by Eden Glenn
“You hold it right there Ethan,” She shouted. Having touched Kiernan’s pain she couldn’t bear to watch him kneel helpless awaiting his fate. She hadn’t saved him to have him slaughtered now. Caleb moved forward swinging his twin swords in an intricate pattern, light flashing off the blades in front of him.
“You too Caleb, Kiernan saved me. Don’t you dare hurt him.” She threw herself between her lovers and Kiernan. Ethan’s distress pelted her like a shock wave.
They both projected a fear of her loss, having no indication that she still existed. Caleb’s indescribable fatigue from acting as focus of their, search pulled at her. Then their relief at finding her, crushed by the realization that she remained in danger, and they were powerless to get to her quick enough. On top of that the effort of then triangulating her position while she was on the move, still in danger zapped the rest of their reason. Their aggression pinged between each extreme making them snarl like a baited bear.
So of course, Ethan roared at her “Female, you would stand between this criminal and his punishment.”
“You listen to me. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He saved me.”
She turned to Kiernan. “Say something in your own defense.” He remained silent. She pleaded with him. “Kiernan, I know you may have thought. . . I mean I didn’t know you had been kidnapped. You didn’t know that, well. . . things have changed for me since I saw you last.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the two who had turned her life into an episode from the x-files. They were both pretty emotional for males who believed that sex was just the outlet for normal physical urges. One could almost think that they were j-e-a-l-o-u-s.
Kiernan looked up and met her eyes as she turned back to him. “The heirs to the kingdom have spoken. You have everything I would have wanted for you, my Queen.”
“Kiernan, I’m so sorry. I need you to want to live.” She couldn’t explain the feeling but somehow she felt responsible for him and she desperately wanted him to choose to live. He needed a task to focus his survival skills on long enough to gain distance from the hideous experience he’d escaped.
He bowed his head again. “I am ever your servant.” She cupped her hand around his cheek, stroking the side of his face with her thumb. His suffering swamped her.
“You will live and have purpose. The Goddess isn’t finished with you yet.” She felt the magic sizzle down her arm and through her hand. Kiernan leaned into her touch. She felt an electrical buzz of energy surround them.
Caleb shouted. “Wren, what are you doing?”
She looked over at her men. No, the word men did not adequately describe them and all that they were to her, her males, her mates, well potential mates, if she claimed them. For the first time since she’d met them they were completely speechless. Gobstobbered, in fact. The power faded from her.
“Look, I got teleported or something away from you ended up where Kiernan has been held hostage and tortured for months. I freed him just before Ron Packard returned. Packard’s crazy. He’s behind all this. He probably sabotaged my stairs too. Why are you so angry?”
Ethan growled the primal need of an alpha animal to protect and possess his mate against a rival. “You reek of another dragon; his stench is all over you. Now you defend him against us, and you’re touching him there … intimately on his face. You are ours. You will not touch other male dragons.” He finished the statement with a predatory bellow. “And what have you clothed your body with?”
“I don’t know. When I left you I was naked. I found this cloth and wrapped it around me. What’s the big deal?” Ethan and Caleb circled her inhaling deeply. Kiernan, forgotten by them for the moment, watched them quietly as if awaiting the outcome. Ethan spat the words at her as he ground his teeth. “Take it off.”
“Oh no, I am not stripping here in front of all of you. You do realize being naked is what started this fiasco.”
“Take it off or I will take it off, for you.” Ethan spoke each word slowly, venom coating each syllable.
Caleb pulled a T-shirt out of her purple back pack the dragon had been carrying and threw it to her. Wren caught the shirt. She laid her sword down on the grass.
Obviously they knew she disappeared from them naked and at least he had thought to bring one of their t-shirts. It would hang down mid-thigh on her.
She didn’t need to be able to read their minds to feel the rage radiating off of both of them. If a little thing like taking the cloth off would appease their anger, she’d take it off.
But, they were going to have to have a sit down talk and come to some understanding later about this whole belonging, and ordering her around. She grumbled as she fumbled with the fabric.
She tried to untangle the makeshift wrap around her body. It wouldn’t come loose. She tried pulling and couldn’t get the leather like fabric unknotted. “Guys, I can’t get it off. What’s going on? Why can’t I get this knot to let loose?” She looked up as Ethan and Caleb stared at her and then at Kiernan. Finally, he’d met their eyes.
“Wren, what have you done?” The loss in Caleb’s voice stopped her struggling with the piece of cloth. He stared at Kiernan, who remained passive and silent, which ticked her off more. Then she saw what Caleb must have seen.
A perfect quarter sized mark shaped like letters in a large inverted tear had formed on Kiernan’s right cheek where she had touched him with her thumb a moment ago, a mark suspiciously like the design she seen trying to form on her Goddess given sword.
Craapp, Another hasty action, evidently gone straight to freaking hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Wren looked between Ethan and Caleb who seemed in shock and paled significantly as she watched them. She didn’t mark Kiernan on purpose. How could they expect her to know what to do when they didn’t explain what she could do? She was stumbling into her power like a blind woman in the dark.
Ethan staring at Kiernan whispered. “By the spirit of the Goddess, what have you done Wren?”
Kiernan lifted his hand to his cheek feeling the raised edge of the inflamed mark. His voice took on a more hopeful tone. Wren wasn’t sure why he felt it necessary to poke sticks at tigers.
“Lords, I take it that I bear her mark and as you see, she wears my skin, it follows that she is mine to mate and not yours after all. I take exception to your tainting her with your foul stench.”
Okay so he was sensitive about the stench statement.
Ethan’s blade forgotten, dropped to the ground as he launched over Caleb grabbing at Kiernan to smash and pummel him with his bare hands. Kiernan managed to bolt to his feet and dodge Ethan.
“No no no, this is not happening. Something is not right. Someone has to fix this.” Wren moaned, before Caleb grabbed her, trying to drag her behind him, again. She tangled herself around both of them to block their attack on Kiernan.
“You will not take her.” Ethan roared his fury again, ready to battle Kiernan.
Wren pushed against him. “Stop, stop right now. No one is going to do anything. We have to figure this out obviously a mistake has been made.” She looked at Caleb and Ethan willing them to believe everything would be all right.
Caleb hissed. “You’re ours to mate, you belong to us, not him and he will not take you.”
Wren reached her limit. She was exhausted and dirty from crawling around in the slaughterhouse. A cold settled into her bones squeezing her heart in a painful vice grip. Pain the only indication that she hadn’t been completely eviscerated by their possessive disregard for her feelings. They were so engrossed in defending their territorial rights that they couldn’t think past their predatory aggression. Tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. How could she make them understand?
“I’m not property. I don’t belong to anyone. Take me back to my place right now and” she hiccupped “and call someone to figure this out.” She broke at the pain tearing inside her. Life was so incredibly freaking unfair.
She felt a soul wrenching loss emana
te from both of them as the conduit to their shared mental awareness completely shut down.
A hollow dull ache settled in the pit of her stomach. She realized that her outburst announcing that she didn’t belong to anyone had hurt them. They were warriors and needed to protect her, to be responsible for her.
Their form of ownership was a loving one where it meant responsibility and stewardship, and care. She knew their character from the moments she’d spent sharing their thoughts.
Her rejection of belonging to them in essence rejected the bond, and their commitment to her. But these two had to get a grip. She didn’t know how to apologize.
How did you take back words, that once they were said out loud hurt so bad? The guys certainly didn’t have any experience with that, the clods.
“Rogue, we are not finished with you yet. Come with us.”
Kiernan nodded and turned his back to them. She watched him transform into his dragon. Wren bit her lip fighting her gag reaction at seeing the raw exposed meat across the dragon’s back, of course he couldn’t carry her astride sitting across the open wound. The three of them got the full-force of the devastating injury on the beast, oozing infection and crawling with something. Ethan and Caleb looked away from the wreckage that had been elegant dragon hide.
They stepped away to make room for their own change. Ethan clasped his arms around Caleb’s torso bringing them back to chest in a pose that was blatantly sexual yet completely masculine. Caleb laid his head back against Ethan’s shoulder accepting his brother’s embrace.
She barely blinked and in their place before her stood the massive two-headed dragon, with deep bronze skin that glowed in the afternoon sun-- the patina of antique brass. She gasped still in awe that this was Caleb and Ethan.
Wren fought to remain calm as the huge animal swiveled his massive body toward her. Should she beg him…them not to eat her? He seemed inviting but maybe it was a lure to entice lunch nearer.
“I am Si. My Queen. We have not been properly introduced.” One of the heads blew steamy breath against her exhaling. The other head came even with her body inhaling, drawing in her essence. “I am Mon. Greetings, vessel of my mate.”
She reached out with her hand tentatively to touch the dragon. The beast’s skin was soft under her hand, the texture of fine leather and deep metallic bronze. “You are magnificent.”
“And you are the capricious little witch who has vexed us beyond all reason. Why are you wearing another dragon’s skin? This shouldn’t be.”
“Tell me about it.” She wasn’t brave enough to start an argument with a dragon.
“Are you Ethan and Caleb?” Her conscience, which seemed centered on telling her to act not react, and to consider every action for potential consequence; had already started harping on the, ‘you’re too stupid to live’ message, to punish her erratic behavior. In all fairness this out of control phase of life started when Ethan and Caleb had arrived on the scene.
“Ethan and Caleb are me and I am them. Will you ride astride my back or be carried in my claws, like baggage.”
Oh that was a low blow. “Astride, thank you very much.”
She grabbed her back pack of the ground, pushed the shirt into the compartment and zipped it shut with a vicious rip. Then snatching her sword out of the dirt, she shoved it into the scabbard with a hard fast punch. It wasn’t like Kiernan had had a choice when he’d grabbed her in his claws to rescue her. She slid her arms into the straps and waited.
Si’Mon lowered himself so she could climb onto his foreleg for a boost up to settle between his neck ridges with her legs straddling his withers and across his shoulders. Her bare thighs pressed against the soft buttery hide from where the sarong rode up her legs.
The huge dragon sauntered forward several steps. The rolling gait of his movement created a delicious friction across her bare bottom and feminine core.
Oh freaking-hell-no, there was more of those two naughty twins apparent in the dragon’s character than they were willing to admit. She was considering protesting when he launched into the air causing her head to snap down against her chest.
They flew together high in the clouds hovering over Kiernan in shadow. Finally, Si’Mon spoke to her, His whispered words just for her to hear in the funky modulated dual voice that resonated in her head. “Caleb and Ethan are well pleased to find a mate to take together and provide such a lovely partner for my queen dragon”
“I thought you were Caleb and Ethan but you speak of them as if you are not.” She was confused. The hulking Si’Mon also said queen as if the meaning were different from the Queen she’d heard about.
She’d watched Ethan and Caleb transform into the great dragon. She saw their mannerisms in his behavior. Caleb and Ethan had spoken to her telepathically while in route to find her. Certainly the way he teased her body’s reaction spoke of their be-deviling attitude.
“I am of them and they are within me, but I am Si’Mon. Just as you will transform from the shell you are into the host of my mate and be together.”
“I don’t understand Si’Mon. I don’t have a dragon’s spirit inside me.”
“Yes, you have always carried her spirit inside you. For many generations she has traveled in your family’s ancestral blood line waiting for the moment of awakening. The blood holds the secret.”
She was mesmerized by his words. It occurred to her, she didn’t know Kiernan’s dragon’s name and wondered why.
“Si’Mon, what is Kiernan’s dragon’s name?”
“I do not know, little one. Names are power. If you know another’s name you have the power to call that one to you in their dragon form. Names are guarded carefully and not revealed.”
“I didn’t realize that. I said your name aloud for anyone to hear. You didn’t say anything about keeping it secret.” Wren worried that she had committed another social blunder.
The huge dragon spoke matter-of-factly, almost prideful. “Yes, all Drakin know my name, Si’Mon. I am the Mane’tung, I enforce the Queen’s laws and all must have the power to call me in any form.”
“That doesn’t seem right that anyone can call you and yet you aren’t given the same privilege.” Wren was learning that many things in their dragon world, while not fair, just were.
“None the less, that is the way of our people, secrecy is their strength. Someone must have learned Kiernan’s dragon name and ensnared him.”
“What’s to keep you from being called into a trap?” Fear choked her at how easily Si’Mon might be taken and through him Ethan and Caleb. That they would be tortured like Kiernan had been.
My strength is in the skills I have obtained. My might is my protection.”
Somewhere during the flight he became her friend and protector and she realized that her life had changed forever. She felt like a fairy tale princess. He landed lightly on the ground absorbing the concussion through his bolder sized joints. “Si’Mon, you are wonderful.”
“In you, my mate has a host that is worthy of her long wait, and I have found a valiant friend. Do not give up the battle for my human forms. Our anger is a passion that runs deep.”
She hugged the huge dragon around the base of his twin necks. It felt like trying to hug the front of a motor coach. Then Wren stepped back leaving room for him to initiate the transition back to Caleb and Ethan.
“Yeah, well put in a good word for me.”
She hoped his belief that he was safe from capture wasn’t just prideful over-confidence. She watched the transformation again that left Caleb and Ethan entwined together before her. They clasped each other in tenderness, heads bent together, eyes closed and breathing deeply.
Their reluctance to separate from the dragon shape and each other was apparent in every line of their embrace. She remembered how many hours Caleb and Ethan had worried searching the psychic plain for her. They had reason to be exhausted.
She missed Kiernan’s change. He stood leaning over with his hands on his knees semi-vertical by sheer determ
ination alone. Wren could only imagine the agony his dragon was experiencing. Once the dragon shifted to man, where did that pain go?
Wren watched as the brothers looked on and Kiernan moved his body forward on grit and guts alone. The interlude of friendship with Si’Mon was over. Ethan and Caleb glared at as the stalked past her.
They must have found some measure of respect for the Kiernan they labeled rogue because they moved to help him. Together they ducked under his arms to shoulder his weight and carry him up the stairs of a wide veranda porch, around a wood frame Victorian era home. He didn’t resist.
“The old crone will have our hide if anything happens to him.” Caleb groused.
Ethan muttered “Yeah. Too bad she didn’t fill in all the details involved in this nightmare.”
“Wait, where are we?” This wasn’t Wren’s store. A light scent of Confederate Jasmine hung in the air.
Ethan’s weary voice told her more than anything else how far apart they’d become.
“We’ve needed an alliance with the Watchers. Perhaps Isobeau and them can help us straighten out this fuckfest.” So, they’d brought her to dump her on the Watchers?
Caleb shrugged hefting Kiernan’s weight higher on his shoulder. “They’re the only hope we have.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kiernan couldn’t get warm, a frozen lump sat in his belly and radiated ice outward. Warmth didn’t exist in his universe. Food had helped him regain some of his strength. A shower and borrowed clothes from the Watchers, a token balm to humanity, reminded him of all that had been stripped from him.
He had spent six month chained and tortured, treated like the soulless beast he was. Kiernan sat huddled on the corner of the couch with his arms wrapped across his abdomen, convinced he would never be warm again. Nothing eased the raw pain gnawing in him.
He realized the dragon inside him suffered physical injury that he would need to find a way to heal. He refused to consider that the dragon part of him might not survive.
