Dark Embers (31 page)

“I’m fine.” He flipped open the folder she’d handed him.

“You’re patently not fine. You’re—”

“Back off, Phoebe.” After nearly two weeks around him—and Dylan—she was able to recognize when his eyes turned dragon. Like now. And while she was largely certain Quinn wouldn’t hurt her, she wasn’t stupid enough to tempt fate. Or Quinn, for that matter.

“Quinn, you look like hell.” Dylan’s voice carried effortlessly from the doorway. “Go home and sleep it off.”

“No.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“Fuck you.” Quinn stood up so abruptly, he knocked down the pile of research he’d been weeding through. “You’re going to pull rank on me? Over this?”

“If I have to.”

“Yeah, well, being my king gives you control of the laws governing me, but not how long I stay at work.”

Dylan bristled at his sentry’s pissed-off tone. “Don’t make me drag you out of here.”

Quinn was across the lab in a heartbeat, his face in Dylan’s. “You can try.”

“In the state you’re in, it won’t take much.” Dylan reached out one huge hand and shoved Quinn hard.

Phoebe gasped as she expected the other dragon to go down—Dylan’s strength was legendary—but Quinn held his ground with barely a stumble. He didn’t push back; in the past week, she’d learned that raising a hand to the alpha in true aggression was considered a challenge, not to mention suicide. But Dylan didn’t seem like he cared. The look on his face said he knew Quinn was spoiling for a fight and that he was more than ready to give it to him.

So when Dylan pushed him again, his chin raised in an obvious fuck-you, Quinn hit back.

“Hey, stop it!” Phoebe ran across the lab, straight at the tangle of furious male aggression.

Neither paid her any attention as they careened off a lab table and into the wall. “Dylan!” She fought the urge to scream, focused instead on trying to figure out a way to break them up. Part of her wanted to wade directly into the fight, but as Quinn’s huge fist hit Dylan’s jaw, she figured that probably wasn’t the best idea. Not when she might get the same treatment.

For long seconds, the fight continued as the two men ripped into each other. They bounced from one lab table to the wall to another table, fighting the entire time. Completely stressed out by their behavior and determined to make it stop, Phoebe did the only thing she could think of: she grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and turned it on them.

It took a moment for them to register that they were covered in foam, but when they did, both men stopped fighting to glare at her.

“What the hell was that for?” Dylan demanded, irritably shaking foam off his arms.

“You were acting like two animals.”

“We are two animals.” The right side of Quinn’s face was swollen, making his grin lopsided. “But we were just letting off a bit of steam.”

“Yeah, until you had to ruin it.” Dylan leaped lithely to his feet, then extended a hand down to help Quinn up. The other man took it, like the two of them hadn’t just been trying to kill each other.

“Well, excuse the hell out of me. This whole animal thing is new to me. I thought you were really trying to kill each other.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked out, anger pounding through her with each beat of her heart.

They were both imbeciles, and she’d had more than enough of them.

Quinn laughed as he watched Phoebe walk out of the lab. “That is one pissed-off woman, Dylan. I don’t envy you.”

“That’s an understatement.” He pinned the healer with a glare. “So, now that you’ve totally fucked up my plans for Phoebe tonight, you owe me. Go home.”

“I just want to finish—”

“You always want to finish something. But the disease isn’t going anywhere, unfortunately. So killing yourself to try to cure it isn’t going to help us. Go home, get something to eat, get some rest and come back tomorrow afternoon. You need to do something besides stare at the four walls of this goddamn building for a while.”

Quinn shrugged, wiped off some more of the foam that was covering him from head to toe. “Fine. I’ll catch a few hours.”

“More like twenty-four.” Dylan stared him down, satisfied when Quinn reluctantly nodded. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go grovel.”

Quinn laughed again. “You better make it good or Phoebe will have your ass for dinner.”

“I can think of worse ways to go.” Still, he hightailed it out of the lab and into the parking lot. Phoebe was halfway to the street, her stride quick and annoyed. As he hurried to catch up with her, he couldn’t help admiring the graceful line of her spine and the swing of her perfect ass.

“Phoebe, wait!”

She ignored him, except to speed up, and Dylan grinned at her spirit. She knew she didn’t have a chance in hell of eluding him, but she wasn’t going to give an inch, either. God, he loved her.

As the import of his thoughts hit him, Dylan stumbled to a stop. He loved her. He loved Phoebe.
I am in love with Phoebe
. Joy exploded through him, followed quickly by panic. She was human, with almost no knowledge of his world. And worse, she wasn’t his mate.

Trust him to manage to fuck up, even when it didn’t look like things could get worse. He’d spent four hundred years looking for a mate, only to fall for a human he could never ask his people to accept as their queen. It was a goddamn fucking disaster, and he was one hundred percent responsible for it.

He started to walk again, even faster than before. Phoebe had taken advantage of his inattention to put on a burst of speed that took her out of the lot and halfway up the street.

He was still reeling from the fight with Quinn when he managed to catch her, so he simply walked beside her in silence for a few minutes, which seemed more than okay with her. After one fulminating glare, she proceeded to ignore him—not an easy task because of his size, but she was doing a damn fine job of it.

Like she did with everything. No fuss, no muss. Just nerves of steel and an incredible competence that was downright intimidating. Though the sex was incredible, her brain was still his favorite thing about her.

“Come on, Phoebe. We weren’t really going to hurt each other.”

She didn’t so much as glance his way.

“We were just letting off a little steam. Quinn needed a fight and I gave it to him, pure and simple.”

She rolled her eyes.

“It was nothing, I swear. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten into it with Quinn and it won’t be the last. He’s a hardheaded bastard.”

She snorted and kept walking, her long legs eating up the sidewalk.

“Phoebe!” He put every ounce of royal command he could muster into his tone. “Listen to me for a minute. Please.”

She flipped him off.

“Damn it, you are the most stubborn woman I have ever met.” He grabbed her arms and jerked her to face him.

“And you are the most arrogant, ridiculous dragon I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.” Her tone was scathing. “You put on a display like that, acting like you’re two instead of a fully grown man, and you expect me to be impressed. You could have destroyed the lab.”

“We were careful.”

“Yeah, you looked like you were being careful when you damn near ripped the lab table up from where it was bolted to the floor.”

“Quinn’s not upset.”

“Which proves he’s as big a moron as you are.” She checked both ways, then started across the street at the corner. His little rule follower. No wonder she couldn’t understand the fact that the fight had given both Quinn and him a much-needed release of tension. To her, all violence was the same.

Figuring the best way around her anger was just to ignore it, he swooped down on her. Picking her up, he twirled her in his arms, nuzzling his nose against her neck and taking a deep breath.

“Stop it!” She shoved against his shoulders, but he barely felt it. “I’m really mad at you.”

“I know. But I said I was sorry.” He leaned back, gave her the best hangdog look he could manage.

She rolled her eyes again, but her lips curled up just a little at the corners. He let her slide to the ground. “If it’s a dragon thing, fine. If it’s an aggressive male animal thing, that’s fine, too. Just don’t do it in front of me again. It freaks me out.”

“You didn’t look freaked out when you shot us with the fire extinguisher. You looked magnificent.”

“Yeah, and now you’re just making stuff up.”

“No, really.” He wrapped an arm around her, pulled her against his side. Wondered what the hell he was going to do when he had to let her go. “It was awesome.”

“So, where are we going tonight?” she asked, snuggling into him. She was still stiff, but he could tell she was making an effort to put the fight behind them.

“I thought I’d take you on a date. I have reservations at my favorite restaurant, but”—he glanced down at himself—“I think we might have to take a rain—”

A bolt of lightning came hurtling through the air straight at Phoebe. With a growl, he yanked her behind him, and took a glancing blow from the electricity that would have hit her head-on. Then he turned to see where and who the attack was coming from.

“Dylan! Are you okay?” Phoebe was scrambling to her feet, trying to get to him.

“Stay back,” he shouted, sending a pulse of energy straight at her. She flew back three feet and landed on her ass against the wall of his favorite bakery.

The dragon roared to life inside of him, its senses bursting through him even as its talons shoved through his fingers and toes. He could smell them now, at least six Wyvernmoons coming in from every direction.

Logan, Shawn, Liam.
He sent the call out to his sentries.
I’m under attack. Phoebe’s in danger.

Shit.

Fuck.

We’re coming.

The answers came on three different mental paths, but he barely absorbed them as Jacob, heir to the Wyvernmoon throne, took form in front of him. He was rapidly followed by five other dragons—two in human form, as he was, and three already shifted into dragon form.

Shit. What the hell were Caitlyn and Riley doing over there if they couldn’t figure out that an attack was imminent? When he got them home, he’d have something to say to—He deflected another bolt of lightning, then turned, seething, to the group’s leader.

“I should have known it was you,” he snarled at Jacob. Dressed in black leather pants and a leather motorcycle jacket, he looked more like a circus clown than the badass he was impersonating. “You always were a coward.”

More electricity came at him from both the left and right, powerful blasts that would have felled a lesser dragon, or one whose powers hadn’t been recharged with copious amounts of fabulous sex. He threw up a block and the energy bounced off it, striking the blond dragon to the left of Jacob. It yelped, but stood its ground.

“A child’s trick,” he murmured, sending a fireball straight at the Wyvernmoon king. Jacob deflected it. “Now, are you going to tell me what you want, or are we going to stand here trying to kill each other all night? If so, I’d rather get it over with. I had a pretty good evening planned before you showed up.”

“With your human whore?” Jacob sneered. “You’ve been slumming, Dylan.”

A red haze covered his eyes, even as he told himself that was exactly what Jacob was hoping for. Forgoing magic, his hand shot out and fastened around Jacob’s neck. He lifted the smaller man off his feet and let him dangle three feet in the air—by the throat.

Immediately, the dragons behind him got restless, electricity crackling from their fingertips and in the air around them. He ignored them—Quinn, Shawn, Logan and Liam had fallen in behind him and were more than capable of watching his back.

“You’re going to want to be more respectful when you speak about my woman.” His fingers tightened around the other man’s throat.

“Your woman?” Jacob managed to gasp out. “My father’s right—you don’t know the first thing about being king.”

“I know how to kill you. That’s enough for me.” He squeezed until Jacob’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

Five bolts of electricity headed straight for him—Shawn and Logan easily deflected them. And then all hell broke loose.

Ten more dragons dropped in behind the Wyvernmoons, breathing fire with claws extended. Liam and Quinn threw themselves in front of Dylan, their powerful dragon bodies taking the blows meant for him. In the meantime, Dylan jumped straight up in the air, his feelings of panic over Phoebe making everything hazy. But she was right where he’d left her, huddled with her back against the old brick building. She’d managed to knock over the iron sidewalk bench and was hiding behind it.

A man had to love a woman who thought on her feet. The bench might be meager protection, but it was better than nothing. Lending his own powerful protection to the iron, he bent down so she could hear him over the sound of the battle cries. “Don’t move from here until I get back.”

The look she shot him was more than aggrieved. “Like there’s so many places for me to go right now.” Then, “Look out!”

But he was already turning, easily diverting the electricity coming at him. “Stay here!” he shouted again, before diving headfirst into the fight.

Phoebe stared at the men around her in horror. They were outnumbered three to one—how the hell could they actually expect to get out of this alive? Especially with the wicked-ass lightning bolts the other dragons were throwing at them.

Not that Dylan and his sentries were without their own weapons; fireballs shot from their fingertips in moves so fast, she had trouble following them. As one of the enemy dragons grabbed Dylan’s collar in his mouth and started to stab him with something, she freaked out. She might have left her hiding place—and the protection Dylan had given her—if he hadn’t shifted, his body becoming dragon in the blink of an eye.

As he moved, graceful even in the body of the dragon, she could see the difference between his fight with Quinn and this. What had gone on in the laboratory, and had seemed so terrible, really had been just a friendly brawl. This—she ducked as a stray fireball flew at her head—was all-out war.

She watched agog as he ripped the other dragon’s jugular clear open. Black blood spurted everywhere, but Dylan was already dropping him and moving on. The dragon disintegrated before he hit the ground. The only thing left was the syringe he’d planned to use on Dylan.