His vision went hazy, and all he saw was Fleur’s smile, the way she made his soul, not just the shard, glow with all the love he had inside for her.
His soul would wither if she was dead.
They were one. He didn’t understand how he knew, but Fleur was alive, because if she wasn’t, he would die with her.
The demon dragon squealed, not because Jakob was twisting the spikes of his tail into its chest, but out of thrill of seeing Steele’s painful reaction.
Steele was this close to stabbing the demon dragon through the eye. It was taunting him.
He shook off the possibility of the demon dragon’s words being true. They couldn’t be. “That’s beneath you. Too easy of a lie.”
“Easy?” It tilted its head to the side like this was the first time that word had ever entered its consciousness.
“Yes. Lies are easy. Cheap. You know what has power?” He got right up in the beast’s face and whispered. “Real power?”
It groaned and breathed faster. “Want power.”
“Are you sure? Can you handle it? I don’t know. You’re smart, but are you strong enough to handle it?”
It squirmed. “Yes. Yesssss. Give me.”
Steele shrugged and turned his back. Denying it a little longer, making it want to hear what he had to say. “Truth.” Steele whipped around staring at the demon dragon eye to eye. “The truth is more powerful than you can imagine.”
It narrowed its eyes and Steele had to push the air in an out of his lungs to make sure the thing didn’t get a whiff of doubt that every word was the path to pure power.
“I know truth.” It paused waiting to see how that felt coming out of its mouth. “Truth about woman.”
He couldn’t get too excited. He almost had what he wanted and then he could rip its throat out. “I don’t know. You could be lying about that. Prove it.”
“Woman not dead. Yet. Woman slave to AllFather.”
A slave. He would kill this all father twice. “Who is all father?”
“I powerful. You stupid.”
Maybe he was for trying to talk to a demon dragon. But he’d gotten this far. “I am. Show me how stupid I am. Tell me who all father is, where he is.”
“AllFather father of all demon dragons. You kill one. He fuck demon. Make new demon dragon.”
Disgusting, but more information than they’d ever gotten before about the origin of the demon dragons. “Oh, man. How did I not know? You know so much. What else? How does a demon make a demon dragon?”
“You stupid. Demon not make demon dragon. Dragon make demon dragon.”
A dragon was doing this, creating a legion of abominations. That black dragon they’d fought was more tha a demon. Steele glanced at Jakob then Match. They both shook their heads indicating they didn’t know what or whom the demon dragon was talking about either.
It had to be lying again.
“Huh. That’s interesting. I could listen to you talk all day. So, this dragon. Where is he? I bet you know.”
“No.”
Shit. Now it clams up? “No? Come on. You’re smart, you know.”
“No. AllFather go down. He hide woman from you.”
“You must have seen him, you know he’s made the woman his slave.” Fuck, that hurt to say. Enough was enough. Time to find Fleur. “Down, where?”
“Down. You not find AllFather. You never find woman. I fuck woman.”
Not in this lifetime or any other. Steele stabbed the demon through the eye and ripped off its head. He sliced through the entire tree the demon had been trapped on. Then stomped the trunk into the ground and smashed the demon dragon’s body into the hole in the ground.
“Well, that thing is pretty damn dead.” The voice of one of Fleur’s friend’s broke through Steele’s frenzy. He stomped one more time and looked up to see a circle of men and women, all wolf shifters. They were interspersed with the dragon warriors.
The dragons shifted into their human forms, one by one, until Steele was the only one still in his beast. He took three, then five deep breaths, trying to contain the rage inside. His dragon self wanted to fly, search, tear, shred, until he had his mate back.
If he was going to find her, he needed their help.
The change finally shimmered through him, and he stood with the rest of the group. His fists were clenched, his heart and gut were eating him from the inside out, and his injuries burned, but he was human.
Jakob put a hand on his shoulder, giving him the solidarity, the knowledge that he had a support team. He didn’t have to do this alone.
Match addressed the wolf shifters. “Do you have any geothermal activity in this area?”
Two of the wolf females Steele recognized, Heli and Selena glanced at each other. “We have hot springs in the area. Why?”
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Dax said. “Demon dragons like to live and congregate in volcanoes and other underground high temperature biomes.”
Match nodded. “The stain said this all father dude went down. If it’s anything like the demon dragons, the area around your hot springs would be its first escape route.”
Niko stepped forward. “What can we do to keep our pack’s safe? The protection your warriors gave us tonight is appreciated, but you won’t always be around. What if they come back once you leave?”
These people were Fleur’s friends, her family even. Whatever happened, he would make sure the dragon warriors would protect her people like he would protect her.
The alpha in Match recognized the same in Niko. “We must root out their nest and destroy them so they do not plague this area.”
Steele may be injured, he may have failed in his duty to protect his mate, and he may not ever be worthy of Fleur’s love, but he had it, and he would put it above all else. “Not before we find Fleur.”
Selena walked over and squeezed his cheek. “I knew you’d finally win her over. Let’s go get your mate.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Witchy Woman
Fleur closed her eyes and thought of Steele. The way he’d pursued her relentlessly. The way he kissed her and loved her. The way he’d given his soul into her care, and the way she gave hers to him.
“What are you doing, witch? Your magic can’t save you.”
She ignored the disdain and disgust in the demon’s words. Her love was more powerful than his hatred.
She pushed every bit of that love toward the teeny-tiny root and urged it to grow. Cracks and crunches of the rock breaking echoed all through the cavern and the scent of newly turned earth and fresh growth overtook the stench of sulfer.
“A tree root is not going to save you from an agonizing lava burn.”
Fleur opened her eyes and smiled at the asshat. He was wrong. The roots stretched down, creating first a wall of tangled wood between them and the creepy crone, and then a mass weaving covering the lava closest to her.
The shard at her neck glowed brightly, changing the color of the air around them from red to green.
The crone rattled the cage of branches and shouted through them. “Boy, see its power. Get the shard from her. Claim what is rightfully yours.”
The man snarled and black scales rippled across his body. His hands transformed into dark claws the color of dirty oil. They swiped across her chest, shredding her shirt and cutting deep, leaving gashes that oozed black sludge.
She swallowed the scream, not wanting him to see her give into any pain he could inflict. She held fast to the knowledge that try as he might, his torture hadn’t sliced through the cord of the shard.
He roared, trying to grasp the crystal. “Give it to me, whore.”
“Get off.” Fleur twisted and slapped at his claws. She pushed her power far beyond where she’d gone before forcing the tree roots to twice, three, four times its normal size. A chunk of the ceiling fell, breaking away and landing in great pieces all around them.
One narrowly missed the half-dragon-half asshole’s head. That pissed him off even more. She’d hoped she coul
d injure him and get him to let her go, even run away.
Nope.
He seized her by the throat with one giant clawed fist and grabbed for the shard with the other. Fleur clutched his arms attempting to save both her life and the shard.
“Never. You’ll never get it.”
He growled and flames licked at the edges of his mouth. “I will.”
The fire burst out at her and this time she did scream, turning her head away. But the flames never touched her, didn’t burn her skin.
“What the fuck? What are you?” The man shook her and shot his fiery breath at her again.
It licked across her skin, but didn’t hurt any more than incredibly bad breath.
Fleur blinked. There was something different about her eyelids. Or was it her eyes? The world around her turned technicolor, sharper. The heat the shard had protected her from lessened even more and the wounds on her chest hurt less. A change was rising in her from the inside.
She glared at her captor. Thorny vines wrapped around his claws and fist, drawing blood and crushing the scales. “Hells bells, why does everyone have to ask what I am?”
She’d been asked that her entire life. Those that didn’t care to ask simply shunned her. Now she was being tortured, and she still couldn’t answer the question. She didn’t know herself.
She’d clung to her unknown destiny her whole life, hiding behind it. She would know who she was when her fate showed up to tell her.
Screw that.
A renewed power built inside.
“You want to know what I am?” She released her grip on him as more vines and branches wrapped around them both. “You can talk to the hand. No, talk to the finger, because I’m not taking any more questions today.”
Fleur raised her middle finger to the asshat’s face, holding it steady and strong.
Smoke curled out of his snarl-puss face. He glanced at the shard and to her face. “There are plenty of other ways to get what I want, hundreds of dragons who don’t know how precious the gift is.”
He released her, breaking through the vines and dropped her to the ground. She landed close to the lava, protected only by the thin layer of roots that were burning up by the second. Still she didn’t feel the heat.
“If you won’t give me the soul shard, you can die and take your dragon with you.”
He kicked at her, sending her careening into the lava. She raised her arms into the air, calling the plants to her. A branch stretched down, wrapping around each arm and pulling her up and away from the danger.
The man transformed fully into a black beast of a dragon and crashed through the wooden barrier. He took flight and torpedoed across the lava, following its flow deeper into the ground.
The crone screeched after him and disappeared into a puff of black smoke.
A great roar bubbled up from the direction the black dragon had flown and the earth shook below her. More of the ceiling caved in and the floor below her cracked right on cue like the set of an action adventure disaster movie.
Crapping crappity crap crap. Fleur had been ready to release a sigh of relief, but they hadn’t let her escape at all. They were going to trap her underground in the cavern of death and despair.
Where was a dragon warrior when she needed one?
“He’s waiting for you.” The whisper of a soft feminine voice slid into her head.
“What? Hello? Who’s there?”
“Go, Fleur. Quickly.”
“Where? I don’t see a way out.” The floor shook again, and she fell. “Oh, Gods on Olympus. I’m going to die in here, aren’t I? This is my destiny coming to bite me in the ass.”
That would teach her to think she could ignore what the universe had predetermined her life would be.
The image of a gorgeous mother-nature diva, white flowing robes, dark hair, and plump soft curves formed before her.
For the briefest moment, she saw a reflection in the woman’s eyes of herself, but instead of her own olive skin, she saw white scales.
The woman pointed toward the tunnel in the rock Fleur had come through before. The roots had opened a new path that angled up to the surface. “Dammit, girl. Screw destiny. Run.”
She had said it. Now she was truly going to do it.
Screw. Stupid. Destiny.
She wanted to live.
The floor shook again, but this time the falling rock uncovered more roots. The tree she’d coaxed into helping her had continued to swell and fill the cavern with its tendrils. The leafy canopy of the tree must be huge above the ground.
She scrambled onto the nearest root and encouraged more growth, jumping across from sprout to sprout across the cracks in the ground and the bubbling lava.
Her muscles were on fire, and she vowed to start doing squats if her legs would get her out of here in one piece. The room was collapsing before her eyes.
She put on one final burst of speed. The white-robed woman drifted alongside of her, waving her hands and whispering foreign words.
A tremor grabbed Fleur’s heart, pushing out, shimmering over her entire body. One second she was running and the next, she flew into the tunnel, the earth falling in a tidal wave of dirt and rock behind her.
Flying. Holy smokes, literally flying. She clawed at the rock to make room for her and her big ole white wings. A ginormous crack in the earth opened before her and she jumped into the air, dodging falling rocks and hot water spilling from above.
“Steele? Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Fleur? We found your dragon tree. I’m coming.”
She didn’t know what a dragon tree was, but she could feel Steele, he was close.
“I’m flying up through a crack in the ground.”
He was silent for a moment. “Did you say flying?”
“Yeah, thanks to the woman in white with me.” Or, she had been. The woman wasn’t beside her anymore.
The night sky with the moon and stars were visible above. Almost there. Almost back to Steele.
A great roar came from behind her and the crack widened. Fleur looked over her shoulder and saw the black dragon hot on her tail.
Between them was the woman in white.
“Go, little daughter. Hurry. I’ve muddled the dragon’s sight. Kur-jara cannot see this part of you. Get to the surface and shift into your human form.”
Go, go, go. Hopefully Steele would know how to help her shift, because she didn’t have a clue.
She burst out of the ground and into the sky. Several dragons were circling the biggest tree in the forest. It towered above all the others, and its branches stretched out like the wings of dragon.
She’d made a great big green dragon tree.
It was beautiful and amazing, but not as incredible as the sight of her own big green dragon pacing beneath it. “Steele.”
She swooped down and skidded across the ground. Her body shimmered and her feet transformed, then her legs, and torso, and arms, which she wrapped around Steele and held him tight.
He shifted instantly into his human form and held her tight against his chest with one arm. “Thank the first dragon. I failed you, my love. Forgive me.”
First, she would kiss him, making sure his lips and tongue, teeth and tonsils knew how much she missed them. Then she’d set him straight on the whole failure thing.
His kissy face plans matched hers. He pressed her against the tree trunk and mashed his lips against hers, taking her in a soul-deep kiss. The moment they touched, a sense of overwhelming joy and rightness to her world flowed through, in, and around them both.
She could kiss him forever, except she knew danger was on its way. If they were going to fight it off together, she needed him to know everything that was in her heart and to heal his. He thought he’d failed her, when in reality he’d saved her, helped her save herself from living a small life.
As much as she didn’t want to, she broke the kiss and pressed her finger against his lips before he could say a word. “The black dragon is coming, so l
et me say this before the battle.” He sucked the end of her finger into his mouth, but waited for her to speak.
When this was over they were going to spend a long damn time staring into each other’s eyes. In bed.
The thunder and heat of dragon fire filled the air. She had only seconds before the black dragon and his special brand of destruction arrived.
The great tree shuddered and the ground moved beneath their feet. Steele steadied them against the trunk, keeping them both from falling.
Crap. She had a whole speech prepared, about how he was a warrior that has to protect the whole world from the evil she didn’t even know existed until yesterday. That would have to wait. Short, sweet, and to the point. They had a beast to battle.
“Love of my life, you’re badass. But you don’t have to protect me. I think it’s actually my job to keep you and your soul safe, so you can keep on saving the world.”
Steele shook his head and clenched his jaw. “I am never leaving you exposed to a draft of cold air, much less demon dragons. I can’t, will not, lose you again. It almost killed me to think about those things even touching you.”
The black dragon surged out of the ground, taking half a ton of earth and trees with him and raining it down along with fireballs of rock and lava.
Dragons and wolves scattered to avoid the debris. Oh, no. The Troika pack was here. Her friends, the closest thing she had to a family, were in danger, too.
She and Steele had to stop the black dragon before it hurt any of them.
Fleur grabbed Steele’s arms and saw his wounds weren’t healing. They matched the ones across her chest.
Both were filled with a black taint, something evil and not of the earth.
White scales rippled across her arms. What was inside of her, the part that she’d never been able to recognize or understand, pushed to get out.
“Trust me, Steele. Together we are stronger, together, we can save Rogue from the black dragon.”
It wasn’t only the dragon that Steele had awakened in her, but love.
The antidote for evil.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN