Page 28 of Awaken the Dragon
Dudum, dudum, dudum.
Her heart was still beating. He looked down, only to find her eyes flashing from the icy coolness of her soul identity to the fiery reddish brown that was displayed to everyone else.
He cursed, long and loud.
Chapter Ten
Foregoing the mind trick this time, Theo kicked the door off its hinges and pulled Shola out of the truck. Bleu and Ziva were already out.
“It was the newborns!” Reece yelled from across the road where he and Aiken were also climbing out of their vehicle.
“The burst of fire,” Ziva said, coming to stand beside Theo. “It was a missile. They came out of the shadows and shot fuckin’ missiles at us!”
“The other team’s going after them!” Aiken yelled.
“Go!” Theo yelled back. “Go! Now!”
Twenty-five humans comprised the other team who worked for the company. They were no match against the strength of newborn vampires who had apparently been told to attack them.
Theo took a step forward, and Bleu appeared in front of him.
“It’s her they want,” Bleu said quietly. “You have to get her to safety.”
Theo’s eyes flipped, fury rising along with the dragon, who was ready and rearing to go. He wanted to watch each one of those newborns as their bodies burned and the ash seeped into the ground, but Bleu was right.
His eyes snapped back and he glared at Shola. She was staring at the small bursts of fire now burning along the road. She appeared to be in shock, and in that moment he knew what Bleu said was right, because the beast was ready to kill for her, the woman who wouldn’t be honest with him.
“I want them dead,” he said through clenched teeth. “Every last one of them burned to the fucking ground!”
Bleu nodded and waved Theo to the truck Aiken and Reece had been riding in. It was still upright. The other trucks would be turned over by Bleu or Ziva. If Shola watched them do that, she’d want to know how. She knew about preternatural beings, but she didn’t know he and his employees were among them, and he planned to keep it that way.
He grabbed Shola’s hand and pulled her along behind him as he jogged to the other truck. Once inside, he pulled the seat belt around her and snapped the lock in place, then started the truck’s engine with a push of a button and mentally clicked on every other security measure this vehicle possessed. They weren’t going to be hit by any other missiles, nor were they going to be turned over. The last device he’d engaged was the cloaking mechanism that Isla, the youngest Drakon of their crew, had developed using her own blood and the power of mimicry she possessed.
If he could take to the sky, they would have gotten to the mountain sooner. He let that thought float in and out of his mind as he gunned the gas and soared over the open road.
By the time he arrived at the Office, he was even angrier than before. He jumped out of the truck, ran to the other side, yanked open the passenger door, and reached for Shola. With her hand in his, they headed for the doors in silence, but once inside, she yanked her hand out of his grasp.
“That is enough,” she said in a voice that was much calmer than Theo thought either of them actually were. “I do not know what is happening here, or what this is anymore.” She was shaking her head and backing away. “People are being killed.”
“Yes!” he yelled. “And that’s precisely why I need you to tell me what the hell you’re doing here. What’s in that box you wanted so desperately? A bunch of rocks? And who the hell is your husband-to-be? Why did he have a house full of...of...” He couldn’t say it because putting it into words would make the possibility of what could have happened to her real and more serious than he’d thought.
While he was pretty certain Shola was magickal, he had no idea on which side of magick she fell. What if she knew about the newborns? What if this entire wedding was a sham?
“Who are you?”
Three simple words, asked in her calm voice, pierced him deep in his soul because his identity—the one he’d being running from for three hundred years—was exactly what kept him from settling this situation once and for all.
He shook his head. “I’m the one hired to guard you.”
“And I am the one telling you I do not need a guard. I can handle this on my own.”
“You need something!” he yelled. “Because all of this didn’t start happening until you appeared. And until you can tell me why that is, you’re not going anywhere, Shola. So just make yourself comfortable.”
Theo walked away because he could feel the split in his skin as the beast pressed forward. He couldn’t shift in this part of the Office, and he definitely couldn’t shift in front of her. Scaring her beyond what he was certain the events of tonight already had and bringing the beast into a structure it was too damn big to fit inside were not options.
He left her standing there and didn’t dare look back. The dragon’s eyes had flipped once more so that he knew what she would see when she stared back at him. He broke into a run when he felt he wasn’t getting away from her fast enough and a glimpse of his hand showed the first emergence of black scales.
Warrick slammed the steel doors of the basement in the townhouse he owned on the outskirts of the financial district. With his rage boiling, he sent boxes of ingredients stored for the manufacturing of hella—a combination of strong herbs spiked with hallucinogens that was the recreational drug of choice these days—soaring across the space. They slammed into steel-lined walls and fell to the floor. He opened his mouth, teeth elongated, and threw back his head as a vicious growl ripped from his throat.
