I figured she'd already seen them when we were walking back from her little tryst with Kingston. Neither of them had asked about them, though, unlike Zayn, who had come right out and asked.
"It was in the cave." I wanted to turn and see her reaction but also didn't trust myself to be so close to her while she was naked. "I'd overheard a conversation about the dragons in the cave under the waterfall and I had to see for myself. I made my little brother go with me and there was a dragon sleeping…"
Her fingers traced one of the scars. "But it wasn't sleeping… was it?"
"I think it was a younger dragon, or maybe a baby dragon. It was maybe the size of a really large bear." I sighed and shut my eyes, trying not to cry at theimage flashing in my mind of the gigantic beast we'd run into trying to escape. "I assume it was younger because when we turned to leave, the dragon standing behind us was the size of a school bus, and it was not happy."
Her hand paused briefly before she continued tracing the nasty scars. "But you got away."
"With the dragon being so big and blocking the only exit we could see, which was no wider than a normal door, we tried running underneath it. It grabbed my brother and threw him toward the exit while shooting fire up to the ceiling. I'd never been so scared in my life, Wren." I shuddered. "I scooped my lifeless brother up, and as I got to the doorway that would lead us to safety, the dragon swiped me."
"I'm sorry." She sounded so sincere, and I rolled onto my back and looked up at her. Her eyes glistened in the dim gray light that was coming in from outside. "Did your brother… is he?"
"He survived. Paralyzed from the neck down. Can't shift because his body won't let him." I shut my eyes. "And it's all my fault."
"You can't blame yourself for something like that. How were you to know there were really dragons in there? Mothers are very protective of their young." She cupped my cheek, and I leaned into her touch.
Fuck.
"I went into the cave hoping there would be. My brother didn't want to go." Sighing, I sat up, not wanting to let myself enjoy her touch too much. Kingston and Zayn would kill me. "So, now I fight to help pay for his care."
"Does the pack not help with all that?"
"They do, but it gets expensive without human insurance, and if he needs a procedure, we have to find doctors and nurses who are shifters to come do it. That, and providing the location, and all the medical equipment…"
"Let me talk to my dad and see-"
"No." I turned to face her. "I don't want the coalition involved. The last thing we need is for them to whisk him away and to never see him again."
She frowned and looked down at her hands. I felt like shit for not even hearing her out, but I couldn't take any more procedures or surgeries that left us all feeling hopeful, only to let us down.
"We should get going now that the hail has stopped." She got up and stayed crouching, moving outside into the steady rain.
Why did I suddenly wish it was still hailing?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wren
Sullivan's story had left me feeling out of sorts as we headed back toward the path we had been on. I didn't know if my dad could heal his brother's spinal cord injury, but maybe with my help, it was a possibility.
We weren't on that level yet for me to even suggest it or reveal that side of me. I'd have to talk to my dad first to see if it was even something he could do, so I kept my mouth shut as I shifted and tried to pick back up on Zayn's scent. It had completely disappeared thanks to the rain, but there was onlyone path, unless he'd magically shifted into a mountain goat and was climbing the steep rock.
Despite the predicament we were in with Marcos and with Zayn killing two people, I was enjoying my time running freely in my fox form and not slinking around. It gave me a chance to think about what I was going to do with my life now that the coalition wasn't going to be a part of it.
At least, I hoped they weren't.
Coalition agents saw and heard things that made them a liability. All it would take was one slip up and all the secrets would be out there for the world. Then there was the matter of being accepted back into shifter society. Packs did not like coalition agents since we often had to be the bad guys and lock shifters away for making decisions that could expose us.
Decisions like Kingston had made.
Damn it. I didn't like that everything was so black and white with the coalition. They weren't going to care why he was doing what he did. All they cared about was the fact that humans were involved with wolves, and it was enough to get the government's interest. The last thing we needed was for the government to find out and want to kill us all, use us for experiments, or combat.
After about thirty minutes, we came to a narrow valley, similar to the one we had been in before. The valley wasn't that wide, but it was long. Without a scent, it was like we were chasing our tails. Something pulled me to the left and Sullivan gave me a confused look.
I barely caught Zayn's scent as we got farther into the area. It was faint and sporadic, but the trees had preserved some of the places he had run. He was probably still miles ahead, but we hadn't lost him completely.
He hadn't said much about his sister, but from what I understood, she didn't want to live in society. I could see how easy it would be for wolves, or any shifter for that matter, to detach from the human world and live in nature. It was peaceful and without the drama and risk that came along with living in populated areas.
