Chapter Three

Hadyn stared straight into accusatory black eyes and scowled. “They’re not here for me.”

Of course he’d think that. Paranoid was this man’s primary setting.

“How do I know that for sure?”

“You don’t.” She wasn’t sticking around to argue the point, either.

Dragons showing up here, ones Rune wasn’t expecting, could only be a bad thing. Rule number one that her adoptive parents had taught her: never get caught.

Hadyn jumped to her feet and made to bolt from the room, not that she had any clue where she was going. All she knew was this room had only a single point of entry and egress, which made it a dead end, and therefore a trap. Not the place she wanted to be.

“Hold up.” Rune’s voice was all command.

For some odd reason, she obeyed, jerking to a halt to swing around and face him. “What?”

He had out a device—not a phone, more like a small, foldable tablet—which he was checking. Where had he had that stashed?

“I activated the security system when I first got here,” he said. “It runs on its own power source.”

“What are you checking?”

“The cameras.”

His fingers flew across the screen, flicking from view to view, it appeared to her from an upside-down vantage point. Not one to sit on her laurels, Hadyn moved to her pack. She wasn’t going to be able to take most of it with her. It would only slow her down. She pulled on her jacket and zipped it up. Then grabbed the backpack with her sleeping bag and food and was reaching for at least one rope and set of carabiners when Rune grunted.

“Shit,” he muttered behind her. Still weirdly calm.

Though, she’d bet whatever the cameras caught was not positive news. Doubtful this was simply a friend popping by for a check-in.

He lifted his head to see her pared-down gear situation.

“Leave it,” Rune ordered as he got up from the table.

The urgency to his economical movements telegraphed to her. No explanation needed. They were going to have to move fast and being weighed down was the last thing either of them needed. Without question, she dropped everything except the rope looped across her chest. No way was she being stuck on a mountain without it.

“Follow me,” he said. “No flashlight.”

“I can’t see…”

“I’ll guide you.”

A trust walk of sorts. Why did this seem scarier than leaping off a cliff and trusting him to catch her?

She didn’t question, though. This was about survival, and Rune knew this mountain. She did not, which gave her exactly one choice. Go with him or deal with whoever had shown up.

Given that she was supposed to have died with Kip had they mated before he was killed—getting caught might be a death sentence. She’d been warned her entire life that, with the way the current leaders ran things, despite her mate being dead, she’d be shuffled off to the Mating Council in France and paired with another dragon. She’d burn in his fire when he tried to turn her.

Rune paused at the tunnel entrance leading out of the kitchen space, staring down the long black passageway leading to the gods knew where. He sniffed. Then put his hand behind him.

She clasped it without hesitation, then had to swallow a small sound. His were the hands of a fighter. Big, rough and calloused…and warm. That was the dragon in him. Only the warmth seeped through her, soaking into her skin. Almost soothing.

She had the strangest sense that this man would keep her safe, even if it meant risking his own life.

“Stay close,” he warned.

As though in the pitch black she’d go running off. Hadyn just nodded.

Trying to sync her steps to his, she followed him. One small turn in the path, and the light of her flashlight, left behind in the kitchen, disappeared, plunging her into the kind of darkness that leached courage from the soul. Rune moved in complete silence, the epitome of a black dragon. Her entire world shrank to the sound of her feet on the ground, the hush of her breathing, and the solid hand wrapped around hers.

Lucky I’m not claustrophobic. The errant humor was inappropriately timed at best, but it also kept her from flipping out.

Rather than focusing on how he could accidentally slam her into a wall, or they could fall into a crevice or a hole before they knew what happened, Hadyn started counting her steps. The sequence, the consistency and regularity of it, settled her, allowing her to move quickly and easily with him. Holding a smidge of the creeping anxiety at bay.

This didn’t feel remotely like it had been when the dragons had come for Kip, or for her adoptive parents more recently for that matter. Maybe because, though her dragon family had been hunted as rogues, they hadn’t done anything beyond that. No stealing mates or attacking dragon settlements. This… This was about Rune, who’d done a hell of a lot, according to Chaghan and Qara.

And yet, she couldn’t shake the same foreboding sense that she was being hunted. That any second she would feel a hand on her back, or a body tackle her to the ground, or teeth sink into her flesh, though that was the least likely scenario since they weren’t dealing with vampires.

Hadyn lost track of how many times they turned. In her head they’d gone in a thousand circles when suddenly Rune stopped. She had to shuffle her feet like a sports star to keep from slamming into his back.

“Stay here,” he said.

Without waiting, Rune let go of her. She managed, barely, to hold back words. Not even a whimper escaped her. Still, she couldn’t quite stop herself from reaching out in the darkness, grasping for a man who was no longer there.

Slow your heart rate, sweetheart, she could almost hear her dragon father beside her, but he wasn’t. He was locked in a hole with dragonsteel bars a long, long way from here.

Everywhere around her was the sound of water, a constant drip, drip, drip like the snow and ice on the towering peaks outside seeped inside the mountain to melt and weep through the walls. Hopefully that would mask the sound of her own clumsier footfalls, no matter how silent she tried to be. Shifters had extraordinary hearing.

No doubt Rune wasn’t thrilled to have a human, even one trained to be around shifters most of her life, making noises as he tried to escape. What if he left her to save his own hide? What if he dragged her into the middle of nowhere so that no one would ever find her body and know? What if—

“We’re in luck.” The low murmur of his voice in her ear made her jump.

He didn’t say more than that, merely took her hand again and tugged her along in his wake. More twists and turns, only slower going as this part of the tunnels had apparently collapsed. Rune kept having to help her over or under, or both, rocks and debris. Where in the seven hells was he taking her?

“Duck,” he whispered a second before he pulled her closer, his hand on the top of her head. “Foot up. One more step. Now down.”

Hadyn felt as though she’d contorted into a squat pretzel, using her free hand to feel her way over and under a fall of rough-edged rock.

“Okay. You can straighten.”

Even with his assurance, she still did so cautiously, waving her hand above her head just in case.

A low huff reached her ears.

“You better not be laughing at me,” she whisper-hissed.

A grunt was her only answer. One she had no trouble interpreting.

“Yes,” she said. “You totally would.”

“How would you know?” Even hushed, Rune sounded goaded.

“Doesn’t take a genius.”

“Let’s keep going.” Now he sounded at the edge of his patience. Difficult to tell when he didn’t emote, but that was her best guess.

In the cloying darkness, Hadyn grinned. No matter. She’d totally won that round.

He took her by the hand, and they kept going. With each turn in the tunnel, the way got increasingly more difficult to navigate, until they climbed over a larger fall of rocks and the unmistakable sound of a pebble plopping into water sounded. Water? But it remained too dark to see even the tip of her nose.

“I think we’re okay for now.” A flick sounded, followed by a tiny glow that illuminated the dark. The flame of a small lighter.

“What is a dragon shifter doing carrying one of those around?” she asked. They had their own flames, after all.

“It doesn’t burn as hot as dragon fire, so it won’t trip the sensors of any enforcer teams watching for heat signature when I’m near them.”

The longest explanation he’d given her for anything thus far. One that made total sense, too. According to her parents, all three Americas enforcer teams—the Alaz, the Imoogi, and Rune’s old team, the Huracáns—had a room of ultra-modern technology that was able to show the heat of any given fire in their region. The job of the enforcers was to put it out, or, if the blaze was big enough to bring human firefighters, to go in pretending to be a hot shot crew and help. The shifters might be backward when it came to just about everything else, but they did glom onto technological advances faster even than humans did.

Hadyn settled into having her sight back and glanced around owlishly. She hadn’t been wrong about the water. A large underground reservoir—a pond or maybe a lake, the light didn’t reach to the back of the cavern—greeted her. Black and glassy, like it held deadly secrets if she dared disturb the surface, the water added a chill to the room, a larger cavern that hadn’t been dragon formed. Natural, apparently. She glanced behind her to find they’d come through what appeared to have been a massive stone door. A modern panel to the right of the entrance told her she was right. What was this? Some kind of panic room? It must not have been all that well built if it had been forced open like that.

As she turned back to him, a dark object caught her attention. Propped up against the wall was a large computer monitor with the screen splintered, incredibly out of place in this space. There weren’t even wires or outlets to connect it to.

“What happened in here?” she asked.

“Long story,” was all the answer she got. “We need to keep moving.”

“Where?” Looked like a dead end to her.

He waved the hand holding the lighter, which made the flame dance and flicker, sending shadows leaping across the stone walls. “Around that bend there’s a longer tunnel. Human sized to start, eventually it turns big enough for dragons to shift and fly out. It leads outside.”

A secret back entrance? Most mountains had one, but even knowing Rune the tiny bit she did so far, she wasn’t too surprised.

“I bet you had this made after you took up residence,” she guessed.

“I don’t take chances.” Which was a yes.

Careful and paranoid. Maybe she needed to become a little more like him. Her parents had been cautious. Moving them from place to place. Often living in cities, hiding what they were among humans in number. Though that put them at a different kind of risk from other supernaturals.

Still, this dragon shifter took survival to a whole different level.

…

Since leaving his team decades before, Rune had taken multiple dragon mates, secreting them away, keeping them safe, often just ahead of the men who’d come to drag them, willing or not, to a choice that would result in a fifty-fifty shot that they’d die. The Mating Council was under Pytheios’s direction now, and that fucker had somehow convinced them to give more men a shot at the human women discovered who showed dragon sign. Sometimes even different clans and families than the signs on their necks showed, spouting nonsense about having a Seer who told the council who to include.

In theory, the mates still had a choice, like the dragon shifter version of that human show, The Bachelorette. However, according to what he could find out, half or more of the mates were dying, which told him the process wasn’t working.

Rune had never believed in fated mates. He agreed with some that a mate successfully being turned was more about her strength and ability to survive the fire that would be poured into her as part of mating. But what if the Fates, with the symbol they provided on each female, were giving his kind a sign about the best possibility for survival. Maybe the heart needed to be involved. Sort of the same way a young dragon needed blood family at his side the first time he shifted, a deeper relationship required in order to anchor his humanity so that the monster inside didn’t take over. Maybe a mate needed love, a deep love, to survive the change.

Going against the symbol seemed foolhardy at best. Murder at worst.

That more and more mates under Pytheios’s current edicts were dying only fed Rune’s belief that he was right. The dragon colonies needed independence if he continued in leadership. They needed to separate from the clans and be allowed to govern themselves and figure out their own mating process. One that, hopefully, resulted in many fewer deaths. Not that he ever saw that happening.

Until Pytheios pulled his sticky fingers out of it, Rune wasn’t letting those women go to the Mating Council. Not if he could save them.

Hadyn being here now felt like that, only not the same.

He didn’t have to explain dragon shifters to this mate or convince her that they existed in the first place. She wasn’t panicky, following him in the dark without question or hesitation. Maybe a few blindly waving arm movements, but that was it.

He could smell her fear, but she kept it staunchly under control, even her heart rate staying steady. Still, the fact that she feared meant she wasn’t entirely blind to the peril they’d found themselves in. She merely pushed through and did what she must.

The fact that her mate was dead already was a godsdamned tragedy because she would make an incredible dragon with those traits. A partner.

His dragon, strangely, remained silent in his head.

Probably too focused on escape to be working through the conundrum of a mate who could never be changed. His dragon’s survival instincts, if anything, were even stronger than his own. Even with the human half in charge, the animal was tuned to everything around them, listening for any sign that they’d been followed from behind or were walking into a trap as they moved forward. Right now…no sounds, no scents, nothing reached them.

How had those who’d come along after he’d abandoned the mountain not figured out this entrance? All they’d had to do was go around the water and they’d discover the tunnel beyond. The phoenix and dragon king who was now her mate had escaped this way with dragons crawling all over the blasted peak.

Deep would be proud he’d managed to keep this secret.

But so far, he and Hadyn remained safe. Rune worked through alternate plans on the chance that an ambush was waiting for them. Finally they reached the part of the cave that widened, allowing him to straighten from the stoop he’d been forced into. Another hundred yards and he’d be able to shift.

After that…well…

He’d never been one to appeal to the gods with prayer. Most of the time—hell, all the time—they didn’t answer or deign to get involved, so why bother.

“Whoa,” Hadyn whispered at his side as the cavern suddenly widened, a pinpoint of sunlight beaming down at the end from the hole made in a natural caldera.

“We wait here until well into the night,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Time to shift.” And run like hell.

He’d seen three dragons in the camera feed. A green, a red, and what might have been blue or black. Hard to tell based on the grainy image. There could be more out there, though. He hadn’t waited around long enough to find out.

Her head snapped in his direction, and he winced at how that couldn’t have felt good to her neck. “I can’t shift. I told you—”

He held up a hand. “I assume you’ve flown on the back of a dragon before.”

Realization dawned in her eyes, evident even in the small light cast by the flame he’d held steady as they’d made their way to this point.

“If you have to fight, you could throw me off or lose me.”

“We’re going to have to take that chance,” he said.

“Terrific.”

His estimation of her—even through the still nagging suspicions that she’d brought these bastards down on his head—went up a notch or two. Because facing those odds without quibble took more guts than most could lay claim to. “We’d better rest while we can.”

Hadyn glanced around. He shouldn’t have been surprised when she suddenly scaled up the side of the rounded walls—this part was dragon made, by him, connecting the caldera to the chamber with the underground lake—to a spot that was relatively flat, but shielded from the rest of the room by a large boulder.

Smart.

Without comment, he followed and squished in beside her, back against the wall. She’d already dropped her head back against the wall, eyes closed. Another surprise because he’d expected another round of fifty questions. He took advantage of the opportunity to study her face.

No wonder she was ready to sleep already, dark smudges under her eyes told him she was more exhausted than she’d let on. Climbing the mountain alone was no small feat.

Rune clenched his fist against reaching out to smooth back a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes. The urge ill-timed and ill-conceived. Not that he’d consciously conceived it.

Maybe the gesture had been driven by the show of implicit trust. She hadn’t warned him to not betray her or worried that she shouldn’t sleep now, assuming he would keep her safe while she rested, even when they were being hunted.

That had to be it. His protective instincts, when it came to mates in particular, must’ve kicked in. The best explanation he could come up with for his reaction to her, that sat in his gut like the boulder they currently slept behind.

With a long exhale, he resigned himself to a state of only half rest. One of them needed to stay alert.

When he’d arrived today, after nearly two weeks of travel, covering his tracks along the way, he’d hoped to spend a night or two in the mountain recharging before the return trip. Dragons flew at roughly the speed of a small plane and could only go so far before they were forced to stop.

“You take the first hour then wake me up,” she murmured in a sleep-weary voice.

That damn mind-reading thing again. He’d swear the woman was a telepath.

He grunted his agreement, not willing to show the small spark of appreciation that she’d considered him, then had to swallow back a growl as her lips lifted in a small smile, even as her eyes remained shut.

Suddenly, a shiver visibly passed through her, and he kicked himself for not realizing sooner. Dragons ran hot, given that they carried their own fire with them, even in human form. But Hadyn was human. That jacket—the girl had done her research to get the best gear for cold-weather mountaineering, that was for certain—no doubt did a lot to ward off the chill, and it helped that they were in a cavern, except this high up, winter already had a firm grip. That, combined with a dragon-sized entrance, allowed a frosty breeze to blow down, which made it damn cold. The soft howl of the wind was putting him in mind of a lone wolf shifter.

He couldn’t start a fire for warmth. The light and the smoke would both be like a beacon announcing their exact location to anyone searching. And he had no doubt they were watching for the slightest sign.

“Come here,” he said. He put an arm around her, pulling her into his side.

She stiffened against him, sitting up straight.

“Don’t be a fool,” he grumbled. “You need the body heat.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ll get it better this way.”

She unzipped her jacket and took it off, then handed it to him and folded herself in closer to his side. Rune stiffened. Even through the thin material of her shirt, and the thicker material of her own clothing, it was as though they were skin to skin, branding him. Heating him up.

“Do you mind laying that over me?” she asked.

He stopped all those thoughts on a dime and tucked the jacket around her like a blanket. This close, the shivers chasing through her were more noticeable, almost rattling her bones. Not a lot of meat on those bones, either. How she wasn’t a human popsicle after sleeping on the side of the mountain for several days, as she must have done, was a miracle of human engineering. That gear she’d carried had been the high-end shit—ultralight but practically rated for Everest.

Deliberately, Rune lit the fire in his belly. He’d be a little uncomfortably warm, but it would reach her, which was more important.

“Mmmm…” Hadyn hummed her approval.

The sound went straight to his stupid cock. Fuck. Getting a hard-on for a woman seeking warmth was a dick move. Literally.

Refusing to shift his body to ease the ache, he willed that part of his anatomy to cooperate and go back down.

The fact that her shaking subsided helped, centering his focus on caring for her rather than fucking her.

“So tell me about the Alaz team,” she said.

“Not here. We need to stay quiet, and we both need to rest.”

Her huff warmed the side of his neck and his eager cock responded accordingly. Rune gritted his teeth against the reaction.

“One of these days,” she mumbled, “I’m going to get that story out of you, Rune Abaddon.”

Her words were starting to blur, which meant sleep wasn’t far behind. He said nothing. Sure enough, she went looser against him, her head tipping forward slightly. Letting go a silent breath of tension he’d been holding, Rune rested his chin on the top of her head.

Hell if he knew why, but Hadyn asleep against him sent his instincts into overdrive. Fear was a reaction he’d learned to ignore, bury deep within the dark recesses of his soul, centuries ago. Damned if that fear wasn’t rearing its ugly head here, as she slept trustingly against him.

His dragon gave a low rumble of a growl, on high alert as well. Neither of them was getting any rest tonight. Rune allowed himself the luxury of another sigh.

I knew she was going to be trouble the second I saw her on that video feed.