Grey chortles at my reaction, thinking I’m reacting in fear to Peter’s threat and not awed by my own baby kicking me for the first time. “Now, now, Peter, we don’t have to kill her. If we can convince her dragon to return to a cell, we could raise several little dragon babies. We could have a whole clan, loyal to our cause.” Grey snaps his fingers, and two people come out carrying trays.
One has a plate full of food.
The other holds two goblets of deep red, thick liquid.
I can’t do this. I can’t even pretend I’m okay with this.
“Where’s my father? My brother? What have you done with our staff?” These are the least of my worries, really, but I can’t ask real questions. And I can’t leave, I can’t move. I know I’m not really at home, but I need them to carry on around me. I need them to think I’m complying and acting like a poor, meek woman.
“They’re at your home in D.C.” Grey smirks as he picks up his goblet. “You didn’t really think I’d bring you home, did you?”
“Where are we?” I ask glancing around.
The only thing that could possibly be worse would be if Declan thinks I purposely left him.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
DECLAN
Everything inside of me turns to fear and then into red rage. “What do you mean, she’s gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she taken?”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t a sign of a struggle. She left behind her purse. That’s all I know.” Pru replies while looking at me with sad eyes.
I don’t understand at all, and no matter how many times we watch the footage, no matter how many times we see her walk out of her room, down the hall, and to the exit, I refuse to believe she did it on her own. Why would she leave? Especially without her belongings?
Grey has to be behind this. Or her father. Someone made her leave me.
And she wouldn’t just leave me. She wouldn’t get into a strange car, and just leave.
“Brother, you need to take a breath.” Ash’s grip on my forearm is tight.
Malcolm’s got my other arm just as tightly. They can’t hold me here.
I yank myself forward, trying to break out of their grips. “I’m going to find her.”
They manage to hold onto to me, but not without a fight. “Not like this, you’re not.” Ash says, as he and Malcolm drag me out of the security office, down the hall to a door marked “emergency exit only” and shove me through it.
There are stairs leading up.
To the roof.
“You want to shift, you want to do more damage to dragons’ reputations in this world, you do it up there. You’re not destroying a building where people are doing good, where Pru is healing the sick.” Ash growls at me, his own eyes swirling with evidence that his own dragon is near the surface.
I know mine is teetering on the edge of control, but I don’t know if I can shift. I don’t know whether I’m even capable of doing it anymore. My dragon and I haven’t been one in so long, not truly the way shifters are meant to be with their animal halves.
What I do know is I’ll burn the world to the ground to find her.
Storming up the stairs, taking them two and three steps at a time, I rip open the roof hatch and take a deep breath of the salty ocean air. I don’t care that I’ve left talon marks on the hatch, or if it’ll ever close again.
I’ll donate a new wing or something once my mate is found.
My dragon’s rage feeds into mine. We just found her. We didn’t even get to claim her. As he stretches into my limbs, I scream through the pain of feeling my dragon stretch my body so he can take over.