That’s about when my heart started to speed up.
Perdita, I need you to find her now, I ordered.
Perdita took a few seconds too long to answer me, and I screamed at her in my head.
Perdita, I need you to find her! I bellowed.
I don’t know why I was all worried about it now.
I’d been standing here for two hours without any hint of worry.
Then all of a sudden it was just there.
And it took me a few long moments to realize why.
Because I was feeling her panic.
Brooklyn! I cried, hoping she’d answer.
She didn’t.
So I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to use that same thread I’d used weeks ago when I’d channeled her in the hospital basement.
And I found her…but I couldn’t see anything.
“Where are you?” I whispered aloud.
The blackness shifted, and I saw what looked like brake lights…from the inside, not the outside.
“Shit,” I hissed. “Shit!”
I was too scared to break off from her, so I mentally shouted for Perdita to relay the information I’d just discovered to Keifer.
And I prayed.
Because, this time, I wasn’t sure that everything was going to work out quite like I wanted it to.Chapter 16I love you more than you deserve. Fucker.
-Brooklyn’s secret thoughts
Brooklyn
My body hit the floor with a solid thud, and I jolted in pain.
My elbow hit the concrete with a loud smack, and I knew instantly that it was broken.
White hot pain rolled through my vision as I rolled over and vomited as the pain washed over me.
“Tie her up,” a familiar voice ordered.
A familiar voice that I hadn’t heard in a very long time.
I forced myself to open my eyes and stared at my brother, Charles.
“No,” I croaked.
My brother smiled, showing his crooked teeth that glowed yellow due to not taking care of them.
The last time I’d seen him he’d had a beard that reached down to his nipples.
Now it was shorter and came to just about shoulder level; however, everything else about him was the same.
He hadn’t changed at all in the years since I’d last seen him.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked.
I nodded.
I was surprised.
“Get her tied up!” he snapped again, and it was then that I saw the men in the room around me.
And the other tables.
And the cage.
Shit.
There was a dragon in the cage.
A beautiful brown and white one that resembled more bronze, rather than brown, the longer I stared at it.
That must be Merrick’s dragon.
Speaking of Merrick, I looked over to the wall where I’d heard a body hit the ground shortly after us getting into the room that we were in, and saw him lying on the ground, blood seeping out of his ears, nose, and mouth.
My heart hurt.
Not because he’d attacked me, but because I could clearly see that he’d had no choice.
He literally couldn’t not do it, and it’d cost him.
Big time.
He was dying.
I could tell.
And I knew he’d brought me here under protest.
The blood where he’d fought the pull proved it.
He’d slipped me a note that I’d read by the brake light glow, and I’d clearly seen the letters he’d quickly scribbled onto an old receipt from a supply order.
He’d said only a few short words.
There’d been another geis that I hadn’t realized was there…nor had Ian.
One that was sort of a ticking time bomb.
If I wasn’t brought to the compound where the man said to bring me, who I now knew was Charles, then he’d kill him. After he killed Merrick’s sister.
And then he’d practically forced him to do it by taking complete control of his body, which I knew couldn’t be done by anyone other than another dragon rider.
And Merrick had fought it.
He’d fought it so hard that even his eyes were bleeding from his attempt not to deliver me to my brother.
He’d been willing to let his sister and dragon die to make sure that I lived, but in the end he hadn’t been strong enough.
I wasn’t sure anyone could be. Not against that kind of power.
My eyes went to the other two tables where a man and a woman lay.
The man only had eyes for the woman, and the woman looked at her brother with a broken heart.
I could guess what was going on here.
The man on the table was probably the other dragon rider that’d forced Merrick to do his bidding, and the girl was probably Merrick’s sister.
An impossible task if I did say so myself.
The man had wanted his mate to live. The woman had wanted her brother to live. The brother had wanted what was best for everyone.
Look around, my mate instructed me.
I couldn’t though, because in the next instant I was yanked up by my arms, and my elbow screeched in protest.
I could practically hear the bones of my arm grinding together at the move.
I’d almost managed to block the pain out due to some weird healing power that I knew I got from Nikolai.