“Wait…you can put people out?”
“Yep. I can do a helluva lot people don’t realize.”
“Then what are you still doing in here?”
“I’m voluntary, Riyah.”
“You lost your dragon on purpose?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I didn’t think they could actually take him. I believe in consequences, though. I burned a town. I’ve burned several towns, but I got busted in Covington. I saw Torren go headfirst into that fight with the gorillas and the Dunn lions. He was protecting his sister and his sister’s crew, but I always have his back. So, I let the dragon have me. And I didn’t even try to stop his rampage. I just…let him do what he wanted, consequences be damned. Then I ran to my mountains, and I started thinking. And I thought and thought and thought. And my dad was telling me I needed to listen to that one-year sentence. He wanted to smooth things over with the humans and keep peace between them and shifters. He’s worked very hard to protect shifters. I understood why he wanted to give me up to the system. I hated it. Hated him for it. I wanted him to pick me over everyone else. Pick me over his precious crews, but the more I sat in my mountains, thinking, the more it made sense. The biggest change in me happened when Torren, Nox, and Nevada decided we were a crew, not just a dysfunctional group of friends thrown together. They made me alpha, and I’m shitty at it, but I don’t want to be bad at this forever. I got this deep instinct to protect them. I loved…” Vyr swallowed hard, his muscular throat moving with it. “I love them. If I didn’t come here and ride out my time, it would affect their whole lives. Our crew would always be on the run, always looking over our shoulders, and eventually they would get hurt protecting me. And that’s not how it should be. I should be the one protecting them. This time in here makes me feel like I’m a better alpha because I put them first, before myself. Before my dragon. And now I understand why my dad wanted me in here. I can see how his protective instincts over all those people in his mountains, over all shifters, could drive him to give up his son. And especially if he thought he was teaching me a lesson like the one I’m learning.”
“What lesson?”
“How to be a good alpha. And I know what I am. I am total destruction. I know what I’m capable of. I accepted it a long time ago. I had to. It was time for me to come here and pay the consequences for my actions. I will always miss the dragon.” He cleared his throat and gave his attention back to the floating stars. “I’ll never feel whole. There will always be a huge part of me missing, and I will live a half-life. I’ll always hate the people here for what they did. I’ll fight bitterness for the rest of my life. I’ll fight the emptiness. I won’t have a single easy day because every time I look in the mirror, I’m going to hurt. There’s no accepting the loss of my dragon, but I had to do this. For my crew.”
“Vyr,” she whispered, her voice breaking. She wished more than anything that she could fix his life. She had this vision of him staring in the mirror and slamming his fist against the glass, over and over, and in each frame he aged until he was gray and tired, and still, he hated his frozen dragon eyes. She was going to watch the man she loved break every day because of what happened here.
“I like what you’re wearing today,” Vyr murmured.
She looked down at her dark wash jeans, sneakers, and plain, black, fitted, cotton T-shirt. She’d dressed it up with cute turquoise jewelry, but it was the most casual thing she’d worn since she started working for the prison. “Emmitt called my high heels victim shoes, and lately it feels like I need to be ready.”
“For what?”
“For total destruction,” she said with a smile.
“I should tell you I’m not a good man. I stole a lot of things from you without you knowing. Sometimes I spend time with you in your head when you don’t realize it. Quietly. Picking through memories. Learning about you.”
“Why do you do that?”
“Because I can’t get enough of you. I want to know everything. You’re so light. So optimistic, so beautiful inside and outside. I like everything about you. Even the things you’re ashamed of. I like that your favorite color is rainbow.” He chuckled. “Whose favorite color is all of them?”
She snorted. “Mine.”
“And I like that you eat a carton of chocolate chip cookie dough when you’re upset and that you’re fine with boxes all over your house, which is insane because I’m extremely tidy. But I imagine you leaving your shit all over my house and how it’ll make me feel.”
“How will it make you feel?”
“Like you’re everywhere. Like you’re filling up all the space that used to be boring. I think a week with you, and I’ll have trouble remembering my old life.”
Her stomach fluttered. She slid over to him, pressed right against his ribs, and rested her cheek on the inside of his shoulder. He was looking at her with that same crooked smile she couldn’t get enough of.
“What else did you learn while you were being a memory thief?”
“That you want kids, but you’re afraid they would have your powers.”
“Yeah, well now I’m double concerned because you have, like, eight guards in comas, and with very little effort.”
“And I’ve turned off all the cameras for the entire lower level. One hundred percent, any babies I put in you would be little hellions. But…they would also be good. You know how I know?”
“How?” she asked softly.
“Because you would be their mother. And I can see you so clearly, Riyah. You told me once that you’re the monster, but you were wrong. You’re good.”
“A good witch,” she teased.
And he agreed. “A very good witch.”
Vyr lifted up and rolled her onto her back, cupped her cheek as he searched her eyes. Riyah gripped his wrist to keep him touching her like this. Above him the glowing stars were still rotating slowly. It was amazing the things he could control all at once when he didn’t even look like he was focusing on them.
His lips curved into a smile just as he leaned down and pressed them to hers. It was so different from their first kiss, which was rushed and violent, and his hand had been so rough on her leg. This one was love, not lust. It was tender. It was soft sipping and steady breathing and lips moving together. When he brushed his tongue against her bottom lip, she opened for him. He didn’t taste like smoke anymore, and there was a moment when that made her sad, but she squeezed her eyes closed and focused on enjoying their time together because they might not get this again. Vyr dragged his fingertips down her ribs to her hip, gripped her, and pulled her against him with a deep, sexy sound in his throat. His touch was fire, blazing against her skin as he slid his hand up her shirt. He pushed under her bra and gripped her breast so hard she gasped and her back arched on reflex.
“Mmmm, good girl,” he rumbled.
Okay, now her body was igniting. Vyr shoved her shirt up over her head and ripped her bra off. Ripped it, not unfastened. His hands were firm and steady as he sat up and pulled her with him. He sat back and yanked his shirt over his head. “Skin. I want to feel your skin,” he demanded.
Oh God, she’d never liked being told what to do, but hell yes to Vyr taking control. She kicked out of her shoes and shimmied out of her pants as he watched. She planned on straddling him but he caught her by the hips, settled her upright on locked legs, and eased onto his knees before she could move. His fingers dug into her waist as he held her still and licked her right between the thighs…slowly. With a gasp, she locked her arms against his shoulders, because she wasn’t going to stay upright for this, she could already tell. Her legs were going numb.
He sucked gently on her clit, brushing his tongue against it rhythmically until she was panting and digging her nails into his shoulders. And then right when she was on the verge of orgasm, he thrust his tongue deep inside her until she was throbbing hard. She panted his name, legs buckling, but he had her, held her upright. And then he trailed biting kisses up her stomach to her breast
s as he lowered her slowly to his lap. When he sucked hard on her nipple, she cupped his head and tossed her head back, closed her eyes, and melted into his touch. When she finally settled onto his lap, his erection was hard against her sex. Vyr slid his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, as if he was just testing his strength, testing how much pressure she could take. Her back cracked and her breath left her lungs with a needy sound. He gripped her ass as he thrust his hips against her.
Riyah lifted up enough to shove his pants down his hips, unsheathing his thick, hard dick. That was hers. When she rocked against him, Vyr closed his eyes and huffed a breath. He reached between them and grabbed his dick, poised it right at her entrance. Riyah slid over him, slowly, focused on relaxing so she could take all of him, and when she had, she rocked faster. It felt so good, having him move inside of her, being connected like this. Vyr spread his knees farther apart and slammed into her, meeting her, moving with her, fingers rough on her hips as he kept her on him. He pushed into her harder and faster until she was chanting his name, and just as her second orgasm blasted through her, Vyr clamped his teeth on her neck and groaned, thrust deep, and throbbed warmth into her. He didn’t break the skin, but his bite felt so good as her release pulsed on and on. They moved together, drawing every aftershock from each other’s bodies. And when they were spent and still at last, she cupped his cheeks and smiled. “That was…” What word could she possibly use to describe something so important?
“For me, too,” he murmured. Vyr pulled her in close and hugged her tight. “It’s not exactly the way I wanted it for us, though.”
She giggled. “You mean you didn’t have prison sex in mind when you started wooing me?”
Vyr snorted and tickled her ribs until she squirmed, then laid them down on the concrete and pulled her against his side. With a sigh, he looked up at the floating stars and murmured, “Thank you for tonight, Riyah. For giving me the sky for a little while.”
With a content sigh, she kissed his chest, right over his heart, and nuzzled her cheek against him. “Someday, I’m going to give you the real thing.” It was a promise she was making to him and to herself. She was going to figure this out because she couldn’t watch him hate his reflection forever. There had to be something better than a half-life for Vyr.
In this moment, she didn’t care what would happen to her if she found a way to save the Red Dragon.
In this moment, she didn’t care about the fire that Beaston had promised.
In this moment, Riyah realized, as long as Vyr existed on this Earth, she would never be in the dark again. And as long as she existed, neither would he.
Chapter Fifteen
Riyah’s burner phone rang just as she was driving into the prison parking lot. In a rush, she pulled into a spot crooked and fumbled around in her purse until she found it.
“Hello?” she answered, hoping she hadn’t missed it.
“Turn on the news,” was all Damon Daye said before the line went dead.
Okay then. She’d been in lala land, aka thinking about Vyr-diddles the entire drive here, and now she was jolted back to reality. She pulled out her personal cell phone and connected to the internet. Well, news footage on Vyr wasn’t hard to find. Every link she clicked showed video of somber anchors talking about the death of the Red Dragon at the hands of the New IESA.
…against his will…
…not what our prison system should’ve been doing…
…grotesque use of power…
…the dragon is finally incapacitated…
…the world is a safer place…
…horrified by the secrecy…
…apparently the International Exchange of Shifter Affairs has been revived, to the detriment of all shifter-kind…
…the New IESA…
…experiments on shifters…
…a second look at shifter rights in the prison system…
…dragon is dead…
…dead…
…dead…
…the Red Dragon is dead…
Feeling sick, Riyah clicked on the video with the most views. It had been released late last night and already had several million hits. It opened with shaky footage of the conversation with Emmitt. Well, shit. She was the only one in the room when they had that conversation. She was definitely busted as the rat.
“Fuck,” she muttered as her heart rate went to racing and the blood drained out of her face and hands so quickly her skin tingled. Why would Cora Keller and Beck Anderson blast this out there? They’d completely blown her cover, and she wasn’t done here yet. Vyr was still in here, still at risk. She struggled to hold the phone steady as she watched the rest of the video.
The entire conversation between her and Emmitt was on there, and then the screen faded to black. Words typed across the darkness as Vyr said, “I hate you seeing me like this.”
The screen morphed to Vyr, running his hand down his short beard, his scar an angry red from his temple to the back of his head. She wasn’t in the scene, but her voice rang out clearly. “What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice sounded so defeated, and he ghosted a glance at the camera, flashing those sad, frozen dragon eyes.
“Don’t push me away,” she pleaded.
“Riyah, it’s best this way. I know what’s coming.” The scene faded to black, and words started typing across the dark again as Vyr spoke. “I’m tired. I’ve existed for thirty years with everyone thinking I’m evil. Doesn’t matter the effort I put into keeping good people safe. I lost the dragon. Lost the biggest part of me, and now there’s this hole. It’s growing bigger and bigger, and now all I feel is…”
“Is what?” she murmured.
“Emptiness.” Vyr’s voice echoed with sadness. The video showed Vyr again, and he was looking down at his clenched hands between his knees, shaking his head as he uttered, “If everyone wants me gone so bad…okay. I don’t really want to live a life where I feel like this anyway.”
“What about me?” Riyah asked from offscreen. “I’ll be alone if you leave. Really alone. I want more.”
“More what?”
“Time. I want you to kiss me, hold my hand, take me out for coffee, and stay up all night talking while you’re actually lying beside me. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. It was instant for me. I should’ve been scared of you, right? Well, I wasn’t. You always make me feel safe, even locked in here. I want to see Mr. Diddles and see your mountains. I want to be part of your crew. I want you to stick around because, to me, it doesn’t matter if you have the dragon or not. To me, it only matters if you’re here. With me. The princess and the dragon. A fairytale…except that’s not us, is it? Not really. We were built in similar ways that made our edges too rough for anyone else to handle or they would get cut. But we don’t cut each other. We fit. Now you go. What do you want?”
Vyr ran his hand over his hair roughly and then leaned forward, grabbed her chair, and pulled her close. The camera changed angles, aiming at both of them as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“What do you want, Vyr?” she asked.
“I want my dragon back. I want to be whole because I want to keep you.”
Riyah put her hands up, and then Vyr slid his much bigger hands against hers and intertwined their fingers.
“I have a surprise for you,” she whispered.
He frowned. “What is it?”
“Come lay on the floor with me.”
The scene cut to a shot of the cement ceiling, covered in black scorch marks. The words appeared on the screen as she and Vyr spoke. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“I’m ready,” Vyr answered.
The lights cut suddenly, and the scene was just pitch black with hundreds of plastic glowing stars. And their words appearing in closed captions.
“Riyaaah.”
“Remember when you told me what you missed the most?”
“The sky. The stars.”
“Yeah, and you said you l
iked to imagine them smiling down on you, even if you couldn’t see them. And that they were smiling because they could see better things coming for you.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Vyr. I’ll be your star. I believe in you. I’ll wait with you while better things are coming.”
“I’m yours,” he read aloud.
There was a pause, and then in an emotional voice, Riyah murmured, “You just said you wanted the dragon back so you could keep me. Well…dragon or no, you have me.”
Slowly, the glowing stars faded to black.
And just like that, whoever had edited this video had humanized the most misunderstood shifter in the world. They had turned him from monster to man.
The scene cut to a pair of news anchors. A pretty blond woman was dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex, and the man asked if she was okay.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, it’s just sad. Shifters really and truly are people, with feelings and fears and hopes and dreams just like humans. When my crew and my husband, Boone, were coming out to the public all those years ago, it was so scary for us. It was terrifying. We were scared for our families, and now it feels like that’s been revived. That fear of shifters. And because of that fear, you have these underground, secret operations that pop up and experiment on shifters, abuse them, torture them, steal their animals, and who is holding them accountable? Who? Whose place is it to stand up and say it’s not right what they are doing?”
“The public,” the man answered somberly.
The woman—Cora Keller, the name read along the bottom of the screen—turned to the camera, and her voice went steely as she said, “I agree. It’s up to us to stop experimentation and involuntary cleansing of shifter animals. The suicide rate of shifters who have been cleansed is horrifying. I want the New IESA brought down. I want it annihilated, and I think we should revisit Vyr Daye spending another six months of his sentence in that godforsaken place. The government already seized all his assets, and he has paid to rebuild Covington, and now his dragon has been tortured to death. To death. I think he’s suffered enough. I’ve started a petition online. You can find it at www-dot-stop-the-new-IESA-dot-com. Join me and thousands of others in making a positive change.”