Aeran & Rhys (Dragon Hearts 7)

by Carole Mortimer

  But it still hadn’t been quick enough for Rhys, and several times, he had attempted to take his mate from his brother’s arms, only to receive a growl and a warning slash of long talons. Having now shifted back to their human forms, Aeran was still refusing to relinquish his hold on Cristina, much to Rhys’s increasing—and obvious—fury.

  “Well, obviously it is,” Rhys snapped now. “And as the eldest of the two of us, I claim the right—”

  “We’ve both been alive for sixteen hundred years, and you’re only two hours older than I am, so fuck off.” Aeran glowered at him. “Cristina is mine.” His arms tightened about her.

  “Like hell she is!”

  “I don’t care if you are my brother, I’m going to rip your fucking throat out—”

  “Would you both please calm down,” Grigor soothed. “Deryk is the one who has been liaising with the Russian dragons, learning their history, etc. We need to talk to him and see if this has happened before.”

  “And how long is that going to take?” Rhys demanded to know. “My dragon and I want Cristina now, not after some fucking history lesson!”

  Grigor’s nostrils flared in warning. He wasn’t the biggest of the dragon shifter brothers, but he was certainly one of the fiercest. “You know it doesn’t work that way. Cristina will be the one to choose whether she wants to mate with either or both of you.”

  Cristina had been feigning unconsciousness for some time now. Mainly because she couldn’t believe what was she had seen and was now hearing.

  Maybe Aeran or Rhys had given her some sort of hallucinogenic drug before leaving London, because she couldn’t really have flown here in the arms of a dragon.

  Could she?

  Wherever “here” was, because Cristina had no idea where these two men—dragons?—had brought her. Only that there were now three men. A very brief glance between her lids had shown her that the third man, Grigor, was just as dangerous-looking as the other two.

  He also had similar facial features, which made him yet another Pendragon brother?

  Grigor’s expression was much more austere than either of the other two men, his dark eyes gleaming with a calculated intelligence that Cristina knew instinctively would make him a formidable adversary.

  Whoever he was, Cristina was in complete agreement with him: She would choose whether or not she mated with either Aeran or Rhys, and as far as she was concerned she didn’t want either or both of them.

  And what the hell was all this talk about dragon shifters?

  She liked to read raunchy romance novels, and she’d read more than her fair share of shifter novels, some of them about super-sexy dragons. But they were fiction. An erotic fairy tale that got her juices flowing and her imagination running riot.

  Fantasies she had needed in her life, when her father was overprotective to the point she never went out on dates, and was never left alone with a man long enough to enter into a physical relationship. Even during her time of backpacking round Europe, she had been aware of her father’s men following and watching her. She had even caught those two bodyguards ordering a couple of men to back off when they tried to get too close to her in a nightclub one evening.

  Consequently, unlike most of her contemporaries, Cristina was still a virgin at the age of twenty-one. The thought of one of these huge men—assuming that everything was in proportion to their height and size—being her first lover was terrifying. She might be tall for a woman, but her body was slender. One of these men attempting to make love to her would rip her apart, both of them would kill her.

  Besides which, the conversation she’d overheard showed that this whole family was stark staring mad!

  “I don’t want either of them,” she stated firmly as she pulled herself from Aeran’s arms before standing. Which was when she realized she was wearing a black T-shirt over her nightclothes. Rhys’s black T-shirt she had refused to put on earlier? Considering Rhys was completely bare-chested, that would be a good supposition.

  These bloody men, whoever the hell they were, had taken absolutely no notice of her earlier refusal, and dressed her in the black T-shirt before fly—bringing her here.

  “Nor do I want this!” She took hold of the bottom of the T-shirt and pulled it over her head before throwing it down on the floor.

  “Put that back on!” Rhys bit out between gritted teeth. “Now!”

  Cristina’s chin rose in challenge. “Go swivel on it.”

  “Go—” Rhys’s eyes darkened. “What did I tell you earlier about being disrespectful to me?” His voice had lowered to a dangerous growl.

  “When you do something to earn my respect, then maybe I’ll think about giving it to you,” she came back icily.

  “You’ll think about it?” Rhys repeated softly. “Little girl, you are asking for that spanking I promised you.”

  “Go to hell,” she scorned before turning to the other two men in the room.

  Aeran was now also standing, his gaze admiring rather than censorious.

  Grigor’s expression was much harder to read, although Cristina thought she saw a grudging respect in those dark eyes. “I’m Grigor Pendragon, older brother to these two.” He swept a scathing glance over Aeran and Rhys.

  Cristina nodded terse acknowledgment of the introduction. “Where am I, and how do I get out of here?”

  “You are going nowhere, especially dressed like that!” Predictably, Rhys was the one to threaten her.

  Okay, so maybe her camisole top and boy shorts weren’t exactly what she would have chosen to wear in the company of three complete strangers—strange being the appropriate word—but it was all she had with her after being brought here while she was unconscious. She definitely wasn’t wearing Rhys’s T-shirt again. That was way too intimate for comfort. Besides, it smelled just like him. Pure predatory male with an underlying musk.

  Her chin rose. “I’ll wear what I want, when I want. And if you hadn’t come bursting in in the middle of the night before carrying me off to God knows where, then I wouldn’t be dressed like this right now!”

  “When you are my mate, I will ensure you are covered from head to toe at all times other than when we are in bed together!”

  Cristina rolled her eyes. “My God, you’re like something out of the Stone Age.”

  “I’m worse,” Rhys assured her without apology.

  “You—”

  “What the hell is all the shouting about?”

  Make that four strangers, Cristina corrected as a fourth man entered the room. A blond-haired and golden-eyed Adonis so much like the other men in features that surely— Wait a minute; no one had gold-colored eyes. It just wasn’t possible.

  Except this man did.

  Come to think of it, if these men were brothers, and their similarity in looks said they had to be related, then how did they all have such different-colored eyes? Aeran’s were a soft amethyst. Rhys’s aquamarine. Grigor’s so dark a brown, they almost looked black. And now this fourth man had eyes the color of molten gold.

  Had she bumped her head and somehow entered a parallel universe?

  Or maybe the tension and worry of the past few days had finally gotten to her and she really was hallucinating?

  Or stuck in a nightmare?

  Yes, that had to be it. She was really still asleep in her father’s apartment, and none of these men really existed. Although where the hell she had imagined them from, she had no idea. Never, not even in her wildest fantasies, had she ever imagined men like these four.

  “Who does the beauty long to?” the newcomer enquired mildly.

  “She’s mine,” Rhys rasped possessively.

  “Mine,” Aeran bit out just as proprietarily.

  “I don’t belong to either one of you,” Cristina snapped. “And will you please all get out of my nightmare so I can fall back into a restful sleep?”

  Aeran could totally understand why Cristina thought she was still asleep. The Pendragon brothers, even if she had met only half of them so far, were
an overwhelming lot at the best of times. All of them were six and a half feet tall, with huge and muscular bodies. With him and Rhys arguing over whose mate Cristina was, the danger level in the room had risen exponentially.

  He gave a wince. “I’m afraid to tell you, for your sake, not ours, but this is no dream, Cristina.” Aeran couldn’t regret the fact, ever, that he had at last found his fated mate. Quite what was happening with Rhys claiming she was also his mate was still something of a dilemma. Dilemma? It was a fucking catastrophe.

  He and Rhys didn’t get on at the best of times. They were too different, in their temperament as well as their take on the world.

  Aeran might have been alive for the same sixteen hundred years as all his brothers but he had adapted and learned from each century he lived through, and he was now very much a twenty-first-century man with the technological accomplishments to go with it.

  Rhys, on the other hand, was still very much the warrior he had always been. He also spent a lot of his time alone working for their company, Pendragon Security. Nor did he care for any of the twenty-first-century conveniences or technology.

  How could two such different men, and both dragon shifters, possibly have the same mate?

  And yet, the more time that passed, it became apparent that was exactly what was happening.

  Cristina, for her part, didn’t seem to want either of them. “You’re telling me all this is for real?”

  “Yes.” Grigor was the one to answer her.

  Cristina had gone so white that even her lips were pale. “Including that my— Cezar is dead?”

  “Cristina…” Aeran stepped forward.

  “Is he dead?” She ignored him and concentrated on Rhys, obviously already knowing he would tell her the unsugarcoated truth.

  “Yes.”

  She swallowed. “You’re sure?”

  “Very,” he bit out with a satisfaction he didn’t try to hide.

  “You stupid…” Aeran only just reached Cristina in time as she would have stumbled and fallen. “That’s it. I’m taking her up to my suite of rooms,” he announced as he gathered her up in his arms and marched toward the door.

  The roar behind him was the only warning Aeran had before he felt the pain of dragon talons raking down the length of his back followed by the hot rush of blood down his skin.

  “Mine!” Rhys bellowed in his dragon voice.

  “Rhys, no!” Both Grigor and Deryk rushed forward to restrain their brother.

  Aeran kept on walking, his body hunched forward protectively over his mate.

  He didn’t need to see the injuries to his back to know they were savage. But they would also heal quickly and without scars. It was a part of his dragon shifter DNA.

  The damage done by the attack to an already precarious relationship with Rhys would take longer to repair.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Rhys didn’t answer Grigor as he continued to rage against the hold his two brothers had on his arms. He was still filled with the red haze of jealousy at having watched Aeran leave the room carrying his mate.

  Their mate?

  Rhys still had no idea how such a thing was possible, but the fact Aeran was prepared to defend Cristina with his life, if necessary, showed that he believed her to be his mate too.

  He looked at Grigor and Deryk through the haze of that murderous rage. “Is it possible she’s really mate to both of us?”

  “I believe she has to be, yes,” Grigor confirmed grimly before turning to Deryk. “Has this ever happened to any of the Russian dragons?”

  Deryk frowned. “As you know, the Mikhailov brothers are all currently unmated, but I believe there was a great uncle, many centuries ago, who was involved in a mating of three.”

  “How did that even work?” Rhys snapped.

  Deryk leveled a narrow-eyed glare at him. “By compromise and understanding. Two qualities you’ve just demonstrated you know absolutely nothing about.”

  Rhys was starting to feel somewhat calmer now that Cristina was no longer in the room and her scent wasn’t saturating his senses. He was still unhappy that Aeran had taken her up to his suite of rooms, but the blood lust he’d felt previously was starting to fade.

  “We’ve been a family for sixteen hundred years, Rhys. Yes, we’ve had our disagreements, but never on a physical level.” Grigor added his own words of censure. “You just attacked your own brother.”

  The tension between Rhys and Aeran had been deepening during recent months, and Rhys couldn’t help wondering if this wasn’t the reason why. Perhaps, subconsciously, they had known something like this was going to happen.

  Whatever the reason, it seemed he and Aeran would have to come to some form of compromise if they were to persuade Cristina into becoming their mate.

  The dragon inside him roared merely at the thought of sharing Cristina.

  “Why is he like that?” Cristina swung her legs to the floor on the couch where Aeran had placed her, this time in a stone-walled but comfortably furnished sitting room.

  “Rhys?” Aeran shrugged. “You were probably in the right vicinity when you called him Neanderthal Man. Rhys is…set in his ways. I suppose we all are to some extent,” he added thoughtfully.

  Cristina gave a snort. “And I suppose that’s because you’ve all been alive for sixteen hundred years?”

  Aeran studied her through narrowed lids. Their mate was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but there was also an intelligence in those dark gray eyes. A steeliness he hadn’t realized was there. “You weren’t unconscious earlier.”

  “No,” she confirmed without apology as she stood to walk over to the window. “Oh my God… Is this an actual castle?” She turned wide eyes back to Aeran.

  He nodded. “Pendragon Castle in North Wales.”

  “Pendragon, the same as your name, right? And you and your brothers all believe you’re dragon shifters?”

  She had balls too, Aeran admired ruefully. In spades.

  Unfortunately, if Rhys was as desperate to mate with her as Aeran was, then he had a feeling Cristina was going to need every ounce of that steeliness and courage over the next few days.

  Chapter 4

  “No, I haven’t mated her. I wouldn’t do that until we know what’s going on,” Aeran informed his brother stiffly after letting Rhys into his sitting room and seeing the way his brother looked about the otherwise empty room before sniffing the air. “She’s in the bathroom taking a shower.”

  Rhys listened for the sound of the water running before nodding tersely. “I…wish to apologize. For my behavior earlier.” His gaze didn’t quite meet Aeran’s.

  Aeran flexed his back and shoulders. “Already healed.”

  “Nevertheless, I shouldn’t have attacked you in that way. I—Deryk seems to be of the opinion that Cristina is indeed mate to both of us.”

  That was what Aeran had been afraid of. Even though a part of him had already known it was the truth. Rhys’s possessive behavior was too like his own for it to be anything else.

  He sat down abruptly. “How the hell is that even supposed to work? We take her to our beds on alternate nights?” The thought of that made Aeran feel ill. Now that he had found her, he didn’t want to be parted from Cristina for even a second, let alone allow her to go to Rhys’s bed on alternate nights.

  “Deryk says no.” Rhys still wouldn’t look at him. “For the mating, at least, we would both have to be present and inside Cristina at the same time when we give her the mating bite on the back of her neck—”

  “No!” Aeran stood up again, too restless to remain seated. “For fuck’s sake… She’s human. Taking the two of us at the same time would probably kill her!” Every instinct in his body protested against hurting Cristina. Ever. “I’ll step back, let you have her, rather than ever risk hurting her.” He had no choice if he cared for Cristina at all. And he already cared for her too much to ever allow any harm to come to her. From him or anyone else.

&n
bsp; Rhys did look at him now, respect in his eyes rather than animosity. “You’ll die if you don’t mate now that you’ve found her.”

  Aeran sighed heavily. The euphoria he’d felt earlier at finally finding his mate, had turned to dust in his mouth now that he knew it was indeed possible for her to be Rhys’s mate too. “Then I’d rather die than hurt Cristina.”

  Rhys’s frown was pained. “That isn’t going to happen.”

  Aeran gave a humorless laugh. “I don’t think I asked or need your permission to decide what to do with my own life.”

  “Actually, you do.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  His brother shrugged. “As you know, Deryk has been compiling a history of the Russian dragons, along with our own. Making comparisons between the born Russian dragons and the made Pendragon ones.”

  The Pendragon brothers had all been born on the invisible island of Annwn, off the coast of Wales, where the Welsh Underworld resided. Their mothers had all been Welsh goddesses and their father human. At the age of thirty-five, the brothers had come into their dragon shifter powers and left Annwn in order to aid and fight for their brother, the King Arthur of legend.

  “The three Russian dragons that mated were originally two men who were later joined by a female,” Rhys continued his explanation. “They were locked into a ménage à trois that would have killed all of them if the bond was ever broken.”

  Aeran shook his head. “We haven’t started the mating yet. There’s been no exchange of bodily fluids.” Even a kiss, the giving of dragon shifter’s aphrodisiac in his saliva, could begin the mating. Much as Aeran might have wanted to kiss Cristina these past few hours, he hadn’t done so. And he hadn’t allowed Rhys close enough to kiss her either.

  “Apparently, it doesn’t work the same way in a ménage à trois.” Rhys grimaced. “Simply finding the third in the mating starts the process. It’s unstoppable, Aeran. Deryk believes if we don’t complete the mating, claim Cristina together, then all three of us are going to die in three weeks.”

  It was a quirk in the Pendragon dragons’ mating, ordained by their Welsh goddess mothers. Once the female mate had taken some of the mating aphrodisiac into her body, present in the dragon shifter’s saliva or semen, they then had three weeks to complete the mating with the claiming bite to the nape, making an exchange of blood and saliva, or they would both die.