Chapter 22 - Sierra

"Dad?!" I exclaim when the bag covering my head is finally removed, and I find my father seated across from me. It barely comes as a surprise to see him, but I haven't seen his face since the first time he kidnapped me.

Despite my suspicions, the journey to Louisa wasn't as long as it should have been. I don't even think we'd left Charlottesville. I couldn't see much while being tied up and bagged, only feeling the moment the van stopped and I'd been dragged out along a sandy path.

"What's going on?" I ask with a frown when I notice that Dad's hands are tied behind him. My frown only deepens as the realization sinks in—Dad isn't the culprit behind my kidnapping this time.

"Shh…" he urges lowly, eyes flitting around warily as one of the kidnappers comes over to secure the ropes binding me to the chair.

Through my periphery, I notice that the man is none other than one of my father's goons. He marches over to my dad and checks his ropes before grunting as a parting remark before he disappears behind me.

I take account of our surroundings and realize that we're in a dilapidated warehouse with empty steel shelves and broken crates all around us. There's shuffling behind me, prompting me to glance as far back over my shoulder as possible. All I can see is a wall, the kidnappers probably behind it.

"What's going on?" I whisper urgently to Dad.

He shakes his head, wrinkled eyes full of worry. "I don't know, Sierra," he shrugs as much as his bound shoulders will allow. "They don't work for me anymore, so I don't know what's going on."

"Did you piss them off? Not pay them?" I ask urgently, keeping my voice low. "Don't you have money from… You know who?"

"This isn't about money," he shakes his head. "Mateo made that very clear."

"Who's Mat—" I sigh frustratedly and shake my head. "You know what, never mind."

Huffing in irritation, I roll my eyes and mentally scratch my head as I call out to Felix again. It's so pointless right now, but it's my only hope to get out of this diabolical situation.

Of course, my father had to get himself in some kind of trouble and drag me into it.

When loud, belting footsteps echo louder into the giant room, I feel hope slipping away as a shiver courses down my spine.

"Mateo, please, just let us go," Dad pleads to the man behind me.

I haven't made a single move, glaring at my father's face when I feel a cold hand settle on my shoulder. Too disgusted to turn to the man called Mateo, I only see his reflection through Dad's eyes.

"Let you go, Diego?" the man chuckles sardonically. "Where will the fun be in that?"

"Let my daughter go then. Please," Dad begs Mateo, and I see his eyes pool with tears.

I frown then, witnessing a different side to the man I'd come to despise so much.

Unless this is all a part of some grand act. Scoffing under my breath, I know I can't put it past my dad.

Anything is possible with him.

"What's that, Ms. Sierra?" Mateo's voice is thick with Spanish undertones as he steps in front of me.

I'm forced to look up into his hideous face where a scar marrs his left cheek.

"Nothing," I grunt. "Just tell us what you want already."

He lifts his head and guffaws into the air, trickles of saliva raining down around my personal space and filling me with the urge to throw up.

"What I want will be delivered to me very soon, Ms. Sierra. In fact…" he glances at his wristwatch. "... It should be here any minute now."

"Why do you need us then?" I ask. "You're getting what you want."

"Collateral," he says brutishly as he narrows his eyes at me, lips curled into a sardonic smirk. "He'll have to comply with my demands when his friends' lives are in my hands."

I exchange a confused glance with my dad, who only offers me a terse shrug in response. Neither of us has any idea what's going on, or who he's talking about.

When the huge metal doors on the side shake against the chains holding them together, Mateo claps his hands.

"Aha! He must be here!" he cheers before whistling and calling a handful of goons from behind the wall.

One rushes to the door with a set of keys and is about to unlock the chains when one side of the door swings open, breaking through the metal links.

The man is crushed behind the door when it crashes against a concrete wall. My attention is zapped to the dark silhouette standing between the gaping hole where the door used to be. With the sun illuminating his presence from behind him, all that's clear is his outline.

There's no mistaking it.

I gasped in awe when I realized the man standing there was none other than Felix. I know those broad shoulders, those bulging arms, that jawline that could cut through glass. His stance is powerful, his fists clenched at his sides when the goons run toward him.

My breath hitches in my throat when Felix's dragon wings spread out around him against the sunlight. With the golden hues forming an aura around the weredragon, he appears like an angel coming to save me.

That's exactly what he'd always been to me, the picture of him now just as I envisioned him to be the first time he came to my aid and held me in his arms.

I knew back then that he was an angel sent into my life. The heartbreak I endured was only to strengthen me so that I could be whole to meet his wholeness.

In its purest form, with webbed wings and crystalline tips, breathing fire from its lips. He's an angel who prepares to fight for me.

Only when a thunderous howl rings out am I snapped out of my daze. Where the kidnappers had been running now stand wolves at least three times the size of a human.

"Werewolves…?" I murmur under my breath, shocked but not surprised ever since learning that weredragons exist.

It appears that all the fairytales were true, and the weredragons are the strongest of their kind when I witness Felix effortlessly flicking his wings to fight off the furry wolves. One sweep of his wings, a flick of his wrist when only one arm shifts into dragon form.

He barely has to lift a finger to have the whimpering wolves cowering or, better yet, dead. He's taken them all down.

All except one.

The man beside me pulls out a gun and presses the metal barrel at my temple, startling me.

"Felix…" I mutter under my breath as he comes all the way into the warehouse, his wings disappearing behind him. His eyes are wide with horrification, meeting mine as he slowly lifts his hands up in surrender.

"Please…" Felix begs Mateo. "Don't shoot. Let her go."

Mateo chuckles, the gun moving and causing me to freeze on the spot. I'm so afraid that he might actually shoot me. Even if it's a mistake.

I can barely breathe.

All I can do is focus on Felix as he cautiously steps forward.

"I don't really wanna shoot her," Mateo says as a scoured pair of knuckles strokes my cheek and makes me shiver with disgust and dread all in one. "She's too pretty to die. I just want you to stop killing my people."

"Your people, huh?" Felix challenges. "You're the one who kidnapped my people."

"That's because you have what I want," Mateo retorts with a grunt. "Now, it's either you surrender, or I shoot the girl."

"You don't wanna do that," Felix warns him, his eyes flitting to me before going back to Mateo.

That's when one of the criminals who'd shifted into wolf form quietly gets to his feet behind Felix. He creeps up on him with a syringe in his hand.

"Felix! Behind you!" I yelp, warning Felix just in time for him to turn and grab the man by the neck.

"I warned you," Mateo clicks his tongue next to me.

"No!" My dad yelps as he throws himself forward, knocking Mateo off his feet and joining him in a pile along with the chair he's bound to.

A deafening bang lights up the warehouse before Mateo shoves my father off him and shifts into wolf form. He isn't fast enough; Felix flies forward and grabs the wolf with his dragon claws. He snaps his neck in the air, forcing me to look away as bile rises in my throat.

It's not because I'm put off by what I just witnessed. I'm almost sure now that the reason for my churning gut is the baby growing inside me.

"S-Sierra…" Dad croaks from where he'd been tossed aside on the floor. Lifting my eyes to him, I notice the blood pooling around his shoulder.

"Felix! Help!" I cry out, a grieving scream rippling from my chest when it hits me.

Dad's just been shot, and he's losing blood very quickly.

Felix soars down and quickly shifts into human form.

"Sierra!" He rushes to me, crouching beside the chair. "Thank—"

"No, not me! My dad!"

Felix quickly turns to my father, whose eyelids grow heavy as he goes in and out of consciousness. He picks the chair upright, then tears the ropes that keep my dad tied to the chair. But when he's untied, his limp body falls forward into Felix's arms.

"No… No…" I whimper, panic rising in my chest. With his life on the line, not only did he save me, but I realized that I'd never hated my father.

He can't die now. Despite our very estranged relationship, he's my father, after all.

"He's not dead, Sierra," Felix assures me quickly as he tosses my father's body over one shoulder. "But we need to get him to a hospital. Quickly."

I can only nod as Felix comes over and breaks the chair out from under me. I climb into his arms, placing one hand on my dad's back just as Felix shifts, carries us out of the warehouse, and flies us toward the skies.

This time, it's not the scenic ride I enjoy as I close my eyes and pray that my father survives this. Behind my eyelids, tears well up for the man who'd just saved my life by risking his own.

I didn't think it was possible, but maybe my father does care about me.