I glanced at him, and the hairs on my arm rose. His jaw was set, his eyes angry as he met my gaze. His pupils had contracted until they were razor-thin slits against the gray of his irises. And for one crazy, surreal moment, it didn’t feel like I was staring into the face of an angry human. It felt like I was staring down a rival drake, and he was seconds away from snarling the ancient challenge and lunging at me with fangs bared.

But then he blinked, and his eyes went normal again. I ignored the possessive anger in my gut and gave him a weary smile. “Well, you’re welcome to try, St. George,” I said. “But I’m not extending the same offer. You want to kick my ass, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

“Perhaps if we can stay on target,” came an exasperated voice from the front, and Mist peered back at us. Her eyes glimmered blue in the fading light. Beside her in the driver’s seat, a man in a dark suit gazed straight ahead, silently ignoring the three dragons and the soldier of St. George surrounding him. I wondered who he was, if he was employed by Talon and if he was now royally screwed for helping us escape.

“We need a place to hide,” Mist said, gazing at me. “One where Talon can’t track us down. From what we saw, all of your safe houses have been compromised. I have a place we can go—my employer set it up in case it came to this.”

“No,” I said, and she blinked at me. “Sorry, Mist, but trusting you to get us out is one thing. Trusting some mysterious Talon employer to provide us with a safe house is a little out of my comfort zone. The fewer people who know where we are, the better.”

“You don’t have any more safe houses,” Mist said. “Talon found them all.”

“Not all of them.” I went over Talon’s list in my mind, making sure this final sanctuary wasn’t among the targets. “I have one last place we can go.”

Mist regarded me a moment longer, then shrugged. “I’d argue that you are being paranoid, but it would be a waste of effort. And I suppose it doesn’t matter where we go, as long as it’s safe.”