For the first time, I see it. What he meant when he said he wasn’t a human who shifts into a dragon, but rather a dragon who wears his humanity like a mask.
“She,” he says in that calm voice that somehow shakes the earth, “is my mate.”
The words ignite in the silence of the private garden.
I feel the wolves’ shock pulse through our pack bonds. Their collective attention snaps toward Villeneuve with laser focus.
But I can’t look at them. Can’t look away from Knox’s face, which has gone a shade paler than its usual corpse-white.
“You’re bluffing,” Knox says. But there’s uncertainty behind his words now.
“Am I?” Villeneuve takes a step forward. Just one step this time, slow and measured, but Knox jolts anyway. Villeneuve raises his hand, and I gasp as a green light forms in the center of my chest. It stretches and strains like an unspooling thread across the field to where Villeneuve is standing, and finds its end point just over the professor’s heart.
The same thing as the cords binding me to the pack, the same one Vyse recognized when he immediately connected me to Villeneuve. And now it’s finally visible for the eye to see.
Not just Knox, but the pack too.
“Try me, Mr. Warner,” Villeneuve says coldly, the thread vanishing once more. “Attempt to take her. See what happens when you come between a dragon and his mate.”
Dragon.
He said it out loud. In front of a Council investigator.
Surely they know what he is if he works for them, but still. He doesn’t talk about these things openly.
Knox’s purple eyes flicker. He’s undead, powerful in his own right. But even a lich knows better than to challenge a dragon on his own territory.
“This isn’t over,” Knox says finally. “The Council will hear of this. Your interference, your...relationshipwith the suspect. Your ‘jurisdiction’ is at its end.”
“I’m counting on it.” Villeneuve’s smile is sharper than usual. “Now get off my property before I remove you myself.”
Knox holds his gaze for a long moment. Then, without another word, he turns and walks back toward the tree line. The wards shimmer as he passes through them, and then he’s gone.
The garden is silent once more.
I can hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
They know. Not only does the pack know that I’m Villeneuve’s mate, but they all saw the usually invisible thread binding me to him.
No hiding it now.
Villeneuve turns to face us. His eyes have faded back to their usual dark shade, but there’s an emotion in them I wasn’t expecting to find in the wake of the wrath he turned on Knox.
It’s almost apologetic.
“Regina—”
Killian moves.
I don’t see it coming. None of us do. One second Killian is standing beside me, the next, he’s launched himself at Villeneuve, shifting mid-lunge, his massive black wolf form colliding with the professor in a blur of fur and fangs.
“KILLIAN!” I scream.
Villeneuve doesn’t shift. He stays in his human form, catching Killian’s charge with supernatural strength thatshouldn’t be possible for something that looks like a man. They crash through a rose bush, destroying the ancient plants Sean trampled earlier, and hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and snarling fury.
Killian isstrong. Stronger than he should be, even for an alpha wolf. He’s driving Villeneuve back, raw power surging behind every snap of his jaws. The virus is making him faster, more aggressive, more dangerous.
But Villeneuve is a dragon. Even in human form, he’s holding his own, deflecting strikes that would have killed a normal man, keeping Killian’s teeth away from his throat through sheer force of will.
