Page 3 of Draco

Luna was a clever girl. She’d hidden from the bad guys by being captured by them. Well, not by them, but by their even uglier underbelly. The traffickers. Some questions still remained unanswered as she began to relax in my arms. Namely, why had Kat seen her free, walking about by herself that day?

Captives to be sold were never given free rein to do as they pleased. They were considered flight risks and their wings—as it were—were clipped.

With a sigh, her eyes began to drift closed, and I held onto her as Stryker checked her pulse and glanced at me.

“And she’s out. That was some weird shit.” His eyebrows furrowed. “She’s tangled up in the trafficking side. Why the hell were they selling her?”

I lifted a shoulder. Clearly, there was more to this than we knew.

“The underground.” Leif’s voice cut through the car and Stryker glanced at me, a confused look on his face. Ah, to be a rookie again. I liked my mentee, but he had a lot to learn. And after his fiasco, I knew I needed to take a more hands-on approach to teaching him.

“There is an underground subset to the Doubletap bastards. They are on no one’s side, not ours, not the groups. They work to free anyone they deem worthy of being saved,” I said.

“Or anyone that can pay.” Leif’s disgust shone in his deep voice.

I nodded as Stryker sat back in his seat, his eye flashing with hatred and anger. I knew he was thinking of Kat.

If Kat had been more cooperative, she’d have been sold too. Just like Luna here. Kat, though, the mouthy, crafty girl she was hadn’t been given that opportunity. She’d been on the kill list from the first second because the Doubletap fucks didn’t want to deal with someone that was worth more trouble than the money they’d bring in for her.

Of course, if they’d have known she was untouched, they might have changed their minds. Virgins always got a higher price on the market. Not that I understood why. Sex with virgins had never been pleasurable to me. I’d always preferred a partner that knew what they wanted and weren’t afraid to ask for it.

I adjusted Luna’s blond hair and brushed it away from her face. It spilled out over my lap as the car made a sharp left turn onto a mostly untraveled road. We’d been cleared to use the cavern, my favorite safe house. It was literally built into the side of a cliff face into the rocks. Several walls of the home were natural rock, and the whole building was designed to complement the natural formations, not to intrude on them.

A stone fireplace went through ten feet of stone to let the smoke out in a way that made the place impossible to trace based on the wood heat source alone. There was one way in, but six ways out, not counting the flying pad we often used. It would only be another hour of driving on these back roads that resembled forest service roads winding deeper and deeper into the wilderness that we favored so much. It was easier to hide that you were a fucking dragon when there was no one around to actually see you.

Besides, most of our kind were more at ease and in tune with nature than with humanity. It seemed like a cruel irony that we were destined to protect those that we couldn’t be all that close to in large quantities.

I shifted Luna, worried at how still and pale she’d gone. The sedative was a powerful one, but safe, and I trusted Stryker’s ability with it. I’d spent a lot of time sharpening his skills with the old ways. Things my family had taught me that had been passed down from generation to generation. Medicines, practices, beliefs, all the things the old ones demanded we know.

Things Stryker had never had a chance to be taught. He might not be pure blood—as in both his parents were not dragons, just one—but still, these things were still passed down from dragon to dragonpup. His tragic loss of his parents, and later his brother, left him stunted and drove me to take him in. From that first moment he came to us, I’d seen his pain and felt it as keenly as he did.

I’d seen an opportunity to help him heal and grow and find a reason to live again, but he’d taught me more than I ever expected. His loyalty led him to save my life, led him to protect me above all else, until Kat.

“I know that look.” Stryker glared at me.

“Remember Castor?” I asked, thinking about the young man who’d hit me with a poison blade while my back was turned.

Stryker nodded. “That was my first experience using the golden dragon.”

The golden dragon, a plant used specifically for our kind to heal us. Used on anyone without dragon blood they’d die slowly and painfully.

“Golden Dragon?” Leif’s eyes jumped from me to Stryker before shifting back to the bumpy road ahead. “I thought half-bloods couldn’t learn the old ways.”

Stryker stiffened, but I shook my head. Leif didn’t mean any insult. “Generally they can’t, but not for lack of skill. It’s a lack of knowledge.”

“Are you half-blood?”

At Stryker’s question, Leif’s knuckles went white as he gripped the steering wheel so tightly I expected it to crumble to powder in his hands. I didn’t want the two to start rearranging each other’s faces with their fists, so I smoothed things over.

“Now is not the time.” I knew Leif’s story, but it was his to tell. Not mine.

Privacy was valued above most things in our ranks. While Stryker and I had an oddly open relationship where he knew he could ask me questions and I’d answer, it was not so with many of our kind. Stryker knew this, of course, but the perceived insult might have clouded his judgment.

“Just wondering. He had a bit of bite to the word half-blood when he spoke. But his name doesn’t sound like a pureblood’s.” Stryker gestured to me. “I mean, you’re Draco. That’s dragon through and through. And Wrath, that’s a dragon name.” He gestured to himself. “Stryker. Half-blood. Leif… Half-blood?”

Leif hit the brakes, and I glanced up, preparing myself for the two to clash. Out the windshield, a doe and two speckled fawns stood, staring at us.

“Hungry?” Leif glared at Stryker, and this time, the insult was clear.

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