Reckless

Luckless Series Book 3

Cari Z

Warning: this book contains adult language and themes, including graphic descriptions of violence.  It is intended for mature readers only, of legal age to possess such material in their area.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, events, and locations are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

Dauntless

Copyright 2022 by Cari Z.

Cover Art by Vivid Covers

Editing by Lisa Lakeland

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

About This Book

Refugees have been streaming into the city of Forge from around the country. Monsters are coming down from the mountains and staking out new hunting grounds. Even as the dragons of Forge grow stronger and more numerous, the challenges they and their riders are facing are only increasing, and there's only one place to look for answers.

Chicago is the strongest remaining city in the Midwest, home to thousands of people and protected by powerful dragons … or at least, it was. By the time Evan Luck and his dragon, Ladon, arrive there, it's clear that something's gone terribly wrong. People are starving, dragons are dying, and nobody knows who’s behind it all.

It’s something they’ve never faced before—something they thought didn’t exist, yet that’s terrifyingly familiar. It's up to Evan and Ladon to stop it … or lose their city, their son, and their lives.

Chapter One

The birds screamed out of the darkness like wraiths, hard to track and harder to hit in this miserably icy weather. They were no match for dragon fire, but even the hottest flame burned out eventually. They attacked, they retreated, and then as soon as there was another break in Ladon’s fire, they attacked again. It was all Evan could do to keep himself from being plucked out of the saddle.

Nock.

Draw.

Aim.

Release.

A massive, eyeless black bird less than a dozen feet away from him fell with an indignant squawk, an arrow deeply embedded in its chest. Evan paused to clench his free hand, forcing blood to move through his half-frozen fingers, before reaching for another arrow.

Another bird appeared through the blowing snow, deadly beak gleaming with Ladon’s reflected fire as the mighty silver dragon burned his way through another half dozen of them, but this one fell to Evan to drive back.

Nock.

Draw.

Aim.

Release.

The bird veered out of the path of the arrow at the last minute, which fortunately also sent it out of Evan’s path. It would be back, though. A flock of flesh-seeking night ravens had been harrying them for the past twenty miles, pressing them harder the closer they got to Chicago. Evan could see the lights of the city in the distance now, fires glowing along the tops of the few skyscrapers that had withstood the initial monster attack over a century ago.

Chicago was an amazingly resilient city. It had been devastated when the influx of monsters poured through the rifts, shattered further when nuclear fallout from humanity’s rash response to the interdimensional invasion left half the city uninhabitable. But it had come back and was the largest human stronghold not on a coast of the former United States, with only the up-and-coming Forge, formerly known as Denver, around to make it work for its status.

Now here they were, less than five miles from that magnificent city, and they were fighting for their lives.

On your left!

Evan pivoted, already getting his next arrow up, but he was a fraction of a second too late. The bird, its feathers the glistening hue of fresh tar, got close enough to score its beak across the back of Evan’s left arm, all the way up to his shoulder and the base of his neck.

“Fuck!” he shouted, the pain enough to make him almost drop his bow.

Only almost, though. When the bird came around for another pass—and damn, but its beak was as hard as a rock and as sharp as a blade—he had his next arrow ready to go.

It wasn’t necessary. Ladon arched his neck back so sharply it had to hurt and blew a gout of fire hot enough that Evan could smell the monster’s feathers cook. It fell out of the sky and vanished into the darkness below.

Evan reached for another arrow but hissed as the pain reasserted itself.

We’re landing.

“We’re almost at the city,” he argued with his dragon, but he could feel Ladon’s resolve through their bond. They were going to land, and Lee was going to care for his wounds, and Evan would not argue with him about it.

“Fine.” Evan kept his eyes sharp as they descended toward the distant ground, searching for more of the ravenous birds, but none appeared. A minute later, Ladon touched down on the uneven surface of an old road, surrounded on both sides by the gutted ruins of buildings, including one with a faded green plus sign on it. Evan recognized the symbol as representing a type of pharmacy back in humanity’s heyday. This close to Chicago, everything useful in the wreckage had long ago been retrieved by scavs, but Ladon leaned his head down to look into the depths of the concrete and rebar before blowing a blast of cleansing fire into it. Nothing emerged.

It’s safe for now. He waited for Evan to undo his harness and slide to the ground before a sudden surge of brilliant white light overtook the massive dragon. A second later, Ladon was gone, and in his place was Lee, wearing the silver armor that appeared when he took his warrior form.

“Evan,” he said worriedly, setting the silver helm aside before taking Evan’s left arm in a careful grip. The still-burning store beside them offered both light and heat, and while Evan sighed with frustration as Lee ripped his sleeve away to inspect the wound better, at least he wasn’t cold.

“I liked that jacket, you know.”

“Evan,” Lee repeated, this time with a chiding note. Evan grinned at his lover. He had bonded with Ladon, the silver dragon, but he’d fallen in love with Lee, the man within the monster. Dragons were empathic, the only creatures to come through the rifts who had the capacity, the compulsion, to connect with humans. People like Evan, capable of achieving that connection, were deeply empathic, able to sense their dragon’s emotions and even to share their thoughts.

As far as either of them knew, Lee—who was also Ladon—was the only one of his kind who had come through the rift, a dragon who could take on the shape of a human being. And of all the people out there, he had chosen Evan to bond with. It still stunned Evan sometimes that someone as magnificent as his lover had seen something in him worth committing to.

“Ow!”

“Be still, and it’ll hurt less.”

Their relationship was a little less stunning when Evan was subjected to his lover’s medical care. Lee had many wonderful skills, but his healing capabilities weren’t among them.

“It’s not too deep, hardly touched the muscle except up here by your neck, but it’s bleeding fiercely,” he said at last, mopping up blood with Evan’s poor repurposed sleeve. “They might have an anticoagulant in their beaks. Hang on, I need to clean it out.”

“Nachtkrapp,” Evan grunted as Lee rinsed his wound clean with a bottle of sterile water from one of their packs. They’d only left Forge three days ago, just after the winter holiday, but Lee had packed like they were going to be flying to the North Pole. “Night ravens. I’ve heard of them before but never seen them. Didn’t really believe they could be so deadly without eyes to see by.”

“Stranger things have come through the rifts.”

Wasn’t that the truth? Monsters had besieged all corners of the earth, some of them beasts out of legend and myth while others had never been seen, or at least reported, before. Whether that meant that the rifts had opened in smaller, less dramatic ways in the past, or that maybe there was some grand and sadistic intelligent design behind this whole thing, Evan didn’t know. He didn’t care to either; all he really cared about was whether or not he could kill what he was fighting before it killed him first. Someone like Lee, though, more powerful than everything else around him, had the time to be more thoughtful about the monsters.

“Do you ever wish you remembered more?”

“Sometimes,” Lee said, his answer a little surprising. Lee wasn’t the type to look back with longing or nostalgia, not even for the life he’d lived here in Chicago. He had been bonded and married to a human woman named Valorie. They’d had a son together, Jason. After she died in a battle, Lee had taken his son and left Chicago, knowing that no one else there was a compatible empath for him. He had loved his wife, but he hadn’t been willing to live in the past for her.

“Mostly because I wish I had more to tell Jason about the power we both hold,” he continued, pulling a long piece of linen gauze out of their medical kit and winding it around Evan’s arm. “For me, using it is second nature, but that doesn’t mean I know how to teach him to do the same.” He frowned down at the rapidly soaking gauze. “You need stitches.”

“We can take care of that in Chicago. Just make it tight enough that I don’t bleed out on the way there.”

Lee’s expression was fierce. “I would never let that happen.” He was beautiful like this, his white-blond hair made orange by the firelight, elegant features accentuated by the shadows. Evan felt like a sparrow come to roost next to a swan.

“I know you wouldn’t,” Evan said. “We should try to get there quickly, though.” He glanced up dubiously at the sky. “Should we run it?” Normally he wouldn’t suggest that route—dragons were far more vulnerable on the ground—but they didn’t know how many of the night ravens were up there.

“It’s worth a try.” Lee’s look shifted from fierce to downright ferocious. “Chicago was home to over a dozen full-grown dragons while I lived there! How can they afford to not keep the skies clear this close to their own homes? Creatures like these nachtkrapp could be deadly to a fledgling.”

“I don’t know.” The problem was that none of them did. They knew from Winona, a refugee and former dragon rider who’d barely made it to Forge alive with her stolen dragon’s egg, that things had gone terribly wrong lately for the dragons of Chicago. They’d died in battles they should have won, lost their riders and gone rogue, had eggs go missing. The last she knew, the city’s complement of adult dragons was down to three, none of them mated. That meant no new dragons would be forthcoming in Chicago, which made the adults all the more valuable. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising after all that they hadn’t bothered with the night ravens. “Lee …”

Lee couldn’t look into Evan’s mind the way he could when he was a dragon, but he could certainly sense his emotions. “You feel … worried.”

“Cautious,” Evan corrected. “There’s been so much death and destruction in this city lately. I know its location makes it a target for monsters, but even so, the devastation seems extreme.”

“What are you thinking?”

Evan blew out a breath. “I think it might be best for us to approach this as though we’re entering hostile territory.”

A furrow appeared in Lee’s smooth brow. “But they know me. They will expect me to be a friend to them, to help them drive back their enemies while we’re there.” The I want to went unsaid, but Evan felt it loud and clear.

“True, but we’re not just going there to lend them your skill,” Evan said. “We’re going there to try and figure out what’s wrong with the place, and to do that at least one of us needs to be able to move more freely than the people in charge might be comfortable allowing.”

Lee paused. “You suspect someone in authority.”

“Winona certainly did,” Evan pointed out. “She was scared enough to try and make the trip to Forge with just two other people and a dragon’s egg on the verge of hatching.” Winona wouldn’t have risked her fallen dragon’s only egg if she hadn’t felt the situation was desperate.

“What should we do, then?”

“Well, seeing as I’m conveniently injured—”

“Evan.” Lee pulled him into his arms before Evan could go on, surrounding him with warmth and love. “Don’t say that so easily,” Lee murmured, and Evan sighed as he heard the pain in his lover’s voice. “Not after everything that happened. What almost happened.”

“I’m sorry.” Evan tended not to take his injuries to heart the way Lee did. He’d nearly died not too long ago after breathing in the airborne poison of a tatzelwurm. It had left his lungs and throat raw, and he still had to be careful how much he spoke, or the pain set in again.

“But it’s a good cover,” he murmured against Lee’s neck before pressing a kiss against the sharp line of his jaw. “If we make it seem like I’m more injured than I am, then I won’t be expected to meet with the people in charge. I could sneak out and investigate the lower levels, be just one more face in the crowd.” Honestly, Evan had been an outcast for too long to relish the thought of settling into the privileged company of a group of riders and politicians—probably the same people in some cases.

“If you think it best,” Lee finally said, drawing Evan’s face back to stare deeply into his eyes. “But know that if I sense any fear or pain from you while we’re parted, nothing will be able to stop me from coming to you wherever you are.”

“I know you will.” Evan pressed their mouths together, his chapped lips to Lee’s smooth ones, and gasped when Lee opened his mouth hungrily. He wanted to lean in, wanted to do more, to give more of himself, but they were still in a vulnerable position. And …

Evan pulled back and turned his head to look out into the darkness across the crumbled road. “Listen.”

Lee followed his gaze, and his eyes began to glow with an internal fire. Stepping back, he hoisted his helm onto his head. A second later, an immense, two-handed, silver blade appeared in his hands. Levering it down like it weighed nothing, he drew a flaming circle in the ground around Evan and their gear. “Stay here,” he said as the ancient concrete cracked and bubbled with the force of his power. “I’ll deal with them.”

“Deal with who?” Evan demanded as Lee stepped away.

“The hodags,” he said. A second later, a creature the size of a horse was leaping out from the shadows. It had the horns of a bull on top of its wide, flat head and a grinning mouth full of hideously sharp teeth that reminded Evan of a picture he’d once seen of a shark. Its legs were short but strong, like a crocodile, and its back was covered in long spines, which culminated in a dangerous spiky tail.

As vicious as it looked, Evan wasn’t immediately worried. In his warrior incarnation, Lee had advantages that neither Ladon nor Lee the regular man shared. As Evan watched, the hodag darted forward with a serpentine slither, tail lashing back and forth like a lure before it lunged for Lee’s throat.

Lee swept his sword up in a diagonal slice that was more than deadly; it released a sizzling bolt of incandescent power from the edge of the blade, slicing through the body of the hodag like it was no firmer than dandelion fluff. The monster’s scream was cut short by the severance of its lungs, but its front and hind legs clawed independently at the ground for a few more moments, its jaw gnashing fruitlessly before it finally shuddered and died. It was a fast, flawless kill.

It wasn’t going to be the only one.

Two more of the beasts crawled out of the shadows, casting their dark-red gazes from their fallen companion to Lee and finally to Evan. One of them faced Lee head-on, careful to keep a few meters of distance between them, while the other began to sidle around him like it was trying to flank Lee … or get to Evan.

Evan immediately went for his bow. He nocked an arrow and drew, cursing the vicious way his arm and shoulder ached before firing at the closest hodag.

The arrow stuck in the creature’s shoulder, making it snap and snarl but not seeming to do any real damage. Honestly, Evan wasn’t sure what the best target was on a beast like this—down the mouth? But its teeth were firmly closed, and its stubby neck might be too short to allow him to access a vital organ through it anyway. He grabbed for another arrow as the hodag refocused on him.

Lee was fighting the other one, which leapt with surprising alacrity for a creature so large and heavy. It dodged his energy attacks and danced back and forth just out of range of the end of Lee’s blade. The second hodag had focused all its efforts on Evan now, stalking toward him like the apex predator it was. It got to the edge of the circle, tried to step over it, then leapt back screaming like it had been burned. The circle flared with fresh fire, so it probably had been burned. It backed away a bit further, then ran forward at full speed, leaping into the air five feet from the edge of the circle. Its long claws were on full display, mouth gaping, and Evan fired again, but the arrow just bounced off those hideous teeth, and—

It stopped two feet in front of him like it had run into a wall, and its entire face burst into flames. Evan heard Lee yell in the distance and saw him emit a great flare of light. A moment later, the hodag that had attacked Evan—and was in the middle of trying to claw its own face off to escape the pain—was decapitated.

In the strange silence thereafter, Lee walked over to him. He was moving slowly, and when he lowered his helm once more, his face was drawn, pale eyes shadowed with fatigue. “Foolish creature,” he said, glancing at the body of the beast before he banished the circle.

“Is it always so tiring for you?” Evan asked. “Doing … doing magic like that?”

“It feels different every time.”

“That’s a bullshit answer.”

Lee shook his head. “It’s a complex question that I can’t answer in a hurry, and we’re definitely in a hurry now. Other monsters will smell the corpses and come to scavenge. We need to leave.”

“Flying or …”

“I’ll run as Ladon,” Lee decided after a moment. “If we fly, we’ll certainly be attacked by those night ravens again, and I don’t want you to have to strain your arm any further.” He winced and touched Evan’s hand. “You’re dripping with blood. We have to hurry.”

Oh, was he dripping? Evan looked down and felt mild surprise when he realized that Lee was right. Huh. He hadn’t even felt it. That was a bad sign. “We can rebind it later,” he said as a distant howl split the night. Uh-oh. “Right now, we need to go.”

They repacked, Lee transformed to Ladon, and Evan heaved himself back up into the saddle as best he could, attaching his harness so nothing could jerk him away from his dragon if he was unable to fight it off. They set out at a steady jog, leaving the light of the burning building behind them as they headed toward the heart of the city.

Evan began to shiver. The snow was making itself known again, and his jacket was missing a sleeve now. He felt cold. “I think I might … I might …”

I can feel you fading. Hold on, beloved. We’ll be there in minutes, I promise.

“I’ll be fine,” Evan murmured, hunkering down close to Ladon’s neck, where he could feel his dragon’s internal heat radiating. “M’just … tired, is all. I’m …” So tired.

Evan, stay awake.

“M’wake.” But he could feel sleep pulling at him, making his head loll and his jaw fall open. His hand was still dripping, leaving a bright red streak down Ladon’s perfect hide. “Sorry,” he slurred. “I’ll get it … just …” He couldn’t quite muster the energy to finish his apology. Stars swam across his vision, and a second later Evan felt himself topple to the side.

Evan!

Chapter Two

The bits and pieces of their arrival that filtered in through Evan’s unreliable state of consciousness were blurry at best. He heard a chorus of voices, jubilation juxtaposed with concern. He felt hands reach for him and just as quickly felt them removed. Cold turned to warmth as he was brought inside somewhere, and soon after that a cup was pressed to his lips. Bitter liquid flowed into his mouth, making him grimace, but he swallowed anyhow. Then everything was dark, except for a few breakthrough moments of pain as something pierced his skin over and over again. It was all right, though, because Lee was there, holding his hand and soothing him through it.

When Evan woke up again, he found himself in a large room with strangely smooth walls. Painted, perhaps? They were the color of eggshells and slightly shiny. A faint light glowed from the bedside table, not a candle but a … a lamp? He blinked again to make sure. He’d seen electrical lamps before, of course, but not working ones, yet this one seemed to be doing just that. There was a plug trailing off the back of it and everything.

“Evan.”

A warm hand on his shoulder had him turning to look beside him. Lee lay there, one arm folded beneath his head to act as a pillow, the other rubbing gentle circles against Evan’s bare skin. “How do you feel?” he asked quietly.

“Fine,” Evan replied, a little surprised he could be so honest. He glanced at his injured arm, feeling stiffness in his shoulder and neck as he did so but no pain. “It’s fine.” He looked back at Lee. “What happened?”

“You were worse off than we realized after the fight. The wound itself wasn’t so bad, but the bleeding never fully stopped, and then when you had to use your bow again …” Lee bit his lower lip for a moment. “Your clothing was soaked with blood. I burned it all and dressed you in fresh stuff from your pack once you were stitched up.”

“Ah.” That must have been hard for Lee to see. Evan shifted over and kissed his lover on the lips, slow and sweet. “I’m all right, though.”

“You are.” Lee nodded, seeming to reassure himself as much as Evan. “You heal better when I’m close to you; I’m not sure why. I noticed it after the incident with the egg.”

The incident in which Evan had almost had his throat burned out, yes. “I thought that too.”

“It’s actually a good cover for what you want to accomplish,” Lee went on. “We arrived in a rather dramatic fashion, and almost everyone here believes you’re on the brink of death. It should be a simple thing to keep almost all of them out of our room and allow you to explore unimpeded although”—he grimaced—“the pain will come back. The medicine you got only lasts for a few hours, and you can’t take it more than two times a day. If you were really recuperating here, lying still and quiet, it wouldn’t be so bad, but if you’re out there moving around and infiltrating the ground level—”

“I’ll handle it,” Evan promised him. “I’ll be all right. And you’re right, this is perfect.”

Lee’s frown deepened. “You being hurt is far from perfect.”

“I know, but our excuse for me being out of sight is better than ever. Except for … hmm.” He looked down at his wrist, where the edge of a few black-threaded stitches peeked out from beneath the bandages. “Who doctored me?”

“An old friend.” Lee’s expression gentled. “Someone very dear to me, someone I trust. He won’t give us away.”

“Who is he?” Evan asked.

“The first human I ever remember talking to.”

“He’s referring to me,” a creaky voice said from the doorway.

Evan jerked around to look, wincing as breakthrough pain set his nerves alight. Standing in the doorframe was an old man, maybe the oldest man Evan had ever personally laid eyes on. He knew it used to be normal for people to live into their seventies, eighties—even nineties. But the oldest person he knew in Forge was seventy-two and could hardly move anymore for joint pain. This man had to be at least a decade older. His hair was completely white, and his face and neck were wrinkled to the point that Evan could barely see his eyes from beneath his drooping lids and half-moon spectacles. His back was slightly stooped, and in his left hand he held a cane.

When he raised his chin, though, Evan could make out the brightness in those eyes and see the smile even deeper than the wrinkles around it shine through. The old man’s teeth were stained but seemed to be all present, and his steps to the side of the bed were steady with the help of the cane. “You can refer to me as Dr. Clark, or simply Joseph will do. And how are you feeling today, young man?” he asked, looking Evan over with a clear gaze.

“Very well, thank you,” Evan replied, bemused at being referred to as “young man.” He was pushing thirty now; there was nothing young about him. “There’s little discomfort, apart from stiffness.”

“Mmm.” Joseph nodded. “We make a topical numbing cream from the salivary glands of one of the beasts that our dragons bring in. It’s very good for keeping surface pain manageable, less good when it comes to soothing internal difficulties.” He peered over his spectacles at Evan. “That said, how’s everything on the inside feeling? Any sharp pains, any aches, any sense of heat?”

“No, none.”

“Very good.” The doctor smiled, his shoulders dropping a little as he looked down to reach into the leather satchel at his waist. “Lee told me there were no internal injuries, but I have to verify that sort of thing.”

“Always so careful,” Lee said with warmth in his voice. He was smiling as he looked at Evan. “When Jason was little, he got frequent chest infections. Joseph was the first person he asked for the moment he felt ill. His mother and I were quite useless by comparison.”

“He was one of my better patients,” Joseph reflected, pulling a small metal bottle out of his satchel and unscrewing the top. He tipped a tiny white pill out into his hand and extended it toward Evan. “Antibiotics, to keep any infection at bay.” He waited for Evan to take it before setting the bottle down on the table next to the bed. “One of my better reinventions, I feel.”

“You successfully recreated antibiotics?” Evan was stunned. “Our doctors have been working on that for decades with no luck.”

“Well, I was rather blessed to be in a big city where old medical facilities still existed,” Joseph said with a shrug before carefully lowering himself into a nearby chair, waving away Lee’s move to help him. “I was able to puzzle out some formulas. Better yet, I was able to find a detailed history of the way it was done the first time around, when people weren’t any more advanced than we are now. Speaking of now, though.” He set his cane aside, crossed his hands, and looked between them sternly. “Why is it you want to keep your recovering health a secret, given that there are so many people out there worried about you? Vincent is going to walk a rut in the floor if he keeps pacing out in the hall.”

“Valorie’s brother,” Lee explained to Evan.

“She had a brother?” Why hadn’t he known about this before? Admittedly, neither Lee nor Jason liked to talk about Valorie very much—her death was a sensitive subject for them, and Evan tried to respect that as much as possible—but the fact that she had a sibling seemed kind of important. “Is he a rider too?”

“No, he—”

“Actually, he is now,” Joseph interrupted.

Now it was Lee’s turn to be dumbstruck. “One of the dragons bonded to him?” he asked incredulously. “Aren’t all the ones who remain here still with their original riders?”

“The old ones are. This is a newer arrival, only came here, oh … two years ago, perhaps? Shortly after you left,” Joseph said. “His name is Graeve. A beautiful dragon he is, too, cobalt blue and very big, almost as big as you. But fairly wild for all that.” He shook his head. “He and Vincent have a bond, but it’s not the same as most riders and their dragons. Graeve is accustomed to hunting alone, going after whatever he wants whenever he pleases. He drags some carcasses back like an enormous cat, showing off a mouse.”

He smiled briefly, but it vanished just as fast. “Sometimes he’s gone for days, even weeks. Doesn’t seem to care whether the city falls or not while he’s out. Vincent thinks he underwent some sort of serious trauma at some point, and we have no idea where he’s from originally.”

“And yet Vincent managed to bond to him.” That seemed to be quite the sticking point for Lee. Evan wondered why. “So he’s not completely feral like some of the others are after losing a rider or mate.”

“No, he’s not that bad,” Joseph agreed. “Just unreliable, which isn’t what this city needs right now. To be frank, we need someone like you. Someone strong, powerful, with a skillful rider to help lead us through these dark times.” He looked between them again, brow heavily furrowed. “But I can tell you’re not here for that; otherwise, you would have brought Jason along. So please, humor an old man who cares for you and tell me why you’re here and what you’re intending.”

Evan glanced at Lee, who seemed rattled. He reached out and took his lover’s hand in his good one. “We have to tell him,” he murmured.

“Tell me what?” Joseph pressed.

“The truth,” Lee said heavily. He squeezed Evan’s hand, then looked at his old friend. “But I have to ask you to keep the whole of what I’m about to tell you to yourself. There’s too much at stake to risk word getting out to the wrong person.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, but I understand the need for confidentiality,” Joseph said seriously. “On my honor as a physician and a healer, I will not share anything you’re about to tell me.”

“Very well, then.”

It took the better part of an hour to explain everything to Joseph: the increasing attacks and strange behavior of the monsters, the growing burden on Forge, the arrival of Winona and Rayan and the distressing news they’d delivered. Joseph didn’t speak, only sighed with evident relief when he learned that Winona and the baby dragon had survived and smiled when he learned that Jason had bonded with Rayan.

“I always wondered how he was going to get along,” Joseph said with a sigh of relief. “I’m so grateful my grandchild found the bond he needed. Well, great-grandchild, but”—he shrugged—“the great is tedious, I think.”

“Wait a second.” Evan looked between Lee and Joseph. “You’re related?”

“Through Jason,” Joseph confirmed. “My granddaughter Valorie was Lee’s wife.”

Evan felt like he’d just been hit upside the head with a hammer. “Why didn’t you mention that sooner?”

Lee looked genuinely confused. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Lee!”

“I—I really didn’t.” He looked at Joseph, then back at Evan. “Was that wrong? Should I have told you before?”

Evan stared at him for a long moment. The thing was, it didn’t really matter that Lee and Jason had relatives in Chicago. Lee had never insinuated otherwise; he simply hadn’t said anything at all. Evan was the one who’d jumped to conclusions, but …

Family. They had relatives here, from Jason’s mother. Joseph, right in front of him, was Lee’s family. His wife’s brother was standing right outside. To Evan, who hadn’t had any family of his own for a very long time before Lee and Jason came along, the revelation made him simultaneously want to draw these people in, so he could better protect them, and push them away, so that they couldn’t tempt Lee back to their side.

Not that they would. Lee had made his choice, and Evan trusted him to stick with it but still … family. It must have been so painful for them both to leave Chicago in search of a new start.

“Evan?”

Lee’s expression had gone from curious to concerned. “Are you all right? Did I—”

“It’s not you,” he said, more gruffly than he wanted to. “It’s just … it’s fine.”

“It doesn’t feel fine.”

“It is.” It had to be for now. Evan’s complicated emotions around family could wait to be worked through some other day; right now, they had bigger problems at hand. He focused his attention on Joseph. “You understand why we came, don’t you? The problems Winona said you’re facing here seem to be happening all over. Everywhere but Forge.” They’d had some dangerous battles at Forge since Evan and Lee had bonded but nothing that had truly tested them. “That means that whatever is happening right now is either missing Forge deliberately, perhaps saving it for last, or there might be another motive entirely. But to figure that out, we need to understand what’s going on here first.”

“I see.” Joseph stared pensively at the top of his cane for a moment. “I do see,” he muttered. “The losses here have been … indescribable. Truly, I could never have foreseen it getting so bad so fast. With so few dragons left to us, it’s …” He shook his head. “And the rate at which we’ve lost eggs puts our very future here in jeopardy. You think someone could be working against Chicago from the inside?”

“It’s possible,” Lee said somberly. “You know it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s been years,” he added to Evan, “but at one point, there was a whole conspiracy of people here who worked out a ploy to steal and auction off dragon eggs. They were caught before it got too far and were exiled, but a lot of the dragons lost their faith in the people of Chicago. If I hadn’t made a new family here with Valorie at that point, I might have been one of those who chose to leave.”

“Speaking of family.” Joseph nodded his head toward the door. “Will you see Vincent now? Do you want to bring him in on this? He’d be a good man to have in the mix.”

Lee hesitated. It was just for a moment, the sort of pause that most people wouldn’t even notice, but Evan saw it like it had lasted an hour. “No. I will see him, of course, but I don’t think we’ll let him know the details of our purpose here quite yet. He’s on the ruling council now, correct?”

“He is. For the past year,” Joseph said proudly.

“Then he intimately knows some of the people I might have to investigate. I’d rather not put him in an awkward situation. Don’t tell him any of this, including the fact that Evan is healthier than he looks. We need everyone to think he’s still at death’s door.”

Fortunately, Joseph gave in without a fight. “You do as you think is right, and I’ll support you. Evan’s condition will remain grave, and your cause here will remain mysterious. But you should meet with him, soon, if only to say hello,” he added. “He’s missed you terribly.”

“I will,” Lee promised. “Tomorrow morning. Until then, I don’t want anyone else even as close as the outer room unless they’re you or leaving food.”

“I’ll see to it.” Joseph got to his feet with a groan, waving off Lee as he moved to get up and help him. “Just aches in the old bones, just a few aches. I can still move myself about all right; I don’t need help getting up from a damn chair.”

“We’re all grateful for your longevity,” Lee said.

“Grateful that I’m still around to help you meddle that is,” Joseph said, but he seemed pleased and patted Lee on the cheek with one gnarled hand before looking at Evan. “You’re going to recover fine as long as you don’t push yourself too hard. That means no handling that bow of yours, understand? Whatever you do when you’re prowling around this place, do it without getting into any more fights.”

“I’ll do my best.” Evan held Lee’s hand as they watched Joseph go. They listened to him close the bedroom door and exit through the outer door of the suite of rooms before finally turning to each other. “What don’t you like about Vincent?” Evan asked immediately.

“I don’t … not like him,” Lee replied a little sheepishly.

“Lee.”

“It’s hard for me to articulate,” Lee said, rubbing his thumb over the back of Evan’s hand as he stared blankly at the door. “When I lived here before, I … you have to understand, I don’t remember my feral days very well. I don’t remember coming through the rift, or what I did for years after that. I simply don’t know about far too much of my own life, but the memories I do have start with Joseph.”

“Were you …” How did Evan ask this without sounding like a jealous lover? “Were you ever …”

“We never bonded,” Lee confirmed. “If we had, I would likely have stayed here. But something changed inside me before I met Joseph … and I met him elsewhere, near the great lake that edges up to this city. I saw him, and I was full and sated, not feeling hunger or anger, and so I … stopped. Settled in beside him and let him speak to me. He didn’t even try to run away.” Lee smiled. “He was too brave for his own good, but slowly I realized that I understood what he was saying. He helped me make sense of the dragons I’d seen flying in and around Chicago, the ones who never left. Joseph was very patient with me. It seemed like fate led us together, and if either of us had had a slightly different mind …” His voice trailed off, and Lee shrugged. “But we didn’t.”

“But you went with him to Chicago?” Evan prompted.

“Eventually. And eventually, I met his daughter, Philippa, and later on her children, Vincent and Valorie. When Valorie was of age, I was finally ready to bond, and she was very willing. We were a good fit.

“Her brother was jealous of her, though. Incredibly jealous. Vincent is an empath as well, but not as strong as his sister, and he never had her martial abilities. He’s better at speaking than he is at fighting, which is fine, but … he wasn’t a good fit for a bond with me. He didn’t want to accept that for a long time.”

Evan could read between the lines. “So you don’t like him.”

“Truly, it’s not that I don’t like him …”

“You don’t.” Evan shook his head. “I don’t even need to be able to feel your emotions to tell. You two weren’t a good fit, and he took that to heart.”

Lee sighed. “He was a good brother to Valorie. A loving uncle to Jason too. But there’s something about him that just … you have to understand, none of the dragons ever picked him to bond with. He was available, he was willing, but he was always refused. That would make anyone a little bitter, especially when he briefly thought that I was going to pick him, for whatever reason, only to disappoint him.

“But he’s family, and he has a dragon now, of sorts. So I’ll see him, and love him, and learn what I can from him. But I won’t give him access to you.” The last part was said in a diamond-hard tone of voice as if he was getting ready to head off any potential complaints from Evan.

He wasn’t going to get any. “I don’t need to meet with him,” Evan said. “My job is on the ground floor, not up here in the sky. As long as you can keep him from finding out what we’re doing, then I’m more than happy to let you handle everything. But don’t take too much on by yourself, all right?” He cupped Lee’s face with his bandaged hand and drew him in close, then kissed him. His arm burned a bit, but not so much that he wanted to stop for any reason. He did have to breathe, though.

“If you need me for anything, if I need to make a miraculous recovery and help you, you tell me,” Evan said, breath cutting off with a little gasp as Lee curled his arms around Evan’s body and lowered him down onto the bed.

“I need you,” Lee said, his gaze intent, eyes glittering like they were backlit by a flame. “I need you to make a miraculous recovery and let me have my way with you.”

“How?” Evan asked, instead of saying “What?” or “Are you kidding?” He never had to dig for desire when it came to being with Lee, not the way he’d fought to feel something for the few other partners he’d had in his life. It was like his heart had saved all its longing for this one person, and now that he had him, there was an abundance of need inside of him, just waiting to burst out and smother Lee with love, affection, and desire.

“Gently,” Lee said, settling in between his hips. “Carefully. Let me do the work if you feel like you want this right now. Otherwise, I’ll hold you, and we can sleep.”

Evan always wanted to be with Lee. And right now, mostly pain-free and lying in a soft bed with his lover for the first time in days, he felt his body stir. Lee clearly felt it too, and his smile went sharp before he captured Evan’s lips in another kiss.

“Mmm, yes,” Evan said into Lee’s mouth, winding his good arm around his neck and pulling him closer. Lee went, but just far enough that he could keep his weight off Evan’s shoulder. “Please.” I’ve missed you. Their three days in transit had been too dangerous for intimacy, and the weeks leading up to their departure had been a blur of preparations and spending time with Jason, with few moments left for romance.

Lee kissed him harder, his lips opening and tongue sliding possessively into Evan’s mouth. He rocked their hips together, long, slow glides that had Evan’s cock hardening in under a minute. He wanted to do more, tried to lift his other arm up, but before the pain could even register, Lee was pushing it back down.

“I do the work,” he said as he pulled back. “You relax.”

That was easier said than done, but Evan did his best. He let Lee undress him the rest of the way, removing his pants and the pair of warm, thick socks that Charlie had knitted for him, then spread his legs wide as he leaned in and closed his mouth over the head of Evan’s cock.

“Oh,” Evan breathed, staring straight up at the ceiling. He couldn’t look right now. If he looked, he’d be coming too soon. “Oh, fuck.” Was he the first man Lee had ever been with? He didn’t know for sure; it wasn’t something that had ever come up, but the way Lee sucked cock, Evan almost had to believe he’d practiced with someone before they’d met because he was so good at it.

Lee took him deep, so deep that Evan wouldn’t be able to breathe if the tables were turned, then pulled back slowly, sucking hard the whole way. He didn’t use his hands, just his mouth, drawing the sensation out like thread winding around a bobbin, gathering gradually until all of a sudden, Evan was full to the point of bursting with it.

“Lee,” he said warningly. Lee pulled off but didn’t move back up.

“What do you want, beloved?”

“You, up here.” It wasn’t that Evan didn’t want to come in his lover’s mouth, but he wanted the warmth of their bodies pressed together more. Everything about this place was strange except for Lee, and Evan craved his comforting familiarity almost as much as he wanted to come.

Lee smiled and stood up just long enough to remove his own clothes, then moved back between Evan’s legs, pressing their cocks together and wrapping a hand around them. It was perfect, and Evan jerked his hips up with a moan. “Like this,” he begged, and Lee kissed him again, then started to move. His hand was stationary, just holding them close as they rutted. Evan wound his hand into Lee’s hair and clenched his fist tight as he finally began to come, breathless from pleasure. Lee joined him a second later, his neck arched from Evan’s grasp, eyes glowing and mouth dropping open in ecstasy.

Sudden lassitude cut through Evan like a monster’s claw, draining all of his energy and leaving him sore but very satisfied. He was falling asleep before he could even regain his ability to speak, and his last conscious sensation was Lee’s mouth on his cheek and a whisper in his ear: “I’ll watch over you.”

Lee always did. Evan knew that he always would.

Chapter Three

Evan had never seen the Tower of Chicago in person before. He’d seen it in dreams, though; dreams that he’d shared with Lee and Ladon, dreams that had been his first indicator that he was forming a new bond. At first, he’d dismissed them as a fantasy cooked up by his overactive imagination—the idea of bonding again hadn’t even occurred to him. His dragon, Juree, was dead, had died saving his life. All Evan could do was honor her sacrifice by living as well as he could in the city of Forge, far from his mountain hometown where she, and everyone else he’d grown up with, had died.

In his dreams, and later in Lee and Jason’s descriptions, the Tower had been described as the tallest thing in any direction until you reached the mountains. Evan had figured a lot of that had to be hyperbole; what building could compare to the height and majesty of the Rocky Mountains? Now, though, awake and looking up at the massive building from the ground floor, he understood that he’d been too hasty.

This building was huge, and the twin spires on top of it only added to its immensity. It truly was the tallest thing in any direction as far as he could see. There were a few other—what was the word for them again?—right, skyscrapers, two of them fairly close to the Tower and one a bit farther in the distance, but this one was the tallest. The stone building nearest to it, tremendous in its own right and with a clock high up on its front façade, surrounded by two huge carved faces, had been gutted and turned into the dragons’ eyrie. Even with only two dragons—or two residents and one frequent visitor—there now, the smell of them was strong in the air.

It was all so much, he felt dizzied by it. He leaned against the nearest wall and closed his eyes for a moment, recentering himself. He didn’t have time to be dazzled. He had too much to do.

“Hey, you all right, man?”

Evan looked over at the speaker, a Black man wearing a knit cap and a heavy jacket. He held a cloth bag in one hand and an unsheathed machete in the other.

“I’m okay,” Evan said, straightening up again. His damaged shoulder ached a bit from where he’d been leaning against it, but the pain was dull enough to ignore. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He pointed his machete to the right. “You still need breakfast? The Franklin Center should be handing food out for another half an hour.”

“Sounds good.” Evan had actually eaten with Lee that morning before slipping out of their rooms, but it would be good for him to see where other people gathered and get the lay of the land. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” The man’s face was openly curious as they began to walk. “You new here? I’ve never seen you around before.”

“I just got in last night,” Evan replied. It wouldn’t do to pretend he knew more than he did.

“Whoooo, damn. You came in here during that mess?” His company shook his head. “Wouldn’t have gotten me past the moat for nothing last night, not a damn thing. I heard there were hodags.”

Evan grimaced and nodded. “There were.”

“Mean motherfuckers.” The guy held out a hand. “I’m Darryl.”

“Evan.” They shook. Darryl looked at him closely before releasing his hand.

“You hurt, Evan?”

“Just a scrape,” Evan replied, narrowing his eyes. “How can you tell?”

“The way you carry your bow.” Darryl gestured at his own shoulder. “Where you’re gripping it, you keep shifting your hand around. Figured you’re used to slinging it over the other side of your back.”

Evan smiled. “You’re sharp. Are you an archer?”

Darryl shook his head. “Nah, my eyes aren’t good enough for that. I’ve got a, what’s it called, an astigmatism. Makes everything more than ten feet distant blurry. I’m decent up close, though.” He hefted the machete. “You don’t have to be able to see far to use something like this. Here we go.” He joined in a line of people outside the door of another immense building. Unlike the Tower, though, this one looked like it had been cut off about ten stories up, with the twisted remains of its massive steel skeleton jutting bare into the sky.

Evan stared, transfixed. They had buildings this big in Forge, but none that still looked so … raw. Everything that could be used on the Wall had been used on the barricade that surrounded his home city, and that included all the immense old buildings.

Darryl began to laugh. “You’re such a yokel, man. What, you’ve never seen a skyscraper before?”

“Not this close up,” Evan replied, ducking his head.

“Where are you even from?”

“A little town called Marble.” It didn’t matter if there was no Marble here; settlements came and went, and most were never known to more than the people who lived there. “Not all that close to here, but after it went down, I decided to try my luck somewhere bigger.”

“Bigger.” Darryl’s mouth tightened, his expression grim. “Well, Chicago is big all right. Not that that’s doing us any favors lately. There are more people moving out than coming in these days, and I’m not convinced they’re wrong.” The line shuffled forward, and they shuffled with it as a group of three settled into place behind them: a man, woman, and little girl no older than four. Probably a family, given the way the girl favored them. She was silent, though, completely silent, not interested in playing or running around like the children at Forge.

“We’re getting hit harder and harder every day, it seems. What happened to the Franklin Building?” Darryl raised a hand toward the top of the building they were walking beside. “This here was the result of a battle ten years ago. Huge battle, all the dragons out fighting against some of the biggest damn monsters I’ve ever seen, raining fire and brimstone and all kinds of hell on everybody for miles around. Crazy. I’ve never seen anything so violent in my life, and when it was over, I figured I’d never see anything like that again. But now?”

Darryl shrugged. “They aren’t big events, not like that one, but they’re persistent. More monsters are on the attack all the time, even when they oughta be sleeping, like now. We’ve never had so many fights during the winter.”

Evan knew that Chicago was surrounded by a moat and had a series of walls as well, with built-in gates to allow for access in and out. “Aerial attacks?” he guessed.

“And ground,” Darryl said, shuffling forward again. “The aerial stuff, yeah, we’ve been dealing with that since this damn city fell apart in the first place, but nothing was supposed to be able to tunnel. That’s how they got the eggs,” he added in a melancholy tone, glancing over at the eyrie building. “Something managed to tunnel so deep it got under the moat. That thing goes down over fifty feet—you want to tell me how a monster tunnels under that, through all the metal and concrete and centuries of shit people have buried here, and comes up right smack-dab in the middle of the eyrie? I thought the dragons were all going to go feral that day.”

Evan winced. “It must have been awful.”

“They were so loud,” the woman behind them said, not really looking at them as she brushed wispy brown curls back from her daughter’s forehead. “I still can’t get over how loud they all were. My ears rang so much afterward, I worried they might be permanently damaged.”

“Who was loud?” her little girl asked.

Her mother kissed her forehead. “It’s better that you don’t remember, honey.”

They moved a little further, and now Evan could smell the food: fresh-baked bread, something meaty like sausage, and it looked like there was a basket full of wrinkled winter apples set out on a table as well. “This is where they process food for the city,” Darryl said, waving at the partially destroyed building. “Not a whole lot to go around these days; keeping beasts out of the herds is a full-time job for our archers. You checked in with them yet?”

“Not yet,” Evan said.

“I’ll take you after breakfast. If you’re any good at all with that bow, I’m sure they could use you.”

Not that firing a bow was what Evan needed to be doing right now, given the state of his arm, but if it got him a chance to take a look at the city defenses and work with the people on the ground, then he’d do it. “That would be perfect.”

“My pleasure. Marlene!” His voice rose and took on a happy lilt as they reached the table where the food was being distributed. “You save me an extra sausage today?”

“You do anything deserving of an extra sausage lately?” Marlene shot back. She was a heavyset woman with muscles in her forearms that put Evan’s to shame, reddish-brown hair, and pale skin covered in freckles.

“I exist,” Darryl replied, spreading his arms grandly. “How’s that?”

“Mmm …” She looked him up and down. “Rather pathetic reasoning to my mind. Try again.”

“Pathe—are you kidding me? Trying to make me look bad in front of the children?” He looked back at the little girl, whose solemn face had brightened with a smile. “Don’t listen to her, kid, I’m flipping fantastic. You should see how fast I can run.”

“Running from trouble and not toward it, no doubt,” Marlene grumbled, but she had a bit of a smile on her face as well. “Now grab your roll and sausage and go, I’ve got half an hour before I need to start cooking for the lunch rush.”

“No extra sausage, no appreciation,” Darryl said with a sigh as he grabbed his food, then gestured for Evan to do the same. “It’s a hard world already, Marlene, why do you have to make it even harder?”

“Listen to you, bellyaching like you’re a child yourself.” Marlene turned her attention to Evan. “I’ve not seen you ’round here before.”

“First day,” Evan replied.

“Hmph. You come in with Ladon last night?”

Evan startled. “You know him?”

“Shit, man!” Darryl laughed. “We all know Ladon! He hasn’t been gone so long we wouldn’t remember a dragon like that! Best fighter we had, too. You came with him? What the hell?”

“Not with him,” Evan hurried to clarify, hoping he hadn’t already blown his cover. Seems like you’re not cut out for subterfuge. “I met him and his rider in the ruins about five miles east of here. They had to land because of the night ravens, and I was on the run from the hodags. They ended up escorting me in.”

“No shit.” Darryl clapped him on the back, and Evan stifled the whimper that tried to emerge from between his lips as his wound lit up with pain. “You’ve got to tell me all about his rider, man. Gotta be pretty special to steal our best dragon from us.”

“I—ah—”

A bell began to ring, reverberating along the entire street. Everyone who’d been milling about chatting while they ate either stuffed their food into their mouths in one go or forgot it completely in their haste to run due west. Darryl was one of the ones who crammed the food in, then gestured for Evan to do the same.

“G’n na ned ih,” he choked out around the enormous mouthful before setting off at a jog. Evan followed suit, swallowing the food down as fast as he could and chasing it with some water from his canteen as he followed Darryl.

“Where are we going?” he asked once Darryl was able to talk again.

“To the moat,” the other man said grimly. “That bell means somethin’ bigger than the normal crew can handle has been spotted. We’re going to have to fight.”

Shit. Evan wasn’t exactly in top form for a fight. Then again, there was no better way to make a friend than to fight beside him.

It’s probably a little sick that you believe that. That friendship was based in blood instead of something gentler was sad, but it was a basic fact of reality for Evan. “What sort of monster are we talking about?” he asked as they crossed the remains of a broad, six-laned street and headed for an earthen wall about twenty-five feet high.

“Could be anything,” Darryl replied, shaking his head. “We’ve gotten all kinds of bullshit here lately. Not the normal stuff, y’know—hodags are nasty, but they’ve always been a local specialty if you know what I mean. But the night ravens? The rougarous? Damn, we had a horde of kappas in the moat last week; where the hell did they come from?”

“It was the same for me, back home,” Evan mused, climbing the earthen bunker and freeing his bow from his back. He held it loosely, not wanting to strain himself drawing an arrow but not wanting to be caught unawares either. “We got attacked by monsters that we’d never seen before, in bigger numbers too.” They were actually several walls back from the moat, which gleamed in the distance under the pale morning sunlight.

“Nasty stuff,” Darryl said. “It’s a—”

“Tunnelers!” someone shouted. “Look for the holes where they push up! Don’t let the bastards work their way beneath the back wall; we don’t want to have to blow it to stop them!”

“Blow it?” Evan asked.

“Explosives buried at the base of the wall. Last resort. Motherfucking tunnelers,” Darryl said, clenching his machete tightly. All around them, fighters were getting into position, archers at the front. A few people had guns, but there was none of the heavy firepower that Forge boasted. “We never used to get tunnelers, never. Ground’s too fucked up here, dug to hell and back to put in all these buildings. Where are the fuckers, huh? Where are they …”

“There!” a woman ten feet further down the line shouted, pointing with her slender spear. “About twenty meters out!”

Sure enough, the ground was unsettled out where she was pointing, churning upward through a section of dirt interspersed between the concrete. A moment later, a beastly head burst through the hole, rows of teeth snapping at nothing as it abandoned its tunnel and moved to a land attack.

“What in the name of almighty fuckin’ God is that?” Darryl asked.

“It’s a leech,” Evan breathed, his shoulders relaxing just a bit. Not that leeches were a good thing to have tunneling into your fortifications, but at least this was a monster he recognized.

“Don’t bother going for the head unless you get a clear shot into the mouth!” he called out. A few people turned their heads toward him. “Their hides are too tough for all but the biggest blades,” he continued, “but they’re vulnerable right at the tip of the tail. Stab them there; they’ll curl up and try to protect it. That’s the best chance you’ll get to go right down their throats.” He put one foot on the front of the embankment, ready to run down it and out onto the field.

“Whoa, whoa!” Darryl grabbed his sleeve and held him back. “What the hell are you doing, Evan?”

“Going after them.” Obviously.

“Nah, not necessary!” He pointed up at the sky, a smile splitting his face. “We’ve got dragons incoming! They’ll handle these maggots.” Sure enough, two dragons circled above, one bright orange, the other a pale summer green. “Best not to get in their way when they start the light show, you hear me?”

Evan grimaced. “Fire isn’t a good option with this kind of monster. They can get underground faster than the flame can incinerate them. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

“So what, then?” someone else asked. “The dragons land and just crush them?”

Memories of Gorot bleeding from raw, round wounds in his lower flank floated across Evan’s mind. “No, dragons can’t handle them on the ground,” he insisted. “They’re not fast enough. Do you have a cavalry?”

Darryl made a face. “What, you think this is the nineteenth century, man? We don’t ride horses around here.”

“Shit.” Horses would have made this a lot easier. He glanced up, looking at the dragons circling lower. “Call them off,” he insisted. “Without horses, we’ll have to handle this on foot.”

“Too late!” Darryl crowed, throwing his head back with a laugh as the pale green dragon dove down. It opened its mouth, and a spark of fire the color of the sun flared at the back of its throat, becoming a jet of fire a moment later. It scoured the ground just meters in front of them, almost hot enough to hurt their skin. Evan threw his arm over his face to protect himself. When he finally opened his eyes, it was to cheers all along the makeshift wall.

“Burned to a crisp!” Darryl said proudly. “Look, you can’t even see it anymore.”

“That’s because it went underground,” Evan insisted.

“No, there’s no way it—”

A new hole appeared in the ground: no, two new holes. Leeches burst forth from them, one of them just barely singed, and they started to cross the ground at a surprising speed. The residual flames didn’t seem to bother them at all.

“What … the … hell?”

“I told you it wouldn’t work. Call off the dragons!” Evan shouted. The ground was still burning in places; would his boots hold up to the heat? “They’re just going to make it too hot for us to move out there!” He looked up desperately. The orange one was angling like it was about to come in for a pass.

Lee, Lee, I need Ladon! He couldn’t talk to Lee empathically, but he was doing his damndest to get his emotions across right now. We need a new strategy, this isn’t working! Ladon!

The orange dragon opened its mouth, fire beginning to swell at the back of its throat. It drew its head back—

Evan!

The roar of a dragon was something that after you heard it, you never forgot it. Every dragon’s roar was slightly different; to Evan, Ladon’s sounded like wind through a canyon, amplified by a thousand. Hearing it sent a thrill down his whole body, and the dragon who’d been about to strike pulled up abruptly as Ladon came into view.

Oh, thank god. Evan closed his eyes for a moment in sheer relief. Thank you. No one seems to know how to fight these creatures.

Tunnelers are a new phenomenon in Chicago, Ladon said. The sky was so blue today, and Ladon’s silver scales reflected that blue like a moving mirror. What do you want me to do?

Hold back for now. I need to see if there’s someone in charge down here who can—

“What were you saying about their tails?”

Evan turned to look at the newcomer beside him. He was a tall, rangy man, rawboned but with an intense, sharp-jawed face and expressive eyes under a heavy brow. “Their tails,” the man repeated impatiently, ignoring Darryl’s quick salute. “What’s vulnerable about them?”

“Damage to the very tip of them causes extreme pain,” Evan said. “It’s actually an orifice, so …”

“Wait, wait.” Darryl held up a hand. “Are you talking about stabbing these things up the ass? That’s where you’re going with this? You want us to take our knives and stab these scary motherfuckers up the—”

The new arrival shook his head. “No knives, we’ll need more distance. Polearms only, spears and halberds.”

“And archers,” Evan said.

The man frowned. “Too small a target.”

“It’s not for a really good archer.”

“And are you a really good archer?”

With his injury, Evan was probably no more than middling, but he couldn’t let that stop him now. “I am,” he said.

“Very well. You can demonstrate for us once we’re out on the field, then. Polearms, to the front!” he shouted, moving past them along the line of defenders. Darryl moved in close again and elbowed Evan in the side.

“Do you always show up with such a bang?” he asked incredulously. “New monsters, new fighting style … If this works, you’re going to impress Captain Zenal for sure.”

“That’s who that guy is?” Evan stared down the line past Darryl to watch the authoritative figure move on, calling out directions the whole way. “He’s going to burn his voice out at this rate.”

“He does pretty often. Takes him some time to recover, too, but then he’s right back out here shouting at us not to be fuckups.” Darryl grinned. “Zenal’s a good guy. He’s one of the only reasons this city is still standing, I reckon, but he doesn’t have time to suffer fools. If this shit doesn’t work …”

“It works,” Evan assured him. He heard a whistle sound, and then Captain Zenal shouted, “Archers, you’re distractions. Polearms, you work on flanking. There’s two of them out there, so don’t be caught between them, you hear me? Move out!”

A group of fifteen or so people carrying spears began descending the wall, and Evan went with them. He wasn’t going to waste time peppering the leeches’ heads with useless shots when he could be doing more damage from behind.

You realize I could cut these two in half with my sword in a second if I transform, yes?

Yes, but we don’t want to give away our connection, Evan reminded Ladon as he stepped down onto the still-steaming ground. The leeches were closing the distance fast, given how awkwardly they moved. Evan began to run in a semicircle around the monster on the right. I’m already being noticed for my newness. If you step in now, right after you swooped in to keep the other dragon from wasting more fire, someone could start putting things together. He pulled an arrow free of his quiver and nocked it as he ran. I’ll be all right.

Don’t hurt yourself. Let the spearmen take care of it.

I have to put on a bit of a show. He felt Ladon’s discontent with that. I’ll be as careful as possible, I promise.

You’d better be. Ladon swooped by overhead, roaring again, and the leeches actually stopped in their tracks and quivered. Dragons inspired more than awe, it seemed—this one inspired paralyzing fear in the beasts that were his prey. Evan took advantage of their slowdown to run a little harder. He was almost there.

Archers fired arrows at the leeches’ heads, but they were next to useless even as distractions. The arrows simply didn’t penetrate, and the few people with guns who decided to try their luck got the same result. When the first spear-wielder, a woman whose weapon was longer than her, reached the leech on the left and stuck it straight through the tip of the tail—now that was a dramatic result. The leech coiled up like a piece of hair that had caught fire, twisting itself around desperately to defend its tail. It writhed so hard that the woman lost her grip on her weapon, but others were there to take over, stabbing in again and again, darting back and dodging the leech’s clumsy attacks as they got it firmly on the defensive.

The one on the right, having heard the other’s cries, had stopped moving forward and took a defensive posture, curling its tail up against the bulk of its body and baring its horrendous rows of teeth at anyone who came too close. The spearmen tried their luck against its bulky figure, but none of the tips penetrated more than a centimeter, and those who tried lost their weapons more often than not.

“Clear a sightline!” Evan called out. He got down onto one knee, not trusting his legs to hold him as steady as he needed to be right now. Using his knee to brace his elbow, he was able to draw slowly, carefully, getting sight of the tip of the tail—or as close as he could see—and finally, blessedly, fired a clean shot.

It wasn’t quite far enough down the tail to cause major trauma, but it stuck and definitely made the leech angry. The creature bellowed, opening its mouth wide, and Evan tried to nock another arrow fast enough to take advantage of the chance to kill it, but by the time he’d pulled it free, the leech had closed its mouth.

Fuck!

Evan?

Nothing, just missed an opportunity to end this early.

I could grab it, Ladon suggested. Carry it up and drop it from a thousand feet high.

It was tempting, but … These people need a win, Evan thought to him with a grimace. They need one badly. Morale seems to be low, and the only leader I’ve met so far is clearly overworked. The other leech is on its last paces; he could tell that much. Give us a little longer to figure it ou—shit! Evan pressed to his feet in a hurry and started to backpedal as the leech’s flailing rolls brought it closer to him.

Evan …

Spearmen were taking their strikes, but no one could pin down the bloody tail, oozing blood from the wound Evan’s arrow had made in it. The leech got closer and closer, its horrible mouth snapping at spears, arrows, and anything else that it caught sight of. Evan nocked his next arrow and raised it into a firing position, sighting down it toward the leech’s mouth. He needed a chance, just one more chance … The nearer it came, the better his odds were.

Evan, you need to move.

I will in a moment, just one more moment. He could almost see right down into its guts. Just a little closer, a little closer …

EVAN!

Evan fired. A second later, the bellow of a dragon roared so close by it made his head hurt, and a second after that, a pair of strong arms wrapped around his midsection and pulled him away, breaking his all-consuming focus. He was suddenly aware of the stench in the air, the miasma of decay and death that was coming from the leech’s gaping maw. It was choking up gouts of purplish blood from the back of its throat where Evan’s arrow had stuck. As he watched, it rolled right over the spot where he’d been standing just moments ago.

Spearmen ran in to finish the job, but the leech had already lost so much blood it was essentially finished. It quivered, groaned once as a particularly strong attacker managed to get his spear a few inches into the lower half of its tail, then died. Its mouth gaped open again, a purple film coating every one of its jagged teeth.

The other one must have been killed shortly thereafter, judging from the cheers, but Evan was suddenly acutely aware of the fresh roar above him, the fear crowding the edges of his mind, and the iron grip someone had around his midsection. “I’m all right,” he said out loud, then projected at Ladon, I’m all right, sweetheart. It’s down.

The roar cut off, and Ladon slowly swung around, making some space between himself and the defenders before he began to flap his wings and stir up dust on the ground.

Good work, my love. I’ll let Vincent know.

Evan smiled. Asking you for status updates already? Where is his dragon, by the way?

He is, and his dragon is … out. That’s the best Vincent could tell me. You’re about to be distracted, darling. The panic was gone now, a hint of amusement taking its place. We’ll talk when you return. Be careful with your arm.

I will. Evan felt the arms around his waist disengage and turned around to take a look at his rescuer. Dark eyes inspected him, and Captain Zenal’s sharp jaw tightened for a moment before he said, “That was reckless.”

“I know. Thanks for the assist.”

“I’d prefer it wasn’t necessary in the first place, but”—Zenal leaned back on his hands and looked at the leech’s corpse with a hint of admiration in his eyes—“I can’t argue with the results. You’ve tangled with these before?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Further west,” was all Evan wanted to say right now.

“Hmm.” Zenal’s eyes seemed to pierce right through him. “I’d like to ask you some questions about—”

“Damn, man!” Darryl descended on Evan, swearing up a storm even as he pulled him to his feet and hugged him. The interruption was perfectly timed. “That worked like a fuckin’ charm, except for the part where you almost ended up pancaked on the concrete.”

“I couldn’t get to her tail,” he said in a slightly apologetic tone.

“That’s nothing to be sorry about. I was sitting up on the wall with my machete, I’ve got nothing to say to you about how you did your damn job. Cap!” He turned to Zenal, who’d also gotten to his feet. “We need to put this man to work out here if he’s gonna keep saving our asses like that.”

“I agree,” Zenal said. “That’s why I’d like to talk to you about—”

“Captain!” a voice called out from further down the inner embankments. “Three more coming up outside the north wall! One hundred meters!”

“On my way!” he shouted hoarsely, then looked at Evan and grinned. The grin transformed his face from something forbidding, even harsh, into someone surprisingly handsome. “Let’s see if I can replicate your success on the north wall.”

“Do you want us to come with?” Evan asked.

“No, stay here. Darryl, bring your crew out to process the corpses. Evan, you get back on the wall and scout for them to make sure they don’t get surprised by any new leeches.”

“Gotcha,” Darryl said and tossed off a sloppy salute. Evan just nodded, which seemed to satisfy the captain, who turned and began to run toward the next section of defenders.

“You heard the man.” Darryl grinned and jerked his chin toward the wall. “You’ve been conscripted. Hope you didn’t have any other plans for the day.”

“Nothing that can’t wait,” Evan replied. “I’ll go keep a lookout.”

“Thanks. Grainger! Perkins! Tommy, where you at? We’ve got work to do!” Darryl headed off to get his team together, and Evan retreated to the wall. People he didn’t know, people he’d never met before, offered him congratulations along the way, slapping his back when he couldn’t avoid it, some of them shaking his hand. It was the exact opposite of how he’d been greeted in Forge all those years ago, when he’d been young and damaged and alone for the first time in his life. There, he’d been regarded as a broken empath, one step above useless due to the fact that he was also a blacksmith. Here, all it took was one little battle, and he was accepted in a way that he never would have been back home without Ladon.

I think if things had turned out differently, Evan thought to Ladon as he climbed back up to the top of the wall and took a lookout position, I would have enjoyed living in Chicago.

They’d nearly made that decision before Jason met baby dragon Rayan: to leave Forge behind and relocate to Chicago, where Jason would have more opportunities to find a dragon ready to bond. Winona’s news had changed all of that, of course, but …

It has its charms, Ladon agreed. I certainly enjoyed my life here before Valorie’s death. I have to become Lee again now, darling. Their empathic bond would be less crisp and clear once he was.

I understand. I’ll head up as soon as I can get away without causing a scene.

There’s no rush.

No rush. That was good, Evan mused as he settled into his place, scanning both ground and air for signs of movement as Darryl and his team began the process of moving the heavy carcasses somewhere out of the way. He was in no hurry to hide himself away after the excitement of the morning.

No hurry at all.

Chapter Four

The city was abuzz with word of the successful defense that morning. Apparently, it was a rare day that didn’t end in some sort of tragedy: either the loss of a person, valuable livestock, or more desperately, a dragon taking damage. But this day, at least, there were no more attacks. Evan had to fend off several offers of dinner, more offers of places to stay, and he only slipped away once it was becoming dark. By then, he’d realized a number of valuable things about Chicago.

First: the people here were utterly beleaguered. They had faced so many challenges over the past few years—challenges that had often tested them past bearing—that their will to fight and, more importantly, to be creative about it, was low.

Second: the city itself had shrunk dramatically since their difficulties began, in just two years down to half the size it used to be. They had lost defenders and dragons enough that even holding on to the territory they still maintained was hard, and they were losing more ground by the day.

Third: they depended too much on their dragons. When they began to lose them, all of the power and might of Chicago was brought low, throwing the city into a state of chaos that had lasted until a few people forced changes that slowly began to turn things around.

One of those people was Captain Zenal, who’d moved from a suburb to the main city of Chicago a few years ago after his hometown was destroyed by monsters. He came with experience as a human fighter, relying on human abilities with no dragon assistance. The other great help?

Vincent Clark. Until he’d bonded with Graeve, he’d been something of a nonentity in the city, important by way of his family but not so much in and of himself. Since bonding with the feral dragon, he’d become a power player. Graeve was ferocious, daring in a way that the other dragons of Chicago weren’t—how could they be, when they had to be so careful with themselves just so they could last another day? But Graeve, as Darryl had succinctly put it, “Doesn’t give a shit about himself if it means taking out a monster.”

“Have you learned anything new about Graeve?” Evan asked that night as he and Lee shared dinner on the bed in their private rooms. Lee had successfully put off any attempts by Chicago’s ruling council to look in on Evan, at least for today. He, in turn, had been reacquainting himself with the leaders of the city and the remaining dragons, and he’d had a tour of the eyrie.

“He doesn’t live here,” Lee replied after taking a sip of his tea. “No one knows exactly where he does live, but no one’s ever tried to stop him from going either. Vincent won’t let them. He says if they try to contain Graeve in any way, the dragon will just leave them all, and they can’t afford to let that happen right now. Vincent least of all.”

“Is he really worried about that? You said they were bonded.” Evan had never heard of a dragon who could simply choose to leave his rider or vice versa. They were fated to work together, live together, to be together until death separated them.

“Apparently their bond is very …” Lee frowned down at the plate on the bed between them. “Tenuous. If multiple people hadn’t told me that Vincent was bonded, I wouldn’t have believed it. He never behaves as though he’s communicating with his dragon, never even speaks about him unless asked a direct question.”

“How on earth did they even bond in the first place?”

Lee shrugged. “Vincent described it as random chance. He was alone on top of the Tower, Graeve found him there and proposed this union, and they bonded. That was that. Graeve has acted as a part-time protector of Chicago ever since, and Vincent has gained a certain level of prestige as a result. I’m pleased to see that he’s trying to do good with it.”

Evan smirked. “You sound surprised.”

“It’s no secret that I was never my brother-in-law’s greatest fan,” Lee replied. “And the feeling is mutual ever since I declined to transfer my bond to him. But Vincent is taking steps to ensure that the people of Chicago are protected, he’s coming up with reasonable rotations for the dragons and riders who remain here, he’s evaluating proposals for improved defenses for the city … not that they’re needed, it seems, when they have you around.”

Evan sensed a hint of censure in his lover’s tone. “I had to help them with the leeches! I was the only person down there who was familiar with them.”

“Did you also have to charge out onto the field and strain every stitch in your arm shooting one of them in the mouth?”

“It was the fastest way to make sure it went down.” Evan set his knife and fork aside and reached for one of Lee’s hands. “You know I don’t take my safety lightly. I truly don’t. I want to be with you and Jason for as long as possible, but I can’t stand aside and let people get hurt when my actions could prevent that. I just can’t do it.”

“I know.” Lee stared down at their joined hands, pale hair framing his solemn face. “I can’t ask you to be someone you’re not, and I know our task here will be easier if we keep our connection a secret, so I can’t charge in every time. I just want you to take every precaution possible because if something happens to you here, then monsters will cease to be Chicago’s problem.”

“Because you’ll destroy them all?” Evan asked archly, trying to lighten the mood. “Like an avenging angel?”

“For starters,” Lee agreed, not smiling back. “And then, if I’ve completely lost my mind at that point, I might move on to destroying the city itself.”

The words broke over Evan like an icy wave. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said as confidently as he could. “That’s not who you are.”

“Not in Forge,” Lee said, looking up now. His eyes glowed ever so faintly. “Not when I have Jason nearby to call me back to myself. But here?” He sighed. “There’s a monster inside every dragon, and it’s been a long time since I set mine free.”

Evan couldn’t even comprehend a time when Ladon had been anything other than the consummate protector he’d always known. He could see that Lee was very serious about this, though. “I guess there’s a lot I still don’t know about you,” he said.

“There’s a lot I don’t remember about myself.” Lee looked back down at their hands. “I don’t remember anything about my life before I settled in Chicago. What did I do before that? Did I come through the rifts in the beginning, or was I born here? Am I the only one left of my kind? Will Jason end up like me, or will he stay human? I just don’t know.” He shrugged despondently. “I wish I did, for his sake if nothing else, but perhaps it’s a blessing that my mind won’t look that far back.”

“Do you think your subconscious might be protecting you from something?” Evan asked, his anxiety rising. “Something dangerous in your past?”

“Perhaps. It doesn’t really matter,” Lee said, firmer now. “I’m happy with my life. I have everything I need, and the reason we’re here is so we can figure out how to secure our future, not muse about my past. Now. How do you feel about playing sick while I talk with Vincent in the other room?” Lee rolled his eyes, something Evan was pretty sure he’d picked up from Jason. “He’s been very insistent on seeing you for himself, and I think it would do you some good to see and hear him, so that you can identify him quickly if you happen to cross paths on the ground.”

Evan chuckled. “He doesn’t believe I exist, does he?”

“Oh, he would never call his grandfather or me liars. To our faces at least,” Lee replied. “But I would appreciate your help in assuaging his curiosity, if only to make it easier to turn him away at the door after this.”

“That’s fine.” He was a little curious about Lee’s brother-in-law himself. It wouldn’t hurt to let him get a glimpse of Evan “sleeping” if it meant settling some of his own questions. “If you change my bandage first, I’ll even be convincingly pale.”

“Evan.”

“It’s really not that bad,” he said, pushing his plate away and leaning in to cup Lee’s face. Lee used his free hand to pull Evan closer, so close that they ought to have been off-balance, falling back onto the surface of the bed, but Lee was rock-solid. It was a little reminder that his lover was other than human, and that might have bothered some people, but for Evan it was a comfort.

Lee was better than he knew. Even if—when—the worst happened, Lee would be all right. He would survive and eventually thrive again; he wouldn’t turn his back on humanity and become a monster. He had lived through the worst once already when Valorie died. He would manage it again.

“Whatever painfully melancholy thing you’re thinking,” Lee murmured, tilting his face up close to Evan’s, “please stop unless you want me to undress you and remind you of the happiness you deserve.”

“The happiness of being naked beneath you?” Evan asked, a little breathless.

“For starters.” They shared a kiss that went from chaste to consuming in moments. Evan twined his good arm around Lee’s shoulder, pulling him tighter, ready to suggest that perhaps they should do that even though he wasn’t sad any longer, when—

Knock, knock.

Evan pulled back in alarm. “Is that him?” he hissed quietly. The knock was coming from outside the suite’s door, an empty room’s distance away, but it was still alarming.

Lee nodded resignedly. “He must have gotten tired of waiting for an answer from me.”

“Rude piece of—” Evan bit his frustration back and got off Lee’s lap with a sigh. “All right, I’ll get under the covers and look sweaty and pathetic; you feed him some lines and then chat him up in the next room.”

“I’ll do my best.” Lee collected their plates while Evan mussed his own hair, then lay down facing away, careful to keep his bandaged shoulder in plain view. The cloth was fairly messy this late in the day, especially after how he’d strained his wound earlier. Let him see it, he thought as he calmed his breathing, let him think I’ve got an infection or a fever. Then let him go the hell away.

“Ready?” Lee asked just as another knock sounded against the door. This one was accompanied by a low voice calling out, “Lee? Is this a bad time?”

“As if he cares,” Evan grumbled. “Yes, I’m ready.”

“Good.” Lee kissed the top of his rumpled head, then walked out of the bedroom with the plates and glasses. Evan heard him set them down on the table before going and unlocking the suite’s door. “Good evening, Vincent,” he said softly. “I would appreciate it if you’d be quiet. Evan just fell asleep, and he needs all the rest he can get.”

“Do you want me to go get Grandpa Joe?” the man asked. He had a nice voice, smooth and well-modulated. It was the kind of tone Evan was used to hearing come out of politicians like Governor Townsend and his staff: people who needed to put on a calm, controlled front at all times, especially when they were being asked uncomfortable questions.

“Thank you, but that’s not necessary. He’ll be here soon to help me change the bandages.”

“Mmm. Do you mind if I …” There was a pause that Evan assumed was filled with a physical cue of some kind, maybe Vincent flapping a hand at the bedroom door.

“Not at all, but please, quietly.”

Evan could barely hear the man’s footsteps as he drew up to the bedroom door and peered inside, but he felt the weight of Vincent’s regard like an actual hand pressing down on him. It was strangely intense, almost oppressive, and he couldn’t help shifting restlessly after a few moments.

“Let’s leave him be,” Lee said in a gentle voice. “We can speak in the living room. Evan won’t wake up.”

“He looks like he’s in bad shape,” Vincent murmured, closing the door until there was only a thin crack letting in light from the other room. “Are you sure he shouldn’t be in the clinic?”

“I prefer to keep him where I have more control of the situation.”

“Why? What are you afraid of?” There was a subtle air of offense to Vincent’s words. As quietly as he could, Evan slipped out from under the blanket and padded over to the crack in the door, hoping to get a look at the man. Curiosity went both ways after all.

“You know perfectly well what I’m afraid of,” Lee replied.

“No, you were there when Valorie died. This isn’t trauma from not being present for your last rider’s death, this is something else. Do you not trust us?”

“Vincent …” Lee sounded tired already, like they were on the cusp of rehashing a very old argument. Evan focused on him first, the tightness of his jaw and slight lowering of his eyebrows, before looking for Vincent.

“You don’t, do you?” Vincent moved forward, and—ah. There he was.

He was bigger than Evan had anticipated, with broad shoulders and a strong, blockish body. He wore nice jeans—really nice, no holes or wear spots in them at all, the dark-blue fabric completely unmarred—and a long-sleeved, red Henley that looked comfortable on him. He had a silver chain around his neck, connected to something that rested beneath his shirt. He was handsome, and there was something in the curve of his ear and the line of his mouth that reminded Evan of Jason.

If only the sour look on his face didn’t completely spoil the comparison.

“I don’t know what you think is going on here, but whatever it is, you’re wrong. We hit a rough patch, it’s true, but Chicago is doing better all the time. With Graeve to help us, we’ll overcome the challenges of the past few years and come back better than ever.”

“I’ve heard differently,” Lee said.

“From whom, Winona Hallows?” Vincent scoffed. “She was the very image of a disgruntled employee when she lived here, complaining about everything left, right, and center. She was too young for the responsibility of being a rider, and it showed, especially when she lost her dragon.”

Lee frowned. “Vincent—”

“And that’s a tragedy,” Vincent pushed on, ignoring Lee’s warning tone. “I understand that. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t feel my sister’s loss every day? But it was different with you and Valorie. Winona was reckless with her own life, and that got her dragon killed saving her.”

Evan shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t know the details of how Winona’s dragon had died—she’d never shared with him or Lee as far as he knew—but if this was the case … well, maybe he had more in common with her than he liked. His first dragon, Jurie, had saved him in exactly the same way, and the guilt had almost been more than he could bear.

Soothing affection came over his bond with Lee—and not a little bit of anger as well—although Evan knew that part wasn’t directed at him.

“You lost their eggs.” Lee’s voice was as cold as the snow outside. “Entire clutches were swiped right out from under your noses. Especially once their parents were gone, those eggs should have been your first priority. How are you going to come back better than ever when you have no new generation of hatchlings to raise up?”

“How could we foresee that a monster would manage to dig underneath the eyrie right into the hatchery?” Vincent demanded. “You’re putting too much blame on us. We’re not psychic, Lee.”

“You have no compunction about blaming a rider for her dragon’s death, but you balk at shouldering responsibility for unhatched dragonlings who had no means of defending themselves?” Lee rejoined.

Vincent sighed. “I shouldn’t have expected this to go any better than it is. You’ve never, never understood what I’m trying to do here.”

“I still don’t.” Lee obviously made an effort to soften his voice. “But I’m listening. I’m trying. What is it that I don’t understand? How are you going to rebuild when you lack what you need to create a solid foundation of a future here?”

“Chicago is a city with a special destiny,” Vincent said. Evan watched his face as he spoke; his eyes were bright, his brow clear. He was definitely invested in what he was saying. “It’s already risen out of the ashes twice: first after the Great Fire, then again when it collapsed after the rifts first opened. It will rise again, only this time it will be a mobile authority. Chicago won’t just squat here on the edges of the wild, a bastion of safety only for those who can reach it. It will spread out, grow, become a leader and a power from coast to coast. Under our guidance, new cities will rise, and trade routes will be monitored and protected between them.

“People will be able to move again, Lee, to see the world again instead of being locked into their own little corner of it. I believe that a dragon can bond with a place, not just a singular person, and when they do, they’ll work to protect that entire place to the best of their ability.”

“You want dragons … not to have riders?” Lee asked, so quiet Evan almost didn’t hear him. Vincent clearly did, though, if the way his tone went from excited to lecturing was any indication.

“I want them to escape from the constraints of one person’s expectations, one person’s life. The world is so much bigger than that. Why should only one person benefit from their care when hundreds, thousands could be saved by them. Look at you.” Vincent stepped forward and set his hands on Lee’s shoulders. “You were loved here, you and Jason both. People adored you, this was your home, and you just … just threw that all away when you ran off to Forge. If you had been able to broaden your mind, perhaps Chicago wouldn’t have crept so close to the edge of ruin.”

So it’s Lee’s fault that Chicago is falling the fuck apart? Evan was one scant breath from storming out there and giving this asshole a piece of his mind, but Lee’s emotions seemed stable. Not happy but stable, and Evan didn’t want to give the ploy up if he didn’t have to. It was hard, though, to listen to this man who ought to be kind to Lee blame him for all his city’s problems instead.

“You really believe that’s possible. For a dragon to dedicate themselves to a specific place and tend to it with the same devotion they do an empathic bond with a single person.”

“I do,” Vincent said firmly.

“Because that’s what your dragon is doing?” Lee guessed.

“Not … exactly, but what Graeve and I have is a start.” Vincent’s voice lowered. “You could be the next step in this grand experiment, Lee. I know you could. Isn’t it worth a try if it means so many more people surviving who would otherwise die without the care of a dragon?”

“By doing what?”

“Try to expand the bond. Give yourself more than one person to rely on, to get that empathic connection with. You’ve already done that in a way, haven’t you? With Jason.” Vincent’s voice grew stronger. “He kept you going after you lost Valorie, I know he did. Imagine how much easier it would have been to bear her loss if you’d shared connections with a dozen people or even more. Isn’t it worth a try? You can try now, perhaps expand your bond to … me.”

He wants two dragons bonded to him?

Evan could hardly believe what he was hearing. On the surface, it made some sense to suggest that dragons could do better than rely on a single person for their emotional stability, but a hundred years of experience seemed to indicate that it just didn’t work that way. There were other ways to connect a dragon to a particular city, and their families were one of them. Family was all that kept some dragons alive after their people died and vice versa. If Vincent was serious about turning Chicago into a center for security across the land, then they should have watched over those eggs nonstop and defended them with everything they had.

“I didn’t leave Chicago because I feel no love for this place,” Lee said, slow and kind, like he was explaining a particularly challenging concept to his son. “I did then, and I still do. That love wasn’t enough, though. I needed a more stable bond to a person who wasn’t my son to make sure I didn’t end up leaving him too soon.”

“You are a slave to a concept, but that concept doesn’t have to be reality,” Vincent argued. “Isn’t it worth trying? It doesn’t have to be with me,” he said although it was clear that he desperately wanted it to be, “but I think it’s worth making a sincere attempt to expand your ability to bond. Think of the opportunities for both our peoples if you do.”

Lee hummed, then said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to tend to Evan’s wounds now.”

There was a moment of silence before Vincent said, “Of course, I understand. I would never—I’m not telling you to leave him in any way, you understand? I’m not trying to diminish what you have with him. I’m just saying, you have so much more to give. I wish you could see it the way Graeve and I do.”

“Thank you for sharing your insights. I promise to consider them very seriously.” There was the sound of the outer door opening, a low whisper that Evan couldn’t hear, and then the door closing again. A few seconds later, the bedroom door opened, revealing Lee standing there alone.

“What did he—” That was all Evan had time to get out before he was wrapped up in Lee’s arms and kissed to within an inch of his life. He couldn’t think, could barely breathe, was consumed body and mind and soul by his lover, the man and the dragon and the warrior in-between them.

Love and need flared within him, like his body was a forest catching fire, and Evan moaned as Lee walked him back to the bed and laid him down, pressing him into the mattress and holding him there while he ravaged him, kissing him with a desperate passion that made Evan’s heart surge in his chest.

They were both hard in seconds, and when Lee thrust down, Evan wrapped his legs around Lee’s hips and pulled him in tighter. Lee made to keep moving, but Evan shook his head. “Fuck me.” It wasn’t something they did very often—it was too easy to be interrupted back home, and there were so many other ways to take pleasure in each other—but he wanted it now. He wanted to feel joined, possessed, consumed by his dragon.

Lee didn’t ask if he was sure, didn’t ask about his shoulder or his pain or any of the things he would normally concern himself with. He stood back just long enough to strip and grab the oil they’d brought in Evan’s medical kit, then joined him back on the bed and pulled Evan’s trousers off and threw them into a distant corner. Fingers slicked, he found Evan’s entrance and rubbed him there until the oil warmed, then slid one finger inside of him.

It wasn’t easy—it never was—Evan always got too caught up in the sensation to relax all the way. He loved being touched like this, though, taken in such a private, intimate way by the one person in all the world he could trust to never hurt him.

“You’re mine,” Lee said, staring down at Evan with fire in his eyes. Evan could see the edges of his armor appear and disappear, like it was taking all the focus he had not to slip into his warrior self, and it only made him want Lee more.

“I am.” A second finger slid inside him, and Evan moaned. “I am, just yours.”

“Just mine.” A third finger joined the others, almost too fast but not quite, and after another minute, Lee was taking their place, smoothing oil over himself before he lined up and pressed inside Evan’s body.

Evan gasped and clung to him, staring up at the ceiling as his mind threatened to leak out of his ears. He was still tight, but not so much that being penetrated caused him pain. It was more that it heightened his awareness, making him feel every inch of Lee that entered him—and there were a lot of inches. And all Evan could do was lie back and enjoy it, feel everything and let it happen, let Lee take care of him and show him how much he wanted him, how much he loved him.

God, did he ever.

“I would be inside you all of the time if I could,” Lee confessed in a hard voice as he began to move, pulling back and pressing inside again with a slow, steady rhythm. “Every time I’m with you, it gets better. I love feeling you around me, looking at you and knowing that in this moment, I’m your entire world. I love touching you like this.”

He wrapped a hand around Evan’s cock, and Evan shut his eyes and groaned, helpless against the rising pleasure inside of him. He was already on the verge of coming. “Do it,” Lee goaded him. “Give yourself that, and then give yourself to me. Stay here with me, let me have you, let me fuck you and love you and make you mine …”

“Fuck,” Evan bit out through gritted teeth, coming across his own stomach and Lee’s hand. The pleasure of it practically blinded him, made everything brighter and more brilliant, and coming down from it was just this side of painful now that his body was so sensitive. Lee didn’t stop fucking him, though, and Evan didn’t ask him to.

“This is the heart of a dragon,” Lee murmured, leaning in close and biting Evan’s chin, then his lips, then the curve of his jaw as he thrust harder and faster. “Possession. We love fiercely and possessively. Only the best of us can share our hearts, and I’m not the best of us, Evan, because you’re my heart, and I can’t share you. I won’t.”

“I know,” Evan breathed, sheer overwhelming sensation finally starting to transform back into a slow, pleasurable build. “I don’t want you to,” he confessed, and that was all it took for Lee to bite his own lip hard enough to draw blood as he hammered his cock into Evan until he came with a hiss, orange eyes closing in ecstasy.

He pulled out, and Evan reached for him, then jerked in surprise as Lee kept moving down until he was crouched on the bed between Evan’s thighs, sliding three fingers back inside him and keeping the pleasure going. “Once more,” Lee said, then sucked Evan’s cock into his mouth.

“Oh, oh, you … fuck, god, Lee.” Evan was torn between wanting to beg him to stop and pleading with him to continue, but in the end he was too breathless to do anything more than let his lover work him over until he came for a second time, wrung out like an old rag by the end of it. He was barely aware of the cleanup, even less aware of Lee changing the bandages on his arm and shoulder, and completely unconscious by the time Lee settled into bed with him.

He didn’t need to be conscious to know that he was safe, though. Lee was there, watching over him, guarding his heart.

Evan slept as soundly as a child.

Chapter Five

“Light the torches!” Captain Zenal called. Wearily, a row of defenders passed a flame along the low wall of Chicago’s fourth line of defense. It was a gamble, throwing off their night vision and giving them relatively little to see with in return, but the sky was already thick with falling snow—there would be no moonlight tonight. At least with the torches so close, the chimera would think twice about attacking. They feared fire, whereas the snow was nothing to them. With their thick, heavily furred bodies and leonine manes, Evan could see why.

“Chi-fucking-meras,” Darryl spat, rubbing his hands together. He’d traded out his machete for a spear, and there was already blood freezing on the top of it after the pride’s first foray had brought them all the way into the last wall. How they’d made it past the moat, no one seemed sure, but it was clear that what had once been a highly effective means of holding back monsters simply wasn’t doing it anymore. “Since when do these things travel in packs? They’re s’posed to have a hard time getting along with themselves, much less each other.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Evan agreed, scanning the windswept space between there and the water for signs of movement. It paid to be vigilant. At least two defenders had already been injured by night raven attacks before the dragons were mobilized to deal with them. They flew overhead, harrying the nachtkrapp as best they could, and Ladon flew with them.

Not Graeve, though. He hadn’t shown up to take part in defending the city since Evan and Lee had arrived. Apparently, Vincent had insisted it was because he was working in other areas nearby. But Evan thought the situation was bad enough that if Graeve didn’t commit to keeping Chicago going, there wouldn’t be any need to pacify monsters nearby because every person who might want to live in Chicago would be dead already.

The people who fought to defend Chicago were split in their opinions of the dragon. Some of them thought any help was good; others argued that if they couldn’t rely on Graeve, then it would be better not to have him at all. Darryl was one of those people.

“It just makes for double the stress,” he had said earlier while he and Evan warmed their hands over one of the bonfires going just behind the wall. “You think he’s gonna show up and he doesn’t, then you’re trying to ramp yourself up to do the work you could have been prepping for earlier. You don’t expect him to show up and he does, then you’ve wasted effort. It fucking sucks. Clark needs to have a come-to-Jesus talk with his dragon.”

Evan was about to ask what a Jesus was when Zenal called out, “They’re coming in! Spears and arrows at the ready!”

Were they? Evan peered out into the snow, looking for any strange movement, and saw nothing. Nothing but—ah. It went from being a mere shadow to a bounding fury in seconds, all three of its heads—lion, goat, and snake—hissing as it leapt up the wall in no time. Evan got one arrow off, but it went wide, and a moment later the chimera was at the top of the wall.

The spear wielders stepped forward, five of them stabbing in at once, but only two of the spears made contact. This creature was fast, and from the sound of the screams, the others in the pride were striking now as well. Evan threw his bow aside and pulled his knife, but he already knew it would be little better than suicide to step in right now.

Evan?

We’re outmatched down here, he thought grimly as Darryl almost lost his grip on his spear to a swipe from one of the chimera’s massive paws. We need reinforcements.

Dragonfire?

It stands as good a chance of burning us as it does the chimera. We need— He was about to say “We need you and your sword” when a bolt of what looked like actual lightning arced through the snow, hitting the chimera in the center of its broad chest. The monster staggered under the assault, and a second later, a spear went right through its eye.

“Hell yeah!” Darryl yelled, punching the air with one fist. “That’s what I like to see! Fire up the Zeus!”

“What the hell was that?” Evan shouted. Darryl didn’t have time to answer, but a second later, Captain Zenal pushed in between them, holding something that looked vaguely like a gun, with a curving metallic bell in the very front and a cord attached to the back of it that descended to the other side of the wall.

Evan?

Hang on, we’re getting an … assist. As he watched, Zenal pressed a button that released another bolt of lightning into the middle of the staggering beast. It opened its mouth to roar, but no sound came out, and a second later it thudded down onto the ground, motionless except for the twitching of its serpentine tail.

“I’ve got to get the other Zeus set up,” Zenal muttered as he stared at the monster’s corpse, then thrust the weapon at Evan. “Take this.” Evan hastily put his knife away and took the lightning gun, which wasn’t as heavy as he thought it would be. “This is the trigger. This line of lights on the side indicates when the capacitor is charged enough to fire. It has to be at least in the amber range, all right? Any less than that won’t get you a bolt, and you’re not going to be at killing power until the lights are green.”

“I—what is this?”

“Exactly what it looks like. Don’t pull the cord out.” He gestured at the back of the weapon. “It’s attached to one of our last working car batteries. You’re not going to be able to go more than a few meters in either direction if you want this to keep working.”

“All right, but—”

Zenal grabbed his shoulder—his bad one, fuck it, that hurt—and pointed him back toward the snow. “Incoming! Fire!”

Evan reacted on instinct, firing a crackling white bolt into the swirling snow. A charging chimera with black-tipped fur that he’d barely seen went down with a snarl ten feet away. “Spears!” Zenal called out, and three of the defenders who’d held back the last chimera went down to finish this one off.

Holy shit. Was this how Lee felt when he was in his warrior form? Or Jason, when he threw power that was fierce enough to cut a tatzelwurm in half? Zenal’s strong hand turned him back to face him, and the taller man smiled at Evan. “You’ll do. Keep up the fire.” He vanished down the other side of the wall, and Evan just barely got it together in time to dodge Darryl’s celebratory backslap.

“They haven’t pulled the Zeuses out in over a year!” he said with a grin. “I thought the batteries were dead, to be honest. There’s plenty of fights where we could have used these, but I guess Zenal thought now was the time.”

“Why is it called a—” Evan’s attention was grabbed a second later, and he fired over the heads of the defenders who were just finishing off the second chimera. He heard a triple shriek and knew the shot he’d just sent out there wasn’t enough. “Get back up here!” he called to them. The fight wasn’t over yet.

Not only was it not over, but it also seemed for a time that even with the help of the lightning gun, they might not win this. The chimera just kept coming, and Evan killed another two in the next fifteen minutes, but he also lost three defenders to brutal scratches and bites, one whose injuries might be fatal. He wanted to call Ladon down, but he could also feel the furious fight that his bonded was waging in the air, feel the phantom blows of the night ravens as they struck with their talons and beaks again and again, doing their damndest to rip through the thinner skin of Ladon’s wings. If Evan had been on his dragon’s back, he would have been torn out of the saddle by now.

No, Ladon was needed where he was. Evan had to figure out a way to handle things on his own down there.

It was no use trying to hide his thoughts from his dragon, though. You need help.

Finish your fight first.

There is no end in sight to this battle. I’ll come to you. Let me just—

An immense shadow suddenly descended on the field in front of the wall, turning blowing snow into stinging ice with the force of its wingbeats. A second later, Darryl whooped again.

“Fuck yeah! Finally!” He laughed and pumped a fist in the air. “That’s Graeve, man. That’s Graeve!”

Evan couldn’t see the dragon clearly with all the snow, but he could hear it stalking the remaining chimera, hear their squeals and screams as the dragon caught them in his claws and teeth. It was dangerous for a dragon to be on the ground alone, though. Is Vincent riding Graeve?

No, Vincent is on top of the Tower. I can see him with the rest of the council.

Then Graeve could be in trouble down here. He’s fighting chimeras in the dark; they could— The next roar sounded like a dragon, both angry and pained. He’s in trouble. I’ve got to help.

Be careful!

I will. I promise. Evan turned and handed the lightning gun to Darryl. “I need you to fire this into the ground,” he said as he grabbed for his bow and arrows. “Don’t try to hit anything specific with it, just light me a path out to Graeve.”

“You’re off to play rescue?”

“He’s saving us,” Evan said grimly. “The lease we can do is make sure we save him back. Light it up!” He leapt over the wall and ran down the hill, nocking an arrow as he went. The dead chimera stank so badly he didn’t need to be able to see it to avoid it, but after that, things got too dark. “Darryl!” Evan called out. “Now!”

A bolt of bluish-white lightning shot into the ground just to his left. Evan used the advantage the light gave him to get his bearings. Graeve was ten yards in front of him, clawing at two chimera on the ground. A third had gotten onto his back, though, and all three heads were biting and clawing at the spot right between his wings. In a second, Evan focused on the center mass of the monster and fired.

The arrow took the goat head right through the base of the throat. It bleated pitifully, then went limp just as the lightning died.

“Again!” Evan called out.

“Gotta wait for it to charge, man! I can’t—”

Whatever else he was going to say, Evan didn’t hear it. A long, dark tail came swishing out of the darkness, heading straight for him. He jumped over it, then rolled as it came back in another brutally fast swish. It was Graeve. He must not know that Evan was an ally.

“Darryl!”

“Ten more seconds!”

Shit, Evan wasn’t going to last for ten more seconds at that rate. Shrill, pained screams rose from the remaining chimera. Evan tried to focus on the sound, to see what he could see of them in the darkness, but there was nothing. It was all he could do to see the tail … but no … that wasn’t a tail, that was a—

The dragon’s claw descended upon him, pinning him in a wrenching hold to the ground. It was sheer luck that the tips of Graeve’s claws hadn’t penetrated his chest.

EVAN! Up in the sky, a lance of flame began to descend toward the ground. A second later, lightning struck a few feet away, illuminating the cobalt-blue dragon who had Evan trapped against the icy ground. Its huge eyes glowed orange, so similar to Ladon’s, but its head was thinner, its jaw longer. This was a dragon with no regard for Evan as anything other than a potential enemy.

He let his bow and arrow drop and held up his hands as best he could. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was trying to help.” One quick snap of those jaws and Evan would be bitten in two before Ladon could get to him. He needed to break through the pain and fear that was driving Graeve to lash out. “It’s all right,” he said gently. “I’m a friend, I promise. I’m a friend.” He patted Graeve’s armored, pebbly skin. “I won’t hurt you.”

But I might.

A second later, Lee landed beside Evan in his warrior form. Silver armor covered his body, and fire flared from every crevice of it. His sword was a solid bar of reddish flame, and he raised it to Graeve’s head and held it just above one glowing eye.

“I will kill you if you hurt him,” Lee rumbled, his dark words a promise. Graeve flinched and slowly pulled his claw away. Evan scrambled to his feet, grateful that he could move so readily and do his part to diminish the rage he felt radiating from his lover.

“It’s not his fault,” he said to Lee. “He was in pain; it clouded his judgement. Let him go.” He drew as close to Lee as he could without touching his fiery armor. “Please.”

There was a long moment where neither Lee nor Graeve moved, and then— “Fine.” Lee slowly lowered his sword, and just as slowly Graeve took a single step back, then another. A second after that, he launched himself into the air with another roar. Evan barely felt it, though; he was surrounded by warmth and comfort, safe in Lee’s arms. Soon Graeve was gone, and judging from the cheers along the wall, he’d finished off the pride of chimera before he left.

“Thank you,” Evan whispered.

“It’s the least I could do,” Lee whispered back, and Evan knew he meant it as far more than a simple platitude. Driving off the dragon who’d almost—accidentally—killed Evan was literally the least Lee had wanted to do. Punishing Graeve would have made him feel better, but Chicago needed him hale and healthy.

“Evan, what the hell?” Darryl called from the wall. “Is that Ladon? Are you goddamn cuddling with a dragon? You’re his rider, aren’t you!”

Evan sighed. “The jig is up. If Darryl knows what’s going on, everyone will know by tomorrow.”

“It’s a necessary sacrifice,” Lee replied. “Nothing is more important than your safety. Being anonymous hasn’t gained us much so far. Perhaps acting as a united front will do more in the long run.”

“Whatever we do …” Evan stared out at the smoldering bodies of the chimera, more of them together than he’d ever seen at one time before. “We’d better do it fast. Things are getting worse here.” He kissed the point of Lee’s chin, one of the few unarmored places on his entire body. “Are there still nachtkrapp to fight?”

“Yes. It seems like there always are,” Lee said with a sigh.

“Then I’d best let you get back up there. The other dragons will do better with your support.”

Le nodded. “Will you come back up to our rooms soon?”

“As soon as I can,” Evan promised. “I’m just going to make sure the people who were wounded are all right.”

Lee nodded. He stepped back, and his orange eyes brightened until they were nearly white. “Cover your ears, darling,” he said, and then he transformed and lifted off into the sky with a tremendous whump of shifting air, heavy enough to shift fallen snow for a hundred feet in every direction.

It also caused a fairly dramatic pressure change, but with Lee’s warning, Evan was all right. He watched his dragon return to the fight high in the air above them, the glint of his silver body slowly diminishing the higher up he got, then turned and trudged back to the wall. God, he was tired.

“What the fuck, Evan?” Darryl demanded as soon as he was close. “You’re Ladon’s rider?”

He was too tired to deal with this, but he didn’t have a choice. If he wanted the defenders of Chicago to trust him, then he needed to come clean with them. “Yeah.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say that earlier?”

“It didn’t really seem important.”

Darryl gave him a look that made Evan want to cringe. “Let me give you a chance to rephrase that.”

Ugh. Evan tried again. “Lee—Ladon—is here on official business, things that require him to interact with the people in charge. Yes, he and I are partners, but our strengths are very different. Before I bonded with Ladon, I was one of Forge’s defenders, the same as you are here. That’s what I know how to do, and that’s how I thought I could be most useful while we were here.”

Darryl didn’t look pacified. “Why not tell us who you really were from the start, though? Why pretend to be one thing while you’re really something else?”

“I didn’t, not really,” Evan insisted. “I said I was a fighter, and I am. As for why I didn’t mention Ladon … come on. You think Captain Zenal would let me anywhere near the front line if he knew I was bonded to a dragon? I didn’t come here to be coddled or take resources away from where they’re needed, I came here to help.” He glanced around. “Where is the captain, anyway?”

“He’s probably putting away the Zeus. Not like we need it when Graeve’s around.” Darryl tilted his head consideringly. “You all looked a few seconds away from a fight out there.”

Evan sighed. “It was all a misunderstanding. Graeve thought I was an enemy, and Ladon came down to rescue me from a dragon that wasn’t really a threat.”

“I don’t know, man. Looked pretty damn threatening to me. It’s not like Graeve could really mistake you for a chimera.”

Evan decided not to explain about the way he’d shot one of them off Graeve’s back, and how the dragon must have thought the attack was meant for him. “It’s not really important. The important thing is that the pride is defeated, and we’re all okay.” He paused. “Are we all okay?”

“Yeah, Lian’ll make it,” Darryl confirmed.

“Good.” That was a relief.

We’re done up here, Ladon thought at Evan. If you are as well, then Vincent is very eager to meet you.

Oh, great. I’ll be right there, Evan replied, then turned to Darryl. “The night ravens are gone for now. I’m being called back up the Tower.”

Darryl folded his arms. “Are you gonna come back to work tomorrow, or are you too fancy for us now?”

“I’ll be back.” The last thing Evan wanted to do was stay in close proximity to Vincent Clark any more than he had to. Besides, he still had questions to ask about the patterns of attack.

“I’ll hold you to that. Get here before Marlene gives away all the good food!” Darryl called out after him as he descended the wall and began walking toward the Tower.

“I will!” Evan shouted back. To his surprise, the moment he entered the lobby at the base of the Tower, he was met by two people wearing badges across their hats that depicted the spire of the building.

“Evan Luck?” one of them asked a bit dubiously.

“That’s me.”

“Councilor Clark sent us to escort you back to the upper level.” She turned and indicated the elevator at the far side of the wide-open lobby. “We’ll take the lift.”

Ummm … “That’s not necessary. I’m happy with the stairs.”

“We’ll take the lift,” she said with finality and led the way to the elevator. The man walked behind Evan as if he was expecting him to bolt at any second.

You can’t blame them for not trusting you, Evan reminded himself. He was the one who’d suggested the ruse with pretending to be more injured than he really was. Now, Vincent would be even less inclined to trust him.

Inside the elevator doors was a smooth wooden platform with a complicated series of ropes connecting it to what he thought was a counterweight, high above them. It rose fairly quickly, although with plenty of creaks and groans, and Evan found himself gripping the railing hard enough to make his knuckles blanch.

What has you so tense? Ladon asked through their bond.

It’s this lift. I don’t like it.

It can be a little intimidating, but the system is a proven one. You’ll be at the upper levels of the Tower soon.

Good. Soon couldn’t come quickly enough. Evan thought he was inured to a fear of heights, but maybe it was less the height and more the sense of being surrounded by edges that he didn’t care for. When the lift opened at the top of the Tower, he stumbled in his haste to get out. A pair of broad, gentle hands gripped his arms, helping to straighten him up so he could look into the face of …

Vincent Clark. Shit. And he was furious.

Not that he looked furious. He had the kind of vaguely affable expression that Evan saw on the faces of a lot of politicians, somewhere between “I’m pleased to meet you” and “I’m not quite listening to what you’re saying.” He wasn’t quite so good that he knew not to fist up his hands, though.

He was taller than Evan by several inches, almost as tall as Lee, and his chest was even broader. The man was built like a barrel. He wore a dark wool trench coat over his outfit and had on a scarf and a pair of gloves that indicated he’d only recently come in from the top of the Tower.

“So,” Vincent said in a smooth voice. Forcibly smooth: there was a hint of a tremor there that Evan couldn’t attribute to cold. He released his grip and straightened his back, all the better to tower over people. “You’re the real Evan Luck.”

“That’s me,” Evan said. It was warm up there at least. He could feel his hands coming back to life for the first time in hours.

“Not bedridden.”

He shook his head. “No, although I really was injured on the way here.”

“I see.” Vincent nodded. “At least my grandfather didn’t completely lie to me.”

Evan winced. “I’m sorry about the deception. We didn’t mean any harm by it.”

“Hmm.” Vincent looked at him for a moment, then turned to the people who’d brought Evan there. “Have my quarters been prepared?”

“Yes sir,” the woman said.

“Good. Then get back to your stations.” He returned his attention to Evan. “I’ve taken the liberty of having a meal laid out in my rooms. I’d be pleased if you could join me for it. I think we have a lot to talk about.”

Do I have to do this?

It’s one way to get dinner, Ladon reasoned, sounding more amused than annoyed. Just be vague and he’ll leave you alone, darling. Vincent knows when not to push.

It didn’t seem that way to Evan after yesterday’s conversation in their suite but okay.

“I assume you’re checking in with Ladon.” Vincent smiled. “I know the look well. My sister wore it frequently while she was still alive. Has he assured you that I’m safe?”

“Something like that,” Evan said. His stomach rumbled. Eh, what the hell. “Lead the way.”

Vincent’s rooms were on the opposite side of the Tower from the suite that Lee and Evan had been given. Apparently, this side was for councilors and their families, of whom there seemed to be few. They only passed two other people on the way there, and both of them were dressed simply and looked to be doing chores. “In here,” Vincent said, unlocking a door and pushing it open to reveal a sumptuous room inside. This room did seem to have electricity if the ceiling light was anything to go by, and the floor was covered by a dark-maroon carpet that gave it a warm feel.

There was a table set with rich-smelling food to the righthand side of the door, and Evan almost started in that direction before he remembered just how filthy he was. He turned to look for a kitchen area but didn’t find one. Did councilors get all their meals delivered, then? That was … something.

“You can use the bathroom for washing,” Vincent said, pointing at a door on the left. Evan complied, feeling a little confused by the setup in there until he turned the taps and saw real water come out of them. One tap even gave warm water. It was so decadent he could hardly believe it. Hell of a way to live. He washed up quickly but thoroughly, dried his hands on a towel that was nicer than most of his shirts, then walked back to the table, where Vincent was waiting for him.

“Please, sit. Take however much you want,” he added, removing the top from a tureen of soup as he indicated the spread with his other hand. There was stew, fresh-baked bread, roasted potatoes and carrots, even a small dish of butter in addition to one pitcher of water and another of beer. Incredible. Leaving self-consciousness behind, Evan heaped the plate in front of him full and dedicated the next few minutes to easing the gnawing hunger he hadn’t even realized was so intense until the food was right there in front of him.

He managed not to make a mess of himself, and when the worst of the hunger was sated, and Evan could take a moment to sit back and sip at the mug of beer that had been poured for him, Vincent made his move.

“So. Elaborate a bit on why you and my brother-in-law thought it was necessary to keep your mobility a secret here in Chicago.”

Evan had at least had time to plan out his response to this. “It’s nothing personal,” he said self-deprecatingly. “Lee went along with it because I asked him to. I’m not very good at being more than I am, which is a fighter and a blacksmith. I thought it would be easier for me and for him if I could be hands-on down on the wall while he handled the more … professional interactions.”

“And yet it seems that you’re very well-thought-of down there,” Vincent replied. “Even Captain Zenal has nothing but good things to say about you, and he’s a notoriously difficult man to please.”

Evan shrugged. “I’m a good fighter. And I was injured by a nachtkrapp on the way here; that part isn’t a lie.” He indicated the edge of the bandage sticking out from beneath his left sleeve. “For aerial fights, it’s often better if Ladon works alone. The night ravens are a case in point. He can attack them more aggressively if he doesn’t have to worry about protecting me at the same time.”

“Mmm.” Vincent nodded in understanding. “Still, the subterfuge is … troubling. He’s my family, you know? The idea that either of you felt you couldn’t be honest with me, for whatever reason, makes me wonder where I went wrong. Does Lee hate me so much that he would encourage his own partner to lie to me?”

Oh, shit, was he that bothered? Evan felt completely out of his depth. “I … think it says more about Lee’s willingness to indulge me than his desire to keep you ignorant,” Evan said. That wasn’t quite correct. Lee and Evan were united in their sense of something being not right here in Chicago and had agreed that keeping Evan free to investigate was the best course of action. But bringing that up right now would feel like rubbing salt in Vincent’s wounds.

“I don’t come from a big family,” Evan added, trying to make the wounded expression on Vincent’s face go away. “In fact, by the time I got to Forge, I didn’t have any family at all. I’m not used to being … open with other people or trusting them. Honestly, don’t lay the blame for any ill feelings at Lee’s feet. He was respecting my wishes. He’s said nothing but good things about you.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“I see.” Vincent smiled briefly. “Then I’ll just have to make sure that you get a better sense of family here in Chicago to ease your mind. Allow me to accompany you down the Tower tomorrow before you head off to impress the world with your fighting skills. I’ve got access to several things that I think will make your stay more … productive.”

Evan didn’t know what that meant, but he was willing to accept the offer in good faith. “Thank you. I appreciate that.” He took another sip of the beer, which was malty and dark, and felt his head spin a bit. “That’s strong.”

“It is.” Vincent chuckled. “Are you a bit drunk, do you think?”

“I might be,” Evan admitted.

“Well. Perhaps we should consider—” A knock at the door cut him off, and before he could rise, it was opening, and Lee was stepping inside. He looked as immaculate as ever despite the fact that he’d been fiercely battling night ravens until just a few minutes ago.

“Vincent.” Lee inclined his head to the man, then looked at Evan with a smile. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“I’m finished,” Evan told him, getting up from his chair. The room spun a bit beneath him, but he managed to keep himself upright. “That’s powerful stuff,” he murmured, glancing at the half-full mug.

“Chicago brews strong beer,” Lee said, coming over and taking Evan’s arm. He glanced over at his brother-in-law. “I think it’s best if I escort Evan back to our rooms.”

“Of course. Unless …” He indicated the tremendous spread of food. “You’d like to stay and have some dinner yourself?”

“I’ve already eaten, thank you,” Lee said politely, which Evan knew meant he’d crunched up some of the monsters he’d been fighting in his massive jaws. “I appreciate you looking after him.”

“What is family for?” Vincent got up and walked them out into the hall. “Goodnight, then. Sleep well.”

“You too.” They headed over to the other side of the Tower, Evan leaning on Lee every step of the way.

“Ugh,” he muttered. “I hate being drunk.”

“I’ve never been drunk,” Lee reflected, “but I’m told it’s a pleasurable sensation. Valorie was drunk a few times while we were together, and she always seemed very happy in the moment. Not so much the next morning, though.”

“I don’t like the … lack of control,” Evan said, taking longer than he liked to come up with the right words. “The … tippiness. I’m a fighter; I need to know how to fight, y’know?” He put his free hand against his forehead. “Ugh. Too strong. This feels more like … like rotgut than beer. I feel … awful already. Whoa!” Less than a second later, he was scooped up into Lee’s arms. “I can walk,” Evan objected.

“I know. I like to carry you, though.”

“Oh.” It was a lot easier, not to mention faster, to get back to their rooms this way. “Mkay.” He leaned his head against Lee’s chest and shut his eyes.

“You should try to stay awake long enough for me to change your bandage,” Lee said, but his voice was more amused than chiding.

“Mkay.”

“Do you want me to get Grandpa Joe to give you a hangover remedy?”

“Not until tomorrow,” Evan said blearily. “Right now, jus’ wanna be with you.”

Lee held him a little closer. “I can do that for you.”

Chapter Six

Evan woke up with a predictably pounding head and a case of dry mouth so severe if he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought he’d downed a whole barrel full of beer, not just half a glass. What the hell did they make their beer from in this place?

“Here.” Lee helped him sit upright enough that he could drink, then tilted a glass to his lips. It was just water, but it tasted better than anything else could have right then. Evan groaned—a little pitifully, he had to confess—when Lee took it away a moment later.

“I’m saving some for you to drink after you take the hangover cure,” Lee told him. “You’ll thank me, I promise.” He held a new, smaller glass up to Evan’s face. It smelled …

“What’s in this?”

“Nothing toxic.”

“What?”

“Corn flour, lemon, salt, and, I believe, a raw egg,” Lee said. Evan looked at him in horror. “I’m told it really does help, but of course the decision is up to you.”

Evan thought for a second about sitting up under his own power. Then he sighed and nodded his head—very slightly—toward the glass. “I’ll take it.” One quick swallow and a few seconds controlling his gag reflex later, and he managed to drink the rest of the water. “Ugh.”

“Give it a bit to settle before you try to get up,” Lee advised. Evan blinked his eyes and looked at his lover more closely. He was already fully dressed, wearing a long dark coat over a silver-gray suit. His hair was left down but meticulously brushed, and he was even wearing a pair of what looked like leather gloves.

“How do you conjure up such beautiful things?” Evan asked, fingering the edge of Lee’s coat.

“I wish I knew. It’s one of the stranger side effects of my … magic, I suppose.” Evan knew that Lee didn’t care to talk about the odder aspects of his existence. The fact that he was a man who could become a dragon, and a dragon who could shapeshift into a man, was challenging enough. To add his warrior form to that, all armored and armed, not to mention the silver jets of power he could fire when he took that form … it made him even more inexplicable, and Lee didn’t like that. He didn’t like reminders of the fact that he was something remarkable while Evan was just a man.

“Stop it, please.”

“Sorry,” Evan said, turning his thoughts back to how terrible he felt instead of their eventual, inevitable separation.

“Wallowing in your misery isn’t better.”

“I am never drinking again,” Evan vowed. “That stuff was awful.”

Lee frowned. “You do seem to be having a very severe reaction to it. I’ll let Vincent know, so he can tell the brewer. They might have made a bad batch.”

“Bad for me at least.” Evan leaned his head against Lee’s chest. “What time is it?”

“A bit past eight in the morning, I believe.”

“Shit.” He was going to be late to meet with Darryl. “I’m supposed to be downstairs by half past. I told one of the men I was fighting with yesterday that I’d be on the wall again today, and now he’s going to think I’m going back on my word.”

“He won’t,” Lee said. “But if he’s so inclined to think you faithless, then I’ll fly down there myself after I meet with the council to go over the threat assessment and let them know that you’re delayed.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“How often do I have to tell you, beloved?” Lee kissed his temple. “There’s no such thing.”

In his most optimistic moments, Evan came very close to believing that was true. Unfortunately, he knew himself better than Lee did: knew his tastes were simpler than his lover preferred, knew that he was far less elegant than Lee deserved. He also knew that thinking about that would get him nowhere, much less actually bringing it up, so he didn’t. He simply returned the kiss, pressing his lips to the base of Lee’s neck, and sighed. God, he was tired. “I know we haven’t been here long, but I’m already looking forward to getting back home,” he confessed.

“So am I.” Lee sounded somber. “I keep wondering how Jason is doing, whether Rayan is all right, whether they’re being taken good care of. I’m sure they are,” he added before Evan could try to reassure him, “but he’s only ten, and it’s hard to be without your parents.”

“We’ll get back to him soon,” Evan said. That was as much a motivation as any for them to figure out the truth of the situation there in Chicago. “I’ll speak with Captain Zenal today, get his opinion on the timeline and what was going on when things began to get bad here.”

“Who?”

“Captain Zenal.” Evan tilted his head to look up at Lee’s face. “Surely, you’ve heard of him. He’s one of the coordinators of the city’s ground defenses.”

“I confess I haven’t,” Lee said, “but I’ll ask about him today. Most of the time, the council seems to be more concerned with the affairs of their dragons than the situation on the ground.”

“They’re idiots.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.” Lee shifted Evan, so he was leaning against the wall instead of Lee’s chest, then got up from the bed. “If you need me, call for me. I’ll be human all morning, I think, but I’ll still be able to feel you.”

“I know.” Evan found a smile somewhere for his worried lover. “Go soothe spirits, I’ll be out of here soon enough. And thank you for speaking to Darryl for me.”

“It’s my pleasure, darling.” Lee squeezed his hand one more time, then got up and left the bedroom. A few moments later, the door to the hallway shut after him. Evan sighed, took a deep breath, and tried to shift himself to sit on the edge of the bed. It was … not impossible.

Huh. Maybe that hangover cure was working after all.

It took what felt like hours to get himself dressed and ready for the day. By the time he was feeling mostly functional again—except for leaning over to tie up his boots, that was still a no-go—someone was knocking on the door.

“Come in.”

Vincent stepped inside the outer room of the suite, a contrite expression on his face. “Lee let me know you had some trouble with the alcohol yesterday. I’m sorry about that; I should have warned you it was strong stuff.”

“I’ve never felt so sick after one mug of beer,” Evan said. “Did you experience anything bad from it?”

“Nothing at all … but then, I’m used to it.” He looked at Evan’s feet. “Do you still want to head down to the ground defenses today?”

“Yes.” Which meant he’d have to tie his fucking boots. He was not going to get help with that from Vincent Clark, of all people. Steeling himself, Evan bent as little as possible and reached as far as he could to tie a pair of knots that would disgrace a small child, but they’d do for now.

There. He stood up and felt relatively firm on his feet. “I’m ready,” he said, grabbing his bow and quiver from the bedside chair and slinging them comfortably over his back.

“Excellent. Let’s head to the lift, then.”

Under normal circumstances, Evan would have pushed for the stairs, but he figured a little bit of anxiety was worth saving himself that many steps. They had the lift to themselves, and Vincent manipulated the controls expertly, getting them descending at a brisk pace that still managed to keep Evan’s stomach in one place.

“What was it you wanted to show me?” Evan asked, remembering their conversation yesterday. Access to things that will make your stay more productive. After yesterday’s fight against the chimera, he was interested in anything that made it easier to push back the seemingly constant flow of monsters into the heart of the city.

Vincent smiled. “We have to go a little bit deeper to get to it, but I think you’ll find it intriguing. Can you spare me the time this morning?” Before Evan could reply, he glanced at the watch on his wrist. “The timing should be just about perfect.”

Perfect for what? Maybe there was a shift change of some sort coming up, or Vincent had a meeting to get to after this. Whatever was going on, Evan hoped they got to it fast. “Sounds good.”

“It is,” Vincent agreed. The lift slowed as they reached the ground floor but moved right past the big double doors that opened out into the lobby and kept moving down. It was almost immediately colder, so cold that Evan had to resist the urge to rub his hands along his arms. He dug into his pockets for his gloves and pulled them on, wincing a little at the sting in his shoulder. This wound was never going to heal properly if he didn’t stop pushing it.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that what I’m about to show you is vital to the future of Chicago. To the future of the entire continent,” Vincent went on.

Evan raised both his eyebrows as the lift slowly came to a stop. In front of them was a single large door, one of the old metal kinds that rolled upward, only this one was held shut with a complex, heavy-duty padlock and a length of chain. Vincent reached around his neck and pulled out a slender necklace with a key dangling at the end of it. He undid the lock, unwound the chain, and finally heaved on a lever that lifted the door. Behind it was a room—a large one, if the feel of the draft was any indication—that was completely dark.

It wasn’t silent, though. There was a low, ever-present hum in the air, a sound that Evan couldn’t quite identify. It was cold but not quite freezing.

Evan frowned. “What is this place?”

“It was meant for hiding stolen eggs, but the people who built it never got a chance to use it. Take a look.” Vincent stepped into the room and flipped a switch. Lights fluttered into existence: low ones only, down on the ground. Lights, down there? What could possibly be worth the expenditure of precious fuel down there? The tiny white lights made a path forward that ended in a circular pattern perhaps thirty paces ahead. And inside the circle was … wait.

What were those? At first glance, they almost looked like …

Evan was running before he could stop himself. He got to the circle and blinked, disbelieving, at the rounded shapes packed as tight together as they could be packed. One, two, three … there were at least ten dragon eggs there, maybe as many as twelve. A huge clutch—they had to have come from more than one dragon couple. Hell, they could have been preserved from every single mated pair of dragons in the entire city … all of whom were dead now. Never got a chance to use it; but Vincent sure as hell was using it now.

Evan touched one of them and felt that it was cold. No, oh no: they needed to be warmed up if they were going to come out of stasis and hatch.

Of course, if the whole purpose of keeping them down there in the dark and cold was to preserve their secrecy and keep them in stasis, then that plan was working splendidly. If that was true, though—

Evan opened his mouth—to shout, to yell, to hurl curses at Vincent before he hurtled himself at the man—but a strange sound stopped him in his tracks. A strangely familiar sound.

Lightning flared in front of him like a demonic tentacle reaching out of the darkness. It struck him square in the chest, and Evan barely had a second to register how terribly painful the burn of it was before his overwhelmed heart stuttered and stopped.

He fell to the ground, lungs frozen, mouth gaping, and felt his blood slow to a stop.

Then he didn’t feel anything at all.

***

Feeling filtered back in slowly, penetrating through the layers of wet clay that seemed to be packed around Evan’s body, making everything feel heavy and slow. The first thing he noticed was the intense, aching burn in the center of his chest. The next thing was the sound of a familiar, now frantic voice fuzzing into existence not far from him.

“—us Christ, I can hear him raging all the way down here!” That was Vincent, the man who had led Evan down there to this secret storeroom of hope and lies.

What the hell was going on?

“What did you expect?” another vaguely familiar voice asked. “For Ladon to take the death of his bonded rider in stride? You yourself told me that the last time this happened, he was inconsolable for days.”

“Not like this! He killed the enemy who took Valorie out, then locked himself in his quarters to grieve with their son. Not … not …” A faint rumble rolled through the room, and Vincent cursed. “I can’t face him like this, not alone! I need you with me!”

“You told me to make it so that you had a chance with him. I’ve done that.” A hand roughly shook Evan’s shoulder. “Ladon’s rider is dead. You’re the next obvious choice. Go claim another dragon, then. I’ll take care of the body.”

Dead? He wasn’t dead, he was just … just …

Evan felt for the bond within him, the empathic tie that let him speak to his dragon and feel his lover’s emotions.

There was nothing there. Only a void, endlessly deep and hideously painful. Just like it had been when Jurie had died.

“I—he just—I would feel better if—”

“A dragon confronting another dragon during a time of intense grief is asking for a fight, one I might not be able to win,” the voice went on. “Do you want him to kill me? Haven’t I done everything you asked of me?”

“You … yes. All right, I’ll …” There was a sound of shifting cloth as if someone were pulling a jacket tight. “I’ll go to him. Talk to him. He’ll see me, and I’ll … I’ll make my case.”

“Do that.” Footsteps indicated someone was walking away, and a moment later Evan heard the sound of the heavy rolling door falling shut, then the lift activating again.

Mustering all his energy, he forced his eyelids to move. It was just a flicker, but whoever was with him must have had a light because a moment later he felt a warm hand—almost hot—against his forehead. “Finally waking up, I see.” The man’s voice was amused. “Excellent timing. It would have been hard to keep playing Vincent for a fool if he actually saw you waking up instead of safely dead like you should be.”

“D … de …”

“Yes, dead. He’s wanted to kill you for some time, but you were impossible to get alone. Drugging your beer was a foolish act of desperation, but he finally did the right thing and asked for my assistance. I was supposed to kill you with the Zeus.” The hand moved to his cheek, trailing delicious warmth and bringing feeling back to his skin.

“But I released the trigger right before your heart burst. Dying like that would be such a waste for a man like you. I have too many questions before you go.” The room seemed to rumble again, and the man’s voice turned sour. “Not the least of which is what you did to inspire such loyalty in that lovesick idiot’s soul.”

Whoever it was leaned in close enough that Evan felt their warm breath on his left cheek. The right one was pressed to the freezing floor. “Look at you. You’re nothing, all of you, less than nothing even. Prey that thinks too highly of itself. And yet you’ve had not one but two dragons dance attendance on you, and one of them is Ladon? The greatest of us? All his power, all his magnificence, devoted to the protection of a creature no better than the worms that crawl through the ground? What’s so special about you?”

“Oo … are … you?” It was hard to shape the words, harder still to force his vocal cords to speak them, but Evan persisted. He needed to learn more, needed to know what was going on to be able to figure out how to escape it.

“You haven’t put it together yet? I’m a little surprised although I don’t know why I should be. After all, you’re such a stupid species.” Light flared, dimmed through Evan’s eyelids but still visible. “Open your eyes and see for yourself.”

It was hard to open his eyes, harder still when the light made them water and run, but once his vision adapted to the glow of a lantern held too close, Evan saw the man who knelt above him and gasped. “Captain Zenal?”

“In the human skin,” the captain said with a sharp smile. “Which isn’t a form I like to take often.”

“You’re a …” Could it be? It had to be, there was no way around it given what he’d already said, but was it really possible? He was like Lee and Ladon, both a man and a dragon? “Shapeshifter.”

Captain Zenal nodded. “I am. And unlike some fools, who limit themselves and their power to two primary forms, I can become nearly two dozen different beasts. All the better to ally myself to them. Even monsters grow cautious when confronted with a dragon like Graeve, while this human form wouldn’t give anyone except the weakest beast pause. I had to learn to become them in order to bend them to my will, and it was worth every effort.”

Bend them to his will? A thousand questions suddenly crystallized with one perfect, terrible answer. Nuance often escaped Evan, but this time he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was right. “You’re the one,” he breathed. “The one who’s behind the monster attacks. You’re driving them to do it.”

“Well done.” The creature above him smirked. “Perhaps you’re not as stupid as you seem. You can’t be, can you? Not if you’ve managed to entrap the most powerful of us all.”

The greatest of us, the most powerful of us … “How many of you are there?”

“I’m not sure anymore.” Captain Zenal—no, Graeve, it was easier to think of this person as Graeve than as the man who’d helped Evan defend the city—frowned. “When we first came through, we were five. Ladon was our leader, mighty and fierce. He was going to lead us in a crusade to take over this new world, and for a time he did just that. Then he got distracted by you little fools, lost his path and his memories with it, and the others took it into their heads to go off on their own.

“I didn’t. I watched him, tried to bring him back. When that didn’t work …” Graeve shook his head.

“The woman I can almost see. The temptation to breed with something that could lead to a viable child must have been irresistible—although given the weakness of the child they created, I don’t think it was worth the effort. He should have taken a dragon bride, made something stronger to fight by his side.”

Anger flared in the darkness of Evan’s soul, lending him an energy that he’d been sorely lacking so far. “Don’t speak about Jason like that.”

“What, the truth?” Graeve shook his head. “Ah, what does it matter? She died, and I waited for him to return to us. I was so sure that he would … so sure. I’d worked for years preparing for it, making alliances with the beasts that came through with us, becoming them, becoming lesser, so that he would have an army at his disposal when he returned to me. And instead …

“Instead, he went to Forge. To you.” Graeve’s eyes lit with a familiar orange fire. “A man, incapable of giving him more children. A man who had already ruined one powerful dragon. A man worth less than nothing, and yet … What did you promise him, to make him bond with you? What did you give Ladon that could possibly have tempted him?”

It was a question Evan had asked himself plenty of times. The only reasonable answer he could come up with at the end of the day was the hardest one for him to accept, yet accept it he must.

“My love,” he said, voice hoarse with both pain and earnestness. “I offered him my love without asking for anything back even though he’d already given me more than I deserved.

“And I didn’t initiate the bond,” Evan added. “Lee did. It came as a surprise that he even wanted to bond with me.”

Graeve tapped his fingers against the floor beside Evan’s face. “You’re honest about your own uselessness at least. But … no, I can’t believe it. I’ve bonded with humans before, you see.” He brought his face down level to Evan’s again—strong featured, handsome, and totally ruthless. “Vincent Clark isn’t the first, not by far. I’ve bonded with over a dozen of you useless creatures, and every one of you has been nothing but a bottomless pit of unending need and selfish desires. The only thing your species is exceptional at is your capacity for deception, deliberate and otherwise.”

This statement was a little too ironic for Evan to take. “You’re one to talk about deception,” he scoffed. “Look at you, living in a man’s body, defending a city of men, and forcing your monsters to attack them at the same time.” Hopefully speaking would give him the cover he needed to try moving his fingers and toes. Anything, even the most pitiful attempt at fighting back, would be better than lying there and letting Graeve decry him, then murder him.

“I learned from the best,” Graeve said. The room rumbled again. “Listen to him,” the shifter murmured, casting his gaze upward. “Feel him rage. He thinks you’re dead.”

Oh god. Of course, the bond had been broken when Graeve had briefly killed him. It was one thing for Evan to feel that terrible emptiness, but his broken heart ached even more thinking about Ladon’s pain.

“He might take this entire city down in his fury,” Graeve continued, a soft smile stretching across his face. “Brilliant. I would have taken you from him a year ago if I’d known it would lead to this. Such violence, such rage … all over you.”

All over me. Evan wasn’t worth it—the people of Chicago hadn’t done anything to deserve Ladon’s anger, but unless Evan was able to reestablish the bond, he couldn’t do anything to calm his dragon down. “He might kill Vincent.”

“I’m counting on it,” Graeve replied. “What a waste of resources he turned out to be. His usefulness to me was always only as far as his influence with Ladon stretched.” He shook his head. “Vincent wants to bond with Ladon and become a king, and he treated bonding with me as a stepping-stone to making that alliance. He deserves whatever he gets out of it.”

All right, Vincent was clearly a dead end. “Ladon won’t go with you,” Evan said. “Even if he tears this city down, he won’t go back to you.”

“Not with his son still alive, no,” Graeve agreed. “Which is why as soon as we’re done here, I’m going to fly ahead to Forge and call every pack of monsters I’ve ever bonded with to me. There, we’ll lay waste to your pathetic city and kill Ladon’s useless human son. Once his connections to humanity are fully severed, he’ll come back. He’ll have to.” Graeve smiled again. “He’s too used to companionship now to go without, and I will—ah.” His eyes went glazed and distant. “Vincent is afraid. He sees him, he’s trying to speak to him, but—”

Evan could see it in Graeve’s eyes the moment Vincent died. As the light of Vincent’s life went out, so too did the conscious thought in Graeve’s mind.

Evan had seen it before, experienced it before. When you lost the one you were bonded to, for a while there was nothing but loss. Given that Graeve seemed like a complete sociopath, the loss probably wouldn’t affect him for long—a few seconds perhaps? A minute? But that would be enough time.

It would have to be. There was no way Evan was leaving his family to be destroyed by this monster.

He forced himself up onto his elbow, chest screaming in pain the whole time, then grabbed Graeve’s shoulder tight with one hand as he thrust the power of his empathy at him. He shuddered with disgust as his soul encountered a being he could never hope to bond with under normal circumstances, would never have wanted to bond with under normal circumstances. The bond between himself and Jurie had been inherited, practically a part of his life from the very beginning. The bond between him and Ladon had been similarly slow to start, happening almost without him being aware of it.

This bond? This was an assault on Graeve’s mind as Evan forced himself into the space that had belonged not only to Vincent but to every other monster Graeve was bound to. Evan felt for those ties and snapped them, one by one, awareness of alphas and pack leaders and matriarchs all withering away in Graeve’s soul. By the time he was finished, he was the only thing left for Graeve to cling to.

He half expected Graeve to be repulsed by him. They weren’t compatible—it was all Evan could do not to retch at the wrongness of their connection. But Graeve’s amber eyes were wide, staring at him with longing and wonder.

“You feel so warm,” he whispered. Evan finally dropped his hand down and looked around the room. There. He began crawling. “Is that love?” Graeve crawled after him, wrapping a hand around his ankle and holding it reverently. “My mind is … so warm with the love that you hold.”

Why was it so hard to move? Evan stopped to catch his breath, and the building shuddered again. Dimly, he thought he heard the sound of screaming. Not human—dragon. Ladon.

I’m coming, sweetheart. He glanced back at the hideous creature holding onto him and felt an unwilling stirring of compassion. “Was your mind cold before?”

“So cold … I didn’t realize how cold until I felt you.” Graeve met his eyes. “I haven’t felt this warm since losing my family.”

The dragons—shapeshifters, beasts, whatever they were—who’d come with him. Evan shook his head and started to crawl again. Time was his enemy, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted by sympathy.

“Look at me,” Graeve pleaded, rubbing his fingers over Evan’s ankle. “Please look at me again, it feels so much warmer when you do. I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll spare Ladon’s son, I’ll leave Chicago alone, I’ll be the best companion you could ever dream of. Just look at me.”

Finally. Evan slowly rolled onto his side, took aim, and looked Graeve right in the eyes. “Let me go,” he said, and Graeve obeyed, desperate to please.

Then Evan fired at him with the Zeus.

It was hard to keep the lightning steady in this position—he had to brace the gun against the floor, and some of the energy was lost to the concrete, but most of it shot straight into Graeve’s head. His eyes went bright white, and his mouth opened in a shriek of pain and sorrow and madness. He tried to fight the current at first, but Evan sent soothing emotions toward him: calm and affection, a sense of family, a sense that he was doing the right thing. Slowly, Graeve laid his head down, and still jerking with the force of the lightning but not fighting it anymore, he died.

They had been bonded for fewer than five minutes, but Evan still felt like his heart was bleeding as he let go of the Zeus. He shook his ringing head, trying not to dwell on the gaping hole he’d just left in it and failing. He had … he had, oh god, he had forced a bond. He had forced a bond and then killed his bonded. He had murdered him.

He was monstrous.

He murdered you first. The thought wasn’t a very positive one, but it was motivational. Evan had been dead, or enough so that his bond with Ladon was broken. He needed to get to his dragon, needed to stop him from destroying the Tower, needed to find him and put both of them back together, so they could get out of this hell and go home to their son. Oh Jason. He needed them, needed his parents. Evan had to get up.

He used one of the boxes holding a dragon’s egg to lever himself to his feet. Pausing to fight down the nausea that came from standing, he stared at the dragon’s egg and thought he detected the faintest flicker of movement within it. “I’ll come back for you,” he whispered. “I’ll come back for you all.”

Getting across the floor to the lift was more of a drunken stumble than an actual walk, but he finally made it. He was grateful that Vincent hadn’t bothered to lower the folding metal door—Evan barely had the strength to move himself around right now, much less something that heavy. He looked blearily for the appropriate lever, pulled it, and the lift slowly began to rise, stopping with a creak one long level up.

Finally, he was at the ground floor. The doors opened, and Evan emerged into a scene of complete desertion, the lobby abandoned. Every single pane of glass in the place was shattered, and he could hear Ladon’s roar more clearly now although he still seemed far away. Evan staggered toward the exit, not sure how he was going to get Ladon’s attention, but positive that he couldn’t do it from in there. Unless … should he take the lift all the way up? Get to the top of the Tower and try to signal him?

Too late. His feet weren’t going to carry him backward. As soon as he was outside, the devastation became even clearer. People he recognized, people he’d fought with, were running for cover as pieces of the building plummeted to the ground, smashing into dangerous shards. He couldn’t see any bodies, but if nobody other than Vincent had died so far it would be a miracle. From high above him, Ladon screamed again, a scream full of sorrow so huge it had turned instantly to insanity. Evan needed to help him. But where could he … how could he …

“Evan? Motherfucker!” A rough grip on his arm spun him around to face Darryl, who looked furious. “What the hell are you doing, setting your fucking dragon on us? I thought you came here to help …” His voice trailed off as he finally got a good look at Evan, who … yeah, he knew he wasn’t looking his best.

“He’s not my dragon right now,” Evan croaked.

“You … but how?”

There wasn’t enough time for that painful story right now. “I’ll tell you later,” Evan promised. “Right now, I need to get Ladon’s attention. What’s the best way to do that?”

“Shit.” Darryl pulled his cap off and dug his fingers into his hair as he considered the question. “Some sort of challenge, I guess. But the other dragons aren’t getting involved in this—hell no. They tried at first—got bitten bad for their trouble.”

They were lucky to still be alive. There was more than one way to challenge a dragon than with another of its kind, though. “Fire,” Evan said. “How can we make a fire fast, something big?”

“I don’t know!” Darryl said helplessly. “Fuel, but we don’t have enough of that, definitely not stockpiled. The Zeuses are gone, and I haven’t been able to find Captain Zenal to ask where he put them.” For a moment, it was all Evan could do not to blurt out what had happened underground. Darryl continued, “Explosives, but the only ones we have are meant to be the last resort at the wall, and—”

“Those. We need those.” It was perfect. It had to be—it was all they had.

“Evan!” Darryl looked shocked. “Those are only supposed to be used if we’re completely overrun! We’ll have to rebuild the walls from scratch if you blow them now.”

“What good are walls without something left for them to protect?” Evan replied. “Ladon thinks I’m dead. He’s bent on getting revenge, and if we don’t give him something else to focus on, Chicago won’t survive.”

“But … it’s …”

“It’s all we’ve got.” It hurt, but Evan lifted up both his hands until he could clasp Darryl’s shoulders. “I need your help to set them off. Can you do it?”

Darryl stared into his eyes for a long moment, then groaned and nodded. “Yeah. Let’s get the fuck to it, huh?” A huge pane of glass fell to the ground not fifty feet away, making them both startle. “Before your dragon kills us all.”

Darryl led the way to the wall, with Evan limping as fast as he could behind him. They got to the concrete bunker at the end of it, and after a few shaking tries, Darryl finally managed to input the right combination to open the door. It took another minute to get the generator primed and turned on, but then an overhead light burst into life, and so did the switchboard against the wall.

“It’s a pretty simple system,” Darryl said, more to himself than to Evan, it seemed. “Just turn on the warning siren so people know to move their asses, flip this switch to get power to the triggers on the bombs, then flip this one to trigger them. Siren, flip, flip. Fucking simple.”

“Good,” Evan said encouragingly. “That’s great. Give me enough time to get out on the ground between here and the river—five minutes—and then do that.”

“What? Why the hell are you going out there?”

“I want to keep as much distance between myself and the city center as possible. Just in case this goes badly.” Which it wouldn’t, it couldn’t. “Five minutes,” Evan repeated, then left the bunker before Darryl could object again. A second later, the warning siren began to sound.

Climbing up to the top of the earthen wall was hard but getting down the other side was relatively simple. Evan tripped over his own feet and ended up rolling down most of it, banging his head in the process. He ended up flat on his belly, which still burned from the Zeus’s blast, so exhausted he could hardly fathom getting to his feet again.

You’d better, or you’re going to be blown up any minute now.

Fuck, right. Evan gritted his teeth and got onto his hands and knees, then his feet. He moved away from the wall, hardly walking in a steady line but unable to do anything about it. He kept going and didn’t stop until he reached the edge of the water, where—

BOOM!

The blast knocked him back onto his knees. Evan stared, dumbfounded and impressed in the most terrible way, at the extent of the blast. The power … the intensity … people had been able to make weapons like that? Even better? How had they ever lost their world to monsters when they held the ability to create that much devastation?

That’s exactly how they lost it. Too much power, too little thought. But now Evan was the one holding the power, and he was determined to keep things from falling apart any more than they already had. He wasn’t going to die there. Chicago, and he, would survive.

Dust and snow rose up all around him, the air pressure from Ladon’s wings bearing down against his head. His dragon was coming, drawn by the fire even through his madness. He was close, so close. Now all Evan had to do was capture his attention.

Could he take advantage of the same wound in Ladon’s soul that had let him slide into Graeve’s so quickly? Could he—not force a bond but perhaps provide a balm? A hint of something better, something less painful? He’d have to try.

Evan looked at his dragon, firelight reflecting off his silver scales as he landed only twenty yards away and began stalking toward the wall. Evan caught the ragged edges of the torn bond within him. He flooded it with every ounce of emotion he could muster, all the love and longing and hope that he felt for Ladon, then used his empathy to push the mess of bleeding adoration right at him. It was small, a speck of heat within an inferno, but he had to hope that Ladon wasn’t so lost to his fury that he couldn’t recognize Evan when he knocked at the door.

Ladon took two more steps, then suddenly stopped. He twisted his head right and left, the brilliance of his orange eyes dimming slightly. His tail twitched back and forth, his wings flared slightly, and he suddenly spun around and caught sight of Evan, sitting there on his knees.

Evan smiled. It was cracked and bloody, but for the first time since he’d been shot, he felt happy. “Sweetheart,” he whispered, and he pushed again, nudging his empathy against Ladon’s shining spirit and asking for something he knew now that he did deserve. He was such a part of Ladon that his dragon’s heart and mind couldn’t function right without him, and that would be sad if it wasn’t entirely mutual. “Lee.”

Ladon exhaled a gusty, trembling sigh, then a second later he was gone, and Lee was in his place—not in his warrior form, no sword or armor to be seen, just a ragged, soot-stained shirt and pants. His feet were bare, his hands were shaking, and his face …

“Evan.”

“It’s—” He didn’t have time to finish his reassurance before Lee was there, throwing himself onto his knees and gathering Evan into his arms. As soon as they touched, the bond snapped together like a flag unfurling in the wind. This close, Evan felt everything his partner was going through, and it made him want to cry.

“It’s really me,” he finally managed, holding Lee back as tight as he could. “He didn’t kill me, I didn’t die. I came close, but I didn’t die.”

“I felt it,” Lee said, his face pressed so hard to Evan’s neck he could barely hear him. “I felt it, surprise and then pain and then … just nothing at all. Emptiness where you ought to be, and I tried to follow you there, but I couldn’t, I was stuck here, and you were gone, and I just … I just …”

“It’s okay.”

“I think I killed Vincent.”

“Good.”

“I might have killed others as well.” Evan got a sense memory of guns firing, bullets impacting his skin and making his grief go from desolate to furious.

Evan sighed. “We’ll have to deal with that as it comes, but for now the only thing that matters is that we’re together again.”

Lee pulled back far enough to kiss up the side of Evan’s neck and across his face. “You’re hurt,” he said, glancing down at Evan’s chest. “He shot you with one of those horrible machines, Evan, you’re—"

“I’ll be all right.”

“You are not all right!” Lee shouted it right in his face, stunning Evan into silence. “You’re not! You were murdered! I’m not all right, and I’m not the one who was—Evan!” Tears spilled down Lee’s cheeks, and he seemed on the verge of hyperventilating.

The truth was, Evan knew he wasn’t all right. His heartbeat felt off, his skin still burned, and everything hurt, but he couldn’t succumb to any of that before Lee was taken care of. It was just how he was. How he loved. He put others first, which was why Jurie’s death had hit him so hard.

Which was why he would never be able to survive Lee dying before him.

Maybe we’re more alike than we should be.

“Take me to Grandpa Joe,” he whispered. “He’ll help.” At least, he would once he knew the truth.

Soon, everyone would know the truth about what had happened to Chicago, how close to being the center of another apocalypse it had been. Right now, though, Evan was finally able to relax into his lover’s arms, and then into his scaly grip as Ladon flew them both back up to the top of the Tower.

Chapter Seven

As impatient as Evan was to get back to Forge, he was also grateful that healing gave him a very real reason to avoid the Council of Chicago this time around because the politics were exhausting. You would think these people hadn’t just been infiltrated by a shapeshifter, nearly overrun with monsters, and dealing with betrayal from one of their own, the way they slung demands around.

No, Lee would not be staying in Chicago. No, he would not be making reparations either. Yes, he was sorry that he had lashed out in his grief, but what could they reasonably expect after Vincent had spirited Evan off to be murdered? Yes, they could keep the dragon eggs—they belonged to the former dragons of Chicago after all—but their first priority ought to be propping up the people who were doing the work down on the ground, not redirecting resources toward eggs that were perfectly all right in stasis.

Bring people up from the ground level to speak with the council? Never! Only, Lee wasn’t budging on that point, and after a few heated discussions, Darryl, Marlene, and some other longtime residents were brought upstairs and added to the mix. Which led to a whole new round of arguments, which …

“Just ignore them,” Joseph said gently from where he was unwrapping the bandages around Evan’s chest. It was hard, given that the arguments were happening in the room right next to theirs, but Lee refused to be any further from him than that, so Evan had become good at tuning them out over the past week. “They don’t know any other way to do things.”

“They should learn,” Evan replied. “Not everything has to be shouted in order to be understood.”

“Perhaps they’ll do better in time. Things often have to be raw before they can become refined. Like your wound,” he added, inspecting the pattern of burns across Evan’s chest where the Zeus had impacted him. “It’s healing very well. Another week of bandages, and you’ll have nothing left there but a few scars.”

“That’s good.”

Joseph nodded and pulled out his stethoscope. “Let me listen to your heart, please.” That was one of his bigger fears—that the electricity had done permanent damage to Evan’s heart. The first few days had seen it race uncontrollably one minute, then become weak and nearly inaudible the next. Joseph had feared the worst, but then things stabilized. Now, he could hardly tell anything had ever been wrong.

“Normal,” Joseph said. He sat back in his chair with a sigh, staring pensively at Evan’s bare chest. “I wonder … could there be some element of your bond with Lee that’s helping you heal? Because I’ve treated people damaged by electricity before, and none of them ever made such a full recovery in so little time. Couple that with the fact that your arm is completely healed, and you’ve barely lost any muscle tone despite being in bed for a week …”

“I—huh.” Evan had been about to deny it, but thinking back on all the times he’d nearly died since knowing Lee made him reconsider. Especially the incident with the tatzelwurm poison—even the lingering damage to his throat was practically negligible now. “It’s possible.”

“Good.” Joseph patted his leg. “If anyone deserves a leg up when it comes to their health, it’s you. After all, you and Lee nearly lost everything because of us.” Because of Vincent, his body language said as Joseph’s bony shoulders tucked in on themselves, and his weary eyes took on a liquid sheen.

Evan wasn’t sure how close Joseph had been to his grandson, but close or not, it couldn’t be easy knowing that your only descendant was a traitor who deliberately hurt someone else you loved, just so he could have a chance at something he didn’t deserve.

“We’re fine,” Evan finally settled on saying. “And I have a feeling the city will be as well.”

“So do I, son.” Joseph smiled, small but genuine. “There hasn’t been an attack the whole time you’ve been back up here. I don’t remember the last time Chicago went an entire week without a battle of some kind, and I’ve been here for most of my life.”

“Graeve was relentless,” Evan said. “He was determined to take this city down, but he had to go pretty far afield to find monsters to bond with and entice back here.”

“A shapeshifter.” Joseph shook his head, but there was a hint of marvel in his voice. “Was he a dragon first, or is it just another of his forms? What does Lee have to say about it all?”

“We haven’t talked about it.” Not because Evan wasn’t curious, but because Lee wasn’t ready for that question yet. His mind—his soul, his psyche, everything he was—had been mortally wounded when his bond with Evan had been ripped away. He had gone insane, lost to insatiable grief. That Evan had been able to bring him back was a miracle, but that didn’t mean that Lee was healed. Far from it. And what he needed right now was solidity, certainty, the solace of companionship and love—not introspective questions that toyed with the idea that he didn’t truly know himself.

There would be a time for those sorts of questions, but it could wait until they were home and settled in Forge again, with Jason and Rayan close by, and hopefully another break from the persistent monster attacks that had become a hallmark of the last several years.

God, more than that. Increased monster attacks had been the reason Evan had abandoned Marble all those years ago—the reason so many smaller communities were abandoned for large cities over the past two decades or more. How long had Graeve been working on his plan? How far had he really gone? They would never know now, but Evan sincerely believed that the future looked brighter for all of them.

“All right, arms up,” Joseph said in a no-nonsense tone of voice, bringing Evan back to the present. “Let me wrap you up again. I think they’re almost done shouting nonsense at each other out there, so I’ll take my leave and check in on your husband if he lets me.”

“I’m sure he will.” Lee was tolerant of Joseph in a way he was of few others. After applying a salve to keep infection at bay and rewrapping Evan’s chest, Joseph picked up his cane and got to his feet. Evan watched him go, stepping carefully through the door in such a way that he minimized the chances of someone out there being able to look in at Evan. Then, Evan leaned back against the wall and laid a hand against his own chest. It hardly hurt anymore.

Good. He was so ready for this to be done. Jason had been without them for the better part of a month, and while that was well off the deadline that they’d set for their son to expect them to come back, it still felt like forever. At ten, Jason was growing so fast Evan was half convinced they would be the same height by the time he returned home. He had Rayan now too, which had matured him significantly, and he was focusing harder than ever on all the things a rider needed to learn in order to be a good partner to their dragon.

It would be years before he and Rayan could actually fly together—most dragons didn’t take on a rider until their first two decades were behind them; they were simply too small and fragile for it. That would put Jason around thirty years old before they were truly able to work together, but Jason seemed determined to find more to do in the meantime. He’d found the chance he was looking for, the connection that stabilized him and settled Lee and Evan’s fears of losing their son to the instability that came from his intense empathic longing. Rayan had saved Jason’s life and would continue to do so whether they were fighting together or not, but the boy still needed his father.

“You thinkin’ big thoughts or something? Because I can come back.”

Evan jerked out of his reverie to see Darryl standing in the doorway, one hand on the door, the other with his thumb looped through a pocket. He looked irritated, but Evan sensed that wasn’t really directed at him.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you. Come in.” He indicated the chair that Joseph had vacated, and Darryl sat down, looking around the room with interest.

“Damn, you have your own personal generator and everything?” He nodded toward the lamp, which wasn’t on right now since it was bright enough outside to illuminate the room.

“We do.” Not that they’d used it much, but even having the option felt decadent.

“Look at how the Tower folk live, huh?” He shook his head. “I knew they saw things different from us down on the ground, but I didn’t know it was this different.”

“Are the negotiations getting anywhere?” Evan asked, resettling himself with a slight wince.

“Oh, maybe. They push, we pull, things end up in a muddle in the middle. We should get help reconstructing the wall this week, though, and the council has agreed to give everybody an equal chance at bonding with the new dragons once they’re of age.” When Evan raised an eyebrow, Darryl clarified, “It used to be that people in the Tower got first chance at any Bonding ceremony. Only if a dragon couldn’t find the right partner three times did they open it up to the rest of us.”

Evan frowned. “That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, it is.” Darryl twisted his neck to the side until Evan heard a little “pop.” “Ahh, that’s it right there. Anyway, yeah, it’s time for a lot of things to change. This place has been an echo chamber for so long that people didn’t see the murderer in the middle of them until he came within an inch of slitting their damn throats.” He frowned. “We’ve been just subsisting for so long, it’s hard to remember that there’s more to life than subsisting. It’s especially hard when the people in charge don’t want you to think beyond that. It’s basically been ‘pay for protection’ for a long time in Chicago, but things are changing now.”

“I’m glad,” Evan said.

“Me too. Helps me sleep a little better at night.” Darryl caught Evan’s gaze. “Did Graeve give any indication at all that he cared about … us? The people of Chicago?”

“No.”

“Then why did he go to so much trouble to help us survive? Why be Captain Zenal? He could have ended this any time he wanted to, but he didn’t. The guy personally saved my life half a dozen times, it—shit, I don’t know.”

Evan had been thinking about this. “He was laying a trap for Ladon, I know that much. He couldn’t abandon Chicago and focus on Forge because he wanted the eggs to survive, and he couldn’t set a decent trap to get rid of me from so far away, so he needed to lure us here.

“I’m pretty sure he let Winona get as far as she did on purpose,” Evan added. “So at the very least, we’d see her and figure out where she came from. The fact that she lived long enough to tell us how bad things were here was just a bonus.”

“Damn. That’s cold.”

“It is.” Evan wished he had a bit of comfort to share with Darryl, something to let him know that despite it all, there had been some truth to Captain’s Zenal’s dedication to keeping Chicago safe. He couldn’t, so he changed the subject instead. “I hear you’re going to be the next captain of the wall.”

“Which isn’t terrifying at all,” Darryl deadpanned.

“Hey, at least things are pretty quiet right now,” Evan deadpanned right back. “So you’ll have some time to ease into it instead of yelling yourself hoarse every other day. Are you going to push for any changes to the architecture of the defenses?”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. What do you think about …”

The rest of the afternoon passed as pleasantly as Evan could hope for. By the time Darryl left, so had the rest of the people holding court out in the living room. By the time Lee came in, carrying dinner on a tray, Evan was feeling cautiously optimistic.

“Things are definitely changing,” Lee agreed when Evan shared his thoughts in between bites of a savory hash. “People like Darryl are going to have a bigger role to play in the future here. It’s hard for the council to accept that, but they don’t have a choice.” Because I’m not giving them one, Lee’s subtext and emotions seemed to say.

“I wish I had been more helpful when it came to dealing with the council,” Evan confessed. “I haven’t even met the other riders.”

“Peter and Samantha are legacy riders, like you were with Jurie, but they think that makes them Chicago royalty.” Lee raised an eyebrow. “They didn’t like learning that the next generation of dragons were going to have a wider pool of empaths to choose from.”

Evan sighed. “People in power are always the same, aren’t they?”

“Not always,” Lee said. “Not if we don’t let them get that way. And I think we should make a point of visiting Chicago regularly while those hatchlings are growing up, and send Forge’s other dragons to do the same to broaden their influences.”

“That’s a good idea.” Evan finished his water, put his plate back on the tray, and sighed. “It would be nice to be here when they hatch, but for now I’m more than ready to go home.”

“So am I,” Lee said. He set the tray on the floor and moved over next to Evan, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him in close. Evan went and let his eyes drift shut as he just listened to the sound of Lee’s heartbeat and the slow, steady rush of his breaths.

“One more week,” Lee promised. “When you’re recovered enough to leave the bandages behind. One week to make sure we’ve done all we can here to help them start anew. One week to help build the wall and drive away any lurking monsters, and then we’re going home.” He kissed the top of Evan’s head, then his temple. “Back to our son and our friends and our life.”

“I could make a life anywhere as long as it’s with you,” Evan murmured. He knew he’d go anywhere, endure anything, if it meant staying with Lee.

“I know.” He heard the smile in his partner’s voice as clearly as if he was seeing it. “Lucky me. And lucky us that we have one waiting already. Forge is our future, Evan.”

“It is.” For now at least. In the future, once Jason was grown and things were more peaceful, perhaps they would be called to go somewhere else.

Either way, he would be with Lee. That was promise enough.

Epilogue

Jason cradled Rayan in his arms as he stared out at the bright-blue horizon. It was midafternoon, bitterly cold, but with warm, cozy Rayan tucked to his chest, Jason didn’t mind it. Jason went to rub his nose on his sleeve, then stopped when he heard his dad’s voice in his head, reminding him, handkerchief, kiddo, c’mon. He grabbed a ragged piece of cotton out of his pocket and wiped with that instead, then went back to staring.

Daddies?

“They’re coming,” he whispered to Rayan. “They’re getting close. I know it.” Jason wasn’t entirely sure if that was true, but he could feel something—a slight pressure in the back of his mind, one he hadn’t even realized was there until the terrible day a few weeks ago when it disappeared entirely. He’d been left on the floor, gasping and crying as Rayan and Winona and Charlie all crowded around him, asking what was wrong and unable to understand when he told them his fathers were gone.

It was even stranger to suddenly feel them again not much later. Charlie had chalked his sudden grief and recovery up to missing his parents, and Winona had eventually agreed, but Rayan, who was just beginning to project her thoughts, knew the truth.

It was good to have someone to share the truth with when no one else knew how to believe him.

Jason was up on the walls a lot—he liked the view, he liked naming the mountains for Rayan, and looking at the livestock pens from so high up, and watching the dragons swirl overhead as they went on patrol. He didn’t let himself linger on the eastern wall very often, though. It made him sad to look out there and miss his fathers. But today … today …

“They’re coming,” he repeated. The feeling inside of him was growing, warming, making him feel whole.

Daddies. Happy.

Jason smiled and hugged his baby dragon. “Yeah, I’m happy they’re almost home.”

Them happy.

“I hope so.” He stared out over the snow-dotted ruins of Denver until his eyes blurred with tears from the wind, long enough that Charlie eventually came looking for him.

“Hey, kid,” the old woman said, clasping his shoulder and pulling him into a side hug. Jason leaned his head against her but resisted when she tried to direct him away from the wall. “It’s getting late. You ought to come inside for dinner.”

“In a minute,” he replied. Just a little longer and his fathers would be back, he knew it, knew it. He just had to give it a bit more time.

“You know your dads wouldn’t want you to freeze up here waiting for them,” Charlie said. “They’ll be back when they’re back. Staring out at nothing won’t make them show up any faster.”

“It’s not—” Nothing, he’d been about to say when the setting sun lit a spark on something bright in the distance. The object grew wings, then a tail, then—

“Dads!” Jason knew they couldn’t hear him yet, but he raised his free arm and started waving it wildly. He would have jumped up and down if he hadn’t been holding Rayan. “My dads are coming!”

“Well, damn. You’re right!” Charlie said, a grin breaking out on her face. “About time, huh?”

Jason knew they were flying fast, but it still felt like too long before they finally reached the wall. Shouts were sounding, a bell was ringing to announce Ladon and Evan’s return, but all Jason knew was Evan jumping down from Ladon’s back, running over to him, and—

Warmth. Comfort. Family, and then another set of arms wrapped them both up, and it was even better, even more exactly what he needed, and what he’d missed so much.

“I missed you,” he mumbled into his dad’s chest. Evan kissed the top of his head.

“We missed you too,” he said. “But we’re home now.”

Home, Rayan cooed into Jason’s mind. He had to agree.

Wherever the four of them were, that was home.

~*~*~*~

Ready for more danger, magic, and romance? Try Luckless, the first book in Cari Z’s epic M/M fantasy romance series! If you like dragons and people with the ability to bond with them going toe-to-toe against monsters in the wrecked and rebuilt remnants of human civilization, then this is a book you’re going to love!

Luckless is currently exclusive to KU, so purchase or borrow your copy and get ready to get caught up in a dangerously addicting fantasy series! Luckless is also coming to audiobook soon, narrated by the fantastic Michael Ferraiuolo, so look out for whispersync! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088WG8ZLQ/

Get more on Cari’s latest releases and exclusive content by subscribing to her newsletter: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/x1x1m4

~*~

Luckless: Chapter One

“Incoming, one thousand feet!”

The gunner manning the corner turret wielded his megaphone like a whip, waving toward the edge of the wall. “Archers, move forward! Pikemen, get your asses ready to back them up!” Evan stepped up to his position, close enough to the edge to shoot over it but far enough back that he wouldn’t be vulnerable to the first thing with claws to crawl up there.

He glanced down and frowned. The crix were still about eight hundred feet away, but there were a lot of them—more than he’d ever seen before during a winter attack on the city. The dragons and their riders were already battling the bigger beasts farther out in the ruins that used to be Denver, but there weren’t enough of them anymore to keep the city completely clear. That was where Evan and the people like him came in.

The man to his left—a boy, really, probably no more than sixteen—shivered as he took his own peek over the wall. His hands were shaking so badly they could barely hold on to his bow, much less nock an arrow when the crix got close enough to shoot. His fear struck a chord in Evan, who still remembered the brutal chaos of his first battle almost twenty years ago. He smiled sympathetically. “First time on the wall?”

The boy gulped and nodded. “Uh-huh.” His posture was so stiff it seemed his back might break. “I thought—I thought there would be fewer of them. That’s why my dad chose now to bring me up here, so I could—I could get used to fighting them before the big waves come in the spring. But this is . . .”

“Unusual,” Evan supplied. “Around double what we’d see during a normal winter attack. That probably means they’re being driven.”

“Driven?” The boy turned wide eyes on Evan. “By what?”

Evan shrugged. “Lack of food, a bad weather front closing in, or more likely in this case? A bigger monster. Crix are tough, but they’re too small to put up much of a fight against a really big monster, and they don’t have the temperament for swarming for long. Too prone to cannibalism.”

“Oh. Right.” His voice sounded so small, already close to defeat without even seeing battle.

Evan moved a little closer to him. “Remember, aim for their heads—if you can crack the carapace, you’ll stun them, and then the other crix will take care of them for us. If you shoot them through the eye socket, you’ll kill them fast. Don’t bother going for the legs, they’ve got too many backups. Just breathe, nock, draw, and loose.”

“Breathe, nock, draw, and loose,” the boy repeated, sounding better already. “Breathe, nock, draw, and loose. Aim for the head.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Right.”

Evan patted the boy on the shoulder, then dropped his hand when the man stationed on the kid’s other side stalked over to them, pointing an accusing finger at Evan.

“You leave my boy alone, Luckless!”

“Dad, calm down.” The kid seemed embarrassed, but whether for his dad’s words or for responding to Evan’s attempt to comfort him, Evan didn’t know. “He was just telling me about how to take down crix.”

“You take down crix like you do any other monster—you shoot it,” his father said stiffly. “That’s what the damn bow is for. You don’t need Luckless to tell you that.” He focused on Evan again. “Ollie doesn’t need advice on killing beasts from a failed rider who couldn’t even keep his own dragon alive. I’ll tell you one last time—leave my boy alone.” He grabbed Ollie by the arm and hauled him a few feet farther to the left, away from Evan.

The kid seemed confused, but Evan just looked away. He’d gone through this same encounter so many times since coming to the massive fortress that was the city of Forge that the accusations had almost stopped stinging. There wasn’t much about what the man had said that wasn’t true, after all. Evan had lost his dragon, as well as everyone else left in Marble after that hellish summer five years ago.

Evan watched as the gunner swung his .50 caliber M2 machine gun toward an incoming flock of harpies—carrion feeders who only banded together when there was bigger prey in the offing. The gunner fired a short burst and half of the monsters fell, losing feathers and blood and shrieking almost intelligibly. This machine gun was one of only four in the city, and one of the very few firearms that they still managed to produce ammunition for. Even so, its store of brass casings would wear out eventually, and then they’d have little more than muskets to fire along with their arrows.

Some of the defenders cheered, but Evan simply tuned them out and glanced over the edge again. The first wave of crix was almost within range, their leg blades singing over the whistle of the icy wind, their armored bellies nearly scraping the chunks of pitted concrete and rebar that were all that remained of southbound I-25. Their front legs were shaped for climbing, short and stubby and tipped with thick, sharp claws, while their hind legs were long and built for propulsion. When they rubbed those blades together, they made a sound almost too beautiful to possibly herald death.

They were no more than a hundred feet away now, the bigger ones starting to jump in anticipation of bounding up the wall. It was an ugly, patchwork thing, made from the bones of skyscrapers and museums, the city it surrounded packed to the brim with the survivors, their herds, and their dragons. In most places, it was too steep to jump straight over, and the crix had to climb, but sometimes a few of them got lucky—especially the bigger ones, closer to mule-sized than dog-sized.

The gunner lifted his megaphone again. “Archers, fire at will!”

Evan had an arrow nocked before the man finished speaking, and loosed it at the largest crix within range. It hit a glancing blow on the creature’s head—not quite enough to crack its shell, but it was still stunned, limbs waving dazedly as it rolled onto its side. Five or six smaller crix immediately diverted to attack it, and Evan smiled grimly. There was no better way to take out a monster than with another monster.

He fired again and again, striking true and winnowing down the oncoming horde as effectively as he could. Unfortunately, most of his fellow archers weren’t having the same success. Ollie in particular seemed to have forgotten Evan’s advice in the heat of the fight, firing almost blindly and with no thought to aiming, which meant most of his arrows skittered into the ground. Evan gritted his teeth over it until his last arrow was gone, then lowered his bow and ran to the boy’s side.

“Slow down!” he shouted.

Ollie turned to him, his expression blank with shock, hands so tight on the bow they were blanched bone white. “Wha-what?”

“You have to slow down if you’re going to have a hope of hitting anything.” Evan kept his voice loud even though they were face-to-face now, trying to break through Ollie’s fear and the rising sounds of the advancing crix. The gunner yelled something again, but Evan couldn’t make it out. “You’re just wasting arrows otherwise. Try to—”

“Luckless!” Ollie’s father marched back over, dodging around advancing pikemen with rage written in the craggy lines of his face. “What the hell did I just tell you? You leave my boy alone or I’ll—” A crix the size of a house cat leapt over the edge of the wall, dodged the pikeman who tried to impale it, and landed on Ollie’s father’s chest.

It was small, but heavy enough to knock him to the ground. He screamed as he fell back, the crix fastening its mandibles into the front of his shoulder and violently shaking its head.

“Dad!” Ollie dropped his bow and ran to his father, trying in vain to pry the crix off of him. The creature’s leg blades keened and the boy jumped back, cradling his lacerated hands to his chest with a dumbfounded expression.

“Son of a bitch,” Evan muttered. He unsheathed his bowie knife as he ran over, reversed his grip on it, and then stuck it straight down, right through the side of the crix’s neck. He put his other hand on the back of the creature’s head and drew the blade in a circle. The wound seeped dark-blue blood, staining his glove, and a second later the crix slumped over onto the parapet, its grip vanishing in death.

He glanced back at Ollie, who blinked at him uncomprehendingly. For fuck’s sake, what were they doing in training these days? “Get your father off the wall,” Evan said. “Take him to the medics.”

Ollie nodded but didn’t move.

“Now!” His volume finally mobilized the kid, who managed to get a grip on his moaning father despite his bloody hands and hoisted him to his feet. Evan plucked the rest of the arrows out of Ollie’s quiver before he could disappear, then shoved the pair of them toward the nearest stairwell. Their injuries didn’t look too bad. They’d probably both live to fight another day.

Although if this was their idea of fighting, everyone would be better off if they stayed at home.

Not nice, Evan thought as he fired a pilfered arrow at the next crix to make it past the pikemen, a larger specimen that hissed menacingly when he cracked its shell. It reeled like a drunk, though, and he was able to jam his knife into its brain with little danger. But there’s no place for nice when you’re fighting for your life. He’d offered to help train the archer corps before, but had been bluntly rebuffed. Might have to insist.

The sound of the machine gun rang in the air, ugly and beautiful all at once. Their gunner was a good shot, really good, but he was too busy taking out fliers to help with the horde coming over the wall, and over it they were. Evan fired his last arrow straight into the eye of a crix not ten feet away, partly on and partly over the wall. He ran to it and shoved the quivering carcass off the edge, diverting half a dozen others toward their next meal, but it wasn’t enough. The crix were still coming, four or five bodies deep as they crawled up the wall, mandibles clacking and leg blades singing a haunting chorus. The pikemen would be overwhelmed soon, and there weren’t enough archers left on this section of the wall to do much good. They needed a strafe.

“Hey!” he shouted at the gunner, hoping against hope that he’d be heard above the noise. “Flare!”

The man didn’t even glance his way, still focused on shooting down harpies. Their feminine faces contorted with agony as the bullets tore into their flesh, the girlish illusion ruined by the cluster of razor-like teeth framing every scream.

“Flare!” He started running toward the turret, dodging the pikemen engaged in direct combat. He could climb up there and—

Shing! Bright white pain shot through Evan’s left calf and emerged as a half-choked shout. He turned to face the raccoon-sized crix that had sliced into his leg even as he drew his right foot back. Too fast for the creature to counter, he kicked it just beneath its jaw. The beast flew onto its back, writhing and squirming, and Evan jammed his knife into its throat and twisted the blade before it could right itself. His glove was soaked with blue now, but he kept his grip—salamander skin didn’t slip. He pulled the knife free and kept running, forcing his gait to stay long and smooth. He didn’t have time to limp—they were going to be overwhelmed, and their idiot of a gunner wouldn’t even notice until a crix pulled him out of his perch.

The easiest way to get up the turret was to take the stairs, but those weren’t accessible from the outside, so Evan found purchase for his hands and began to climb.

It was only twenty feet. It felt like twenty miles, especially when a tiny crix, no bigger than the palm of his hand but no less deadly for it, jumped straight at his face. Evan saw it coming and managed to parry it with the knife, barely maintaining his hold on the wall with his other hand. The crix hit the ground, but it wasn’t hurt, and it gathered itself to jump again. This time Evan met it with his boot, and the steel in the toe impacted the beast’s head hard enough to crack the carapace. The crix fell again, twitching uncontrollably, and Evan turned back to the climb.

He hauled himself over the edge of the turret, then threw up his hands when he found the gun swinging around to point at him. “Whoa, easy, relax!”

“What the fuck are you doing up here?” the gunner demanded. His lank brown hair was held back from his face by a red kerchief, and his eyes blazed with indignation. “Get back down to your post!”

“We need a strafe! Or we’re going to lose this section of the wall and all the defenders on it.”

“I decide when we need a strafe, not you!” He swung the gun around and fired off a few shots at a distant cluster of harpies. “You’ll manage.”

“Look at our complement—it’s down by half with injured.” Injured or dead. “We don’t have the archers or the ammo to slow down the crix enough so the pikemen aren’t overwhelmed.”

“You bein’ up here isn’t helping! I can— Oh, shit.” The gunner pivoted again and continued to fire, winnowing through an incoming cluster of fliers in a spray of blood and feathers. “Yeah! Take that, you bitch-faced pigeon fuckers! Take— Hey!” He grabbed for the flare gun that Evan had just lifted from his belt, but too late—Evan aimed it into the sky and fired. A few moments later, a burst of red exploded above them. The defenders on the wall cheered.

In the distance, Evan could just make out one of Forge’s dragons—Gorot, such a dark green he was almost black—turning away from whatever he was fighting and flying ponderously toward the wall. The dragons and their riders were spread thin these days, only three of them left with the mass and strength to engage with whatever might come at them across the ruin of the old city.

Once Gorot and his rider, Susan, got close enough to flame, the gunner—still glaring at Evan—lifted his megaphone and shouted, “Cover!” Fighters all along the wall pulled back to the far edge, and eager crix followed them.

Hundreds of monsters died instantly as a dense spray of fire roasted them in place against the wall. The heat was brief but intense, the burning warmth clinging to cold concrete in the form of charred gore. The crix already on top of the wall lost their focus, scattering in panic at their confrontation with an immeasurably more powerful beast. Some leapt back down the wall; others were skewered as they scuttled about, either by defenders or their own frantic cousins. Gorot turned to make another pass, but a sudden rumbling roar sent him heading back the way he’d come, and stopped everyone else in their tracks out of pure shock.

“Oh god,” Evan breathed. “Manticore.” He hadn’t seen a manticore in the flesh since leaving Marble, but he’d never forget that roar. The sound echoed across the city, and in its wake came the creature itself. As tall as a dragon but thicker, stronger, this beast with a shockingly human face, a lion’s body, and a killing, quill-covered tail was one of the deadliest and most destructive monsters roaming what used to be the United States.

It wasn’t in and of itself so dangerous to a dragon—they were armored and could fly, after all, and enough fire would drive off even something like this. No, the greatest danger a manticore posed to a dragon was to his rider. The quills in its tail could be fired like darts, and they were poisonous on top of being wickedly sharp. If a dragon got too close, the odds of their rider escaping injury were . . . not good.

Evan and the rest of the defenders watched in anxious silence as the two dragons who were closest engaged the manticore. It leapt at them like a cat jumping for a bird, dodging their fire with the speed of a snake. Two on one should have favored the dragons, but they were already tired from the earlier battle, their flight slower than it should have been. One of them—Lyra, the oldest dragon, grizzled and gray and missing half her teeth—was glanced by a leaping paw as she banked around the beast.

The move destabilized her flight, tilting her dangerously toward the ground. That was when the manticore fired his quills. Evan couldn’t see them fly, but he saw their effects clearly enough. One second, Lyra was attempting to stabilize herself and then—

A dragon’s roar was different from a manticore’s, less of a growl and more like an instrument, a clarion trumpet. Usually clear and smooth, Lyra’s roar now was tortured, a sound of pure, animalistic grief and rage. Evan could just barely make out the silhouette of a tiny figure dangling limply from Lyra’s back. His heart spasmed in his chest, his withered empathy reaching out but still unable to connect to the dragon. He was broken, and with the loss of her rider, Bram, so was Lyra.

Lyra abandoned the skies, diving straight at the manticore and spewing flames from her maw. The manticore ducked low and darted forward, but Lyra caught his hindquarters with her claws as she crashed to the ground, and dragged the beast in tight before smashing hard into an old pile of rebar.

Evan winced as he heard a loud crack reverberate across the valley—she had likely broken a wing, and just as obviously didn’t care. The manticore bit and scratched, but Lyra wouldn’t let go, rending it as she fought to bring her fire to bear again. For a moment it seemed like she would prevail, but the manticore was more agile on the ground. It got beneath her long jaw and dug its fangs into her throat. Her scream was a death knell now, tapering off after several agonizing seconds of pain.

The manticore had no time to celebrate its victory. Gorot and Kisthe converged on it from opposite directions, fire blazing so hot it was nearly white as it poured from their throats. The beast, still tangled with Lyra’s corpse, couldn’t avoid both jets. Half its body caught fire, the long, dangerous tail shriveling and curling like a dead match. It swatted fruitlessly at the sky, enormous paws grasping greedily until the very end. When it died, it did so with an enormous shudder that even Evan could make out.

The dragons screamed with grief. The defenders watched with breathless dread. And the remaining crix reversed direction and scuttled, en masse, toward the carcasses.

About The Author

Cari Z. is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayers, and even normal people sometimes. Cari has published short stories, novellas and novels with numerous print and e-presses, and she also offers up a tremendous amount of free content on her blog and on AO3 as CariZee. Follow her blog, join her Patreon, or sign up for her newsletter to read her serial stories! New chapters post on a weekly/monthly basis.

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