Page 18 of Pierce

7

Pierce

For the firsttime in a thousand years, I punched one of the cave’s interior walls. Nothing in all that time had ever taken me to the point of blinding, searing rage.

Nothing until her.

You cannot let her die!The dragon roared in no uncertain terms. He would make sure I heard him—and listened.

Only nothing he said made the first damned bit of difference if she refused to go along.

“She’s the one who wants to die,” I snarled before tightening my hand into a fist and slamming it into the rock again.

It did little to ease my anger and certainly did nothing to harm the wall.

I heard Miles and Fence talking as they came back from salvaging the truck.

“We could use a little help here,” Miles grunted as he carried two boxes full of meat to the kitchen.

I followed, along with Smoke and Gate.

“You sure that’s still safe?” Smoke asked.

“Oh, yeah. It’s cold. But I guess we could always have Pierce go back for more once the road’s clear,” he joked. His smile faded when he saw the obvious tension between Gate and me. “What did I miss?”

“I’ll leave this in the walk-in for now.” Gate carried the meat to the walk-in refrigerator.We needed something that big to contain the amount of meat the six of us went through.

“Coming through!” Fence dropped two boxes of various supplies on the floor. “Whew. That mudslide was no joke. I’m sorry, buddy, but your truck’s a total loss. It was up to the windows and starting to seep inside.”

“There’s a bigger issue right now.” Smoke threw a glance my way.

“You could say that.” Gate came in rubbing his hands together to warm them.

“I wish you would keep your opinion to yourself until everybody has a chance to hear the story,” I growled.

“What story?” Fence looked around the room. “I swear, you go out to salvage what you can after a mudslide, then come back to something like this.”

“I’ll cut right to the chase. A girl was trapped in the mudslide. I saved her before her car went over the edge and brought her back here.”

“You what?” Miles’s jaw dropped.

“Yeah, yeah, it was a no-no. You don’t have to tell me.”

“But you did it anyway?” Fence looked around like he was trying to make sense and hoping one of them could help him. None of them could.

“I hope you don’t think you’ll keep her here like some sort of pet,” Miles said, eyes narrowing dangerously.

“It’s worse than that,” Gate chimed in. “He wants to heal her, rather than just letting her die.”

“What if she lives and she reveals us?” Miles moaned, slapping his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“It’s worse than that,” I confessed. “She won’t try to reveal us—at least, I don’t believe she would—because she has secrets of her own which she’s trying to keep.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that she’s fae.”

The kitchen erupted. “You rescued one of them?” From Miles’s voice, he might as well have been talking about a rodent.

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