The Platinum Dragon's Mate - Zoe Chant Page 0,2

wrong—but she couldn’t.

Her dragon rose within her. Find her. There’s danger.

Sage ran out the door. Looked around. “Rhiannon!”

No sign of her daughter, and no answer when she called again.

Grimly, Sage braced herself, and shifted. Her dragon form could move faster and see better, and she was going to find her daughter fast.

It wasn’t safe out there. And it was getting more dangerous all the time.

Chapter 3: Reid

It was a long drive to the red dragons’ hideout.

They could have flown more quickly—the mountain roads wound around and through the forest, taking them far out of their way, and as the dragon flew it was a much shorter trip—but having baby Olivia along made that impractical. Even if Athena had been willing to fly while holding her daughter in her talons, Reid would have recommended against it.

Fortunately, Athena, Alaric, and Santos all wanted to ride together—well, Santos and Alaric probably would have been fine staying apart, but neither of them was willing to separate from Athena and the baby.

So Reid drove his own car, and therefore had quite a few hours of peace and quiet.

And foreboding.

He wasn’t nervous. He was just—aware. Aware of the danger that could be ahead, the uncertainty. The stakes.

But he was a doctor. He was accustomed to high stakes. He’d been trained for high stakes. Just because he rarely encountered them, working as a small-town doctor for a town full of people with shifter healing, didn’t mean he wasn’t capable.

As long as he kept his cool, stayed professional, and thought before he spoke, it would be fine.

He followed Athena’s old station wagon off the main road and onto a little dirt track, bumping along into the woods. It was barely drivable, but he gritted his teeth and kept going.

They stayed on the track for almost twenty minutes before coming out into a clearing—no, not just a clearing, the remains of an old town. Houses half-fallen, roofs caving in, vines growing through windows...this was where they lived?

Athena brought her car to a stop in front of one of the ruined buildings, so Reid had to assume that it was, in fact, where they lived.

He waited until Alaric opened his door before getting out of the car. These people were unlikely to react kindly to a stranger showing up.

“You.” A man burst out the door of one of the ruins—was he truly living there?—and came right up to Alaric’s face. “Are you crawling back for mercy? After you turned coat so obviously?”

Reid supposed these people weren’t likely to react kindly to acquaintances, either.

“We’re not crawling back for anything, Shiloh,” Athena snapped, stepping out of the car and coming forward to get in the man’s face herself. “We’re here to negotiate.”

“Negotiate.” The man—Shiloh, who Reid understood to be their leader’s son—acted like it was a curse word. “We don’t negotiate with traitors.”

“That’s not for you to say, Shiloh,” Alaric broke in, quiet but implacable. “Where’s your father?”

Shiloh’s face twisted; Reid couldn’t quite interpret what the expression meant. “Away,” he spat. “But I don’t need him here to drive you off. You’re outnumbered, you know.”

And Reid noticed that there were other men appearing in the clearing, coming out of doors or just melting out from the forest. Hard, tough-looking men. Four—five—could they fight all of them, Santos and Alaric and Reid and Athena, with baby Olivia as a potential hostage?

Had this been an even stupider idea than Reid had thought?

“You don’t want to attack us,” Athena said dangerously.

Time to step up. “Shiloh,” Reid said, and immediately had the man’s attention. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Shiloh nodded once. “And don’t you forget it.”

“You’re Jeremiah’s son?” Asking calm questions, Reid had found, tended to dissipate people’s rage or terror. It was a useful way to keep patients from freaking out in the exam room.

And it kept him in charge. Show them nothing.

“That’s right.” Shiloh had at least backed down from being ready to shift and attack immediately.

“I’m Reid MacAllister, Mayor MacAllister’s son,” Reid said, still keeping his voice calm and easy. “I’m here to—”

“To take over?” Shiloh interrupted, his voice rising. “To show off how you’ve suborned two of our people, and taken a clan baby hostage? I won’t stand here and listen to you boast about your power—”

Should have stuck with questions, should have done something else—Shiloh’s voice was rising up in volume and pitch, getting angrier and angrier. Would interrupting him make it worse? Probably. The other men were coming closer—any second now, they were going to have to fight—

No!

Shiloh fell away.