Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(103)

Jaik turned and raised an eyebrow at me.

“If you don’t want me to follow right on your ass,” I said, “you should try not abandoning me with monsters. Our trust’s a bit broken at the moment.”

“I didn’t know about the monsters,” Jaik said mildly. “For the record, I don’t trust you either.”

It should’ve just been banter, but it struck me deeply as I followed him into the dark.

Jaik was not going to cope well when he found out who I really was, was he? For all his good qualities, he was also a controlling bastard—and I’d slipped far outside his control.

We proceeded through twists and turns in the tunnels, which rose and sloped through the earth. Little drainage channels were built at the bottom of the slopes, preventing the tunnels from flooding during the rainy season.

The smell of wet earth was almost overpowering, and my nostrils flared, trying to tease out any other scent. Some shifter with a keener nose would’ve been a nice addition to the team, able to sense a monster before we stumbled across it. “It’s too bad we don’t have a wolf shifter with us.”

Jaik’s shoulders stiffened. “Be quiet, Lucien.”

“If the monsters hear you, they’ll definitely want to kill you.” Arren observed helpfully.

Jaik twisted to look over his shoulder. “You need to stop associating with Caldren.”

“Associating?”

“He’s a traitor to the kingdom. It’s not a good look for a dragon royal. Now shut up.”

My jaw stiffened. He was probably right we shouldn’t chit-chat at the moment, but he’d launched his right hook, then warned me off making a ruckus.

Caldren was always so kind and patient, training me to fight alongside the royals. He wasn’t faking.

We reached another fork in the tunnels, the only sound the scribbling of Lynx’s pencil.

Talisyn held his flame-filled hand down the corridor, not that it illuminated much. “So far, no monsters.”

Branok groaned. Even Jaik pursed his lips.

“Why are you such superstitious children?” Tal demanded of no one in particular. “You don’t summon a thing just by thinking about it.”

Jaik shook his head and began down the tunnel once more. When he came to an abrupt halt, I almost walked into his back before he raised his fist to one side, signaling us all to stop.

He’d frozen, his head cocked to one side, listening.

My stomach suddenly roiled. I wasn’t really excited about the prospect of whatever he’d heard. I strained my ears, my own breathing suddenly seeming too loud in the hush of the tunnel, then finally heard the faint human murmur in the far distance. Ice formed in my stomach. We weren’t alone, and something strange was happening.

Jaik gestured for us to move silently along. We passed a ladder that reached up. Jaik gripped the ladder with one hand and turned to Branok, who was already moving forward. Branok quickly scaled the ladder. His nicely-shaped ass in trousers paused right in front of my face as he went up, then he lifted a hatch that let out a slow, quiet groan. The noise still made me cringe. He climbed up the rest of the way, until only the toes of his boots were in my vision.

I looked up. Past Branok, I glimpsed sunlight and green trees.

These hatches must be how our hybrids reached the forests without leaving a trail.

Jaik patted Branok’s calf, and Branok closed the hatch and climbed carefully down. The tunnel felt somehow more airless when the hatch had been closed. The two of them exchanged a grim look, but none of us were talking now.

Jaik smothered the flames in his hands, and everyone else followed suit. We were plunged into complete darkness.

I couldn’t help but reach to touch Jaik’s shoulder. He didn’t flinch away, and I dropped my hand, my eyes adjusting to the dark. The royals seemed to move in sync with each other, and I followed more clumsily, sometimes crashing into one warm body or another. In the dark, maybe they couldn’t see who I was, because a hand would steady my shoulder and we would move on.

We began to pass more branches, more hallways, even doors. Flickering lights in the walls provided soft illumination, and we could move more quickly.

Then we passed a room carved into the side, where there was a litter abandoned in one corner, a heap of rags on the ground. Branok knelt and gathered the rags to his face, inhaled, winced. In all our minds, he whispered, “Fresh blood, old wounds.”

In the distance we heard chanting, a mystical sound that seemed to reverberate through the tunnel and directly into my soul. I didn’t want to see what was at the end of the tunnel.

But I kept going anyway. Wherever the dragon royals went, I’d go too.





Honor



We tracked the sounds of chanting until we reached a chamber where we found more ram and bear hybrids groaning in pain, lying on high beds. I counted about half a dozen of them and a dozen others who moved between them, seeming to take care of them, but they often stopped to incant over the broken, twisted bodies. What the hell was happening?

“This time, we take some alive.” Jaik whispered into our minds. He flashed a hard look at several of us.

“I’ll do my best,” I promised.

I noticed Arren didn’t make any promises. He wasn’t really the leave them alive type.

The caretakers checked on several shifters, but slowly I realized they entirely ignored some—there were two hybrids who seemed to be still breathing—and crying or begging—but who were twisted into odd shapes they ignored entirely.