by Riley Storm
She snatched up her jacket and staff from where they’d fallen next to the bed and stormed toward the door.
“How are you going to leave?” Galen asked. “The vampires are still out there.”
“I’m going to go over one of the other walls as fast as I can. I’ll run to the edge of the wards and open a portal immediately. It will be too fast for them to react,” she said savagely. “Or I’ll blast a path through them and be gone that way. I don’t really care, but I need to go. Now. Away from you. Away from this place,” she ranted.
“Kyla, please, just…just let me explain,” Galen pleaded, his face bearing a haunted look so unlike anything else she’d seen before that it actually caused her to pause in her steps.
“Why?” she asked. “Why the hell should I give you anything, let alone a chance to try and convince me why what we just did wasn’t wrong? You are pathetic, and a scumbag. I should never have tried helping you. You and the vampires deserve each other,” she snapped, hurling the last insult at him.
“You don’t understand,” Galen said, taking a step toward her. “Kyla, please.”
“Don’t talk to me,” she said. “I understand plenty. It’s you who doesn’t understand. You’re the one who should feel horrible. Who should ask for forgiveness.”
“I have been,” he said. “Believe me, I have been.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, looking around. “There’s nobody else here. Go ask your mate, Galen. She’s the one you need to ask.”
With that, Kyla turned and stomped toward the door. A blast of magic pulled it open so she could storm through it without pausing.
Just as quickly, a furious blast of wind slammed it back shut and held it there. Kyla turned to see Galen staring at her, looking sick to his stomach.
“She is the one I’ve been asking,” he said weakly. “Ever since we finished.”
Kyla frowned. “What are you talking about, Galen? She’s your mate. Go ask her in person.”
The dragon shifter shook his head solemnly. “No, Kyla. You’re wrong.”
“I am?”
“She was my mate,” Galen finished, in the ghost of a whisper.
Chapter 19
He watched Kyla’s face, tracking her thoughts as she interpreted his last words, and what they had to mean to a dragon.
Seeing her like that, after what they’d done, after everything, had left Galen more distraught than he’d been since…since she died.
“She was your mate?” Kyla asked.
Even despite knowing the question was coming, it didn’t do anything to urge the pain that entered his heart as memories beyond counting came to life in his mind. Memories of good times. Memories of bad, and worst of all, memories of the end.
“Yes,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“I…I’m sorry,” Kyla stammered, obviously not understanding. “But why…I don’t understand.”
Galen’s lips twitched upward, but it wasn’t a smile. There was no joy in it.
“And why would you?” he said, asking the question rhetorically. “There’s no reason you should.”
He looked at the mage, his concentration on the door fading away, leaving it open for her to leave if she wanted.
But she stayed. Whether by curiosity at his words, or anger not quite satiated, Kyla noted the freedom, but she didn’t move, her attention fixed firmly on him, those gray eyes that just minutes ago had been so open and available to him, now hidden behind an impenetrable wall.
Galen didn’t think he was wrong about there being something between them. Yet he still wasn’t sure what, and he doubted Kyla would be willing to hang around just to test it out. After all, it shouldn’t be possible for him to find someone again. That didn’t happen to dragons.
Yet he hadn’t felt this way in a long, long time.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “I should not have let this happen. If my willpower was greater, than we wouldn’t be in such a spot. So it’s my fault.”
Kyla frowned. “Galen, I’m not going to pretend that this hasn’t caught me by surprise, or that I’m confused beyond belief about, well, everything going on in my life since I arrived here, but you did not force yourself upon me. I was a willing participant. I just didn’t realize that…” she shrugged.
“Perhaps.” He sat down heavily, burying his head in his hands as emotions threatened to well up again.
Calm. Collected. Controlled.
He needed to control himself. To rein in those thoughts and feelings, and conduct himself as he had for so many years. To act the way a Dragon King should act. Whatever that was supposed to be, he knew this wasn’t it.
“Why are you so upset?” Kyla asked softly. “I mean no disrespect, I hope you understand that. But if she is…if she has passed, then why is what we did hurting you so badly?”
Galen bit his lip. He wanted to tell her, to explain that she was making him feel a certain way, that it had snuck up on him and worked its way through his defenses without Galen even realizing it. That he hadn’t had sex in a very long time.
“I gave into something tonight,” he said softly, looking up with as much calm and control as he could muster. “Something I have avoided for longer than I care to admit. I haven’t let myself indulge, because that would not be right.”
Kyla frowned. “I don’t understand. Why is it not right? There’s nothing wrong about two consenting adults doing what we’re doing. What we did,” she corrected.
Yes. Past tense. Because whatever we had going on, I’ve ruined it with all this. As it should be. I do not deserve this. My focus needs to be on my people, not myself!
“I’ve betrayed her memory, Kyla, can’t you understand that?” he said, getting up, feeling his confidence return. He was right to feel awful for what he’d done. To admit that he’d enjoyed it.
“No,” she said softly. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Dragons only mate once. Once. For life. Everyone knows that,” he explained. “Yet here I am feeling…doing…things. Things that I have spent centuries preventing myself from doing, to ensure that her memory was honored. Respected.”
Kyla’s eyebrows shot up. “You haven’t had sex in centuries?” she gasped, stunned at his admission.
“No,” he said, not appreciating her disbelief and inability to believe he would do something like that. “It wasn’t right.”
“Galen. Did you never ask yourself what she might want for you? What she might wish you would do with your life, since she’s unable to be in it? Wouldn’t she want you to be happy?”
Galen snorted. “I doubt she would be happy that the first time I lay with somebody after her death, was with someone like you.”
Even as the words came out, he started to backtrack. “Wait. Wait!” he said, holding up a hand as Kyla’s eyes blazed with fury.
“You had better have a very good explanation for those words,” she hissed. “And you’d better give it now.”
“Old prejudices,” he said quietly. “My feelings toward mages have been altered by more than just the war as a whole.”
Kyla’s glared only intensified. “That’s not an explanation.”
“Don’t you get it?” he growled. “You were the worst possible choice for me to sleep with.”
“That’s not doing any better,” Kyla pointed out, her eyes practically glowing silver with fury. “Are you saying that it was bad?”
“No!” he shouted, struggling with the words. He sucked at this. “I enjoyed it. It was good. Really good. But that’s the problem. I enjoyed sex. With a mage.”
Kyla’s anger faded into confusion. “So? I’m still a woman, Galen.”
“You don’t understand,” he said softly.
“So make me!” Kyla cried in frustration. “Stop dancing around the point and just tell me. Talk to me. Make me understand! Quit the tiptoeing around!”
“She was killed by a mage!” he snapped, getting to his feet, anger filling him as he remembered the war,
the surprise attack. Attempting to flee, his mate in his arms.
The bolt of blue magic that he’d not seen coming. Galen had tried to turn, to take the impact. To sacrifice himself for his mate so that she might live. But he’d been too slow. He’d watched with horror as she died, right there, in his arms.
Now he’d betrayed her memory by sleeping with a mage, who made him feel the exact same way his mate had, centuries later. It was all too much. Too much to handle, to take in.
He stormed out of the room, angry at himself, at his weakness, but also for the way he was treating Kyla. She didn’t deserve any of this, because she hadn’t done anything wrong.
But most of all, as he pushed past the mage and out into the Keep, Galen felt another emotion. Stronger than all the others, and weighing heavily on his shoulders.
What he felt most was shame.
Chapter 20
Kyla stood stock still. The seconds ticked by, and nearly a minute passed before she turned to look out the door into the Keep’s hallways.
“What the fuck just happened?” she asked the room, leaning back, letting her shoulders and then head thud against the wall as she stared up at the high ceilings, confused and yet understanding all at the same time.
You need to leave.
It was that time now, she had no doubt. There was no point in staying. Galen didn’t want her there, not when she would remind him of his long dead mate.
“Centuries,” she whispered. How the hell could someone go that long without sex? It boggled the mind, the willpower needed to endure a celibacy lasting that long.
Grief will do a lot to mess with a person’s head though. Don’t forget that. Still. Centuries?
She shuddered at the thought of what Galen must have put himself through to stay pure and honor his mate.
Kyla wondered if she could do the same for such a long period of time. It seemed…foreign to her.
And yet. Yet if she truly loved someone in a way that she’d not experienced yet, maybe that would seem like the way to go? Knowing that no one else would ever make her feel the way that person had, why would she want to put herself out there? Knowing it would only ever be disappointing.
Galen had said he’d enjoyed the sex, but that was understandable. Physical desires were often unrelated to mental, even more so in men. It was possible that he had enjoyed sleeping with her body, but didn’t care about her mind.
Yes, of course, that’s what it is. If dragons only ever mate once, than I’m not, I cannot be, anything more than a body to him.
Gathering herself, Kyla moved out of Galen’s room. She would never be coming back here, not just his room, but the Keep as a whole. It wasn’t a place for her, that much was clear to her now.
She was starting to learn the layout now, and after a few wrong turns, ended up in the large hallway that she knew would lead her out of the Keep.
“Kyla.”
The feminine voice preceded a rapid set of footsteps as someone came out of another side hallway and chased her down.
Chased might have been a bit inaccurate, Kyla realized as she turned, noting the swollen belly of the woman coming after her in hot pursuit.
“Can I help you?” she asked politely.
Despite having spent several days in the Keep, her time had mostly been confined to dealing with the dragons, and though she’d seen the woman in passing, Kyla had no idea of her name or who she was, besides the mate of one of the dragons.
“I just passed Galen in the hallway,” the woman said, pushing her long silvery-white hair back over her shoulder. “He didn’t even acknowledge me. Looked horrible. Is everything okay?”
Kyla’s eyes automatically glanced down the passageway that the woman had come from.
“It’s…complicated,” she said with a tight smile.
“It can get like that sometimes,” the woman said with a knowing chuckle.
“Pardon?” Kyla shook her head, not following along. Who was this?
As if sensing her curiosity, the woman stuck out her hand. “I’m Cheryl. Victor’s mate.”
“Oh. Right. That explains…” Kyla gestured at the very obvious pregnant belly.
“Yeah,” Cheryl said, smiling wide. “Stuck in here, there wasn’t much else to do. Things happen.” She laughed, as if Kyla was supposed to understand it all.
“So, what can I do for you, Cheryl?” she asked, wanting to be on her way back home. Back to where she belonged.
Cheryl’s eyebrows knitted together over her eyes as she looked at Kyla. “You already knew about Galen being in a bad mood, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Like I said. It’s…complicated.”
“Do you not want to go to him? To help him out? If the others see him like this…” Cheryl shifted uncomfortably.
“Galen isn’t my responsibility,” Kyla said. “Why would I go help him? He’s the one who’s doing this all to himself anyway.”
“Well, because you’re…” Cheryl trailed off. “Oh. Oh I thought…”
Kyla laughed in sudden understanding. “That we were mates? Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. But no. No we’re not. Galen made that very clear just now.” Her smile grew grim. “I should be going though.”
“You’re not?” Cheryl said, looking down at the ground, lost in thought. “Are you sure?”
“It’s not my place to explain,” Kyla said cautiously.
Despite everything that had just occurred between her and Galen, she wasn’t about to talk about his private life. If Cheryl thought that the two of them were mates, then it seemed logical she wasn’t aware of Galen’s previous mate. That wasn’t something she was going to divulge. It wasn’t her place.
“Are you sure you want to go?” Cheryl asked, trying in vain.
“Yes,” Kyla said. “I should never have…have let myself be involved, with him. With a shifter. The animosity between us, between our kinds. It’s still very prevalent. Lots of people would be furious at me if they knew what had happened tonight. Or that I tried to help you out yesterday. I’ve done enough rule-breaking. It’s time for me to go. To let Galen be in peace with himself.”
Maybe that way, he’ll get his mind sorted out straight.
Just admitting to Cheryl the possible repercussions that she would face if word got out about her liaison with the dragon king made Kyla nervous about the idea of going home. She didn’t want to face the Archmage and have to lie to him.
“I should never have come here,” she said suddenly, hurriedly moving past Cheryl and heading down the hallway. “Goodbye.”
She heard Cheryl call out her name, one last-ditch attempt to convince her to stay, but Kyla had made up her mind, and she wasn’t about to be swayed.
Galen had created the problem with himself. Galen could fix it.
She was going home.
Chapter 21
The door opened easily under her push and Kyla stepped out into the evening air. Her skin prickled and tightened as she left the relative warmth of the keep.
“Ahhh,” she sighed, taking a deep breath of the unexpected cooler air outside.
The milder temperature washed over her like a cleansing breath. She stood straighter, felt more awake, at last feeling secure in her decision to leave the Keep, and Galen, behind. The things that had happened, the events she’d experienced. They were better left in her past. Perhaps even forgotten about entirely. A momentary weakness to which she’d succumbed, nothing more.
So why are you still standing here with the door held open in one hand, reluctant to take another step forward then? If things were that easy, shouldn’t you be on your way to the south wall, and beyond that, home?
Turning slowly on the balls of her feet, Kyla found herself looking back into the Keep. Her eyes ran over the tapestries that lined the main hallway, and the various statues and other artifacts that sat on the tables and shelves beneath.
Overhead, the arched ceiling rose high into the air, easily twenty feet or more above her head. It truly was one of the more impr
essive places she’d visited in her time as a mage. It was hard to put into words just what spoke to her the most. Perhaps it was the old world feel, that subtle shift that, upon entering Drakon Keep she was somehow transported back to a different era.
The dragons were certainly modern enough, but there was something older about them, something more mature, sophisticated even. Kyla liked that, and it had made her time among them easier than she would have ever believed possible until she’d actually experienced it.
It’s at an end, though. It’s time for you to go home. To where you belong.
Her fingers slipped free of the door, and she watched it swing closed. For some reason, Kyla needed to see this happen. The door signified a milestone, the closing chapter of her adventure to Drakon Keep. Once it shut, it was closed forever.
A sudden racing of her heart distracted her for a moment.
You’re not seriously hoping that he’s going to come bursting through the door at the last minute, are you?
She snorted to herself as the door closed with a dull thud. Of course not. That wasn’t Galen’s style at all.
“Going somewhere?”
Kyla yelped and spun around, staff lurching up protectively.
“Whoa! Hey, hey, whoa, hold on there!” a figure at the bottom of the steps cried out, shielding themselves with their arms.
“Francis?” she cried, relaxing almost immediately at the sight of the Keep’s steward. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Recovering from a heart attack I think,” he muttered, slowly composing himself.
“No I mean, out here,” she said, feeling guilty for scaring the poor man.
“Working. You don’t think the dragons actually do any of the work themselves, do you?” he asked. “It’s a lot of working, fixing the lawns every time one of them lands and digs those big ugly talons of theirs into it. Don’t get me started about the damage they cause from fighting one another either.”
