“Does it really matter?” I squinted at her. “I think you’re smart enough to work out that you’re in big trouble right now, Peyton.”
Stupid woman that she was, she tried to jerk out of my grip again, this time throwing her weight into it and getting... nowhere. Obviously. A human woman was no match against a dragon shifter.
Rapidly changing tactics, she turned back to me with huge eyes and a tremble to her lip. “Please, don’t hurt me. I have a daughter; she can’t grow up without her mother!”
This infuriated me more than I had been prepared for, and Cole must have seconded my opinion as a low dragon growl echoed through the darkness.
“Funny you should say that,” I sneered, “considering you gave your precious daughter up for adoption the second your inheritance was threatened. Believe me, dear, that little girl will grow up just fine with her new mother. Giving her up was possibly the only good thing you’ve ever done with your evil existence.”
This information hadn’t been hard for us to find. Turned out her lover—Bella’s real father—had caught her cheating and left her high and dry. After that, Peyton’s well-to-do parents had told her they would cut her out of their will unless she gave Bella up for adoption. Unsurprising, given everything we’d learned of Austin’s ex, she chose money over her own daughter.
Thankfully, Bella had gone to an incredible family and was being raised the way she deserved. With love.
“Truthfully, you did us a favor,” I continued, using my tight grip on her arm to march her over to our car. “It would have been much harder working out what to do with you if you were a good mom.”
“So what are you going to do with me?” she demanded, dropping the damsel-in-distress act and glaring daggers at me. “I’m late for a meeting with some very dangerous men. They’ll be looking for me soon.”
“Oh, we know you are. That’s part of what sealed your fate.” I gave her another smile, letting my teeth sharpen ever so slightly. Just enough to scare her.
“You’ve been messing with things that are none of your business, Peyton,” Cole added, his voice soft and dark, carrying the promise of pain. “Working with a vigilante group to expose freaks to the world?” He tsk-tsked, clicking his tongue. “Bet you didn’t realize that those men you’re colluding with are the freaks?”
“W-what?” Her eyes widened, and she darted a panicked look between Cole and myself. “That’s not possible. They said—”
“We’re not really here to chitchat, Peyton dear,” I cut off her protests, rolling my eyes. “We’re here because of the part you played at the Toronto Gala. You remember the one? When you conveniently distracted your ex-lover and let a woman be abducted?” There was a flash of understanding in her fearful eyes, followed by dread. “Ah, I see you do remember. Excellent.”
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked again, sounding considerably less sure of herself this time. Still, I had to admire her for not sobbing and carrying on.
“In the interest of becoming more upstanding citizens, we aren’t going to kill you. We aren’t even going to torture you. We are going to stuff you in the trunk of our car and drive you down to the local police department where you will confess to planting the bomb at the Full Moon club last week.” I gave her a smile that said this was the most generous offer I was prepared to make.
The look she gave me suggested she wasn’t pleased. “You must be joking,” she spat. “I’m not doing that. They’ll give me life in prison.”
“That’s the point,” I informed her in a dry tone. The bomb at Full Moon had been intended to elicit a response from the shifters, there was no doubt about it. Luckily, they seemed to have found out about it in advance and mostly all evacuated the building. Only two were killed, rather than the two hundred that could have been.
The little redhead glared daggers at me, her chin set stubbornly and my Romani senses warned me this wasn’t going to end well. For her, anyway.
“Like hell,” she snarled, dropping an elbow hard into my gut. If I’d been human, it would have been enough to make me drop my grip on her arm, but as it was, I just tightened my grip and winced.
She wasn’t trying to get free though; it was a distraction. I saw just a second too late that her other hand had dipped into her handbag and pulled out a pistol, pointing it at my chest.
In almost comical slow motion, her finger began squeezing the trigger. .
Before her gun could fire, both she and her weapon went up in a flare of blue fire, then disintegrated to the pavement in a pile of smoking ash.
For a moment, I just stared down at the remains of Austin’s ex-girlfriend at my feet, then arched an eyebrow at my little brother. He looked back at me with an impassive expression on his face, like he hadn’t just incinerated a woman in the middle of the street.
“Really?” I sighed, and he just shrugged.
“She was going to shoot you,” he explained, and I rolled my eyes.
“I’m a dragon shifter. It wouldn’t have killed me, idiot.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Cole deadpanned, scuffing his shoe through what remained of Peyton. “At least now she’s been taken care of.”
“True,” I muttered, heading back to our car. “Not like she didn’t deserve it for being mixed up with Gray anyway.”
Cole snickered a dark sound as he slid back into the driver’s seat. “This is probably not what Vixen’s had in mind when she told us to spend bonding time together.”
I grinned across at him. “I bet she wouldn’t object though.”
“Too true,” he murmured, driving out of the warehouse area and leaving Peyton’s car with its blown-out tires. “Our girl is one vicious chick.”
My heart constricted, and I said nothing. Words couldn’t do justice to how it felt hearing Cole say “our girl.” Instead I just leaned forward and turned on the radio. Appropriately, it was playing “Highway to Hell,” so I cranked it up loud. If there was ever a life anthem for two estranged brothers who could shift into dragons, were dating the same girl, and considered killing people to be bonding time… it had to be that.
11
RIVER
Caleb and I landed in the middle of the street in Harrow, Alaska, without bothering to hide our arrival. It was a town full of werewolves, so not exactly somewhere we needed to hide magic… not that I had any. Yet.
“You again?” a teenage boy commented as he stepped out of the grocery store wearing an apron and wiping his hands.
“Have we met?” I asked him, narrowing my eyes and trying to place his face.
The kid shook his head. “Not really. You guys saved my little sister, though, when those dickheads tried to take all the pups. What are you doing back here?”
“We came to see Vic. Is he around?” I glanced down the street farther to where Vic’s house was located.
The kid shrugged and shook his head again. “Nope, not that I know of. Haven’t seen him for a while anyway. Granny will want to know you’re here, though…”
He looked almost regretful as he pulled his phone from the apron pocket and unlocked it to call Granny Winter, presumably.
“All good, kid,” Caleb replied with a smile. “Save yourself the call; we will head straight over and see her. She’s Vic’s mom anyway, isn’t she?”
“Uh,” the boy stuttered, “she’s, uh…”
“Don’t worry about it.” Caleb brushed his panic off. “We’ll go see her.”
Turning back to me, Caleb gave a little nod toward the house where we’d been held captive last time we were in town. When Granny Winter—who was clearly the one in charge around here—had tried to kill Kit in a death match with a psychotic she-wolf.
After knocking on the old wolf’s door, we were greeted by a mean-faced little punk who also seemed like he recognized us and wasn’t too fond of the memory. We weren’t in Harrow to start fights, though. We wanted information.