The moment he met Rannock, guilt joined the chorus.
Now, a whole choir of doubt occupied his mind.
Keeping a male from his female was never right. Blackmailing one by threatening his mate bordered on unconscionable. Dillinger never said much, but he could tell his brother didn’t like it either. Noble kept telling him it had been necessary. He was no doubt right, and yet…
And yet…
The whole mess bothered Rathbone. Probably more than it should, given the dragon warrior’s level of lethal.
Twirling the ring in his hand, Rathbone glanced over his shoulder into his favorite room. Keys hit the center of his palm. Metal jangled against metal as he stared at the fire.
Fed by his magic, flames roared against the iron grate. No wood. Zero kindling. Not a scrap of paper to be seen. Just the fire in the pit of his belly made manifest by the turmoil in his mind. Destructive, perhaps, but he needed the outlet, a way to drain the potent magic slithering beneath the surface of his skin.
Without the TriHexe in its cradle, he had nowhere to channel the excess, no way to manipulate to the Meridian in order to shape and polish the power. Just overload and excess, malnourishment and pain. Worse, his brothers suffered right alongside him, amplifying the current, adding to the torture.
Dillinger became more volatile by the minute. And Noble… Rathbone clenched his teeth. Goddamn him. Feeling the burn, his brother withdrew, closing himself away, fearing the fallout if his nature spilled out of bounds.
Which left him here, twiddling his thumbs, while worry sliced him raw and rage picked at his bones.
Fisting his hand around the keys, Rathbone stepped out from beneath the arches. Cushioned by antique rugs, he strode down the corridor into darkness. Extinguished candles reacted to his mood. Flames sparked on dry wicks and illumination spilled as he moved deeper into his home buried beneath Habersham House.
He rarely went abovestairs anymore. No need. The boutique hotel he owned didn’t need him. He employed humans for such tasks. Those who rented his rooms and slept in beds secure behind locked doors, beneath the roof he provided, were well treated, filling his coffers with borrowed money it would take years for them to pay back.
No reason to mess with a good thing.
So he didn’t, unless his manager e-mailed him about a problem she couldn’t solve. A rarity, thank the goddess. He wanted to deal with humans about as much as he wanted to be eaten by Dillinger in beast mode.
Reaching a locked door, he drew the pad of his thumb over the keys in his hand. Metal ridges stroked his skin. He rotated the ring again, listened to the jangle, wondering why he carried the jumbled mess. Noble kept asking. Rathbone never provided a response. Maybe he did it to annoy his brother. Maybe the habit soothed him somehow. Mostly, though, he didn’t know why he needed a drawer full of keys.
Key ring snug against his palm, he murmured, voicing his wishes.
Complicated locking mechanisms clicked. Multiple deadbolts slid to one side. The vault door swung open, bumping against the wall.
Ducking beneath the low lintel, Rathbone strolled onto a wide landing, then down a set of steps. Stale air once brimming with magic met him on the way down. He swallowed his annoyance, recognizing his response for what it was—grief. He missed the TriHexe like he would an amputated limb, like a loved one, forever lost to the misfortunes of time.
He tightened his grip on the cluster of keys and, forcing himself to keep walking, rounded the corner. He paused and peered into the crypt. Built centuries ago, the six-sided chamber rooted his house to the ground. The seat of power for his kind. The place where the TriHexe had sat for over three hundred years after he and his brothers made the trip from West Africa to North America.
Early days on the new continent. The good old days, some of his kind insisted.
Rathbone didn’t really care. After two-and-a-half thousand years spent roaming the earth, time meant very little anymore. With a blink, one hundred years passed like dust blown across a desert, nothing but sand spun through an hourglass. Little more than long days and lonely nights spent in a city chosen for—
Raw energy rippled beneath the surface of his skin.
Rathbone flinched.
The base where the TriHexe usually sat pulsed.
Bright light flashed across the crypt, flaring across pictograms carved into the marble-clad walls. Sparks burst from the cradle’s prongs. Shimmers exploded upward, puffing against the gilded ceiling.
Surprise turned to awe, then morphed into gratitude.
Rathbone sucked in a quick breath. The TriHexe was close. Less than ten miles away, moving fast, closing in on Habersham House with speed and intensity. Reaching across the distance, the power called to him as it returned home.
Spinning away from the golden base, Rathbone raced across the chamber toward the stairs. He reached out with his mind, tracking the TriHexe, tapping into each dragon warrior’s unique energy signal. Unable to tell the dragons apart from a distance, he read the force of their magic. Four distinct energy signatures appeared on his mental grid. Three healthy and whole, but the last…
Rathbone frowned.
He narrowed his focus and—
“Christ,” he growled as the problem came to light.
One of the four was injured… badly. Unconscious. Thready pulse. Suffering from serious energy depletion. A state that would kill the Dragonkind warrior if he didn’t feed, and do it fast.
Unease crept in to replace his elation.
He brushed it aside as a fifth heartbeat registered on his grid. Surprise spun him around the lip of reality. Jesus. A human. The dragon warriors flew toward Habersham House with a human in tow, one suffering from magic sickness—the kind Rathbone knew at a glance couldn’t be cured.
With a curse, he took the stairs three at a time.
His feet touched down on the landing. He snarled at the door. The heavy panel slammed open. Avoiding the backlash, he roared over the threshold into the hallway.
A loud thump rippled down the main corridor. Dark eyes with yellow fire glowed from the opposite end of the hallway. “Rath—incoming!”
“I feel it,” he yelled back, answering Noble’s call. “Where’s Dillinger?”
“With Cate in the garage.”
Shock whipped through him. Another round of dread followed. “What the fuck?”
“He hasn’t hurt her.”
“Yet,” he snapped, blood rushing through his veins. Worry for Rannock’s mate throbbed through him. “What were you thinking? You promised to keep track of him.”
“He likes her.” Jogging a fast clip, Noble met him in front of the tri-arches.
“All the more reason to keep him the hell away from her. Jesus, Noble.” Sliding to a stop, Rathbone stared his brother. He’d clearly lost his mind. No other explanation. Leaving Cate with Dillinger amounted to setting a helpless lamb down in front of a hungry lion.
Noble opened his mouth, no doubt to defend his decision.
He sliced his hand through the air. “Never mind. Get to the crypt. Prepare the chamber. I’ll join you with Dillinger after I see to Cate.”
Concern in his dark eyes, Noble hesitated. “One of them’s injured.”
“It better be Rannock.”
“Why?”
“The injured male needs an immediate infusion of energy—right from the source,” Rathbone said. “Cate’s high energy, and given the extent of the injuries I sense, she’s the only one with a strong enough connection to the Meridian to feed him. Anything less, and he won’t survive. Even with her, he might not live.”