Apparently, they weren’t the least bit concerned.

  I watched in amazement as Cillian flew closer to the tree line and then his body shimmered, growing smaller in size before he transformed back to his human form about fifteen feet from the ground.

  Awesome fucking trick, I thought before shifting as well and running toward him.

  He wrapped me in his arms. “You’re hurt. I smelled blood.”

  “There was a dragon back there, but I lost him at some point.” I glanced behind him. “Is it working?”

  “Not as well as we’d hoped, but we’ll get in or they’ll come out. Either way, this is happening.”

  That was good, because I had so much adrenaline pumping through my veins, I wasn’t sure I could not fight someone at this point.

  A crease formed between his eyes. “You’re still glowing even as you are now.” His hands moved over my arms. “It’s faint, but there’s definitely something there.”

  I glanced down and, sure enough, there was a soft silver glow above my skin.

  The energy is protecting us from the wolfsbane, my wolf said. We should be unconscious by now.

  Well, shit. That was rather helpful, and I relayed that same information to Cillian.

  “I don’t understand your shifter abilities, but I’m damn sure grateful for them.”

  Him and me both.

  Another roar sounded in the sky and even more from further north.

  Cillian’s hold on my arms tightened. “They dropped the last boulder. It’s time. Stick to the plan, Dawsyn. Find my dad if you can, but more importantly, get the hell out of there before things escalate.”

  I nodded. I had every intention of doing just that, but it didn’t mean I would find the quickest escape, depending on the condition Darius was in.

  “And you’re going back up there?” I asked him. He hadn’t seemed sure what his form of attack would be.

  “For the moment. I want to see if Knox comes out first before going in,” he replied. “I won’t miss my chance to end him.”

  The sky cracked with more lightning, causing both of us to look up.

  “I need to go,” Cillian said, an uneasiness lacing his words.

  “I’ll be fine,” I reminded him with a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “My freaky wolf powers will make sure of that.”

  “They better,” he grumbled, then wrapped his arms around me one more time, kissing me so thoroughly that my toes began to curl inside my boots just as he pulled away. “I’m going to go before I change my mind.”

  I gave him a light shove. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “But not soon enough,” he added as he jogged far enough away to begin shifting. His dragon body was much too big to be in the forest, but that didn’t seem to stop him.

  With what seemed like little effort, Cillian’s head pushed trees out of the way, causing them to fall to the earth, then he spread his wings before taking flight.

  “Show-off,” I muttered before transforming back to my wolf.

  It was time to sneak back inside the place I’d fought so hard to escape.

  We ran back toward where the boulders were dropped. Dragons were dipping low to the ground and clawing at the dirt in rapid succession until they broke the top completely. The openings weren’t big enough for any of them to fit, and neither were the tunnels, but I wasn’t waiting for a dragon to lead the way.

  My wolf spotted the nearest hole. We were going in.

  At least, that was the plan until Lykem dropped from the sky right in our path. He crossed his arms over his chest and tsked. “Did you forget you were supposed to stick with me?”

  Not exactly, I thought. I’d just hoped I could get away with going by myself. I didn’t need a babysitter.

  But a little back-up never killed anyone.

  I wanted to disagree, but my wolf wasn’t wrong.

  We yipped at Lykem, then nodded toward the hole.

  He glanced back and shook his arms out. “Let’s have some fun, Wolf Girl.”

  Oh, I intended to.

  He jumped through first, and just as I followed him, a fist came flying for my wolf’s head.

  Before it could connect, Lykem had the guy by the throat and slammed him into the hard rock wall with a smirk on his face. “Look at me coming in handy already.”

  He was a little too proud of that fact as he tied a rope around the guy’s hands behind his back. “No killing unless we have to.”

  That was a part of the plan I was more than okay with. I’d been trained to kill, but I’d yet to actually do so. Though, I knew I could without blinking an eye if it meant saving an innocent life.

  Once he was done, I glanced in both directions, trying to correlate where we’d jumped in with where the door in the tree was.

  We were further down than I’d been. Though, I felt rather confident that we needed to head right, then turn left somewhere up ahead.

  I led the way with Lykem right behind me, him running and managing to keep up with my wolf.

  Three men charged toward us, and I glanced at Lykem. He’d just been badly injured the day before, yet I couldn’t see any signs that he’d already tired or was too weak to fight. I just had to trust that he was as strong on the inside as he was appearing on the outside.

  “I’ll get baldy on the right,” he said. “You get the left and we’ll hope the third doesn’t blindside one of us.”

  That was as good of a plan as we were going to come up with. Given the tight quarters, there wasn’t going to be a chance of separating the group to lessen their advantage.

  We met the three men head on. Lykem was swinging punches with one hand and swiping out with a knife in the other.

  My wolf had her teeth bared and claws at the ready. We attacked the guy on the left as planned, attempting to only knock him out, given how easily Lykem had done that to the first attacker. Except this one wasn’t as easily taken down.

  He had a glowing blade in his hand and winked just before he swiped at me. We dodged out of the way, but he was quick with another attempt. This time the knife sliced cleanly through my wolf’s front leg, preventing us from putting any pressure on it.

  Sorry, wolf, I said. I don’t think bringing a wolf to a knife fight is going to be helpful this time.

  She snarled and backed up, then allowed me to shift back without any resistance.

  As soon as I was on two feet, I checked my arm where she’d been cut. It wasn’t deep, but blood still trickled down my arm.

  I surged forward with two blades in hand from my back pockets. Just before I moved to cut my attacker in return, I dropped down and slid toward him.

  His knife barely missed the top of my head, and mine cut through his inner thighs.

  The roar he bellowed had me grinning, but not for long.

  I caught the third attacker jumping onto Lykem’s back while he was still fighting the bald one.

  Deciding mine was incapacitated enough, I jumped into Lykem’s fight without thinking.

  As soon as I grabbed on to the third man, a shot of electricity went through me and my body was forced back, slamming into the wall.

  I had to blink several times before I could get back up. “Fuck, that hurt,” I muttered.

  Though, I had to figure something else out and soon, because Lykem was worse off than I realized.

  His entire body shook, and he was seconds from having his neck sliced up.

  That could have been you if you’d gone ahead without him, my wolf reminded me, then added something actually helpful. Use your knife to dig a chunk of rock from the wall, then smash it over the guy’s head.

  That I could do.

  Then I had a better idea once I began to turn around.

  The man I’d already taken out was bent over, hugging his legs. Instead of wasting time we didn’t have getting a rock, I grabbed the guy and lifted him up just enough to throw him at the others.

  He was heavy, but between the adrenaline and new energy inside me, I had no problem with the action.

  As soon as his body hit the one with the electricity power, all four of them tumbled to the ground. I had no idea if I’d interrupted the energy enough to make things safe for me, but I had to help Lykem.

  I charged forward again, knife in hand and without thinking about the potential consequences, I drove the blade into the neck of the third attacker.

  My muscles tensed as I waited for the pain, but it never came, and Lykem was able to get out from underneath them, only one bad cut on his collarbone.

  “Thanks,” he huffed before reaching down to the bald one. Lykem picked him up, then slammed him against the wall twice.

  This time, there was no point in tying the attacker up. This one wasn’t waking up.

  The one I’d been fighting held his hands up. “I won’t fight back.”

  Lykem kicked him in the ribs. “Then, you can live, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”

  He tied him up, and I glanced at the one I’d stabbed in the neck. Yeah, he wasn’t waking up either.

  I’d thought I’d feel more at having been responsible for taking a life, but knowing Lykem was alive because of my choice made any guilt I might have felt otherwise become non-existent.

  Once there were no more threats, Lykem nodded at me. “Where to now?”

  “Straight ahead until we see the tunnels start to appear on the left,” I said.

  The pounding of footfalls sounded behind us, and I tensed, ready to fight again, but Lykem placed a hand on my shoulder. “They’re friendly.”

  Two shifters I didn’t recognize joined us. “Need us to do anything about these ones?”

  Lykem shook his head. “Go ahead and make sure we don’t run into any other problems.”

  Without questioning anything, they did just that and we followed a little slower behind them.

  After another five minutes, we finally made it to the cell area. I shifted back to two feet as soon as I saw the door I’d been looking for. Only it was open and not sealed shut like it should have been.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, jerking on the handle.

  There was a momentary relief when I saw someone still in the dark room, but that was dashed away just as quickly when I realized he was bleeding profusely from a head wound.

  “Darius,” I said, kneeling next to him. “I’m here to help you. I need you to wake up.”

  His body was beaten badly and wasn’t moving, but he was at least breathing.

  “That’s Darius?” Lykem asked. “Are you sure?”

  My head whipped back. “What the fuck do you mean am I sure? Don’t you recognize him?”

  If I’d been wrong and this wasn’t Cillian’s father… I wasn’t sure how my mate would take that disappointment after all he’d been through lately.

  Lykem lowered himself next to me and grabbed the man by his shoulders, brushing long tangled hair away from his face. “I mean, he could be. It’s been a couple decades since I saw him. He used to be larger than life. This man is…”

  Not that, I thought.

  “Even if he’s not the Darius we thought he was, we still have to help him,” I said. “Carry him in your arms and be fucking careful.”

  “Easy, Wolf Girl,” he rumbled in return. “I’m not the one you need to be aggressive with. If I’m carrying him, you’ll need to watch out for more attackers.”

  I was fully aware of that, but also glad Lykem had stopped me from doing this by myself. I’d have been fucked before I’d even gotten to the cells, and I wasn’t too proud to admit that.

  I just had to keep hoping that Cillian had been just as successful as we’d been.

  If not, my wolf was about to spill a hell of a lot more blood.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  CILLIAN

  Flying away from Dawsyn was hard, but as soon as I shifted, I’d made sure Lykem knew to find her given how certain I felt that she wouldn’t wait for him before running headfirst into those tunnels.

  As I took to the skies, I searched for Knox’s dragon, but after ten minutes of looking and keeping an eye on things below, he was nowhere to be seen. Not only did him not coming out to fight like a man frustrate me, but so did the number of dragons working with Knox. I was more than a little disappointed in how many dragons had been hiding out here.

  They started to crawl out of the ground, shifting almost immediately. Some of them I knew and most of them I didn’t, but either way, I didn’t understand how they could have decided to work to destroy their own world. Though, they weren’t my problem at the moment. Knox was. I stayed out of the fight as much as I was able until I could find him.

  The dragons that had come with us were holding their own. None of the ones supporting Knox seemed to be able to do anything special, but that didn’t mean we could let our guard down.

  When it seemed like the numbers had shifted to our benefit, I flew to the ground and decided it was time for me to head inside the tunnel.

  As I landed between already demolished trees, my dragon’s head jerked to the right. There were no sounds coming from that way, but there was heavy energy pulsing from the trees that I hadn’t sensed when we’d been higher in the sky.

  I shifted back to my human form, because getting through the dense forest as my dragon would only hinder me. Then I ran.

  There was no way to know if I was making the right choice moving away from the fight and the tunnels, but I couldn’t ignore the pull toward the power I’d sensed.

  It was heavy and most of all familiar. Not because I’d encountered it before, but because it tasted like family.

  All blood-related dragons shared a certain scent. My family smelled of the air after a fierce storm. Fresh yet so crisp, it was almost like pins and needles on your skin.

  And it was a scent that came directly from my mother’s more powerful family line. Another reason why my gut told me that it was Knox I was suddenly chasing after.

  With my uncle dead, there shouldn’t have been anyone else with that scent other than me, and if Knox had it and I hadn’t realized it before because I’d been so concerned with keeping Dawsyn safe, then that meant he was my mother’s child.

  Even though I’d had the same thought before, the longer I considered the possibility, the less it made sense.

  I could have understood if my dad had fathered a child and didn’t know about it before he met my mother, but there was no scenario in which my mother could have had a baby and didn’t know, nor could I have imagined her abandoning a child.

  Yet, that seemed to be exactly what happened to Knox. So, what the hell happened all those years ago?

  That was a question that had the possibility of staying with me my whole life. I didn’t suspect Knox was going to be forthcoming with information, and I wasn’t going to allow him to live any longer than it took me to get my claws around his throat.

  I came to an abrupt stop when I saw the glow of a tree. A man stepped forward that I shared no similarities with other than our scent.

  A smirk grew on his sharp face, making the scar on his cheek stand out. “Cillian. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You never should have touched her,” I snarled. My dragon’s rage at seeing the man who stole our bond with Dawsyn had my own ire increasing by the second.

  “I wanted your attention and now I have it, Brother.” His stance was relaxed as he stepped closer, seeming not to care that I was about to rip his throat out.

  My fingers curled into fists at my sides and my chest heaved. “I could have been your brother, but you chose differently.”

  His haunting laugh echoed around us. “I chose? Oh, how young and naïve you are, Cillian.”

  “You killed my uncles, stole my mate, and burned half the city down while murdering thousands of dragons in the process.” I turned my body, preparing to attack as he got within striking distance. “Unless you’re about to tell me someone else is controlling you, you chose this path, and it ends here.”

  Whatever had happened to him, I no longer had the desire to know. The fact he’d touched my mate was already enough to end him. Everything else just proved my motivations weren’t unfounded or selfish.

  My right fist connected with his jaw, sending him tumbling back several steps, but I didn’t stop there. I charged forward, hands out and claws extended past my fingertips.

  Scales appeared over my skin, giving me an added layer of protection as I reached for Knox’s neck.

  He sidestepped me, regaining his footing quickly. “You’re not strong enough to hurt me, dear brother. Why try?”

  Oh, I could and I would. Severely.

  I ignored his taunting and struck again, this time going for his legs. My claws cut through his thigh, hopefully straight through his femoral artery.

  He barely even flinched, then he laughed as his leg buckled. “Is that all you have?”

  My chest burned with fire, and I kneeled over him, pressing my knee into his chest as I bent forward to choke him.

  Knox wasn’t fighting back, though.

  After all he’d done and destroyed, him giving up now made no sense. I wanted to stop and question what was happening—or more accurately, what wasn’t happening—but Knox twisted as if he was about to roll out from underneath me and I let my wrath get the best of me.

  “No!” I roared in his face, tightening the grip around his neck.

  His eyes darkened, showing the evil I’d already known he held inside. “Then, fucking kill me, Cillian. What are you waiting for? For Mommy to come back and tell us to be nice to each other?”

  “Don’t fucking speak of her.” My heart hammered in my chest. I wanted so badly to end him like I’d come here to do, but something was stopping me. Knox wanted to die. He was begging for this, but why?

  Why, after all he’d done?

  “Maybe you’re waiting for Dawsyn to come find us,” he taunted. “I’ve been wondering if she regretted leaving me to go back to you.”

  A heaviness settled over me, not like a weight to bear, but one to be unleashed, and there was no stopping its power. The moment he’d mentioned Dawsyn, I had no control over my actions. I no longer gave a shit why he wanted to die. All I knew was that he needed to cease breathing.