Nightfall (Nightmare Dragons Book 2) Read online

  With the adults always talking about whether they should be destroyed, about what to do with them.

  All he had to do was go out in the world for a little while, and then he would have a purpose. A reason to exist.

  Such a thing felt almost impossible to hope for, but as the woman knelt and began talking to his brothers, Dare pressed the small book to his chest and hoped all the same.

  Dare woke suddenly, startled, still struggling to separate the present from the past. The images had been so real to him that he had to look down at his hands in wonder to make sure they weren’t still the smooth, helpless hands of a boy.

  He sat up in bed and leaned forward, covering his face and noting it was sweaty. He wasn’t surprised.

  He looked down at Sasha, making sure he hadn’t disturbed her, and then looked out at the moon, still high in the sky.

  He’d been so naive and hopeful, with no idea about what the world held for him once he’d been kicked out of the lab.

  Suddenly, there was no food and no shelter and no one who cared for them, and the reality of the situation had set in.

  Dare wasn’t sure how many years went by before he stopped hoping, before he realized it was all an excuse to be rid of him, but it didn’t take long.

  He and his brothers quickly learned hunting, and there were enough men who would want to take advantage of children to deserve everything they got.

  Killing became second nature to Dare. Easy. And for Nathan and Theo, he would have done it again and again.

  He supposed that was how he had become so protective over them, to the extent that he would even threaten someone as harmless as Sasha.

  He wasn’t close to his brothers anymore. Barely saw them once they were old enough to hunt separately, and it was safer to hide from the world that way.

  But they were all he had in a world where it hadn’t been safe to get close to others.

  When he was young, he’d tried to make friends, but he’d always known if they saw him feeding, they would run away.

  If they saw what he was, they would react like the humans he had to kill, so afraid and disgusted it was hard for them not to throw up, even when they were facing their death.

  So why had Sasha accepted him?

  In his life, she was the first real kindness. He’d thought the woman had been kind in freeing him from the laboratory, but he was smart enough to know now that he had just been disposed of.

  Something wrong, something cast off, something that needed to disappear.

  It wouldn’t have even hurt if he hadn’t allowed himself to hope for more than that. To hope to someday have a home and a purpose.

  He looked at Sasha and knew the toxic flower of hope was blooming again in his heart, and he wasn’t sure when he had allowed it to take root.

  He’d almost done the right thing for her. Almost backed up his possessiveness enough to hook her up with a man she deserved.

  But then she’d left that man to come after Dare, and she’d accepted him and invited him to mark her again. After a hundred years of pure sadness, Dare couldn’t bring himself to turn down such joy.

  Joy. That’s what she was. A ray of light that should have never shone in the darkness, never fallen on a creature like him.

  He thought of the boy he had been and silently hated him for being stupid.

  The creator had never come back, and a hundred years of ugliness and darkness had passed for no reason.

  There was no magic world where he belonged awaiting him. Nowhere he would fit in. The only thing that remained was to find the woman who created and discarded them and make her answer for her crimes.

  He took one last look at Sasha, knowing she was just another thing he should never have reached for, another thing far too good for his touch. He resolved to be better tomorrow, to go back to how it should have been from the start.

  There was no way out of the life he’d been given, and it was stupid to hope for more than the dark.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, Dare seemed to be a little standoffish, but Sasha didn’t mind.

  She’d just had the most wonderful night with him, felt completely beautiful in his arms.

  But as he sat at the kitchen table, staring at his coffee, there did seem to be something not right. His mood was off, more than usual, and she wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Dare,” she said quietly, sitting at the table beside him. “Is anything wrong?”

  He looked up at her, and his blue eyes were misty and distracted. He shook his head. “What? No.”

  It pained her to see him still hiding his thoughts. She folded her hands in her lap and noticed a muscle ticking in his jaw.

  “It’s just… since last night, you’ve been…”

  “I’m just tired. That’s all,” he said sharply. He walked to the sink and emptied his cup, letting it splash. “Listen, Sasha.”

  And then suddenly, she felt he was going to say something, probably something she didn’t want to hear. She knew they were going around and around with this, that he would continue to insist they weren’t right together while continuing to chase off anyone who came near.

  She could feel his care and possessiveness when he held her, but also the distance from him at other times.

  Those times tended to hurt her, and she knew she needed to get her head on straight. In a few days, Dare might find what he’d been searching for, and then he wouldn’t need her anymore.

  The thought of being apart from him rankled, but she knew she couldn’t expect any more.

  “I’m thinking… of going to Lilian’s today,” Sasha said quietly. “I think it would be good to spend the day with a friend.”

  He raised a dark-blond eyebrow but didn’t disagree with her, leaning back against the counter and giving a small nod.

  Oh God, that body. She needed to stop thinking about it. Needed to just let herself move on in her thoughts.

  “I’ll drive you over there and drop you off.”

  “What will you do today?” she asked curiously.

  He stared at her for a long moment, looking somewhat lost. “I’ll get in touch with Benny, see if they’ve found anything out.”

  “You could come with me, visit with Nathan while I’m with Lils.”

  Dare shook his head. “I still can’t face him. He has made a choice I cannot support.”

  Sasha cocked her head. “To be with Lillian?”

  He nodded.

  “But she’s his mate.”

  Dare’s eyes narrowed to slits the color of the night sky. “He may feel that way, but he’s deluding himself. We are monsters. Mates aren’t something we can have.”

  “I think you’re underestimating things,” Sasha retorted, folding her arms in response. “I think that…”

  “Don’t,” Dare said. “Don’t make this harder than it already is. You keep wanting me to mark you. You keep making it harder to walk away. I know I’m not good for you, Sasha. I don’t know how to say this another time.”

  She took a nervous step forward. “I don’t know how to walk away from you, Dare. Not when I can tell you’re upset and I might be able to help you.”

  “Don’t you dare pity me right now, Sasha.” He put his head in his hands. “Because that is the last thing I could take.”

  “Did something happen last night while I was sleeping? Did someone call or something?”

  He shook his head tiredly, and his blond hair hung limp at the sides of his face. For some reason, more than any other time she’d seen him, he looked fairly weak.

  But how was that possible when he’d just fed?

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go to Lillian’s,” Sasha said quietly. “Maybe I should stay here with you.”

  When he looked at her, his expression was stricken. “We can’t just change things, Sasha. We can’t just have everything we want.”

  “So you do want me.”

  He slammed a hand down on her counter, and she heard something crack, watching as his handsom
e face winced and he rubbed his palm. “Of course I want you, Sasha. Isn’t that plain in everything that I do? The way I hold you? I’ve never gotten close to a person like this, and it scares me to death. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I do know it’s wrong.” He stared at her with a haunted expression. “And the thing is I don’t know if I can stop it. I don’t know if I can stop wanting you for my own.”

  She was oddly touched by his words, though they sounded hopeless. “I want you, too, Dare. Just as you are.”

  He turned away from her. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see, Sasha? I’ve spent my life eating your kind. I can’t just turn that around now. I can’t just forget what I am.”

  “So don’t forget,” she said, running over to him and putting her hands around his chest from behind, burying her head against him. “You can be you. You can feed. I know how Lil feels now. I know you’re complicated, but I can’t just walk off and leave you alone.”

  He turned around and carefully extricated himself from her, looking pained as he did so. “I know that, Sasha. That’s why I’m going to be the one to leave you. Once I know you can be happy.” He looked impatiently down at his watch. “Now let’s get you to Lilian. I know she’d love to see you, and you’ll be safe at Nate’s house.”

  Sasha frowned as his words sank in, making her feel all was lost. “Fine, then. I’ll get my things, and we’ll go.”

  Lillian would be just the person to spend time with while getting distance from the difficult man who kept worming his way into her heart.

  As Dare was driving home from dropping off Sasha, his pocket buzzed with a call.

  Good, something to focus on other than how hurt Sasha had looked.

  Didn’t she realize this was the best thing for her? Didn’t she realize all he could bring her was darkness and blood?

  He picked up the phone and put it on speaker mode, placing it on the seat. “Hello?”

  “Dare? It’s Benny, from the club.”

  “Oh, right. How are you?” He grimaced at how flat his tone was.

  “Good. I think we have some info you can use. Or at least someone you can get it from.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, where are you?”

  “Driving.”

  “Can you come over? We have someone who might want to talk.”

  Dare lowered his eyebrows. “What do you mean someone?”

  “Just come in and see. The lady you told me about, I think she has to be an oracle. No one else could do experiments like that and get away with it. I’ve seen the wyverns created by amateurs, and they’re nowhere near as functional as you.”

  Dare thought Benny had no idea about how “functional” he was, but he sighed. At least Benny had figured out on his own that their creator was an oracle. “I guess so.”

  “Anyway, oracles only work with shifters at the top of the food chain, generally dragons, and I happen to know one who is willing to talk.”

  Dare sighed. So the bitch was willing to work with normal dragons but ignored him and his brothers? And she was out there most likely?

  A part of him had hoped she was dead. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Good. So will our guest.”

  Dare did his best to focus on the road, but after over a hundred years of waiting, it was hard to even see straight at the prospect of hearing more about the woman who’d made everything wrong.

  Why had she even created them, only to send them out in a world they could never belong?

  Now that he had met Sasha, he truly hated the oracle. Truly hated what he was made to become. Hated that he wasn’t a human, or a dragon, or something normal that could fit in the world.

  He pitied Nathan, knowing how he must feel about Lillian, knowing it was hopeless to fall in love with your food.

  But Dare also knew he wasn’t fully a nightmare, that there was something else inside him, something that called out to good, something that made him protect.

  But it wasn’t enough when he became a hunter in the darkness.

  Once he’d pulled into the parking lot and stopped, he slammed his hands onto the steering wheel. He took several deep breaths to compose himself and looked up to see a tall man with dark-brown hair and hawkish yellow eyes walking past into the club.

  He raised an eyebrow, getting an odd feeling about the man, and then got out of his car to go in. Was that the dragon Benny had talked about?

  Dare walked in and saw Benny waving to him, gesturing toward the back room.

  He hunched his shoulders as he moved forward, walked through the doorway, and glared at the table in front of him.

  The guy who had just walked in was sitting there, and he looked up at Dare with those hawkish eyes.

  He was huge, for one thing, broad and muscled, more than even a bear or wolf shifter.

  He gave freaking Benny a run for his money.

  Benny sat at the table, looking fairly pleased with himself. “So, Dare, come talk with us.”

  Dare reluctantly took a seat at the table. “What do you have to say?”

  The man eyed him sharply, and Dare felt a commanding presence from him that almost reminded him of someone in the army. “We haven’t yet been introduced.”

  “This is Dare. Dare, this is Lead, one of the dragons who lives nearby. He’s friends with Chromium, a dragon I ran into at a nearby restaurant, and he’s still a bit new to the shifter world as well.”

  “Only because I’m not from this planet,” Lead said firmly, sizing up Dare. “Otherwise, I’d have more information about what is going on.”

  Dare sat back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. “You brought me an alien? You said it was a dragon.”

  Lead let out a little growl. “I don’t like this guy, not at all.”

  “Come on, guys,” Benny said, trying to placate them. “Let’s be friends. We’re all on the same side here.”

  But Dare wasn’t so sure. Besides, the idea of being on a team was still fairly new to him.

  “You have to forgive Dare. He got really fucked over by this oracle we’ve been talking about.”

  “Doesn’t sound like her,” Lead said. “She can be stern, but not the type to hurt someone without reason.” He gave Dare a suspicious look. “What happened?”

  “She made me and my brothers in a test tube and then dumped us in the world alone because we were an abomination.” Dare studied his nails, keeping his rage down. “Then she promised to come back and check with us to see if we could join the shifters and the humans, and she never came back.” Dare gave Lead a smile that was more just baring his teeth. “So we worked a hundred years alone in the darkness for nothing.”

  Lead looked chagrined and rubbed the back of his neck. “She just doesn’t sound like the woman I’m working for. But I’m sure she’d want to know about this.”

  “Tell her, then,” Dare snapped. “But I’m sure she remembers. Unless she’s fucked over so many people she can’t keep track.”

  Lead shook his head. “I don’t think so. Anyway, she’s training one of my friends, so I see her quite often. When are you wanting to meet with her?”

  Dare felt as though his heart nearly stopped at the prospect. He’d expected Lead to defend her, not offer a meeting with a guy who hated her guts. He rubbed his neck. “I… uh…”

  “I might be able to arrange it for tonight or tomorrow.”

  Dare’s ledger suddenly came to his head. So much red. Did he even want to see her? What if she looked at it and just told everyone he and his brothers needed to still be destroyed?

  Somehow, though he’d wanted to see her, he’d never really thought it possible that he would.

  His hands tightened into painful fists. “Whenever she’s available. As soon as she can.” Before he could fall harder for Sasha than he already had.

  Not that it was even possible.

  If he had ever believed he could have a mate, he knew she would be it. C
ute, kind Sasha with her blond hair and sweet smile and inability to know who was bad for her.

  If only he could watch out for her forever.

  Lead stood, giving him a look that was something like pity. As usual, it made Dare fire up.

  Dare stood, looking haughty. “Tell that bitch not to expect me to be nice to her.”

  Lead frowned. “I won’t call her any such thing since she doesn’t deserve it. Could there be another oracle around?”

  Dare lifted his chin. “Just because she’s nice to you doesn’t mean she’s nice to everyone.”

  Lead sniffed the air. “You don’t smell like other Earth dragons.”

  “Then why are you letting me meet with her?”

  “Because I can sense something is wrong with you. Someone has wronged you, and maybe she can help us with that.”

  Dare glared at Lead, unconvinced. People like the oracle always had people sucking up to them. People willing to torture or kill or just look the other way for a “good” cause.

  He and his brothers were the consequence.

  Lead gave him one last sympathetic look, then shook hands with Benny and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Benny slapped his hands on his knees. “Well, damn, Dare. You’re angry. I get it, but you don’t have to insult his boss.”

  Dare kept his arms stubbornly folded as he sat back down in the chair. “I’ll insult whoever I want. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

  “No,” Benny said thoughtfully. “I don’t. But I’m here if you want to talk.”

  “Like hell,” Dare said glumly.

  “Okay,” Benny replied. “Listen, is Sasha coming in soon? She always makes you feel better, I think.”

  “She’s coming later for the officer meeting, but if the oracle meeting happens tonight, I don’t want her to be there.”

  But Dare couldn’t help thinking about what Benny had said. Sasha did make everything better.

  She was a stream of sunlight in a night that was only supposed to be dark. She was a star rising even at nightfall.

  She was something impossible in his heart.

  And he needed to help her move on.