Hidden Embers (15 page)

She started to pull away—she wanted to get a stethoscope and listen to his heart—but his hand reached up and grabbed hers, holding it against his shoulder. “Don’t go.”

“I was just going to—”

“Please.” His fingers tightened and something moved deep inside of her. Again, she saw him as he’d been when she’d awoken the night before, curled up on the floor, utterly vulnerable and worn out, yet determined not to bother her. It seemed this man was willing to take responsibility for everyone and everything but himself.

Which meant she was just going to have to do it for him—at least until he was back up to fighting form.

“Hey, Phoebe, is this kind of thing normal?”

Phoebe snorted. “Define normal. Nothing around here is exactly status quo.”

Like she hadn’t figured that out for herself? “I mean, is Quinn always like this after he does his—” She broke off, still not sure what name to put to whatever it was he had done.

“I don’t know. Quinn’s a really private person. I’ve never noticed him having a problem before.”

“Is that true?” Jasmine asked, turning to Quinn. “Is this kind of reaction unusual for you?” She bent down so no one could hear what she said next. “And don’t even think about lying to me. You won’t like what happens if you do.”

His lush lips pulled into a grim line and his eyes narrowed, but not before she saw something move in them—something that wasn’t quite human. And suddenly all of the little clues fell into place.

“Oh, shit. You’re—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish as the side door banged open a second time. And this time, when a man so large he made Quinn, Gabe and Logan look regular-sized entered the room, Jasmine didn’t even flinch.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“W
ould someone like to tell me what the hell is going on here?” The question echoed through the lab, and Quinn looked up just in time to see Dylan stride into his lab like an avenging angel on the warpath—which was pretty much what he was, if you substituted dragon wings for angel’s wings. It was also exactly what Quinn didn’t need right then—even if his old friend was in human form.

It was hard enough to deal with Dylan when he was like this under normal circumstances. Add in the fact that Quinn currently felt like someone had drop-kicked him from one end of New Mexico to the other—several times—and it was a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

Healing always took a lot out of him, and this time was no exception. But he couldn’t complain. He’d expected the side effects to be much worse considering the episode he’d gone through the night before. And it had started out bad. He’d been concerned at first that he wouldn’t be able to make it somewhere private before the effects took hold of him.

Then the strangest thing happened. The worst part of the effects had receded. His breathing had steadied, and eventually so had his pulse—and he didn’t think it was because of the soda Jasmine had insisted he drink. The more he thought about it, the more he decided that his mild reaction had something to do with her.

It had happened the night before. The moment Jasmine touched him, he had started to feel better. The pain had stopped immediately and the shakes had been reduced by at least half. He’d been able to think, when normally he was completely at the mercy of his instincts when the trouble started.

She buffered him. Somehow, in some way, she stood between him and the worst effects of the healing. It didn’t make sense, and if anyone else had tried to convince him such a thing was possible he would have told them they were full of shit. But there was no other explanation. No other reason that could explain what happened to him.

Maybe, if last night had never occurred, he’d be willing to write this off to something else. But it had happened, and his energy had been so low today that healing Tyler should have knocked him completely on his ass.

Tyler had been pretty far gone—so far gone that normally he wouldn’t have attempted to heal him in the old ways.

To do so risked both of their lives, and he was going to suffer the consequences whether he succeeded or failed.

But he had no choice. And even if he did, he would make the same decision again. Their clan was weakening, this damn disease running rampant through its strongest members. Losing Ty would have made them even weaker, would have made Dylan and the sentries who guarded him and made up his Council more vulnerable, as Ty was one of the clan’s best warriors.

That was why he’d done it, why he’d risked his life to bring Ty back when everything inside of him had warned against it. He’d owed it to Dylan, owed it to the other Dragonstars, to try.

Even as he assured himself that was the case, a small part of him knew the truth. A small part of him understood that he’d been more than willing to trade his life for Ty’s. He couldn’t lose one more person, couldn’t fail one more time and survive. He was as sure of that as he was that Jasmine was his mate.

“Dylan.” Phoebe rushed forward to greet her fiancé, and Dylan’s eyes ran over her quickly, checking to make sure she was unharmed. When he was satisfied that she was really all right, he pulled her gently against him and leveled the full strength of his glare on Logan, Gabe and Quinn.

“Well?”

“The Wyvernmoons attacked again.” Gabe’s voice was low and hard, his eyes glacier cold. “Eight of the bastards ambushed Ty when he was on patrol on the southern edge of our territory. He held on long enough for Logan and me to get there, but he was injured.”

“And the Wyvernmoons?” Dylan’s voice was silky soft and so threatening that it made nearly everyone in the room cringe. Even Quinn felt a little uneasy, and he’d been the recipient of that tone more times than he could count through the years.

“Four of them are dead. The other four, including the leader, who was using some kind of glamour by the way, took off after they realized things weren’t going their way.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like the odds. Eight on one pretty much sucks. It’s just a matter of time before one of these battles goes their way, and I don’t want to lose any more of my people.” Dylan moved to Ty’s side. The other dragon had slipped into a light doze as his body continued to mend itself. “How badly was he injured?”

Quinn didn’t know whether the king was addressing him or Phoebe, but when she didn’t immediately answer, he said, “It wasn’t terrible. There was a lot of blood, but the wounds weren’t as bad as they looked.”

Phoebe gaped at him incredulously, then rolled her eyes. “He’s totally underestimating himself again, Dylan. Ty’s wounds were about as serious as they get. If anyone other than Quinn had been here, I’m almost positive we would have lost him.”

At her words, Dylan turned to Quinn, eyes narrowed. He was one of the few in the clan who understood what it meant for Quinn to have brought Tyler back when he was that far gone. “Well, you’re still breathing,” he said, and coming from him it didn’t necessarily sound like a compliment.

“Barely,” Jasmine piped up for the first time. She was leaning against a lab table. “I had a few moments when I wasn’t so sure he was going to make it, either. He was in bad shape for a while there. Hell, he’s still in bad shape, to be honest.”

Quinn ground his teeth and wondered what possible incentive he could offer Jazz to get her to shut her mouth. But one look at the other dragons’ faces and he knew that train had already left the station. His mate hadn’t even been around for twenty-four hours, and already she was revealing secrets he’d spent four hundred years keeping hidden.

Dylan must have reached the same conclusion because the look he shot Jazz straddled the line between respect at the way she so easily spoke up in a room full of dangerous predators and a warning not to go too far. But then, Quinn wasn’t surprised that his best friend saw more in the situation than the words being exchanged. He was the shrewdest person Quinn had ever met, and he had a way of seeing every nuance in a situation, then applying just the right amount of pressure to get the best result.

“Who are
you
?” Dylan demanded.

Phoebe ripped her eyes from Quinn—thank God—and said, “This is Dr. Jasmine Kane, the hematologist I was telling you about.”

“Oh. Right.” His eyes narrowed. “It looks like you got one hell of a welcome to the Dragonstar clan.”

Jasmine lifted one inquisitive eyebrow. “The Dragonstar…clan?”

“Yeah, well, we hadn’t exactly gotten that far yet, Dylan,” Quinn said as he pushed himself to his feet and concentrated on walking without wobbling. Without Jasmine’s touch, he was suddenly a lot shakier, but he’d be damned if he let anyone see it. Jasmine’s big mouth and observant eyes had caused enough problems for him without him passing out like a total candy ass in front of half the clan’s High Council.

Dylan turned to his fiancée in surprise. “Exactly how far
had
you gotten?”

Phoebe grinned affectionately. “About as far as ‘Here, take a look at this blood sample and tell me what you see.’ You remember the drill.”

“I do. And what did she see?”

“I don’t think she had a clue what she was seeing.”

“I never said that.” Jasmine’s voice was cool when she spoke. “What I said was that what I was looking at was either contaminated or not human. It looked much more reptilian in nature, if I remember my days from college biology correctly. But I guess you already knew that, didn’t you, Phoebe—if you’re running around with
dragons
.”

The five of them gaped at her in surprise, and Quinn couldn’t help wondering what game she was playing at. No one knew about dragon shifters—
no one
. It was a matter of their very survival, and they were incredibly careful about who they revealed themselves to. Though they hated to do it, once in a blue moon they actually had to alter some poor person’s memories who found out about them. Not every dragon could do that, mind you. Only the very old ones, as well as Logan, who was relatively young but whose command over human and dragon minds alike often bordered on the miraculous, and frightening.

It was what Quinn had originally planned to do to Jazz when Phoebe convinced Dylan to bring in another human doctor.

“What?” Jazz demanded testily, as they continued to stare at her. “In the past hour I’ve looked at strange DNA that you insisted came from a human, have seen someone live through an injury that should have killed him in under two minutes, watched Quinn heal the injury using nothing but his mind and what I assume were currents of energy, and seen all of you move around here at about four times the speed of the average human. I’m not stupid, you know, and I’ve lived in enough cultures to understand that there is more to this world than meets the eye. After finding out you call yourselves the ‘Dragonstars,’ it wasn’t a huge leap to go from supernatural creature of some sort to dragon. From the looks on your faces, I must’ve hit the nail on the head.”

“So, that’s it?” Logan asked her curiously. “Seriously? You’re completely okay with being in a room filled with six dragons, all of whom are capable of inflicting wounds like the one you just saw with one blow?”

Jasmine grinned. “Define ‘okay.’ And I only see five dragons, unless Phoebe’s been holding out on me for the past ten years.” She glanced at her friend quizzically.

Phoebe nodded. “Everything changed for me when I met Dylan. My dragon had been latent—so latent that I hadn’t known it existed until I came in contact with other dragons. It’s been…an adjustment.”

“I bet.” Jasmine looked around at the mess that was Quinn’s formerly pristine lab. “Now, it looks like Ty is out of danger, right?”

“He’ll be fine in two to three days,” Quinn acknowledged.

“All right then. I’d really like to get to work, if you don’t mind. And the first thing I’m going to need is a few samples of healthy dragon blood, so that I can compare the differences.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do I have any volunteers?”

After every single one of them had given blood—including Phoebe and Quinn—Dylan called an emergency meeting back at the War Room, the section of his home cave he reserved for dealing with issues concerning the clan.

This meant, much to Quinn’s chagrin, that he had to go. As one of Dylan’s top two ranked sentries, absence wasn’t an option—no matter how much he wanted to stick around and see what Jasmine did with the blood samples. If she had a new idea about this thing, he wanted to be in the thick of it.

Then again, if they didn’t find out how the Wyvernmoons were breaching the protections they had put up to keep them out, curing the virus would be meaningless. They’d have the other clan’s dragons so far up their asses there wouldn’t be enough Dragonstars left to stop the damn disease.

Dylan’s people were better fighters, but that didn’t mean much when the Wyverns had such incredible numbers—and they hadn’t spent most of the last decade being ravaged by disease. Three on eight, the Dragonstars had a chance. Three on eighty…not so much.

With a grimace, Quinn turned off the main highway that cut through the desert and drove straight through the sand out to the caves he and his clan had inhabited for nearly a thousand years. About halfway there he ran into the invisible safeguards that had kept their homes from being discovered for centuries, and the ride got a whole lot bumpier.

Ty groaned where he was stretched out on the backseat, and Quinn cursed the fact that they’d had to drive out rather than fly. The constant bumping over the deliberately unsettled land wasn’t good for Ty’s injuries. Of course, neither was shifting, which was why Quinn was driving him to the caves instead of flying with the other dragons.

“Hold on, man. It’s just a few minutes more.”

“I’m fine,” Ty answered. “Don’t worry about me.”

But he did worry about him. That was his job as one of the clan elders, and also as Michael’s brother. Ty and Michael had been best friends since childhood, and Quinn had grown so used to seeing the two of them together through the years that seeing Ty alone now was like a red-hot knife to the gut. He could only imagine how the other man was feeling.

They slammed along in silence for the next couple of minutes, hitting what felt like every uneven spot in the damn desert. After a particularly bad dip, Quinn opened his mouth to apologize, but Ty beat him to it.