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“Or for us to be afraid of you,” I suggested. Her smile grew a little, as if she understood exactly what Imeant.
West had raised his phone to his ear. While I’d been talking to the fae woman, the sun had disappeared completely. The wolf shifter called over to me. “The trucks are on the move. They’ll be heresoon.”
I breathed in and out deep and slow, readying myself for a shift. I’d need to hold it as long as I possibly could if we were going to push the vampires back all across the country. All we needed was for them to arrive and try to breach our walls, and we’d incinerate them inside those damned trucks they must have thought themselves so smart toobtain.
The other shifters stirred in their places around the courtyard. An owl hooted in the distance. Then my ears picked up the distant sounds ofengines.
They grew from a hum into a rumble. Everyone along the walls went still, braced for action. The engine’s growl rose even higher—and cut off as the trucks must have come to astop.
I exhaled sharply in the sudden silence. A different sound reached my ears: a low, rolling chuckle that made every nerve in my body jangle inalarm.
“Oh, dragon shifter,” a cajoling voice carried over the wall. “Won’t you come out andplay?”
West looked to me, frowning. My skin had turned clammy. Nausea swelled insideme.
“It’s him,” I said hoarsely, just loud enough for my mate to hear me. “The rogue who led the attack on my estate—the one who had my familykilled.”
Chapter 20
Ren
“Do you remember me?”the voice went on, lilting over the canine estate’s stone wall with an amused tone that set my teeth on edge. “I remember you. Scared little girl scampering after her mother down the halls. Too bad we didn’t paint them with your blood too thatnight.”
I remembered. Oh, hell, did I remember. When he chuckled again, the tone of it took me back sixteen years to that panicked dash through the estate, adrenaline sour on my tongue and heart thudding at the base of my throat. To the blood the rogueshadspilled all over my home. My dads’. Mysisters’.
I’d assumed we’d caught the rogue who’d led that assault in one of our past battles with his group. I hadn’t seen him clearly back then, didn’t even know what kind of shifter he was, so there’d been no way to tell other than that chuckle. But charging into battle wasn’t how he worked, was it? He led others to the fray and then stood back to watch thecarnage.
To watch andlaugh.
So he’d survived. Survived and gone running to the vampires with his last few rogue accomplices? Was he using them to get his revenge or were they usinghim?
Possiblyboth.
“Well, then, where are you?” the rogue called again. “Still too scared to stand your ground and faceme?”
My jaw clenched. West gripped my arm. I hadn’t even heard him coming to myside.
“Ignore him,” my mate said in a low voice. “He’s trying to get you worked up. To distract you. But he doesn’t matter. When we take down the vampires, we’ll take down any rogues with themtoo.”
Bertrand jogged across the courtyard to us. “We’ve got eyes on four rogues. The vampires are staying back, but those traitors have come right out of the forest. Looks like the bloodsuckers have shared theirguns.”
If they were at the edge of the forest, then they were in my firingrange.
As if triggered by my thought, a crackle of gunfire sounded near the gate. The guards along the wall jerked down. One yelped, clapping his hand to his head where a bullet had grazed his temple. A couple of his kin rushed tohelp.
I gritted my teeth. We couldn’t just leave the rogues alone. With that weaponry, they were almost as big a threat as thevampires.
I yanked my arm away from West and strode to the wall. The urge to shift was already prickling through me. I could at least pick off these few, even if the vampires were still hiding in the shelter of the forest. A little warm-up. Show them how far from scared Iwas.
“Wow,” the lead rogue said, his voice dripping with disdain. “Still no sign of that fearsome dragon. I guess we don’t have anything to worry about here after all. She can’t even be bothered to protect herkin.”
West followed me, catching my wrist again. “Don’t,” hesaid.
The rogue kept going. “Just like your mother, apparently. Running away instead of standing and fighting. Not that it did her any good. Did you hear your sisters crying out as we cut them down? And those pathetic alphas—I put the bullet in one of your fathers’ heads myself, while he laygroaning.”
Rage flared through my body. It pushed the talons from my fingers and the scales to the surface of my skin. A draconic roar rang from my throat as my muscles twisted and expanded. My wings unfurled, ready to cast me up in to the air, so I could incinerate them like so much barbeque. Wrench their lives from this world like they had my family’s. Pay them back for every bit of pain they’dcaused—
Flames scorched the base of my throat as I tensed to push myself off the ground—and a memory seared through my head. The wild rush of the fire over the trees when I’d lost control after our parlay with the vampireking.
