However, he was anxious to finish his sweep and find Faye. After all, the devil had forgone waking him up and had left him with a message: You needed the sleep. When you read this, do your job and then find us.
In her note, Faye had acted if she were still head Protector. He was also a bit miffed she had made decisions for him.
His dragon said, I agree with her, and someone needs to look after us. Besides, those few extra hours of sleep make us sharper and better able to find clues.
What clues? All I see are trees, cottages, and more bloody trees.
Someone is impatient.
Grant was about to argue with his dragon about patience. Few dragon halves possessed it, and under normal circumstances, Grant’s was no exception.
But he decided against it. After all, Grant had been denying him their true mate. That would make anyone testy.
Grant himself was wound tight after his dream of Faye naked and beneath him. While sex dreams wer
e great, the tenderness of her curling up against his chest as he held her tight still sent a wave of longing through his body. He’d always secretly wanted to have someone he could trust completely and confide in. He loved his brother, but Chase preferred to tease and treat the world as a ride to be enjoyed. Grant wasn’t sure where he got that from, but the differences in their personalities had created a type of barrier between them growing up.
Faye, on the other hand, knew how to balance fun with dependability. She would never betray him by spilling a secret. After all, she never had in the past and she’d known more than almost anyone about his time in the army.
His dragon chimed in again. She will be ours. Stop doubting it.
I wish it were that easy, dragon.
It could be.
Rather than wax on about what he wanted, he focused on what he could do in the present. Grant flapped his wings as the ground sped past beneath him. He’d nearly reached the village that signaled the end of his search area when he noticed smoke coming up from a large patch of trees.
While it could be humans or even a routine controlled fire, he wasn’t taking any chances. His gut said to investigate the smoke.
Grant maintained his trajectory and speed. He needed whoever it was to think he was going to fly past them.
At the last second Grant folded his wings to his back and dove for the trees. As the branches broke against his body, he didn’t think of the bruises he’d have the next day. Instead, he scanned the area and saw the backs of two forms near a fire.
In the next second, the male and female jumped up and faced him.
It was his father and his father’s sister.
While recognition flared in his father and aunt’s eyes, the realization only took a split-second. The pair turned and ran just as Grant half-crashed to the ground. Not wasting any time, he lunged for them in his dragon form. However, he could only reach his father in time. His aunt ran out of sight.
Fucking fantastic. Even if he made it out of the trees as quickly as he could, his aunt would probably take the car parked near the lone cottage he’d seen next to the trees and escape before he could reach her. If he didn’t have a prisoner, he might be able to catch up to her. But that would require releasing his father.
Grant looked down at his father, Michael. He may have a way to still find the other traitors, even if his aunt warned them.
His father spoke. “Let me go, lad. You don’t want to become involved.”
His father’s statement only piqued his curiosity. Not that Grant could ask questions in his dragon form.
No, he had to find a safe place to stow Michael McFarland until Grant could interrogate him. He wanted to do it straight away, but he couldn’t risk something going wrong with the exhibition.
Then it hit him. Inverness Castle had an underground dragon holding cell. If Grant stashed his dad there, he could question the traitor as soon as the exhibition was over.
With a plan in place, Grant moved toward the clearing beyond the trees. As expected, there was no sign of his aunt.
Focusing back on his father, Grant turned him upside down and shook him a few times to dislodge his belongings. As a few things tumbled to the ground, Grant snatched up his dad’s mobile phone between two talons of his free hand and tucked it gently into the small pouch around Grant’s neck. He would ask Ian and Emma, Lochguard’s techies, to poke around and see what they could find.
He scanned the rest of the bits and bobs and didn’t see anything of value. Hopefully if his father had any sort of anti-dragon defense items, Grant had shaken them out. There was no way he would risk Michael running free by setting his dad down to shift, calling for back-up, searching his prisoner, and then finally taking off.
Since Grant had come on a mission to find rogue dragon-shifters, he carefully took out a vial of ground mandrake root and periwinkle from the small pouch around his neck. Holding the tube with one of his rear feet, he delicately tugged the ring on the top. If he spilled any on himself, Grant wouldn’t be able to shift again for days.