Page 10 of Starting Over (D.O.A. DRAGO #1)

Wyatt could picture his man nodding, as he answered, “I do. Arun went to the prison they escaped from, and with some commissary gifting and extra phone call promises, was able to find out that Danny only met these guys in prison. They were never part of his biker gang, but Danny apparently made a deal with them that he’d help them get out of prison if they found the snitch bitch that put him behind bars.

They also knew that if they didn’t follow through on their agreement, they didn’t have to worry about returning, because the only place they would be heading to was a pauper’s grave. ”

“More like a body of water no one would ever find them in,” Ryan muttered.

Pit let out a deep sigh, “Okay, I’m going to…”

“Do nothing but deal with the move,” Jude said, then tightened his tone, “You and I both know that you need every able body you can get to assist in moving an entire town. Bren already told me Heck did his part in getting all the houses ready and doing the wards and shit. It’s up to you to get everyone to the new location safely.

Casper being here already puts you a man down. ”

“Pit, I promise you we can handle this. We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years.

I also swear to you that we have both Jude and Casper’s back.

If we need more men, I have eight more I can call on to come in, and it’s only a few hours flight for them…

I’m talking dragon flight not plane,” Wyatt stated, with just as much authority in his tone as Pit had when talking to them.

The silence on the other end didn’t last long, before Pit said, “Fine. However, if there looks like there is even the slightest problem, I expect to be notified. I can have men there in a few seconds.”

Wyatt looked at Jude and Casper, but neither man corrected Pit, nor did they enlighten them as to what the hell Pit was talking about.

“I’ll make sure that I keep Wyatt up to date on any new information that might come in,” River said.

“Okay, Wiz, I want you to do some more digging on Danny Houdon. If he was willing to go into a house filled with people and kill them all, it tells me he had to have been behind more deaths,” Pit stated.

Wiz cleared his throat, saying, “Why weren’t we notified about this guy?”

“I don’t know. We should have been. However, it could be because he was already caught,” Pit replied.

“Yeah, but the moment he escaped wouldn’t we have been summonsed? It makes no sense,” Wiz said.

The tentative reply of, “Maybe because Wyatt and his men were called in to help.”

Everyone looked at Rain, who looked as if he wished he hadn’t spoken a word. Wanting to take away the man’s discomfort, Wyatt asked, “What do you mean?”

Rain looked at him, answering, “I don’t know about you, but the tales I’ve heard about DOA are that they were brought here by the right hand man to the creator. It was said that the entire reason for their existence was so they could help take down the worst of the worst.”

“Right, we were taught the same thing,” Wyatt said.

“That is exactly why we were created,” Pit affirmed.

Rain looked towards Jude, who held the phone, saying, “Wyatt and his men were called in. From what Jude said that Wiz found out about them, they were kind of doing the same thing, just not backed by Heck. Maybe this Heck guy or something knew they could handle Danny.”

“Actually, I would think it would be more like Glaurung being involved,” Wyatt replied.

Jude looked at Wyatt asking, “Glaurung? Who’s he?”

“He’s the father of all dragons, and the first to ever breathe fire on land.

The stories told to us as children say that Heck went to Glaurung and asked for his help in the creation of DOA.

He didn’t exactly trust humans because of the harm they had caused to his children in the past, but also recognized that this was the best way to keep what children he had left still alive.

So, he agreed, but only if the man and dragon were soul bound. ”

“Holy shit. It makes sense,” Jude said in awe, then turned to his mate, asking, “Why the fuck didn’t Tanner ever mention this?”

“I don’t know,” Casper answered.

Wyatt looked at Jude, saying, “Only dragons would know of this. It is, as I said, a tale told to dragon shifter children at bedtime. It’s honestly the reason my thunder and I became the hunters we did.

” Feeling something Wyatt could never remember feeling…

embarrassment, he said, “We stopped believing the tale of DOA, and thought it would be cool if we could actually make the stories real. So, we left and formed our own thunder and started bounty hunting.”

“That is so cool.” Jude said, then smiled wide, “You wanted to be superheroes.”

Wyatt quickly said, “We are no superheroes. We just thought the concept of taking down the worst of the worst worthy of our reason for life. However, we’ve grown very tired over the years and have decided to move on.”

“Move on? What do you mean?” Rain asked.

Asod sat forward, saying, “In order to do what we do, we have to get into the minds of the person we’re hunting. We have to think ten steps ahead if we’re going to be successful. Many if not most of those minds are sick as fuck.”

Ryan nodded. “Gods, yes. The things they think about in order to kill or rape or do what they did to get arrested to begin with, will either make a person want to curl up in a ball and suck their thumb, throw up, or go insane.”

“We know what we do is important, but we’re… burnt out, for lack of a better term. We just want to rest our brains,” Wyatt said, then shrugged. “Who knows, maybe in time we’ll want to return to it, but for now, we just need to take a break from it all.”

“Trust me, we understand,” Pit said, then asked, “What are your plans after this case?”

Wyatt could hear something else in the question, but wasn’t quite sure what it was he was asking, so he answered, “We were going to talk about it after our last case, but then River agreed to take on this one, so that conversation hasn’t happened yet.”

“Ah come on, Wy. You can’t still be pissed at me. I already apologized to all of you. It was muscle memory damn it. You know… just doing what I’d done for years,” River whined.

Thinking about the fact that had he not been on this case, he wouldn’t be sitting next to his mate, so instead of the standard, “I’ll be kicking your ass when I get home. Just accept it.” No, he said, “It’s all good, River. Remind me to thank you when I see you.”

“But Wy, I… wait. What? What’s going on? What happened?” River asked to anyone that would answer.

Instead Wyatt nodded to Ryan, calling out, “Get me the answers we need, River.”

Ryan hung up as River was shouting for answers.

Ryan laughed, “You are so bad.”

Shrugging, Wyatt replied, “Had to do something. Anyway, no way am I telling him that because he fucked up, I met my mate. You and I both know he is going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life.”

Rain looked confused. “You weren’t supposed to be here?”

Shaking his head, Wyatt answered, “No. Our last case was supposed to be it. We were shocked when River told us he’d taken on the Houdon case.”

“Maybe there was some divine intervention,” Jude suggested.

When Wyatt and his men looked at Jude in confusion, he snuggled back into his mate, saying, “You guys weren’t taking any more cases.

Yet, when Danny escaped, the mayor called you immediately.

That isn’t normal. Typically they would contact the federal police or Royal Canadian Mounted Police or some shit.

Not a bounty hunter team that doesn’t even live in Canada.

It’s hinky. I think Heck used you to help out, but only he knows his reasons…

either that or the Fates walked in, and said, Wyatt’s mate is there, go get him. ”

“Or it’s because they are exactly what we’ve been looking for,” Pit said, bringing all of their attention back to him.

“He’s right,” Casper said.

Jude sat forward enough to turn to his mate looking just as confused as the rest of them.

Casper answered the unasked question. “We’ve been saying that we need help in Drago. They have all the qualifications. Wiz would have said if he found anything… what was the word you used, babe? Hinky?”

Jude gasped and turned to Wyatt. “Oh fuck, I’m an idiot and my mate is right! You guys would be perfect!”

“Look, as much as we appreciate the thought, we honestly are not mentally up to becoming DOA. It wouldn’t be that far off from what we’re already doing, and honestly…”

“No, Wyatt. It isn’t you guys becoming DOA…

besides the fact that I have no idea how a dragon shifter could soul bond with another dragon, the fact is, we have that covered between Drago and the New Mexico team.

What Pit and Casper are talking about is that we have almost four hundred people in our town.

With all of DOA finding their mates and the increase in crime in the past fifty years, it’s been really hard on us all,” Jude said, then went on to explain how Drago was formed and what they were asking.

Tandris leaned in, asking, “So, you want us, to be the law in a town that consists of people that are either hiding from someone trying to kill them, or because they hold knowledge of our world?”

“Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, but the gist of it is, we want you guys to be our new law officers for Drago in Montana.

After everything that’s happened in our old homestead, we recognize that they need to feel safe again.

Moving to a new state is one part of that process, and hiring someone to watch out for them from within is the other,” Jude explained.

Wyatt looked to his teammates and fellow thunder family and they gave him a small nod, Asod saying, “We need to talk to the others, but I can say it sounds like a good setup. We get out of this business, can still do something to help others, and the best part is none of us get bored just lying around.”

“I agree,” Wyatt said, then added, “However, we do need to see what the others have to say.”

“Might I ask how many are in your thunder?” Pit asked.

“There are twelve of us, and yes, we’re all dragon shifters,” Tandris stated.

Pit let out a whistle, “Damn, Tanner is going to shit himself. I honestly wish I could be there to see his face when he finds this shit out.”

“Tanner?” Wyatt asked.

“He’s a dragon shifter. After his brother and sister-in-law were killed by a sick fuck, he thought all that was left of his kind were himself and his nephew. To discover there are twelve more is going to blow his mind,” Jude answered. “So, what kind of dragon are you guys?”

“Um, Jude, there are thousands of us out there. Hell, in the thunder we left to create our own there were over three hundred alone,” Wyatt said.

Ryan jumped in, saying, “And there are at least twenty more thunders, that we know about, that have just as many if not more members in it.”

“And that’s not including the smaller ones that split off like we did,” Tandris added.

“However, you asked what kind of dragons we are. We are fire and water dragons. We shift to about the size of a minibus and our wing span is about fifty feet. We do have scales like most dragons, but ours are tougher than air and earth dragons. Our colors can differ, for example, my dragon is light copper color while Ryan’s is lavender but Orca’s is an indigo. ”

Jude moved forward, asking, “Do the different colors mean something? Or is it because you’re different kinds of dragons?”

Shaking his head, Wyatt answered, “No, my thunder is made of the same type of dragon, and no, our colors don’t have a specific meaning.”

“Well, that sucks,” Jude muttered, then said, “I still can’t wait to see you guys shift. I really want to see what you look like.”

Ryan quickly said, “Think of Smaug. You know the dragon from The Hobbit. We look like that, just more… colorful.”

“Well, son of a bitch,” Jude whispered as he shook his head. “I think Tanner might pass out when he finds all this out.”

Wyatt’s phone rang and he answered it, knowing it could only be one person. “Hey, River, what’s up?”

“You have a problem,” River said without the usual joking tone he normally had.

“What do you mean? What kind of problem?” Wyatt asked.

Without wasting a moment of time, River said, “Ennyd’s contact got a hold of him. Danny has created a game… a hunting game.”

“What the hell is a hunting game?” Jude asked.

“It’s the kind of game that he’s promised to pay out five hundred thousand dollars for anyone that can bring him Rain,” River said.

Rain gasped as many of the others hissed, “Son of a bitch.”

“Oh, that’s not all,” River said.

Wyatt wanted to jump through the phone and choke the fucker. “Just spit it the fuck out!”

“Damn, dude, I’m trying. What I was going to say is that the word is, if by chance he gets caught before he can kill Rain, he’s going to up the price to a cool million for anyone that kills him,” River anxiously said.

“Son of a bitch,” Ryan muttered.

“Oh gods,” Rain murmured. “He made it to where I die no matter what.”

Jude jumped from his mate’s lap and knelt in front of Rain. “You are not going to die. You have too damn many people here that’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“But, he wants me dead. Even if we catch him and take him back to prison, he’s made sure I d… die,” Rain said, tears clogging his throat.

Jude’s gaze became stern, as he snapped, “Look at me, Rain! Look at me!”

Rain slowly raised his eyes to do as Jude ordered, so Jude could say, “If it comes down to it, you will be safe. Wyatt will make sure of that and so will we.” He then called out, “Tell him, Pit.”

Pit said, “You can come and live with us in Drago. Trust me, Rain, no one will get past our wards or our people. You are not going to die.”

“No,” Wyatt snarled, “You will not die.”