Chapter Eight
Tyson
T he blood is rushing to my head as I curse both out loud and inside my head. How the hell did I let this happen? Letting this bastard get his hands back on me is something I never planned on allowing to happen again.
“What’s wrong, Tyson? Are you not comfortable?” Alistair laughs as he steps into my line of sight.
I bare my teeth at him but say nothing. That’s all the reaction he’s going to get from me.
He chuckles, shaking his head before stepping away and returning with a chair. He sits in it and crosses one leg over his knee as he watches me.
I’m not even sure how I ended up in his trap that’s blocking not only my shift but my magic. And upside down at that!
Fucking hell.
I was checking out the perimeter of his warehouse, making sure to stay far enough away to not be detected. I needed to see what was going on so I could make a plan to get to him. I was just about to head back to my truck when something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. The next thing I knew, I woke up inside this stupid trap.
“Ty, Ty, Ty. You should’ve known better than to snoop around my business. I’ve known you were looking into Dragon’s Fire for months now. I’ve been waiting for you to make a mistake so I could bring you home where you belong.”
“Home?” I bark out with a laugh before spitting on the floor. “Nowhere you are is home.”
Alistair hums, bobbing his head. “But don’t you consider Cecelia your home? Or should I tell your little sister you no longer care about her? That you’ve forgotten her in your quest for vengeance?”
Rage sputters inside me at the mention of my baby sister.
This man has taken everything from me.
Alistair was my parents’ best friend, so when they died in a car accident, it made sense that me and my sisters went to live with him. He was the closest thing we had to a family, even if he wasn’t blood.
Becca, my eldest sister, was the first one to mention that he was acting funny. We’d been there for about six months, and Alistair had been everything we needed. He held us when we cried, sat with us in silence when we weren’t ready to talk. Whatever we needed, he took care of it.
Because of that, I waved off my sister’s concerns. I was ten at the time and thought I knew everything. Becca was fourteen and prone to panic, or at least that’s what I thought. What else was I supposed to think when she started talking about our parents being murdered? And then talking about Alistair acting weird? I just couldn’t deal with it.
I told her to stop trying to cause problems where there weren’t any before taking Cecelia, who was only six, by the hand and taking her outside to play. If only I’d listened to her, then maybe we could’ve found a way to sneak out and run far, far away.
Within a month, I started to see what she was talking about, but it was too little, too late. Within a week, Becca, Cecelia, and I found ourselves locked in cages, where we remained for twelve years.
At first, we didn’t understand why he’d caged us. We begged him to let us out; to tell us why he was doing this to us. He wouldn’t tell us a thing, and it wasn’t until he started stealing our dragon’s fire that we understood what he needed us for. We wouldn’t find out the reason why for years.
And why was he stealing our fire? Because he was using it as the main ingredient in a new drug for supernaturals, Dragon’s Fire. It wasn’t the only ingredient but the one that forged all the others together. I’m not even sure he meant to tell us why, but he lost his shit when he took too much of Becca’s fire and she died.
He blamed me and Cecelia for it. Makes sense, right? It had nothing to do with the fact that he was stealing our fire, obviously.
It didn’t matter who he blamed. I knew where the blame lay. Just like I knew there was no reason that my twenty-six-year-old sister should’ve died.
Cecelia took Becca’s death the hardest. She went almost catatonic, and I knew it was up to me to get us the hell out of there. Alistair was so enraged by losing one of his dragons that he got sloppy, and I was able to sneak us out of the compound Alistair had turned his home into. The hardest part of the escape plan was getting my sister to shift.
We stood outside in the woods for over an hour before I could get her to take her dragon form, having to use my alpha roar to command her to do, so I almost wish I hadn’t forced her to shift. We could’ve carried on running through the woods and maybe we could’ve avoided detection. Even though I’d been kept captive for twelve years, I was still strong enough to carry my baby sister if she faltered. I just thought it would be harder for them to catch us in our dragon forms.
If Cecelia had just taken flight a few seconds faster, everything would’ve been alright. But she was so lost in her grief that her reaction times were too slow. Alistair hit her with a bolt of lightning before she could even clear the tops of the trees. It took me too long to realize she wasn’t with me. I tried to raze my enemies and the woods where they hid, but I didn’t have enough fire left inside of me.
I tried everything I could to rescue my sister from Alistair’s grasp without getting caught myself, but when exhaustion started weighing on me, I knew I needed to find somewhere to heal. Somewhere I could grow stronger. Then I could come back for Cecelia, so I flew off into the sky, leaving my sister behind.
I’d roared to the heavens my rage and pain with no response. I found an abandoned house and stayed there, crashing out for a week straight before I woke up. I’d been determined to go straight back to Alistair’s then and there, but something held me back—the knowledge I’d fail if I tried then.
Now, six years later, my sister is still his prisoner, and it seems like I am now too.
Seriously, fuck my life.
“I knew you couldn’t stay away forever,” Alistair continues, clearly not realizing I’d lost myself in the past. “It’s just not in you to abandon your only remaining family like that. It took you longer than I thought it would. Six years I’ve had your sister, and you haven’t once tried to rescue her. Cecelia isn’t as powerful as Becca was or even half as strong as you. I had to slow productions so I wouldn’t kill her before I found a replacement. Now that I have you, I have no reason to keep her around.”
He pauses, considering me. “Except to keep you in line. Yes, I think that’s a much better use for her. I’m sure you want your sister to stay alive, don’t you?”
“Fuck you, Alistair. I will kill you for what you’ve done to my family,“ I say with a snarl as if I’m not the one being held captive in his magic.
He snorts. “Sure, you are, Tyson. Don’t worry, I’ll reunite you with your sister soon enough.”
Rage rumbles through me, and I know if I could move that I’d be shaking with it. There’s no one in this world I hate more than the man sitting before me, but he’s also the only one who holds the answer to a question that’s been burning in my gut for years.
“Did you kill our parents?”
For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer me, but eventually he nods. “I did. I would’ve tried to capture them as well, but I wasn’t as strong then. I hadn’t figured out the right dosage for Dragon’s Fire yet, so I was nothing more than an average mage. They were far more powerful than I was, so I did the next best thing. I killed them and used the three of you to get the dragon’s fire I needed. It was rather ingenious of me, if I do say so.”
Tears burn my eyes as I squeeze them shut. I was pretty sure of his answer before I asked the question, but hearing him admit to it is harder to hear than I thought it would be.
I want to rip myself out of his trap and wrap my hands around his throat, squeezing until he’s dead. If only it were that easy.
I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get out of this, but I have to. And I will kill him. No matter how much he laughs at the idea of it. It might not be today or even tomorrow, but he will die. Of that, I swear.
Blinking my eyes open, I frown at the movement behind Alistair. It takes a few moments to focus on it and my eyes widen when I realize it’s Aaliyah. What the hell is she doing here? And how do I keep Alistair from noticing?
Wait. Does she have six arms?
I must be seeing things, right? It must be whatever Alistair used to knock me out.
I blink my eyes, but nope, she still has six arms.
Huh. I wasn’t expecting that.