They say the skies tore the day the harpies screamed into existence.
This time—THIS TIME—she had gone too goddamn far.
This time he wasn’t going to just throttle her. Swear to gods, this time he was going to kill her.
He showered in painfully hot water and scrubbed all traces of the woman’s scent from his body. Then he yanked on fresh clothes, jeans, boots and a T-shirt. Sentinel clothes, the sturdy kind that had some chance of holding up in a fight and were easy to throw away afterward. Because he’d earned the right to go armed in the Tower now, he strapped on weapons too, a knife in a thigh sheath and a Glock in a shoulder holster.
The sheet of ice on the roads forced him to take the drive to the Tower slowly. The sedate trip did nothing to calm his seething temper, which settled into cold, predatory intent. By the time he strode into the Tower, traffic had begun to pick up as dawn lightened the sky and the city awakened.
A study of affluence in every detail, Cuelebre Tower was eighty stories tall. Nobody in their right mind took the stairs. He wasn’t in his right mind. He didn’t want to have to talk to anybody.
He took the stairs at a steady, relentless pace that did nothing to calm him down either. It did limber up his body, until he felt warm, loose and ready for a confrontation.
Except then he couldn’t find her.
One of the first things he had learned about the Tower was where Aryal slept at night, so he went to her apartment and pounded on her door. Nobody answered, and he could hear no sound of movement from within.
He whirled and stalked to the cafeteria. It had just opened to serve breakfast, and people were beginning to trickle in. No harpy. People took note of his rigid face and swift, angry movements and gave him plenty of room. Next stop on his hunt was the massive gym and training area. He circled through, and even went so far as to check the locker rooms.
Goddammit, no.
He was going to have to pause to think about this. He didn’t want to. His hands remembered how it felt to latch around her neck, and they wanted to do it again. Flexing his long fingers, he exited the gym—
Just as down the hall, the doors to one of the elevators opened, and Aryal and Grym walked out.
The sight of her was the same shock to the system as it always was, a raw live jolt of electricity that juddered over his nerve endings. Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, his mind leaped to a higher, faster level. This must be what it felt like for humans to jack on amphetamines.
He lunged down the hall toward her, noting every detail about her as he gained speed. As usual, she wore fighting leathers and her thick, black shoulder-length hair was tangled. Even though he knew that meant she had recently been airborne, she looked as rumpled as if she had just gotten out of bed. Her normally pale skin was flush all over with a clear, high color.
She looked as if she was glowing from an internal flame. Even though her face was uncharacteristically drawn with tiredness, she was still more alive than anyone he had ever met, ten times more vibrant than any other woman he had ever seen.
She was … glorious.
A stiletto of bitterness lanced him. Gods, if he could ever meet a woman like that whom he didn’t loathe as completely as he loathed her, he might lose this whip of restlessness that drove him. He could live the rest of his life and do nothing, be nothing but completely content. It was hideously unfair that he would look at this harpy and realize that about himself.
She saw him coming. Even though his intent was unmistakable, her face lit up, because she was just bent that way. As she turned toward him, she swept one of her arms backward, hard, and knocked Grym in the chest so that he staggered back into the elevator. Then she strode forward to engage.
She didn’t even pause to say anything or ask Quentin why. They both knew there were so many reasons.
He leaped at her, and she dove low so that he overshot, but he thrust out one hand and grabbed a magnificent handful of that tangled black hair and yanked her with him.
They tumbled together, growling, arms and limbs entwined. He caught her scent, and she smelled like healthy woman, clean cold air and arousal.
So the rumors about her and Grym must be true. He liked Grym and found the thought of their pairing so offensive that his growling deepened and grew edged.
She flipped him onto his back. Heaving hard, he flipped them over again and covered her straining body with his. As he pinned her long, taut torso, their hips came into alignment. There was rough friction at his groin, along with her wild scent.
It was so goddamn primal.
His c**k stiffened again. Bloody hell.
Her eyes flashed furiously through her tangled hair. Fire bloomed down the length of his back as she raked him with her talons. Quicker than thought, breathing heavily, he punched her in the face. For one split second he thought she looked surprised and thoughtful. Then she twisted underneath him to knee him in the groin. More fire bloomed in an infernal garden.
He still had one fist clenched in her hair. Snarling, he yanked her head back and struck down, intending to fasten his teeth on her bared throat.
He never connected.
One moment they were locked together in a vicious, intimate embrace. The next moment he was several yards away, sprawled in a tangle against the wall in a complete disconnect with reality. He felt as if he had been kicked by a mountain.
Which in a way, he realized, he had been. His mind caught up with what had happened. Broken ribs protesting, he struggled to roll over onto his hands and knees, and he looked back in the direction of the elevators.
Dragos stood where they had been fighting, the harpy prone at his feet. Grym stood quietly in the open doorway of the elevator that Aryal had knocked him into, hands lax, all of his attention fixed on the Lord of the Wyr.
More details sank in. Dragos was dressed in jeans and a thin silk sweater, and he had one boot planted in the middle of Aryal’s back. He looked utterly furious, his roughhewn expression set in lines of brutality.
He also held his sleeping son cradled against his shoulder. Quentin had thought that baby was small before—just six pounds when he had been born, Pia had told him. Held against the tremendous musculature of his father’s chest, he looked as tiny as a small child’s doll.
Quentin’s mind flatlined.
He had thought he didn’t hold any illusions about Dragos. He knew that the only thing that could possibly take the dragon down was a dedicated army with inspired leadership and experienced magic users. But if he had ever held a secret daydream of someone besting Dragos in his human form in single, unarmed combat, that daydream had just been shattered forever.
Not only had Dragos just taken down two of the best, nastiest Wyr fighters in the world, he had done it by moving faster than Quentin could comprehend.
And he did it all without ever jostling the baby enough to wake him.
Dragos glared around the hall at the spectators who had been drawn by the violence.
“Go away,” he whispered. People vanished. He kicked Aryal over so that she lay on her back, staring up at him. Still speaking so gently that the baby never stirred, he told her, “I have given you more free rein than I have given almost anybody else, and you have just used the last of that up.”
The dragon’s incandescent gold gaze turned to Quentin. “And you haven’t earned any free rein. I am going upstairs to tuck my son into his crib. You will both go to my office right now and wait for me there. You will not speak to anyone else. You will not speak to or fight each other.” He glanced at Grym. “If either one of them disobeys me by so much as uttering a single word, shoot them.”
Grym drew his gun and said, “Yes, my lord.”
THREE
Quentin held his side as he limped down the hall, cataloguing the damage from the fight and that monstrously powerful kick. He guessed he had three broken ribs, maybe more. Whatever the damage was, it was the size of Dragos’s boot. His left knee was wrenched badly and he couldn’t bend it. The kneecap felt wrong, like it had been dislocated.
He had also done something exceedingly rare for him. When he had landed against the wall, he had been ass over teakettle, completely out of control of his fall. Usually his fast reflexes saved him from that kind of damage, but not this time.
When he added his bruised, throbbing groin and the claw marks on his back to the list, he was actually more hurt now than he had been throughout all of the Sentinel Games, but for a Wyr of his robust health the injuries were minor. He would want to get his ribs wrapped after Dragos yelled at and maybe fired them, but he’d heal just fine.
His gaze slid sideways. Grym walked between him and Aryal, his Glock pointed casually at the floor.
Aryal walked stiffly, her expression grim and mouth tight. One side of her face had already purpled from his punch. As Quentin watched, her gaze slid sideways toward him. The narrow-eyed glance she gave him was filled with pure evil. Then she looked down at Grym’s Glock, and her expression turned unhappy.
“You’re doing a really good job,” Grym told her, his voice mild and encouraging. “I know what you want to ask, so I’ll answer right now and save you the temptation. Dragos told me to shoot you if you said a word, so yes, I would do as he ordered. He didn’t say where to shoot you though.”
Aryal threw up her hands in a silent question.
Grym told her, “I’d probably tag you on your foot.”
Her mouth turned down at the corners. She shook her head and pointed to her forearm, while Quentin scratched the back of his head and stared at them. They were discussing in all seriousness which body part Grym was going to shoot?
“Okay, not your foot,” Grym amended. “I’d tag your arm. Satisfied? And the point is that you would deserve it. You both would. He really lost it with you. You’re lucky he didn’t shatter your spines and put you in traction for a month.”
Quentin took a deep breath. Both Aryal and Grym turned to him. Aryal looked hopeful while Grym just waited. He let the breath out again silently and Aryal’s face fell.
Grym said, “If that was meant as a question—yes, Dragos has put people in traction before.”
This was the most Quentin had ever heard Grym talk before. They made their way through the outer offices into Dragos’s massive corner office.
Quentin had only been in Dragos’s office once before. His lip curled as he looked around.
Compared to the ostentatious luxury throughout the rest of the Tower, the office was almost Spartan. Mostly the room was empty floor space. There was a huge desk and chair, with two more chairs positioned in front of it, a plain mahogany table pushed against one wall, and original multimedia artwork hung on the two interior walls. The two corner walls were floor to ceiling windows, framing one of the most expensive skyline views in the world. French doors led out onto a balcony patio.
Quentin moved to put his back to the one of the interior walls, crossing his arms and leaning against it for support. He watched as Grym shut the door and Aryal limped over to ease back against Dragos’s desk.
Grym registered Quentin’s position with a quirk of his black, straight eyebrows then walked over to Aryal. He still hadn’t holstered his gun.
The harpy was scowling at the floor, her head bent. Grym flattened one hand on the desk by her hip and leaned on it, angling his head to look into Aryal’s face.
Grym said to her in gentle voice, “You make people crazy. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Aryal made a face then winced and fingered her swollen bruise.
“Your wildness is actually one of the reasons why so many people love you in spite of the headaches you cause. Why Dragos loves you, even though I know he’s never said it. Some Wyr are more tame than others, but we all recognize something of our own wildness in you. Did you know that too?”
Quentin’s gaze narrowed, frowning as he listened. Grym talked quietly, the pitch of his voice clearly intended to exclude Quentin. But the other sentinel could also have talked to her telepathically, so he intended for Quentin to witness but not participate.
Aryal looked up at Grym, questions shimmering in her eyes.
Gripped by a compulsion he couldn’t control, Quentin cheated. Don’t worry, he said to her telepathically, you’re still quite rotten and plenty of other people dislike you intensely.
Renewed fury blazed in her face. She started to push away from the desk, but Grym slammed his hand down on her shoulder and held her in place. Then he glared at Quentin suspiciously and pointed his Glock at him.
Quentin didn’t want to laugh. His ribs sent a stabbing pain right through his chest. He couldn’t believe Aryal didn’t return fire telepathically. Perhaps she didn’t trust herself once she got going. He sure as hell didn’t trust her. She was crazypants at the best of times, let alone when she got angry.
He also hated the appearance of intimacy that Grym had created, and the obvious deep affection Grym and Aryal had for each other. Not only did it speak of long years of intimacy between them, but it highlighted qualities in Aryal that Quentin didn’t want to acknowledge might exist.
He wanted to block out Grym’s voice, but he couldn’t, as the other sentinel turned back to Aryal. “I have a point to make here. There’s a reason why Dragos has given you so much free rein. In a way, you’re kindred spirits. Like you, he has his own hellish temper to grapple with and he creates as many problems as he solves. He knows you love him too, and you’re committed to the Wyr demesne with every bit of that considerable passion you carry inside of you. So if Dragos says you’ve used up all the free rein he’s given you, Aryal, you’d better listen to him, because he meant every word he said out in the hall. I really think this could be it for you. Be careful how you act when he gets down here. Okay?”
The harpy’s angular features sobered as she listened. She nodded.
Grym straightened and turned to face Quentin, his expression growing colder. “Now for you,” he said. “Dragos meant every word he said to you too. You haven’t earned any free rein. A lot of people like you, and it’s probably a lot more than who like Aryal. Most of the sentinels like you. I like you. We also all know that she’s been investigating you for a long time. Dragos knows, because she hasn’t held any secrets back. So what the hell are you doing here, Quentin? Why is she getting under your skin so bad, and what are the rest of us supposed to think when you fly off the handle and continue to attack her?”
This time—THIS TIME—she had gone too goddamn far.
This time he wasn’t going to just throttle her. Swear to gods, this time he was going to kill her.
He showered in painfully hot water and scrubbed all traces of the woman’s scent from his body. Then he yanked on fresh clothes, jeans, boots and a T-shirt. Sentinel clothes, the sturdy kind that had some chance of holding up in a fight and were easy to throw away afterward. Because he’d earned the right to go armed in the Tower now, he strapped on weapons too, a knife in a thigh sheath and a Glock in a shoulder holster.
The sheet of ice on the roads forced him to take the drive to the Tower slowly. The sedate trip did nothing to calm his seething temper, which settled into cold, predatory intent. By the time he strode into the Tower, traffic had begun to pick up as dawn lightened the sky and the city awakened.
A study of affluence in every detail, Cuelebre Tower was eighty stories tall. Nobody in their right mind took the stairs. He wasn’t in his right mind. He didn’t want to have to talk to anybody.
He took the stairs at a steady, relentless pace that did nothing to calm him down either. It did limber up his body, until he felt warm, loose and ready for a confrontation.
Except then he couldn’t find her.
One of the first things he had learned about the Tower was where Aryal slept at night, so he went to her apartment and pounded on her door. Nobody answered, and he could hear no sound of movement from within.
He whirled and stalked to the cafeteria. It had just opened to serve breakfast, and people were beginning to trickle in. No harpy. People took note of his rigid face and swift, angry movements and gave him plenty of room. Next stop on his hunt was the massive gym and training area. He circled through, and even went so far as to check the locker rooms.
Goddammit, no.
He was going to have to pause to think about this. He didn’t want to. His hands remembered how it felt to latch around her neck, and they wanted to do it again. Flexing his long fingers, he exited the gym—
Just as down the hall, the doors to one of the elevators opened, and Aryal and Grym walked out.
The sight of her was the same shock to the system as it always was, a raw live jolt of electricity that juddered over his nerve endings. Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, his mind leaped to a higher, faster level. This must be what it felt like for humans to jack on amphetamines.
He lunged down the hall toward her, noting every detail about her as he gained speed. As usual, she wore fighting leathers and her thick, black shoulder-length hair was tangled. Even though he knew that meant she had recently been airborne, she looked as rumpled as if she had just gotten out of bed. Her normally pale skin was flush all over with a clear, high color.
She looked as if she was glowing from an internal flame. Even though her face was uncharacteristically drawn with tiredness, she was still more alive than anyone he had ever met, ten times more vibrant than any other woman he had ever seen.
She was … glorious.
A stiletto of bitterness lanced him. Gods, if he could ever meet a woman like that whom he didn’t loathe as completely as he loathed her, he might lose this whip of restlessness that drove him. He could live the rest of his life and do nothing, be nothing but completely content. It was hideously unfair that he would look at this harpy and realize that about himself.
She saw him coming. Even though his intent was unmistakable, her face lit up, because she was just bent that way. As she turned toward him, she swept one of her arms backward, hard, and knocked Grym in the chest so that he staggered back into the elevator. Then she strode forward to engage.
She didn’t even pause to say anything or ask Quentin why. They both knew there were so many reasons.
He leaped at her, and she dove low so that he overshot, but he thrust out one hand and grabbed a magnificent handful of that tangled black hair and yanked her with him.
They tumbled together, growling, arms and limbs entwined. He caught her scent, and she smelled like healthy woman, clean cold air and arousal.
So the rumors about her and Grym must be true. He liked Grym and found the thought of their pairing so offensive that his growling deepened and grew edged.
She flipped him onto his back. Heaving hard, he flipped them over again and covered her straining body with his. As he pinned her long, taut torso, their hips came into alignment. There was rough friction at his groin, along with her wild scent.
It was so goddamn primal.
His c**k stiffened again. Bloody hell.
Her eyes flashed furiously through her tangled hair. Fire bloomed down the length of his back as she raked him with her talons. Quicker than thought, breathing heavily, he punched her in the face. For one split second he thought she looked surprised and thoughtful. Then she twisted underneath him to knee him in the groin. More fire bloomed in an infernal garden.
He still had one fist clenched in her hair. Snarling, he yanked her head back and struck down, intending to fasten his teeth on her bared throat.
He never connected.
One moment they were locked together in a vicious, intimate embrace. The next moment he was several yards away, sprawled in a tangle against the wall in a complete disconnect with reality. He felt as if he had been kicked by a mountain.
Which in a way, he realized, he had been. His mind caught up with what had happened. Broken ribs protesting, he struggled to roll over onto his hands and knees, and he looked back in the direction of the elevators.
Dragos stood where they had been fighting, the harpy prone at his feet. Grym stood quietly in the open doorway of the elevator that Aryal had knocked him into, hands lax, all of his attention fixed on the Lord of the Wyr.
More details sank in. Dragos was dressed in jeans and a thin silk sweater, and he had one boot planted in the middle of Aryal’s back. He looked utterly furious, his roughhewn expression set in lines of brutality.
He also held his sleeping son cradled against his shoulder. Quentin had thought that baby was small before—just six pounds when he had been born, Pia had told him. Held against the tremendous musculature of his father’s chest, he looked as tiny as a small child’s doll.
Quentin’s mind flatlined.
He had thought he didn’t hold any illusions about Dragos. He knew that the only thing that could possibly take the dragon down was a dedicated army with inspired leadership and experienced magic users. But if he had ever held a secret daydream of someone besting Dragos in his human form in single, unarmed combat, that daydream had just been shattered forever.
Not only had Dragos just taken down two of the best, nastiest Wyr fighters in the world, he had done it by moving faster than Quentin could comprehend.
And he did it all without ever jostling the baby enough to wake him.
Dragos glared around the hall at the spectators who had been drawn by the violence.
“Go away,” he whispered. People vanished. He kicked Aryal over so that she lay on her back, staring up at him. Still speaking so gently that the baby never stirred, he told her, “I have given you more free rein than I have given almost anybody else, and you have just used the last of that up.”
The dragon’s incandescent gold gaze turned to Quentin. “And you haven’t earned any free rein. I am going upstairs to tuck my son into his crib. You will both go to my office right now and wait for me there. You will not speak to anyone else. You will not speak to or fight each other.” He glanced at Grym. “If either one of them disobeys me by so much as uttering a single word, shoot them.”
Grym drew his gun and said, “Yes, my lord.”
THREE
Quentin held his side as he limped down the hall, cataloguing the damage from the fight and that monstrously powerful kick. He guessed he had three broken ribs, maybe more. Whatever the damage was, it was the size of Dragos’s boot. His left knee was wrenched badly and he couldn’t bend it. The kneecap felt wrong, like it had been dislocated.
He had also done something exceedingly rare for him. When he had landed against the wall, he had been ass over teakettle, completely out of control of his fall. Usually his fast reflexes saved him from that kind of damage, but not this time.
When he added his bruised, throbbing groin and the claw marks on his back to the list, he was actually more hurt now than he had been throughout all of the Sentinel Games, but for a Wyr of his robust health the injuries were minor. He would want to get his ribs wrapped after Dragos yelled at and maybe fired them, but he’d heal just fine.
His gaze slid sideways. Grym walked between him and Aryal, his Glock pointed casually at the floor.
Aryal walked stiffly, her expression grim and mouth tight. One side of her face had already purpled from his punch. As Quentin watched, her gaze slid sideways toward him. The narrow-eyed glance she gave him was filled with pure evil. Then she looked down at Grym’s Glock, and her expression turned unhappy.
“You’re doing a really good job,” Grym told her, his voice mild and encouraging. “I know what you want to ask, so I’ll answer right now and save you the temptation. Dragos told me to shoot you if you said a word, so yes, I would do as he ordered. He didn’t say where to shoot you though.”
Aryal threw up her hands in a silent question.
Grym told her, “I’d probably tag you on your foot.”
Her mouth turned down at the corners. She shook her head and pointed to her forearm, while Quentin scratched the back of his head and stared at them. They were discussing in all seriousness which body part Grym was going to shoot?
“Okay, not your foot,” Grym amended. “I’d tag your arm. Satisfied? And the point is that you would deserve it. You both would. He really lost it with you. You’re lucky he didn’t shatter your spines and put you in traction for a month.”
Quentin took a deep breath. Both Aryal and Grym turned to him. Aryal looked hopeful while Grym just waited. He let the breath out again silently and Aryal’s face fell.
Grym said, “If that was meant as a question—yes, Dragos has put people in traction before.”
This was the most Quentin had ever heard Grym talk before. They made their way through the outer offices into Dragos’s massive corner office.
Quentin had only been in Dragos’s office once before. His lip curled as he looked around.
Compared to the ostentatious luxury throughout the rest of the Tower, the office was almost Spartan. Mostly the room was empty floor space. There was a huge desk and chair, with two more chairs positioned in front of it, a plain mahogany table pushed against one wall, and original multimedia artwork hung on the two interior walls. The two corner walls were floor to ceiling windows, framing one of the most expensive skyline views in the world. French doors led out onto a balcony patio.
Quentin moved to put his back to the one of the interior walls, crossing his arms and leaning against it for support. He watched as Grym shut the door and Aryal limped over to ease back against Dragos’s desk.
Grym registered Quentin’s position with a quirk of his black, straight eyebrows then walked over to Aryal. He still hadn’t holstered his gun.
The harpy was scowling at the floor, her head bent. Grym flattened one hand on the desk by her hip and leaned on it, angling his head to look into Aryal’s face.
Grym said to her in gentle voice, “You make people crazy. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Aryal made a face then winced and fingered her swollen bruise.
“Your wildness is actually one of the reasons why so many people love you in spite of the headaches you cause. Why Dragos loves you, even though I know he’s never said it. Some Wyr are more tame than others, but we all recognize something of our own wildness in you. Did you know that too?”
Quentin’s gaze narrowed, frowning as he listened. Grym talked quietly, the pitch of his voice clearly intended to exclude Quentin. But the other sentinel could also have talked to her telepathically, so he intended for Quentin to witness but not participate.
Aryal looked up at Grym, questions shimmering in her eyes.
Gripped by a compulsion he couldn’t control, Quentin cheated. Don’t worry, he said to her telepathically, you’re still quite rotten and plenty of other people dislike you intensely.
Renewed fury blazed in her face. She started to push away from the desk, but Grym slammed his hand down on her shoulder and held her in place. Then he glared at Quentin suspiciously and pointed his Glock at him.
Quentin didn’t want to laugh. His ribs sent a stabbing pain right through his chest. He couldn’t believe Aryal didn’t return fire telepathically. Perhaps she didn’t trust herself once she got going. He sure as hell didn’t trust her. She was crazypants at the best of times, let alone when she got angry.
He also hated the appearance of intimacy that Grym had created, and the obvious deep affection Grym and Aryal had for each other. Not only did it speak of long years of intimacy between them, but it highlighted qualities in Aryal that Quentin didn’t want to acknowledge might exist.
He wanted to block out Grym’s voice, but he couldn’t, as the other sentinel turned back to Aryal. “I have a point to make here. There’s a reason why Dragos has given you so much free rein. In a way, you’re kindred spirits. Like you, he has his own hellish temper to grapple with and he creates as many problems as he solves. He knows you love him too, and you’re committed to the Wyr demesne with every bit of that considerable passion you carry inside of you. So if Dragos says you’ve used up all the free rein he’s given you, Aryal, you’d better listen to him, because he meant every word he said out in the hall. I really think this could be it for you. Be careful how you act when he gets down here. Okay?”
The harpy’s angular features sobered as she listened. She nodded.
Grym straightened and turned to face Quentin, his expression growing colder. “Now for you,” he said. “Dragos meant every word he said to you too. You haven’t earned any free rein. A lot of people like you, and it’s probably a lot more than who like Aryal. Most of the sentinels like you. I like you. We also all know that she’s been investigating you for a long time. Dragos knows, because she hasn’t held any secrets back. So what the hell are you doing here, Quentin? Why is she getting under your skin so bad, and what are the rest of us supposed to think when you fly off the handle and continue to attack her?”
