If she succeeded here, then that would help.
She had to believe that.
The clearing was strangely silent.
“Rouse?” Francine blinked and looked over the car. There was no sign of the dragon shifter. Her stomach dropped.
Throat tight, she hurried around to the passenger side. The door was still wide open. She tripped on something she couldn’t see and thrust out one hand to break her fall.
It landed on something warm.
Francine squinted. The light coming through the open door lit up the ground beside the car. It looked empty. Itlookedas though her hand was hovering a foot above the ground.
Julian hadn’t fled. He’d collapsed. Again.
Francine bit down on the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t seen more than a glimpse of his dragon after the explosion, but even a human could tell it had been in bad shape. Of course it was! He’d flown through an exploding building! Even with a shifter’s advanced healing ability, that should have been fatal.
But it hadn’t been. At least, not yet.
Francine tasted blood. She stopped gnawing on her cheek. Julian was using his shadow magic to shield himself from sight. She could deal with that. She reached for the hidden pocket in her suit jacket and wrapped her fingers around the dragon scale she’d stowed there.
The scale was cool and smooth, and when she touched it, the world wavered around her. The trees, car, and road all seemed to fade out slightly—and Julian appeared as if out of nowhere.
He’d fallen facedown, half-inside the car. Francine rolled him over. His face was pale, but he was breathing. His chest rose and fell. She found the pulse in his neck and counted out the beats. Slow, but steady.
“Rouse,” she muttered urgently. “Julian. Can you hear me?”
No response. She bit her lip and reached for his mind. *Rouse?*
Nothing, not even the instinctive psychic reaction to another shifter’s speech. He was out cold.
Her heart cried out. Her lioness, though—it was silent. Watchful.
This is my fault.She swallowed. If she’d been faster. If she hadn’t wasted time talking to the guards. If she hadn’t spent precious days fretting over whether she should tell Lance and the others about the plan to attack the shadow dragons in their home, then she could have got Julian out before the safe house was attacked. Before he was hurt.
He was her mate. She’d wasted time, fretting over the best course of action, terrified of getting things wrong again, and now her mate had got himself hurt trying to saveher.
And there wasn’t time for her to stop to let him recover.
Hating herself, she lifted him into the passenger seat. He muttered something as she fastened the seatbelt around him. Francine froze and searched his face. He was still unconscious, but his eyebrows twitched together as though he was flinching away from something.
Her breath caught in her throat.
They were in a hurry. She had to get on the road before Lance or whoever else was after them thought to stop the traffic. The journey ahead was an interlocking puzzle of departures and connections. Missing one would mean redoing the entire plan.
But she couldn’t pull herself away from the dragon shifter.
He looked like an ordinary man. An ordinary, good-looking man, with an athlete’s lean build and glossy dark hair. Sharp cheekbones. Disgustingly lush, black eyelashes. She tried to remember what his eyes had looked like, from the brief glance she’d managed earlier. Dark green, like sea glass. With something powerful and inhuman lurking behind them.
Dragon shifters. Most of her life, if anyone had suggested dragon shifters existed, she would have thought they were crazy. Yet here one was.
And she’d almost gotten him killed.
Francine stood up. Her chest felt hollow.
There was still time to make a different decision.
She could call Lance. Or call Mathis and tell him to pass on the message. Would Mathis believe her? Would Lance? Or would they spend so long mistrusting her—a mistrust she deserved—that they would be too late to save Julian’s family?
