Page 51 of Bad Blood Alpha

“I was there too,” Ashley said. “There was a set of wooden doors. They had the Al-Maddeiri coat of arms carved into them.”

Kira’s eyes grew wide. “They did! I didn’t see them the last time. I wasn’t looking…”

“So someone has taken over one of the Al-Maddeiri castles? I thought they were all in ruins,” Harrison said.

Israel pinched his lip. “An outpost, maybe? Or someplace that was abandoned before the war, so that no one bothered to destroy it?”

“It’s a place to start,” Ashley said. “But it may mean that Kane and Rachelle’s contacts won’t do us much good. If they’re not in this world…”

“But someone from this world has to be involved,” Kira said. “I don’t know about the lab equipment, but there were computers, like the kind you’d see in any Earth lab. There was even a logo on the screen. You know, a screensaver.”

Flynn got her a pad and paper and she sketched it. When she was finished, he and Israel looked at each other.

“Gen-X,” he said.

Gen-X was moving between worlds, and screwing with dragons. This was a lot bigger, and even more fucked-up, then he’d imagined.

And Kira’s magic wasn’t dissipating. It was growing.

He turned to Ashley. “Is there anything you can find out about this damn ritual? Kira can’t go on like this. You must have felt how strong the magic is getting. If it breaks free…”

Ashley bit her lips. “There might be something in the Akkabi archives. Or one of the ancient sorcerers might know. I could try to find out, but I’m not exactly anyone’s favorite person in the House of Akkabi right now. Especially the elders.”

“There has to be something,” Flynn said. “What about this other thing, that her guardian did? That cloaks her dragon nature? That’s got to be more common—you have something like it, don’t you? Would taking it off help Kira at all? Or would it just make things worse?”

“I don’t know.” Ashley frowned in thought, then turned to Kira. “Do you have any of your guardian’s papers or records? He might have a copy of the spell. We could at least see how it’s formed and what he designed it to do.”

Kira nodded. “When Markus died, I saved his papers, all I could find. I don’t have them with me, though. I—”

Flynn lost track of what she was saying. That one name reverberated through his mind, blocking out everything else.

Markus. She’d said Markus.

That wasn’t fucking possible. It had to be someone else.

“Markus?” he said. “Markus Dobari?”

Her eyes went wide, and he could see it in her face. She knew.

She knew what Markus was to him—had been to him. She knew, and she hadn’t told him.

This was why her fighting style had looked so familiar, that night they fought the hellhounds. It was Flynn’s style of fighting as well. The same man had trained them both.

Markus hadn’t died in the last battle. He’d survived, and he’d been alive until three years ago.

Flynn’s world crumbled, and fell apart.