Page 49 of The Dragon's Warlock

16

Diem

“What did you do?” Kayda whispered at her.

Her head throbbed. Even the hushed words screeched in her head.

She’d fucked up. Gideon would kill her when he found her. If he could find her.

At least she would see her sister before she died. She rubbed her hand over her heart. What worried her most was that she couldn’t sense her dragon. For months, she’d wanted her dragon gone and to be human. Now she wished more than anything that her dragon was back.

“Can you hear me?” Kayda asked.

“Yes.” Even her throat hurt.

Her back rested against the cold brick wall, and her ass sat against the cold cement floor. Silver cuffs locked her wrists together. Even her ankles had cuffs around them. A metal chain connected her wrists and feet together. There were no windows in the cell to tell her how long she’d been out. It could be hours or days.

Kayda moved next to her. She wore the same set of cuffs, and her blond hair was pulled back. The bags under her eyes worried Diem.

“Why did you come back?” Kayda let out a sigh. “You were supposed to go free. This is all my fault.” Moisture pooled in Kayda’s eyes.

Diem didn’t like how sad her sister was. “When was I supposed to go free?”

“Kael promised if I helped him, he would let you go.”

Everything seemed to lead back to the corrupt warlock. The man she was falling for had lost so many years of his life because of Kael. Then Kael had killed Conley. Her mind went back to the moment Gideon had killed Kael. Her warlock didn’t have a glimpse of remorse, and she didn’t fault him for killing Kael. But Kael’s death had left them with too many unanswered questions.

“Kael is a lying bastard,” she told her sister. “When they took me from this place, they used me by putting a collar around my neck.”

“He promised,” Kayda spat out. “Things are worse now, and Kael hasn’t been back in over two months.”

“Because he’s dead.”

Diem took her eyes off her sister to take a look around the room. The cages were all empty, and there were no guards. This lab looked different from the one Diem had been turned in. Hopefully, they could get out of this. If her dragon would wake up, it would make everything better.

“Kayda, can you feel your dragon?”

“I was never turned.”

Her stomach clenched. She could have sworn she’d seen her sister turn from human to dragon when she was taken from the last facility. “I know I saw you turn.”

“No, you saw another woman turn, but she didn’t make it. Her body couldn’t take the dragon. And they didn’t want to take the chance of killing me as well.”

“Why?”

As Diem had told Gideon, she was sure her sister didn’t work for the DOD. She worked for someone else—maybe a secret department in the government. Kayda’s fascination with science would anger their foster parents when the girls were growing up. Sometimes it was the smell of her experiments. Other times, it was when things blew up. And honestly, she didn’t care what her sister did, as long as they both made it out of the lab alive. She couldn’t live without her twin.

“I’ve been working on a top-secret project for years. Kael recruited me out of college to come work for a lab.”

Wait a minute.“Then why the fuck did he kidnap us from a bar?”

“Because I refused to continue the research. He wasn’t telling me what they were using it for. I thought we were working on something to help people heal faster. During an experiment in college, I accidentally used my blood, and it helped cure a baby bear quicker.”

Wait one goddamned minute.“And you documented the findings?”

“I never knew about this world,” she huffed. “I thought there was something special in my blood. My professor helped me publish a paper I was working on. I couldn’t wait to tell you about it. I was on my way to your place when I got the call. It was a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity for someone in grad school.”

How could I have been so dumb not to ask Kayda more questions when she told me the DOD recruited her out of college?Diem had only congratulated her sister for getting the job.

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