Son of the Dragon (Sons of Beasts #3)
T. S. Joyce
Chapter One
“Don’t be scared,” Emmitt murmured over his shoulder.
Riyah Mercer clutched her clipboard closer to her chest and smiled at the back of the security guard’s thinning hair. That was so nice of him to care—
“Because they’ll sense that fear and kill you.”
Oh.
The smile fell from her lips as a massive silverback shifter slammed his entire body against one of the cell doors. The bars gonged with the force. The low noise faded when he paced away, but then he turned and charged the bars again. Gong! This time he stayed, huge hands wrapped around the bars, his eyes totally empty and staring right through her.
Emmitt gave a quick flick of his fingers. “You’ll get used to that. He’s been doing it for a month straight. That’s Titus.”
“I don’t think it’s healthy for him to be caged up like that then,” she said, unable to keep her eyes from the giant.
“Murdered three people in their sleep. Humans. Still feel sorry for him?”
Riyah swallowed bile and ripped her gaze away from the insane animal. The next cage held a man as tall as a building and covered in tattoos, with a feral smile for her as she passed. He spat at the floor right by her shoes and uttered something deplorable about what he was going to do to her body so he could listen to her scream.
She scurried to catch up to Emmitt’s long strides.
“Look,” he muttered. “I’ll be completely honest. I voted against you.”
“What?”
“A woman don’t belong in this hell. That’s what this is, Mercer. It’s hell. The inmates here? They aren’t what you are used to dealing with at your last prison. They are monsters, and they will slit your throat the second they get the chance. Do you know how many casualties have come with this job?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Seventeen since this facility opened three years ago. All humans. All strong men who were trained in combat, trained to subdue the demons who live in these walls. Even now, you don’t realize it, but you’re being hunted.” Emmitt’s gaze bore into her as he jammed a finger at a larger cell with an enormous lion pacing in front of the bars, his gold eyes never leaving her. “Meet one of the dominants of the Dunn Pride. He’s set to be released next week. He’ll come after me and the other guards, and after you the second they let him out. He’s been here three times now. He always hunts the guards. A snapped Dunn lion? He can’t even help hunting us. Three strikes, and he’s out.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means we get to finally put that fucker down. His pride refused to do the dirty work, so it’s on us now.”
“Put him down? Like…kill him?”
Emmitt sighed as he slid his master key card into a reader on the wall. “I can tell you won’t last a day here. Your sympathy for these animals will get you hurt or worse. Like I said. I voted against you, but this was the higher-ups’ decision. They’re desperate, and you’re the Hail Mary. Lucky fuckin’ you. You’re gonna burn to ashes for this job.”
Her hands shook so bad she clutched her clipboard tighter. She could do this. She had to. There was no choice. When Clara Daye asked a person to do the impossible, they did it. Or they died trying. Because she was the mother of the Red Dragon, and only Clara and Riyah knew what she was really doing here. Not even Damon Daye, the Blue Dragon himself, knew what his mate was up to. Clara Daye was good and done letting her mate run this show, and she’d just taken control without anyone in Damon’s Mountains knowing. She’d done it quick, too. She’d approached Riyah last week, and look, here she was, seven days later, with a high-clearance job at the most secure shifter prison in the world, on her way to the underground bowels of hell, as Emmitt had so eloquently called it, to sit in a room with the most terrifying creature on the entire planet.
And what was wrong with her? She wasn’t scared of Vyr, like she should be. No, she was scared of failing. Scared of the monsters behind her, but not the one below her.
If this was hell, then Vyr Daye was the devil himself, and she would be meeting him within minutes.
Maybe she was in shock. Or perhaps she was shut down because of the whirlwind of the last week, but she only half-listened to Emmitt explain how to use her card to get down to the lower levels where they kept “the evil ones,” as the old guard called them.
Evil. That word… Riyah had seen real evil, and so far, none of the shifters she’d passed gave off those vibes. Emmitt’s definition was probably vastly different from her own.
A week ago, she’d quit the prison she’d worked for the last year, packed up her life, and moved to the Arizona desert to likely die by fire, like Emmitt had said. She felt numb as the elevator took them deeper and deeper underground. The temperature changed gradually, growing colder and colder until gooseflesh raised across her forearms.
“Bring a jacket next time. They keep it cold down here for the dragon. He’s like a snake. The cold slows him down. If it gets too warm, he’s even harder to manage. He thrives in heat. He withers in cold. We learned that little trick with Dark Kane.”
Riyah snapped back to attention at the mention of the End of Days. “You worked with the Black Dragon?”
“Call him what he is, Mercer. Apocalypse. Vyr is even worse. Not for long, though.”
She shook her head, utterly baffled. “Dark Kane was never in shifter prison. How did you work with him?”
“Not with him. I worked on him. You signed the confidentiality agreement. You utter a word outside of these walls, and your entire life will be set on fire. This place is shifter prison. This place is also how we fix the baddies. It’s also a research facility.” The elevator made a hideous buzzing noise and the doors opened. The sterile white hallway split in two. Emmitt pointed down the right tunnel. “Research. We’ll tour the New IESA lab after your interview. Boss says it’s imperative you get that done today. So far, Vyr has refused to talk to anyone. It makes things…difficult.” He gestured to follow him down the left hallway. “This hall is what we call the highway to hell. And since you have a sympathy problem, we’re making a pitstop.”
They passed several thick glass cells with shifters, all in human form. She had no guess what their animals were, but now she was sensing the darkness that Emmitt hinted at. The baddies. These were deemed the worst, hidden down here away from the rest of the world for its protection.
The hall seemed to stretch for eternity as her heels clacked neatly on the tile, echoing with each step she took. Twice, Emmitt gave her shoes a narrow-eyed sideways glance. “Please don’t wear victim shoes to work anymore. You can’t run in those.”