Page 17 of Bad Blood Alpha

Chapter 7

Flynn felt like every thought in his brain had been snuffed out. There was nothing but blank, empty darkness. Frozen, like the depths of space.

The bracelets couldn’t lie, and their magic couldn’t be manipulated.

She was who she said she was—Princess Kiraset Lael, the draken princess he’d been pledged to when he was twelve years old.

When she was only five.

She’d been a stranger to him then, and she was no less of a stranger now. A beautiful, intriguing stranger—who brought trouble along behind her. Unstoppable, fire-breathing trouble.

It was wrong, he knew it was wrong, but for one savage moment he wished she’d stayed dead. And his oaths and duties and memories could have stayed behind the walls he’d built so he could forget them.

Flynn slapped his left palm over the bracelet, cutting off the light. The hologram disappeared.

Then, without another word, he started the truck up, put it in gear, and drove.

It took him ten minutes to corral his feelings and shove them into the black hole where all his unwanted feelings went—which was most of them.

He did it the way he always did—focusing on practicalities. Things he could control, like strategy, tactics, and intel.

Kira waited, saying nothing. At least she had sense enough to know when to keep her mouth shut.

“So who’s after you?” he asked abruptly.

“Who isn’t?” She leaned her head back on the seat and closed her eyes.

“Not an answer.” He hit the brakes and pulled over abruptly. The car behind them leaned on the horn and zoomed past.

“Get this straight,” he said. “My territory, my rules. You want my protection, you answer my questions, or you can get out now. So, who’s sending hellhounds after you?”

She sighed. “You really want to do this here?”

“I’m waiting.”

She twisted in the seat to face him. “Use your famous brains, Lion. I’m the last survivor of the Draken House of Al-Maddeiri.”

“You stayed under the radar all this time,” he said. “Twenty years, and not even a breath of a rumor that you’d survived. If there was, I’d have heard about it. But now, suddenly everyone knows?”

“They don’t know who I am,” she said. “But they know what I am.”

A dragon, alone and unprotected, with magic and knowledge that many people would kill to get their hands on.

“How?” he asked.

“Hello,” she said. “Did you learn nothing in your preparation for our binding ceremony?”

He’d learned plenty. That’s what you did when you were a cadet in the Lion Guard. You did what you were told, and you learned what they told you to learn. And when they abandoned you, you spent the next twenty years erasing that shit from your mind.

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

She sighed. “I’m the goddamned Bound One, Flynn. I have all the superpowers of my bloodline. When I turned twenty-one, I was supposed to bond with my destined mate—that would be you—and gain access to the power. Then the draken of Al-Maddeiri would have a ceremony, and I’d channel all that magical goodness back into my clan, to replenish their powers for another thousand years.”

He knew that. It hadn’t made much impression on him at the time—the whole thing was far in the future, and his part was simply to mate with her when the time came. The rest was nothing to him.

“So? You didn’t do it. How did you get outed?”

She leaned back against the headrest once more. “Let’s just say I’m past my expiration date. And—until now—no destined mate, no way to unbind the power and nowhere for it to go. So now and then my wacky magic busts out and transmits like a beacon—ten times louder than that bullet I dug out of you—to anyone who’s looking. Some of them want to capture me, and the rest want to kill me dead. The end.”