Max #3
“Then we’ve got nothing to worry about, vamp,” Caspian said. “Ground’s covered. You stay here and do what you do best. Charm the enemy stupid so they never feel the knife go in.”
I had a feeling his push to keep Nikolai home had less to do with the mission and more to do with their rivalry. Nikolai and I were more than friendly. Drakken and I were hostile on our best days. Swap the vampire for the dragon, and Caspian had no competition on the road.
“Who blends into shadows better than me?” Nikolai said. “You can see Drakken coming from five miles off. And the dragon would blow our cover in two seconds.”
“My dragon can be stealthier than you’ll ever be,” Drakken said, offended on his beast’s behalf. “How do you think he’s kept his hoard all these years?”
I bit back the urge to suggest he hand that hoard out to the poor. Seemed like a waste to let treasure just sit there, but neither he nor his dragon would take the suggestion kindly.
“This isn’t a battlefield, where brute force wins the day,” Nikolai pressed. “This is a quiet extraction. We go in, we come out with Max’s sister, and the casualty count stays at zero. Understood?”
I nodded, even though he wasn’t talking to me.
The vampire prince was speaking my language, and he got me better than Drakken ever would.
I hated casualties with everything in me.
I’d lost too many people already, and even knowing more losses were coming, I couldn’t stomach the thought of adding to the count.
“I won’t argue with taking Caspian,” Nikolai went on. “He’ll be a pain in my ass, but we need his nose. Nothing else.”
“Nothing else?” Caspian scowled at him. “I’m a powerful alpha. My fighting is top-shelf. I’m a ten across the board.”
Shit. I never should have said he was a ten. Now he wasn’t going to let it go, and he’d completely missed the point.
“Whatever.” Drakken shrugged. He hadn’t touched his food. I could’ve eaten it for him if he’d offered. “On any operation, I’m the first pick. Above even Aelindor. I choose my team, and people are grateful to be chosen.”
“Your arrogance has no end,” Nikolai said.
“Correction,” Caspian said. “On any operation, I’m the first pick. But I’ll give you second seat, Drakken.”
Drakken ignored them both and turned his alpha stare on me. Here we go again. I hadn’t buckled under that pressure when I was half-dead, and he thought it would work on me now, over dinner? His dragon rose under his skin to help him try, eyes sliding from cold gray to molten gold.
“Who wouldn’t want a dragon at her back?” he demanded, and the question was aimed squarely at me.
I’d just finished my roasted chicken and a roll of bread. Full, warm, and feeling invincible in the particular way a good meal makes you feel.
I smiled sweetly and let his alpha weight roll right off me. “I wouldn’t.”
Everyone stared. I resisted the urge to pat my stomach, which would’ve been deeply unladylike. If a man did it, nobody would blink.
I gave the heirs a small nod. “I’ll take Caspian and Nikolai, gentlemen.”
Nikolai smiled and raised his blood-laced whiskey in salute. He kept a glass on hand for the days between feedings.
Drakken’s eyes narrowed to slits, like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. A first-year cadet had turned down the mighty dragon general.
“You can’t be serious, Cadet Max.”
“I’ve never been more serious, General.”
“You’re holding a grudge against your superior officer,” he said. “Don’t think I can’t tell.”
I almost shouted for trying to kill me in the library? but ratting him out meant admitting I’d gotten caught with a smut book in the first place. So I just blinked at him, all innocence, an expression I’d borrowed from my six-and-a-half-year-old sister.
“This is bigger than you and me,” he ground out.
He must have wanted this mission badly. Aelindor had handed me the reins and made all three of them work for it, and Drakken had clearly never had to ask anyone’s permission for anything in his life. Which meant he had no idea how badly his pitch was landing.
“If you want this rescue to succeed,” he pressed, “set your personal feelings aside, cadet.”
“It’s not personal.” I kept my voice low and even. “Like you said, if this is going to work, I pick whoever’s best suited to get my sister out. Ego doesn’t get a seat at this table. Prince Nikolai can vanish into shadow and empty a man’s veins from across the room without laying a finger on him.”
“Bloodsucker,” Caspian muttered.
“And Prince Caspian is the finest tracker on this continent. I’ve seen what he can do with those death cards.
” I held Drakken’s stare. “You’re powerful, and you’re terrifying on a battlefield, Prince Drakken.
But this isn’t a battlefield. We don’t need a dragon breathing down our necks on a quiet job.
Best case, you crowd us with your attitude.
Worst case, you announce us to the entire palace before anyone even sees us.
” I took a breath, then dropped into my best impression of his battlefield bark.
“Bow before me, inferiors! The dragon has arrived! Kiss my bottom—the bottom of my boots!” I straightened, voice low again.
“And where does that leave us? A failed mission, General.”
Nikolai laughed so hard he wiped a tear from the corner of his crimson eye. “That’s exactly what he sounds like.”
Drakken’s eyes went from cold gray to molten gold, a thin curl of smoke escaping his nostrils. His dragon wasn’t amused.
I mimed ducking under the table. “I’m shaking. Please don’t eat me, dragon.”
Caspian burst out laughing. “Didn’t know my girl could be this funny.”
His girl. He’d said it right in front of the other heirs, and nobody so much as blinked. What was happening here? But he’d dropped his support for Drakken the second I opened my mouth. No point backing a losing argument.
“Comedian now too, cadet?” Drakken said. “And you think because you’ve got the wolf and the bloodsucker—”
“Enough, Drakken.” Aelindor’s voice cut clean through it. “Max gets a say in the mission to rescue her own sister. You should know by now that pushing her only makes her dig in harder. I’ve yet to meet anyone more stubborn under pressure.”
I blinked. Stubborn wasn’t really how I saw myself. I got along fine with most people. Just not with bullies, and I never picked fights for sport. Drakken didn’t grind on other cadets the way he ground on me. With me, he just didn’t seem to know how to stop.
“Give it up, man. She’s not interested.” Caspian clapped him on the back, trying to soften the blow. “Doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do, though. Put in some real effort next time. Aim for a four, at least.”
Drakken shoved him off. It didn’t dent the shifter’s mood at all. Caspian put his fists up, ready to keep going, and Drakken growled low in his chest. Watching him like this, easy and almost playful, you’d never guess how lethal the shifter prince was with an actual enemy in front of him.
“Not cool, man,” Caspian said, still grinning.
“That settles it, then.” Aelindor’s mouth curved, like Drakken’s outrage was the best part of his evening.
“Caspian and Nikolai will co-lead Operation Nightingale with Max. The night Xander arrives, Drakken and I will keep him occupied here at the Summit. That same night, the team moves into Houston and gets Missy out.” His gaze found mine.
“Don’t linger. Don’t be a hero. Go in, get her, come home. ”
To my surprise, neither Caspian nor Nikolai argued that I was too green to co-lead anything.
“I want to add Cadet Bryn and make it a team of eight,” I said.
Drakken’s frown deepened as he placed her. “The Forged girl. First-year. No field experience. Untested.” He stared at me. “You’re joking.”
“She’s my only friend. I want her with me.”
“We’re all your friends,” Caspian said, mock-wounded.
He was more than that, and we both knew it. But I wasn’t going to say so out loud.
I beamed at him. “Yeah, but you’re an heir. All three of you outrank me. Bryn’s at my level. I don’t want us drifting apart, so I want her on this.”
Bryn had begged to come, begged to help me get my sister back. I wasn’t about to leave behind the one person here who wanted nothing from me but my friendship.
“She won’t be dead weight,” I added. “She’s been training harder than anyone. We’ve still got a few days of drills left. Run her through them. If she doesn’t hit the mark, cross her off the list yourselves. But I’d bet good money she clears it.”
Caspian nodded along. He’d always had a soft spot for me, which made him the easiest of the heirs to talk into things. Not that I’d ever take advantage of that. Except during training. Repeatedly.
“We haven’t pinned down your sister’s exact location, but she’s somewhere in the palace,” Nikolai said.
“I’ll find her,” I said. “The Oracle will help me.”
The heirs all went still at the mention of the Oracle.
I lifted my wrist. Coldiron hummed inside the armguard, and the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.
“And so will my metal.”