She was too late, had waited too long to intercede. She watched, seething with anger as Kane and the unknown woman got into the back of a sedan and the car immediately took off. Her dragon writhed within, demanding to be released. She’d follow, use her claws to rip the roof off that vehicle and take back what was hers.
“Miss? Are you all right?”
Sophia snapped her head around and snarled at the man who had spoken. He stumbled back, catching himself on the wall of the building. “Jesus Christ!” he screeched, looking at her in horror, and Sophia suddenly realized that her eyes had shifted and she could feel the scales beginning to form, crawling up her back.
Ducking her head, she quickly took off down the street. She needed to call Travis, needed to get herself back under control before she was driven by her anger to do irreparable damage.
Stupid, stupid, stupid not to have borrowed a car for the evening under the assumption that Kane would bring her home. Now she was stuck in the heart of the city, in the midst of a painful partial shift she couldn’t seem to shake, as the man that her dragon had chosen as her mate went off somewhere to make love to another woman.
Sophia was barely hanging on by her fingertips – or rather, claw tips currently – when her brother found her huddled behind a dumpster in an alley, scorch marks around her from where her fire had needed to be released before it consumed her from the inside. Her body was pulsing from a change she was desperately trying to suppress, scales having emerged over most of her body, and curved, deadly sharp talons topping her fingers.
Travis must have broken every speed limit to get to her so quickly, and he practically threw her into his truck before speeding away, tires screeching on the wet pavement. To his credit, he didn’t ask what had happened to set her off, he simply gripped her clawed hand in his and said, “Hold on a little longer, baby girl. Almost there.”
“It hurts,” she told him with a painfilled whimper.
“I know, Soph. I know. But you’re strong, you’ve got this.”
They were headed toward pack lands, she noted through the near-blinding agony, the city lights and buildings left behind them. But Travis didn’t wait for the turnoff, didn’t turn downanyroad but rather pulled his truck sharply into the trees, and without slowing down, set them on a bouncing course through a wooded area before he brought the vehicle to a lurching stop.
He was out of the truck and opening her door within seconds to pull her free of the vehicle. “Do it,” he said, backing away. “Let her out. Now, Sophia. Let her out.”
As Sophia released the teeth-gritted death grip she had on her inner self, her dragon burst free of her in a painful explosion of spiked wings and scales. With a prehistoric roar, she spewed fire into the sky, releasing with it, the last of her anger. What was left were seemingly unbearable pain and heartbreak. Worse even than Olivier Rodolfo’s dagger to her chest. It was a wonder to her that she wasn’t crusting over in stone to heal.
Instead of taking to the skies in an attempt to find Kane as she had thought her dragon would force her to do, she bellowed three, sad-sounding trumpet blasts and hung her head.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The place his queen had brought him to was shocking in its obvious neglect, the smell… but suddenly, before his eyes, things began to change. The musty, dark interior transformed to a softly lit, romantic bower draped with pale gauzy fabric, and the room smelled like peppermint, his favorite scent. Kane stared in wonder, but a moment later, he’d forgotten what things had looked like previously, or any question that may have arisen as to how things could have possibly changed so drastically. His queen was leading him to a bed fit for royalty, piled high with an assortment of fat throw pillows. There, he would make himself worthy of her by pleasing her. There, he would redeem himself in her eyes.
Kane watched her move, hips swaying seductively as she strolled toward the bed and laid herself upon it in a decadent feast for his eyes. Her hand lifted, beckoning him forward. “Come, my love, worship me.”
Yes,was a whisper in his mind as he approached.Yes, I will worship her. I will adore her.
Joining her on the bed, his eyes devoured the perfection of her features as that whisper continued,He would never feed from her vein, never mar such flawless flesh with his bite. He was unworthy of such an honor.
An image of another throat popped unbidden into his mind, long, graceful fingers running down the length in an invitation, and then that same throat later, marked by his kiss, as a voice that seemed so familiar told him, ‘I’ll wear a scarf’. The memory caused him to wince as a lance of pain speared through his skull and a feeling of guilt suffused his chest.He should know who she was, he thought.Why couldn’t he remember?He attempted to dig deeper, tried to chase that elusive memory until that whisper once more invaded his head.His queen was before him, she was all that mattered.
The pain immediately eased and he watched, entranced as his queen bared her perfect breasts to his gaze. His hands cupped them, lush globes that overflowed his palms. His fingers spasmed as he recalled another pair of breasts, rosy-tipped and small, but perfect just the same. That feeling of guilt overtook him once more.Thatwas his queen, not this woman beneath him, his mind screamed, and a name suddenly formed on his lips – “Sophia.” His dragon.
Another whisper of protest invaded his mind but he fought it, holding on to the memory of Sophia St. John. Yes, that was her name. Sophia St. John, a dragon and his. She would give him strength.
Pain ripped through his head like hot pokers, and Kane fisted the sides of his hair with a groan of agony.
An unholy screech echoed around him and he was suddenly flung back from the bed to land on the floor. “You bled on me, you miserable slug!” the woman said, wiping at the drops of blood on her chest with stiff fingers.
Covering herself, she rose with all the regal dignity of the queen she had tried to convince him she was.
“Witch,” Kane accused past the blood bubbling up into his mouth as he mentally fought to hold on to himself, to hold on to Sophia.
She stared at him intensely for a moment, a look of wonder on her face before she threw her head back and laughed, her hands clapping together in glee. “Oh, my goodness. You’re fighting it. How absolutely astonishing.”
Blood trickled from his nose, and a tell-tale tickle beneath his left ear told him he was bleeding there as well, but still, he refused to listen to the barrage of whispers battering at his mind, seeking a crack they might slip through. Even more determined, he reminded himself that he was Kane Alexander Fletcher, former Hunter, territory-holding Born, in love with a dragon named Sophia. He was not a puppet, and this witch wasnothis queen.
In a sing-song voice, the witch told him, “You’ll give yourself an aneurysm if you continue to fight me.” She tried peering deeply into his eyes, so Kane closed his and continued his mental recitation. Better to die with Sophia’s name on his lips than live as a shadow under this bitch’s control.
He heard a long, drawn-out sigh. “I underestimated your strength, vampire. That’s twice now. There won’t be a third.”
He felt the clamp around his mind release and opened his eyes. The illusion slipped away and the room was once more a dark, dingy warehouse that reeked of rotting fish and the witch before him was now holding a gun pointed straight at him.
