Defender Dragon (Protection, Inc 2)

Journey pressed her knuckles hard into her mouth to stifle a gasp. He was unconscious, his head hanging down and his arms stretched up above him. She didn’t see any blood, but he was drenched in sweat and breathing as if pain had followed him even into sleep.

She tugged at the cell door, careful not to rattle it. The door was locked.

“Lucas,” she whispered.

He didn’t stir.

She whispered louder. “Lucas! It’s Journey!”

That didn’t wake him either, and she was afraid to speak louder. Whoever had locked him up had to be nearby.

She wanted to rip her hair out with frustration. He was hurt and in terrible danger, but though she was only six feet away from him, she couldn’t get to him or help him. She couldn’t even let him know she was there without endangering them both.

Journey forced herself to think. There had to be something she could do.

She could leave, find a telephone, and call the police. But she hated to abandon Lucas, let alone for the hours— maybe days— that would take. He could be dead by the time anyone got there.

Journey looked around the dungeon, hoping for a stray iron bar she could use to bash someone over the head. She didn’t see one, but she did see a small wooden table with a vial full of clear liquid, placed right outside Lucas’s cell. That was odd.

She glanced back into the cell, then at the table. It would be directly in his line of sight if he’d been awake. If that was deliberate, then he was supposed to look at that vial. It must have been left there to intimidate him when he woke up.

Poison? Journey thought, then guessed, Dragonsbane.

Then she heard footsteps coming down the stairs at the other end of the dungeon. She had no time to wonder if she was right. Moving as fast as she could, she opened the vial, dumped the liquid into her backpack so it wouldn’t make a telltale stain on the ground, yanked the bottle of heartsease from her pocket, poured it into the vial, capped the vial, and replaced it on the table.

By the time she was done with that, the footsteps were almost at the dungeon. Terror vibrated down every nerve as she fled for the servants’ stairs, trying to mo

ve as fast as she could without making a sound.

She could hear voices by the time she reached the stairs. Journey darted upward until she was in darkness, then sank down on the hard stone steps, her pulse thundering in her ears.

She could see nothing, but she could hear everything. Footsteps. The cell door rattling open. A hard slap. A muffled groan, quickly cut off, that pierced her to the heart.

And then a voice she didn’t recognize. “Where is Journey Jacobson?”

“That’s the wrong question.” Lucas’s voice was hoarse and stressed, but his crisp intonations were unmistakable. “You should be asking, ‘Who is Journey Jacobson?’”

“Play games with me, and I’ll have you gagged again,” snapped the other man.

Lucas went on as if the man hadn’t spoken. “Journey Jacobson is my mate. She’s the woman I love and always will. It is my honor to protect her to my dying breath.”

Journey’s heart ached to hear Lucas’s words. Even tortured and chained and threatened, with no idea that she was there to hear him, his thoughts were on her. That was what she’d always imagined love to be— always secretly believed love to be— though everyone told her fairytales weren’t real, happily ever afters didn’t exist, and love was no deeper bond than mere shared interests and sexual attraction.

If the heartsease didn’t work, Journey would run down the steps and fight to save the man she loved. She couldn’t imagine that having any outcome other than getting herself killed. But she had to try. She couldn’t leave Lucas to die alone.

Another slap echoed against the stone walls. Journey winced in sympathetic pain.

The other man spoke loudly. “You’ll change your tune soon enough. Pry his mouth open.”

Chapter Ten

Lucas

Lucas fought the men holding him, but he had little strength left. They easily forced his head back and pried his jaws apart. Even that brief struggle left him dizzy, his heart fluttering unevenly in his chest.

I won’t have to endure this for two days, he thought. A couple more doses, and my heart will give out.

Maybe one more dose will do it.