The site of the Tahoe Organization facility was almost unrecognizable to Rhia. The lumber mill used to disguise the above-ground opening had been swept over by the wildfires, leaving a forest of dead trees and a carpet of ash. Smoke still hung in the air, though the fires were no longer anywhere near the site.

Fires were unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence for California, and Rhia had seen just how destructive they could be in the years she worked as a paramedic. Her very first experience with the Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service teams had been during an international effort to fight what was, at the time, the worst wildfires in California history. Firefighters, fire suppression specialists, EMTs, and paramedics, just to name a few of the volunteers that came down from Canada and up from Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.

Rhia, on top of her desperate fear of heights and flying, had just been saddled with a brand new EMT to train. It was the rookie's very first week on the job, and for that reason specifically, she specifically requested an assignment to ground support or held back to assist with triage. The last thing she needed was for him to freeze up or panic if they got caught in a burn-over.

So how she and Ian had been paired up with the STARS was beyond her.

She had nothing to say about the trauma nurse or advanced care paramedic. They were professional, knowledgeable, and had the same dark humor she did when they weren't working on a patient. They didn't get in her way while teaching and let Ian make mistakes until it put the patient at risk, and then weren't afraid to stop him.

No, her problem wasn't with the medical staff. Her problem was with the pilots. With a minimum of five hundred hours in the air needed just to be interviewed, the two pilots on that team had a combined total of thirty thousand hours of flight time and both had spent their entire careers with STARS. They did things Rhia didn't even know were possible in a helicopter. Things she still didn't understand now.

She asked Nekros about it once. He'd laughed and told her that the worst thing for a newly awakened flier was to look at helicopters. Planes, dragons and kin, and other flying creatures relied on aerodynamics and a delicate balance of speed, strength, and weight distribution. Helicopters, on the other hand, did not fly at all; they beat the air into submission.

Those pilots scared her for life. Poor Ian, who once thought he'd ended up with a cool, confident, and competent mentor, was left second-guessing his career choice. Somehow, out of pure luck, he hadn't lost total respect for her. They'd become best friends. Until...

Rhia shook her head and turned her back on the destruction. Thinking about Ian was a waste of time. Nathan, his boyfriend, had made it clear that neither of them wanted anything to do with her. If that ever changed, it would be up to them to contact her through the Counsel. They put their boundaries in place. All she could do was respect them.

The only thing that hadn't been burned away was the solid concrete elevator shaft. The elevator itself had been removed, as it had been damaged beyond repair, but the shaft was solid and safe—in theory—to descend by rope. Subconsciously, she tugged at her own harness and waited for turn. Logically, she knew she would probably survive falling straight down. But that was the problem with phobias. They weren't always rational.

"You don't have to come down with us," Bastian said gently from his place on a nearby rock. He, too, was in his harness and waiting for his turn on the ropes once Atticus and one of his computer techs had landed safely. "We can tell you what we find down there."

"I'm okay," she lied and masked it with a smirk. "Are you sure you want to go down there? You think your leg can handle it?"

"Respect your elders, young lady," he mocked through a puff of smoke and smacked her ankle with his cane.

Dancing out of the way of both cane and smoke, she still caught a whiff of the cigarette and her nose wrinkled. "Those things will kill you, you know?"

"I am nine-hundred and three years old! If this is the thing that takes me out, I'll consider it a life well lived." Bastian's laughter faded into a heavy sigh, and he stared at the smoking butt. "Syb hated it, too. Used to tell me that every cigarette took away seven minutes that we would spend together as a family. Of course, she probably meant that I was the one who was going to die."

A heavy silence hung between them, before the spotter at the ropes called out. "Alright, you two are up."

Bastian dropped the cigarette and crushed it to dust with his boot as he slowly got to his feet. The spotter latched their harness to the ropes, reminded them to walk down the wall, and use their radios, not yell, if there was a problem. The next thing she knew, she was three meters down, clinging to the rope with shaking hands and forcing herself to keep her eyes on the wall, and not look either up or down.

"How did the other dragons take the news?" Bastian asked, calm as anything.

It took her several deep breaths before she got her shaking under control enough to answer. "Not sure. Lysander was the only one to answer the phone."

"Lysander... he's the crystal one, right? I always liked him."

"You weren't supposed to know about him."

"I'm not supposed to know a lot of things. That's the benefit of living so long. You'll get there one day."

"Yeah... Hey, I've been meaning to ask since the meeting. How do the kin know you? And why haven't they talked about you before?"

"Despite what they say, the dragons can't actually do most of what they do without help from other breeds more interconnected than them. They pay very well for those who will work quietly and effectively." Bastian shrugged and then laughed. "It also pissed Nolan off to no end."

For the first time, her eyes left the wall and turned to look at him. "You deliberately picked work that would upset your father? Why?"

"What else? Attention." He kept chuckling and shaking his head at his own memories. "I was young, bored, and angry. Nolan was off bending the world to Constantine's will and wasn't around. I hated him and desperately wanted him to acknowledge me. The only way I could do that was by doing something he expressly forbade me from doing. That just happened to be working for the dragonkin. I was good at it, too, which made it all feel worth it for a while."

"What happened?"

"I grew up. I got over myself. I never forgave him, but we were able to move on. We were always better friends than we were family." He met Rhia's eyes. "Haven't you ever done anything because you knew it would piss your parents off?"

"No. I did everything Richard wanted me to. When he didn't like my dates, I dumped them. If he didn't like a friend, I would ditch them. When it came to work, my choices were military, police, or healthcare. I chose paramedic, and just so happened to fall in love with it. I dated Church because Richard approved of him. I did everything to make that relationship work. When I was put in the hospital, he convinced me not to press charges over one little mistake. At some point I recognized that he would never approve of me, and I just started avoiding him unless I had to. It wasn't until Maddox got shot and I met Nolan that I finally grew a pair and stood up to him."

"I see... I guess the difference is that I always knew deep down that Nolan always cared."

Their feet touched the ground, and Rhia quickly detached the rope and stepped away from the shaft. "No, it wasn't that. I mean, yes, Nolan loves you, and he has always loved you. Seriously, the way he talked about you and Sybil and Cameron, Val, and Ethan... never mind. The point is, I had no illusions. I knew from the beginning that Richard didn't like me, never would like me, and no matter what I couldn't change that. I was Madeline's kid, not his."

"So why try for his approval?"

"I thought I'd been abandoned. I spent over a month in the hospital after Madeline found me because of the condition I was in, and then I got to go home to a room with a door, a bed that didn't have wheels, toys to play with, a mother and brother that adored me... That first year I had doctor's appointments every couple of weeks, and every time we pulled up to the hospital, I was sure that they were going to leave me there. I didn't care about making him love me, I didn't even care if I made him happy... I got it in my head that my real family abandoned me because I was a bad kid. I didn't want to be abandoned again, so..."

She shrugged, leaving the sentence hanging where it was, and turned her attention down the long hallway. It was dark, despite the work lights dragged down and hooked up to a generator. A layer of ash and dust had settled over the floor of the shaft and a few feet beyond... but after that, there was nothing but emptiness.

Shivers rippled up from the base of her spine. Every hair on her body stood on end and goosebumps washed over her arms. Half-blocked memories rushed back, along with every nightmare. Faces leering at her through a glass cage.

Ropes and bindings holding her down. Needles and drills piercing her skin and bones. Zenith mocking her pain. The cruel laughter of Price as he watched her struggle. The impassive doctors and scientists and soldiers that didn't care that she was a living, breathing, feeling creature.

Acid burned in her throat, and Rhia hunched over, bracing her weight on her knees. Tears brimmed in her eyes even as she counted her breaths and heartbeat. Of them all, it was Richard's voice that came back at that moment to haunt her. The last time she saw him and the last words he spoke... A hunting rifle, loaded with ancient-killer ammunition, aimed at her head...

I have been hunting creatures like you my whole life...

I will kill you...

Her whole life, she had been in the hands of these monsters, and didn't even know it. Reduced to an object they wanted to twist and mold into their weapon. They wanted to point at something, and for her to burn it down without question or thought.

Bastian's hand on her shoulder was warm and comforting, gently pulling her out of the memories that weighed her down. "You haven't been back since that night, have you?" he asked quietly.

"I never planned on ever coming back here," she shook her head, and took a few more deep breaths before standing straight. "I wanted to forget this place ever existed."

"You didn't need to come down. We could have-"

"Nekros offered to go back to the place that held and tortured him for twenty-six years. I can do this."

Before he could try to talk her out of it again, Rhia stepped deeper into the facility.

According to one of Maddox's earlier reports and the limited information Atticus's people were able to find out, the shaft they just descended from was an emergency exit to the surface. It was the way Maddox and Church had evacuated with the orders to drive to Fort Collins. The elevator Rhia had gone up with the three hatchlings was on the other side of the facility in the main lab.

Within the main lab, that Maddox reported the Organization called 'The Zoo', was the massive containment cell she had been in. The place where Ashton Price removed the titanium plates in her side that allowed her to shift for the very first time. The place where she learned the truth of who and what she was.

An observation room had been built on the higher level of the cell. Within that room was the one computer that Atticus and his team were able to save. Most of the electronics in the facility had been wiped by the internal lockdown, or because of the sheer amount of draconic magic in the air. But because the cell had been built to contain a dragon, the computer in the observation room had been hardened against the effects of magic, and someone had been able to stop the purge protocol before everything was erased.

Atticus and his specialist were already up there, booting the computer up and working their way carefully through the firewalls before progressing with plugging in the USB drive. Bastian went up to join them, but Rhia held back. That she couldn't do. She couldn't bear the thought of seeing that room again, especially not from the view that Richard had.

She veered away from the enormous doors and walked slowly through the lab. Broken glass cages and equipment everywhere. At the center of the processing space, was the cell she had torn her way out of. One broken side, and the one facing the floor had melted from the spray of acid before she knocked it over.

A few feet away from the box, she stopped and just looked at it. Why did they take her out of the bigger room? There had been a reason, but she couldn't remember. She'd been in such a state, she could barely remember most of what happened that night. Just the pain, and the fear, and the relief when Nolan found her.

"And now it's my turn to find you," Rhia muttered to herself, turning slowly to look around the rest of the processing room. "So, where are you? How do I find you?"

She didn't have an answer. That was the problem. Coming back here was to dig further into the information that Kate gave them about the Organization, but she didn't actually know where to start to find Nolan. There was no evidence that the Organization even took him. But there wasn't any evidence to say that they didn't. Who else would have the ability to capture and contain someone like him?

Aarón Guerrero certainly had a motive. No one had more reason to hate Nolan than the werewolf king. That's why Rhia wanted to talk to him. He spent the whole summer practically gloating that he was the one who killed the Nolan Wes... but did he actually? Maybe the lycan was a witness to something, or someone, much stronger than either of them step in.

Cameron was the first to point out that talking would be futile. If Nolan was alive, Aarón would be the last person who would help them. Val wasn't confident it could even be done, either, but she promised to try. It would take time, but she had dozens of meetings scheduled with him and other counsel members over the next several months. She would have the time and opportunity to build a foundation of a relationship and make the request. Rhia just needed to be patient.

A sudden icy feeling rippled through her, and she whirled around, searching for the presence she felt. Nothing. Nothing but the cold emptiness of the laboratory. But she felt it. Someone was here.

She was three steps forward before she realized what she was doing. "Goddamnit, Rhia," she scolded herself. "This is exactly how you keep getting in trouble. How many times do you have to be the stupid white girl in every horror movie before you figure it out?"

"At least once more," came a voice behind her.

She screamed, predictably, and bright red and orange flames erupted from her palms as she spun around again. The newcomer caught her wrist, keeping the deadly fire from touching him, and a second later she recognized those glowing tan eyes and his stupid face. "Dáithí?!" she gasped. "What the actual fuck?!"

"You're late," he chastised her with a smile. "Didn't think it would take you a week to get back here."

Her fear turned to anger faster than the speed of light and she ripped her arm free. "What the fuck are you doing here?!"

"Calm down, little bird. If I left it to you, then-"

"No!" she cut him off, slapping away the hand that was waving her off. Flames sprung up between them, creating a physical barrier between them that forced their separation. "No more little bird! You told me I was on my own. That you weren't 'enabling' my delusion. You made your intentions clear as a fucking bell, so what are you doing here?!"

"A man can't change his mind?"

"You don't. You never change your mind."

"You have to have the shortest fucking memory of all the Ancients." Dáithí glared at her, his lip curled in a snarl. "I've changed my mind on a lot since meeting you. I wasn't going to protect you from Constantine, and I changed my mind. I wasn't going to keep an eye on you at the Gala, and I changed my mind then, too. When we first met, I hated the dragons. All of them. I still do. Except you."

"Yeah, you've made your feelings about me very clear."

His eyes flicked away from her face to the fire, then back to her. With a cocky smirk, he took a step forward. Red and orange flames lapped around his legs menacingly but did not burn him. He knew, as she knew, that she would never be able to bring herself to hurt him. He loomed over her and hissed. "I changed my mind."

"Just like that?" Heat was beginning to rise in her cheeks from her anger. "After everything you said, you just changed your mind at the drop of a hat?"

Suddenly, Dáithí's arm hooked around her waist and dragged her into his chest. "I will always do right by you, little bird," he growled, his lips so close she could feel them moving as he spoke. "If you really believe Nolan's alive, then so do I. I'm with you till the end."

Rhia scowled and tried to push away. He wouldn't let go, so she turned her head away. "If you're just doing this for the chance of being with me later... Nolan and I are soulmates. I physically can't be with anyone else."

She felt his body stiffen against hers, and she refused to look at him for a whole new reason. She didn't want to see the anger or the hurt in his eyes. It would be too much for the fragile wall she'd put up around her heart since talking to Keoni.

"Who told you that?"

"A demon."

"Ah, yes. The most trustworthy sources of information. Remind me, what kind of creatures was it that tried to kill you when we were stuck in the dark realm."

"Of course, you don't believe me. Just let me go."

Before she could try pushing away again, he kissed her cheek. "How I feel for you hasn't changed. But a part of being in love with someone is wanting their happiness above all else. I'm here to help. Like it or not, you're stuck with me."

Then he let her go, turned, and started walking back the way she came. Rhia rubbed her cheek, hating how hot her face was. "I'm getting serious whiplash here," she sighed and followed.

"You're fine. I found something, by the way, so if you're done wasting time..."

That caught her attention. Dáithí was holding up a small notebook, something like she used to carry around in case the never-so reliable computers stopped working while on the job. She reached for it, and he pulled back just out of her reach, raising an eyebrow. "Dáithí, please," she begged.

His eyebrow only rose higher. "Am I forgiven?" he teased.

"Fuck you, give me the book!"

"Rhia?"

Bastian's voice came from the other side of the lab, and when Dáithí looked away Rhia snatched the notebook and started flipping through it. Notes. All handwritten notes on the experiments they were running. Nothing made sense to her, and she was ready to throw it back at his head. "Last page," he spat bitterly.

She flipped to the back page and stared at it. It was a list. A very short, very simple one, but the second item down she recognized. Grouse Ridge. That was only a few miles from the entrance to this facility. "What is this?" she asked as Bastian limped into view.

"Not sure," Dáithí shrugged his shoulder. "But Grouse Ridge is right near us. And Cerro Steffen is in Argentina. I figure it's a list of their facilities."

"Oh my god," Rhia's knees went weak, and this time she didn't protest when Dáithí reached to support her. "This is it... we found him!"

Bastian took the notebook and looked down at the page. "Don't get a head of yourself," he warned gently. "This can't be all of them. Probably just the ones the owner knew about."

"But it's something! We can work with this! What about you? Did you find anything new in the database?"

Bastian's hesitation was louder than anything Rhia had ever heard in her life. Slowly he handed the book back and gave her a look so full of dread and concern that she felt her heart breaking at the sight. "The database updated. Which means it's probably still on the same server as at least one other facility, which means we might be able to find another location. But..." Another hesitation, then a heavy sigh. "The names on the list that were listed as pending were changed to cancelled, and their statuses were changed to eliminated."

Rhia leaned harder into Dáithí, her knees starting to shake again. "Eliminated?" she breathed. "You mean...?"

"If I'm right... the Organization has suffered more losses than they deem acceptable. They're downsizing. Cleaning house, and they're starting with the Entity Project."

~