A Taurus’s greatest fear is the unknown, and I watched her dive into that gold abyss headfirst. It shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. I barely know this woman. But seeing her like that and knowing it was hurting her, maybe not in the immediate sense but long-term, doesn’t sit well with me. And now this, whatever this is.
She shivers in my arms.
“Zoe, are you okay? Wake up.” I grip her chin and shake her a little. Something warm and wet seeps onto my lap. She’s wet herself. I place my hand against her heart. It’s still beating, thank the creator, and she’s breathing, but she’s out, limp in my arms.
I consider calling Morwyn, but the dragon doctor is busier than ever right now, moving his clinic to a new, secure location. Calling him out is a risk to both him and our kind. We need him ready in case there is another attack.
Zoe expected something like this would happen. I know the cause and the solution. As scary as this is, she just needs time to recover.
And I’ll be here when she does.
It takes me the better part of an hour to get Zoe cleaned up and into a pair of my pajamas. She’s drowning in them, of course. I’ve always been a fan of the finer things. They’re pure silk, and the neck keeps slipping off her shoulder, which might be sexy as hell if she were conscious. Thank the creator, despite having to undress her and bathe her, my inner dragon has remained subdued. He knows she’s not well. Both of us are nothing but worried. My appetency, the mating fever that burns inside me during my alignment, is barely an ache as I lay her in my bed.
I grab her soiled clothes and take them to the laundry room. It’s the middle of the night. Patrick is asleep. But even if he weren’t, I’d want to do this myself. No one needs to know what happened to Zoe but me. I don’t want to embarrass her.
I’ve just hit the start button when the phone in my pocket vibrates. Remus’s icon appears on the screen, and I answer it in a hushed voice, not wanting to wake Zoe.
“Imani turned out to be a wealth of information.”
“Oh? Did you get the list?”
“Got more than that. The organization she works for has been tracking an uptick in Order activity. The original list has doubled.”
“Doubled?”
“According to her intel, the Saint’s Order isn’t just recruiting millionaires and billionaires anymore. She’s seen rings on men of all walks of life recently, most of them linked to certain extremist political organizations.”
I groan. “Great. So, they’re duplicating like rats. Fuck me.”
“Yeah. But that’s not even the weirdest part.”
“No?”
“No. There’s been no announcement concerning Roman’s death, Seb.”
“What are you talking about? The fire was in the news. They said they’d recovered bodies.”
“Not Roman’s. We assumed Roman was among the dead, but as it turns out, forensics has now identified all the bodies, and they were all servants and security. No Roman.”
“Connor watched him die. And wouldn’t we have seen something in the news if he were alive? Roman was a media darling before the fire. Last I heard, a new CEO is leading his company. If he isn’t dead, where is he?”
Remus gives a long, low groan. “Here’s the really scary part. Imani is a genius when it comes to surveillance. She played some recordings for me. A few order members refer to a new leader as ‘the destroyer.’”
The hair at the base of my neck stands at attention. “The destroyer?” I have to repeat it. There’s no way I heard him right.
“That’s what I heard, Seb. If Roman is alive and he’s still leading the Order, he’s taken the creep factor up a notch.”
Dragons worship the creator. The creator is the origin of all life and light, and is said to be the maker of dragonkind. The destroyer is our devil. It is the source of all evil, of all death. I say it because we think of it as a negative energy or a power, not an actual being. We believe the destroyer took the form of a dark angel and gave the first ring to the first order member, an attempt by the greatest evil to counteract the creator, the greatest good. We’ve been at war ever since. If Roman is calling himself the destroyer, he’s decided that he is the embodiment of everything that dragons hate the most. He’s our bogeyman.
“So, what you’re saying is, Roman survived the fire, has named himself the destroyer, and has amped up his attack on dragons. Great.”
“Presumably,” Remus says. “And from what Imani is hearing, the new recruits are restless. Reports of innocent humans being attacked by overzealous order members are on the rise. They know we’re in hiding now, but they aren’t giving up. Their hope is that if they wait long enough, they’ll starve us out, and then they plan to slaughter us.”
My head pounds. Dragons are almost universally wealthy. Our creative energy lends itself to attracting wealth. But even the wealthiest of dragons can’t stay hidden forever. Full Throttle will move to replace me if I don’t come back to work after my leave of absence. How we’re living now is no long-term solution.
“Have you heard anything from Lucas?”
“No. I’m on my way back to you. Maybe he’ll know something by the time I get there. How did it go with the girl?”
