I would hate my mate if I could. I want to blame him. I do blame him, but I know that it’s not all his fault that Ancalagon is gone. The probability that the hunters stumbled across my son, killed a herd of shifters and were prepared to transport a baby dragon while I was away for one night, is highly unlikely. So, I’m angry at myself for not realizing that I was being watched but I’m putting that blame unfairly on Ishir.
When he comes for me, I can’t be with him. The pain in my heart, the agony of knowing that those hunters have my son, makes me unable to listen to Ishir. And why would he want me anyway. I’m a dragon. I’m supposed to be the strongest of the supernaturals. I’m supposed to be the protector of the supernaturals and I can’t even protect my own son. What man or shifter would want a mate that can’t protect their own child?
No one, that's who.
So rather than wait for his verdict that I’m not good enough for him, I leave. Okay, I knocked him off the mountain first. I couldn’t handle his gentleness, his soft words. They only made me feel worse. But I need to express some of this grief before pulling myself together and going in search of my son again.
I know Avani and Merethyl are searching. I know that Kaylani is searching, and most likely Tana and Kenna are searching as well. I heard Ishir is searching and yet, with all of us out here, looking for my son, we still haven’t found him.
That gives me pause. Why haven’t we found him? I mean, we have the best hunters on the planet looking for my son, but we haven’t found him yet? Why?
We’re looking in the wrong places. We’re looking where the now dead Chief used to keep supernaturals. We should be looking somewhere else…but where?
I stop my lament, thinking of where you could hide a baby dragon. There are plenty of places, but if you’re not in the wild, it doesn’t mean you’re not underground. The Chief was successful because he hid in plain sight.
Avani and Merethyl told me about the time they killed the Chief. And they told me that he had a son who escaped. Ancalagon is a lot like his father, reminding me of that saying ‘like father, like son’. Maybe the Chief’s son is like him, hiding in plain sight, only not in the wild.
I turn my head, looking in the direction of the city. What if he is in the city, hiding in plain sight, my son in the bowels of that horrible place? He could be holding my son underground anywhere in the city, but if he is, I can find him. I know it.
With renewed vigor, I begin flying to the city. I know Tana has a penthouse there. I’ve never been, but I’ll recognize her scent and of course, Ishir’s scent, since he still lives there, too. If I get there and his scent is strong, I’ll move on. But if it’s faint, as I expect it will be, I’ll land, borrow some of Tana’s clothing and begin searching for my son in my human form.
I wait until it’s dark and then begin flying over top of the city. It doesn’t take me long to catch Ishir’s exotic scent and follow it to a dark penthouse. I should have known that Tana would be in the condominium in the tallest building in the city. And her place is on the top floor with a convenient patio to shift and land on.
I walk to the sliding glass door and find it open. Of course it is, this is how Tana and Kenna come home. I walk inside, taking a moment to look over the space where Ishir lives. I follow his scent to a room that makes me sway his scent is so strong. I want to crawl into his bed and roll around on his sheets, covering myself in his scent. But I can’t do that, I’m here for a reason. My son.
I step away from his room and move down the hallway to Tana’s room. I can smell Cedric’s spring rainstorm scent mixed with Tana’s campfire scent. I walk into the room and go to the closet. She and I are a similar size, so her clothes fit me well enough, however, my feet are smaller than hers. I go to Kenna’s room and find a pair of shoes that will work for me.
Because I can’t help myself, I find a black hoodie in Ishir’s closet and pull it over me, surrounding myself in his scent and calming my nerves immediately.
I dig around the apartment, finding a spare key. I make sure it works for the door and the elevator before heading downstairs. I walk out into the streets, my senses overwhelmed with the smells of exhaust, different types of food cooking and the loudness of everything around me, car horns honking, people yelling at each other, music blaring from multiple places. How do people live here?
I pick a direction and begin walking, trying to filter through the scents all around me and find the one of my son. His scent of upturned earth after a tornado, would stand out here where everything else smells like machines and sewage.
I walk up and down the streets, finding a stopping point in two directions and working my way out of the city from there. Hours later, I’ve found nothing. I return to Ishir’s building and begin walking the same grid pattern in the other direction. By now, there are very few people on the street. The shifters give me a wide berth, it’s the humans that don’t know what I am.
I’ve had to knock out a couple of them already. They approached me and thought I was an easy target. They learned too late how wrong they were. I didn’t kill them, but they’ll wake up with a nasty headache.
I’ve just about given up when I catch the scent. I instantly go on alert, my nose rising in the air, sniffing until I catch it again.
I turn, following my son’s scent. It continues to get stronger and I pick up my pace, staying alert to my surroundings. If my son is here, they probably have some sort of security.
My son’s scent leads me to what looks like an abandoned building on the outskirts of town. I don’t hear him, but that doesn’t mean anything. He could be sedated.
I carefully open the door, sliding inside the space quickly before quietly closing the door behind me. Maybe I should contact Avani and the others, but I’m not wasting another moment, letting these creatures hurt my son.
I’ve barely taken three steps into the warehouse space when the lights flicker on, lighting up the room. There in the center is a man, leaning against a desk with computer monitors lined up behind him.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the air dragon. Finally. I thought maybe you weren’t as intelligent as I’ve heard,” the man says.
“Where is my son?” I snarl, the wind whipping up in the space around us.
“He’s safe, for now. But that very much depends on you and what happens between us today,” he says, obviously enjoying this.
I throw a blast of wind at him, knocking him to the ground, the smirk on his face replaced with a scowl.
“Now, now, bitch. You want to be careful. I’m the only reason your son is still alive.”
“WHERE. IS. HE?” I snarl at him.
He stands, grabbing a remote and turning on the computer monitors. Instantly, I see Ancalagon, a muzzle on his face, thrashing against the restraints that are holding him to the ground.
“He’s not here, not any longer. I’m not stupid,” he says.
I take a step toward the monitors. “Let him go.”
“I don’t think so. Afterall, his father did kill mine,” the man says, making me turn to him.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Now THAT is the right question to be asking me. What I want is for you to work for me. In exchange, I’ll keep your son alive.”
“Why should I trust you?” I ask him.
“You shouldn’t. But I will tell you that your son is only alive because I choose for him to be. I’ve already implanted one of those explosives into his head. With a simple push of a button, I could kill him, and there’s nothing you could do about it.”
I look back at the monitors, seeing my son, my son who loves to fly, restrained on the ground.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask, knowing I’ll do anything for my son.
“I want you to take out the shifter population for me. I want them gone, all of them, but I have a list of the ones that I want taken out first. If you do that for me, your son lives. If you don’t, well, maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t.”
“How do I know you won’t kill him, anyway?” I ask.
“You don’t. But every week you will meet me here, give me an update on your progress, get your next assignment and then you can see your son on the monitors. Take it or leave it.”
I look at the monitor, watching as my son continues to thrash against his restraints, and I know I’ll do what he’s asking. I’ll go against everything in my blood, in my soul, to save my son. The dragons are meant to protect the shifters, it’s why they call Avani the Dark Protector. But for my son, I will sell my soul to this devil in the hopes that it will save Ancalagon.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good, I’ll see you in one week with your first assignment.”
After leaving the mountain that Zephyr threw me off of, I followed her for awhile, then, her lament stopped. I tried searching for her, but I couldn’t find her.I went back to searching for Ancalagon and finding the laboratory dragons. I’ve been searching everywhere, in constant contact with Avani and Cedric and none of us has a clue where they’ve taken him.In a group meeting, Kenna, Tana and Cedric's daughter, mentions that we might be looking in the wrong place and it makes sense. Ancalagon isn’t where we expect him to be, so we need to switch where and how we are looking for him.I head back to the city, back to the penthouse. As soon as I walk inside, I smell her scent of freshly fallen snow. Zephyr has been here. I follow her scent to my room, seeing that some of my clothes are missing. Then I follow it to Tana’s room, seeing that several more of Tana’s clothes are missing and some of Kenna’s shoes.I make note of the sizes that she’s taken from their rooms before going to showe
I think the owl had been a test. Oliver, that’s the guy’s name, wanted to see if I would actually do it. I did, I killed him with my bare hands, then I took a picture of his dead body, before racing off and vomiting on a mountain. The force of my dry heaves started an avalanche which thankfully covered what little I had vomited up.I send the picture to Oliver before deleting it from my phone. Then I stay on top of the mountain and begin a lament for the owl. He had been a kind shifter, and he had trusted me as all shifters will because I’m a dragon. I betrayed that trust and I hate myself for it. I can only hope that one of us can find Ancalagon quickly so I can stop this before I completely lose myself.The look on that owl’s face and his desperate “Why?” as I killed him, will haunt me the rest of my life.When I finish my lament, I shift back, waiting for instructions. It took me two weeks to finally be able to kill the owl and I haven’t seen my son in that amount of time. I have n
It’s been two months since Ancalagon went missing and I can’t find him anywhere. Of course, the one time I desperately want to find someone, I can’t find them. I know that Zephyr is hurting. My mate is hurting and I should be able to help her. This is what I do, after all, and I’m damn good at it. Or at least, I used to be. Now, when it’s most important to me, I find I’m incapable. Incapable of doing the work I’m usually so good at and incapable of taking away my mate’s pain.I’ve been working closely with Avani and Cedric and we’ve searched the city, even found places that had Ancalagon’s scent, but it was faint, as if Oliver is moving Ancalagon around so we can’t find him. It’s maddening because it means that he’s been planning this for a very long time and he’s more than a couple steps ahead of us.If that wasn’t bad enough, shifters have started to turn up dead. I have no idea if Oliver is responsible for the deaths of these shifters or not, but since Avani and I found the owl shi
I can’t get the smell of blood off of me, the blood of the innocents that I’ve killed. I scrub and scrub, but their blood is still on my hands. I hate it, and I hate myself.None of them, not one, worried about being in my presence. Why would they, dragons have always been the protectors of the shifters, the strongest and most fierce of us all. And yet, as much as I hate myself, as much as I know I’ll be tormented for the rest of my life, I would do it all again, and I know I will have to, in order to ensure my son stays alive.Oliver had finally let me see him. He looked drugged when I saw him, but at least he was breathing. In the short time that I got to see him, I could see the sores around his mouth where he’s been fighting against the muzzle, see the bruises and patches of spots where the scales have worn away or been ripped out from the restraints that are holding him down.Afterward, I came back to the penthouse. It’s become my central point. So far, I’ve been lucky and haven’
I watch my mate across the table from me. She’s holding herself together, but the cracks are starting to form. She’s falling apart.I’m not sure she realizes that she’s been creating gusts of wind when she has strong emotions. It makes it a lot easier to read her because outwardly, she’s not giving me anything. But she’s having a harder time controlling her element.I can imagine that the thought of Avani taking his pregnant mate to his cave of treasures hurts Zephyr in more ways than one. First, if he’s there, he’s not helping to find Ancalagon, which could feel like he's choosing that son over his son with Zephyr. But also, he’s protecting his mate and their child, when Zephyr can’t protect hers.I’ve been watching her push her food around on her plate, after the first bite that looked like she barely got it down, she hasn’t eaten anything. She’s struggling, not letting me in so I can help her, and I’ve had enough.I stand, her head whipping up to look at me as I move around the tab
I’m not sure I’ve ever broken down like I did with Ishir last night. And I know I’ve never let someone hold me, seeking them out to hold me while I cried. He thinks my sadness is due to my missing son, and most of it is. But the rest is about having to kill these shifters. Their pain and their cries are haunting my dreams. It seems that only Ishir can quiet them down, helping to bring me peace again. I had to leave early this morning, before Ishir woke up. I heard my phone ping with a text, and I knew who it was. Oliver. He gave me a new address to meet him at. I’m not sure what that means, but I have to assume that Ishir is closing in on him and he’s moving. It was news to me that he’s moving Ancalagon, and that Ishir has found a couple different places with his scent. I figured he’d brought him to the warehouse to get him in the city and then was housing him somewhere, although I’ve never been able to find out where. If he’s moving him, why doesn’t the video image of where they ha
The last time I was with Zephyr, I woke alone. Again. It’s not like I’m a heavy sleeper, but when the woman wants to slip away from me, she does. I had smelled the scent of magic when I walked into the penthouse that night. Magic and blood. Then, when she had been on the verge of falling apart, I needed to show her that she’s mine, that I don’t care how damaged she thinks she is. I know from being around Tana and Avani that nothing is more important to a dragon than being accepted and claimed by their rider. I’m not technically her rider, but I am her mate, and so I had done what I could do to show her that she’s mine, no matter what. When I had stripped her down, I’d seen the burn marks, the bruises. I didn’t say anything to her and I didn’t say anything to Avani when we found the dead witch and warlock beheaded the next day, but I’m pretty sure I’ve found my assassin. It’s my mate. I know I should have told Avani and Cedric, but I can’t betray Zephyr like that. I need to find out
“Why?” “What did I do?” “How can you do this?” The voices of the ones I’ve killed continue to haunt me. They are always with me now, tormenting me. Somedays, like today, I don’t even realize that I’ve killed again until they are in my head and I know they are gone. I should call myself the soul collector. Every one of them, going back to the owl are here, in my head, screaming and crying and asking me questions I don’t have a good enough answer for. I tried, for the longest time, to tell them it was to save my son, to save Ancalagon. I needed to help him, I needed to save him. “How long ago was that?” “You killed me months ago.” “I’m dead and he’s still a prisoner.” “Is he even alive anymore?” “STOP IT!” I scream at them, covering my ears with my hands. He has to be alive, he has to be. If I did this, if I killed these innocents and he’s dead…. “You’re cruel.” “You’re a horrible person.” “A horrible dragon.” “You’re wicked, evil.” “You’re no better than Oliver.” “I forg