Dragon Devotion Read online

  “Wow,” Ajax said softly as they broke apart for air.

  “Wow what?” she echoed, feeling her heart hammering against her ribcage, desperately trying to break free.

  “You,” he gasped, the only word he got out before she pulled his head back down to her. Their foreheads crashed together slightly because of the dark, but she didn’t care, and neither did he. She just wanted more.

  “Me?” she asked as they spun around, so that he could sit her up on one of the desks.

  “Yes.”

  The single word was spoken with an animalistic, carnal growl to it that Arianna couldn’t help but respond to. Despite the fact that they were trapped by an unknown enemy and being shipped to who-knew-where did not matter one single iota at that moment in time. All that occupied her mind was the tall, hunky shifter who had somehow taken an interest in her, the bookworm with thick thighs and big glasses.

  Glasses which were likely fogged to all hell as she embraced Ajax and kissed him again in the dark. They may have been on their way to meet their maker, but at least she would go with a smile on her lips.

  ***

  An unknown amount of time later the trailer came to an abrupt halt, spilling them both awkwardly to the floor. She heard Ajax bang up hard against something.

  “Ow,” he said dully. The automatic nature of his response told her he wasn’t actually hurt, just more annoyed.

  “So, what now?” she asked, straightening her clothes. Although her body had wanted to take things further with Ajax, the time and place just wasn’t appropriate. He had agreed, so the two of them had spent the next while in each other’s arms, simply enjoying the presence of the other. The ride hadn’t been long—perhaps twenty minutes to half an hour at most.

  “We must be in the city,” Ajax mused. “There’s no way we could have made it outside the limits that quickly.

  “They have to have some sort of base of operations there,” she agreed. “There was no equipment, nothing at the Shipyard. The whole place looked like a front just to trap us.”

  “Or anyone else who made the connection between them and the missing shifters,” Ajax replied thoughtfully. “I wonder if perhaps that’s how they got Benjamin or some of the others. Luring them all out here, then transporting them inside something like this.”

  She could sense his arms spreading wide to encompass their makeshift prison.

  “It takes a lot to imprison a shifter. Military-grade steel would be one way,” she agreed.

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t need to go to half the effort that this must have taken for a human. This was specially built for my kind.” Anger tinged his voice at the thought that whatever this agency was, they were targeting shifters.

  There was a hiss, and the door behind them suddenly slid open, bathing the room in blinding lights. The pair threw up their hands up to cover their eyes, but that didn’t stop her from noticing the men that raced inside while they recovered their eyesight.

  “They aren’t shifters,” Ajax muttered from next to her. “Just normal men.”

  There were six of them, all dressed in black military style gear, holding rifles of some sort. Although Arianna wasn’t a gun aficionada by trade, but she had developed enough of an eye to tell that something was off about these. She couldn’t tell what was off, but they were not ordinary rifles. Something about the size and shape of the loading chamber was just…wrong.

  She found out a moment later as the men pulled the triggers, following the sharp command of a seventh man who entered. Ari screamed, throwing up her arms to protect her face on instinct, even as a split second later she knew it would be a pointless gesture when the bullets slapped home.

  Arms crossed in front of her face, she waited for what felt like an eternity for the blossoming of pain followed by darkness that she knew was to come. After a moment, she lowered them as a sound came from her right. She looked over at Ajax just in time to see him slump to the ground, half a dozen darts protruding from his body.

  “Ajax!” she cried, lunging to his side, pulling darts out as fast as she could. She got four of them before two of the men pulled her off of them.

  Without hesitation she stepped on the foot of the one to her right and reversed her direction. Whereas she had been struggling to get to Ajax, with her foot planted, she threw herself backward, driving her elbow up into the man’s face as hard as she could. Her arm went numb at the same time his jaw cracked closed. The man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to the floor.

  She knew the same maneuver wouldn’t work with the other man, but in the split second she took to contemplate what to do, he pulled a knife and whipped it up to her throat.

  “Enough!” The seventh man, the only one not armed with a gun, spoke. His voice was like a whip as it cracked against his men and froze them all in place.

  Even Arianna felt herself stop struggling as she focused on this man. Like his henchmen, he wore a mask and goggles, covering his eyes and face from her view so that she couldn’t identify him. Even his mouth was covered. He was speaking through some fabric.

  “Get him out of here,” he commanded, pointing at Ajax. “And make sure he stays down.”

  Arianna’s eyes flew open and she struggled to get free, the knife on her throat drawing some blood as two men stepped up and shot two more darts apiece into Ajax’s torso, before bending down to grab his arms and haul him quickly from the room.

  “What the fuck do you want with us?” she snarled as the man holding the knife to her neck forced her to turn and face the leader.

  He didn’t respond, but she saw his head tilt slightly as he eyeballed her. Then it turned rather forcefully to the man on the ground. “Get him out of here too. See to it that he learns a lesson from being so useless.” There was no malice in the man’s voice, but Ari couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of being “taught a lesson” by this man and his goons.

  “Where’s Benjamin?” she shouted, trying both to get his attention and to change the subject. “What have you done with him? Where is he?” She struggled against her guard. “Tell me!” she all but screamed at him.

  Still the man gave no reply to her demands.

  “What should we do with her?” That was the man holding the knife to her neck.

  In response, the leader stepped closer as he continued to evaluate her. “She has strength, even if she’s not one of them,” he replied. “Perhaps enough strength to make our plans succeed. I think we’ll turn her over to the doctors.”

  “Very good sir,” the man said. After another moment, one of the men from earlier returned. Or perhaps he was a new one. She had no idea; they all looked the same to her.

  “If you’re going to kill me, at least do it like a man and show me your face,” she snarled as they began to hustle her from the chamber.

  A flick of the leader’s hand froze her two guards in place. She felt an icy, sinking sensation in her stomach as he turned to regard her once more.

  “Kill you?” He laughed.

  For some reason Arianna had expected his laugh to be an evil, maniacal howl. Instead, he just sounded like any normal man. She wasn’t sure now which would have been worse.

  “I don’t want to kill you!” he told her, shoulders still shaking with laughter. “No, my dear. The farthest thing from it. I want to make you better.”

  The near-fervent, near-hiss of his voice as he spoke the last word was more unsettling than anything she had experienced yet. She knew right then that whatever it was this man had in store for her, she didn’t want any part of it. They must be experimenting on shifters, and they wanted to use her as a guinea pig for what they had learned.

  Not good.

  The knife had disappeared now that two of them were holding her still, and Arianna tried to take advantage of that. She made a weak, limp-sounding noise and pretended to faint in their arms. One of them wasn’t quick enough in readjusting his grip on her arm, and she tore it free, spinning in place to slam her clubbed fist into the original gu
ard’s face. She connected enough to dislodge his mask, but she couldn’t make out any features besides his cheekbone.

  “Enough of this,” the leader said, and Arianna heard a hiss followed by a sharp burst of pain in the square of her back.

  The pain faded quickly as cold numbness spread across her body.

  “Ajax,” she tried to say, but her lips no longer worked. The sound was just mumbled garbage as she crashed toward the floor. She prepared for the blackness that would have to come.

  But as it closed in, her vision dimming around the edges, a figure resolved itself in her mind.

  Ajax.

  Chapter Nine

  Ajax

  Arianna!

  The thought coalesced in his head with a start. Awareness flooded back into Ajax and he fought back the urge to react. Forcing himself to remain still, he continued to breathe deeply and easily, eyes closed. This wasn’t the first time he’d awoke in a situation like this, and it had long been instilled in him that keeping people unaware that he was conscious could work to his advantage.

  While he opened his ears to any sounds around him, Ajax focused on running a check on his body to see if anything was wrong. Everything felt okay, he decided several minutes later, but until he actually tried to move he wouldn’t be able to determine that for sure.

  The last thing he remembered was the men storming into the room and the pinprick of their tranquilizer darts blossoming across his chest. He had no sense of time on how long he’d been out, or how far away he might have been taken from Arianna.

  In the background he could heard the soft hum of a circulation system funneling air into and out of whatever type of room he happened to be in. The surface below him was cool, indicating he was on some sort of metal tray or slab. The air running over his skin was cool, without any telltale signs of heat, which likely meant there were no windows anywhere nearby either.

  Something clanged nearby, the distinct sound of metal on metal. His ears separated two distinct sets of shoes scuffing the floor as they approached.

  “Still out? How hard did you hit him?” a voice complained from nearby.

  “Enough,” a second, distinctly deeper voice replied. “It’s only been half an hour. Ten shots should keep him down another thirty minutes I would presume.”

  He wanted to snort, but he repressed the urge. An hour from ten shots? Maybe for some city shifter, perhaps. But Ajax was different. He was the Alpha of a mining crew from Genesis Valley. They were a different breed of bear than anything these men had encountered before. Ajax intended to take full advantage of that fact. They’d likely never dealt with a shifter so used to being knocked down and dusting himself off.

  “Do you think it’s going to work this time?” the first voice asked, subdued.

  “No clue. But they’ve already used up all the blood we took from him, which could be a good sign. Perhaps the boss was right and this subject will take it better.”

  Subject? They took my blood to inject in someone? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. That had been tried a number of times over the years, generally with no results besides making the recipient extremely ill for several days, depending on dosage size. Something else was going on. And who was their test subject? He needed answers.

  The conversation drifted away from anything serious. Ajax decided that he wasn’t going to get anything more from staying “unconscious.” Slowly he opened the eye farthest away from the voice. He was lying on his back in what appeared to be a steel cube. There was absolutely nothing of interest. The walls were gray and solid, no markings or openings that he could see.

  Ajax opened the other eye. Now he could see the front of the cell and the front wall. To his surprise, there was no front wall.

  What the hell?

  He sat up.

  Or tried to. But a metal bar that he hadn’t noticed before stopped his progress.

  “Oh, he’s awake.” Voice number two sounded intrigued, and Ajax caught sight of a head pop into view from around the corner, followed by the rest of a body. Like he remembered from earlier, they were wearing balaclava-style masks that concealed their faces. The ones that had shot him had worn ski goggles compared to the darkened sunglasses this pair was sporting. They really were serious about hiding their identities.

  Ajax opened his mouth to speak, but his dried-out throat only emitted a croak. Working his jaw to increase the flow of saliva, after a moment he felt capable of speaking actual words.

  “So, what kind of trouble have I gotten myself into this time?” he asked with an exaggerated sigh.

  Although he couldn’t see their faces, the look the two guards gave each other told him all he needed to know about their reaction. He wondered if either of them had strained their eyes by rolling them that badly.

  “Thinks he’s a tough guy, does he?” the guard on his left said, revealing his voice to be guard number two.

  “Ah, Number Two,” Ajax said with a laugh. “Good to see you.”

  “What?”

  “Number One, could you please tell Number Two to get over here and open this bar? I’d really like to sit up, if you don’t mind.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen, pal,” Number One replied, shaking his head.

  “Why not? Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Tell us what?” Number One asked in exasperation.

  “That I’m with you guys. That it was all for show, to get the woman to cooperate,” he said patiently. “I was planted to help capture her in a way that wouldn’t arouse any suspicion with the local law enforcement.”

  “Yeah, right,” Number Two replied. “There was never going to be any trouble with the locals. What do you take us for, some kind of idiots?”

  You, perhaps, Ajax thought. Not Number One, he seems to be a little sharper. I doubt he would have revealed that you’re either working for, or with, the police department.

  That was good knowledge to have. It meant there would be no missing persons’ report filed for Arianna, or if there was, it would never go anywhere. So he couldn’t count on that method, though it had been a long shot anyway.

  “That’s what you think,” he persisted. “There’s one guy been making some trouble lately though. The boss told me to go and make sure this happened. No mistakes,” he said seriously.

  “Peter’s told you that?” Number Two asked with a laugh. “Right.”

  “Shut up,” Number One growled, and his voice wasn’t directed at Ajax.

  Before the pair could devolve farther into an argument the door clanked and opened, admitting another pair of masked men. Ajax promptly labeled the tall one Number Three and the shorter one Number Four as soon as they walked into sight of his cell.

  “Number Three!” he shouted, looking in the man’s direction.

  The guard paused, his head tilting oddly. “What did you call me?”

  Ajax filed his voice away. “Number Three. Meet One and Two,” he said happily, pointing as best he could with hands that were clamped to the table by the original two guards.

  “What the fuck is he talking about?” Number Four spoke in confusion.

  Ajax hid a smile. He probably would not need to recognize any of their voices, but he had them now in case he came across them without their masks on. It was highly unlikely, because he was already planning his jail break.

  “Doc says he needs more, but he’s too busy with the specimen to come take it himself. So we get to take him,” Number Three gestured at Ajax, “to the Doc.”

  “Lovely,” Number One muttered, pointing to Number Two. “Okay chatterbox, go remove the restraints.”

  Two hesitated, but the hiss of metal rubbing against plastic as the three other guards drew some sort of baton gave him courage, and he moved into the cell with Ajax. He reached under the table near Ajax’s head and flicked a switch. At the same moment he drew his own wand.

  “Cute sticks,” Ajax said, not moving as the metal restrains unlocked. “Can you cast any spells with them?”

  As a reply,
Number One drove his baton into Ajax’s side.

  He screamed, writhing in pain, his movements pushing the restraints out of the way as he convulsed on the table.

  “How’s that, smartass? You like that spell?” Number Two taunted him, then jabbed his own stick into Ajax’s gut.

  He grunted and cried out in pain again.

  “Enough,” Number Three said, and the others immediately pulled their batons back.

  Two of the guards moved closer and hauled him to his feet, forcing him to stand up and uncurl from the ball he had been in after taking two hits of the electrically charged batons. His face was scrunched up with pain and he hissed as his back straightened, forcing his abs to unclench.

  “You’re going to behave now, right?” Number Three asked menacingly.

  Little men and their toys. Number Three was going to die first, he decided. Or at least, would go down first. He’d have to figure out whether they were government run or private. If they were privately run, then nobody could touch him if he killed anyone who restrained him illegally.

  “Come on,” Number One said, pointing out of the cell with his baton.

  Ajax shuffled from the room, still wincing and grunting in pain. The men moved him to the door to the right of his cell. As he waited for them to key it open, he looked around, noting the other two cells on either side of his, exactly the same. The rest of the room was the same drab, utilitarian gray steel that he was rapidly becoming used to.

  The door hissed and clanked open, and two guards preceded him inside, while the other two followed, wands crackling as they neared his skin. They walked down the corridor at a slightly less-than-brisk pace, enough that it forced Ajax to move faster than he wanted to after taking those hits.

  “I didn’t realize the government was so hot for the color gray,” he remarked as they passed another gray steel door. “You’d think they could afford to splurge on a splash of color here or there.”