Riley was...a really good kisser.

Pulling back, Riley gazed down at me, smiling at my stunned expression. “There,” he said quietly, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Is that enough to convince you that I’m still thinking about us? That you are constantly on my mind, even when I’m distracted?”

I swallowed, trying to find my voice. “For a dragon, I’d say you’ve got this human thing down pretty well,” I whispered, and he smirked.

“I haven’t lived this long by not being observant.” Releasing me, he stepped back, shoving his fingers through his hair and looking faintly embarrassed. “Wes should be done in a few minutes,” he said, glancing at the door. “Will you be ready to leave by then?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, feeling a lightness in my chest that drove away the fear and anger and frustration, at least for now. “I’ll be right out. I just wish I knew where we were going.”

As if on cue, Riley’s phone chimed. Pulling it out of his jacket, he stared at the screen a moment, then shook his head.

“Well, it looks like you’ll get your wish, Firebrand. Wes found the coordinates.” He scanned the message, brow furrowing slightly. “Makes sense, I guess. Away from people, out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Where?”

He sighed and stuck his phone in his pocket again. “According to Wes, we’re going to West Virginia.”

DANTE

“How many vessels have you awakened so far, Dr. Olsen?”

The thin, bearded man in a stained lab coat gave Mr. Roth a proud, weary smile as we left the elevator and followed the scientist down the twisting corridors that led deeper underground. “Twenty-two,” he announced.

“And how many have survived?”

“Thirteen vessels have lived through the initial adjustment phase and are expected to continue without support.”

He said it with satisfaction, but I felt my stomach twist painfully at the number. The project was progressing at an astonishing rate. More than half the replicas had survived, better than predicted, but that was still nine dragons that hadn’t made it. Dragons who had died because they hadn’t developed properly, or whose minds had been damaged from the programming process. Or, worst of all, had simply never developed that mysterious spark of life that couldn’t be replicated by science. Their lungs and hearts functioned, everything seemed to be working fine, but they were empty shells; living pieces of meat that slowly starved to death when the feeding tubes were removed.

It made me sick to think about. In fact, though I would never admit it out loud, the whole thing was making me rather ill. Was this truly the only way we could survive? Making clones of ourselves? Dragons who were grown in a vat, whose memories and personality traits were artificially implanted to make them more compliant? It didn’t sit well with me, but at the same time, I trusted that the organization knew what it was doing. This was a war, and we were vastly outnumbered. Every year, we lost more of our kind to St. George, and their numbers weren’t getting any smaller. Something had to be done to even out the score, or we would find ourselves close to extinction again.

“And how is their training progressing?” Mr. Roth inquired as we continued down the corridor, passing armed guards and other scientists, who bowed their heads or averted their gazes as we went by. Mr. Roth paid them no attention whatsoever. “Have they shown any signs of being able to Shift?”

Dr. Olsen paused at a heavy metal door, punched a code into the keypad beside it and pressed his thumb to the lit screen. It beeped, flashed green and the door unlocked with a soft hiss. The scientist looked back at us and smiled. “Come see for yourself,” he replied, and opened the door.

I stepped through the frame onto a metal balcony that overlooked a large room. The walls and floor were cement, and the ceiling rose above us in a steel dome. Several doors of heavy-duty steel were set into the walls every dozen or so feet, individual cells that made me shiver.

A dozen lean, metallic-gray bodies lay on the cold concrete floor, unmoving. They didn’t stir or look up, or give any indication that they’d heard us, and my heart gave a violent lurch as, for just a moment, I thought they were dead. But then the scientist stepped to the edge of the railing and raised his arms, as if embracing them all.

“Hello, my darlings!” Dr. Olsen called into the room, his voice echoing in the vast space around us. No response from the dragons below, not even a tail or wing twitch, and the scientist smacked his forehead. “Oh, that’s right. I told them to stay.” He clapped his hands. “Up here, please! Everyone, look at me!”