Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

Evander

I try to move my arm, but it's so damn heavy. My head spins, and I try to remember what I was doing. I don't know anymore, but I'm cold. I'm colder than I've ever been. For a while, I tried to stay off the floor, knowing heat can be conducted through the metal floor. I'd put my hands under my shirt and vest to prevent the frostbite from hitting my fingers… but that time had come and gone not long after the people in the gas station had flipped me off and left.

I'm going to die here.

The glass won't break. Trying to stop the freezer fan by cramming things in it hadn't worked. My gun is probably right on the other side of the door still, if she didn't take it with her, but I can't reach it, so it doesn't matter. It's all pointless. Hopeless.

No, I need to survive. I need to find a way out of this.

Shifting my hands, I ignore how numb they are and use one hand planted on the floor to help lift me from the ground. The floor rushes away like I'm falling from the edge of a cliff, and then I'm standing. The world is swaying. I can't feel my feet. Before it was just my toes. Now, it's my whole feet and the lower half of my legs.

If I look at them, they'll be black.

I try to lift my hand to see my watch, but can't. Wait, no, it's already lifted. I'm using it to lean against the wall. I glance to the side and have trouble making out the numbers on my watch, but when I can finally see them, the hands are no longer moving. Right. They'd stopped after I'd been in here for around an hour.

Maybe I should press on the door?

Yes, maybe if I lean against the door whatever is keeping me trapped in here will break. I'd tried it before. Or maybe I hadn't. Maybe I'd just thought about it. Or maybe it was a dream. Did I fall asleep in here? I don't know.

Lean against the wall. Right, that was the idea.

Not the wall; the door. Then it should break.

I focus all my attention on the door, knowing I need to, knowing my mind isn't working right any longer, so doing this is going to require everything I've got. My gaze focuses on the door as I command my feet to move. I'm getting closer. I think. So I must be moving.

Then the world is sideways and slow, streaming in a blur around me.

Metal. Cold. I'm lying down. Metal under me. Pressed against my cheek. My breathing feels too slow. Where am I? How did I get here? Why am I so cold?

Maybe my dad forgot me in the snow again.

I remember. Yes, I do. Clearly. One day my dad had been sick of me, so he'd tossed me out into the snow. I was little. So little that he could still pick me up with ease. I hadn't been able to get out of the snow. I'd cried and cried, feeling the snow all around me. In my mouth. In my lungs.

My mom came home early from work. They'd cut her hours… and she was the reason that I lived. She'd heard me crying in that snow and pulled me out. She never said a word, just gave me a hot bath that made all my fingers and toes burn, and I'd developed a healthy fear of the snow.

But am I in the snow now? Am I a child? Or had someone else thrown me away in the snow, seeing me for the useless thing I am?

My father said he'd wanted to throw me away when I was in my mom's stomach. He wanted me scooped out like the trash I was, but she said I wasn't trash. She'd said she loved me before she even heard my heartbeat for the first time.

And she'd kept saying she loved me. When she grew thin. When she lost all her hair. When I was a strong man, in the military, finally capable of protecting her and giving her the life she deserved. Except, instead of doing that, I'd held her hand while she drew her last breath, unable to save her from the terrible thing that was cancer.

Life had given me so many blessings since then, but none of them mattered without her. I had to find meaning. Meaning didn't find me.

Because she was gone.

"Mom?" My voice sounds small, like it had when I was little.

Her warm hand presses against my cheek, and I find the energy to roll to look up into her face. She's herself again. Young, but without the pain in her eyes she always seemed to have. Her lips lift into a smile, and my breath slows in my chest.

"Evander," she whispers.

"Mom."

"Evander," she whispers again.

"Mom." I'm crying now, and I don't even care.

"Evander. It's not time for you to die. You need to fight. You're dying, sweetie, but you need to fight."

"Dying? Me?"

"Fight. Can you do that for me?"

"Mom, I'm not–"

"Fight!" she says, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

Then she's gone, and I try to fight, but I can't move. I can't even lift my head. My body twitches around me, but I can't do anything. I'm useless again. Just like I was back then.

Another breath is drawn.

Then, nothing.

Nothing.

Then… heat? Warmth? A shedding of my flesh…

An explosion makes my eyes fly open as my heart sits still in my chest, as fire pours over my skin. A green dragon is in the opening of the freezer door. He's torn it off. Warm air comes pouring in, but the dragon's focus is on sniffing the ground. For what? I don't know.

But when it sees me, I'm dead. I try to move. I try to save myself, but I can't.

The dragon's dark gaze pins on me. It opens its mouth and roars. It starts to press and try to squeeze itself into the opening, rage flowing from it, and I realize that its presence might have saved me from the cold, but that I was going to die anyway.

Hot. Too hot. Skin too tight.

Fear awakens within me. I have a primal awareness that this is it.

Half a second passes, and I feel that heat spread over me. My body is twitching and changing, but in a different way this time. It swells and swells around me, and then I'm filling the room, bringing the roof down above me. I flap my… wings, and they are wings.

Now, I'm something different. Me, but a different me. Fucking hell. Am I a dragon?

All the fuzziness of the cold is gone. I feel alive in a way I don't think I ever have. The dragon near me roars again and hot flames fan over my flesh, but they don't hurt.

Ducking my head, I manage to fit back in the freezer. I shove through the door, pressing him back, and then I explode out. His teeth go for my throat, but I twist, and he misses me. A roar rumbles from my own throat, and I feel heat burning in my lungs.

We crash together. His fire is cut off as I slam him to one side. He retaliates, crashing me to the other side. We're engaging in a struggle that feels as normal to me as my wings and my body. I know just how he's going to attack, and just how to avoid him.

At first I think I'm lost to something else, to some dragon part of me, as my flames roll over him, and then my human mind returns and I notice the groans of the building, and the many walls that have come down as we've fought.

Fuck.

When I turn and run from him, it feels like something a dragon male would never do. But I'm not just a dragon. I'm a man.

I squeeze back into the freezer, even though I sense his confusion behind me, and I climb out of the hole I'd created. I perch on the roof and start flapping my wings. I start to lift off, smashing the roof even more as I try to gain height, and then hear as the entire building crumbles in on the green dragon.

My heart hammers in my chest. I land unevenly on the ground of the parking lot, panting as I stare back at the building. Somehow, I know that I didn't just kill the other dragon, but I did slow him down. That might give me time to figure out what's next. What my move is. What it means to be a dragon.

But then… I pick up another scent. One that is overwhelming, almost like marshmallows and caramel, but sexual in nature. I feel myself reacting. My body swelling.

I track the smell to the door of the building, and the scent intensifies. I must have whatever that belongs to. Whoever that belongs to. Because, for certain, it's a female.

The scent carries back out to the parking lot, disappearing by one of the gas pumps, but her scent mingles with that of a truck. Gasoline. Metal. Cologne.

It's her. Of course it's the beautiful redhead. The goddess. My would-be murderer. If I find that truck, I'll find her. And I need to find her.

Flapping, I try to fly after her, above the road out of the town, which is the one I'm sure she took. I crash back into the parking lot, roar my frustration, and try again. I make it a little higher before I catch the wind wrong and fall again. My roar is deafening. Pointless. But it feels damn good to me.

Behind me, I hear noise at the building. The green dragon's head has emerged as he struggles with wires, brick, and more, trying to escape his imprisonment.

I need to get the fuck out of here.

This time when I flap my wings, I go slow, taking even strokes. I try not to focus on the delicious scent of Sam, to ignore the way my body reacts to her scent.

I lift off into the air and glide above the town. The rush of the wind around me is intoxicating. I always loved the air. I always loved the sense of danger, and the ground far off gives me exactly that. But when I spot the green dragon still struggling to escape, overcome by his need for Samantha's scent, I remember my mission.

Soaring away, I follow the road out of town, my eyes glued to it. The scent of her blood humming through me and my desire to have her are overwhelming. I can picture us, mating, locked in a battle in the skies. I can see me tearing her wings to shreds, claiming her for my own, making it impossible for her to ever escape me.

I'm panting. My vision shifts like I'm forgetting that I'm human. The need is all that matters.

I realize I've lost the road. I have to stay focused. I have to remember to be human. This woman is doing things to me that are making me lose all control, but I'm not an animal. I'll find her. If she wants me, I'll fuck this feeling away, and then I'm going to… what?

Another realization dawns on me. My job was to bring the dragons to Specter Inc. Is that still what I'm going to do? Should I just bring Sam… and myself to them?

Fuck.

The beast within me whispers that things are simpler in his mind. If I just let go of my human side and be for a little while, he'll take over. I don't have to worry about human problems. And the whispers in my mind? They make me cling to my human self even harder.

These dragons are dangerous creatures. Me included.