by Kim Fox
“It’s never safe,” Cali answered as she watched the two dragons disappear into the night sky. The light blue one was carrying a lion who looked dead, but it was the red dragon who had caught her eye.
He circled back to see me.
Her heart fluttered as she imagined the man hiding inside the dragon. Was he a handsome shifter who would finally free her from this dreaded tower? Probably not, but it was nice to think about. There wasn’t much to do up here but tell herself nice stories like that.
“What did you see?” Anna asked. She was sitting on the old couch with Katrina, knitting a lopsided looking sweater.
“Dragons,” Cali answered as she walked over with a tingling sensation in her body. “Have you ever seen a red dragon?”
Anna thought about it for a minute and then shook her head. “No, but I haven’t seen much but the inside of this tower. Berinon never lets me leave.”
“What about a light blue one, or a lion?” she asked, intensely curious about the strange trio she had just seen outside.
Anna had been here the longest out of the three of them, but even she hadn’t been here too long. About ten years in total, or five years longer than Cali and her mother had been.
“I don’t know,” Anna said, shaking her head nervously. “Mary and Clara always knew that kind of stuff. They were here for centuries and knew it all.”
Cali glanced at her mother who quickly tried to change the subject. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said with her voice racing as she grabbed a roll of yarn from the basket. “Probably just old friends or family coming to visit. They probably tripped the alarms when they came in to say hi. That’s it. Just friends is all. Now come sit down and help me with this hat.”
Cali took a deep breath and held it as she watched her poor mother trying to knit with her shaky hands.
The past five years had been hard on her mother, it had been hard on her too, but the past few weeks had been even worst.
Mary was the first to die. She was walking around the tower and talking normally one minute, and the next, she had just shriveled up like a corpse. It had all happened so fast. She just kind of imploded with her skin melting off and her bones collapsing into dust.
Cali could still remember it in every gruesome detail. She could still hear the horrible sound of her mother, Anna, and Clara screaming after it happened. Clara had thought that it was because Mary’s mate Jarin had died and the centuries of immortality had caught up to the human woman in a single moment.
A week later, Clara had died next, joining her in the same gruesome way.
Cali’s mother Katrina had been putting on a brave face, but she knew that her mom had been rocked to the core. She tossed and turned at night, and even woke up screaming a few times.
Anna had said it was a shame, but Cali wasn’t so sure. The two women had spent centuries locked in this tower and she couldn’t help but feel that they were in a better place now. They were finally free.
“I’m sure you’re right, Mom,” Cali said, smiling at her mother as she sat down beside her, helping her with the yarn.
They sat in silence, sewing hats that they would never use until the alarm turned off and the castle was plunged into silence once again.
Cali thought of the red dragon and the way he looked at her and couldn’t help but feel a flutter of hope.
Stop. Please stop.
Hope was a dangerous thing in this tower. Hope made the long boring days torturous. It made them unbearable.
Mary was the first to warn them about that when they had arrived.
“Don’t think you’ll escape,” she warned in a serious tone. “Don’t think you’ll be rescued. It will destroy your soul.” She took the fourteen-year-old Cali to the window and pointed to the tall trees in the distance. “Be like the trees. They sit there for ages, not hoping, not dreaming, not thinking, not praying. They just sit and sit and sit, becoming one with time. That’s how you must be young girl if you are to survive this life. The dragons are more powerful than you can imagine and there’s no hope for you.”
At the time, Cali didn’t understand what she had meant, but she was starting to understand it now. She would be here until she was old and gray and lucky enough to die. Her mother on the other hand… Her poor mother was doomed with immortality and would still be here long after Cali’s body returned to the earth.
And it was all Cali’s fault.
She still felt guilty every time she thought about it. When she was fourteen, she had begged her mother to take her to the mall so she could spend her babysitting money on some new clothes. Katrina had just finished a long shift at the hospital and wanted nothing more than her pajamas, a glass of wine, and the television, but Cali was always a stubborn child, and she eventually got her way.
The shopping went fine, but when they were walking back to the car, a black stretch limousine stopped in front of them and the most handsome man that Cali had ever seen stepped out, smiling like a movie star.
Her single mother had been instantly attracted to the rich stranger and the eye contact between them had been intense. The man, who Cali later learned was named Terrowin, was watching her mother when his body stiffened and his eyes turned black. Cali didn’t understand what had happened, but it changed everything. Shortly after, her mother had accepted his offer for a ride and they were in the back of the limo.
They arrived at the castle an hour later, and that was the last time that Cali had been outside. They were locked in this horrible tower with three other women, and they hadn’t been allowed to leave since.
Mary had explained everything to them. About the dragons, the immortality, the hopelessness of their situation.
It was a nightmare, and it would never have happened if Cali hadn’t begged her mother to take her to the mall. It was all her fault.
“I like it,” Cali whispered as her mother held up the misshapen hat.
Her mother laughed. “Now all we need is to find a deformed head to fit it on.” She sighed as she tossed it onto the pile with the others. “I’m afraid I’ll never be good at knitting.”
You’ll have centuries to practice. The cruel words almost slipped past Cali’s tongue, but she pulled them back in time. It was never a good idea to remind any of them of the inevitable.
Cali watched as her mother started a new one, but her thoughts were not on the hat, they were on the red dragon who had been flying outside the window.
I hope he comes back.
Cali didn’t know why, but she did. The sight of him was bringing something back—something she hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.
She was lost in thought when her mother’s voice finally broke through. “Cali!” she shouted.
“Huh?”
Both her mother and Anna giggled as she shook out of her daze. “I swear Cali,” her mother said as she shook her head and laughed. “You are such a space cadet sometimes.”
Cali smiled, relieved to see the women laughing. They had been so stressed out lately.
“She gets it from you,” Anna teased.
“She does not,” her mother said with a chuckle. “I have no idea where you get it from, Caliburnus Payne, but it definitely isn’t from me.”
Caliburnus smiled and handed her mother the yarn.
Chapter 4
Draven
“It has to be somewhere else,” Aleida said, pacing around the camp after they had returned from the long flight. “Maybe hidden somewhere in our father’s study or somewhere else in the crypt? We didn’t have time to search the whole thing. Maybe it was by Grandfather’s tomb, or—”
“Aleida,” Draven said, interrupting her with a soft voice. “It’s over.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head as she tried to hold herself together. “It has to be there. It has to be.”
Her shoulders slumped forward as she covered her face with her hands. Gunner wrapped his arms around her and swallowed her in a hug as she started crying.
His lion had recovered
on the long flight home and he was feeling a lot better but was still in some significant pain.
“We came all this way and it was just a fairy tale,” she said as she dug her face into Gunner’s comforting chest. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know, Aleida,” Draven said as he took a deep breath and looked out at the horizon. “It was a long shot but we tried our best. It just didn’t go our way.”
Aleida pulled away from Gunner’s embrace and took a deep breath, composing herself as she rubbed the tears out of her eyes. “So, what now?”
Gunner grimaced in pain as he shuffled over to the log beside the firepit and sat down, holding his broken ribs that were still healing.
“There’s not much more we can do here,” he said softly. “We go home. Right, D?”
The couple looked at Draven for answers that he didn’t have. They should go back home, but going back home was the last thing on his mind.
How could he return home after seeing the beautiful girl in the window? She had been on his mind the entire flight back, and even now, all he could think about was returning to her no matter how dangerous it was. He was absolutely mesmerized by her gorgeous amber hair and sparkling green eyes.
He needed to learn more about her.
“I think it’s time to go back,” Aleida said with a nod. Draven knew how hard it must have been for her to admit that. She desperately wanted to believe that Caliburnus existed. And who could blame her? Her brothers were invincible without it.
“Okay,” Draven said, nodding reluctantly. “We go home. We can set up a defense with the other shifters in Colwood and hope our brothers don’t attack all at the same time. Maybe we have a chance to win if we fight them one at a time. We beat Jarin, right?”
Gunner sighed. “I think that’s our best choice.”
“No swords, no prophecies,” Draven said. “We do this the old-fashioned way. Tooth and claw.”
Aleida swallowed hard as she listened. “They won’t come alone,” she said, looking worried. “The three of them will attack as a group.”
Draven ran a hand through his red hair and huffed out a breath. “Then we fight them as a group. We have a mated dragon on our side too, remember?”
Aleida forced out a smile. “We should let Gunner heal throughout the night.”
“I’m fine,” Gunner grunted, grimacing in pain as he spoke.
“You’ll be fine after a night’s rest,” Draven said. “We can leave first thing in the morning. They don’t know where we are so we’ll be fine resting here for a few hours. It’s supposed to be an overcast tomorrow. We’ll be able to fly home over the clouds.”
Gunner stood up to protest, but his thick legs wobbled and he fell back down on his ass with a grunt.
“Come, my love,” Aleida whispered, offering her hand. “Let’s get some rest.”
The proud lion shifter glanced at her hand with a tight expression on his hard face, which softened when he looked up into her eyes. “Okay,” he muttered as he slid his hand into hers. “I would have been fine.”
“Yes, we all know you’re very tough,” she said with a playful roll of her eyes. “Come cuddle with me.”
Draven watched with envy as the happy couple disappeared into the tent leaving him all alone.
His mind immediately darted back to the girl in the tower, wondering if she was sleeping, wondering if she was okay.
I can’t leave without seeing her again.
Draven knew that if he returned home without talking to her, he would spend the next few centuries thinking about her and coming back to this moment in his mind—wishing he had acted differently. Wishing that he had gone to see her once again.
He watched the dark clouds coming in as he waited for the soft murmurs coming from Gunner and Aleida’s tent to stop.
An hour later, when he was convinced that they were sleeping, he crept down the side of the mountain and phased into his dragon.
With his excited heart pounding and his nerve endings tingling, he took the sky to return to the castle.
Draven’s breath quickened as his dragon approached the tower over the cover of the dark clouds. He dipped in and out of them, eying the Northern Tower where he had seen the girl.
The light was off in the room, and she was probably asleep. It was close to morning and he had to act fast before the sun came up and blew his cover. His brothers would be on the lookout for any dragons who were stupid enough to invade, and he wasn’t in the mood to face them again. Not without his younger sister to bail him out again.
Draven surveyed the castle from up high, trying to catch a glimpse of his brothers, any dragons, or guards patrolling the area. He spotted three. One guard was smoking a cigarette by the Southern wall and the other two were staring at their phones.
All right, he told his dragon. This has to be fast and quiet.
He needed perfect timing to pull off the difficult move, but he was willing to risk it to get another glimpse of her.
Draven pulled his red dragon up and then dove for the tower, tucking his wings in as the dragon plummeted like a rocket. He aimed for the tiny window that had no balcony—just a tiny ledge that he could hold onto.
Three. Two. He counted off as he rocketed closer. At one, he spread out his wings, abruptly stopping his fall, and pulled in his dragon.
The phase was instant and in the next split second, he was free falling down in his human form, waving his arms as he fell hard and fast toward the ground.
He reached out—timing it perfectly—and grabbed onto the small stone ledge, grunting as the momentum of the fall slammed his body into the wall of the tower.
His heart was pounding in his chest as he looked down past his dangling naked body to the ground below. He was so high up and a fall from here probably would have killed him. In the least, it would have hurt him enough that he couldn’t escape.
With a deep breath, he pulled himself up and looked in through the open window. There were five cots lined up against the wall but there were only three women sleeping inside. The room was bare with only a few pieces of furniture and a television that looked like it was from the eighties.
The hair on his arms raised as he watched one of the bodies move. She had the same amber hair splayed on the pillow that had caught his eye in the first place.
A warm shiver rippled through his body as her head turned on the pillow and faced him. Her eyes were open and she gasped when she saw him, flying up into a seating position.
“Shhhh,” Draven said, raising his finger to his lips. “It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you.”
Her eyes were wide and she glanced back at the two other sleeping bodies as she clutched her blankets to her chest, looking scared and unsure.
“I’m here to help,” he whispered. “Are you trapped in here?”
She stared at him for a long time as she held her breath, looking unsure if she could trust him. Eventually, she nodded, and Draven let out a breath of relief. He desperately wanted to talk to her, and if she would have screamed he would have had to push off the tower, phase back into his dragon, and fly away.
“Come here,” he whispered, waving her over.
Her green eyes were piercing his soul. Even in the darkness, they looked so bright. She was utterly stunning and he didn’t care if he was about to be captured and tortured, this moment was worth all of that.
She glanced back at the two other women one last time and then crept out of her bed and tiptoed over.
Draven didn’t dare blink as she came. She was wearing baby-doll pajamas with nothing covering her slim legs and delicate feet. He tried to keep his eyes off her body as he hung there. It was bad enough that he was totally naked as he was creeping outside her window—he didn’t have to have a hard cock too.
“Who are you?” she whispered as she came closer. She stopped out of his reach and crossed her arms, looking at him skeptically. “What are you doing here?”
Draven didn’t want to lie to her, bu
t the truth was complicated. What was he supposed to say? That he was here to find a magic sword or that he was here to kill his brothers?
“I just… I had to see you again,” he said, staring at her in awe.
“You’re the red dragon,” she whispered as she stared back at him. “From before.”
Draven nodded. “They’re keeping you locked in here? How long have you been here?”
She swallowed nervously as she glanced down at the floor. “Five years.”
“Five years?” he said with a gasp. “Are you…” He couldn’t finish the horrible thought, but she just stared at him, not knowing what he was referring too. “Did any of them bond with you?”
He didn’t know what he was going to do if she said yes. Burning the whole castle down in a fit of rage would have been a start…
“No,” she said shyly as she wrapped her arms around her chest, holding herself tight. “But Terrowin bonded with my mother.”
Draven followed her eyes as she glanced back at one of the women sleeping behind her. He let out a breath of relief, suddenly filled with a giddy lightness. She wasn’t mated to any of his brothers. She could still be his…
“He took me when he bonded to my mother,” she said, biting her bottom lip nervously as she turned back to him. “I guess we were a package deal.”
He stared into her beautiful eyes, willing his inner dragon to bond to her. This was the girl for him. He just knew it. Centuries and centuries of existence and he had never felt a moment like this. He knew in his heart and soul that she would be the one to ignite his dragon core and be with him for the rest of his days.
Come on… she’s right there.
But there was no spark that set off the bond. No shock and darkening of his eyes. Just the two of them—standing there as vulnerable strangers.
“Come with me,” he said, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. “I’ll take you out of here.”
She leaned forward with a willingness in her eyes, but she shook her head after a moment of contemplation. “Not without my mother and Anna. I can’t go without them.”
