“What in the hell?” Garrick blasted.
“Exactly,” Luke snarled right back, enraged. “Just hold that thought for one fucking moment.” His knees bent and he shot into the air, flying right after Leo. His brother dared, dared to take Mina? No, it would not happen.
His skin heated. Burned. Smoke filled the air around him. His body stretched and his bones snapped. The shift rolled through him and when he looked down, when he saw the humans running out of the station and firing up at him…
His control broke. Luke opened his mouth and he breathed his fire onto them.
***
“Look at him.”
Mina hated that his voice was just like Luke’s. She hated that his body was the same. His face the same. Leo. The twin.
“Look at the man you took for a lover and see him for just how evil he truly is.”
Her head turned. She saw a cloud of smoke rising from the Naval Air Station. Her breath rushed out as flames burst into the air—bright orange and red flames. And in the middle of all that fire…someone was moving.
Something was moving.
The creature burst out of the flames—big, dark, its mouth bursting with razor sharp teeth. Its massive wings cut through the air and its tail whipped behind the beast.
Not just a beast…
Scales were on its body. Big, heavy-looking scales that gleamed in the moonlight. Its eyes were huge but…serpentine in shape. Just like its head. Only it wasn’t a snake coming at her. It was a dragon. A freaking dragon! Breathing got very, very hard for Mina.
“That’s his true form. That’s what he is beneath the mask of a man. Evil and darkness. He burns and he destroys and he doesn’t care who he hurts.” Leo’s grip on her tightened. “I will take you away from him. You’ll be safe, I guarantee it. You were never meant to be with him. You aren’t one of his creatures. You aren’t—”
Gunshots cut through the night. She saw the bullets hit the dragon flying toward them. Luke wasn’t just hit once. Not twice. But again and again. The dragon’s giant body jerked and blood burst from his wounds. The gunshots hit his wings, ripping through them and…
It fell. The dragon fell.
No, he fell. Luke. His body crashed back to earth, falling right toward the shooting agents.
She opened her mouth, screaming for him, but no sound emerged. Nothing came out, not even a whimper as terror nearly choked her. Luke!
“Well, that was…unexpected.” The air fluttered around her. “I’ll get you to safety. You’ll be free. You’ll—”
She wasn’t leaving. She grabbed for the collar at her neck, yanking it with all of her strength. She could feel it tightening, biting into her skin, sinking deeper and cutting her air supply off as she struggled.
“What are you doing? What’s happening?” Alarm had entered Leo’s voice. “How can I help you?”
Get me down. Get me to Luke.
Her throat was being pierced—a sharp slice right from that cursed emerald. It was cutting into her and dizziness swam through her head. She just had to get the collar off.
“Why are you fighting this way? For him?”
She nodded even as she kept clawing at her throat.
“Dammit.” Leo’s arms tightened around her. “And here I thought we’d get away clean.” But then he turned his body and instead of flying up, they were suddenly hurtling straight toward the ground. She sucked in a deep breath and choked on the smoke as they went through that black cloud that the dragon—Luke—had created. Mina felt the lance of heat around her skin and then…
She was standing on the ground, right in the middle of the smoke and the flames. The man who’d held her moments before seemed to have vanished, but Luke…
He was a few feet in front of her, on the ground, his body naked, bleeding.
Mina ran to him. He was face down on ground that had been blackened, and she rolled him over. Her heart was about to burst from her chest. He was covered in blood. His arms were twisted, the bones seemingly shattered. His face—his handsome face had been smashed. His nose was broken, a bone poking from his cheek. She felt tears raining down her own cheeks because he didn’t seem to be moving—not moving, not breathing.
One of her tears fell onto his face. She smoothed her fingers over his neck, searching desperately for a pulse. Don’t do this to me, Luke. You’re supposed to be all powerful. Bullets can’t take you out. That’s not the way this works.
“Get away from him, Mina!” It was a familiar voice roaring at her. The voice she heard in her nightmares. Her head lifted and she saw that armed men now surrounded her. Garrick and his men. Garrick had a pistol in one hand and that hated remote for her collar in the other. He was glaring at her. Seething with his fury. “I don’t know what that bastard is,” Garrick shouted. “But our scientists will figure him out. They’ll cut him apart and piece him back together. He’ll be a weapon no one else can beat. Our weapon.”