovering Miss Tagalong and telling Keiran. He drew in deep breaths, but his body remained coiled tight.
If Miss Tagalong would rather be with Sarah, good riddance, right?
His dragon didn’t agree. It pawed at the link as if it could bring her back. It seemed like she stared back at him through Sarah’s gray eyes.
Catching his gaze, Sarah shook her head. “She’s unresponsive. Just meditating or really, it feels like she’s going through some kind of internal library.”
“She seemed just as clueless about our kind as we are hers.”
Sarah nodded. “She may be trying to research then. It might not hurt to offer one of our journals in exchange for information about her. When she’s responsive, that is.”
“It’s not a bad idea. I should have one on the plane somewhere.”
“I also wish I knew why she’s in danger and wants to get to Tennessee.”
Daxton received tendrils of emotion along the mysterious link between him and Miss Tagalong, as though they were his own. Her fear overcast his mind. He wanted to protect her. But I can’t if she doesn’t tell me what’s going on.
He sighed. “Why aren’t you throwing a fit that she’s inside you?”
Sarah tapped her chin. “I didn’t lash out because I saw her injury and sensed your Mark on her. I consider her to be dragon trusted, so I don’t fear that she knows about us.”
The back of his neck tingled. “Did you say I Marked her?”
“You hadn’t realized?” Her eyes widened. “It’s not exactly the same. Normally my Insight picks up only a dragon-caused spirit tag, but she distinctly carries your energy. How is that possible?”
His heart stopped for a moment. “I have no idea.” Keiran would never permit a Mark. “Keiran can’t find out about this, or it’ll be my head.”
“You’re telling me. I can’t remember the last time Keiran gave his permission for a human to know about our kind. And she is far more dangerous than humans are.”
“He granted me permission for a Marking at the beginning of the previous century. He wanted the face of my company, Hough Prater, to know that not only did his voice, as the company’s CEO, fight for his fellow indigenous peoples’ lives, but also our civilization’s.”
When he had Marked Hough, it had been as simple as shaking his hand and transferring enough of his spirit energy to leave a Mark on him for other dragons to sense that Hough knew about the dragons. What had happened between him and Miss Tagalong was something else.
He didn’t understand why he grabbed her, but the primal compulsion in his mind had whispered, “Mine.” And her energy had reached back to form the link between them.
He squirmed from the memory of the blazing sensation of electric fingers trailing down his chest to his cock.
But even as euphoria had rushed in, another sensation like embracing a warm and familiar shadow had spread throughout his body.
To distract himself from the memory, he concentrated on the billowy clouds outside the plane window.
“If I Marked her, it was instinctual, but…” He paused, rubbing his sweaty hands against his jeans as he turned back to Sarah.
He forced himself to continue, wanting her opinion as a friend much older than he, one with intimate knowledge of their spirit energy because she used it to heal others.
“It was with my whole being, like our spirits melded.”
She exhaled softly. “Oh, dear.” Sitting up straight and leaning forward, she asked, “Did you touch her before that?”
“While she was inside me, my dragon curled around her, and I was content.”
Her mouth gaped open. “You mean…you didn’t want to shift?”
His heart vibrated with hesitant happiness. “I felt at peace.”
He hadn’t wanted to accept the reality, but Sarah’s reaction solidified it.
Few things kept him from needing to transform into dragon form.
He was a wild beast trapped inside a human body.
Because of his far more dominant dragon for his young age, he was always sore from rigidity, and sometimes his stomach burned when the need to shift became unbearable.
Ever since the incident a year ago, he’d feared becoming Lost to his dragon side, unable to shift back to human.
He’d be a danger to his kind, killing anything in sight, and the Centurion would have no choice but to end his life.
And that fear was what he used to keep himself safe—to keep himself under lock and key.
Like an unruly kid, the more energy he expended, the more docile his dragon became. Since he was a Hunter—a dragon who hunted Tattered Ones—physical activity subdued his need to transform for a brief time.
For Miss Tagalong to calm him, it meant something monumental.
Her kind might be the antidote to dragons becoming Lost. He didn’t want to lose her.
But the power she had over him also made him ready to bolt from the situation.
Sarah shook her head in disbelief. “In no way is she calming to me. Even with my desire to help heal her, I’m only tolerating her presence. She’s very draining.” She crossed her arms.
So, she soothes me but not Sarah. That complicates things.
“How are you coping now?” Sarah asked, eyebrows pinched with worry.
He snorted, his drumming fingers taking off once more. “My dragon is acting like a puppy, wanting a bone it can’t have. Though I guess that’s better than having it claw at my insides.”
Before Daxton reached the bottom of the plane’s stairs, his Insight picked out a younger dragon’s vulnerability and fear—coppery, sharp, and a little sour, like someone chewing on nails and second thoughts.
Irritation burned in Daxton’s bones, and his head throbbed.
Near the end of the trip, Miss Tagalong had created a barrier along the link between them.
That shield caused his dragon’s calmness to go up in flames.
His dragon prowled at the shield, looking for relief only the link could provide.
Daxton strode onto the asphalt as Sarah relayed their destination to a young male dragon with bleached blond hair.
Grumbling, Daxton tried not to clench his fists. Percy had saddled them with an chauffeur, or really, a spy.
The kid turned, eyes glued to the ground as Daxton approached. “Nice to meet you, Chief Dyamur,” he said. “My name’s Johnathan, and I’ll be your driver today.” He rocked on the balls of his feet, his hands twined behind his back. “Can I inquire why you need to go to the university?”
“No.” His jaw locked as he gave Sarah a low-key questioning glance. She hadn’t told him about their destination, though it seemed Miss Tagalong roused from her meditation long enough to relay the information.
Sarah crushed the dragon journal written by Centurion Cornelius they had found on his plane against her chest, avoiding Johnathan’s gaze.
Johnathan stared at her with narrowed eyes and rushed to the front passenger door. Daxton snapped his hand up, stopping the younger male. “I got it.”
Sarah was more receptive to Johnathan opening her door, and she climbed into the back.
Silence suffocated the vehicle. Johnathan sat with his shoulders hunched in the driver’s seat beside Daxton.
From his meekness, Daxton surmised that Percy meant to trick Daxton into a sense of security by sending someone nonthreatening.
He wasn’t fooled. He’d still have to be careful around the kid, but his raging dragon was going to make that difficult.
With the overpowering tension, Daxton didn’t protest when Johnathan rolled down his window even though cool air blasted from the vents. Only so many unhappy dragons fit in a sedan.
When they arrived at a parking lot next to an apartment complex, Johnathan’s hands shook as he opened Sarah’s door.
Daxton’s emotions were too frayed to care about comforting one young dragon.
Their kind didn’t gain strength by being timid under a chief’s anger.
If Johnathan had Daxton’s dragon, the pressure to shift would have torn the kid’s control apart.
As it was, only fear kept his beast corralled.
“Where to now?” Daxton whispered to Sarah.
She nudged him to follow her, and a prickling along his spine made him glance back. Johnathan intended to shadow them.
“Stay in the car,” Daxton snapped.
The youngster fled back into the vehicle, keeping his eyes downcast.
Sarah sighed beside him. “We didn’t need a tail, but you’re going to get Percy’s cavalry called on us. Come on.”
He smoothed his fingers over his hair, trying to calm the frustration in his body before he followed her. College-aged kids milled around the recently developed apartment building, looking in their direction. Sarah headed straight to the elevator as if familiar with the layout.
He avoided his reflection in the elevator’s metallic walls, fearing his dragon’s slitted eyes might stare back at him. His dragon paced with a sense of longing fast turning into irritation at the blocked link. Sarah’s clenched hands whitened with nerves as she squeezed the opening of her scrub top.
Once they arrived at the fifth floor, she hurried down the hall. He took long strides to keep up with her. Sarah knocked on an apartment door.
A person with a saccharine-sweet, human spirit energy came to the door but didn’t open it.
“Can I help you?” A male voice with a British accent asked from the other side.
Sarah cleared her throat. “Hello Simon, can you help me find my Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau publication?”
The door swung open before Daxton could ponder Sarah’s words.
“About bloody time.” The young man with boyish features stepped back from the door, curly brown hair framing his face. “What happened? Who are these people?”
Sarah stepped inside the modern-styled dining room and Daxton followed. The lanky young man in a fashionable jacket and green pants eyed him up and down with assessing brown eyes before slamming the door shut.
“My name’s Sarah. I’ve been helping your friend…” Her eyebrows pinched together as if receiving a message internally. “Is her body safe?”
Her body? Daxton felt just as confused as Sarah looked.
“Yes. I took all the precautions. Pardon me, Sarah, as I speak with Izzy.” The man stamped his hands on his hips. “You’re at a random hospital. Now tell me what’s going on.”
A shift of energy crackled against Daxton’s skin, and his Insight picked up metal, purity, and guilt.
Miss Tagalong’s familiar orb of yellow light flew from Sarah’s body.
As the woman materialized into the room with a slight ethereal glow to her dressed form, the breath whooshed from his lungs.
He longed to touch her face to see how real she felt, and his dragon’s pawing became insistent with more claws, stinging his head.
She hunched on her way to a chair at the four-person table and sat, meaning that her injury hiding beneath a simple blue top had not fully healed. His protective instinct raged, but the barrier along the link kept him from pulling her toward him.
“An Archfiend attacked me,” she said.
That must be what she calls a Tattered One.
The man’s jaw dropped. “Bloody hell.”
“These two helped me,” she continued. “And before you lecture me about secrecy, they aren’t what they appear to be either.”
The situation sent heat along Daxton’s nerves, and even as this unknown human male had no right to know about his kind, his concern lay with Miss Tagalong. “You still need to heal.”
Her eyes blazed when they met his. “I’m healed enough because we have plenty to discuss.”