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Then, to make it clear he hadn’t come to play games, he squatted down and seized one of the scales on Reynard’s neck, ripping it from his body.
Reynard screamed in pain and anguish, struggling harder and gnashing his teeth.
Sorin wished he could tell him that he was struggling, too.
“So scary,” he said instead, mockingly. “Whatever will I do? A snarling, ferocious beast is threatening me. Oh no. Poor baby. Do you want free so you can crush me beneath your big stupid lizard feet? Use my bones to pick your teeth? Shred me to pieces with your claws?”
Reynard struggled harder, so Sorin, eyes squeezed shut against the horror of what he was doing, wrenched out another of his scales.
Reynard screamed again, and Sorin didn’t just hear his dragon in it—he heard Bertram.
The effect it had on him was as cutting as it was swift. His stomach lurched. His vision swam. Dizziness set in.
Bertram.
When he found out what Sorin had done, he would be heartbroken, but there was no way around this. The Vanguard had to prove it was a force to be reckoned with, and this was the only way.
Tears beaded in Sorin’s eyes, but he spoke as though they weren’t there—like he was nothing more than a paper doll of a person stripped of his humanity. Evil, and elated about it.
Not a father.
Not a devoted mate.
Not a member of Reynard’s family.
“Naughty, naughty,” he sang as tears streamed down his cheeks. “Didn’t I warn you not to try to get away? You deserve everything you’re getting. Every single one of you reptilian scumbags do.” He leaned in close, so his lips were almost brushing the back of Reynard’s ear. “You know, I didn’t come in here intending to hurt you, but I’m having a lot of fun. And look at these scales! They’re a little small, but they’ll probably do. I’ll rip every single one out of you if you make me. You don’t wanna make me, do you?”
Reynard went very still for a moment, and Sorin thought perhaps he’d won—that this crazed character he’d created had scared a fully grown dragon into submission, and he’d be able to wrap up the torture scene and drug Reynard back to unconsciousness so the Vanguard would have time to fully evacuate before Sorin set him free.
But then Reynard’s whole body shook, surging with transformation, and his dragon burst forth all at once. The bindings around his wrists and ankles snapped as his body expanded, pieces slingshotting out in all directions. One hit Sorin in the thigh, causing him to hiss and jump back from the pain.
It was a good thing, because not even a second later, the half-man, half-dragon abomination Reynard had become flipped over and clawed the air with blinding speed right where Sorin’s face had been.
Cursing, Sorin booked it for the door and slammed it shut behind him, bolting it. A few members of the Vanguard stopped in their tracks and looked at him in confusion—they were transporting weapons and other supplies, which meant the evacuation was still in its earliest stages. They’d only just begun to gut the place of its valuables. No one had yet fled.
“Run,” Sorin cried. “Leave the weapons. Get out now while you still can.”
But even as he spoke, it was too late.
Dragon fire burst out from around the frame of the holding cell’s door, and as the facility’s emergency sirens went off, the door fell. Smoke billowed out from inside, followed by a snarling dragon.
Reynard Drake had broken free.
9
Bertram
On the outskirts of Aurora’s industrial sector was a stretch of abandoned civilization that had long ago fallen into disrepair. The streets, abused for years by the coming and going of semis hauling oversized loads, had been left to crumble, and their old factories and warehouses left to rot. What remained was a ghostly snapshot of a time utterly divorced from the present. Row upon row of ruin of what had once been human innovation, now an eerie testament to the hollowness of modernization and consumerism.
A case study in temporality, and how different the world had become.
Bertram drove his brothers down those crumbling streets and past collapsed, rusted buildings until they arrived at what should have been a familiar sight—his old tower silo and its adjoining processing plant. Bertram had purchased it during the height of Cold War tensions, when he’d been afraid that the worst might come to pass and he’d need an unlikely place to keep his family safe.
A bunker disguised as a derelict warehouse in an industrial cemetery certainly fit the bill.
Out of all the properties Bertram owned, it was the most defensible, and it made sense Sorin would choose it to be the Vanguard’s base of operations now that they were in possession of a stolen clutch of eggs. But there was one small issue.
The bunker was currently on fire.
