Page 66 of Damien’s Mate

“I don’t see your coordinates,” he said. “Why are you shielding your location?”

“I’m not,” she said, bewildered at his hostility. “I’m in the human world. Perhaps the coordinates don’t register automatically?”

“You must reveal your coordinates immediately. No one outside the highest level of security is authorized to posses those artifacts. You will return them. There will be no payment rendered, and if you think to extort one, you will be arrested and charged accordingly.”

Payment? She didn’t want a payment. But she was beginning to think her father wasn’t going to get credit for retrieving them, either.

She said quietly, “With all respect, sir, my father gave his life to recover these artifacts, with the sole purpose of returning them to the Guard, clearing our family’s name, and resuming his service to the House of Makek-Dur. He raised me and trained me for that service as well, secure in his faith that when we accomplished our mission, the Guard would reward us with honor and the opportunity to serve. I have his faith that that will be forthcoming.”

The man’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed as he looked in her eyes.

“Of course, of course,” he said. “The value of the artifacts to the House is incalculable, and we are grateful for their return. If you will give me your location coordinates, a portal will be created within the hour and an honor guard team sent to escort you.”

Lila went silent. She knew that Brandon would not want the Draken opening a random portal into his territory. He wouldn’t want them to even know his crew existed. Also, portals left a magical residue and could be easily reopened, leaving a gateway from the Dragonlands straight here.

She couldn’t do that to him.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she said. “I’m in a place where the creation of a portal would be impossible without revealing ourselves to humans.”

“You should have called from a remote location,” the Lieutenant Commander said.

Right. It had only taken them a week to answer. They expected her to camp out in a cave—in November—until they happened to pick up the phone?

But she already knew the answer to that. They were Lion Guard. Of course they did.

Luckily, she’d been studying maps of Kentucky, and had already picked out the perfect place. “I have an appropriate location,” she said, “but the optimal time to open a portal will not be for another twenty-four hours.”

That would give her time to talk to Damien—and spend one more night with him before she traveled to the Dragonlands.

The Lieutenant Commander snapped, “Contact us when you arrive at that location. You will be unarmed. You will be transported to our command post, where the artifacts will be authenticated.”

“Yes, sir.”

The orb went dead.

Lila stared at it, her gut churning with conflicting feelings. She’d done it—she’d finished the mission and contacted the Lion Guard. But the hero’s welcome her father had always talked about hadn’t materialized.

They don’t know if I’m for real, she told herself. They’re just being careful. But it didn’t help the feeling in her gut.

She bit her lip. It didn’t matter. She had to go—she had to return the artifacts. And if her father had been wrong about that hero’s welcome, she still had to fight to clear her family’s name.

And then—then she had a choice to make. Would she follow the path her father had set out for her, or would she finally choose her own?

Chapter 27

Damien was working in Titan’s cabin when Remy came up and gestured for him to come outside.

“I got my report back from Tyr Greystone,” he said when they were out of earshot of the cabin, walking down towards the shooting range. “It seems the Makek-Dur are one of the most secretive of the Draken clans, so it took him awhile to come up with anything.”

Damien knew the Shifter Council database had already come up empty.

And Damien didn’t like the look on Remy’s face. “This is going to suck, isn’t it,” he said. “Go on, give it to me.”

Remy said, “Lila was right about the uprising twenty years ago. Rebel Draken and their Lion Guard soldiers tried to assassinate the Royal House, plus everyone loyal to the king that they could put their little paws on.”

“Yikes,” Damien said. “That does suck.”

Remy shrugged. “Well, by all accounts the king was kind of a dick, which honestly isn’t unusual for Draken, but also probably doesn’t warrant having your whole family killed. No saying whether the rebels were better or worse, but they got squashed.”