“The truth is I’m kind of done with the one-night-stands.” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m ready to settle down, I think. With someone I respect.”
Dyana crinkled her face skeptically. “Is this hypothetical someone you respect meant to be me then?”
But Brandon didn’t laugh. “Remember when you used to call me Brandy?” he asked, his eyes full of hope. “Back when we were in the top ten on the #shippingwatch?”
Yes, she remembered. She also remembered how she’d called Max, Maxie. That was a cute thing she used to do to indicate to the biofans that this was a #boyilike.
But she’d grown up now. “See you at the next thing, Brandon,” she answered. And she didn’t give him a chance to answer before scurrying away.
Stupid, stupid, stupid… she lambasted herself all the way home in the driverless cab. Max had been gone for months and months, hadn’t he? And Brandon would have been the perfect ego boost. Why was she going home to cry over a scrapbook with a glass of wine, when she could be getting over Max by getting under Brandon?
But maybe tonight would be different, she thought as the cab pulled to a stop in front of her building.
Maybe tonight when she walked into the condominium her parents bought her as a graduation gift, she wouldn’t be overwhelmed with sadness that Max and she had never gotten to share it.
Maybe tonight she would open her trash bin and chuck that scrapbook right on in.
Maybe tonight she would fall asleep and she wouldn’t dream of the time when she called the piece of scum who had left her in Ibiza, Maxie.
Maybe tomorrow when she woke up, she’d stop wondering why he left her access to his locations services on so that she could see he was flitting all over—Greece, Frankfurt, and now apparently North Dakota.
Yet he’d refused to answer any of the biomessages she’d left for him, even the ones where she’d broken down crying.
As it turned out, all those maybes came true.
But not because of any willpower on Dyana’s part.
When she stepped out of the cab, she saw a man leaning into the column closest to her building’s front doors. At first, she assumed he was a doorman of some sort. Or maybe an actor. He was wearing an old-fashioned uniform as if he was auditioning for a part on the reboot of Downton Abbey. And his hair was perfectly trimmed.
But unlike all the #verifiedactors living in her building, who looked down their noses at reality series kids like Dyana, this man stood up straight as soon as he spotted her coming his way. Also, he looked familiar. Almost like…
She blinked, unable to believe what she was seeing, who she was seeing…
Not until Max said, “Dyana, it’s me.”
She blinked again, then tears filled her eyes. “Maxie?” she asked, forgetting in an instant she swore to never call him that again.
“Yes,” he answered. Then he opened his arms.
She’d been so angry… so sad…but in the end, it wasn’t even a decision. She rushed into his arms, so happy, so very relieved to see him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for disappearing like that,” he whispered into her neck. “But I’m back now. I’m back. And I’ll never leave you again.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
OLA
I wake up to once again find myself chained to the bed. No shocked face emoji there. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the supervillain who kidnapped me after last night’s escape attempt.
But a smell way more horrific than silver greets me along with that unsurprising discovery. It’s a mix of wolf pheromones and fire that I’ve only smelled on three other people in my life. And those people were my sister’s half-dragon children.
Pregnant….
I’m pregnant.
With the dragon king’s baby.
Memories of our last heat session flash through my mind. Dark and heavy and somehow still extremely hot. The hate when he held me in his arms…along with the unbelievable comfort. I’d felt safe. So safe and protected in my abductor’s arms.
A sickening guilt washes over my human, but my wolf whimpers. Missing him. Actually missing him.
I rub my nose with my good hand, low-key despising myself.
Usually, I’m a huge fan of being a werewolf, but at the end of the day, our wolves aren’t anything but dumb animals. Really fucking dumb animals.
And mine doesn’t care that he kidnapped and humiliated us. All she knows is that she’s his mate. She’s delighted to be pregnant with a pup of our own. And he’s not here.
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. It doesn’t matter. My heat is done, and I’ll die before I ever have sex with him again…
I trail off at the end of that mental vow, not because I don’t mean it, but because of the object I spot on the nightstand.
The key. The old turnkey to the shackles is lying there, like “Hey, what’s up. Here’s your freedom, just chillin’.”
I take a big breath before picking the key up. Please don’t be made of silver too.
And for once my prayers are answered. The key is cool to the touch, no burn whatsoever. I pick it up…. carefully stick it into the cuffs latch, turn it…and just like that I’m out.
I stare at my free wrist, turning it all around.
That was too easy. This has got to be a trick. A trap of some sort.
But either way, it’s back to Plan A. Which is figuring out how to get me, and now my newly formed baby, out of here.
I quietly go over to the closet and put a nightgown on, then try the door.
It immediately goes red, like, Nah, bitch. Not this time.
I silently curse. I knew getting out of the cuff was too easy, and of course, he’s not going to leave the door open again after I almost escaped the last time.
Okay, new plan, I decide, once again reaching for the door. This time instead of drilling with the closet rod, I’ll wait like a ninja beside the door and when he enters, I’ll jump him and take him out.
The sound of a car brings my head up before I can pull the rod down again though. And not just any car either. An old one from the 20th century with an engine that growls instead of quietly whirring like most modern driverless cars do. There’s an old mixtape of 90s-era West and East coast rap stuck in the otherwise still working tape deck. The third track from that album, LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” is blasting at top volume out of the open driver’s window. And that window is open, not because the driver wants it to be, but because he still hasn’t found a mechanic in North Dakota who can fix it.
My stomach drops. I know that car. Know exactly who’s driving it. Even before I run over to the window.
And my heart soars when I see Uncle Clyde’s Ice Cream Cadillac pull up below the window.
“Uncle Clyde!” I scream, banging on the floor-to-ceiling window.
He looks up, and his eyes bug when he sees me standing there in my gothic nightgown. “Ola?”
I recognize my name on his lips, even if the word itself doesn’t carry as far as a bassed-up LL Cool J jam.
“Yes, Uncle Clyde it’s me!” I scream back.
Like, I said, I’m not a crying bitch, but I’m real close to crying.
I can’t believe he found me!
However, my heart sinks when I see the only reinforcement he brought along was Problem Solver. Problem Solver was what he calls the vintage sawed-off Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge shotgun strapped to his side. He named it that after finding out that my dad FJ had named his dragon slaying sword, The Death Maker. And just like my Dad, he takes his main weapon boo with him everywhere.
But Problem Solver is not enough. Not enough for an enemy like Damianos.
“Uncle Clyde, you’ve got to get back in the car. Run! Get reinforcements.” I frantically point at the car.
But he just shakes his head at me, clearly not understanding.
“Uncle Clyde. You must run! You must get more people!” I yell at the top of my lungs, wildly gesticulating. I’m ready to do a full-on pantom
ime show if that’s what it takes—
But I stop when his gaze suddenly shifts away from me. And my heart goes into to total freefall. Even without a good sightline, I know exactly who he’s looking at.
Oh no…oh no….
“Run!” I scream at Uncle Clyde, hitting the window harder than I ever hit anything before. “Run! Run! Run!”
But Uncle Clyde doesn’t run.
To my abject horror, he smiles broadly and meets Damianos halfway to offer him a hearty dap.
And I realize then that my initial assumption wasn’t true. Uncle Clyde didn’t find me. He was brought here.
By Damianos.
The memory of Kirk slashing his own throat flashes through my mind…along with Damianos promise to punish me last night. “No! No! Please, no!”
Close, but too far away, I pound on the glass and scream my throat raw, begging Uncle Clyde to snap out of it and run while he still can.
However, I stop shouting and banging on the glass when instead of sticking the business end of the Mossberg in his own mouth, Uncle Clyde bumps knuckles with Damianos, gets in his car and drives away. Just drives away.
I watch his car disappear down the road, my mouth open, the sides of my fist still pressed against the cool glass.
What the hell?
As if to answer my question, the door slides open behind me.
I turn to find Damianos and he looks…different. Really, really different.
First of all, his eyes are glowing. They look like two amber stones, lit up from the inside. Second of all his tongue is forked. I know because, the first thing he does is whip it out, before quickly retracting it back in.
Like a frog.
No…no…like a snake, I amend. Fensa explained that dragons smelled with their tongues just like snakes do, after I asked what was up with her son Eos, occasionally licking the air.
He was smelling. Me, if the direction and intensity of his gaze was any indication.
I stare at him, and he stares at me, his nostrils flaring.
Then without any warning, he crosses the room, sweeps me up in his arms, and shoves that forked tongue into my mouth!
Chapter Twenty-Three
He kisses me. He kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before. Especially by my last boyfriend. Akwasi had been a “Hey, baby!” and an affectionate press of the lips. No tongue. No pressure.
Damianos is a fire. Burning me up.
All tongue. All pressure.
It’s not a choice to kiss him back. It’s a simple submission to physics. Fire eats matter. There’s nothing a bundle of sticks can do when it’s being consumed by flame.
We kiss, and my wolf sighs, finally back where she wants to be.
But then my human remembers… the kidnapping… the heat session… the baby…. Uncle Clyde!
I push at him, and it does absolutely nothing. Honestly, it feels like I’m pushing against a stone wall.
There’s nothing I can do to break free of this kiss. But to my shock, I don’t have to do anything else.
He immediately draws back, his glowing amber eyes staring down into mine, as his hands come to rest just beneath my shoulders. “Please accept my deepest apologies, Reverence. I was so excited to behold you again that I did not think before seizing you in my arms. I hope I did not offend you with my kiss. Or hurt you.”
I start to open my mouth to tell him off for his weirdly passionate, mind-melting kiss. But then I stop when his words fully sink in. “Wait…did you just apologize? And say please?”
His expression softens and he smiles down at me. “Yes, I said and meant all of those things, including being excited to behold you.”
I try to talk, but nothing comes out. I’m so shocked to hear those words from the mouth of Damianos Drakkon, the most arrogant and cruel prick I’ve ever met.
For a good few seconds, I’m at a total loss for words, but then I remember…. Clyde!
“Let me go!” I say, pulling all the way out of his arms. “I saw you with my uncle. Did you hypnotize him? Are you going to make him do something horrible too? Because if you do, I swear I’ll never fucking forgive—”
“Yes, I god spoke Clyde,” Damianos answers before I can finish. “I planned to have him kill himself in front of you. The thought was to show you the extent of my power over those you value so that you wouldn’t try to escape again. But as you can see, I changed my mind. I did not hurt your uncle. I simply sent him away with a command to forget that he had seen you in this place.”
He says this casually. Like we’re talking about the weather.
Relief blossoms through me even though I hardly understand. “Wait, what?” I ask, taking a huge step back. “I don’t get it. You were going to kill him, but then you decided not to? Why?”
He dips and turns his head so that I can no longer see his glowing eyes.
“I realize now that would be cruel. Too cruel.”
I jut my chin, barely able to believe what I’m hearing. “So you’re trying to say that after kidnapping me, chaining me to a bed, killing our kingdom’s gatekeeper, and threatening to grisly murder every other member of my immediate family that you just magically learned the concept of ‘too cruel’ overnight?”
An excited smile erupts across his face. “Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Thank you for providing such a concise and clever summation.”
I stare at him for a few hard beats, then I demand, “Okay, what the hell kind of game are you trying to run on me?”
“No game, Reverence. I only wish to revere you as I should have from the start.” His head comes back up, and the look on his face punches me in the heart. Tortured and filled with regret. “That is my sole wish.”
Okay…I’m not sure what to do here. So much fucked up shit has happened over the last—dude, I can’t even tell you how many days it’s been, that’s how fucked up this shit is. But I can feel his sincerity and regret now. The emotions wash over me like they’re my own.
A new realization suddenly blazes across my mind. His emotions…I can feel them now. And on top of that, his words…they’re not coming from his mouth, they’re coming from his mind straight into mine.
Our mate bond. It must be working even though we’re from different species. And that means…
“You’re inside my head!”
“Yes,” he answers, without moving his mouth.
“Get out of my head!”
He dips his head again, then says, “Of coursssse, Reverencccce. But I do not think you will like the ssssound of my voicccce without the tongue cap.”
Okay…well…he’s right about that. This is weird. Like talking to a lizard.
The head communication was better. But… “I don’t want you in my head. Where’s your tongue cap? And whatever you were wearing to cover up your eyes?”
“I am not ssssure. I threw them away and they were never recovered.”
“Why did you throw them away?”
“Becausssse…” he gives me another pained look, and another wave of sadness washes over our mate bond. “I wisssshed to look upon you with my own drakkon eyessss. To tasssste you with my own drakkon tongue.”
A shiver runs through my body because again I can feel his sincerity, even though I know this is bullshit he’s spouting. It has to be.
“Did you…” My stomach turns at just the thought of it, but I have to ask, “Did you hypnotize me, too?”
“No, I cannot god speak you, Reverencccce. That hassss been a problem from the ssssstart. It issss a weaknessss where you were conccccerned. One I did not want you to know about.”
“But you’re telling me now.”
“Yessss.”
My heart thumps fiercely. “Why?”
He gives me another sad look. “Becausssse you are the mother of my hatchling, and I wissssh to give you the Reverencccce you are due. Assss I ssssaid before that is my only wissssh. My only wissssh in thissss life.”
He takes me by the hand. “Come, Reverencccce. I will draw y
ou a bath and tend to you assss you deserve.”
A bath. That sounds so beyond great. Like the #relationshipgoals I had before I found out my thing with Akwasi was a complete sham. But no wait, I’ve got to remember who I’m dealing with.
I tug back on his hand. “Is this some kind of set up? Some new and even crueler way to hurt me? And my family?”
He looks back at me, his eyes intense in a way that goes way beyond their glow. “I will never hurt you. Or anyone in your family. That wassss my plan, but it issss not anymore.”
The promise, so sincere and unexpected stops my heart. Then lifts it with hope. But I keep my expression cynical as I demand, “You expect me to believe you?”
Another wave of emotion washes over our mate bond. Intense and unfathomably sad. “I exxxxpect nothing of you. I am aware I will have to work for everything I recccceive from you. In the meanwhile, my only wissssh issss to revere you in the time we have left.”
Maybe it’s the weird sad feeling coming off of him. Maybe it’s because I’m so confused. Maybe he’s a lying-ass bitch and he really did use our mate bond to hypnotize me.
Probably number three.
I mean why else would I give in with a simple, “Okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
CHLOE
Chloe woke up and immediately reached for Fenris, but his side of the bed was empty.
At first, she panicked. Had he left her too?
But then she remembered…Fenris departed yesterday for the westward-bound part of his annual hunting trip. He did this at the start of every winter. Went off for a day or two in each direction, catching as much meat as he could on each trip. And when he passed back by the house to go in the next direction, he’d leave everything he’d caught so far for her to preserve and salt.
She imagined her mate had camped overnight and got up early to hunt some more this morning. Last year when he went west, he’d brought home a stash so large it had taken her most of the day and half the night to pickle, salt, and jerk it all.
Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet Book 1): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 1 Page 14
