by Lolita Lopez
“How do we know which symptoms are from the apple and which are from us…you know…being together intimately?”
Nico held up a hand and began to tick off symptoms. “Heightened senses? Enhanced and rapid healing? Scales? Wings? That can all be attributed to me. But golden blood? Waking up fully healed after dying in a human state?” He shook his head. “That’s not me.”
Wanting answers and sick of sitting quietly wrapped in a blanket, Eris shoved out of the chair. “Put me to work. Let me do what I know best.”
Nico’s mouth twitched, and she suspected he wanted to order her back into the chair to rest. He gestured to the workstation near Reynard. “He could use your help breaking down that data. His biochemistry and genetics skills are rusty.”
Eris critically eyed Reynard, and he glanced down and away like a dog that had been whipped. He had apologized profusely for hurting her, but she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him completely. She understood that the dragons were on the cusp of another war with the Knights so everyone was on edge, but that didn’t excuse his aggressive behavior.
Putting aside her conflicted feelings toward the giant dragon, she slipped onto the tall stool next to him and held out her hand. “Show me what you have so far.”
Reynard placed the stack of test results in her hand but didn’t let go. She met his gaze and was taken aback by the guilt darkening his face. “I am sorry, Eris. For everything.”
She sensed he was a man deeply troubled by a violent and bloody past. Feeling a rush of forgiveness, she touched his hand. “We’re good.”
“Thank you.” He nodded stiffly and released the test results, but she could tell he was still feeling an intense amount of guilt.
“Hey, man”—she nudged his heavy shoulder with hers and offered a little dark humor—“it’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s not like you killed me or anything. Oh! Wait…”
His expression slackened, and he seemed torn between laughing and gasping. Finally, he shook his head and returned to his microscope. “Nico is going to have his hands full with you.”
She glanced at Nico—at her mate—who watched them with trepidation and smiled at him. “Yes, he is.”
Nico’s gaze turned warm and calm. He smiled at her and got back to work.
Side by side with Reynard, she dug into the data that Nico’s wickedly fast machines had managed to crunch so far. It wasn’t much, but Eris could see that her blood panel values were off-the-charts crazy. A quiver of fear stabbed her belly. What the hell is happening to me?
Chapter Six
What the hell is happening to me?
Startled by the sound of Eris’s sweet voice in his head, Nico glanced up from the heavy leather-bound tome in his hands. She rubbed her forehead and peered intently at the papers in her hands. Marveling at the connection they shared, he listened carefully as she ran down the blood panel results and worked through a mental checklist of further tests to run. She had a number of hypotheses forming already. He could practically see her inner researcher rejoicing at the chance to tackle such an incredibly complex problem.
Given a glimpse of the brilliant workings of her mind, he caught a brief peek at their future together. Here, in his lab—no, their lab—they would make great discoveries. With a partner like Eris at his side, he might finally succeed in conquering some of the problems that had perplexed him the longest.
Partners, huh? She smiled at him from across the lab. I like the sound of that.
He returned her smile. You’re taking this hearing each other’s thoughts development better than expected.
She rolled those big, beautiful eyes at him. Nico, my blood has turned golden. I woke up from the dead. And you’re a dragon. Sharing thoughts with you? That’s basically the least crazy thing that has happened since I met you.
Guilt settled deep in his gut. I’m sorry.
She frowned. For what?
For being selfish and wanting to keep you as my mate. For turning you into a dragon. For letting you eat that apple. For changing your life forever.
Her expression softened. Change isn’t always bad, Nico.
“When you two are done making moon eyes at each other, I think we need to frame this discussion in a different way,” Reynard said, pushing away from the microscope in front of him.
Nico tossed aside the journal. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the answers we want about Eris are going to take too long to find here.” Reynard rubbed his eyes. “We need to figure out who she is. It’s obvious that she has latent dragon blood. She’s just like Cora. The real question? What are the odds that two women like Eris and Ivy would stumble across each other and end up as friends and roommates?” He shook his head. “That feels like a setup, Nico.”
“I agree,” he said, his chest tightening as he considered the implications.
Reynard pinned Eris with a questioning look. “How did you two meet?”
“We met in school,” Eris interjected. “She was a freshman. I was a senior. I was her mentor-slash-big-sister in a program our school ran for kids who had lost both parents.”
“You were an orphan?” Reynard interjected.
She nodded. “And a runaway, homeless delinquent,” she added matter-of factly. “I kind of had a rough patch growing up.”
“Apparently,” Reynard grumbled.
Not wanting to force her to dig into her past, Nico asked, “Was Ivy assigned to you?”
“Yes.”
He shared a glance with Reynard. “And you two hit it off? Became fast friends?”
She nodded. “That’s not strange. That’s how friendship works.”
“Sure, for humans,” Reynard agreed, “but you aren’t human. Neither is she. She’s almost pure-blooded dragon. If you have a drop of our blood in you, the pull to her would have been immediate. That’s how it is for us. There is a couple you’ve heard us mention—Cora and Stig—who were drawn to each other for years before they finally became a couple.”
“After Cora began the shift, we were able to dig through her family tree to find the connection to our kind.” Nico picked up the tale. “Stig had been friends with her brother for many years. We suspect that they recognized each other on an almost cellular level. It’s like pheromones basically.”
“If something inside Ivy recognized Eris as a friend, it’s likely their family lines were entwined. The problem is that we don’t know which side,” Reynard said with a concerned look.
Nico frowned as he considered Ivy’s bloodline tie to the Knights. “I don’t think we need to worry about that. I recognized Eris as one of us when she came through my wards.”
Reynard hesitated as if he wanted to say something but didn’t. Nico recognized that look on his friend’s face. He had a secret. A big one. “Are your family lines in the library?”
“I keep the volumes locked in a case. The key is in the bottom drawer of the desk, taped to the right side.”
“I’m going downstairs to investigate that. I’m better put to use in the stacks than here.” He picked up and folded the sheet of paper that had Eris’s parents’ names on it. It wasn’t much to go on, but she hadn’t known anything else of her family history. “Keep an eye on the sun,” he gently reminded. “I’ll stay out of your way tonight, but I’ll keep watch.”
Nico glanced at Eris, who seemed almost relieved by the prospect of being alone with him. He shared her enthusiasm. The day was fading fast, and the throbbing, dark need of their mating heat grew stronger inside him. “We’ll be fine.”
“If I find anything useful, I’ll come straight down in the morning.” Reynard squeezed his shoulder. “Have fun.”
That wasn’t going to be a problem. He was already thinking of all the ways he intended to make Eris cry out with pleasure, but when he glanced toward the lab table where she worked, he got the feeling that she was going to want to keep her nose to the grindstone as long as possible. Her body language caught his interest. “What is it?”
With a distant look in her eye, she said, “Earlier, before I fell, I was in here and I saw your notes and those test results you were studying. It made me think of something in my own blood.”
“And what was that?”
“During my undergrad, I tested myself for sickle-cell anemia. The test was negative, but I had something else in my blood. There were these strangely shaped cells, and I never could find anything like them anywhere in medical or biological literature.”
Alarmed that she might have inadvertently alerted her mentors to their secret, he asked, “Did you show your slides to anyone?”
“No. I was too scared. I didn’t know what the hell it was. I didn’t want someone poking and prodding me like a lab animal.”
He breathed a sigh of relief before explaining, “What you saw in your slides was normal for people like us. Those cells are—”
Nico’s breath caught in his throat as he felt the unmistakable pulse of the enemy. He jumped to his feet and crossed the lab with quick, powerful strides, slowing down as he neared the floor-to-ceiling windows. Using the wall for cover, he scanned the vast swath of land behind his mansion. The sun was beginning to sink, casting strange shadows over the woods and the wide expanse of the rolling lawn. So close to the forced shift of the mating heat, he was hyperaware of his surroundings.
It didn’t take Nico long to pick out the presence that didn’t belong. His connection to his land and his home was so intense that he could feel the subtle disturbance of a Knight approaching his home. He didn’t have to get a closer look at them. It was a man, and he was probing and pushing up against the wards as if testing them and doing recon for another attack.
Twice in the same week, he thought angrily. His inner beast clamored to be set free. The implied threat to his mate set his teeth on edge and made his skin burn. These assholes have to be stopped.
He didn’t like the way this felt. There was something sinister and strange about one single man poking around his property. Was he being taunted? Were the Knights trying to inflame his protective instinct toward Eris to draw him outside the wards? Would they try to ambush the house later tonight when he was locked away with Eris? His wards had been beat to hell this week. There was always the risk they wouldn’t hold.
Though he tried to mask those troubling thoughts, Eris seemed to feel them. He sensed her movement as she walked toward him. Looking down at her, the fear and anxiety etched into her beautiful face told him everything he needed to know. He cupped the back of her neck and dragged her tight to the front of his body. He held her gaze as he lowered his face and claimed her mouth with an insistent, promising kiss. By the time he was done, any doubts she had about her safety had fled. He would die before he let anything happen to her, and she understood that.
Rising up on her toes, she brushed her mouth against his in a seeking kiss that he happily returned. As the needful mating hunger took hold, he angled his body and tangled his fingers in her hair. Her scent filled his nose and urged him onward, the throbbing, low pulse of heat in his core growing stronger and stronger until—
Glass exploded behind them as the window shattered with a burst of force. Nico lurched forward, wrapping his arms around Eris and dragging her bodily toward the closest piece of wall. They slammed into it, and pain erupted in his shoulder. Still trying to process what had happened, he looked down at Eris, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
She was covered in blood, her face and neck spattered with bright red. A blossoming circle of gold darkened her shirt, right below her clavicle, and spread quickly. Horror gripped him. “Eris, you’ve been shot!”
“You’ve been shot!” Nearly hysterical, she pressed her hand to his chest. Her touch sent a shockwave of pain through his body. His knees sagged as all the pieces finally came together in his mind.
The red blood on her face and neck wasn’t her own. It’s mine.
As he hit the floor, his knees slamming into the hardwood with such force that his jaw clacked together, he began to feel the horrific, burning pain radiating from the gaping wound in his chest. Eris had both hands on him now, pushing hard as his blood pumped out of the wound and onto the floor.
More gunshots ripped through the windows, sending glass flying everywhere. The bullets banged around in the lab, ricocheting off tables and equipment. Even though he was bleeding profusely and mortally wounded, Nico reached for Eris, dragging her down onto his torn chest and curling his arms protectively around her. He might not walk out of here alive, but he was going to make damn sure she did.
“Nico! Eris!” Reynard roared like a lion as he burst into the laboratory. He dropped to his knees, crawling across the glass-strewn floor to avoid making himself a perfect target, and appeared above him. “Nico? Hey, stay with us!”
“What is that?” Eris asked, her voice rising in pitch. Her bloody fingertip traced something on his neck and up into his cheek.
Reynard let loose a string of expletives. “It’s poison. He’s been poisoned.”
Nico gasped as the searing agony tore through his chest. “I can’t…” He tried to inhale. “Breathe,” he finally managed.
“It’s a sucking chest wound,” Reynard said, tearing open Nico’s shirt with his bare hands and smacking his hand over the massive and ragged wound. “Get some—”
“Plastic,” she said, already on her feet and running.
Nico began to fade, but her presence bolstered his energy when she returned. He groaned as Reynard and Eris taped the plastic to his chest, but his breaths came easier when they were done sealing the hole there. The burning, raging agony of the poison spreading through his body was too much. He could feel it tearing through his veins, pumping through his heart and into his organs.
“I think the round was made from a melted-down sword,” Reynard said, his large hand gripping Nico’s chin. “It must have burst on impact. The iron shavings are poisoning you.”
Nico clutched at Reynard’s wrist. “Take Eris and run,” he ground out between disjointed breaths.
Eris touched his face, drawing his attention. “I’m not leaving you here to die.”
“Eris…”
But she was already on her feet and running away from him. He coughed and sputtered and held tight to Reynard’s wrist while listening to the sounds of his lab being destroyed. He wanted to ask her what she was looking for, but he couldn’t muster the energy. He was fading fast, dying right there on the floor, and all he could think of was how cruel life had been to give him a taste of happiness just before death.
Eris appeared at his side again. She had something in her hand, something large and black. His fuzzy brain refused to name the object, but the moment it touched his skin, he knew what it was. A magnet. She’d found the biggest, heaviest, strongest magnet in his tool collection. He growled with pain as the shards of iron were ripped from his body, tearing through muscle and skin.
“I don’t think I can get it all,” she said, her voice cracking. “There’s so much blood! I can’t see.”
Reynard jumped up for more supplies. When he returned, he irrigated the wound and roughly wiped away the fluid with a handful of paper towel. Eris used the magnet to pull more iron out of his body. The searing, throbbing heat dissipated some, but he was finding it harder and harder to breathe and stay conscious. As his energy faded, he could feel the power in his wards begin to fizzle.
“The tree,” he gasped. “The tree—”
“I’ll take care of it.” Reynard gripped his hand. “I won’t let them take your apples.”
Nico nodded shakily. If Reynard failed and the Knights got their hands on those apples…
“I’ll burn the tree to the ground before I let anyone take them,” Eris swore, roughly grasping his hand.
Suddenly, Nico had a glimpse of the scrappy young woman who had survived the death of both parents and homelessness. She wasn’t going to let the Knights win tonight.
Eris leaned down to touch her forehead to his. “Fight for me, and I’ll fight
for you and those apples and this house and us.”
His heart swelled in his chest as he leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. He didn’t deserve her loyalty, not after a single night, but she seemed to understand and believe in their connection. There was no way he would ever allow himself to be separated from her, not with the mating call and growing bond between them so strong.
He didn’t care how hard he had to fight, how much he had to bleed, he was going to live to see sunrise.
He was going to live for her.
Chapter Seven
Eris tried to control her panic as Nico’s eyelids drifted closed. He passed out on the floor, his hand going limp in hers. “What the hell are we going to do? He needs a hospital, but we can’t call an ambulance.”
“No, we can’t,” Reynard agreed. “And even if we could, the Knight out there with a rifle is just waiting for us to get close to a window, or he’ll shoot at the first responders. We can’t allow that to happen. It’s against our rules to involve innocent humans.”
Feeling helpless, she watched Nico’s blood leaking onto the floor. “He’s going to bleed to death, Reynard.”
“Bleeding to death isn’t the problem,” Reynard said gravely. “It’s the poison. It’s keeping him from shifting right now, weakening him. If he could shift, he would be stronger and could fight off the poison that’s gotten into his blood.”
“What kind of poison is this? What did you mean by the swords earlier?”
“There are swords,” Reynard explained. “They’re magical weapons that will kill us. We’ve destroyed most of them, but there are a handful still out there. It’s possible—likely—that they melted one down to make bullets. It bounced off his bone before blowing through him—and you.” Reynard touched her shoulder. “You’re already healing, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “I swear I can feel the muscle knitting back together.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes.” But she didn’t care. It was just a little pain. She was going crazy thinking about Nico and how to help him. “The round that went through us isn’t affecting me, but it should, right? Because of the dragon blood in me?”
