Page 10

Harmony wasn’t sure how long she’d been left alone in the unremarkable room once Agents Jack and Ass had finally left, but it felt like eternity. Neither prick had wanted to accept that she wasn’t being somehow brainwashed or intimidated into putting on an act in front of Zeno. They’d insisted she was safe in the new space, safe to speak openly and honestly, so she’d firmly told them they were the real kidnappers and she wanted to be taken back. That wasn’t what they’d wanted to hear, apparently. So they’d declared that she needed “a moment to breathe” and left her to herself, in a locked room she was somehow not supposed to see as a cage.

Left alone, Harmony had plenty of time to reflect and take stock. Her foot throbbed in a perfect example of terrible irony, an underscore to everything that had gone wrong that morning. She hadn’t even made it through the parking garage barefoot—granted, she’d been struggling her best—without stepping on something hurting her foot. For which she had been handed a wad of tissues to hold over the wound while she was driven away.

Her first thought when she’d finally processed the pain was that Zeno would be so mad. He’d gone to such trouble to protect her feet, and she’d left her new boots in the bedroom.

Her second thought was no coherent thought at all. Just a vivid, breath-stealing memory of the moment she’d watched Zeno’s back arch and his eyes roll back in his head. The moment she’d seen him drop to the ground with barely a sound. He’d been facing her. He’d been distracted by her. Neither of them had seen whatever had hit him coming, and it was her fault. Her fault he’d been hurt. Her fault he’d been left unconscious, unsupervised, on the floor of his own home.

Her throat threatened to close just thinking about it. She was no fighter. She’d done her best to resist when Jack and Ass had grabbed hold of her, declaring she was coming with them for “her own good,” but it hadn’t made a difference. She might have bruised one. They’d bruised her worse. Not that she cared. She was much more worried about Zeno, who could still for all she knew be lying on his own floor and struggling to breathe. Or not breathing at all.

If she made it out of this alive, she was finding a lawyer and suing the ever-loving crap out of this so-called government agency. Even if she spent the rest of her life paying that lawyer off.

The door at the far side of the room finally swung open, startling her into focus, and Harmony jerked back too forcefully. Her still-sore foot dragged across the cold, hard surface of the floor. She hoped the unfamiliar, older male stepping into the room mistook her sharp gasp as anything other than a sign of pain. Pain was weakness to assholes like them.

He didn’t say a word as he pushed the door shut, never taking his eyes from her. He looked her over as if studying her, his expression impassive, and only when he was done did he move forward to pull out the chair across from her. He stayed silent as he settled his sturdy, but not overly broad frame into the seat. So, Harmony took the opportunity to study him, too. The man looked to be at least in his fifties, had a hard face and hair that was as gray as it was brown. He was either already displeased or had a mean disposition, and with that being all she could read about him, her nerves only spiked higher.

But mean or not, she had to hold out. She had to make it through whatever the hell this was. So she curled her arms around herself as best she could, letting her old bruise show and doing her best to make sure the new, still tender scrape on her opposite arm also showed. She didn’t think that one had bled, but it had hurt almost enough to distract from her foot.

“You made quite a scene, Miss Lace.” He definitely sounded displeased. And there was something distantly familiar in his voice.

Harmony gave him her best glare. “Most people do when they’re being kidnapped.”

His brow twitched. “You’re not kidnapped.”

“Really? Then why the heck was I locked in here? Why was I dragged out of the place I wanted to be?” She pulled her arm forward to point at the scrape she herself could only half see. “Why were they so rough with me I have literal scrapes and bruises, and a freaking hole in my foot that no one’s bothered to even ask about since I got here?”

His gaze lingered on the scrape. “I will talk to them about the way they handled you,” he said, as if he were capitulating with a child, “but you were brought here—”

She smacked her palms on the table. “Against. My. Will.” She’d have stood up if her foot didn’t hurt and her heart wasn’t racing so fast she was worried the movement would make her faint. “And conveniently, now I’m indecently dressed, lacking shoes, and too injured and ill-equipped to walk back to where I want to be. None of which gives you the right to keep me.”

His scowl somehow deepened. “Are you done? I’m too busy for a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum. So if you don’t want to be here, delaying this conversation won’t help.”

Rage licked through her and this time Harmony did push to her feet. “Your people hurt my dragon!” She screamed the words without even meaning to, the truth and fear tearing from her. “I have every right to be hysterical right now, you ass! I’m bleeding and bruised and vulnerable, and if my mate knew about this he would burn your whole building to the ground!” She sucked in a breath, unable to stop the tears even as her voice lowered and began to shake. “But you don’t care about that. You don’t care about any of the things you claim to. So, what, are you going to ship me off to be raped and beaten?” She dropped back into her seat, suddenly weak. “Or are you just here to kill me?”

She hadn’t realized, in her blinding tirade, that the man’s mask had finally cracked. She didn’t realize it until he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose in clear exasperation. “Your mate.” He pushed out a sigh as if he were overburdened. “Goddammit, Darkhan, just be straight for once,” he said quieter, as if muttering to himself.

Harmony blinked.

The man straightened, arm lowering, and aimed his frown again at her. “He told you you’re his mate?”

“Yes.” She swallowed a lump of emotion in her throat. “And your people left him for dead.”

“He was stunned, not decapitated,” the man said with a low grunt. “He’s probably already awake by now.” He sighed again. “Though that means the other part of what you said would be true. Fuck.” He braced his hands on the table as if he were going to stand but didn’t move, and after another moment, let his arms fall. “Harmony, I’m going to ask you something that will upset you. For the sake of conversation, pretend I’m ignorant and this is your golden opportunity.”

She frowned but slowly inclined her head. It wasn’t like she had a lot of options.

The man leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. “Muller and Ryland told me what you said about the neighborhood where your family lives. I need to know if you were exaggerating or fabricating any portion of that story.”

Harmony bit her lips as the urge to yell at him rose in her chest again. Yelling wasn’t getting her anywhere anyway, and she didn’t generally enjoy it. She’d just never been so angry. So distressed. It needed to come out. But she pushed the feeling down as best she could and finally said, “I oversimplified. But you don’t really strike me as the caring stranger type, and frankly, I haven’t been given any reason to tear open my own psychological wounds. Besides, it’s not like that Shifter Relations thing is anything more than a scare tactic for the well-behaved ones like Zeno, right?”

It was the last thing she said that seemed to reach him. The man who hadn’t introduced himself frowned, again, but this frown was deeper. Darker. There was something angry in it that Harmony couldn’t place. Something that felt genuine. “No,” he said, “it’s supposed to be exactly the opposite.” This time he did shove to his feet, the chair scraping behind him. “I knew something was sideways when I heard the report, but Muller and Ryland were already en route. That isn’t justification for letting it get this far. You have my—”

Muffled shouting interrupted him, drawing both their attention to the door seconds before it crashed open so hard it stuck in the wall. The shouting continued, but Harmony only heard it for another second.

Her heart jump-started in her chest as she drank in the ludicrous but entirely welcomed sight of her dragon lover standing just inside the doorway. Nude. Furious. And holding both her parents like sacks of potatoes under his arms.

A stupid smile split her face and tears of relief burned her eyes before she’d even found her voice.

“Darkhan, what the hell are you doing?” the other man in the room demanded, sounding more shocked than angry.

Zeno turned a hard glare on the man and unceremoniously deposited Harmony’s unconscious mother onto the table. There were no obvious wounds on her, though her hair was a wild mess, but she was obviously out. He promptly swung her groaning father around and dropped him to the floor at the government man’s feet. “ Now I am guilty of plucking humans off the ground and absconding with them.” His nostrils flared and his chest expanded with a deep breath.

Harmony shook as she finally pushed to her feet. “Zeno…” She couldn’t even see a burn mark on his skin. Was it stupid that she’d looked for one?

The image of him crumbling to the floor flashed once again through her mind and she decided it wasn’t. Just as she knew she didn’t care about the discomfort in her foot or their audience when she all but threw herself forward. “Zeno!”

Her foot never made another moment of contact with the floor. In a heartbeat, Harmony found herself swept up in Zeno’s strong embrace, one of his hands threaded through her hair at the back of her head, and the other arm tucked beneath her butt for support. He held her tight, his head bent so he could drag his nose beside her ear and down the line of her neck. And she realized she didn’t even know what to say first. So, she curled her arms around his shoulders and let herself breathe him in.

“Forgive me, Little Dove,” Zeno murmured against her skin. “If I had acted sooner, you wouldn’t be hurting now. I am sorry.”

Harmony pushed down her overemotional tears and bumped her head lightly into his in lieu of pulling away. “I’ve been so worried about you…”

Distinct throat-clearing suddenly reminded her they weren’t alone, or really in a place to be having a personal conversation. No matter how comfortable she felt in Zeno’s arms.

Zeno adjusted his stance, not relaxing his grip or setting her down. “Your men caused injury to my mate,” he said in a low, dangerous tone, “and you left her to sit here and bleed. I thought better of you than that, Scott.”

Scott? Harmony’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. The man she’d been speaking to, sort of, when Zeno had burst in was the man who’d called minutes before their day had gone sideways?

She couldn’t see him anymore, but she recognized the sound of Scott’s sigh. “I had been told the wound was superficial. Unlike you, I don’t have super-senses, I had no way to know she was still bleeding.” His tone shifted as he spoke. “I recognize that’s an issue, Darkhan, but it could have been avoided if you’d just told someone who she is to you. What am I supposed to do with this?” Harmony couldn’t see him, but she pictured the grumpy-faced man gesturing to her almost-silent parents as his words sharpened.

“Arrest them,” Zeno said. “Fine them. Fucking chase them out of the city with pitchforks for all I care. They’re the ones who reported Harmony as abducted and we both know it—just as we both know she wasn’t . I believe filing false reports is a crime in your legal system.”

“You want them punished my way?” Scott’s question was cautious.

Zeno’s thumb rubbed almost absently over Harmony’s scalp. “They are my mate’s blood. I would prefer not to kill them with my own hand.”

Harmony felt her throat constrict and twisted her hands in the back of Zeno’s hair. She had a lot of issues with her parents. At this point, she questioned whether she even truly loved them. She certainly didn’t trust them. But wanting them dead? No. That would only make the loss and damage of her childhood worse if she ended up being the reason they died.

Her father made a sound like he might finally be regaining his senses.

Something metallic clinked faintly in the air. “There’s still the matter of that gang she mentioned,” Scott said. The metallic sound happened again, in conjunction with the rustling of fabric, as it clicked and rattled.

Harmony’s father immediately shouted in protest. “Hey! What—”

“I’ll get to you in a minute, Mr. Lace,” Scott said. There was some more rustling, something like shuffled steps, and the sound of a body settling heavily into a chair.

“You can’t—Linda! What the hell is going on?” The briefest of pauses. “Harmony?”

Harmony pressed her forehead into the crook of Zeno’s neck. She’d never heard her usually almost passive father so riled, and it gave her no sense of peace or justice. The entire situation just made her want to be sick.

Zeno’s hand lowered to her nape and he said, “My vendetta with that gang is settled. Yours, I believe, has only just begun. If you find yourself in need of information from Harmony, I expect you to call ahead and ask politely.”

Her father called for her mother again, the metallic sound clinking in time to another rustling of fabric. He didn’t seem able to focus long enough to follow the scene from his perspective.

Scott spoke up again. “If she has anything to say to them, now would be the best time.”

Zeno gave her neck a gentle squeeze.

Harmony swallowed. “This is their fault,” she whispered, her words feeling too raw. She thought to say she had no words left for them, but before she could, something new occurred to her. So, she drew a breath and lifted her head, forcing herself to turn it enough to see a portion of the room.

She saw her mother, still slumped unconscious on the table, legs dangling off the side. And she saw her father, awake and wide-eyed but somehow not looking overly alert, sitting in the chair Scott had previously occupied. Her father’s arms were behind his back in a way he never sat normally, pitching his body slightly forward … as if he were handcuffed.

Harmony settled her gaze on her father, for what good it would do. “I’ve decided to make my own choices from now on.”

Her father’s mouth opened. “But—”

“Goodbye.” She turned her head away, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing the tear that slipped down her cheek anyway.

Zeno pressed her head gently back into the groove of his throat. “You and I will talk another time,” he said, she assumed to Scott.

Scott made a sound like a pained sigh. “Nothing about you leaving the way you came in is good for any of us. Let me have someone drive you, or wait in another room until Roland can get here.”

This time it was Zeno who made a displeased sound.

Harmony’s mouth opened before she could stop herself, though she at least kept her voice soft. “You’re naked.” He seemed to go still and her runaway mouth continued. “Like, all-the-way naked, you hypocrite.”

The hand locked around her thigh gave a squeeze. “A ride home, then. From a driver not attracted to the male form. My Little Dove has decided not to share.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Something like stomping preceded Scott’s voice shouting away from them. “I need someone with muscle, a first-aid kit, and a goddamn sheet!”

Harmony tried to squirm, at least enough to see the room, but Zeno lowered a hand to her shoulders and held her in place.

“Patience, Little Dove.”

All she could do was push out a breath, listen to the increased sounds of movement, and wait. At least, with Zeno’s arms around her, she felt safe. Even her new pains were a faded memory against his warmth. Best of all, she could hear his steady heartbeat beneath her ear. She could feel his strength in his hold. He was alive and well.

She knew now how much the idea of him being anything else distressed her. She didn’t know how she would have handled never seeing him again. Probably that meant he was right about the whole destiny thing.