Wildfire Sea Dragon (Fire & Rescue Shifters: Wildfire Crew Book 3), page 16
“Hold them off!” Lupa shouted. Seven glimpsed the hellhound alpha running away, still in human form. “Get the Prince!”
Two burly men had Joe by the arms, and were trying to sling his limp form over the back of the wendigo, who was crouching with its belly to the ground. Seven tried to charge toward them, but was met by a wall of teeth.
“Callum! Rory!” she shouted.
The two shifters surged forward, trying to fight their way toward Joe—but a blast of hellfire forced them both back. Most of the pack were on four feet now, armed with fire as well as teeth and claws. Apart from Lupa and the men wrestling Joe, only two others were still in human form. They were both sighting down dartguns, back-pedaling from the melee. If either Rory or Callum shifted, the men would be able to dart them.
Rory had realized the problem too. “Seven, Buck!” he yelled. “Take them out!”
No matter how fast she feinted and struck, she couldn’t break through. The hellhounds kept flickering out of existence just long enough to evade her sword, then reappearing to lunge at her.
Buck snapped off another shot that sent a hellhound howling away on three legs—then staggered, his next bullet going wild. A feathered dart stuck out from the center of his chest. Across the clearing, a man lowered his dartgun, looking expectant…and then, as Buck failed to collapse, perplexed.
“Not a shifter, motherlover,” the Chief growled, and shot the dartgun out of the man’s hand. The man screamed and blurred into hellhound form, disappearing into thin air.
That left only one attacker still armed with a dartgun. The man dove into cover behind a tree, taking cover from Buck’s weapon.
“The instant one of you fuckers shifts, I’ll have you!” the man yelled from his hiding-place. “Your gear won’t protect you if you shift!”
Her shark surged forward. Seven tasted the man’s terror, sharp and sweet, and the sweat-stink of bravado—
“He’s lying!” She knew it was true, with a shark’s clear, cold certainty. “He’s out of darts!”
With a triumphant roar that turned into the shriek of a stooping hawk, Rory shifted into griffin form. Callum was only a heartbeat behind, his pegasus’s flame-red wings knocking his two attackers flying.
The hellhounds facing Seven abruptly found themselves occupied with far more pressing concerns. Seven lunged between their bristling black bodies as they turned. It was a gamble—she couldn’t charge and defend her back at the same time—but no burning jaws nipped at her heels. The pack had clearly decided that she was less of a threat than the rest of the squad.
She ran flat-out, smoke burning in her chest. The two men who’d been manhandling Joe surged to intercept her, shifting as they pounced. Past their flaming jaws, she caught a glimpse of Lupa leaping onto the back of the wendigo. Joe’s limp form lay face-down across the huge beast’s shoulders, arms and legs dangling.
“Go! Go!” Lupa shouted.
Her steed leaped into the air.
Time froze in ice-hard clarity. The pair of hellhounds leaping for her throat hung in the air. If she’d been a dragon, she could have shifted and knocked them aside like flies—but she wasn’t.
In the slow beat of combat time, she knew—knew—that she was going to be too late.
With the strength of desperation, Seven leaped. She used one hellhound as a springboard, her boots kicking it out of the air as her stunsword connected with the other one’s head. Her other hand reached out—
And closed on Joe’s ankle.
Lupa screamed with fury, snatching at Joe, but Seven had gravity on her side now. She dropped her stunsword, grabbing onto Joe with both hands, pulling him off the wendigo’s back.
Seven twisted as they fell. Her back hit the ground, but her jacket and armor absorbed the worst of the impact. She curled to break Joe’s fall, his weight driving all the breath out of her.
Her chest was on fire. She had to get up, had to protect her mate, had to fight—but her body wouldn’t obey her. She could only clutch at Joe as Lupa wheeled the wendigo around in a tight turn.
Lupa’s eyes stared down at her, blazing with red fire. The mark on her forehead burned too. She was close enough to see it clearly now—a geometric, stylized snake with gaping jaws and curving horns, glowing with an eerie, hellish light.
Hooves shook the ground. Callum’s gleaming copper wings spread protectively over her, shielding her from the hellhound alpha. The pegasus reared, front hooves ready to strike.
Lupa’s bitter, frustrated howl echoed from the trees. Through Callum’s gleaming feathers, Seven glimpsed the rest of the hellhound pack streaming into the sky, following their alpha. Their dark bodies blurred. In seconds, there was nothing left but swirling smoke.
Rory landed next to her, paws shifting into boots. He crouched to support her, helping her to sit up. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, still too winded for speech. She gestured urgently at the sky.
Callum shook his head, shifting as he did so. “Too late. They’re gone.”
Rory’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “It’s all right, Seven. You drove them back. It’s over. We won.”
She clutched at Joe’s limp body, feeling the slow, even rise and fall of his chest. Despair filled her own.
No, she thought numbly. I failed.
Chapter 23
He found her down by the lake, huddled on a log. The distant lights of the hotshot base gleamed from higher up the mountain, barely visible through the thick pines.
“Hey.” Joe sat down next to Seven. “You disappeared from the party. Well, if you can call a group of exhausted, filthy firefighters trying not to fall asleep over non-alcoholic beverages a party. Then again, I’m pretty sure I saw Callum nearly crack a smile. That alone makes it a wild shindig.”
Seven didn’t turn her head. “You should not be this far out from Wystan’s wards.”
“I’m safe enough.” He leaned into her a little, shoulder to shoulder. “Got my bodyguard with me, haven’t I?”
Seven continued to stare blankly out at the gentle, moonlit lake. Her legs were drawn up; arms around her shins, chin resting on her knees. She still had her armor on. Dark smudges of soot marred the usually immaculate leather plates.
“Have you seen anything?” she asked, abruptly.
Not you too. Joe was getting really tired of being asked that question. Still, he couldn’t blame everyone for being anxious.
“Nope.” He gazed into the dark, rippling waters. The surface of the lake glittered at him like a broken mirror, for once devoid of the future. “I’ve been checking, but it seems fate hasn’t got anything to show me at the moment.”
Seven hugged her legs, staring into the lake herself. “Is that a good sign or an ill omen?”
“Well, it’s a distinct improvement over hallucinating chains around my wrists and a towering evil monster eating my mate, so I’m gonna go with ‘good.’” He bumped her with his shoulder again. “I know you’ve been brooding over that Lupa woman getting away, but maybe that doesn’t matter. You guys kicked hellhound butt. Maybe they’ve given up. Maybe we’re safe now.”
“Maybe,” she echoed. “‘Maybe’ is not good enough, Joe.”
Just the light touch of her hip against his made his body tighten in need. He let out a long, slow sigh, shifting position to put a fraction of an inch of space between them.
“No,” he admitted. “Not when it comes to your safety. It’s just about killing me, but we can’t mate yet. Not until I know for certain that it won’t put you in danger.”
She bowed her head. She’d untied her braids from her warrior’s knot, letting them hang free. They shadowed her face, hiding her expression.
“This is all my fault,” she said in a low, defeated voice. “I failed you.”
“Hey. You were magnificent. I’m the one who failed.” He slid off the log, kneeling on the ground in front of her. He took her hands. “I should have been able to see more. I shouldn’t have let the squad walk near-blind into such a dangerous situation. It’s only thanks to you that I’m not waking up in chains right now.”
She shook her head. “I am not fit to be your bodyguard. If you’d had a true knight at your side, a dragon knight, your enemy would not still be at large.”
Something about the way she’d phrased that snagged his attention. “Hang on. Seven, do you think Lupa got away because you aren’t a sea dragon?”
She stared down at her hands, pale and small in his own. “A dragon could have protected you better. The others did protect you better. The hellhounds stopped fighting me the instant Rory and Callum shifted.”
“Which left you free to save me, and I bet the whole pack is kicking themselves tonight about that.” He tightened his grip, wishing that she would lift her head and meet his eyes. “Seven, you sensed the ambush even before Callum did. And Rory told me how you detected when that guy ran out of poison darts. You saved me today because of your animal, not in spite of it.”
She jerked away from his touch. “I am not a child, to be comforted by unearned praise. I didn’t sense the hellhounds early enough to protect Wystan. And Rory and the others would soon have worked out that that man was bluffing. The truth of the matter is that I would have been more useful today if I was any other type of shifter.”
“If you weren’t a shark, you wouldn’t be you.”
“And that would be better!” She struck her breastplate with one fist, her face twisting in shame and self-loathing. “Damn it, Joe, I can’t even shift on dry land. Stop pretending that I’m perfect just the way I am!”
He sat back on his heels. He studied her, noting her bared teeth and rigid, trembling hands.
“How long has it been since you last shifted?” he asked.
She stiffened, eyes going wary as though suspecting some kind of trick. “I…don’t know. A couple of months, I suppose. What does that matter?”
“A couple of months?” He’d known she couldn’t have shifted since she’d found him in Vegas, but that had only been just over a week ago. “I thought you were in Atlantis before we met!”
“I was. In human form. I always stay in the air-filled parts of the city.” She said this matter-of-factly, as though it should have been obvious. “Lord Azure was gracious enough to assign me duties that fit my limitations.”
“What limitations? You’re a shark, for sea’s sake. You can breathe underwater.”
“So can herring. That does not make a fish equal to a dragon.”
“Exactly. My kind are descended from land-dwelling creatures that got a whim to paddle about underwater. Compared to you guys, we’re only half-assedly adapted to the ocean.”
“But you are still dragons. Far bigger and stronger than any shark.”
“So? Size isn’t everything. I’m ten times bigger than Rory, and I still wouldn’t want to take him on in a fight. You can swim faster than us, dive deeper, sense prey at a greater distance…for the love of sweet little fishes, I don’t think there’s anything that a sea dragon can do better underwater than a shark.”
“I can,” she snapped. “Not alarm the citizens of Atlantis. Sea dragons would be horrified to see a shark wearing the tokens of the Order of the First Water.”
“And making sure they continue to not see a shark knight is meant to help them get used to it…how?”
Her mouth hung ajar for a second. Then her shoulders hunched. “You would not understand. You are a sea dragon. People don’t stare at you.”
“Hello? Crown Prince of Atlantis here?” He held up his hands in apology, forestalling her angry retort. “Sorry. I know, it’s not the same thing at all. But I do get why you’d be self-conscious about going about your duties in public in shark form. What I don’t get is why Lord Azure and the other knights were happy for you to just hide yourself away. It’s a criminal waste of your talents.”
She withdrew further, her armor making her look somewhat like an armadillo curling into a ball. “That is not Lord Azure’s opinion.”
“My opinion of Lord Azure’s opinion can only be expressed with four-letter words, so let’s not get started on that topic. Look, even if he was idiotic enough not to recognize the many benefits of having a shark in the knights, why in the sea would that stop you from shifting at all? Surely he didn’t have you on guard duty every minute of every day. You must have been able to let your shark out for a swim sometimes.”
“Any time I was not on duty, I spent training,” she said defensively. “A knight must be continually striving to improve herself, resisting all temptations that might distract from duty. Swimming would be mere indulgence. Lord Azure commanded me to practice discipline in such matters.”
“Discipline, my ass. That bullying, bigoted little—” Joe stopped himself, drawing in a deep breath and commanding his dragon to settle. “Seven, at some point we need to have a serious conversation about your Lord Azure, but not until my mom is present to hear every word. Stand up.”
Reflexive obedience made her rise, though once she was on her feet she hesitated, looking suspicious. “Why?”
“Because you are going to indulge yourself. And me.”
Her eyes narrowed—and then flew open as he pulled his shirt over his head. “What are you doing?”
“Undressing,” he said, from within his shirt. He emerged from the garment, tossing it to the ground. “Because we are going for a swim.”
“Now?” Her voice shot up. “Together?”
“Yep.” He kicked off his shoes. “Because you are wound up so tight, I’m scared to make a sudden noise in case you fire yourself clear over the horizon. And it’s no wonder, if you haven’t shifted for so long. You are going for a dip if I have to throw you into this lake.”
She eyed the placid water as though it was boiling lava. “It’s freshwater. I’m a Great White. If I shift in there, I’ll suffocate.”
“Just trust me.” He undid his belt. Seven made a very gratifying, wordless noise, and spun abruptly on her heel to put her back to him. “Now are you going to take that armor off, or am I going to have to shuck you out of it like a lobster?”
She cast him a searing glare over a shoulder, but reached for a buckle. With a few deft motions, a piece of her armor—it probably had some kind of fancy name, but he had no idea what—came free. The curved leather plate fell to the ground with a thump, exposing the elegant line of her shoulder-blade.
Now he was the one who had to fix his gaze elsewhere. He occupied himself with pulling off his socks, trying to ignore the soft rustles and thuds from behind him. His imagination, however, insisted on filling in every detail. That was the slight sound of her bending to unlace her leg guards, showing off the high, tight curve of her backside…and now the sensuous sigh of leather through a buckle, freeing her breasts…
He abruptly reconsidered his plan to strip down to his boxers. Swimming in wet denim was hard, but not as hard as what was going on underneath his jeans.
“There.” Seven moved back into sight again, arms folded defiantly across her chest. She was down to nothing but a white sports bra and boy shorts that clung to her muscled body. “Satisfied?”
Satisfied was the exact opposite of what he felt at that instant. He could only stare at her, his entire body on fire.
Her tongue darted out, moistening her lips. It was all he could do not to ravish her on the spot. “Well? Are we swimming or not?”
“Guh,” he managed to get out, eloquently. “No. I mean yes! Water. Great idea. Yep.”
He stumbled into the shallows. It was a miracle the entire lake didn’t instantly turn to steam. The summer-warm waters did absolutely nothing to counteract the effect Seven was having on him. Then again, arctic waters wouldn’t have been able to do that.
He waded out into the lake, kicking off from the bottom as soon the water was deep enough. Seven followed, considerably more gracefully. She barely seemed to need to flick a finger to stay afloat. Her pale body cut through the water without a single ripple. He was no slouch at swimming—he was practically amphibious, having been raised as much in the sea as on land—yet he felt like a dog thrashing along next to an otter.
He grinned to himself. Hah. I was right. She is way more awesome than me in the water. At everything, really.
Now if only he could convince her of that.
When he judged that they were far enough out from the shore, he rolled to float on his back. Seven hovered at his side, holding herself in position with slight, distractingly erotic undulations of her legs. Water darkened her hair from silver to pewter. Her mouth was still set and stubborn, but some of the tightness had eased from around her eyes.
“Hmph.” She rolled to copy his posture, drifting on her back next to him. “I hate to admit it, but you were right. I needed this.”
“I can make it better.” He caught her hand, drawing her closer. “Come here. I’m not sure how far this will work.”
Trying his best to ignore Seven’s bare, slick skin against his, he closed his eyes. He hadn’t done this since childhood, but he could still remember his mother’s voice, her arms around him…
We are the Heart of the Sea, she’d whispered in his ear. Where we are, so is the ocean. We are connected to the water and the waves, always, no matter how far we may go. Remember, my love. Wherever you are, you are always home.
Seven’s gasp made him open his eyes again. She brought her fingers to her lips and then stared at him in wonder.
“Salt,” she whispered. “Salt water.”
“It’s an Imperial bloodline thing,” he managed to get out, past the roar of the waves crashing through his blood. It was like holding up a seashell to your ear to hear the sound of the ocean, except he was the seashell. “Heart of the Sea. We don’t sit on the Pearl Throne just because we’ve got a big treasury and a bigger army, you know. The spirit of the ocean kinda follows me around like a needy puppy. Mostly I just ignore it, but I can make it do a party trick or two.”
The moon reflected in her wide eyes. “This is more than a mere trick, Joe.”
He shrugged as best he could while floating. “Hey, you should see what my mom can do. She’s the actual Heart of the Sea. I’m just her understudy. Anyway, she taught me how to do this when I was little. My parents insisted that I went to a human school, which meant living on land for most of the year. I was horribly homesick for Atlantis.”
