“I’m not sure. Even with dragons, it’s rare, but it runs in my family. Theo can do it too.”
So could her mother, but that wasn’t a gift she would have a chance to use if Sebastian had a fang pressed to the base of her spine.
Iz couldn’t stand the thought of her composed, gracious,powerfulmother reduced to being just another toy in Randolph Sebastian’s dollhouse. Flames of fury licked up and down her spine, and she felt heat radiating out of her as her dragonmarks began to glow.
Logan touched her arm, reading her mind as easily as if they’d been in their shift forms. “We’ll get her back.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
They passed the first trees, and the woods began to close in around them.
Chapter Twenty-one
Once the trees grewthickly enough to block out the light from the restaurant’s parking lot, they muffled any noise from the outside world, too. Normally, that still would have left them with all the natural nighttime sounds of this kind of woodland—crickets, owls—but tonight, almost nothing stirred.
Logan was pretty sure he knew why. Nature had the good sense to be afraid of Randolph Sebastian. One or two people could normally pass through the woods without scaring all the animals away, but not Sebastian. He oozed menace, and even natural predators could sense the vicious, intemperate danger he represented. Everything had shut up so it wouldn’t draw his attention.
He and Iz, of course, were walking straight towards him. But for a very good reason.
He didn’t want to talk about it out loud when Sebastian could be listening, but he still had his shiftsilver handcuffs in his pocket. Sheer force of habit—and maybe some lingering paranoia—had led to him slipping them in his pocket when he’d been getting dressed, and even though he’d felt a little silly about it at the time, he was sure as hell grateful for it now. It was like having a bulb of garlic in his pocket when he knew he needed to go up against a vampire, and he would take all the reassurance he could get.
Whatever happened, he had to protect Iz and her mother. He needed to be prepared for absolutely anything.
In an awful and ironic twist of fate, he thought that right as they came to the dark, open mouth of a cave.
The shimmering, silvery outline of a portal encircled it, which explained why this humble little patch of scrubby woods hid something that looked this intimidating. What it didn’t explain why was his heart was suddenly hammering away at the inside of his chest. He was having trouble catching his breath.
Get it together, he told himself harshly as his vision threatened to get swimmy on him.You need to do this. It’s just a cave, and the only reason it bothers you is because it reminds you of Sebastian, and guess what? You already knew you had to face Sebastian tonight anyway.
He thought it was a good argument, but the sticking gears in his brain and the rigidly locked muscles in his legs didn’t seem to agree with him.
For once, his hellhound was no help at all. It had pulled way, way back, like even though it was stuck inside his mind, it still wanted to get as far away from the cave as possible. It was making a sound that was half growl and half whine.
Honestly, it expressed Logan’s own feelings perfectly.
But he couldn’t afford to give in. He curled his hands into fists.