Page 10 of Claim the Dragon
The golden light was intense and when she grabbed the handle that humming she’d heard back at the house started once more.This time the sound also vibrated through the knife as she pulled it slowly from between her breasts.Once it was away from her chest the light blinked out and it looked like an old dirty knife again.
“What the hell?”
The words hung in the air as she turned her hand back and forth staring at the front and then the back of the knife.
“Maybe Cree’s right and we need to get out of here, because now we’re both cracking up.”The knife couldn’t be glowing, there were no batteries inside of it, and it wasn’t humming to any rhythm in her head.She was tired and still buzzed from pulling off the robbery.
She stood, walking in just her panties and sports bra over to the dresser where she planned to hide the knife in the secret compartment beneath one of the drawers.But as she pulled the drawer out, she changed her mind.Closing it slowly, she walked back across the room and lifted the pillows at the top of her bed.She slid the knife beneath three of them and then fluffed them before falling back on the bed and folding her hands over her stomach.There she stayed for who knew how long, until her lids became heavy and she thought sleep was going to take her.
But the humming sound persisted and with the humming came a cool breeze.She moved until she had the blankets covering her body and then flipped over onto her stomach.When that still didn’t feel quite right, she slipped a hand beneath the pillows, until her fingers found the hilt of the knife once more.Curling her fingers around it had warmth spreading throughout her body and the sound lowered to a steady rhythm that matched her heartbeat.Then she slept and wondered about the golden light and the handsome man who had appeared on the roof tonight.
She was gone, but she was alive.
Steele told himself that was all that mattered.Her heart still beat, he could tell because he hadn’t felt that cold slice that sifted through his soul each time a being he’d dreamed of dying had succumbed to the Reaper’s quest.He entered his hotel room and lay down on his bed, welcoming the warmth that immediately filled him.The beast was awake even as the man sought rest.It moved throughout the human body with slow precision, reminding each limb, every vein and the steady stream of blood to whom it really belonged.
As long as he’d lived, Steele’s beast had never lain dormant.He’d always allowed it freedom on his command.Tonight, once the woman had run so far that Steele could no longer see her, the beast had ripped free, taking to the sky to track her.In those moments he hadn’t been able to control the beast and that worried him.Every second the beast’s eyes were on the car she was in, it breathed easier, and the moment it knew she was in the same area she went to each night, it relaxed, finally heeding Steele’s command and bringing him back to the hotel, where he’d had to use his strength to kick down a door to a service entrance.He used dream dust on the two laundry room workers so he could grab a kitchen uniform to wear.A six-foot-three-inch black man with locks hanging to his shoulders walking naked through the hotel was sure to cause a commotion.
The fury between man and his beast at the moment was at an all-time high and couldn’t be ignored.All Drakon controlled the beast within them, and some were even able to hold their beast at bay for hundreds of years—Theo had done that for the first three hundred years he’d been on the Human Realm.Steele, on the other hand, had always been one with his beast, though he gave it a wide berth whenever possible, even after his clan had moved from the Far Realm to the Yorubaland area of the Human Realm.His beast had space to grow and flourish on both realms, even to the point of entering battle—the battle which had cost his sister her life.
“Fuck!”he yelled when he was closed in the room, alone.What was he supposed to do now?
All his life, Steele had been proud of who and what he was.Until tonight, when he’d stood close to that woman, staring into those enigmatic eyes and watching her lips move as she questioned him.In those moments Steele wished he were anything other than the one tasked with leading her to the Reaper.Should he attribute his insubordinate decision to keep her safe to his beast and the way it acted as if it would do anything—even disobey Steele’s commands—for her?That thought made him queasy, even as his beast moved, rubbing along his muscles as if it were proving its point.Steele scrubbed his hands down his face and hoped that wasn’t the case.He prayed his beast wasn’t interfering, not this time.And if it was, he wanted to run as far away from that scenario as possible.Only, leaving her wasn’t an option, because the thought of her dying was more than he could bear.More than he was willing to accept, again.
