“I doona plan on it.”
With a nod to Elena, Banan hurried out of Jane’s building and into the rain. He lifted his face to the sky. It had been a Dragon King’s place to protect the humans, but this night Banan was going to break his oath.
He was going to kill a human. And rejoice in it.
“Come on!” Rhys shouted over the rain.
Banan lowered his head and took off at a run to catch up with Rhys. Together they weaved their way to the outskirts of London. They were too large, as dragons, to shift where they were. It was going to take privacy.
Fortunately for them, the sky had grown even darker, and people were in such a hurry to get out of the rain, they never looked up.
By the time they reached a safe spot, the urgency pushing Banan was too much. He barely spared Rhys a glance before he closed his eyes and shifted.
The change happened in an instant. He turned his great head first one way, then the other. Another second was spent stretching out his wings.
It felt so good to be in dragon form that for just an instant he forgot his mission. All too soon, the memory of Jane’s scream echoed through his mind.
“Ready?” Rhys’s voice sounded in his head.
Banan gave a nod and jumped into the air. The rush of wind as his wings caught a current sent excitement through him. It had been too long since he was in his true form. Too long to deny what he truly was.
It wasn’t right he was getting such a thrill of being in dragon form in order to save the woman who he had fallen in love with.
Banan climbed higher and higher in the sky, soaring in between the clouds as his vision locked on the warehouse area of London. He could see heat signatures through the buildings.
They appeared like bright orange figures, but picking out which one might be Jane wasn’t so easy.
The many passes he made over the warehouses were blurred as he got closer and closer, hoping to see or hear Jane. He’d do anything if he could detect where she was.
His heart clenched when he heard her terrified scream. With a roar, he rolled and turned to fly back the way he had come. She screamed again, and it helped him home in on the warehouse. He gave a roar that was drowned out by thunder.
And then dived toward the warehouse.
Chapter 13
Jane screamed and stumbled backward, tripping over her feet and nearly falling as her eyes locked on Richard Arnold, who pleaded for his life to the thug with the gun. The goon wasn’t the same man who had threatened her earlier, but that made little difference.
Villains were villains, and the one holding the gun—along with his malicious smile—stated just how much he enjoyed killing.
For the briefest of moments, when Richard had walked into the warehouse, Jane had thought he was in charge. It had taken less than a heartbeat to realize he was being dragged to the warehouse kicking and screaming.
Richard was merely a pawn. A gamepiece whoever ran this criminal enterprise was all too happy to be rid of.
“Richard, Richard, Richard,” said a familiar voice from the shadows. “I warned you what would happen if anyone discovered what you were up to.”
Jane searched the darkness for a face. Whoever the man was, he went to great lengths to keep his face from being seen. But why? If they were going to kill her, what did it matter if she saw him?
Richard glanced at her before he looked at the shadowy figure. “Please. You know how valuable I can be to you. My connections—”
“I didna contact you for your connections!” the voice bellowed angrily.
Once more, the brogue was all too clear. Jane took another step back as she tried to distance herself from Richard and the man with the gun.
“She didn’t hear anything!” Richard yelled.
He opened his mouth to say more, but the gun exploded. Jane screamed and watched as red blossomed over Richard’s heart, staining his white shirt.
Richard turned toward her as his legs gave out. He landed hard on his knees, and then fell to the side. His arm was stretched out to her, and his eyes wide.
Jane couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. She’d seen violent movies, but that was nothing compared to seeing someone killed in real life. It was shocking, appalling. Horrifying.
And it was something she would never forget.
Movement from the thug made her look at him. Only to find the gun now pointed at her. She hadn’t understood when they untied her wrists after hours of interrogation in which she had lied beautifully, but now she did. They wanted her to run, wanted to chase her. Like some kind of quarry.
Every instinct yelled for her to move, but fear rooted her.
“Banan,” she whispered, hating that she would never see him again.
She drew in a deep, shaky breath and readied for the sound of the gun going off. Instead, something crashed through the top of the warehouse.
Jane turned away, raising her arms to block her face from the shower of debris that fell on her. She stumbled against the back wall and quickly covered her ears against the roar that nearly busted her eardrums.
She chanced a look to see what had happened, and stood in stunned disbelief at the massive midnight blue dragon who now stood in the warehouse. Jane blinked through the torrent of water that drenched her to find the dragon’s gemlike sapphire scales glistening from the rain.
The dragon had a thick body with a long neck and a tail with what looked like a spiked ball at the end of it. The dragon used that tail, whipping it to the side to take out more men Jane had never even known were there.
One of the dragon’s large feet with four digits slammed into the floor as it roared again. It was then she noticed the wings tucked against the dragon’s body along with the rows of tendrils that ran from the base of its skull down its back to the tip of its tail.