Twin Dragon’s Destiny

by S. E. Smith

  “I have dreamed of this moment for centuries,” he told her in a voice filled with need and something she couldn’t yet identify.

  Delilah relaxed against the bed and looked up at him. Barrack started to bend his head toward her, and she wanted this so badly, but her mind would just not shut up! She had spent the last two hours trying to read, but she just read the same page over and over again without comprehending a single word. Instead, the scenes from her bracelets had played through her mind like a broken record – especially the one where Brogan lay dead and Barrack was captured.

  “I saw you,” she said, and Barrack paused. “Not in a dream, it was the symbiot who showed me. I saw Brogan, too. Why would a mob hurt you like that?” she quietly asked.

  He looked down at her with a questioning expression. She could sense his withdrawal.

  “What do you mean?” he cautiously asked.

  She touched his cheek. “My bracelets – I saw things I didn’t understand. Brogan was dead and you…. Everyone was so afraid…of you. I know it can’t be real. I don’t understand what it meant,” she confessed.

  She was shocked when he suddenly rolled off the bed and stood up. Sitting up, she watched him run his hands through his hair. She didn’t miss the heated look he shot his symbiot. The golden creature snorted and rose to its feet. With a toss of its massive head, it trotted out of the room.

  Sliding off the bed, she walked over to stand next to him. His shoulders were stiff, and he appeared to be arguing with himself. She turned when she heard the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall. Puzzled, she looked toward the doorway and saw Brogan standing there.

  “You two really can talk to each other,” she suddenly realized with a sense of awe. “Earlier I thought it was just like skipping through conversations you’d already had by reading body language, but you can talk to each other, like, telepathically.”

  “Yes,” Barrack replied in a stiff tone.

  “You communicate with the gold things like that as well. They showed me images in my head. I didn’t hear a voice, but I didn’t need to. They talk with pictures,” she murmured, trying to add this new information to the stuff they had already told her. “You didn’t tell me everything.”

  Barrack turned from the window and waved his hand. “We told you enough,” he defended.

  Delilah knew her eyes reflected her feelings of frustration. They’d told her enough? How much was enough?

  “Enough as in not telling me that Brogan died?” she snapped, pointing her finger at Brogan. “How is it that he is alive when I saw him dead? I want to know everything, Barrack! I don’t want to know just ‘enough’. I want to know everything, so I can make an informed decision about the fact that you two seem to think I’m this mythical mate that you have been on a quest to find!”

  “There is nothing mythical about it! You know that we are dragon-shifters and that we are aliens in your world. What does it matter other than we are your mate, and we have come to take you back with us? You will discover everything you need to know once we have claimed you,” Barrack snarled.

  Delilah fell back a step, shocked at Barrack’s passionate response. The cool, calm brother was gone. In his place was a man with fire in his eyes and scales rippling across his skin.

  He stood glaring at her for several seconds before he turned with a muttered curse and strode from the room, brushing off Brogan’s restraining hand as he passed. A few seconds later, she heard the front door open and slam shut. Shocked, she started forward to go after him. The storm was intensifying. He could get lost, or worse, die out there. She stopped when Brogan reached out and touched her arm.

  “What doesn’t he want me to know? Why… Why do I feel like…?” her voice died as she tried to put her feelings into words.

  “Like we are running out of time?” Brogan asked.

  Delilah nodded and looked up at him. “I saw you….” Her eyes moved to his neck and a shudder ran through her.

  “You saw me dead. Barrack would have died shortly thereafter,” Brogan quietly finished for her.

  She nodded. “What happened? How can you be alive?” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

  Brogan looked around the room and his gaze settled on the cup of tea that Barrack had brought up a short time ago. She watched as he picked it up. Reaching out, he tenderly grasped her hand with the other.

  “You are right. You deserve to know everything,” he replied.

  “Do you promise?” she asked, resisting when he started to lead her out of the room.

  He paused before he nodded. “Yes, everything – including our deaths,” he stated.

  Barrack took a deep breath of the frigid air. Blinding snow and howling winds buffeted him despite the fact that he was under a bridge. His dragon impatiently snapped at the snow and shook his head in irritation. He had shifted by the time he reached the bottom of the front steps and took to the air.

  His body had been hard with desire from Delilah’s kiss while his mind was overwhelmed with fear. His symbiot had tried to form around him, but he was still too furious with the creature for showing Delilah more than they were willing to share at this point and he had ordered it away from him. At the moment, it lay across from him, watching him with a combination of defiance and sadness.

  We weren’t ready for her to know, he growled, turning to shoot his symbiot a fierce look.

  His symbiot shimmered in response and sneezed before turning its head away from his sharp, reproving gaze. Barrack wanted to snap at the creature, but even his dragon was ignoring his frustration, siding with his symbiot. If it weren’t so dangerous, he would have shifted and shoved his dragon so deep inside him that his primitive side would need a month to figure out a way out of his subconscious, and then he would have left his symbiot under the bridge to pout.

  She deserve to know. Goddess said she must make choice, his dragon defended, melting a flurry of snowflakes with an impatient ball of dragon fire.

  I know what the Goddess said, Barrack growled in response.

  Barrack was about to make another retort when his symbiot surged to its feet and his dragon stiffened. He could feel the air around them changing. The change was unnatural. Something far more powerful was at work.

  Barrack’s dragon knelt and lowered his head in deference. He understood a fraction of a second later what was going on when the snowy scene in front of him faded, and he found himself staring into the vast, swirling blackness of space. Walking toward him was an ethereal figure of immense power.

  “Aikaterina,” he murmured.

  His dragon trembled when she reached out and ran a gentle hand over his snout. She turned her gaze to his symbiot and silently beckoned it to come to her. Barrack sensed something different about the Goddess as she tenderly stroked his symbiot. She felt – fragile.

  Come forward, warrior, she murmured, speaking directly to him.

  Barrack shifted back into his two-legged form and started to kneel. He felt her hand against his cheek and looked up. Her smile was serene and her eyes compassionate. The last time she had come to them in the form of a Valdier maiden. This time, she kept her ethereal form.

  “We need longer,” he said, his gut twisting at the thought that she had come to take them back. “We have found our mate. She…. Please, we need more time.”

  Aikaterina stepped by him. She looked curiously from under the other side of the bridge before turning to look at him again. His symbiot followed her, pressing against her side.

  “Time…,” she murmured, looking back to the opening from which she had emerged. “A man from this world once said that time keeps us all a prisoner of the present, yet our life transitions from our past to an unknown future. This human sees what many don’t. As for you, Delilah, and Brogan, your lives were preordained long ago.”

  “But you changed that when you stopped us from dying,” Barrack protested, stepping closer to her. “We did not die, so our present now is intertwined with Delilah’s, whose path in life
was also changed.”

  Aikaterina bowed her head in acknowledgment of his passionate words, but she did not agree with him. Fear rose inside him. What if she refused his request? How could he fight someone so powerful? She chuckled and looked at him with an amused expression.

  “I did not come to battle with you, warrior. I came because I sensed your conflict. I merely thought you needed someone. Your brother is normally the one with the hot temper,” she stated.

  Barrack could feel his cheeks heat at her reply. It had never dawned on him that Aikaterina could see his distress and would come to his aid. Dragon’s balls, he’d been upset enough times in the past and she’d never appeared.

  “Your symbiot reached out to me. It worries about you,” she informed him, looking down at his symbiot with an affectionate smile. “Do not forget that I have a connection to them as well.”

  “It showed Delilah what happened to us. We were not ready,” he defended.

  Aikaterina turned to look at him. “There may never be a good time, warrior. She is stronger than you realize. If you have doubts, ask your brother,” she said, amusement shining from her golden eyes.

  Barrack’s lips twitched at the subtle reminder of Brogan’s painful early encounters with Delilah. He released a deep sigh. He had overreacted.

  “Yes. You also underestimate your true mate, warrior. Trust me when I say she is the perfect mate for you and your brother,” Aikaterina encouraged before her gaze ran over the underside of the bridge and back out into the blizzard. “This world is almost as interesting as yours, warrior. Perhaps….”

  Barrack watched as Aikaterina’s expression changed from slightly pensive to serene again. She turned and slowly began to retrace her steps back through the dark portal. He took a step forward, then paused, his throat tight as he called after her.

  “So, we have more time?” he asked.

  “Watch your symbiot, warrior. When it fades, so too will the threads I have altered,” she softly replied as the portal closed behind her.

  “But… how long?” Barrack’s throat tightened at the sadness in her voice.

  He looked at his symbiot. He was shocked to see that it was in fact more transparent than it should be. He’d been so preoccupied that he had failed to notice.

  “How long?” he demanded.

  His soft hiss of dismay was lost in the howl of the wind. Calling forth his dragon, he shifted. He had to inform Brogan. More importantly, he needed to return to Delilah and reveal everything.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Delilah looked up from where she was dropping cookie dough onto the cookie sheet. She scowled when she saw Barrack quietly enter through the back door. The sharp remark on her lips died when she saw his expression, so worried and remorseful.

  A rueful smile curved her lips as she placed the spoon back in the bowl. She grabbed the dishtowel and wiped the dough off her hands.

  “Delilah, there is something we have to tell you,” he began.

  “I know,” she interrupted, placing the dishtowel down on the counter and walking toward him. “Brogan and I had a long talk while you were gone.”

  His eyes turned to the doorway to the kitchen. Brogan leaned against the doorframe and returned his steady gaze. His brother nodded.

  “I told her everything,” Brogan said, emphasizing the last word.

  Barrack nodded. “I apologize,” he said, his voice filled with regret. “Sara warned us that you should be told. We should have listened to her.”

  Delilah could tell that Barrack’s apology was for both herself and Brogan. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his waist. She’d had a lot to think about after her conversation with Brogan. She didn’t know why she had been so shocked. Perhaps it was because she’d realized that her dreams about her death had been more than dreams, they had been memories of a previous life. Learning more about Sara and Jaguin had also helped her accept that the universe was a lot stranger than she’d ever imagined. She wasn’t sure how all of this was possible, or if she was reliving some previous life over and over, like in a loop.

  Well, not exactly previous, she thought. More like parallel or alternate.

  “There are a few things that I should have mentioned to you two as well,” she confessed, looking up at him.

  “What things?” Barrack asked.

  Brogan chuckled. “She had dreams of us before we arrived,” he stated.

  Delilah turned and glared at Brogan. He had given her a little bit of a hard time about that particular piece of information. Her excuse had been the fact that she’d known nothing about aliens or Goddesses being real until she’d actually met them.

  “It has only been a couple of days,” she reminded him. “I have the right to wrap my head around the fact that you are real before admitting I had hot, sexy dreams about you two.”

  “Hot, sexy dreams?” both men exclaimed at the same time.

  She’d known she had made a blunder the second the words had slipped from her lips. A furious blush rose up in her cheeks. A soft purr rumbled from Barrack’s chest while Brogan straightened, the fire back in his eyes.

  “How hot?” Barrack asked.

  Brogan grinned. “How sexy?” he demanded.

  Delilah swallowed. Brogan was closing the distance between her and Barrack. She could feel her body heat flaring up again. She swore it was like someone was dialing up a horny-switch inside her.

  “Hot enough to melt snow and sexy enough to wet the sheets,” she retorted.

  Brogan reached out and ran his hands down along her hips before he pulled her against him. Her breath caught at the feel of his engorged cock. He had been pretty damn impressive in her dreams. Something told her that she needn’t worry about being disappointed in real life.

  “My cookies,” she started to protest before she felt Barrack’s hands sliding up to cup her breasts.

  “After we wet the sheets,” Brogan chuckled, pressing a hot kiss to her neck.

  Delilah groaned, wrapping her arms around Barrack’s neck when he lifted her into his arms. She buried her face against his neck. She might be crazy, but who the hell cared!

  “I can’t wait to see if this is going to be as good as my dreams have been,” she mumbled against his neck.

  Both men chuckled. “We will make sure it is even better,” Brogan promised.

  Bite, bite, bite, bite, bite….

  Barrack gritted his teeth. He wanted to tell his dragon to shut up, but the damn thing wasn’t having any of it. He’d never had so much trouble in his life controlling the beast!

  Do not release…. Goddess! You are going to kill us all! he growled when he felt the first release of dragon fire in his blood.

  “Barrack, you’ve got… How can they be so soft?” Delilah murmured, her fingertips caressing the scales running along his neck as he climbed the stairs with her in his arms.

  “Delilah, my little fighter, I am close to losing control,” Barrack admitted.

  She tilted her head and looked at him with eyes filled with curiosity and desire. Her fingers paused before she began to stroke him again. He clenched his jaw when he felt his teeth starting to elongate.

  “Are you losing control in a good way?” she asked, nipping at Barrack’s neck before running her tongue over his skin. “Or a bad one?” she drawled suggestively.

  Brogan chuckled over his shoulder at them. “In a very hot way, little book-reader. My brother wants you, but so does his dragon,” he teased as his flaming eyes met his brother’s strained ones.

  Barrack was shocked that Brogan was suddenly the more composed one out of the two of them. He’d honestly believed that when this time came, he would be the one helping his brother keep from losing control, not the other way around. A harsh groan escaped him when Delilah leaned forward and ran the tip of her tongue along his neck. His dragon released a powerful wave of Dragon Fire.

  “I don’t see that happening,” she laughed, her warm breath warming his already heated flesh even more.

&
nbsp; She see, his dragon replied with confidence. I bite. Mate come. I claim. We no die.

  No, no, no. Not until I tell you, Barrack growled, before he released a startled curse when Delilah tugged on his hair.

  Delilah released his hair. “You can let me know if you don’t want to do this,” she replied, lifting her chin.

  He could see the hurt in her eyes. Shaking his head, he slowed to a stop outside of her bedroom. Brogan turned and waited for them.

  “Look inside me,” he quietly requested.

  Her eyes clouded with confusion. “How do I do that?” she asked.

  “Close your eyes, Delilah. Our symbiots will show you,” Brogan gently instructed.

  Barrack watched as her eyelids fluttered before her lashes lowered to rest against her cheeks. Her lips parted on a startled gasp. He focused, conveying his feelings through the symbiot around her wrist and neck.

  “Oh my! Oh! I… Oh, boy… Geez! Really?” Delilah exclaimed, her voice changing from shock, to more shock, to disbelief, back to shock again.

  Her eyes popped open and she stared at him with her mouth partially agape. Her expression of doubt pulled a wry grin to his lips, but as he watched, wonder infused her countenance.

  “Are you saying that I can…? That if we…? I’ll be able to turn into a dragon?” she asked, her voice filled with awe and her heart skipping a beat at the thought.

  “Yes,” he quietly answered.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “How cool would that be?” she breathed.

  After months of dreaming about the two men, it was hard for her to wrap her head around the fact that the dreams were coming true. She didn’t know if she was reliving another life or if some Goddess out in the great cosmos had been sending her a video message. The moment they touched her, she honestly didn’t care. This was real and she wasn’t about to tuck her tail between her legs and become a fainting damsel in distress. She also wasn’t a scared virgin. A few boyfriends during college and a healthy appetite for experiencing life had taken care of that little membrane.