Thea Harrison - Dragon Bound

Why the hell not. She pushed the trunk open wider so that she could wriggle through and spilled onto pavement with a painful thud. She stared up at the front end of a Dodge Ram pickup coming straight for her. The truck slammed to a halt inches away from her face. The car she had been in pulled away from the stop and turned left.

“Hey!” a man yelled from the truck.

Shut up, you stupid man, shut up.

A truck door slammed.

She sat as a middle-aged man appeared. He knelt beside her, his face filled with shock and outrage.

“What the hell?” he said. “Oh sweet Jesus, lady, you’ve been kidnapped?”

Ya think?

Yards away, car brake lights showed. She yelled against her gag at the man.

“Just hold on, honey. You’re gonna be all right now.” The man worked to get her gag loose.

I slipped out at a stop , she said to Dragos. They noticed. They’re in a gray Lexus and they’re turning around. I’m seeing signs for . . . Highway 17 and . . . Averill Avenue or State Road 32. There’s a state park sign. I can’t see the name. It’s the same two guys, no witch.

I know where you are, he said in satisfaction. Well-done.

The man got the gag loose and pulled it over her head just as the Lexus pulled up. She screamed at the man, “Run!”

The two Fae stepped out, looking pissed. They had guns.

No, it’s not well-done. I made a bad mistake. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Dragos was trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t shut up, couldn’t run, couldn’t do anything but stare in horror as the man stood and turned around. One Fae lifted his gun and shot him.

She sobbed, I think I just got somebody killed.

Then the other Fae lifted his gun and shot her. She looked down at the pain in her chest. Another dart stuck in her T-shirt.

Fade to black.

The dragon roared in anguish as he hurtled north with every ounce of his strength and speed. He was followed by all his sentinels but one who had been left behind to deal with the witch.

He was too far, too far, and now she was gone again.

His enemies had taken his mate. His child .

She had to be alive.

Anything else was unacceptable.

Aburning cold Power yanked her awake. She coughed and rolled to her side. Her gag was gone and so were her ankle and wrist restraints. Her arms and legs crawled with prickling pain as her circulation returned.

She was lying on a floor. She touched the polished hardwood. Inside then.

“There’s our thief,” said a cultured male voice overhead. “Time to rise and shine.”

Inhuman. Fae. Didn’t she just know who that was. Too bad his head was still attached to his body. She had been hoping she would meet him the other way.

“I’m asleep, then I’m awake. Then I’m asleep and now I’m awake again,” she croaked. “Make up your mind already.”

The male laughed. “Well, you have not been boring, I’ll give you that, but haven’t you been one slippery bitch to get ahold of. And apparently for Cuelebre to hold on to.”

Yes, well, let’s not talk about that. She looked at the sleek black boots near her head. They belonged to legs that went up farther than she could focus just yet. “Can I have some water?”

“Sure, why not.”

He threw cold water in her face. She was too depleted to react much other than gasp. “Alrighty,” she said after a moment. “Can I have some water to drink now, please, Your Highness?”

He laughed again. “Not boring and not dumb. That’s so much better than your boyfriend, who both bored me and was dumb. To be honest, I don’t know what you saw in him.”

“Ex. Ex-boyfriend,” she said. “I swear to God, I’m never going to live that down.”

Finally it felt like her limbs would function. She pushed herself to a sitting position. She was in a very large room that had a medieval feel. There was a large stone fireplace and a nearby cluster of chairs, a long wooden table with benches, lit sconces that gave the scene a flickering illumination she found eerie, and a high-raftered ceiling.

There were also Fae guards at long metal-hatched windows. The two who had snatched her were stationed at large double doors.

Again she had no idea how long she had been unconscious, or where she was. She hoped the drugs hadn’t hurt the peanut. Her hand slipped to her abdomen. She gave herself a surreptitious scan. She sighed in relief as she located the tiny bright life inside her. There you are. Looks like it’s just you and me, peanut. For now, anyway.

The Fae King squatted beside her. He handed her a goblet. She took a cautious sip. Cold, crisp, clear water. She sucked the contents down.

Then she looked up at Keith’s murderer. A few weeks ago she had not known there were so many people in the world to hate. Urien. The witch Adela. The two Dark Fae males at the door who had shot an innocent human without so much as a blink of an eye. Her revenge to-do list kept getting longer and longer.

The few Fae she had met had looks that ran from those who had a puckish quality, like Tricks, to those who had a strange stern beauty, like Urien. It was too bad he was such a monster. With his lean supple build, high cheekbones, white skin and raven black hair, he should have been one of nature’s miracles.

“This is one of my country retreats,” he told her, having noticed her curiosity. “No full Court in attendance, just me and my men. And now you, of course.” He gestured to the goblet. “More?”

“Yes, thank you.” She handed it to him and pushed to her feet as he refilled it from a silver pitcher sitting on the table. She drank that goblet down as well.

“Have as much as you like. The sedative can leave one with quite a thirst, or so I’m told,” said Urien. “I suspected you’d wake up thirsty since you had two doses back-to-back. Which rather surprised my men, since one dose should have been sufficient for the trip.”

“I’ve always had a high metabolism,” she said. She filled the goblet one last time and drained it. The hydration made all the difference in the world. Things stopped spinning at the edge of her vision and she felt stronger. “Local anesthesia at the dentist? Forget about it. It doesn’t take until they pump enough in me to numb an elephant.”

“I see.” The Fae King strolled to one of the high-backed chairs near the fireplace and sat. He gestured to the chair opposite him with a smile. “Please join me. We have a lot to talk about, you and I.”

The worst thing you could do with a predator was show your fear and run. She suspected dealing with the Fae King would be a similar experience. She took the chair he indicated, leaned back and crossed her legs.

Urien regarded her across steepled fingers; then he reached for the glass of wine on the table by his chair and took a sip. “What a surprise and a mystery you’ve been, Ms. Giovanni.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” she said. “Well, maybe the mystery part was, but that was supposed to go unsolved.”

He gave her a grin that didn’t reach his cold black eyes. “I knew I liked you the moment I got that penny. Now that made me chuckle.” His eyes sharpened. “There is something about you. . . .”

All these stupid old people. Had every last one of them met, heard of, gossiped about, or smelled her mom in the distance? Way to be inconspicuous. Thanks a lot, Mom.

She pinched her nose and sighed, “Yeah, I look like Greta Garbo. I get that a lot.”

“Really, and this Greta Garbo is who?”

She looked at him over her hand. “An old movie star.”

“I do not follow such newfangled human pastimes.” He dismissed the subject with a flick of his fingers. “This pissant nobody kept annoying my men, so when I heard about his preposterous claims about his girlfriend, I thought, Let’s throw a kind of finding charm out there and see what happens. You know, just to try out a prototype of a little something I’ve been cooking up in my spare time. Imagine my surprise when everything he claimed came true. Then imagine my surprise when he wouldn’t say a word about you.” He leaned forward. “Not after he was gelded, not after he was eviscerated, not after he was blinded. I didn’t think the boy had that kind of loyalty in him. I thought he would give you up in the first ten minutes.”