“He’s not coming for you, Jilly,” he snarled, the veins on his neck bulging, his eyes doing the same .
“Yes he is!” He had to. He was her Fire Mate.
Derek scrunched up his face, fisting his hands in his hair. “The dragon’s not coming for you!”
She strained against the ropes, glaring up at him. “How do you know?”
“Because I made sure he couldn’t.”
Cold dread washed over her. The chanting in her head faded, growing more faint with every thumping beat of her heart. “What have you done?”
He curled his lip, his chest rising and falling with a deep breath. “What needed to be done—removed Arriman Drake from your life. I’m saving you, Jilly. The binding between you and Drake is a distortion that should’ve never been. The pagans perverted their magic to forge an alliance with the dragons, one that resulted in what you are now—a dragon shifter who can’t transform. Your ancestors were all perversions! All shifters incapable of changing.”
Jilly blinked. Her skin turned clammy. “Are you telling me I’m a dragon shifter?”
Derek nodded, removing the small distance between them with a hesitant step. He crouched down until their eyes were level, his hands finding her balled fists. “You are. A special kind. But I’m removing everything that means, Jilly. One more dose should be all it takes.”
“You’re…de-dragoning me?” Her mouth grew dry. A prickly heat razed over the goose bumps on her skin. The chanting in her head grew fainter, fainter, until only silence filled her mind. “Like you would if I had worms?”
He nodded again, smoothing his fingers to the ropes around her wrists. “Do you understand now why I’m doing this?”
She swallowed. “So we can be together?”
He smiled the smile of her best friend. “So we can be together. If I take these rope off, Jilly. Will you promise not to try to run away if I do? I want to trust you. And you should trust me.”
Numb and calm at once, Jilly smiled back. “I promise.”
Ari hit the brakes on the loaner Ducati he’d taken from the safe house, studying the warehouse he’d been drawn to.
It looked abandoned. Derelict. The brittle afternoon sun cast it in glaring light, throwing stark shadows over its boarded-up windows, graffiti-scrawled walls and chained doors. Weeds sprouted from between the cracks in the asphalt outside the building. The carcass of a small animal lay rotting near what Ari assumed was the entry door, its pungent odor assaulting his preternatural sense of smell.
He narrowed his eyes. He didn’t believe the animal had chosen that particular spot to die. Its location was too perfect; an odious scent intended to overpower the scent of whoever was currently in the warehouse.
Lowering the kickstand of the bike with his heel, he drew a deep breath.
The stench of decay streamed into his nose, along with the oily taint of old grease and gasoline and…and…
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeper, lips slighted parted, tasting the air.
His heart slammed up into his throat.
Jilly. He could smell her.
She was here, somewhere in the warehouse. With Garrison.
Ari balled his fists. He could detect the druid’s blood and his lust. The carnal combination didn’t sit well with Ari at all.
“Time to fucking end this,” he muttered, climbing off the Ducati. He studied the building.
The closer the building became, the fainter the sensation on his body drawing him to Jilly. The fact that he could smell his Fire Mate inside but not feel her ate at him. He should be able to sense her on every level now.
Unease scraped at his tenuous calm, and he ground his teeth. He didn’t like it. Could Garrison be more powerful at druid magic than the dragon shifters in Sydney assumed? Hell, he’d had enough skill to immobilize Ari back in Jilly’s apartment, and conceal her from him more than once. When it came down to it, that alone proved Garrison was capable of more than anyone had believed possible.
This sensation, however, felt different from that earlier numb lack of awareness. Ari had still sensed—on a visceral level—the connection between him and Jilly back then. Now, standing what could only be a few hundred yards from her, he couldn’t feel her at all. It was as if the connection between them no longer existed.
Which was absurd. Once Fire Mates began the mating fire, they were bound together for life, and the moment he and Jilly had touched—the second he’d tasted her skin, her sweat, her sex—they’d been joined for the rest of eternity.
So why couldn’t he feel her?
Dragging in another slow breath to pinpoint exactly where her scent came from, he crossed to the warehouse’s wire gate and shoved at it.
An electric jolt blasted up his arm, powerful and excruciating.
His heart stopped. The world turned black. The taint of ozone and metal filled his mouth. And then he tore his fingers free of the wire, his breathing rapid.
He glared at the building beyond the fence, heart once more pounding hard in his chest. The bones in his healing shoulder complained, a sure sign they’d yet to completely reknit. If he saw Colin again, he was shutting down the Extraho Venator once and for all. That was if Tyson Conley hadn’t already dealt with the incompetent dragon hunter by now.
“Okay,” he repeated, rubbing his aching hands, “it’s going to be like that, is it?”
He lifted his focus to the top of the fence, noting the razor wire looping along the perimeter.
“Twelve feet,” he estimated, rubbing his singed palms together. “Easy.”
He took a few steps back, sucked in a couple of quick breaths, checked there were no witnesses, and launched himself upward.
His brain registered the scraping contact of his right heel with a loop of razor wire a split second before he was on the ground on the other side of the fence.
He remained motionless for a heartbeat, waiting to see if he’d triggered a security system with his arrival inside the grounds.
None.
“Good,” he muttered, throwing himself into a forward sprint.
He
