Page 12 of Pierce

“She was unconscious for almost all of it,” I argued, even as I knew my argument was falling flat. They wouldn’t want to hear it. “Hell, she has a cut on her head. I could always tell her she imagined it.”

“If she even wakes up at all,” Gate pointed out, looking at her again. “She’s probably all banged up inside.”

“Look at that wound on her shoulder,” Smoke said, bending to get a better look. “It’s wide open. She’ll get infected. That could kill her.”

“What if I healed her?”

“What if you what?” Gate’s voice boomed in the tiny space. “Have you lost your damn mind? It’s bad enough you brought her here, with us, and let her see your dragon. Now you want to heal her?”

“Why not? Our blood can heal just about anything.”

“Impossible,” Smoke muttered, shaking his head.

“It’s not impossible, and you know it.”

“I don’t mean that it isn’t possible your blood could save her,” he clarified. “It absolutely could, and we all know that. But you can’t save her! You can’t run that risk.”

“Don’t the rest of us mean anything to you?” Gate asked, eyes wide and wild. “Doesn’t our mission mean anything? I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been living in a fucking cave for the last thousand years, half a world away from the only place I ever thought of as home, protecting something from the ones trying to find it only to have you ruin everything because your cock twitched at the sight of a pretty girl.”

Smoke stepped between us before I got my hands on him.

“Enough. Both of you.” He pushed at me, moving me back a few steps away from Gate, who looked mad enough to kill.

I knew exactly how that felt.

He looked back at my cousin, then at me. “Don’t you see what this has already done? I mean, is this girl’s life worth tearing us all apart this way?”

“It’s not my fault he can’t handle this like an adult,” I growled, staring daggers over Smoke’s shoulder.

Gate glared right back.

“This isn’t like you.” Smoke took my shoulders and steered me slightly, so I was looking at him instead of at Gate. “You’ve always known what’s right, and you’ve acted from that place. You’ve done just as much as anybody else to ensure our safety and the success of our job here. You have to know how potentially dangerous this girl is.”

I couldn’t lie. It would only make things worse. “Yes. You know I do.”

“And yet, she’s here. How can you explain that?”

Tell him she’s ours, the dragon ordered.

I could almost see him in my head sometimes, especially when his voice was as clear as it was just then. His presence was so strong, it threatened to overwhelm me. Even so, I couldn’t give in. Calling her my mate would only make things worse.

“I suppose I can’t explain it,” was all I said.

It sounded lame, half-hearted, but I had no choice. It would take a little more time for me to make sense of the conflict tearing me in pieces. I didn’t want to speak too soon.

Gate’s voice was low, foreboding. “I’m warning you. Don’t even try to heal her. You’ll only make things worse.”

“I’m warning you,” I snarled in reply. “Don’t warn me. Don’t ever try to tell me what to do again. I don’t want this to end badly, but it will if you ever try something like that again.”

“Enough.” Smoke’s voice cut through the tension like a whip. He sounded like an exhausted father driven to distraction by his quarrelsome children. “I think the rest of the family should hear about this. Miles and Fence should be back soon, and it’s my turn to stand guard after Cash’s shift is up. The three of them need to hear about it, too, and we can arrive at a decision once they know.”

“I see. This is a democracy now?”

“I thought it always was. Anything one of us does affects the rest of us.” He frowned. “When did you forget that? Or was it always a matter of convenience for you?”

I didn’t know what I say. I searched for the right words but came up empty.

No matter how my dragon roared and thrashed and demanded satisfaction, my human side couldn’t deny the truth of what Smoke was saying.

---