Page 22 of Darkhan

He spotted her family’s house from the air and ground his teeth against the urge to set it ablaze. It was Harmony’s right to decide the fate of her parents. He would do no more than frighten them. Bruise them, perhaps. He dragged his gaze away, remembering how she had previously described the setup of her street. Eades’s residence was across the street, and only a scant three rooftops away.

Zeno dropped to the ground as he shifted back into a form that would allow him to communicate, landing on his knees just feet from the postage-stamp porch. It was late morning on a weekday, this was a working-class neighborhood. None of that meant no one would notice a monster falling from the sky, or a naked man in the yard.

That was fine. Eades was a coward who liked the spotlight. A humiliating death in front of everyone he’d bullied for years would be fitting.

Zeno stomped up onto the porch, letting his weight carrythrough and break the old wood beneath his feet even as he took hold of the door and ripped it from its hinges. He let the broken door fall to the side and continued into the dark, unkempt dwelling.

He wasn’t an expert on ordinary honey badgers, but surely they lived in better conditions than this. Perhaps Eades was actually a rat.

Patrick Eades came barreling around the far corner, tugging up his pants as he walked and already shouting. “What the fu—” His eyes blew wide and his face drained of color. The pants slipped from his fingers, hanging unbuttoned from his hips. “You.”

“Yes,” Zeno said, letting more smoke curl from his mouth as he spoke. “Me.” He continued forward, stepping around a love seat that was well past its prime without ever taking his eyes from his target.

Eades slid one foot backward and swallowed hard. “You can’t just—you destroyed my fucking door, asshole!”

Zeno didn’t break stride. “You will never again threaten my mate, or any other woman.”

Eades’s lips curled, his shoulders tightening. For a moment, he only glared as Zeno closed the distance between them, until finally he let out an enraged roar and threw himself forward. His body rippled as his own shift overtook him, the denim falling to the floor as a smaller body covered in black and silver fur propelled through the air. The momentum he’d given himself almost guaranteed he would make first contact, his own claws extended.

Were Zeno human, the attack would rip open his abdomen.

Zeno caught the flying sack of fur-covered-shit by its throat, mindless of the creature’s tinier claws, and pivoted around to slam the beast into the nearest wall. The drywallcracked, caving in from the impact.

Eades made a sound of pain, going limp for a second before exploding into a wild, wiggling frenzy. He scratched and kicked, continuously trying to twist his head around in order to bite, but none of it made a difference. There was absolutely nothing about Patrick Eades that posed a threat.

Zeno growled low and a lick of flame slipped from his lips, heating the air between them. “Never again.” His arm shifted in the span of seconds. By necessity he lost his advantageous grip on the honey badger’s throat, but before the smaller beast could scamper away, he swept downward with his own claws.

Blood sprayed the walls and dripped onto the floor. Zeno felt some of it splatter his own skin.

Eades made a weak, strained sound and finally shifted back into his human form. “F-fuck, stop … please, stop.”

Zeno scowled. “Please?” He made a show of stretching and flexing his claws. “Would you have listened to Harmony if she begged you to stop? If she saidplease?”

Eades’s breathing was shallow, blood still trickling from the wound that hadn’t fully closed with his shift. He couldn’t look away from Zeno’s claws. “I-I…”

“I didn’t think so.” Zeno plunged his claws into Eades’s chest, curled them around the fucker’s heart, and squeezed until it gave. Then he lifted the bleeding corpse, followed his protesting nose to the restroom, and dropped the body into the tub. It was easy enough to toss the flimsy shower curtain aside, and with a single exhale, he lit Patrick Eades’s body ablaze.

From beyond the restroom, he heard someone shout for the newly deceased honey badger. Over the death and blood it was hard to catch the newcomer’s scent, but Zeno had a decent guess. He turned away from the burning body, right arm still shifted and covered in blood, and strode down the hall as heavy footfalls came in his direction.

A man—a wolf—came to an abrupt stop at the sight of him. His eyes darted to Zeno’s bloodied arm and he let out a growl. “Who the fuck are you? Where’s Ricky?”

“You must be the wolf Harmony spoke of,” Zeno replied. “Eades is in the tub, burning.” The wolf’s eyes went wide for a moment before darkening with rage. “I didn’t come for you, but if you think you’re going to pose a problem for me or my mate, I will do the same to you regardless.” At the end of his declaration, Zeno allowed another lick of flame to slide from his lips.

He knew how it looked. He still remembered, even three hundred years since the last time he’d seen it, when his father had used the same intimidation tactic. It was a tactic that had scared even his allies.

The wolf before him, too young and inexperienced to have ever endured that sort of cruelty, was no exception. The fight left his eyes in an instant and he flinched back, making space for Zeno to pass. “Y-you’re the dragon … fuck.” His gaze darted down the hall. Smoke had begun drifting from the room, and no doubt the canine shifter could smell what was underneath. “Fuck.”

Zeno continued forward. “Wise choice.” He gave his arm a good shake, knowing the blood would fall from his scales with his shift, and continued to the door. He had one more stop to make and no desire to linger.

Chapter Ten

Harmony wasn’t sure how long she’d been left alone in the unremarkable room once Agents Jack and Ass had finally left, but it felt like eternity. Neither prick had wanted to accept that she wasn’t being somehow brainwashed or intimidated into putting on an act in front of Zeno. They’d insisted she wassafein the new space, safe to speak openly and honestly, so she’d firmly told them they were the real kidnappers and she wanted to be taken back. That wasn’t what they’d wanted to hear, apparently. So they’d declared that she needed “a moment to breathe” and left her to herself, in a locked room she was somehow not supposed to see as a cage.

Left alone, Harmony had plenty of time to reflect and take stock. Her foot throbbed in a perfect example of terrible irony, an underscore to everything that had gone wrong that morning. She hadn’t even made it through the parking garage barefoot—granted, she’d been struggling her best—without stepping on something hurting her foot. For which she had been handed a wad of tissues to hold over the wound while she was driven away.

Her first thought when she’d finally processed the pain was that Zeno would be so mad. He’d gone to such trouble to protect her feet, and she’d left her new boots in the bedroom.

Her second thought was no coherent thought at all. Just a vivid, breath-stealing memory of the moment she’d watched Zeno’s back arch and his eyes roll back in his head. The moment she’d seen him drop to the ground with barely a sound. He’d been facing her. He’d been distracted by her. Neither of them had seen whatever had hit him coming, and it was her fault. Her fault he’d been hurt. Her fault he’d been left unconscious, unsupervised, on the floor of his own home.

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