Page 60 of The Night Burning

Shane glanced down at himself. “If I had anything else other than my shirt, I would offer it to you. Unless you still want it. I can be shirtless, I don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind either,” I joked.

Shane offered me an I-see-what-you-did-there look.

We watched the trap doors, now closed again, and the trench cutting the square in half.

“I know leaving is the logical thing,” Shane said. “But I still can’t conceive of it.”

“I know,” I whispered. “This place is all we’ve ever known. And we just got it back. I can’t imagine leaving either.”

“But even if we find a way to stop the poison, we’ll lose the crystals.”

“If you want to stay, you can do what your father said. Ask witches to recreate the spell.”

Shane looked at me. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Because of the dragon.”

He nodded. “Because of the dragon.”

It was cruel to have him down there against his will, sleeping for so long, buried in a dark hole alone. Someday, somehow, we would have to wake him, even though I had no idea how to take him out of there.

His brows knotted. “If we leave and let the poison take the land, won’t that get to the dragon? Won’t it kill him too?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. I hate to say it, but we have to think of our people first. If you decide we should leave, I say let’s take everyone to safety. Then we come back and figure out what to do with the dragon.”

“We might need help for that.”

“You made plenty of allies while you were with the DuMoir vampires. You can get us some help.”

“True.”

He was one call away from having the most powerful vampires and witches here. Then, why hadn’t he called them already? If not for the dragon, then for the poison?

Shane grabbed his phone from his back pocket and stared at it. “I … I need to do some thinking.”

I understood. I couldn’t begin to imagine how being alpha could weigh someone down. And ours was a broken pack, with many, many problems. To be honest, I wasn’t eager for the day Shane told everyone about me and I became the official alpha’s mate. Now, I moved with ease and almost no one paid me attention. When I became the alpha’s mate, a weight would settle over me. Probably not as heavy as Shane’s, but still more than I could bear.

“I’ll go back to the library,” I told him. “I still have lots of books to go through.”

Shane nodded. “I might pick up some paperwork I need to look at and bring it to the library, so we can work together.”

My first reaction was that wasn’t a good idea. What if someone saw us working side by side? But I was getting tired of pretending and depriving myself of what I wanted to make sure the others got what they wanted. Besides, if anyone saw us, we could say I was helping the alpha with research. Which wasn’t a lie.

I smiled at Shane. “I like that idea.”

One corner of his lips curled up. “All right. I’ll see you soon, then.”

He turned and marched toward town hall, and I went to the library. Feeling a little lighter, I made some coffee in the backroom, filled two mugs, and went back to the largest table, where many of the books about crystals and poison were spread out.

I stared at the books for a second, my mind going back to all the bad things happening around us. I shouldn’t feel lighter. I shouldn’t feel a tiny bit better knowing Shane was coming to work beside me for a little while … but I did. Hadn’t I had this discussion with myself? I couldn’t live in pain, agony, and frustration all the time. No one of us could. Here and there, we had to force some bright spots to shine through, otherwise we would succumb to the bad, fall so deep, we would never see the light again.

I shook my head, clearly delusional. When did I get so philosophical?

I sat on a chair at the table, set the mugs down, and picked up one of the books. A moment later, the front door opened and I smiled. But when I saw who entered, my blood chilled.

“Serge.” I stood from the chair. “What are you doing here?”

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