Page 61 of Burned

ALRICK

Iwish I could say that I have a plan by the time the plane touches down, but I’ve spent hours running scenarios in my head and all of them end with Digby slitting my throat for being a traitor. I shudder and Lord reaches over to squeeze my hand, the motion of the plane meeting the runway jarring both of us slightly in our seats.

“What if we just tell them we’re turning you over and when they show up to get you, we trap them and force them to hear you out?” Arson suggests.

My dad told us that one of the most dangerous things about dragons is that if you let them look into your eyes, they can read your mind and even implant thoughts there. I was skeptical of that one even at the time, but his uncanny response to my spinning thoughts has me wondering for a split second.

“You’ve been scowling the entire time. It’s obvious you’re worrying over how to approach your family,” Montrose says, similar to Arson, as if I spoke my thoughts out loud.

I shift in my seat and glance over at Lord.

“It’s hard to have secrets around supernaturals. We’re too good at smelling shifts in emotion, or in Montrose’s case even feeding on them,” Lord explains. At least I understand howhecan know so easily that my thoughts are in turmoil, but suddenly mind reading sounds like the least of my worries.

“Feedingon them?”

Montrose drapes himself over the back of my seat, his auburn hair tumbling forward, something unsettling about his cheeky grin.

“Don’t worry, my mate keeps me well fed.” He winks.

“You’re freaking the poor guy out, Monty, have some chill,” Lake chides from across the aisle.

The plane finally comes to a stop and we all disembark. My heart thunders and my stomach knots with indecision. I don’t have the first clue what my next step is, but I know I can’t go back to the compound with them. It’s too dangerous. If my brothers are still watching the place and they see me with the dragons, it will only exacerbate things. The wards might keep them out, but they’re not going to let that stop them for long.

“No, turning me into bait isn’t going to work.” I finally respond to Arson’s suggestion from a few minutes ago. “Not if I have any hope of approaching things peacefully.”

“Okay, so why not just make a phone call?” Lake suggests.

If it weren’t for my nerves making me feel violently nauseous, it would be hilarious how surprised and baffled everyone else looks at the suggestion. I know they all have phones, but it’s obvious that simply making a phone call didn’t occur to any of them. I guess old habits die hard when you’ve been around for thousands of years.

Unlike them, Ididthink of that option and dismissed it somewhere over the Atlantic hours ago.

I shake my head. “I need to get my brother Viggo alone. If I can get him on my side, I might have a chance of talking to Digbyand my dad. But with everyone on high alert right now, any call to Viggo will be monitored.”

Standing on the tarmac, clutching the backpack with nothing but my clothes inside, the urge to bury my face in Lord’s chest and beg him to fix this for me is strong.Toostrong. I can’t let him fight this battle for me, as much as I want to. The look he gives me tells me he can feel my longing and exhaustion through our bond and that he would happily fix this for me if I asked him to. But I have to do this on my own. If I want a different life, I have to claim it for myself, I have to be the one to sever the ties with my family.

“Okay, forget a phone call,” Montrose says. “You said Viggo is the brother you need?”

I frown. “Yeah.”

He steps closer and I flinch back as he leans in towards me, his nostrils flaring as he sniffs the air around me like a bloodhound trying to pick up a scent. I look at Lord for help, but he just shrugs, seeming as perplexed by the demon as I am.

After sniffing me for a good thirty seconds, Montrose leans back again and smirks. “Be right back.”

And just like that, he’s gone. I blink several times, trying to make sense of the fact that he was standing six inches in front of me seconds ago and now he’s justnowhere. There was no puff of smoke or flap of wings, nothing to suggest he was ever there to begin with.

Dempsey pats my shoulder. “You get used to it.” He pushes his glasses up higher on his nose. “I asked him about it before, and apparently since the demon realm exists on a different plane, it makes travel easy between places. It sounds like slipping between realms can act like a wormhole, letting him create a shortcut between any two places in our world.”

I’m sure the explanation is supposed to clear things up, but it just makes my head spin with even more confusion. I thoughtI knew a fair amount about the supernatural world, being raised the way I was, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that I don’t know as much as I thought I did. Even everything IthoughtI knew about dragons was more propaganda than fact.

Just as quickly as he vanished, Montrose reappears right in front of me. A slightly sulfuric smell clings to him now, but otherwise there isn’t a hair out of place.

“Viggo is on his way to Fairmont park.” He snaps his fingers, and a cherry red Mustang appears a few feet away, parked right next to the two black SUVs with heavily tinted windows that I believe belong to the Drakes. Montrose reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of keys, tossing them to me. I catch them in midair, still trying to work out what exactly just happened.

“What… How?”

He waves his hand dismissively. “I popped over to their campsite, which is in the woods just outside of the compound’s wards, and in my invisible form, I whispered the suggestion to Viggo. He thinks it’s his own idea to go to the park without alerting your father or Digby.”

Valentino growls low in his throat and wraps his arms around his mate from behind, nuzzling the demon’s neck. “You’re so fucking hot when you’re all demony like this.”

---