Chapter 6 - Kaius

I jump across the small creek, running through the trees, and land with enough force to shake the surrounding trees. My clawed feet grip through the dirt and stone to give me more traction, propelling me forward as fast as possible in pursuit of the dark figure ahead of me. I'm finally gaining ground. He's lighter and faster than me, so it's taken me a few minutes to catch up, but he's tiring.

The other dragon tries to pivot as we're nearing the edge of our property line, and I catch Milo's scent; he must have been through recently on his patrol. They're too close for comfort. I surge forward and can feel the gained ground tipping in my favor as my steps outpower the smaller male.

I launch forward and use my wings to drive my momentum forward, colliding with his back. I slam my body into him and smash both of us to the ground. As we fall, I slide a clawed hand around the front of his neck, locking my arm in place. My body weight pins him beneath me as that final crush of my weight hits.

I don't loosen my grip, and he flails. His arms and claws scramble at the rocks and debris around us, trying to gain purchase. I push up off of him, snatching one of his arms. I bend his wing painfully in the wrong direction and pin the arm along with it behind his back, stretching it to his capacity.

The tension on his shoulder and wing joint causes him to cry out, and I slam my knee down into his back with a guttural growl.

"Hold still, or I'll rip it out," I warn. His body stills.

"Please don't. Please. I know nothing. I'm just recon. Honestly." Even his voice when shifted sounds soft and meek. Pathetic. I wrench hard at his wing and bring the wing joint just shy of breaking.

"Start talking. What was your target tonight, Recon?"

He tries to fight again and seems like he's going to resist talking, so I give the arm a pull with my other hand for good measure. Both hands drive his wing and arm up in the same unnatural angle behind his back and across his upper back.

"Talk, or you're losing a wing. In three… Two…"

"Okay! Okay. Shit man, please don't. They just have me watching the drunk and his family. We think they have a key. We track him, the old folks from the market, and the hot redhead chick. That's all I know."

My claws grip hard against his scales, and I shift my knee off his back. Leaning down, pinning him beneath my body weight, and applying pressure to the arm and wing until I hear the satisfying cracks of joints popping and bones cracking.

One-word riots through my brain as it registers he is talking about Julie. Mine.

"She's not yours to even look at, you piece of shit," I growl in his ear as his scream rips through the woods. I push up and drop his body, weak and shaking, to the ground in disgust. I kick hard at the soft side of his stomach several times with as much force as I can manage, and his body curls in on itself in pain. Rage is fueling every inch of my movements as I lift my foot and drive it down into the ground through his skull with a satisfying squelch and crunch.

His body quivers as the final bits of life seep out of his body, blood rushing thick and heavy under my foot from his shattered skull. I spit as I wrench my foot out of the mangled debris that was his head and wipe it on the ground next to his body where his blood hasn't mingled with the dirt.

I'm not entirely sure if I killed him for the sake of removing another member of Eclipse from the mess that we're dealing with or purely for the sake of ending him for daring to mention Julie.

You know why. But keep lying to yourself.

I hear heavy footsteps approaching, larger than anything other than a shifter, and my body is back on high alert. I tense and inhale deeply, ready for another fight, but I recognize the scent as Milo's. I sigh in relief and push myself a few more steps away from the gore-soaked mess I made.

"Over here," I call out. Milo breaks into the clearing, shifted but with clouds of fog swirling around his body. He needs the weather cover to stay hidden at night. Milo's scales are luminescent in the moonlight, white and pearly. His eyes are glowing eerily, amber and ice blue.

"Fuck man," Milo comments as his eyes take in the scene at my feet.

"I tried to get some information. He resisted." My eyes trail over the corpse and recognize the signs of just how brutal my response had been. It's more violence than I think Milo has ever seen from me. I'm more careful, measured, and methodical even when I need to end someone. This was just pure rage.

"Clearly, he didn't resist well," Milo mutters as he bends to inspect the body, seeing the familiar Eclipse marking on his arm.

"I swear they don't have any real muscle between them. They just have numbers."

"Where'd you find him?"

"Picked him up nearby Merl's, and he made it this far. He was fast but got tired. Questioned him before I did this… Apparently, they're watching the entire Harris family. All of them."

"Did he piss in your Cheerios? I don't think I've seen you feel the need to curb stomp someone. You're so controlled."

"Definitely pissed in my cheerios." I don't know how else to explain it. I'm not going into it with Milo, not after the shit with him and Orion earlier.

We both stare down at the body as the iron-heavy smell of blood grows thicker, combining with the gamey scent rolling off the body. Milo and I agree I should swing back out to make sure no one else is at Merl's, and he will continue the rest of his patrol and also swing by the market. He says he'll get someone with fire abilities from the clan to come out and deal with the body.

I make my way back to my cabin before heading back to Merl's since I'm only a few minutes away. The need to check my phone and make sure that Julie is safe is needling at me. I shift back into my human form at my doorway and race for the phone. As I unlock the screen I sigh in relief, seeing a text from her. She's home, inside and safe.

I don't really want to acknowledge that the dead shifter's mention of her is sitting in the back of my head like some sort of ridiculous warning bell urging me to protect her. It's everything I can do not to go to her house now and just take her somewhere, anywhere but here, where I know she will be safe.

I send her back a quick reply just asking her to please stay home tonight. After adding her to my contacts, I pause, watching the checkmark change colour to let me know she has read the message. She's still awake. "Julie is typing…" displays for a moment, then stops. It happens a few more times before a message finally pops through.

"Fine. Asshole."

I'll take it. I'll be an asshole if it is going to keep her home tonight. I'm still keyed up from the fight, and I need to get my ass moving if I'm going to make it out to Merl's again quickly. I am hoping I can find the time to extend my patrol out toward Julie and Georgia's apartment as well, just in case.

That's the lie you want to tell yourself? Sure.

I drop my phone on the bed and head out the door, setting off toward Merl's. The cold is a little less biting once I shift. As dragons, we can adapt to it fractionally better with our magic, and the run helps keep the blood flowing to larger muscles. The physical activity allows me time to dwell on why I have such an aggressive need to protect Julie.

She's a human; I should not feel this kind of compulsion. The feeling unsettles me. The dead shifter's words still ring in my mind. The darker, animalistic side of my brain has a singular focus right now. Mine. Julie is mine.

Fuck.

I try to shake her from my thoughts, but it's a struggle. There aren't any fresh scents. The only thing I find when I arrive is an all too familiar chubby black and white body. I shift back into my human form and find some more sweatpants. As I'm pulling them on, Roscoe approaches.

"Hey Buddy, come on up."

He climbs up my leg and into my arm as I swing down to scoop him up. I have a small window before I have to do another patrol, but just enough time to detour through town. I take off at a slower, human-paced jog, with Roscoe along for the ride, chittering as we go. I'm guessing he's pissed I don't have any peanuts on me.

I stop at the bar a few blocks from Julie and Georgia's apartment to grab some peanuts. I set him down at one of the picnic tables with a bowl, and he sits back on his haunches and grabs greedily at the nuts with his little hands.

"Adorable. Enjoy your nuts, Little Dude," I laugh, turning to leave, but a voice calls to me, which stops me.

"You're one of those rock hunter cult boys, aren't you?"

I wince and turn to see Mrs. Susan and Mrs. Lettie sitting at a table just inside the door of the bar, empty glasses in front of them. What are they doing here? The older women in this town are something else.

"We're not a cult, Ma'am. We are here for a research project," I say as I step inside the door of the bar and out of the unforgiving cold, blowing warm air into my cupped hands.

"Well, cult or no, we needed more young men around here. Just the other day you helped my Julie at the shop. That was awfully nice of you."

Mrs. Susan is overly chatty, while Mrs. Lettie is sitting with her head propped up on her hand with her eyes blissfully closed.

"Right place, right time," I comment with an uneasy smile.

"Do you work out?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Oh, just wondering what all you boys do to stay in such good shape. You're all so… Muscular."

Heat rises in my face, and I do not know how to respond to this woman. She is absolutely ridiculous.

"We do a lot of calisthenics."

"Cardio, I'm sure…"

She continues this bizarre line of random personal questions and lightly veiled comments about my appearance for a few more minutes until the bartender, Jim, signals that it's the last call.

"None of my sons want to come home anymore. They won't even help me with things around the house or the shop."

"No?"

"Three sons and three nephews. I can't even get one of them to come out and change the batteries in my smoke alarm."

"That's awful."

"It is, isn't it? Do you think you could come to help me tomorrow? I just have a few things that require someone taller." Her eyes trail up and down my body.

I have never felt so much like a piece of meat before.

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Mrs. Susan."

"Why not? You seem like a nice boy, and you're definitely tall enough to reach without a ladder. If not, it'll be Julie who will end up having to climb up the ladder to get them changed." There's a particularly amused glint in her eyes now, and a cat-like grin spreads across her face.

She's absolutely devious.

This is not how I pictured my night ending. After another ten minutes of back and forth about her housework, I promise to go help her at her house in the morning if she'll just go home. I help get both Mrs. Lettie and Mrs. Susan loaded in Jim"s car as he shuts down the bar. He drives them home every Friday night from what he tells me.

What is it with Harris women and arguing about going home? It's not exactly an endearing family trait, especially in the middle of the night. I don't particularly like the idea of getting closer to Julie's family, but it presents me with an opportunity to patrol out by their house and see if there are any signs that Eclipse has been out there.

With the time I've lost, I can't run by the apartments. I finish the rest of my patrol and let Milo know that I need to swing by the Harris house. He agrees that it's worth a quick check as well and offers to run my normal pass for this round. We both down another round of coffee from Lena before each heading on our way.

The Harris house is further to the east side of town than anything else on our patrols, but as I'm nearing their house, I pick up the familiar scent of shifters that definitely don't belong to our clan. A pit forms in my stomach as the realization that Eclipse is circling this family sets in. This feels similar to how they had fixated on things with Lena before they escalated. I don't like it.