by Marcy Jacks
Despite the size and comfort of the bed, Jesse hadn’t returned, so when Taylor decided to turn in early with his books and lessons, he had the entire space all to himself.
And that was the best possible outcome. It meant Taylor could roll around to his heart’s content and never have to worry about knocking into his friend.
It was funny. Even the half of the bed he got when Jesse was here with him was still much bigger than the cold cot he’d slept in with the others in the basement, and yet having the entire bed to himself was still such an amazing prize to have.
He was getting spoiled by his new dragon masters, and yes, they didn’t like it when he called them that, but old habits and all.
He hoped things were going well with Jesse and the ice dragon. Jesse might not see it, and Taylor wasn’t so good at figuring these things out for himself either, but he was pretty sure he was witnessing a mating take place.
It made Taylor smile, even as he lay in bed. A former slave and an alpha dragon mated together. It was kind of romantic, and it gave Taylor hope that maybe, if he improved himself enough, learned how to read, and showed he was more than just a former slave…well, maybe someone would want him, too.
Really want him. Not just for his body but in the sense that came when two souls met and realized there was no one else in the world for them.
Taylor had never given finding a mate much thought. Slaves who had mates were more vulnerable than if they were alone, and slaves who had children…well, there was never any happiness to be found there.
But now, things were different. Taylor could have a life. He could have children. He didn’t want them yet. Now that he had a choice, he wanted to wait a couple of years, better himself, find his mate, and then have them.
Then he would be able to give them a nice life. Better than the one he had.
Taylor reached out for his book. It was a small one, with some pictures in it but mostly words. He was still only working through the second chapter. He could barely understand the words and sentences unless he reread them again and again, but when he finished this book, he would know he was good enough.
He held it to his chest, hugging it as if it was one of the small toys he used to hold in bed when he was still a child. He closed his eyes. When he woke up, he would try a little more reading before getting to his chores.
He woke to hands on him. He wasn’t worried at first, even though the hands were rough, thinking it might have been Jesse excitedly waking him up out of his sleep.
No. Not Jesse. It was still dark, and these hands weren’t just shaking him awake. They yanked him clear out of bed.
Gloved fingers curled around his throat and then his mouth, yanking him back against a hard chest.
Warm breath against his ear had him shivering. The words spoken were even worse. “You make a single noise and I will slice your ears and tail off. Do you understand?”
Taylor’s heart pounded. His body immediately started to tremble, and he nodded, as best as he could nod when there were hands gripping him like this.
“Good,” said the voice behind him. “Lord Varrick wants you back. Tell me where Sorin is.”
Varrick wanted him? That made no sense. Taylor was a house slave. He just cleaned up and sometimes did the cooking. A few vampires had used him before for his mouth, but he ultimately wasn’t a pleasure slave.
The man removed his hand from Taylor’s mouth. His jaw ached, but Taylor realized he was expected to answer.
“S-Sorin…Lord Sorin is downstairs. He’s in the basement. He’s being watched by one of the dragons, Lucian.”
The man behind him cursed, and Taylor flinched, expecting to be hit, or to have his fox ears sliced off, for accidentally not calling Sorin his lord at first.
That didn’t happen.
“All right. He said one or both, so you’ll have to do.”
“Who are you?”
The hand still around his throat gripped tighter.
“No more questions, Miles,” he said with a soft purr. “You’re just going to be very quiet and we’re going to walk out of here. If the others are successful, I’ll come back for Lord Sorin, and you’ll be back with Lord Varrick by tomorrow night.”
Taylor’s eyes flew wide. Miles? This man thought Taylor was Miles?
His stomach dropped, and it was easy to figure out after that.
This was Miles’s old room. They were both fox shifters, and Taylor supposed there were some similarities in their looks, enough that someone who had only ever heard a description, who had never seen a photo of either of them, could possibly make this mistake.
Slaves never had their photos taken, after all.
An alarm sounded somewhere. Blaring loud enough that it would wake the entire house, which was something of the point.
The man behind him cursed again. “Those fucking, full-footed…”
He trailed off, as if deciding that cursing at the other people who had come to the house to fight for it wasn’t worth the bother.
Instead, his hand clenched around Taylor’s neck one more time. “You remember this. Stay quiet, or else I don’t care what Varrick wants. I will kill you. Understand?”
Taylor nodded, knowing better than to tell the man behind him that he wasn’t who he thought he was.
This was an assassin. If Taylor so much as hinted the man had the wrong person, he would be dead.
But then there was nothing he could do as, with the strength of an alpha, the man behind him scooped Taylor up into his arms and rushed for the window. It was already open, and when he jumped out of it, with Taylor in his arms, he landed with the grace and silence of a ghost, fleeing toward the trees like a gazelle, away from the mansion.
Taylor closed his eyes and prayed to God this was a nasty dream, but somehow, he doubted it.
His luck had run out it seemed.
* * * *
Andrei jumped awake immediately at the sound of the alarm. He was trained to wake up to the slightest of noises, and yet when the alarm went off, it felt almost as if it had been blaring for several minutes before he got his eyes open and rushed out of bed.
“Wha—?” Jesse was still in bed, his eyes swollen with sleep.
He’d fallen asleep with Andrei? Well, at least that was something of a good thing. Andrei glanced around his room in the darkness. Fuck, how long had he slept? It wasn’t exactly late when Jesse had come to his room.
At least there was no one in here. Andrei could hear the sounds of battle even as he reached for last night’s pants.
“Stay here,” he barked, his scales already coming out, his claws and fangs following. He reached for his belt of blades and clipped them on, as well, just in case. “Don’t you leave this room for a single thing.”
“What’s going on?” Jesse asked, the fear evident in his voice.
It was on the tip of Andrei’s tongue to tell him, but he didn’t want to scare the man any more than he already must be. Jesse would figure it out in a minute anyway. The noises in the house were too much to overlook for long.
“Just stay here. Get dressed and hide in the closet, but lock the door behind me when I go.”
“You’re going?”
Andrei looked back at Jesse, at his wide, terrified eyes.
He swiftly walked over to the man, putting his hand behind Jesse’s head. “I’ll come back.”
He almost leaned in to kiss him. He wasn’t sure why, but Andrei stopped himself. He had a battle to get to.
“Lock the door!” he shouted, slamming it shut behind him.
The sounds of battle were louder out here. Dragons roared, the clash of metal against scales and claws rang through the halls. Black shadows rose up through pockets of bright fire that some of the dragon warriors released from their mouths in the fight.
And yet Andrei couldn’t leave to join the warriors and his friends. Not yet.
Then he heard it, the soft click behind him of a lock sliding into place. Jesse finally did as he was told.
/> Good. Andrei let his blood freeze and the ice come over him as he ran into battle with his brothers.
Someone rushed down the hallway to meet him. Andrei roared. He didn’t bring out his blades. He used his claws, swiping at the throat of the vampire rushing at him and leaving him dead before he could get to his room where Jesse was.
Andrei wasn’t about to let that happen. Not in a million damned years.
He flew down the stairs, landing on two vampires who had pinned Marxus onto the ground, knocking him unconscious.
Andrei killed them before they could drink any of his friend’s blood, and then he realized he was surrounded by more vampires, all in black, all with masks that hid their faces, making them look almost more like demons.
Though he supposed there wasn’t much of a difference between a demon and a vampire. They were both filthy, horrifying creatures to begin with.
Andrei pulled his blades out, standing above his friend, baring his teeth, and roaring at the vampires as they closed in on him.
“Come on!”
* * * *
Jesse got dressed. He wasn’t sure if he would need to run away later, but hiding in the closet didn’t seem like the thing to do. It almost seemed as if he would be boxing himself in, that he would be trapping himself.
He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to be trapped in the closet if a bunch of vampire assassins broke in here.
He got his shoes on and then immediately started searching for a weapon.
Jesse’s heart slammed. He couldn’t think. He wished he were near the broom closet because he could break off any of the broom handles and use them as spears or stakes.
A vampire didn’t necessarily need to be speared through the heart to be killed, but it was a nice place to start.
Weapons. Andrei had to have extra weapons in his room somewhere, right?
Jesse went searching, his breath catching as he heard more and more shouting throughout the house. Screams of pain, battle cries, crashes as things were broken and smashed.
Oh God, he couldn’t think. He had no idea what he was going to do, and if he didn’t find something soon, he was going to have a panic attack.
Jesse didn’t want to be a servant to the vampires again. He didn’t want them in charge, to take him back.
He didn’t want them to hurt Andrei either.
Andrei might not come back.
That thought punched him in the chest harder than he thought it should have. Jesse got the middle drawer open of Andrei’s dresser, searching for any kind of weapon he could use, but again, the thought of Andrei getting hurt, of the man dying and never coming back, completely stole the breath right out of his chest.
Jesse had to back away from the dresser. His face felt hot, and his ears started to ring. He sank down to his knees, clutching at his twisting stomach.
He lowered his head to his knees, desperate to get ahold of himself. He couldn’t just curl up and hope for the best. He really would get killed if someone broke down the door and came to get him.
Jesse thought of Andrei, of what he would do, of what he would be proud of.
A warrior like that wouldn’t respect someone who cowered in fear. Even if Jesse couldn’t fight, he wanted to prove to Andrei that he wasn’t small and worthless.
He pushed himself back to his feet and went back on the search.
He found another set of knives in the bottom drawer beneath a few pairs of jeans and some jogging pants.
They were in a glass case. Jesse fumbled to get it open, but when he did, he felt so much better than a few seconds ago.
They were small, probably throwing knives, but at least now he had something.
And something was a thousand times better than nothing. His tiny claws sure weren’t going to do the trick.
Jesse went to kneel on the other side of the bed. With it between him and the door, he at least felt as if he had something of a buffer just in case someone tried to get in and do something to him.
But even now, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from going to Andrei, to the fight he was no doubt having.
And it was the only thing Jesse could think about with all the noise going on inside the house. He flinched when he heard a crash and then a scream.
He hoped that was one of the intruders screaming, but the silence that followed seemed a thousand times worse. The only sound he could hear in the darkness of Andrei’s bedroom was his own breathing, and he couldn’t seem to get it under control. He breathed as if he needed an inhaler to function, which he didn’t, but he couldn’t stop the wheezing.
His heart felt as if it were going to burst out of his chest. It was the door to Andrei’s room that burst instead.
Blinded with terror, Jesse screamed as he readied his blades, slicing at the hands that reached out to grab him.
Chapter Six
Andrei heard the scream. His ears twitched, or at least they felt like they did since he wasn’t an animal shifter and his ears were normal and they didn’t do that.
Despite the numerous screams he’d heard since joining the fight, this one he took note of, as if the sound itself called to him on a primal level he couldn’t ignore.
Marxus was unconscious over Andrei’s shoulders. Andrei had grabbed the man when he finished with all those vampires. Andrei was bleeding out of several fresh wounds, but he couldn’t just leave a friend there to rot. He had to get Marxus somewhere safe where the dragon could recover.
But that scream…
Andrei narrowed his eyes, and they flew wide again when he realized who that scream belonged to.
And his heart swelled and exploded with a terror he hadn’t felt since Mandy had been killed in front of him.
Oh God, no. He’d left the hallway undefended and now…
Andrei searched desperately for a place where he could dump his friend without leaving him totally exposed. He had to get back. Jesse was undefended!
He found a door and yanked it open, knowing it was either a bathroom or a broom closet.
It was a broom closet. He threw his friend down harder than he should have. He probably would have cracked Marxus’s head wide open if his skull wasn’t so damned thick.
Andrei locked the door from the inside and shut it before he flew down the hall.
If anyone broke open that door before Marxus had a chance to wake up, then he would be doomed, but Andrei couldn’t leave Jesse alone. He couldn’t let him die! He’d left Jesse alone! He had to get to him!
Andrei made it back to the foyer where he’d battled the vampires to defend Marxus. He made a tenuous jump, avoiding the stairs altogether as he came to a landing over the railing on the second floor. His legs burned from the running and jumping, but the shouting and screaming got louder as he ran down the hall, back to his bedroom. He rounded the corner, his eyes adjusting immediately to the bodies on the floor and the vampires holding Jesse down, one of them punching him in the gut multiple times.
Andrei roared, flying at the vampire, catching him by the back of the neck before he could react and twisting hard and fast until he both heard and felt the snapping noise that meant he was dead.
The second vampire had more time to react to him, and before the body of the first assassin hit the ground, Andrei felt the sting of a knife striking at the scales on his stomach multiple times.
The vampire moved like lightning and was just as strong. Some of those blows with the knife penetrated his scales. Luckily, Andrei was still standing, and he still had his wits about him.
He struck his hand out hard and fast, his claws stabbing into the throat of the masked figure.
The assassin stopped stabbing him, choosing to instead spend the last seconds of his life clawing at his throat, trying desperately to stop the bleeding.
And Andrei watched with a grim satisfaction as the vampire went down, collapsing onto his knees first, his strength slowly leaving him as he fell onto his chest on the carpet.
A dark pool of blood spread from the body. A
ndrei ignored that, and the pain of the fresh wounds in his body, as he focused down on Jesse.
Jesse, whose eyes were wide open, staring lifelessly up at him.
Andrei was a frost dragon, but in that moment, he’d never felt more cold.
The vampires hadn’t been punching him in the stomach. They’d been stabbing him, killing him.
Andrei’s heart slammed. His knees immediately lost their strength as he fell into the spreading pool of vampire blood. Horror and disbelief paralyzed him, made his body tremble uncontrollably.
“N-no,” he croaked, reaching out, trying to touch Jesse, but he couldn’t seem to reach the man.
As if there was something holding him back.
Whatever invisible chains those were, he broke them. Reaching for Jesse’s body and grabbing on tight, he pulled the omega into his arms. He wasn’t yet cold.
“No, no, come on. You are not dead. Please…”
Andrei felt Jesse’s throat for a pulse, but he detected nothing there, and the pain and desperation already building within Andrei’s body multiplied a thousand times.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, his heart shattering, and he didn’t even know why.
He was the one who’d said he would give nothing to Jesse. He was the one who’d said he would never care for another person ever again.
They had only ever slept with each other once. That shouldn’t have been enough to rip his chest open like this and crush his heart.
The way it had been crushed when he’d been forced to watch Mandy’s life force leave her body and wait until she turned gray and stiff before the vampires released him.
When it was too late to even try the blood ritual.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Andrei choked on the words. Wet heat slid down his cheeks, and he couldn’t stop it. It didn’t even feel as if he was crying but more as if he’d lost something important to him.
Again.
He could try the blood ritual.
The thought struck him like a desperate hope that screamed for his attention.
Andrei shook his head, and he sobbed. He couldn’t contain it. “Jesse isn’t my mate.”
