The Dragon's Heart (Dragon Lore) (25 page)

Because that reasoning didn’t make a damn bit of sense to him, he ground his teeth together to stop the bellow trying to escape. “How did you know Cage wouldn’t kill him?”

“I didn’t.” She winced and brought her hand up to her head. “I meant to stop the fight before it happened, only it didn’t work that way. What happened to me?”

“Your wrist or your head?”

She dropped her gaze to her wrist. As soon as she saw the gauze, she immediately shoved her arm behind her back. The movement was so ridiculous, he would have snorted if he wasn’t so close to violence. Who the hell did she think had wrapped it in the first place? She peeked up at him. “I cut myself, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” he snapped through gritted teeth.

Bain cleared his throat from behind Daniel. “It was smart to tuck it into your sleeve, but you defeat the purpose if you slice your own wrist before you can gut the other guy. You’re lucky you didn’t hit an artery.”

His sweet little mate glared over his shoulder at Bain. “It wasn’t like I had time to plan out a strategy. I just grabbed a knife and hid it.”

As soon as he was capable of talking in more than one-word sentences, he would forbid her from doing anything dangerous ever again. Bain was right, her reasoning was sound, but she sure as fuck didn’t have the experience with blades as sharp as his to pull something like that off without practice.

He dragged both hands through his hair before he reached out and tangled his fingers with hers, startling her into stillness. The cave was full of dragons, and Cage, and because he had no fucking idea how to say what was storming through him, he let her see the madness in his eyes. Hearing her scream for him, seeing her caught between Dallas and Cage as they’d used the air above her as a battle ground…

He’d thought he’d known fear before, but he hadn’t known shit. Helpless terror had gripped him when he hadn’t been sure he’d get to her in time. His throat closed up now as his body began to shake. Closing his eyes, he dragged in a harsh breath, then dropped his head against hers. “Never do that to me again, woman.”

21

“Are we done?” Cage asked Daniel as he pushed off against the wall. The dragons came to attention, tracking Adrian’s every move as he leaned his hands against the back of the couch. He met Daniel’s gaze head on. “If you two are done with the lovey-dovey shit, I didn’t come here for my health.”

“What are you doing here?” Luca asked, his voice tight. He was sprawled in the room’s only chair. Though he looked bored, the tension radiating from him was all kinds of deadly. Daniel was already on edge, and that worried Shelby. She felt like she was in the middle of a powder keg with a lit fuse. “Where’s Seren?”

Cage crossed his arms over his chest, one dark brow winging up over dark green eyes, as if letting them all know he didn’t have to explain shit.

“The dragon safe house.” Cage finally shrugged. “She’s too pregnant to shift and fly, and she knew she’d only slow me down on foot.” A sneer lifted the scarred side of his face. “I left her with Gabriel. She said he wouldn’t get sucked in by her hormonal mood swings, and I needed to get her out of the city.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled something out, tossing it onto the coffee table next to Daniel. “I found something I thought you’d want to see firsthand.” He ran a hand over his shaved head. “It’s not pretty.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.” Dallas swung his head around. “Explain to me again why we’re accepting help from a fucking Hunter? How do we know he’s not setting us up?”

A slow, deadly smile curved Cage’s mouth, and his rough voice was mocking. “How’s the leg there, cowboy?”

Shelby winced at Cage’s reminder she’d hurt Dallas, but Dallas…

He surged to his feet and was in Adrian’s face a second later, his bleeding leg forgotten. Fury pulsed around him.

A slow grin spread over Cage’s face as he straightened, his dark green eyes going flat. “You want to go, flyboy? Let’s go.”

Shelby’s head went woozy as she swung her shaken gaze to Daniel’s, sure if those two came to blows, not even the monstrous cave they were in would survive the damage, but Daniel was already on his feet.

He moved between them, shoving the men apart. He rounded on Dallas. “Stitch your leg up, goddamn it, before Shelby passes out again.” He waited a beat to make sure Dallas backed down, then dragged a hand down his face. He turned his attention back to Cage. “Alright. I’m listening.”

Adrian crossed his arms over his chest as he shot a quick glance at Shelby. The puckered skin of his scar twitched once before he seemed to control it. He looked back at Daniel. “You were right. This whole thing is fucked eleven ways to Sunday. I did some checking after you left the hospital. I eventually ended up in the evidence room at the police station. With Shelby being so high profile and the media breathing down their necks, they were more methodical than I’d expected. They just didn’t know what they had.”

Cage remained silent, the cave thick with the pressure of anticipation. His lip lifted in a snarl as he widened his stance, lowering his arms and fisting his hands at his sides. “I found him.” He jerked his head at the object still resting on the coffee table. “That’s everything I have on him.”

Daniel didn’t move to pick it up. “What aren’t you telling me?”

For a moment, Shelby saw a storm raging in the giant’s dark green eyes, as if Adrian waged war somewhere deep inside himself. Finally, he cursed under his breath and grabbed the envelope. After he ripped it open, he pulled something out, tossing an intricate, ancient medallion face-up on the coffee table. “Look familiar?”

“Bullshit.” Luca sat up straighter. “Bull-fucking-shit.”

Cage shrugged as he met Luca’s temper head on. “I don’t like it any more than you do. It’s why I’m here.”

Shelby’s hand shook as she reached out and wrapped her fingers around the medallion. “Daniel.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, the whole of his attention on Adrian. “You’re saying whoever is after me and Shelby is protected by Alexi?” He stood, hauling her up with him, only to shove her behind his back. It blocked her from every other male in the room. “Why the
fuck
would Alexi Dragan use a goddamn Hunter…” his voice trailed off, before he cursed again. “If a Hunter kills the dragon king’s mate,
my
mate, I die with her. If I don’t bow to him, he’ll take my people another way.”

“Daniel.” She wasn’t sure how she managed to get his name out through the bile rising in her throat. She poked him in the back, but when he continued to ignore her, she finally raised her voice. “I’ve seen that before.”

The sheer insanity in Daniel’s eyes actually scared her more than anything else that had happened. “You’ve what?”

It took everything she had not to cover her ears when he roared, but it was nothing compared to the vicious pain in her chest. “In my manager’s–my dad’s–office.”

* * * *

Rage hit Daniel so fast it nearly blinded him. That bastard! Skinning him alive wasn’t going to be good enough. Maybe if he begged a healer to help, they could find a way to keep the asshole alive while Daniel ripped out his still beating heart and fed it to him.

He moved quickly, grabbing Luca by the throat before anyone could react. He threw him to the ground and kneeled on his chest, the tip of his dagger pressed at the sensitive spot beneath the chin. “You’re the psychopath’s son. What the hell could he possibly gain from this? Why me?
Ryuu
, why Shelby? Why would her father have one of Alexi’s medallions?”

Luca’s jaw ticked. For the first time in decades, the calm facade he projected slipped. In his eyes was the madness he kept at bay, the madness passed down from his father. The insanity they’d all hoped they’d never see.

He shrugged, his face and voice devoid of any emotion. “Cage and Seren.”

A low, inhuman sound tore from Adrian’s chest, the volatile tension in the room spiking with it. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Luca met Daniel’s eyes for a moment, before shifting to look up at Cage. “You and my sister are the first mating between the two species since the Hunters were created to battle dragons. The battle lines in a war as old as time have now blurred. Seren carries the first child born of the two races.” He shifted into a sitting position when Daniel finally withdrew the dagger. He spread his hands, palms out, before shrugging. “The Dragan underworld thrives on our war. With Seren and Cage mated, and peace on the horizon for all of us, Alexi is desperate. He would do anything to refuel that war, because without war, people are less desperate. Less desperation means less crime, which equals less money for him.”

Daniel moved back to Shelby, though he was careful not to touch her. His fury was still too close to the surface. “What the fuck does this have to do with me, let alone a Hunter shooting Shelby?”

Luca shrugged, his gaze flicking to Cage. “Do you want to answer that?”

“I pissed off a lot of Hunters when I took control last year. There were some who had gotten too trigger-happy, and were killing off dragons for sport. There were also some that were nothing more than assassins. It’s possible that whoever wanted her dead found a Hunter willing to do it for the right price.” He ran a hand over his shaved head. “Like Luca said, my mating only makes things worse.”

The pounding in Daniel’s head grew worse. “You’re saying one of your Hunters hates you enough that he’d be willing to get into bed with Alexi?”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Adrian said, “but make no mistake. While we are struggling for peace between us, there is still a war going on. There are Hunters who resent my control, who were happy functioning under no laws. They are more than willing to take me out to do it, even if it means working with Alexi.”

Luca sighed, his face troubled. “Alexi has always craved power. It’s never enough for him. Right now, we’re too close to peace, and he’ll do anything to disrupt it. He wants your fealty, and he’ll kill Shelby to get it.”

No one made a sound as the reality of what Luca said settled in the room like a live entity. One wrong move could have him blowing apart at the seams.

He could feel Shelby trembling behind him. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “How would killing me reinforce the hatred between your species?”

“Me.”

She turned slowly to look up at him, her face frozen in fear. “How?”

“If the Hunter had succeeded in killing us that night, even if the human world didn’t know who I was, our people would have. Luca, Dallas, Broderick, Bain…all the dragons in the area would have hunted down the one responsible and taken revenge.”

“We would have retaliated,” Cage murmured. “Seren and I would have been in the middle, forced to choose sides against each other in a war that doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“When does war ever make sense?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She wrapped her arms around herself. She was pale, her eyes too bright in her face. Daniel knew, with heartbreaking clarity just how much they were putting on her slight shoulders. This could break her. She’d been thrust into the middle of a war she didn’t understand, and her father and sister were mixed up in it somehow. For the first time since she’d found out what Daniel really was, he saw the faint edges of panic flash in the depths of her eyes.

Cage leaned back against the cave wall. “War never makes sense. You’re right. We were created by the goddess Gwendolyn when the first of her beloved race of dragons went bad. We were given immortality, along with magic and the superior strength needed to keep humans safe from the threat the dragons had become. Only the Hunters have turned out to be just as corruptible and susceptible to power as the dragons we hunt. So the war rages on as both sides avenge deaths, recent and ancient.”

Daniel turned to Cage, his voice a furious snap. “Enough. She doesn’t need to hear any more of this shit.”

She rounded on him, her eyes flashing with temper. “I’m not a damsel in distress, so stop waiting for me to break.” She took in a huge breath, and squared her shoulders. “What happens now?”

“Shel–” He lifted a hand to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. His face closed off, as much to protect her from his emotions as it was to keep his rage at bay. “We hide. If Alexi has one Hunter after us, he could have more. Going back into your world just isn’t an option right now, not until we can neutralize the threat.”

To his surprise, she didn’t get angry. The scowl he’d been expecting never appeared. “Alright.” She nodded once as she just stepped in closer to him, one golden brow quirked. She was terrified, but his sweet little hellion of a mate was holding. “What’s the plan?”