Page 24 of Wildfire Witch

A short time later, the wolf guarding me noticed I’d sat up and took a quick look around. My clothes were torn and my back and neck were stiff from laying in awkward positions. Pain throbbed from my right hand, up my arm, to the muscles on that side of my chest. My stunt with fusing my fire with Seth’s water had left the skin swollen, tight, and a shade redder than the rest of my body.

But the worst pain was lancing through my heart, under the cloying humidity of my phoenix. The one who couldn’t wait to be rid of me so badly, she would trade me for a fire bro’s cage.

The nervous wolfput me in handcuffs and kept a bulky pair of fireproof gloves on his hands. His padded grip on my arm made me feel like I was being handled like a piece of cookware left too long in an oven. I didn’t bother telling him I wasn’t going to summon any fire magic the first time he shoved my woundedshoulder and my whole arm throbbed. He could wear the gloves, he looked stupid with them on.

We marched through a compound at about twice the pace my still-waking body could handle. I tripped and stumbled multiple times, hissing in pain when my wolf shifter guard squeezed tighter and hauled me along, cursing me for being “a little bitch.”

He stood somewhere north of six feet, twice as broad as me with muscle. His arms and collar were decorated with multiple small tattoos, like he couldn’t afford to get his sleeves done all in one go. The Fire Brotherhood fist was the biggest tattoo he had, surrounded by the cheaper ink.

Because of his rough treatment, I didn’t catch my bearings on the journey to see his boss. The twists and turns of corridors and stairs might as well have been a maze. There was a pair of shifters standing by the door he led me to and even more beyond the threshold, seated at a conference table.

“Leave us,” one of the men said. He wasn’t seated, but his calm order had the men and women in the room filing out without complaint. All except for one.

The leader of the Fire Brotherhood was a memory wearing a finely tailored suit. He had the same bass voice as his son, the rumble of which suggested that he was a much bigger creature on the inside. The chiseled features, trimmed black stubble, and slitted eyes of draconic amber all belonged to the man who I’d first insulted centuries ago.

He could be a grandson, or a great-grandson of that man. Dragon shifters were long lived and said to have birth rates as erratic as the fae race. This particular family didn’t seem to have a problem reproducing, especially considering the younger manreclining in his chair while the rest of the meeting group had left was his father’s spitting image.

“You too, Benedict,” the older dragon said, turning his amber gaze on the lounging man.

“Should I not be here, as your second?” he asked.

The leader snorted twin curls of smoke. “Leave. We will discuss the vessel’s fate later.”

Benedict got to his feet and brushed past me, his brows lowered into a leer as his eyes roved up and down my form. I curled my lip at him. There was nothing to view here, I had to look like a barely walking disaster. I knew I smelled of body odor and the grime of however many days passing without a hint of water.

A tension headache gripped around my skull when the wolf shifter shoved me in a seat, my arms trapped between my back and the cushion.

“You may go as well,” the leader said, nodding to my guard.

Once the door shut behind him, I raised my chin to look at the man looming over the conference table across from me. He was built tall and broad, as one could expect of a shifter with such a large second form. What also gave away his identity as the leader of the Fire Brotherhood were his hands, which he splayed over the glossy table as he leaned in to get a better look at me.

He had a tattoo of red fire across his palms, which wrapped around the back to form the tails of the flame design that was inked on each man and woman in his gang. His clenched fist was the one in control.

“Hi,” I said with a hint of false cheer. “I’m Nix.”

More smoke trailed from his nostrils as he continued his inspection like I hadn’t spoken.

“I never actually learn the names of any of you guys?—”

“We are not friends, vessel,” he scoffed.

“That’s really a shame, when I have something you want,” I said.

I was still out of sorts, so I made a mistake, baring my teeth in a grimace at the shifter. He responded with a growl so loud and deep, it rattled the table and chairs in the room like a mini earthquake.

“And don’t think I will hesitate to take from you. The phoenix will restore my mate. I’ve already killed and skinned the bounty hunters who dared do the same to her.” His form rippled with his fury, scales rising to the surface of his skin and sinking back down in sinuous rolls over his flesh. The room’s heat spiked and I shifted with discomfort, flushing hotter without the relief of sweat. I needed a tall drink of ice water just as much as I needed Ceridor and Seth to walk through the door and rescue me from this place.

Still, I hardly hid my wince. If his mate was killed in that manner…she was super dead. Aodhnait could only bring back people under very specific conditions, and she was beyond the parameters for resurrection. If she tried, Aodhnait would snuff out her fire in the attempt and join her in the afterlife.

“Don’t tell him that,”she hissed in a furious whisper.

I cleared my dry throat. It was hard to breathe with the heat coming off this man. “What if I told you I figured out how to break my curse?” I asked.

He stopped his partial shifting and regarded me with slitted dragon eyes.

“I’d like to make a deal with you.” The words tasted like ash on my tongue. Despite Aodhnait’s sudden shift in her opinion of me, she was still the only being besides maybe Ceridor who understood me. I’d have preferred skinning myself than continuing to talk. “If you spare me the experimentation by the so-called scientists you’ve undoubtedly hired?—”

“I heard you have a smart mouth,” he muttered.

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