Page 20 of Draco

“Not lost.” She wasn’t lost. I could hear her mind still. I wasn’t worried about letting her go this time. The traps I’d set while she slept the night before would catch her.

As I thought about it, I heard her scream and her thoughts filled with rage as the basket net scooped her up, and I got a mental glimpse of her swinging from a tree, totally caught in the trap a good eight feet off the ground.

I wondered how she’d handle this situation.

“That smirk is scaring me.” Stryker took a deep drink of his coffee.

“How did you know?” I asked him, turning almost all my attention to him while keeping a bit of thought with Luna. Her cursing was enough to wilt the trees as she swung from a branch, wrapped up in netting.

“How did I know what?” Stryker stared at me like I’d lost my mind. And maybe I had.

I rubbed at my eyes, then sat back in my chair with a depressurizing hiss. “How did you know that Kat was the one? That your loyalty was with her, over all else?”

He shrugged, staring into his coffee with a faraway look. “Just a feeling, you know?”

“Do you regret listening to it?”

He lifted his head. “No. But I feel lucky as hell. It could have ended so badly. Instead, everything went right, and now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” He chuckled. “Spending time with her is better than pending it with you ugly bastards, that’s for sure.”

“Fuck you.” Stryker and I had been close after he’d entered the brotherhood. Losing his family, then his brother to suicide had left him without the will to carry on, so he’d joined looking for a purpose or a heroic reason to throw his life away.

With his permission, I’d entered his mind and helped him heal and reason and find that purpose. We’d been a good team. Not growing up with the rigid upbringing of the dragons had a profound effect on him. He was guarded still, but less so than most. He was more open and trusting than others—no other dragon would ever dream of letting me in their minds. Nor would they tell me their talent as he had.

He’d taught me several valuable lessons about how we could make ourselves stronger if we let others in. He’d let me practice mind pushes on him and helped me stretch my skills and learn their true potential, and I’d be forever grateful to him for that. He’d also saved my life on more than one occasion and helped me out of more than a few sticky situations where I shouldn’t have walked away.

In return, I found a way to help him keep the love of his life when the brotherhood wanted to destroy her to keep themselves safe.

To be honest, though, she’d also made me do that by calling me out for what I was. A monster. She’d made me reevaluate myself, my actions, the man I was. And I’d come up lacking. So I decided to remedy that.

“Why are you asking such weird questions?” Stryker’s tone changed, but I didn’t dare reach out and touch his mind. I didn’t feel like fighting my friend, so I kept my talents to myself and let him keep his thoughts private.

“I was just wondering.” I tried to play it off like it was no big deal, like there was no real reason I wanted to know, but of course, there was a reason. And he didn’t fall for my bullshit for a second.

“This one? Really?” He arched an eyebrow at me, and I feigned innocence.

“This one what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I finished my coffee, wishing I’d put something stronger in it. Putting the white ceramic mug on the table, I stretched back in my chair.

“Bullshit.” Stryker called me on it. “Are you fucking her? I didn’t see you with a woman like that.”

A woman like that. I growled, and his eyes widened. “Don’t you dare talk shit about her. You don’t know her.”

A grin slowly stretched across his face. “You’re right. I don’t know her. Want to talk about it?”

I sure as fuck didn’t.

Instead, I ignored Stryker for a moment and focused in on her thoughts. Fear, anger, and frustration as she struggled against the netting. She wasn’t hurt, though, just pissed. She’d given up cursing, and now she seemed to be trying to think through things. She didn’t want to admit she needed my help, but she was stuck until I or someone else cut her down

And I sure as hell wasn’t in a hurry to get out there and let her free. She wanted to do this on her own.

“Whatever you did, she’s mad as hell.” Stryker’s tone held a hint of amusement, and I knew he could smell her and her emotions even from this distance.

“Yep. So how’s the wife?” I stood up and walked over to refill my coffee from the pot. Motioning the glass pot toward him, I offered him more. He held up his cup, and I moved to refill his too.

“She’s great. Loving her place in everything. The Roth child hit her pretty hard.”

I imagined. That whole thing was a nightmare. “How’s she holding up after that?”

He shrugged as I sat across from him. “She’s trying to put it behind her. I’ve told her so damn many times that it’s not her fault, but she still blames herself. Thinks if she’d have been faster…”

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