Page 5

EMME

T here were too many unfinished parts of my life for it all to end now.

Too many unknowns.

Too many questions.

They kept running over and over in my mind, holding me in a near catatonic state.

Like, I’d never asked Kellan why he read romances, or when he figured out he loved being surrounded by plants.

I had no idea who taught Finley to tinker with cars, or if he played hockey when he was younger, and if so, how he managed to get his horrible family to support a relatively expensive sport.

I didn’t have a clue what Hunter’s first invention was, or how he’d created a billion-dollar company under the control of his cruel, ruthless father.

Slade was as much a mystery to me today as he ever had been, and I had so many questions for the dragon: When did he learn to hack?

How did it feel to fly? Was there fire burning in his dragon’s gut moments before it spewed from his mouth? What were his dragon’s thoughts like?

For many years I’d had no one in my life. No one to be curious about or ask questions, and then for a brief moment I’d had what felt like everything , before it was cruelly taken from me.

I’d been stolen from my pack and forced into the arms of my mother’s murderers.

Bonded against my will.

Since then, my mind remained locked down in a state of shock with the world moving around me, but I couldn’t open my eyes.

I couldn’t deal with what had happened in any way other than to retreat into myself completely.

I felt the presence of the dragon in the new bite, a ragged, unstable connection.

Whatever he’d tried to do, it hadn’t worked as well as they hoped.

But it was there. It was a bond . We were joined forever through this tenuous connection.

In my broken state, no one touched me, and I was left with the tingling bite and the reminder that life would never be the same again. A true quintet couldn’t form when one of the parties was bonded outside the pack. A quintet was five, and I’d brought in a sixth.

A scary, evil dragon who looked like Slade, but even at his coldest, cruelest moments, Slade would never have forced me into this bond.

“She needs to eat and drink fluids. We need her at full strength and health, or she’ll be less than useless to us.”

The slivers of my brain not locked down recognized the voice—Hunter’s father. No doubt the alpha had a name, but I had no idea what it was. He’d forever be the devil in my eyes, the evilest shifter in existence, who’d been influencing my life, in the most negative ways , since before I was born.

I might not know everything, but I knew of his omega experiments, which included pushing my mother all the way to her suicidal death. This alpha was the reason I’d had to wade through darkness and pain for most of my life. I was sure of it.

“The bitch won’t starve herself. She has other mates to worry about.”

Blaine fucking Rogers. The entitled alpha of my mom’s former pack, and Hunter’s alleged brother. Apparently, he was still here as well, which had me cringing, seething, and mentally screaming.

“It’s been a fucking week?—”

Hunter’s sperm donor was cut off by a low rumbling growl. The first sound the dragon shifter had made in a week? I caught another hint of his maple sweet scent, and I refused to comprehend what that meant.

“The dragon wants us to leave,” Blaine scoffed. “If you kill her, dragon, I’ll be unhappy. Don’t make me unhappy—you know that never ends well. Just get her to eat and drink.”

The dragon’s response was another guttural rumble, and I almost sighed in relief when the heavy, malicious essence of Hunter’s father and brother left the room.

I had no idea where I was being held now.

They’d moved me multiple times in the first few days, and I’d tried to keep up with where we were, but eventually I’d lost myself to the darkness. And here I’d stayed.

Now, though, I was alone with an unhinged shifter, and while he probably wouldn’t kill me due to our bond, there was nothing to stop him from hurting me badly.

I’d been fighting against my own destruction for so long that the very thought should have me springing to my feet and battling with everything left inside me.

But my wolf never stirred. She hadn’t stirred in days.

I could only assume the forced bonding and distance from my pack had sent her into a depressed hibernation. Where is our fight or flight? I demanded, but my weak question was ignored.

The wolf wasn’t going to help me here, which meant I had to use other strengths to keep myself safe.

Open your eyes, Emme. Open your fucking eyes.

Rough hands lifted me from where I’d curled in on myself, the hard floor my current companion. I was surprised when he placed me on a bed, the sheets smooth but slightly musty, as if no one had been in here for quite some time.

When the dragon dragged a thick blanket over me, a tiny sliver of the tension that had been holding my muscles in a cramped position for hours eased.

Painful tingles erupted through my limbs, and my neck ached from more than the new, forced mark.

My bites from Hunter and Kellan were throbbing too.

The physical distance between us was hurting our beasts, and I would continue to wither away in their absence.

We hadn’t been bonded long enough to withstand the separation, as our beasts screamed out for the connection.

Although my version of screaming appeared to be fading into an abyss.

I felt them out there, but the tethers that bound us were too strained to ease my pain.

As the pressure built in my head, it grew harder to fight the agony. My parched lips parted, cracking on the edges, and I was about to scream when I felt the gentlest tug against my scalp. It took me a few seconds… maybe even an entire minute, to figure out what was happening.

The dragon was brushing my hair.

His touch was hesitant at first, and a little heavy-handed as he tried to pull through my tangled mane, but eventually he figured it out.

He settled into a soothing, rhythmic motion that left my scalp tingling, and with each stroke of the brush, my body relaxed deeper into the bed.

The ice in my limbs didn’t abate, but the relentless screams in my head eased as I focused on the feeling of him and the brush.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever had my hair brushed before.

From what I remembered, when I was young Mom had kept my hair shorn close to my head, and then when I was old enough to care for it myself, I was always the one to brush it. Always.

The heat of the dragon burned into my skin, even though no parts of us touched. He exuded even more heat than Slade, and I wondered if that meant anything. Or was the fire burning in their essence an individual dragon trait?

With each stroke through my now smooth hair, he brought my consciousness closer to the surface, until a raspy sound emerged from my throat.

He paused, and left my side for a moment.

I tensed when he returned, waiting for what he would do next, flinching when a few drops of water landed on my lips.

My thirst roared to life, and I greedily licked them up, my stomach cramped and aching.

He continued to sprinkle the water until my mouth was no longer parched.

He started brushing my hair again, and it was the oddest sensation to feel so relaxed and calm in the face of such danger. “What’s your name?” The question slipped out as a rusty scrape—those few drops of water weren’t enough after a week without fluids.

His movement stilled, leaving the brush against the nape of my neck. When he didn’t answer, I wondered if he could talk—I couldn’t recall hearing him utter a word in my presence. Was it possible there was a shifter out there less talkative than Slade?

Impressive.

The brush moved again, sending my eyes fluttering until they almost opened.

“ He calls me dragon, it , or creature.”

His voice was a low rasp, and weirdly, he had a similar accent to Slade’s. Another dragon trait? It took me a second to move past the fact that he’d answered to focus on what he’d said in that answer. Dragon, it, or creature.

As much as I wished it wouldn’t, my heart hurt at the significance of what he’d just said. That bastard of an alpha had never given him a name. Debased him until he understood that he was nothing more than a tool to be used.

The part of me that heavily blamed the dragon shifter for his part in raping me of my free will and mate bond eased a fraction with this knowledge.

I’d heard humans say that when a dog bit someone, it was, in a lot of cases, the owner’s fault—not the animal’s.

Abuse and lack of training could turn any animal into a savage.

Was that what had happened here?

Slade at least always had Hunter, along with a fucking name and identity. This shifter, it appeared, had had nothing and no one. Hidden away from society and used as a weapon.

It was this thought that allowed me to finally force my eyes open, the darkness releasing its hold. Instinct had me reaching over my shoulder and grasping his hand.

He stopped moving as I weakly gripped him, the brush once again motionless against my scalp. There was no other reaction from him except for the fire burning under his skin, scorching into my palm.

Tension wrapped around us both, and when he started to rumble, I found a sense of self-preservation and released my hold. In the same second, I scooted away, spinning on the bed, more present in my own body than I had been in days.

The dragon sat on a chair beside the bed, his onyx eyes locked on me as if there was nothing else in the room. We were in a bedroom, dimly lit, and there was a chill in the air now that I’d moved from his natural heat. Even as I backed away, my gaze remained drawn to him in a way I couldn’t fight.

Goddess, he looked so much like Slade—a harder, darker version.

“You need to let me go,” I whispered.

His cold expression didn’t ease. If anything, those granite-like features grew hard enough to give diamonds a run for strength in molecular structure. His focus flicked down for a beat, to the bite he’d left on my shoulder, right beside Hunter’s mark.

“Mine,” he rasped, sending tingles down my spine and leaving goosebumps all over my skin.

He didn’t say that in the same way Hunter did.

My entitled alpha wasn’t shy about his claim over me either, but he made it clear that while I was his, he was also mine. A mutual bond.

This dragon believed me to be his possession, and I wondered if that was the only sort of claiming and love he’d witnessed in his life.

It reminded me again of Slade telling me I’m a dragon, Snow.

I ferociously guard what is mine, and right now, you are my possession.

I own you. I watch over you. There’s no part of you that is kept from any part of me.

The main difference though, was that Slade’s actions didn’t fully back his words.

While he wasn’t the most outwardly caring and demonstrative of shifters, he protected me and respected my wishes not to bond.

He’d promised to teach me to defend myself, helped with my reading, and taken part in a fucking prank war.

He’d shown that I was more than a possession to him, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.

This dragon had done nothing of the sort.

There was not one playful bone in his body, and if Slade thought himself a monster, the shifter before me could quite possibly be one.

My gaze fell on the brush in his hand, and I ignored that memory, refusing to soften toward him because of one gentle touch. I couldn’t forget what he’d done and why I was in this position.

The dragon’s gaze was unwavering. The only flaws on him were a jagged scar that spanned from his left ear to the corner of his lip, and the bite I’d been forced to leave on his throat.

With omega magic controlling my actions, I hadn’t been able to choose where I bit him.

My claim had landed on the left side of his throat, just under his scar and ear.

If anything, these “flaws” only added to his dangerously attractive appeal. It was unfortunate that he was a literal weapon of destruction for an evil alpha, and the reason I would never have a future with my pack. Not as a completed quintet anyway.