Page 38 of Bound By My Alpha Mate

Good, I thought. The last thing we needed was another wolf pack sticking their noses into our business. I couldn’t help but wonder how much outside packs knew about what was going on here in these three towns, but clearly, whatever they knew, it wasn’t enough to send them in to help us. Not that I expected strangers to risk their lives coming to our aid.

The caravan of Mythguard vehicles left Grandbay and hurtled southwest, out of Gunnison National Forest.

I leaned back and got comfortable for the drive, searching within myself for the emotions and sensations that might belong to Colt. We still shared feelings that were mirrored through our fated bond. It might have given me more security to have the telepathic connection of being marked—we both would have become stronger, reaching our maximum potential—but it was too much of a leap of faith to do that with Colt right now. I still wanted to know how he felt, so I focused on interpreting the rises and falls of emotion that didn’t belong to me, empathizing with whatever he was experiencing. The feeling of displacement among people who’d rejected him. The small victory of some kind of revelation—I didn’t know what it was, but there was hope and satisfaction that gave me confidence in Colt.

The human occupants of the SUV suddenly shouted, the urgency in their voices tearing me from my reverie. I sat up just in time for us to be jostled sideways by a vehicle that had come up beside us despite the oncoming traffic. I bristled with alarm, looking wide-eyed at the Mythguard men. “What’s happening?”

“This asshole is trying to run us off the road,” said Sebastian, reaching for the handgun at his side.

“They’re dragons,” said another operative.

I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the occupants of the other vehicle, a black truck smeared with dried mud. “There’s only one guy in there. We’ll be fine, right?”

Sebastian twisted around to look through the rear windshield. “More coming up behind us.”

“How did they know we were driving out of town?”

“I don’t know. They probably had eyes on the hotel. Our caravan makes it kind of obvious.”

“I thought you said the soap would hide my scent.”

“Well, it doesn’t make you invisible.”

The truck swerved against us again, scraping metal, wrenching my heart up into my throat. I clutched the back of the seat in front of me, feeling useless as we endured the attack from the truck. If I’d been on foot, I could have run, but there was nothing I could do inside the car! A flurry of honking horns surrounded us on the highway. Sebastian rolled down his window and leaned out into the night air. He aimed the handgun, but before he could fire, he pulled his head in and shouted, “Everyone hold on!” barely a second before I saw an oncoming car veer toward us.

This was a calculated attack by the dragons. They knew what they were doing.

The truck beside us and the oncoming car forced us off the road. The SUV spun across the shoulder and into the wet trench beside the road, its trajectory launching it back up until the front end crunched viciously into a tree. It all happened in the blink of an eye. I barely had time to brace myself for the crash before my body was rocked, my neck jerked, and my head slammed against the window, cracking the glass and smearing it with blood. My ears were ringing—I hadn’t even registered when we’d stopped moving, only that when I regained awareness, the SUV was immobile and smoking. Everyone else in the vehicle was silent except for light groans and an occasional cough. The stench of blood flooded the air.

At least the car was upright. I sat up, dizzily clutching my head and wincing as I turned to look around. The operative in the seat next to me was still alive, groggily trying to blink himself awake. In front of me, the driver was slumped forward and peppered in glass shards. Sebastian hadn’t made it completely back into the car. His body leaned limply out the window, his head, shoulder, and arm twisted unnaturally. I didn’t want to get a better look at Sebastian—I already knew from the grotesque contortion of his body that the impact with the tree had killed him.

Numbness took over. I sat there for a moment, wondering what to do next. My first instinct was to wait for some outside source to rescue me, but then I remembered what had caused the crash in the first place. The dragons. No doubt they would be approaching the SUV any minute now. I had to get out of there. Coming back to reality, I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the door. The metal screeched as I forced it open. I tumbled over my bare feet into the grass, grimacing as I hit sharp wedges of glass that had fallen from the windows. Pain sparked through me as I sat up on my knees, looking at the shards embedded in my palms.

Then, a pair of feet stepped in front of me. I looked up at a dragon, recognizing the cut across his eyebrow and the fanged tattoo on his arm. It was the guard I had attacked in the mine. He sneered down at me but didn’t appear pleased to be here. In fact, he looked more like this whole operation was an annoyance to him. Like he’d rather be doing something else.

“Please…just let me go,” I slurred through my agony.

“I can’t,” he said.

The crash had rattled my body. I wanted so badly to just lie there and let them take me, but the last vestige of my strength and willpower urged me to resist. As the guard grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to my feet, I pushed him away, only to cry out as the glass in my hands cut deeper and poisoned me with my own blood.

The dragon deftly avoided my attack. As others gathered around us, he grabbed my wrists and mercilessly plucked all the glass from my hands, leaving me bleeding profusely. I blearily watched another shifter step up beside us and fire into the SUV. Whoever had still been alive after the crash was dead now. These dragons had made sure there were no survivors to come crawling after us.

“The Inkscales won’t get away with this,” I warned them, my voice hoarse with pain.

They dragged me alongside them, out of the ditch and into the bed of the black truck. The tattooed dragon sat beside me, avoiding my eyes but keeping a firm grip on my wrist. “They don’t care what happens to the Inkscales. In the end, what matters is that dragons are made known to the world. What matters is that we won’t have to hide anymore,” he said.

That would fundamentally change everything. Humans weren’t equipped to handle the existence of dangerous shifters among them. It would cause mayhem. “You can’t…”

“We can.” The guard met my eyes, his expression hard. “Be grateful that you won’t be alive to see it.”

My head and heart both thundered. More than ever before, I felt useless. There was nothing I could do but sit here as they drove me to my fate.

Chapter 24

Colt

Shortly after we’d finished preparing the feather darts, my heart plunged into my stomach with such intensity that I felt sick. Blanched with nausea and inexplicable fear, I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the nearest window, fighting to keep myself from hyperventilating. “Something has happened.”

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