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That was a little too fucking easy.

Dammit. This was a set up. One that he'd walked right into.

But why? Demon wyrms weren't smart enough to make a plan like this on their own, and that meant bigger, more evil forces were at work here. This was not a job for someone like him. He needed to call in backup. But there weren't any other dragons within a thousand miles.

No. MacKay needed to figure out how to take care of this problem on his own and prove to Match and Blaise that he was worthy of being a warrior.

This might be a set up, but he was going to end it before anyone or anything else got caught up in this exercise in evil. Time to pull out his own fire. He'd probably destroy the building, but if he could keep the wyrms from wreaking their destruction beyond and into the people and town then it would be worth it.

MacKay called up the fire inside of him and torched the closest demons to him. They melted into piles of black goo. More came at him in droves. Damn, there were a shit ton of these little bastards. Way more than he'd counted coming in. That reinforced his thought that this was a set up.

He disintegrated a half dozen more and, oh yeah, this place was going up in smoke real fast. He was lucky the local fire department hadn't shown up yet.

Neener, neener, neener.

Ah, there they were. Time to clean this mess up and get out of here before any humans showed up. It was his duty to make sure the humans didn't get hurt. One more time around the interior and he caught another three or four of the little monsters, but a whole boatload of them escaped into a shadow from a falling stack of cardboard.

Damn it.

MacKay flew up to the ceiling and shifted. He crawled out a broken air vent and onto the rooftop. A whole battalion of fire trucks pulled up around the building. This was going to be a tough blaze. Good thing he was here to help. It needed to look like they'd put the fire out, but he had power over his element. The fire obeyed his commands.

He waited until they had the water spraying and reached inside of himself, finding the part of his soul that connected to his element. Slowly he commanded the fire to diminish. It didn't like giving into the water and put up a bit of a fight. He'd give the flames a little leeway since they had helped him to kill the demon wyrms, but eventually, they had to obey his command and fizzled out.

The firefighters wandered around the front of the building looking a bit befuddled. Even pushing the fire to die down slowly, the blaze was out far faster than their water alone should have done. A group of them stood together and seemed to be discussing the situation. He ought to get out of here, but he also needed to make sure there weren't any stray demon wyrms around.

He didn't smell any of them, but then he hadn't smelled the giant horde he'd come across. Something or someone else was disguising their presence here. That could only be evil. Whatever it was had powers beyond what he could comprehend.

Another smaller truck, lights flashing on top, roared into parking lot and screeched to a stop near the group of firefighters deep in discussion. The driver's side door flew open. The group of men turned as one to stare at whoever was about to get out. Must be a very important person to command their attention like that.

A red glow burst up just below him. He thought all the fire was out. He didn't sense any flames. The light wasn't quite the same as that of flame. MacKay looked down and found that the light was coming from him, or rather from around his neck.

The amulet containing a shard of his soul mixed with that of the First Dragon, the gift to all dragonkind from the White Witch, was glowing brightly. He'd never seen it do that before. Could it be possible? Could his mate truly be near? But where? So far, he hadn't seen any women. The whole lot of firefighters that had shown up were men.

To his surprise a short, curvaceous woman jumped out and sauntered over to the group of firefighters. Fire that burned hotter and brighter than anything he'd ever felt ignited in MacKay's core, and his cock was instantly hard. He didn't know who she was, not her name, nothing, but he knew deep in his soul, she was his.

His one true mate.

NATALY

The necklace around Nataly's neck glowed. Huh. Must be a reflection from the last flames of the fire. Although, it also felt hot. That was bizarro.

A lot about this fire was weird. Whoever this arsonist that had been plaguing the city was, he wasn't your typical psycho. She couldn't figure out why in the hell he was doing it.

In fact, she couldn't even figure out how he was doing it. There weren't any accelerants, but every single building this guy had torched had gone up like a stack of kindling. Plus, he was setting multiple fires to get the blaze glowing. That in and of itself wasn't strange, it was how those starter fires were placed. Completely randomly. It was like he didn't know what he was doing.

At first, she'd thought it must be a bunch of kids or some kind of gang initiation. But this many fires in this short of time was a major escalation of someone's psychosis. Whoever was lighting these fires wasn't doing it to destroy the buildings. He loved the fire.

She wasn't sure how she knew that, and she certainly hadn't said it out loud to her superiors. They'd think she was insane herself. There was always a little bit of psychology to figure out when it came to serial arsonists, and usually the FBI got involved when there were this many in a row. They were probably already on their way. Which meant she was going to get pushed aside so someone else could claim all the glory.

No way. This was her case. Her first major one and she didn't want anyone else touching any evidence or even looking at her buildings.

Nataly rubbed her chest beneath the little heart-shaped pendant. It was a motion she'd done hundreds of times over the years. It helped her think. Her father had given the necklace to her, or rather he'd left it to her when he died. She was dedicating this case to him. That meant she had to solve it.

She sniffed the air and ignored the looks she got from the firefighters standing around. They gave her space and respect because she was Drake Conleth's daughter. Not because they thought she could do the job. Yeah, there were some women on the force these days, but by and large it was still a boys’ club, and she'd definitely never been invited.

“Gentlemen.” She gave them a little salute but kept walking toward the building, pulling her custom-fit bunker jacket over her shoulders. Her helmet was tucked under her arm. Her nose was her guide. That same weird scent she'd caught at the last three fires wafted on the air. No one else at any of the previous fires smelled it, and she couldn't fathom why. The scent permeated everything.

Through the smoke and burned building smell was this strange bitter almond plus a sickly, moldy oil aroma. Oil didn't get moldy, but that was the best description she had.