“It does have to be now,” Declan insisted.
“Why?”
“Because I need her to be safe. I need her to feel protected. I need her to know that I did everything I could to take care of her.”
“So that’s what this is really about, huh?”
“Yes. It’s about keeping Zoa safe.”
“You already rescued her. Isn’t that enough?”
“No. I don’t know if it’s ever going to be enough.”
Kellen had done more than just capture Zoa. He had ruined her ability to trust in herself and in the future. At least, that was the vibe that Declan had gotten. He knew that whatever happened next was going to be telling. He felt that if he could kill Kellen, if he could destroy the thing that had hurt Zoa, then everything else would be okay.
“We need to go,” he said. “And it needs to be now.”
Chapter 8
Zoa sat on the couch next to the giant dragon gentleman. He was big. Tall. Wide. He smelled good, but not as good as Declan. That was who she really liked, who she cared about. Still, she couldn’t exactly complain about being assigned a dragon guardian.
“So,” she said, looking over at Christopher.
“So,” he nodded.
Christopher had been given the task of babysitting her. It was kind of strange, really. She didn’t think she needed to be babysat, and she’d requested that if they weren’t going to bring her along to kill her captor, that they would at least let her stay alone. After all, Zoa argued, there was safety in numbers, and she wanted Declan to be as safe as possible when he embarked on this quest. It was her fault he was going, and she didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.
Declan and Brian had firmly told her no. They’d left Christopher to guard her and keep her safe while the others were away. She wasn’t sure how long the entire ordeal was going to take. Maybe it would be a few hours. Perhaps it would take all day. She’d have to find a way to entertain herself, though. If she had to sit on the couch next to Christopher until Declan came back, she’d go crazy.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, looking at the dragon.
“So, you’re triplets,” Zoa finally said.
“Yep.”
“Did you always get along so well?”
Christopher looked over at Zoa and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t seem to understand what she was asking. Zoa had never had siblings, though, so she didn’t understand the dynamics of how things worked. For years, she’d imagined that brothers and sisters tended to fight a lot. To argue. That didn’t seem to be the case with the Monster brothers. That was their last name, she’d learned. Monster.
“Not always,” Christopher finally said.
“Who was the wildest out of the three of you?”
“Probably Declan, to be honest.”
“Was he impulsive? Or a troublemaker?” Zoa didn’t have any interest in judging her dragon boyfriend – if she could call him her boyfriend – for his childhood escapades. She was mostly just curious. She want
ed to know more about the shifters, and she wanted to know more about their world. Learning about where Declan came from seemed like a good start.
She’d grown up in a world of humans. Shifters had been talked about, sure, but it was always more of a whispered rumor than anything serious. Until she’d been kidnapped, she’d never really considered that dragons or shifters might actually exist outside of someone’s imagination.
“Declan? Neither. He just goes after what he believes in. He thinks things through perfectly well, and then he goes for it. Brave. He’s brave.”
“I wish I was brave,” Zoa muttered.
“I don’t know. Sounds like you were pretty brave, going off what Declan said about you.”
“You mean with Kellen?”