Chapter 19
FREAKY-ASS SANDSTORM
Ziara
Tali was sitting cross-legged on the bar, swinging her legs and talking a mile a minute about something one of her teachers had said.
I leaned against the counter, half listening, half enjoying the normalcy of it.
The den hummed with its usual sounds—distant conversations, the clank of pipes, the faint thud of boots on patrol.
Home.
“—and then she had the nerve to tell me I was being disruptive. Me! I was asking a legitimate question.” Tali’s indignation was so pure it bordered on theatrical.
“Was the question relevant to the lesson?”
“It was relevant to my education.”
“That’s not the same thing, pup.”
She huffed and kicked her heels against the bar. “You sound like Mack.”
“Mack sounds like me. I had the attitude first.”
She grinned at that, and the warmth of it settled into my chest like a good meal. This was what I fought for. These moments. This kid, with her big mouth and her bigger heart, safe in the tunnels where nothing could ever…
The temperature dropped.
Not gradually. Not like the house’s heating had glitched. The cold arrived all at once, instant and absolute, as if someone had opened a door to the Arctic and invited it in. Frost crept across the bar beneath Tali’s legs. Her breath misted. Mine did, too.
Tali’s eyes went wide. “Zee, what’s—”
She froze. Mid-sentence, her mouth still shaped around the word she’d never finish, her skin white as death. The patrol’s footsteps cut off. The pipes went silent.
Everything stopped.
He stood at the entrance to my living room, silver eyes scanning the space with an unhurried intensity that made my skin crawl. His gaze moved over the cracked mirror behind the bar, the tin-tiled ceiling, the tunnels outside my window. He took it all in. Cataloguing. Memorizing.
The way my blood turned to ice had nothing to do with his magic.
He’d breached our defenses and now stood in the heart of everything I’d sworn to protect.
I stepped in front of Tali on instinct, putting my body between the dragon and the frozen pup, even though some rational corner of my brain knew none of this was real. It couldn’t be real. He could’t be here.
It had to be another dream.
“Get out,” I snarled.
He ignored me, his attention drifting to the girl behind me. His head tilted, a predator spotting something interesting in the underbrush.
“So, this is where you hide,” he said.
I wanted to rip the den from his sight. Tear it away like a curtain and leave him staring at nothing.
Every face he saw was one he could hunt.
Every tunnel was a path he could follow.
I wished I could gather them all up—Tali, the patrol, every frozen wolf in the den—and shove them somewhere his silver eyes could never reach.
But I couldn’t control the dream. Not like he could.
Exhaustion dragged at my limbs, but that didn’t matter. I couldn’t let him hurt my pack.
I reached for my daggers.
They disappeared as soon as my fingers touched the hilts.
What the hell?
The bastard smirked. His icy eyes finally met mine, and my breath caught. Something fluttered in my stomach. It had to be a combination of anger and humiliation.
I swayed on my feet, my strength waning from… from… something I couldn’t remember. He grabbed my arm, steadying me. I almost thanked him out of habit, but I caught myself. He was the enemy, and this was the second time he’d seen me drained.
I ripped my arm out of his chilly fingers. “What do I have to do to get you to go away?”
Some emotion I didn’t even want to decipher darkened his eyes as he chuckled, the sound so dark and melodic it made me want to run and hide. I only straightened, refusing to cower.
He slid closer, dropping his head to look me in the eye, until only a frosty breath separated us.
His dark pupils were still mostly round, but elongating into vertical slits, warning me that all hell would break loose when his patience wore out.
He might look less imposing in this form, but he was still an apex predator.
His laughter abruptly cut off, sending a shudder up my spine. I was on thin ice.
The smart move would be to surrender, but this blowhard wasn’t pack. He was stalking my brain; his presence was a slap in the face of my inner peace. I didn’t drop my gaze.
“How much insolence shall I suffer before I remind you of your place?” he asked.
“My place? Are you… sexist? In this day and age?”
“I am a dragon. No gender could ever elevate you above me.”
I stared at the man, speechless. His audacity was unreal, and I would have kneed him in the balls if I’d had the energy. And a slightly weaker survival instinct.
“Are you prepared to surrender with my treasure?”
My throat forgot how to work. He was especially terrifying this close. And beautiful. And maybe I could get him to see reason. I forced a swallow and found my voice. “My people need it.”
His eyes narrowed. “For what purpose?”
It was a good question, and one I wasn’t sure I should answer. The alpha wouldn’t want me sharing secrets; however, now that I had his attention for an actual conversation, maybe all wasn’t lost. Maybe we could find some common ground.
“S-s-survival.”
Stuttering hadn’t been the best start to my spiel, but he was so close. And still shirtless. The sheer mass of him was intimidating enough, but his eyes remained locked on me, making me squirm.
“Elaborate.”
I stepped back, putting some much-needed space between us so I could focus. “How do you feel about the Mondeine?”
“They exist on the other side of an impenetrable barrier, so their presence claims no effect on me.”
“Impervious to magic. They are free to come and go as they please.”
“No, they are not. The Mondeine have regulations on who can leave their territories.
I scoffed. “You can’t possibly know that.”
The enigmatic smile he gave me reminded me how little I knew about the dragon.
He stared at me, and I stared right back.
“Why do you ask about the Mondeine?” he said finally.
I’d been considering trying to recruit him, but it felt unwise to reveal that now. “You don’t worry about them crossing the border and attacking us?”
He stared at me unblinkingly. “No.”
I nodded. “Cool. Good talk.”
His jaw ticked. “Does your pack intend to attack the Mondeine?”
I blinked. How in the hell had he reached that conclusion from the little I’d said? Was he reading my mind, or was I just that transparent?
“You cannot get through the barrier, unless…” Realization dawned across his features like a slow-motion car wreck. “The artifact. Your pack intends to use it somehow. To breach the fracture.”
I watched the dragon process the implications of his own stolen property and realized something that would have been funny under different circumstances.
He had no idea what the bloodstone was for. Considering he referred to it only as the artifact or his treasure, he might not even know what it was. Had he never opened the box?
This guy knew even less than I did. My arms folded across my chest as I pursed my lips together.
He shook his head, snarling in disgust. “Idiots. All of you. So determined to destroy everything my family sacrificed for.”
I knew better than to respond, but he didn’t understand. “We are defending our people.”
“By striking first?”
“By utilizing the element of surprise.” Assuming this asshole didn’t notify them. I needed to stop talking.
“Your pack is either suicidal or foolish.”
My eyes narrowed. “I’m done talking to you.”
“This conversation ends when I say so, and not a moment before.” His growl raised the hair on the back of my neck. He latched onto my arm and yanked me against him. I stumbled into his cold, bare chest, and he wrapped an arm around me.
Before I had the chance to rip myself free, my home fell away. The next thing I knew, we were hovering above Seattle.
Above Pioneer Square.
“Actions have consequences,” he said. “And now you will witness the outcome of yours.”
There was a wrenching sound, and then something flew out of the pipe that concealed the den’s entrance.
The door. It flew through the air, plowing into the two guards approaching the entrance and laying them out flat.
An alarm screeched. I stared on in shock as a handful of my packmates trickled out of the den, weapons in hand, searching for the threat.
We were well within range of our ballistic weapons, but nobody looked straight up. None of our traps, diversions, or countermeasures were designed to stop a threat that could literally drop in on us from nowhere.
Water shot out of the Sound in a geyser, arching inland and—to my absolute horror—directly into the exposed entrance.
I wanted to move, to help my people evacuate, to murder the dragon who hovered in the air beside me. Grim determination was etched into his face, making him look like some avenging angel. His magic wrapped around me like a weighted blanket, keeping me from doing anything but watching on in horror.
“Just a dream,” I assured myself. “None of this is real.”
Only it felt real. Like I’d failed some sort of test I hadn’t even known I was taking, and now my pack would pay the price. I needed to rip out his throat before he slaughtered everyone I cared about. Fueled by desperation, I struggled against his hold to no avail.
The amount of magic he wielded was incomprehensible.
Raw, primal screams of terror and confusion ripped through the Underground, echoing off the walls and tunneling through the narrow passageways until they reached me with devastating clarity.
The voices were familiar.
Oh, gods, was that Tali?
“Stop,” I said.
The dragon’s lips stretched into a smile so damn predatory it made my skin crawl. “Why?”
“There are children in the den. Innocents.”
“And what of the Mondeine children? Of their innocents?”
I tried not to think about them at all and didn’t appreciate him bringing them up. I followed orders like the soldier I’d been trained to be. Just doing my goddamn job. None of this should fall on my shoulders, yet this dragon kept tormenting me and now….
“Please. You’re going to kill them.”