But it was different this time. There was no heat in my veins, no fire consuming me from within. No savage, almost painful yearning from Cobalt toward the echo of the white dragon in the drive. Whatever this was, it was nothing like the Sallith’tahn. Whether through time or the knowledge that Ember had chosen someone else, I barely felt the life-mate bond anymore. If I concentrated on it, it was still there, weak and painful. And though my dragon side still keened the loss of his mate, my human self was…almost relieved. I was free. I could finally make my own choice, without following the instinctive pull of the Sallith’tahn. And, maybe, that was what Ember had wanted all along.
The only question was…did I want this?
I sighed. “I don’t know, Mist,” I told her truthfully. “I think we both know what’s happening, but I honestly couldn’t tell you where to go from here. I have absolutely zero experience with this type of thing, and really, I don’t even know if I want to try. We’ve both seen it happen. We both know how screwed up it can get. I mean, hell, look at Ember and St. George. A dragon and a human?” I shook my head. “If that’s not messed up, I don’t know what is.”
“It shouldn’t be possible,” Mist argued. “We’re dragons. We’re not supposed to feel like they do.”
I almost smiled at how much she sounded like me. And how much I was starting to parrot the exact same things Ember had said. “Maybe it shouldn’t be possible,” I said, shrugging. “But it is. At least, it is for me. I’ve been around Ember long enough to know that it can happen, and that it’s damned hard to ignore. Ember chose the human knowing what it meant, that they’d only have a short time together. She would rather spend a few years with him than a few centuries with another dragon. That’s how powerful it can be.”
“I don’t see how they do it,” Mist remarked. “Or why. It’s completely illogical.”
“Yeah. I guess it is.” We were dancing around the words, as if not saying them out loud would somehow make it less real. The things that dragons did not experience. Emotion. Attraction.
Love.
Mist looked down with a sigh. I watched her, noting how the moonlight shimmered off her hair, seeming to glow in the darkness. “So, what now?” I asked, feeling a strange pull in the pit of my stomach, urging me toward her. “What do we do about it?”
Mist didn’t reply. Her brow furrowed, and she seemed perched on the razor edge of a wire, able to fall either way. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for her answer, hoping that she would… Actually, I didn’t know. What was I hoping for here?
The Basilisk raised her head, letting out a long breath. Before she could say anything, however, my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket, sounding urgent.
“Dammit. What now, Wes?” I pulled it out, seeing a new text flash across the screen.
Did you fall down a rabbit hole? Where the hell are you?
Well, that was a mood killer. I rolled my eyes and hit Reply on the screen. Bitchy much? I texted back. I took a walk, where do you think I am?
Certainly not here, was the almost instant reply. Going over the blueprint the bloody Archivist sent us. Didn’t Mist tell you? I thought that’s why she went out there.
What? I looked up at the Basilisk, narrowing my eyes. “Why would the Archivist know what we’re doing, Mist?”
“Because I sent him the video from earlier,” she explained, as if that was obvious. “I also gave him full details of what was happening, and that we were planning to assault the lab to take out the vessels. He thought we could use all the help we could get.”
“And you didn’t tell me this earlier?”
“I didn’t want to spend a half hour trying to convince you that the Archivist isn’t going to sell us out to Talon,” Mist said reasonably. “Besides…” She shrugged, unrepentant. “I’m a Basilisk. We don’t ask permission. When something needs to be done, we trust our own judgment. You should know that just as well as me.”
I shook my head. “And this is why Basilisks don’t play well together.” Stuffing the phone in my pocket, I started back toward the farmhouse. “Come on, then. Let’s go see if your boss has any info that will make this less of a suicide mission.”
GARRET
“An abandoned mining facility,” Lieutenant Ward remarked.
At the edge of the table, Riley nodded, gazing at the sheets of paper scattered on the surface before him. “Yeah,” he said. “According to the information we received from Mist’s contact, the laboratory is located in what was once a large mining facility in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.”
“So, deep underground,” Lieutenant Martin mused. “Which is why they haven’t showed up on satellite or radar. And why no one has been able to find it until now.”
“An underground compound is pretty defensible,” Tristan said. “It’s going to be hard breaking in. And once we’re inside, it’s going to be even harder getting out.”
I looked at Riley. “But we know the layout of the facility, correct? And where the targets are located?”
Riley pulled a large sheet of paper from the pile and set it in the center of the table. It was a meticulously sketched map, almost a blueprint, that showed a complex underground facility with dozens of rooms, halls and stairways. “Right here,” the rogue said, pointing to a truly enormous room near the back. “That’s our target, where the vessels are being kept. We have to break in, get to that room and blow the whole thing to hell.”
“Oh, is that all?” Tristan muttered. “Sounds easy.”
Riley ignored him. “The main entrance will be heavily guarded,” he said, tapping the paper. “And according to this, they have watchtowers set up so they can see anyone coming up the road. We won’t be able to approach the main gate without tipping them off that we’re coming. But apparently this was a huge mine once.” His finger traced the surface to a different point on the map. “There’s a second entrance into the facility near the back of the mine. There are no roads that lead to it, and it isn’t well used or as guarded. Hell, they might’ve forgotten it’s there. If we take that route, we might be able to surprise them.”
“Why don’t we just collapse both entrances?” Lieutenant Ward said, pointing a thick finger at the edge of the map. “It’ll be easier to get to, easier to accomplish, and once the roof caves in Talon will have lost the compound.”
“No.” This from Ember, standing beside me. “This is Talon,” she went on, gazing around the table. “We can’t take any chances. We have to make sure that army is destroyed, and the only way to do that is to get to that chamber and personally bring it down.”
“You realize that what you’re talking about is basically a suicide mission,” Martin told her. “Once Talon realizes why we’ve come, what we’re after, they’ll send everything they have to stop us. Whoever you send into the compound, if their mission is to blow it up from the inside, that team isn’t coming out again.”
“I know,” Ember said softly.
A heavy feeling spread through me as I realized who that team would be. Casting a glance at Riley, I saw he was thinking the same. Three of us, then—me, Riley and Ember—to lead the charge into the laboratory, find the room with the vessels and destroy it.
“There should be two teams,” Riley said after a moment of silence, staring down at the map. “A large force to assault the main entrance, to draw away as much enemy fire as they can, while the second goes in the back.” He glanced at Ember, a wry grin stretching his mouth. “Hopefully, the infiltration group can sneak through and get to the target room before Talon even knows they’re there.”
“Seems tactically sound,” Martin said, nodding. “It worked on the island. The challenge here will be dealing with a much larger, well-armed force. How many men do we have to assault the compound?”
“Not enough,” Ward growled, and Martin looked at him sharply. “We’ve fought Talon before,” he said, not backing down. “To take out even one of their small compounds, we’d need at least twice the soldiers we have now.”
“Don’t forget about us, Lieutenant,” Ember said. “There are a whole lot of dragons here who are willing to stand and fight.”