For how long? the dragon whispered back. How long did I think a former soldier of St. George would remain in the company of his enemies? How long before he realized we had no future, that a dragon and a human were two vastly different creatures, and had no business being together?
“Garret?” I asked, making him shift to look down at me. In the face of those solemn gray eyes, my throat went dry, and I swallowed to clear it. “Is this…? Are we…?” I exhaled and pressed my face to his shirt in embarrassment. Garret waited patiently for me to go on, his arms still looped around my waist. I ducked my head, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “Us,” I whispered. “What we’re doing… Is this wrong?”
Garret went very still. I counted his heartbeats, listened to the rise and fall of his breath. “I don’t know,” he finally said, his voice just a whisper between us.
I gave a bitter chuckle, stifling my disappointment. “That’s not exactly the rousing assurance I was hoping for.”
“I know,” he murmured, sounding resigned, though he still didn’t let me go. “But I’m probably the last person you should ask.” He rested his chin gently atop my head, his voice thoughtful. “All my life, I was taught that dragons were evil, that they had no souls or emotions or real feelings, that they were just imitating humans in order to blend in.” His hand traced my back, making my skin prickle. “And then, I met you. And discovered that everything I had learned, everything I thought I knew, my entire way of life, was wrong.”
The pain in his voice, the underlying bitterness, clawed at me. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I never wanted you to regret this.”
“I don’t.” Garret pulled back to look at me, his metallic gaze intense. “Maybe I would’ve been happier if I’d never come to Crescent Beach,” he went on, making my stomach knot painfully. “If I was still with St. George, I’d still be killing dragons, because that’s what they expected of me, and I wouldn’t know any better. Maybe ignorance is bliss, but that doesn’t make it right.” His face tightened, eyes going dark. “I think back to who I was, what I did, before we met, and it sickens me. I’d rather die right now than return to the Order. I’d rather be hunted like the very ones I used to kill than revert to the ignorant soldier I was. That life is done. I want no part of it anymore. All because I met a dragon on a beach, and she refused to be what I expected.” One hand rose, pressing against the side of my face, stroking with his thumb. “Ember, meeting you is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said in a quiet voice. “I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
“Really?” I smiled, feeling my chest squeeze tight. His words made my heart soar, but the intensity of his gaze was too much. “Even after everything? Being shot at and chased and followed around the casino by a security guard for underage gambling?” I asked, trying to ease the tension.
“Even then,” Garret replied, his eyes shining silver in the darkness. “I think…I’m in love with you, Ember.”
Garret
Did I really just say that?
Time had frozen around us, the echo of my confession hanging in the air, impossible to retract. Ember blinked at me, looking as stunned, and almost as panicked, as I felt. What had come over me? Was I losing my mind? I had absolutely no experience to draw on. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Tristan would’ve laughed at my idiocy. I had been a soldier of the Order; our love affairs involved weapons—machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles. Instruments of death, not people. The Order itself cautioned about divided loyalties, saying our hearts should belong to St. George and the mission before all else. Marriage was infrequent among soldiers; most of us died young, and dedication to the cause had to take precedent over everything else, even family. The bond we shared with our brothers, our comrades in arms, was stronger and far purer than the weak desires of the flesh. I’d known that, believed it wholeheartedly, once. I was what they made me: a weapon. The Perfect Soldier. What did I know about love?
For a second, I balked, my heart going cold in my chest. Why had I said anything? I knew she wasn’t human. Though she looked and acted and sounded like a normal girl, Ember was, at her core, a dragon. A creature that, according to the Order, could only imitate emotion. I no longer even remotely believed that, but I barely understood human emotion; I knew nothing about the hearts of dragons.
The soldier pressed forward, blank and emotionless, ready to numb all feeling. To shield me from pain and humiliation and fear. This had been a mistake. I’d left myself open, vulnerable, but there was still time to withdraw, to retreat behind a wall of indifference and—
No. I hardened myself, steeling my emotions in a different way. No illusions this time. No doubts. I knew exactly what was happening, that the girl in my arms wasn’t human. The Order would call me profane, a blasphemer, a demon lover. I was selling myself to evil. I was joining the devil’s own and damning my soul to hell. Ember might not return my feelings, not in the human sense. I didn’t know if dragons were even capable of love.
All of this went through my head in a heartbeat, and between one pulse and the next I decided, once and for all, that I didn’t care. Ember was a dragon. She was also beautiful, fearless, kind and ironically more human than the very people who wanted her whole race extinct. I didn’t know if most dragons were as the Order said they were—ruthless, conniving, power hungry—but I did know not all dragons were like that. Ember was different. Riley was different. I’d seen it firsthand. And the hatchlings I’d met, Ava and Faith, they weren’t the savage monsters St. George claimed them to be, either. The Order had lied. Talon had lied. I didn’t know what to think anymore, or who to believe. I was aware of only one thing: I was done fighting this. I no longer cared what anyone thought.
I was in love with a dragon.
Let the Order condemn me, I mused, perhaps my first truly rebellious thought in a lifetime. Let them call me a traitor and hunt me down. For thirteen years, I had followed commands, lived by the rigid code of St. George, become their perfect soldier, only to discover the Order I’d dedicated my life to was wrong. Everything I’d thought I knew was a lie. The only real thing was the girl in my arms.
“Garret,” Ember whispered, her eyes huge in her face as she stared at me. I felt the acceleration of her heartbeat, thudding rapidly against mine, felt a tremor go through her, and held my breath. And I waited, everything frozen inside, to see if the dragon I loved would leave me unscathed, or shred my heart to ribbons in front of me. “I… I don’t…”
A phone rang loudly in the darkness.
Ember
I jumped, leaping away from Garret, as a tinny melody shattered the quiet, coming from the bed. He let me go, turning toward the sound as well, his expression shutting into that remote blankness. My heart raced, thrilled, relieved, absolutely terrified. I didn’t know what to feel; I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew that the tangle of confusion, worry and dragony rage inside was threatening to pull me apart.
Later, I decided, between one muffled ring and the next. I would sort through everything later. I couldn’t think about…what Garret had said right now. First, we had to find our missing dragons.
Faith stirred. Rising groggily from the mattress, she fumbled in her pocket and brought the phone to her ear with a mumbled “Hello?”
Instantly, she bolted upright, eyes going wide. Gazing across the room, she spotted me and swung her legs off the bed, holding out the phone. “It’s Ava!”
I lunged and snatched the device from her hand. “Ava, are you all right?” I asked, putting it to my ear. “Is Riley with you?”
“Ember?” The voice on the end was a gasp, and cold fingers clutched my insides. “We couldn’t…make it back,” Ava panted, sounding frantic and breathless. “St. George followed us from the building and have spread out. They’re not letting us leave the area.” She took two deep, ragged breaths, her next words laced with fe
ar. “You have to come quick.Riley’s been hurt—”
The blood froze in my veins. “Where are you?”
“Some old rail yard a few blocks from the hotel. Please, hurry. We don’t…” She trailed off, and in the distance, I thought I heard the sounds of gunshots.
“Ava?”
“They’re coming,” the other dragon whispered.
The line went dead.
“Ava! Dammit!” I yanked the phone from my ear and stood there, trying to calm the fiery urge to Shift and crash through the window after them. What did I do now? Riley was out there, wounded, maybe dying, and St. George was closing in. Panic raged inside, the dragon flaring up and down my veins, screaming at me to do something.
“What happened?” Faith asked, her eyes bright with terror. “Are they all right?”
“Riley’s been hurt,” I said, clenching the phone so that the edges bit into my palm. My skin felt tight, the air in my lungs simmering with heat. “They’ve been trapped, and can’t get back to the hotel. We have to help them.”
“Where are they?”
Garret’s cool, steady voice broke through the rising panic. My dragon snarled at him, impatient and wanting action, not this sitting around to chat. Stop it, I told her. We can’t just charge through the window and wing off to find Riley. We need a plan. I took a deep breath to calm us both and forced myself to think.
“Ava said something about a rail yard a few blocks from the abandoned hotel,” I told the soldier. “But she didn’t give me any street signs or numbers. And I didn’t see any railroads when we were running from the building, did you?” Frustration reared up again, and I rubbed a hand across my face. “They could be anywhere, and we don’t have time to guess. St. George is almost there.”
“We won’t have to guess. Come on.” And Garret strode purposefully from the room, leaving me and Faith to scramble after him. We crossed the nearly empty hall, not pausing to look for would-be enemies, and Garret banged twice on Wes’s door.
It swung back, and the gangly human glared out at us, looking exhausted. Dark circles crouched under his eyes, and his hair stuck out in every direction. “What do you—”
“Ava contacted us,” Garret interrupted, making the human’s brows shoot up. “St. George has them cornered in a rail yard a few blocks from the building we left. Can you pull up a map of the city?”
“Shite,” Wes muttered, and ducked back into the room, hurrying to his laptop. We followed, crowding around the chair, as his fingers flew across the keyboard and his shoulders hunched in concentration.
“All right,” Wes muttered, his nose very close to the computer screen, making it hard to see around him. “A rail yard, you said? That shouldn’t be terribly hard to find.” He typed a few more things, and the screen flipped to a large map of Las Vegas. “Okay,” Wes mumbled, zooming in until street names appeared on-screen, “this is where we are now. And here—” he scrolled over the map “—is the site of that abandoned hotel. So, now we’re looking for a railroad… Wait, that must be it.” The mouse arrow circled a confusing jumble of lines and squares on the map. “About five blocks east from the hotel site,” he said. “Right on the edge of town. Bollocks, Riley, what were you thinking? You don’t run away from the lights and crowds if the Order is chasing you. Certainly not to an isolated warehouse in the middle of nowhere.” Sitting back, he eyed us over the chair back. “If they’re down there, that place will be crawling with dragonslayers. You’ll be walking into a death trap.”
“We don’t have a choice,” I said. “Riley’s in there, and he’s hurt. Besides,” I went on, glaring at him, “I thought this was what you wanted. It’s my fault he’s in trouble, isn’t that what you implied?”
“That doesn’t bloody mean I want you to rush into a trap and get your stupid head blown off,” Wes snarled back. His eyes flashed, staring me down, before he sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “What do you think Riley will do if you get yourself killed?” he went on in a softer voice. “He nearly lost his mind the last time you were hurt. If anything happens to you now, he’ll never be the same. Riley is the beating heart of this underground, but if you die, the resistance might very well die with you. Because he might not have the will to care anymore.”
I blinked in shock. Wes sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, his face taut with pain. “I just want you to think, hatchling.” He sighed. “To come up with some sort of plan, otherwise you’ll all be killed.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Garret broke in, and Wes turned to eye him wearily. “I know St. George,” he added. “I know their tactics, and what they’ll be doing. We’re not going in blind. I’ll get them out.”
“I’m coming, too,” Faith said.
Surprised, I looked at her. She stood a little ways behind us, pale and terrified but resolved. “Ava saved me,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t have gotten out of Talon if it wasn’t for her. I want to help, however I can.”
Garret shook his head. “You’re not trained for this,” he stated. “I can’t effectively search for the others if I’m worried about protecting you, Faith. It’s better if you stay here.”
“Please,” Faith whispered, and turned to me. “Don’t leave me here,” she pleaded. “I can’t stay behind, doing nothing, not knowing if you’ll come back. I swear I won’t get in your way or slow you down. And I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.” Her eyes went glassy, even as she took a deep breath, composing herself. “Ava is like a sister to me,” she said, making my stomach knot. “I won’t abandon her. I might not be trained for this, but two dragons stand a better chance against St. George than one. Please, I have to come.”
I looked helplessly at Garret, who nodded. “All right,” he agreed, sounding reluctant. “Just stay close, and try to hide if things get dangerous.” He turned to Wes, his voice cool. “They’ll need weapons,” he said. “Both of them. If St. George is down there, we can’t take any chances.”
Wes nodded, rising from the chair. “I suppose there’s really no other way to do this,” he said, pulling a duffel bag from the corner and setting it on the bed. Unzipping it, he stepped back as Garret rummaged inside and pulled out a handgun. Turning, he offered it to me. I took it without hesitation this time, checking the chamber for rounds before shoving it into the waistband of my jeans and pulling my shirt over it, as I’d seen Garret do. No being squeamish now. I was a soldier, and this was a war. If we were going to save Riley and Ava, I had to accept that.
Faith paled when Garret held a pistol out to her, but she took it without hesitation. Wes watched the soldier with hooded eyes, his expression torn between dislike and cautious hope. “Get Riley out,” he told him, as Garret checked his own gun for rounds, then snapped the cartridge back into place. “Nothing else matters. You’re not just saving him, you’re saving everyone in his underground. I can’t do what Riley does. If he dies, all the dragons and humans he rescued from Talon are as good as dead.”
“We’ll bring him back,” I told Wes, feeling a fiery determination spread through me. There was no way I was going to let him die. He was my other half; without him, I felt incomplete. I wasn’t sure if this was my dragon talking or me, but I couldn’t imagine a world without Riley. I looked to Garret, meeting those solemn gray eyes, and took a deep breath. “Ready?”
He nodded once. Together, we walked through the casino, out the doors and into the hot Vegas streets.
Back into the war zone.
Garret
This place was a tactical nightmare.
The rail yard was separated from the rest of the city by a rusty chain-link fence and a strip of industrial desert that marked the end of civilization. Tracks stretched across the open, dusty ground, and aisles of freight containers created a labyrinth of cover and tight quarters. If I were to stage an ambush, this would be the perfect spot.
“Stay alert,” I
told Ember as we crouched behind a metal container on the edge of the yard. The place looked deserted, but that meant nothing. St. George knew how to stay hidden. “Watch the aisles, they’ll be the most dangerous. If you see anyone, don’t try to take them out. The Order never does single patrols. If there’s one, there’ll be more nearby. Just get out of sight.”
She nodded, eyes determined. “I’ll follow your lead,” she whispered, raising the gun. “Tell me when to go.”
Behind her, Faith trembled and pressed close, her gaze darting around the yard like a trapped deer. I felt a stab of apprehension; Ember could take care of herself. Or at least, she had faced St. George before, and she wasn’t afraid to fight. Faith, despite her insistence on coming along, was not prepared for this. If we ran into the Order and had to fight our way free, I hoped I could protect us all.
I motioned us forward, and together we darted across the open yard, staying low and keeping to the shadows, until we reached the first train sitting idle on the tracks. Hugging the walls, I edged toward the front, peeking between cars for any hints of movement on the other side. Ember stayed close; I could feel her heat at my back, her steady breathing whenever we paused. For a moment, I had a distracting sense of how surreal this situation was. Again. Here I was, a former soldier of St. George, on the other side of the war with two dragons at my back, trying to rescue one of their own from the Order. It was a fleeting thought; I couldn’t let myself be distracted now. I had to stay focused on the mission and our surroundings, the tactics that would keep us alive. But it crept in all the same, dark and taunting. Would this ever feel normal? And who was I? I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.
“Where are they?” Ember whispered as we crept into an open boxcar after making certain it was empty. “This place feels completely deserted. Where could they be hiding?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured, peering out the other side of the car. The space between the narrow aisles was dark and still. Too still. No bullet holes, no footprints, no signs of a fight or struggle. I hadn’t seen any telltale spatters on the ground, either, which made me both relieved and nervous. The Order was trained to strike hard and fast and to vanish without a trace when the job was done, but they would at least leave some signs of passing. There was nothing here. Ember was right; this place felt completely deserted.