Page 42 of To Spark a Dragon's Love
Ranting and raving wasn’t going to do Harper any good. There were bruised bananas on the shelf. She’d be starving when she got home. Harper was always hungry when she woke up. I’d get started on some bread to keep myself busy.
Pins and needles shot through my legs as I climbed to my feet. But I’d just need to keep moving. One foot after the other.
“Where are you going?”
“To stress bake,” I said as I reached for the doorknob.
A rumbling warning came from the dragon who’d been asleep in the yard. Miss Grace’s silver and dark blue scales blended in perfectly with the early morning darkness until she raised her sleepy head.
The first glimmers of sunshine were coming over the mountains. A woman walked out of Kieran’s house.Morgana.My eyes narrowed, trying to recall the name of the male who walked beside her. One of the alpha wolf-shifters. He’d shown respect to Malachy. Alpha McCaw was his name.
He approached with Morgana, looking much more tame and subdued than he had at dinner.
Morgana gave me a knowing smirk. “They’re not back yet?”
It was such a simple question. Like the males had gone for a beer run, not to save my daughter.
But I wasn’t about to correct her. That woman scared me. It was as if she could read the secrets I kept hidden. She knew it too. I could tell by the slight humor that danced on her face as she stared at me for an uncomfortably long time.
“They’re still out.” I looked away.
“Don’t worry about the child. They’ll take care of her,” Morgana said. Tension in my shoulders eased a bit at her words. It didn’t matter how she knew, but I implicitly trusted her.
I dried my eyes with the corner of my sleeve, feeling overwhelmed with gratitude that she’d come to tell me that. “It’s just hard not to worry, you know?”
“Oh, I didn’t say not to worry at all.” Morgana allowed Alpha McCaw to grasp her hand.
His chest puffed with pride as he stepped forward, bowing his head a fraction to acknowledge me. “When Malachy kills the MacAlisters for this transgression, we need to be prepared.”
My blood ran cold as I looked at Ember and Riley. They were as equally confused as I was.
“Prepared for what?”
16
Malachy
Revenge
Kill them. Kill them all.
Agreed.
I beat my wings faster against the sky, fueled by the bloodlust of my beast. The smoke trail was hours old and fading by the time we picked it up, but I had Lucan beside me and my brother’s tracking was unmatched.
“There.”Lucan motioned with his massive jaw to the beach in the distance. The Pacific Ocean crashed against the rocky shoreline beneath the mansion set on the cliffside.
We perched on the opposite facing cliff nestled between the giant redwood trees. Somehow Lucan had tracked the MacAlisters to their territorial home. Or maybe he’d always known where they lived. Kieran and Lucan were both more worldly than I was, having spent time among the humans and other supernatural creatures.
For once, I wasn’t bitter about that fact.
Especially now that we’d caught up so fast.
“They’ll know we’re coming.”The rotten log of a fallen tree crumbled under Lucan’s golden talons.“My guess is they’ll set a trap.”
“But they couldn’t have known to kidnap Harper.”Kieran’s blood-red scales glinted in the first rays of the rising sun as he perched on my other side.“It wasn’t advertised that we had an unclaimed human child. I bet Jeremy reacted in the heat of the moment without a plan and they’re scrambling now.”
Lucan was better trained in battle, but I trusted Kieran’s knowledge of how others behaved. He’d studied these dragons much longer than I had. And his soothing, steady presence reminded me of all the trouble we’d managed to barely escape in our youth because of his smooth-talking ways.
