Talon shrugged, unconcerned by my little dig. No doubt that was the least of the insults he’d heard in his life. “I am whatever he wants me to be. But yes, mostly a weapon.”
“You can’t let him do this,” I whispered, swallowing roughly. “He’s already destroyed too many lives. So many omegas taken and hurt through his experiments. I know he said there weren’t enough of them to truly experiment on, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt the ones that were around. And they were innocent. You understand that, right? They didn’t deserve what happened to them, and I don’t deserve it either.”
For the first time, I caught a flicker of unease in his expression. Pushing forward, I hurried to try and chip away at his icy exterior. “Do you know what will happen to me if you drain all of my essence?”
More silence.
“My wolf will fade. My wolf will fade and I’ll be a shell of a shifter, unable to touch or call my beast. In the end, I’ll wish for death… and maybe even seek it out.”
Mom hadn’t been able to take the echoing silence in her head any longer or the weakness in her veins. She’d chosen to end it all, and I’d been the one to cut her down from the rope that stole her last breath.
Talon surged to his feet suddenly, and at first I thought I’d gotten through to him, only to hear another knock on the door, one he clearly hadn’t been expecting.
When he crossed to the solid door, he placed his hand against it, as if to sense who was on the other side. There was a beat as he reached for the chain again, pulling it from his shirt, and when he clicked the lock open, the door burst inward. I’d have thought it would catch the dragon by surprise except he was too fast, jumping out of the way of the bear who surged into the room, a dead shifter speared on his massive claws.
I was on my feet now too, and a gasp escaped me.
I’d only seen this bear one other time, but I knew his huge, menacing presence immediately.
Finley Thornton had come for me.
CHAPTER 7
EMME
There was a brief pause from Talon as he assessed the situation. At no point did his expression change. The steady thrumming of his heartbeat remained even too.
Finley, on the other hand, was a raging inferno of fired-up shifter.
His bear threw his head back again, roared into the ceiling, and tossed the body of the shifter aside. When the deafening sound of his rage faded, the bear’s inscrutable deep black eyes locked in on me. His gaze ran over me more than once, taking in every inch from the dirt on my bare toes to the top of my smooth hair.
When the bear sidled forward, Talon snapped into action, launching himself between us. “Wait,” I called, almost reaching out to touch Talon, before I remembered he was the enemy. A powerful, dangerous, possibly sociopathic enemy. “It’s Finley. One of my pack. Don’t hurt him.”
Talon’s head swung around and he shot me a dark stare.Uh,okay.
Was it reallythatof all freaking things that finally upset him?
He’d managed to ignore the bites under my clothes, but Finley standing here in this room, had apparently brokenthrough his iron will and composure. His expression was now wreathed in darkness as his full lips thinned and pulled at the scar on his face. His heartrate didn’t change much, but it was stronger than it had been before. “I’m your pack,” he rumbled, and hell if that didn’t set Finley off as well.
The bear didn’t have the ability to express himself with words, but he launched forward, those blood-tinged claws outreached. Talon reacted like the giant beast moved in slow motion, swatting him out of the way and into the wall. A near ton of bear slammed into the panels, shaking the room, and Talon didn’t even break a sweat.
“Leave now or I’ll kill you.” Like Slade, this dragon didn’t fuck around with pleasantries, and I wasn’t going to pretend that was an empty threat. Talon was Fletcher’s most lethal soldier, trained to obey and kill on demand. A true assassin.
Finley was already back on his hind legs, standing near nine or ten feet tall as the shadows of the room danced around him. This time when he launched, he anticipated the slap from Talon and dodged the dragon’s hand. The two of them clashed like a boulder slamming into a rock wall. It was loud, and I barely refrained from clasping my hands over my ears, caught up in watching their deadly dance.
No matter what happened, I would not let Talon kill one of my mates. I had to protect Finley, and not with my strength—a mere pittance compared to these two—but with my intelligence. With the knowledge that Talon needed me, and not just because we were bonded. I was the key component to his alpha’s plan.
Finley roared as the dragon tore a large tuft of fur from his chest, leaving a bloody welt behind. Talon hadn’t shifted any part of his body, as it appeared he didn’t need to be in dragon form to win this fight. Scary, powerful bastard.
Before he could hurt Finley again, I threw myself between them, and for the first time didn’t avoid the bear like he had ashifter disease. With my arms held wide, I backed into Finley’s huge form. I’d expected, when I put this plan into action, that he’d step back with me, and we’d put some distance between us and Talon. Instead, I found myself plastered against his raging, heaving form, snatched up in two huge bear paws.
Talon let out a huff, the scent of ash filtering through the room. He didn’t follow as Finley dragged me against his massive chest, my feet dangling a few feet off the floor. The warmth of the bear was soothing against my back, and even in this form, he still smelled of vanilla and cherries, mixed decently with sweat and dirt.
The sweet scent overpowered the rest though, and I hated the way I still craved this male when he didn’t want me. The irony of being stuck here, between one pack mate who hated me, and one who had forcibly bonded me… that was fucked up. Part of me wished I could just destroy them both and walk my ass out of here, alive and strong in my own right. Unfortunately, an omega couldn’t play in the world of alphas like that. At least not without more training than I had.
“If you release her,” Talon murmured slowly. “I will let you leave with your life.”
Finley snorted; the sound of derision almost cute coming from a bear. He continued to back away slowly, with Talon matching each step so they remained the same eight feet apart. “You cannot leave,” he ordered, the dragon’s dominance washing over me and Finley.
