by Riley Storm
“Me too,” he managed to get out. “I didn’t realize just how badly…”
“I know,” she said, stroking his head. “I know. But it’s okay now. We’re safe. You have me. I’m here.”
He smiled and kissed her gently, but in his head, he couldn’t stop wondering what this all meant.
Victor had never experienced anything like this before. The need he felt for Cheryl, on more than just the physical level, was intense beyond his understanding.
What does it mean? And more importantly, what do I do about it?
He just wasn’t sure.
32
“I’ll be back soon,” he said, bending over Cheryl to kiss her on the forehead.
“You’re going to talk to Aaric, aren’t you?” she asked, stirring under the covers, the motion pulling them down over her breasts.
Something stirred in his loins but he dismissed it. The time for that had passed. He had more than indulged his own needs.
Right now, there were other people counting on him. People without the strength of his dragon. Victor wasn’t going to let them suffer any longer under the control of the vampire. Not while he could do something about it when they could not.
And not when it’s my fault they’re there in the first place.
His soul was eased, his mind refocused, and he had Cheryl to thank for that on multiple fronts. She seemed to know how to best soothe him, and he found himself forever grateful for the series of events that had brought her into his life.
“Yes,” he said. “We need to act. The Thralls have suffered for long enough.”
“I understand,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers and giving it a tight squeeze. “I’m proud of you.”
He smiled, knowing it was lopsided and crooked, but not caring about it. Cheryl was just that good for him, she made him want to be free and easy.
Finish this first. Then you can enjoy her and see what’s there. But not before.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” he promised, slipping his hand free and stealing from the room while Cheryl yawned and rolled over to go back to sleep.
There was little he wanted to do more than join her, but sometimes duty took precedence. This was one of those times.
Padding through the hallways, he came to Aaric’s door. To his surprise, the other dragon was up and answered shortly after the first knock.
“You can’t sleep either?” was all the greeting Victor got, the door left open.
He entered the room to the smell of coffee. Two mugs sat on the little table in front of the huge sectional Aaric had against one wall.
“Got one for you too,” the fire dragon said, snagging his own half-empty.
“We have to do something,” Victor said without preamble. “We can’t sit around here all safe while the humans suffer.”
Looking up at him, Aaric regarded Victor slowly. “I thought you didn’t care about Plymouth Falls or its people.”
“I didn’t. But I’ve had my eyes opened recently, if you hadn’t noticed,” he drawled, a mixture of sarcasm and irritation that Aaric couldn’t have just let it rest and accept what Victor was saying.
“Just checking, little brother.”
“I’m the same size as you. Just ‘cause you’re half a century older, that doesn’t make you bigger,” Victor muttered, then took a sip of the coffee, feeling the hot liquid burn its way down his throat.
Come on, caffeine, do your magic. Show me a way to solve this that isn’t a straight-up assault on the Thralls designed to draw our vampire buddy out.
“This guy is stronger than the one I fought,” Aaric said quietly. “Judging by how quickly he enthralled all those workers. More than I fought the first time around.” He shook his head. “That’s why I didn’t have any work being done there. I feared this would happen again.”
“I know. I fucked up. Can we move past that?” Victor snarled. “Let’s just figure out how to help them. Then you can keep harping on about how you were right. God.”
Aaric recoiled at the anger. For a moment, Victor thought things were going to devolve between the two of them without Cheryl’s calming presence, but then Aaric surprised him.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. We need to stop butting heads.”
Victor inclined his head once in agreement, the sharp movement indicating he was still irritated, but willing to move on.
“What do we do? I refuse to kill them all. That’s not a solution.”
“I agree,” Aaric said immediately. “Though we don’t have to worry about them finding what they’re looking for at least.”
“You mean the Naagloshiii, don’t you?” Victor asked. “What did you do with it?”
“Eventually, I’m going to dump his tomb down the mine we’re digging and bury him under a fire-blasted layer of solid rock melted around him. But for now, I had to get him out of the construction site.”
“That’s an unusually evasive answer, brother,” Victor growled. “Where is his tomb now, if not at the construction site?”
“Um. In the caverns below with our sleeping brethren?” Aaric said weakly, avoiding looking right at Victor as he answered.
“What! Are you insane? You brought one of them here?” Victor moaned, running his hands over his head.
“Where else was I supposed to take it?” Aaric snapped back, getting to his feet and starting to pace. “What would you have done?”
“Destroyed it?”
“I tried,” Aaric muttered. “Believe me, I tried so very hard, Victor. But the thing is stronger than you could believe. I know we often think of ourselves as the strongest beings on this earth, but we know that’s not really true. Among shifters, yes. But there are more than just our kind out there. Maybe one of the elders could do it. I can’t.”
“Shit,” he muttered, taking the fire dragon at his words. “Okay. So, it’s here. Where we can watch over it. Then we bury it somewhere they’ll never find it. Got it.”
“But they don’t know that yet. Not until they dig up the fake tomb I placed and buried deep in the earth again.”
“So, they’re going to stay at the site,” Victor said, understanding what Aaric was getting at. “Which means we know where to find our vampire friend.”
“Or friends. We can’t assume it’s just one of them. This is the second one to come to our town. Eventually, they’re going to stop coming on their own and come in a group.”
“You’re just so positive today,” Victor grumbled, but he knew the other shifter was right. “So, we can find them there. How do we get them to show themselves?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it is, I’m going to help.”
Victor spun so fast he sloshed hot coffee on his pants. “Cheryl!” he yelped as the platinum-haired beauty pushed her way into Aaric’s quarters. “What are you doing here?”
“Helping,” she said. “However I can. I’m not just going to sit on the sidelines and do nothing. This is my town too.”
Aaric looked at Victor, an unspoken question in his eyes.
“You try telling her no,” Victor said with a shrug. “I hate it. I don’t want it. It terrifies me. But I’m warning you, if you try to argue with her, you will lose.”
Aaric’s eyes bounced between the two of them for a few seconds, then he snorted with laughter. “I know how that feels, believe it or not.”
Victor looked down, smiling, knowing that Aaric was thinking of his mate, Olivia.
Mate.
It was a word he’d not allowed himself to think of much when he was around Cheryl. That was a line he had not broached yet and wasn’t sure he was ready to. Aaric had told him that when he knew, he would know. So far, Victor couldn’t point to any one moment where he unquestioningly knew, that not only did he want her and only her, but that the feeling was mutual.
He wondered if he ever would.
“Welcome to the planning team then,” Aaric said, gesturing at the couch. “I’ll grab some more coffee. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
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“Did you follow me?” Victor asked in a quieter tone.
“You were pretty absorbed in yourself,” she admitted. “I thought for sure you’d hear me, but you didn’t even flinch once. But I wasn’t about to sit here in safety while you two did everything.”
Victor thought just “safe” things truly were at the Keep now, with a Naagloshiii entombed somewhere below them. If it managed to get free, or if a vampire snuck in and let it loose, she would be among the first to die.
He shivered slightly at the thought. Living without her wasn’t a pleasant thought at all.
There wasn’t time to consider the wider ramifications of that before Aaric was back, setting an entire pot of coffee and a full mug of it down on the table, gesturing for Cheryl to help herself.
“Okay,” the fire dragon said, sitting back.
“How do we do this?”
33
“There’s got to be a way. A weakness that they have, something we can exploit…” Cheryl trailed off as both dragons turned to look at her, their human eyes weighing on her with an inhuman touch.
“Was it something I said?” she asked, looking back and forth.
“You know it’s the easiest,” Aaric said quietly.
“No.” Victor’s single word sliced through the air.
Cheryl sat up straight, Victor’s hand sliding off her shoulder and down her back. “I’m not a child,” she snapped at both of them. “Please do not treat me like one.”
Silence hung heavy in the air while the two men fought with their eyes to see who would answer. Growing impatient, she turned her gaze on Victor, imploring him to speak openly.
The big man resisted momentarily, but under her unrelenting stare he finally wilted, giving in to her demands. “The problem with the vampires is luring them out. With the Thralls in place now, they can basically hide in the background without a need to show themselves.”
“You found the one today,” she pointed out.
“Because he decided to show himself,” Victor countered. “They’ve gotten smart, using masks and other modern things to effectively allow them to move about during the day. But it was pure luck. They know how vulnerable they are in the sun. They won’t move against us again like that. One mistake is enough.”
Aaric nodded. “He’s right. We’re going to have to do this on their terms.”
“At night,” she said quietly. “You want to go back there at night.”
The two of them looked at each other, then at her.
“What?” she asked. “What else am I missing?”
“If Victor and I just show up, the vampires will never reveal themselves. They aren’t stupid. Most of them have lived many lifetimes and have accumulated a wealth of knowledge to go along with it.”
“You already have a plan, don’t you?” she asked.
“Not a good one,” Victor grumbled.
“What kind of plan is it? You need to get them to show themselves. But you can’t do it, ‘cause they know you’re too strong for th…em,” she finished after a moment, the word split in two. “Me. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“It would be the easiest,” Aaric started to say.
“It’s too dangerous,” Victor said at the same moment. “I won’t allow it.”
“Guys,” she said uneasily. “I know I said I’d help, do whatever it takes, but you want me to volunteer as bait for a vampire? Are you fucking serious? That’s your plan?”
“Currently, it’s the only plan we have,” Aaric said. “But it doesn’t mean we’re done brainstorming.”
“Good,” she said a bit harsher than intended. “Because I’m not doing it.”
Victor’s hand came around from behind her back and slipped into her lap, pushing between her own clasped hands, fingers easily interlocking with hers. She took strength from his reassuring squeeze.
“The longer we delay, the more likely it is that some of the Thralls start dying as the vamps overwork them,” Aaric pointed out. “They know it won’t be long before we move against them. They have to find what they’re looking for before we get there.”
“That thing you were talking about earlier? That you moved here?”
Aaric grimaced, but Victor just snorted. “I guess she was listening for longer than we thought.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “If there are more dragons here, why not just bring them up? Just all of you go. Surely, they can’t handle that many of you. You could surround the construction site and just search until you find them!” She was sitting up straight, eager now, ready to go.
“They’re not awake,” Victor said quietly. “And we can’t wake them. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not as simple as poking them until they wake,” Aaric said, his voice brooking no further questions about it. “They aren’t available to us, end of story.”
Cheryl frowned, not happy with the ‘because I said so’ answer. Apparently, neither was Victor, because he didn’t drop the subject despite the glare he received from the other shifter.
“They’re in a sort of hibernation,” he explained. “And only a dragon and his or her mate can wake them. One of them.” He looked down. “We’re supposed to wake on our own when the world needs us, when evil is growing strong. But we didn’t this time.”
“A mate?”
Aaric sighed. “You may as well explain everything to her then,” he growled, getting up and leaving the room.
“Thanks,” Victor muttered at the other dragon’s back.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know,” he said, giving her hand another squeeze.
Cheryl returned the pressure, not removing her hand. She wanted to know more, to know everything about Victor and his other side. More than just curiosity was driving her, and though she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge the growing niggle in the back of her brain, she knew why she was really interested.
Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. Now is not the time for that. This is serious, your focus needs to be on those workers, not your own self interests.
“Dragon shifters aren’t entirely human, obviously,” he said dryly. “With that comes other things. One of them being that, unlike humans, we mate for life.”
“So do humans,” she pointed out.
“No, you don’t,” Victor corrected gently. “You choose to be with someone for life. A dragon doesn’t choose their mate. Fate chooses it for them. It’s more than a choice.”
“More?” she asked, not following. “What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s a connection. A literal connection felt between a dragon and his mate. A bond. Nothing physical, but tangible, nonetheless. Up here,” he said softly, touching his head. “And here.” His hand drifted over his heart.
“That’s called love, Victor, and humans experience it too.”
He smiled. “Not in the same way.”
“Yes, in the same way,” she protested, not following. “We call it a soul mate. It’s a real thing.”
“With dragons, it’s more. There are…subtle changes, that occur. They’re much more magnified when a dragon is mated to a human.”
Cheryl fought back the sudden racing of her heart. Dragons didn’t just mate with other dragons then? They could mate with a human?
“Like what?” she asked tentatively.
“Well, for instance, an elongated lifespan. Instead of eighty, or perhaps ninety years of life, a human mated to a dragon will live as long as their mate. Hundreds of years, perhaps.”
Cheryl’s jaw dropped open. “That’s impossible.”
Victor snorted. “Improbable. But it happens, and in our world, there have been many documented cases of it. They just don’t make it out to your world.”
“Right.” She stopped her protests. There was no point in fighting him. Victor could be lying about everything, but she doubted it. After all, she’d seen Victor in his dragon form, had witnessed him shift back to human. Why should anything else be impos
sible after that?
“You don’t believe me,” Victor said lightly, his eyes darting around her face, watching her reaction.
“I have my doubts,” she admitted. “But they’re formed from the world I lived in until a few days ago. So much has changed since then.” Her eyes dropped to their clasped hands. “So much.”
Ask him. Just ask him!
She desperately wanted to know if what was going on in her mind was correct, if she was interpreting everything right. But asking would be shattering the illusion, bringing something to the front that perhaps wasn’t ready to be acknowledged yet. No, in time Victor would tell her everything she needed to know.
“I’m sorry you’re having this all thrown at you without any warning,” Victor said. “But we’re under a bit of a time constraint.”
“Yeah. Those poor Thralls,” she said quietly. “We need to free them.”
The big dragon shifter nodded silently, his eyes flashing with some unspoken thought or another.
“And using me as bait is the best way to go about it,” she muttered quietly. “It can be done quickly, and without a lot of planning.”
“We’re not using you as bait,” Victor said sternly.
Cheryl looked up, staring deep into those wondrous turquoise-lined ovals, her focus switching back and forth as she looked into the abyss of one side and then the other. She could see the truth of it all, locked away behind a door he wasn’t willing to open.
Victor knew she was right. That Aaric was right. This was their best option. But his protective instincts weren’t letting him just offer her up as a potential sacrifice. Normally, that was something she would be all in favor of. Especially now she knew just what sort of dangers lurked in the world she was slowly becoming a part of.
Creatures and entities far older and stronger than she could ever hope to be were nightmares worth having an overprotective dragon shifter around for. Cheryl was just human, and her experiences limited. While she trusted her brain, knew it was capable, sharp, and smart, she also knew enough to know she was outclassed in any physical struggle.
That was what tore at her the most. She knew. She knew this was the only way forward that could be organized in any amount of time, but she also was fully aware of how stupendously dangerous it was. The odds were stacked against her on a level she probably couldn’t quite comprehend.
