by Alisa Woods
Ember nods, sips her latte, and glances at the hallway to my bedroom. We decided not to move her sister until the doctor arrived. And the fact that Cinder hasn’t awoken yet means no one’s in any rush.
I hand Constantine his coffee—black, no sugar, no cream. “Thanks,” he says. “And we need to talk.”
I know what about—the witch back in the Vardigah realm—but that’ll have to wait. “In a minute.”
He nods.
To Ember, I say, “You want to come back?”
She shakes her head, and I don’t insist. Seeing her sister in that state, especially when there’s nothing she can do—and I suspect she still blames herself for Cinder going missing—is no good for anyone.
“I’ll be back.” I give her a quick kiss on the cheek, then grab Aleks’s and my coffees.
When I reach the bedroom, Aleks is sitting in a chair next to the bed, placing a cool washcloth on Cinder’s forehead. I frown—she wasn’t feverish half an hour ago.
He sees me then spies the coffees. “One of those for me?”
I hand it to him. “How’s she doing?”
She mumbles something, startling me—almost like she was answering me—but then she lapses into a quieter mode. Less thrashing, but her eyes are still moving under her eyelids like she’s having a dream. And her breathing is erratic.
Aleks shrugs but looks pained. “I don’t know what’s going on in her head, but she does not like it.” He sips his coffee and sets it down.
I glance at the door—Ember’s out of hearing range. “Do you think the Vardigah did something to her?”
“I don’t know why they had her at all.” He takes the washcloth, dips it in a small basin next to the bed, wrings it, then puts it back on her forehead. “I don’t know what this is, Niko.” He shakes his head. “But I don’t like any of it.”
“Ember blames herself for Cinder getting captured.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“That’s what I told her.” We both watch Cinder’s nearly-silent torment for a moment. “I feel like we should wake her. If she’s caught in some kind of nightmare…”
But Aleks is shaking his head. “This is something darker than that.” He peers up at me. “She was gone, what? Two or three days?”
“I know, it’s not very long—”
“That’s a fucking eternity.” His dark look is the closest I’ve seen to rage on my kind-hearted friend’s face.
I frown at him. “What do you mean?”
“She’s Dragon Spirited, right? I can’t think of any other reason they would take her. Plus, you know, the mark. But here’s the thing… I can’t think of any reason for them to keep her alive, either. Right? Why keep a dragon’s mate alive? Why go to the bother of kidnapping her in the first place? Why not just kill her?” He looks back to her, and there’s pain twisting across his face. “They did something to her, all right. Something bad. And it resulted in this.” He gestures vaguely to the twitching and tumultuous dream state. “I just don’t know why.”
“Maybe it was the witch.”
Aleks squints his skepticism at that. “She conjured a shield for us.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to burn.”
“Maybe.”
Cinder whimpers like she’s in pain and thrashes her head, just once. Like she’s saying no.
“Fuck those fucking pointy-eared bastards.” Aleks rubs a hand across his face like he’s trying to collect himself. I can barely stand seeing it, either.
Cinder’s mumbling starts again. It sounds like she is saying something. Then she gasps, and suddenly her eyes open! She’s casting wildly around, almost like she can’t see. “Ju… Ju…” she says, thrashing.
Aleks catches her flailing hand and captures her attention. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re okay now.”
She shakes her head at him, only seeming to half see him. “Ju… Julia!” she gasps out.
“Who’s Julia?” Aleks asks me, but I just shrug. I’m not sure she even knows what she’s saying, but at least she’s awake. That’s huge. I look to the door, torn between staying and going to get Ember.
“You have… to…” Cinder’s grip on Aleks’s hand is so strong, she’s pulling herself up with it. “You have to.” She’s trying to get up.
“Cinder, no.” He’s trying to get her to lie back down. “You need to rest.”
“No!” She shakes her head, but I can see the energy in her body fading quickly. “You need to save her.”
“Who? Julia?” Aleks gives me a bewildered and panicked look.
I feel it too. Because a sudden, terrible thought is ripping through my mind. What if Cinder’s not the only one kidnapped?
“You have to try,” Cinder says, but she’s already collapsed back in the bed, eyes closed, energy drained. Just that small attempt at… something… wiped her out. She flails, blindly, at Aleks’s hand. He catches it and holds it. “Try,” she insists.
“I’ll try,” Aleks says. “I promise.” He can’t have any idea what he’s promising. Maybe it’s just a fever dream and means nothing.
But the tormented look on Aleks’s face is the same feeling I have squeezing on my chest.
“Stay with her,” I say, and he nods, but I don’t think I could have wrestled him away from her side.
I head back out to the main room. “About that witch…” I say to Constantine as I stride up to him and Ember both.
Constantine lifts his chin. “I think she’s using the Gift.”
Ember frowns. “What’s the Gift?”
I slip my hand into hers. “The ability to find our soul mates.” It’s chilling me to the core. What this means—for all of us.
“I thought…” Ember’s frown turns into a scowl. “I thought you said all the witches were wiped out. Just like the dragons.”
“And yet we’re still here.” Constantine’s flicking looks between Ember and me like he’s not sure how much to say in front of her.
But she needs to know it all. “If there were any survivors,” I say to her, “they’d be in hiding, just like we are. That’s how we’ve survived two hundred years. But if the Vardigah found one and captured her…”
Ember’s eyes go wide. “They would be able to find the dragons.”
“They’d be able to find you,” Constantine says. “They find the soul mates of dragons. The dragons themselves were never hard to find… until we went into hiding.” He looks to me. “You think the witch can find us, too?”
“If she could, we’d already be dead.” But I frown. Huge parts of this don’t make sense. “If she found Cinder and directed the Vardigah to her, then why not Ember?”
Constantine shakes his head. “We only escaped because of her protection. That shield protected all of us. And the witch had to know we were dragon. Only dragons would come after a dragon’s mate in the Vardigah realm. So why protect us? Why help us escape?”
I scowl. “And why do that if she helped the Vardigah capture Cinder in the first place?” But at this point, I know there aren’t any answers. None we can figure out until Cinder comes around—for real—and can give us some.
“We have to go after the witch,” Constantine insists. “Or move Cinder out of the lair. Probably both. Because if the witch leads the Vardigah here…”
I frown—but he’s not wrong. Although, historically, the witches only were wayfinders to unmated Dragon Spirits. Ember should be safe. “We’ll wait until she’s stable,” I tell Ember. But I’m already thinking about what that means. Will Ember go with her? We might have to decamp to somewhere far from the rest of the lair until we sort this out.
“And there’s one more thing,” I say to them both. “I think the Vardigah have captured another mate.”
Constantine closes his eyes and tips his head back—like he’s already thought this through and that was the worst he’d come up with. I know exactly what he means.
“Are you saying you want to go back?” Ember asks, the horror slowly dawning on her face.
“We can’t,” I say. “Not until we know who we’re going after.” Which means waiting for Cinder to get better enough to give us real information.
Ember seems to understand this. She just nods slowly.
“But Constantine’s right,” I add. “At some point, we have to shut down this witch.”
Eleven
Ember
“That’s a wrap.” I wave at Niko to have him cut the camera.
Then I turn and offer up a hug to “Sarah”—that’s not her real name, but it’s the one we’re using for the film. “You’re amazing. You know that, right?”
“I know you say it a lot.” She gives the tiniest of smiles, but it lights up my heart. “I might believe it someday.” She shrugs, and that part breaks my heart again. This girl’s barely sixteen, and she’s been through hell. She was trafficked for six months before Constantine found her being walked into a motel by the man trafficking her for the night. Or more likely, for half an hour. He would have sold her ten times more if he’d had buyers. And there always seem to be buyers.
“Ember’s right, you know,” Niko pipes up. He’s serving as my cameraperson to finish the documentary while Cinder recovers. And she will recover. The doctor could find nothing wrong with her—said she just needed to rest. Which isn’t true, but Aleks is constantly by her side, keeping an eye on her. It’s only been a week, and she’s getting a little better each day. I keep telling myself that. A hundred times a day. “I know grown men who couldn’t even talk about something this hard, much less go on camera with it to help others.”
Sarah ducks her head and shrugs again, but I think the praise reaches her. And I know Niko means it—in fact, I wonder if there aren’t dragons holding in their trauma for two hundred years. I’d be surprised if there weren’t. I’m working with him to get this documentary finally finished because I need the distraction of the work, but he’s been amazing. Gentle and kind, strong and sexy as hell. I’m a hundred percent convinced I would have fallen hard for him even if our souls weren’t literally the broken halves of a single one fated to be together. No… fated isn’t the right word. Because I’ve seen the dragons who wither away before they’ve ever found their mate. They were meant to be together, too… it just never happened. Which is a horrible, terrible tragedy. I give silent thanks to every good thing in the universe that I found Niko before that happened.
I smile brightly for Sarah. “Okay, we’re done here. If you’d like, we can go out right now for that ice cream I promised.” Niko turns to start tearing down the camera and the lights. We’re set up in one of the empty rooms in the dormitory for all the women and girls who find themselves in the orbit of the dragons. They’re regular humans who have no special powers--not the soul mates of anyone, at least not a dragon. But they’ve found a place in their hearts for Niko’s endangered people. Or they’ve found a refuge, like Sarah.
“That’s okay.” She climbs off the chair where she’s been sitting with her legs folded up, telling her horrific story of abuse in that flat, still-little-kid voice that chills me every time. She’s just a kid. Still. And these men obliterated a part of her soul. I pray that it comes back, but as she shuffles to the door, habitually tugging her sleeves down even though the bruises are now gone… I just don’t know. She turns back to me. “I’ve got a shift down in the hospice.”
“You do?” I give Niko a questioning look.
“Hey, I can’t say no all the time. Have you seen how persistent this girl is?”
She beams a smile at him, and my heart’s about to burst. That happens on the regular around my Dragon Lord, so I’m pretty sure I’ll survive. Maybe.
“That’s great,” I say to Sarah. “Raincheck?”
“Raincheck.” Her smile goes with her as she strides out the door.
I turn and hug Niko hard from behind as he’s packing up the equipment.
“Hello,” he says, then sets my sister’s camera down to turn and pull me into his arms. “You okay?”
“I want to rip your clothes off.”
His laugh rumbles deep and sexy in his chest.
I pull back and peer up at him. “I have talons now, right? Can I shift just enough to shred those designer clothes you’re wearing?”
He grins. “I guess we could find out.” He plays with my hair. “Probably should teleport back to the bedroom first. You know, rather than making out in the women’s dorm. I’m constantly on the other dragons about that. Need to set an example.”
“Ah, you’re no fun.” I give him a playful shove, just enough to work loose of his hold.
“You’re the workaholic here, not me.” He takes my hands and brings me back, lightly kissing me on the nose. “But your work is amazing. And important. You need to keep doing it, no matter what’s going on here at the lair.” Or with your sister. He doesn’t say that part, but I hear it.
“I think Cinder would want me to finish the film.” Although I know that was part of what broke her in the first place. And now with whatever the Vardigah have done to her…
“Hey.” Niko squeezes my hands. “She would. And she’s getting better. By the time you’ve got the editing and post-production done, she’ll be ready to watch it with you.”
I just nod, then take a deep breath… because that’s all I can do right now. “That still leaves time for baby-making.” I cuddle up next to his chest.
But his eyebrows lift—we haven’t really talked about it. Too busy with all the wild lovemaking to talk about the serious stuff. And I knew babies were part of the deal. “I’m always up for making a baby with you,” he says softly. He explained how the dragons are hyper careful about birth control—the last thing they want is to impregnate a human who’s not their soul mate. There’s a reason that the first time a mated pair have sex the woman gains her dragon powers—otherwise, carrying a dragon baby is all kinds of lethal. So, they make sure everything goes right—find their soul mate, fall in love, everything set—before they risk making a baby. Of course, we risked it on the first try—but we were kind of in a hurry. And possibly dying soon.
I slide my hands into the open collar of his shirt. “Do you think we’ve already made a little prince?” It’s been less than two weeks, but with the time we’ve spent in Niko’s bed, if we were making a human baby, I’d be knocked up already. But for dragons, on top of everything else, Niko says it’s hard to get pregnant—and mated pairs usually go through periods of infertility. The female’s body has to rest before another baby-making season. But I’m young, and we’ve just mated, so it should be possible.
His expression softens. “Nothing would make me happier.” He cups my cheek and kisses me, then he smiles. “But you know it might take a while. Besides, he wouldn’t be a prince. My father and mother were the Lord and Lady Protectors. All the true royalty died in the fire.”
I give him a teasing scowl. “Seems like they should have made you king by now. Prince at the least.”
“Doesn’t work that way.” He pulls in a breath. “Besides, you don’t earn accolades presiding over the death of your people.”
My hand goes instinctively to his cheek. “You’re saving your people every day.”
“With your help, maybe I finally am.”
I pull him down into a kiss—a hot and heavy one that says I love you and You’re mine and I want to make a baby with you right fucking now. I pull away just enough to whisper, “You need to teleport me to your bed, Lord Protector.”
His answering growl and grasping of my rear end have me closing my eyes for the split second it takes for him to take us out of the dorm. When I open my eyes, we’re not in his bedroom—our bedroom—in his apartment, but at his retreat at the old lair, the one they first came to when the dragons were fleeing their smoldering Athens home.
“I’ve wanted to have you here since that very first night.” His voice is rough as he carries me across the room, toward the canopied bed draped in gauzy coverings.
“I thought you didn’t bring women here?�
�� I say between nibbles on his neck, which is exposed by his open collar. I remember him making a point of it on that first night—that he came here for retreats alone.
“I was waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Although I think I know.
He pushes us through the drapings and lowers me down to sitting on the edge of the bed. “Waiting for you.” The love and lust and excitement in his eyes are setting my body on fire. I need him touching me, not looking at me. I pull him down for a kiss, urging him into the bed so he’ll lay that gorgeous body on top of mine. Now that I’m a dragon, I can take the weight—and the solid press of it sometimes has me nearly coming just from anticipation. But he pulls back. “Turn over,” he says. “I need to be inside you right now.”
I grin and obey, turning onto my belly with my legs hanging off the bed. But he gives me no time to do anything else—I feel a slight scraping along my hips right before my pants just fall way. “What—” My panties go next, and I’m suddenly bare. “Did you just—” Before I can even twist around to look, he’s plunging that enormous cock into me. “Oh, fuck!” I gasp, clawing at the bed, suddenly filled to the brim and unable to think of anything else.
He grunts as he pulls back and thrusts in again. He’s pounding me, hard, with an animal passion I haven’t seen before, and I fucking love it. My sweet, gentle prince—and he is one, if only in his heart—is raging with lust, taking me just as he wants me, in a bed he was saving just for me… I’m wide-mouthed into the comforter, clutching it and panting and bouncing with every thrust.
He groans as the pounding grows stronger. “Fuck… Ember… you’re so damn hot.”
I twist to look back at him, this gorgeous man whose clothes are gone, probably in shreds on the floor, holding my hips with his powerful hands, plunging into me with his cock. The look on his face, as he grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut, is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
