“I don’t know any Jackson Biggs.”
“You’re kidding. He’s the boss. This is his operation. You work for him.” He squirmed, thinking about how she worked for him.
“I serve one, and I serve many, but I do not serve him.”
He’d continued to protest, to get her to stay, to explain, but she’d wrapped a scarf around herself and left. Hurt, bewildered, he’d called her all sorts of names. How could he have been fooled? Sure the incredible sex had rocked his world, but he wasn’t a newb. He’d been married and divorced. Had serious relationships and one-night stands. Something seemed off. Something smelled wrong.
He’d thrown on his clothes then and raced after her, but she had vanished. He dashed for the control room, booted out the tech, and tracked her on the monitors.
He had to find out where she was going, who she was meeting. Had she adopted another protector? Or maybe she was a spy, a honey trap sent to test his loyalty? He’d suspected Biggs didn’t fully trust him. But Lila had claimed not to know him.
Hicks frowned as she swung her arms and marched down the middle of a wide tunnel, triggering a parade of motion sensor lights. Mining operations hadn’t been expanded to that area yet, but it had been outfitted with lights and cameras for the future eventuality and for security. Biggs insisted on being able to view every nook and cranny within miles of the control room.
The tunnel widened into a broad and tall cavern before bottlenecking. At its terminus a fumarole smoked, venting wisps of volcanic gas to the surface. That was another reason they didn’t use the tunnel—although most of the gas escaped to the surface, enough lingered to render the air hazardous. Despite the unhealthful air, she showed no signs of flagging. Anyone else would have been gasping for breath long before now. He shook his head in disbelief, recalling how she’d wandered around on the surface—
She couldn’t be intending to do that again, could she? He watched as she marched straight for the fumarole. No, Lila, no. Don’t even think it. The conduit led to the surface but also plunged downward for only-god-knew how far. They’d dropped lead lines into other holes to measure the depth but never hit bottom. A ladder had never been installed on this one.
She halted at the edge of the precipice and peered up at the trickle of daylight. She bent at the knees—
Christ, she wasn’t going to jump, was she?
“No!” he shouted, leaping out of his chair. And then a mining car came racing down the tunnel. It wasn’t visible to her yet, but she must have heard it because she halted and turned around.
“Thank god!” Somebody was coming. Somebody would stop her.
But as the car neared, and the rider and Lila were within line of sight of each other, the rider didn’t reduce his speed. “Slow down. Slow down, buddy.”
What was the guy doing? He had to see her. She stood there spotlighted.
“Get out of the way! Lila, move, move! Goddammit! Stop, dammit, stop!” he yelled at Lila and the rider.
For an interminable second, she canted her head almost quizzically before jogging out of the bottleneck into the cavern. Hicks expelled his breath in a whoosh, only to catch it again when she remained dead center, as if facing down the car. There was plenty of room to get out of the way in the massive cavern. Why wasn’t she moving?
“Goddammit, get out of the way!”
The car continued to barrel toward her. Now he could see the rider. It was Asher.
What the hell was wrong with him? It was almost as if he was aiming for her. Jesus Christ. “Stop! Stop!” Hicks yelled. He couldn’t watch. But he couldn’t peel his eyes away, either. With sick horror, he watched—
—Lila morph into a dragon. Her body doubled then tripled in size as her neck lengthened and horns sprouted from her skull. Leathery wings thrust out of her back, and she leaped into the air seconds before impact. He could tell Asher hit the brakes because the vehicle slowed, but it was too little, too late. The car zoomed into the bottleneck and plunged into the abyss.
Lila shifted into demiforma, jogged for the conduit, glanced into the fumarole, and then leaped onto the rocky wall and climbed to the surface where she turned into a dragon again and flew away.
Jesus H. Christ. I fucked a dragon.
She would return to her people and tell them they were there. Fumbling, he hit the panic button and signaled Biggs with a three-blast emergency.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I love you,” H’ry said.
O’ne cupped his beloved face and gazed into his stricken eyes. “I will always love you, my mate.”
“Why does that sound like goodbye?”
“Because it…is.”
He flinched. “I thought we’d…find a way to be together.”
“I did, too,” she said sadly.
She had prayed for a clear sign of what she was supposed to do, and she’d received it. She’d awakened in H’ry’s arms with a ballooning pressure and an undeniable, unavoidable burning certainty the temple was ready to be consecrated, and the sacred flame needed to be released. It demanded she sever the relationship with H’ry.
She could no more disobey the edict and shirk her duty than she could cease to breathe. An invisible tether tied her to the temple, and she was being reeled in. It took every ounce of strength she possessed to spend this final moment with H’ry, the mate she would never see again.
She was being compelled to enter the temple. Once more, she was forced to abandon the one she loved.
She wanted to weep, to gnash her teeth, to shoot fireballs
