Page 9

Despite the raw emotion in Harmony’s outburst, the men from the SRA hadn’t listened. That was the first and last thing Zeno knew before the situation went to shit.

Before his senses and his memory scrambled.

Zeno had a lot of respect for his old friend, but Scott was going to be out two agents when he caught up to them. He had assumed they were from whatever apprehension group dealt with larger-breed shifters, but their hands had been free. Except he’d turned his attention away from the men during Harmony’s emotional ranting, his need to protect her and soothe her overriding his need to keep an eye on them. And the choice had cost him.

He’d known a split-second of searing pain, like raw electricity ripping through his blood. The pain was made worse by Harmony’s voice screaming his name somewhere beyond his shrinking line of sight. Then it had all gone black.

When Zeno regained consciousness, he was sprawled on the floor in his own penthouse. His body was heavy, lethargic, and the stench of charred flesh lingered in the air.

“Zeno!” Harmony’s remembered shriek, something like terror in her usually melodic voice, jolted him fully awake.

Zeno shoved up, his head spinning, and twisted around. He called for her but he knew she wouldn’t answer. He knew she wasn’t there. The clothes he’d purchased for her while he’d listened to her sob in the shower remained in bags on the floor just feet away.

Anger burned through him. Scott’s men had used a fucking specialized taser on him. He hadn’t even seen it before it hit him, and since nothing was dangling from his flesh now, he assumed it wasn’t one of those projectile types. Or at least, it was something they could easily retrieve. He hadn’t exactly gone on missions with the SRA, he hadn’t watched them in action. Still, it pissed him off that one of his friend’s teams had gone so far as to strike him. It enraged him that they’d laid hands on his mate.

Zeno grabbed the bags, carrying them properly into the penthouse, and dropped them onto the sofa. He fully intended to retrieve her. She would need those later. Then he tugged his phone from his pocket and growled again. The device was fucking dead.

He dragged in a breath, smacked in the face with Harmony’s scent, mixed with the less prominent smells of the two men who’d ultimately taken her away, and the breakfast they’d shared earlier. The aroma of her long-faded arousal when he’d eaten her out on the kitchen island. The stench of his own burned flesh. That still hurt like a bastard, too.

Zeno ripped off his sweatpants, throwing them aside as he strode for the balcony.

It was too much. They’d pushed too far.

There was a reason it was ill-advised to fuck with dragons.

He would kill Patrick Eades for everything the bastard had ever done to Harmony. Then he would go to the SRA’s headquarters and take back his mate. As a matter of fact, if he could find them, he’d pick up Larry and Linda Lace along the way and bring them with him. They wanted to accuse him of plucking people up out of the sky, perhaps he should show them what that really looked like.

The shift came over him hot and fast, a reflection of his mood. His wings stretched out as soon as they were formed, pulling his weight from the balcony before it became too much for the structure to bear. By the time he was above the building, the shift was settled. His flesh was gone in favor of thicker, armor-like scales. His body size had increased, his arms and legs thickening, claws sprouting where stubby nails had been. His tail swished freely, violently, through the air as he immediately propelled himself forward, aimed directly at Harmony’s old neighborhood. He let out a steady, almost hissing exhale, releasing a cloud of smoke to help disguise himself from anyone below as he moved.

He didn’t generally like risking daytime flights in populated cities, even if the smoke cloud technique worked nine times out of ten.

This wasn’t a normal situation. This time, he didn’t give a fuck. Let some human see him. Let some human post it on YouTube. They’d probably get rich or get ridiculed, it made no difference to him.

Harmony’s neighborhood came into view less than a minute later and Zeno’s focus sharpened. He’d failed her already once that day. He couldn’t show his face before her again until he had something to offer her as penance. He would not fail her again.

He spotted her family’s house from the air and ground his teeth against the urge to set it ablaze. It was Harmony’s right to decide the fate of her parents. He would do no more than frighten them. Bruise them, perhaps. He dragged his gaze away, remembering how she had previously described the setup of her street. Eades’s residence was across the street, and only a scant three rooftops away.

Zeno dropped to the ground as he shifted back into a form that would allow him to communicate, landing on his knees just feet from the postage-stamp porch. It was late morning on a weekday, this was a working-class neighborhood. None of that meant no one would notice a monster falling from the sky, or a naked man in the yard.

That was fine. Eades was a coward who liked the spotlight. A humiliating death in front of everyone he’d bullied for years would be fitting.

Zeno stomped up onto the porch, letting his weight carry through and break the old wood beneath his feet even as he took hold of the door and ripped it from its hinges. He let the broken door fall to the side and continued into the dark, unkempt dwelling.

He wasn’t an expert on ordinary honey badgers, but surely they lived in better conditions than this. Perhaps Eades was actually a rat.

Patrick Eades came barreling around the far corner, tugging up his pants as he walked and already shouting. “What the fu—” His eyes blew wide and his face drained of color. The pants slipped from his fingers, hanging unbuttoned from his hips. “You.”

“Yes,” Zeno said, letting more smoke curl from his mouth as he spoke. “ Me .” He continued forward, stepping around a love seat that was well past its prime without ever taking his eyes from his target.

Eades slid one foot backward and swallowed hard. “You can’t just—you destroyed my fucking door, asshole!”

Zeno didn’t break stride. “You will never again threaten my mate, or any other woman.”

Eades’s lips curled, his shoulders tightening. For a moment, he only glared as Zeno closed the distance between them, until finally he let out an enraged roar and threw himself forward. His body rippled as his own shift overtook him, the denim falling to the floor as a smaller body covered in black and silver fur propelled through the air. The momentum he’d given himself almost guaranteed he would make first contact, his own claws extended.

Were Zeno human, the attack would rip open his abdomen.

Zeno caught the flying sack of fur-covered-shit by its throat, mindless of the creature’s tinier claws, and pivoted around to slam the beast into the nearest wall. The drywall cracked, caving in from the impact.

Eades made a sound of pain, going limp for a second before exploding into a wild, wiggling frenzy. He scratched and kicked, continuously trying to twist his head around in order to bite, but none of it made a difference. There was absolutely nothing about Patrick Eades that posed a threat.

Zeno growled low and a lick of flame slipped from his lips, heating the air between them. “Never again.” His arm shifted in the span of seconds. By necessity he lost his advantageous grip on the honey badger’s throat, but before the smaller beast could scamper away, he swept downward with his own claws.

Blood sprayed the walls and dripped onto the floor. Zeno felt some of it splatter his own skin.

Eades made a weak, strained sound and finally shifted back into his human form. “F-fuck, stop … please, stop.”

Zeno scowled. “Please?” He made a show of stretching and flexing his claws. “Would you have listened to Harmony if she begged you to stop? If she said please ?”

Eades’s breathing was shallow, blood still trickling from the wound that hadn’t fully closed with his shift. He couldn’t look away from Zeno’s claws. “I-I…”

“I didn’t think so.” Zeno plunged his claws into Eades’s chest, curled them around the fucker’s heart, and squeezed until it gave. Then he lifted the bleeding corpse, followed his protesting nose to the restroom, and dropped the body into the tub. It was easy enough to toss the flimsy shower curtain aside, and with a single exhale, he lit Patrick Eades’s body ablaze.

From beyond the restroom, he heard someone shout for the newly deceased honey badger. Over the death and blood it was hard to catch the newcomer’s scent, but Zeno had a decent guess. He turned away from the burning body, right arm still shifted and covered in blood, and strode down the hall as heavy footfalls came in his direction.

A man—a wolf—came to an abrupt stop at the sight of him. His eyes darted to Zeno’s bloodied arm and he let out a growl. “Who the fuck are you? Where’s Ricky?”

“You must be the wolf Harmony spoke of,” Zeno replied. “Eades is in the tub, burning.” The wolf’s eyes went wide for a moment before darkening with rage. “I didn’t come for you, but if you think you’re going to pose a problem for me or my mate, I will do the same to you regardless.” At the end of his declaration, Zeno allowed another lick of flame to slide from his lips.

He knew how it looked. He still remembered, even three hundred years since the last time he’d seen it, when his father had used the same intimidation tactic. It was a tactic that had scared even his allies.

The wolf before him, too young and inexperienced to have ever endured that sort of cruelty, was no exception. The fight left his eyes in an instant and he flinched back, making space for Zeno to pass. “Y-you’re the dragon … fuck.” His gaze darted down the hall. Smoke had begun drifting from the room, and no doubt the canine shifter could smell what was underneath. “Fuck.”

Zeno continued forward. “Wise choice.” He gave his arm a good shake, knowing the blood would fall from his scales with his shift, and continued to the door. He had one more stop to make and no desire to linger.