“I’m sorry,” he said, so unexpectedly that Scarlet had to look at him again. She nearly drowned in his intense golden-brown eyes. “I played this whole situation poorly and if I had it to do over, I would have done things very differently. I made assumptions I never should have made. I expected you to...”
“...Roll over and take gobs of money to move somewhere else like a good little game piece.” Scarlet laughed humorlessly. “And I was having none of that.”
She tried to focus on the larger problem. “Can you make the cage again, from scratch? Can you set the spell again, but early? Do you have that power?”
“Of course,” Mal said with maddening confidence. “I have trained all of my life for it, and have all the power and knowledge necessary. But doing so will wake the wyrm. I will have to fight him into submission to build the cage around him and that will raze the island. There was not a tree left standing here after the last battle.”
Scarlet could not quite keep the noise of dismay from escaping her pursed lips.
“That, that, is why I have been trying to get you to release the resort. I thought I had plenty of time until I got here, but the end result was always going to be the same. The island will certainly be destroyed and everyone still on it will die.”
The look of sympathy in his eyes was both unwelcome and unnerving. “I understand that you built this place with Aaric Lyons and that you have some debt to him that you feel compels you to continue his dream. I know that this resort is your calling and that your hard work and perseverance has seen it to fruition. And I admire that, Scarlet. I admire you. This place you’ve built is impressive, and you’ve done it against incredible odds... myself included. You don’t want my charity, that’s fine, I more than respect that. So take the three-hundred-fifty million you raised by yourself. Go buy a beautiful new island and build a better resort. I’ll fight my fight, reset the spells, and the last of Beehag’s terrible zoo will crumble to dust and slide into the sea. Everyone will live happily ever after. You have to see why this is the only path ahead.”
Scarlet stood and paced away to the edge of the lawn, staring over the resort to the ocean with her arms wrapped around herself.
She didn’t want to believe him, and she didn’t want to trust him. But everything Mal said rang true, and everything matched the things she already knew. She’d felt the creature below the island, and knew its wild power, even if she didn’t understand what it was or where it had come from. She had always known, instinctively, that to wake it would spell disaster.
And Mal...
She’d spent so long hating him that she had a hollow place in her chest where that anger had burned, and it felt raw and tender inside... and that frightened her more than her fury ever had.
Was he really her mate? Yearning threatened to swamp her logical thought and she forced the question away. It had no bearing here.
What mattered were the people who trusted her, all the shifters at the resort who didn’t know the danger they were in: her guests, her staff... her friends.
“How long?” she asked, not turning. “How long do we have?”
She heard Mal rise and cross the lawn to her. “Not long. The storms that will make landfall in a few days are his doing. He has control over wind and water and my gut says that they aren’t a coincidence. His method of destruction will be storms and floods of a scope humans have never seen and have no defense against. He will make our category fives look like child's play. Storm surge will reach your office.”
She looked down the long, steep slope over the roofs of the cottages, the waving treetops, and the glittering pool. The ocean looked peaceful, far below.
“When he wakes, the cage won’t be able to withstand him in its current state.” Mal hesitated. “Scarlet, I have to stop him if that happens. I have to battle him down and reset the spell at that moment, before he breaks free... it wouldn’t matter who was here, who got killed in the crossfire. I can fight him in his resting place, but if he breaks free, he’s in his element of strength and I’m at a disadvantage. And if he gets loose on the world, it would be so much worse. I don’t know who could stop him, or how long it would take, and how many he would kill first. You have to believe me, Scarlet. You have to leave. You have to leave now.”
Scarlet turned to him. “I believe you,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to believe you, but I do.”
His eyes were full of sympathy she didn’t want... and he didn’t even understand the scope of what he was telling her.
“It’s late and the storms are a few days out. I’ll start the evacuation tomorrow morning. I need to make some phone calls, we’ll get the air charter out here as many times as they can schedule. The storms at least are real, we can use them as our reason for the exodus.” She paced to the table and pushed the chairs in neatly, as if arranging the furniture would somehow make everything better.
“I know someone who can put a few news articles up to support the story,” Mal offered. “A general widespread evacuation warning of the coast in this area might look more likely than just a single island.”
“I’ll have Jenny cancel the purchase and return the funds they raised. But...” Scarlet looked at Mal and swallowed her pride with effort. “You offered me a buyout. I know I refused it. But if it’s still on the table, I want it. I want the staff to be able to retire comfortably. They deserve that.”
“I offered you three buyouts,” Mal said dryly. “Every one of them generous by any measure. But why not start the resort again somewhere else? Your people would follow you anywhere and you have the funds.”
Scarlet smiled at him, a slow, sad smile. “I can’t leave the island.”
“I know it means a lot to you...”
She reached out and touched his face, because he was standing so close, and because he was so handsome that she couldn’t resist it. “I can’t leave the island,” she repeated with emphasis. She took her hand back before she was tempted to do more. “It didn’t matter how much money you offered me, or how much pressure you put on me... leaving the island was never an option for me.”
Mal scowled at her. “I don’t understand. Is it a magical compulsion? I can break those.”
Scarlet shook her head slowly.
“A contract?” Mal’s voice took on a hint of alarm as the ramifications of what she was telling him sunk in. “I’m arguably one of the best lawyers in the world. I could get you out of anything.”
“Modest, too,” Scarlet observed wryly. “The only contracts binding me are the ones you already know about.”