Oh, My Dragon

by Lani Lynn Vale

  She grimaced back.

  “I sure do hope he remembers we’re getting married in a week. He better not get himself tangled up in work.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m sure that’s not on the top of his list of priorities at this point,” I replied. “Are you ready?”

  At least I hoped not.

  “Do you want to go ahead and start with the kids?” she asked. “My kids, and Leyland’s, are over there. We can just do us at first, and work him in once he gets past whatever it is that’s making him yell.”

  I agreed, but surreptitiously tossed a look over my shoulder to where Ian had stopped next to a tree to watch.

  He was fine, and he smiled, despite knowing I was checking up on him.

  But I couldn’t help it.

  The man was mine, and that’s what good girlfriends did, right?

  I’m okay.

  I bit my lip.

  You better be, Mister. You also have a lot of explainin’ to do.

  His lips quirked up into a small smile before I turned around and got back to work.

  I started taking pictures, and it wasn’t until about forty-five minutes into the session that Leyland finally joined in the shoot.

  I didn’t comment when he stiffly joined in, and it wasn’t until I said something funny that he finally cracked a smile.

  Things after that were about as smooth as they could be with Ian watching my every move, and I would’ve said they were even enjoyable.

  “All right,” I told the bride, Candace. “These will be done by next weekend, tops. If I get them done earlier, I’ll upload the finals to my website and you can download them from the site directly to your computer. Is there a certain shot you want me to work on first?”

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she stopped when her groom butted in. “One with the kids,” he said. “All of us together.”

  I nodded my head, a small smile overtaking my face.

  “I can do that. I’ll tag you on Facebook with it, and likely another closer to the end of the week. Sound good?” I asked the two of them.

  One of their kids, the smaller ones that looked to be about four, screamed shrilly.

  “Mommy, a dragon!” he cried out.

  I looked up and nearly grinned when I saw Mace, obviously enjoying the hell out of the attention he was garnering from all the patrons in the Dallas Memorial Park, flying low for all to see.

  “What is that about?” I muttered to Ian, who’d come up behind me.

  “He’s a showoff sometimes,” he said. “And he could shield himself, but dragons are popular among this park since it’s close to The Heart. They’re spotted around here often.”

  “Ahh,” I murmured, just as much enthralled with him flying around as the rest of the patrons were. “He looks like he’s flying kind of low. Does he normally do that?”

  Ian was about to reply when Mace suddenly banked hard right, causing everyone to gasp.

  That’s when we saw the first hook attached to a rope come flying out of the air from behind a large boulder.

  Then another, and another.

  Ian went from completely relaxed to wired in a little over ten seconds.

  Chapter 16

  Wink’s moods don’t just ‘swing.’ They pivot, twirl, thrash, and swivel.

  -Ian’s secret thoughts

  Ian

  Shield!

  One second Mace was flying in the air for all to see, and the next he wasn’t.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was cut short when something came sailing toward me next.

  Using my own ability to shield through Mace, I cursed and dropped to the ground, taking Wink with me.

  “Don’t. Move,” I ordered softly. “The shield works best when you don’t move or talk.”

  She stared at me like I was crazy, almost as if to say ‘then why are you talking?’

  Grinning, I chanced a look up and saw a man walking toward us.

  “That’s him,” I whispered. “That’s the guy. The one that can hide his aura.”

  “What guy?” she asked just barely loud enough so I could hear it, looking around as she tried to figure out who I was talking to.

  “She doesn’t see me,” the man said. “Only you can.”

  I stiffened and moved until Wink could move.

  “Who are you?” I asked stiffly, trying to put Wink behind me at the same time as I was trying to stand and project my voice away from where I was actually standing.

  The man watched me move, as if he could see through the veil.

  I knew he couldn’t see me. He was talking to me, but his eyes were watching to the right of me.

  So, although he had a vague idea of where I was at, he wouldn’t be able to get us as long as we stayed quiet and moved slowly to the left of where we’d been.

  “Tell Keifer that he’s been warned,” the man said.

  I squeezed Wink’s hand.

  Stop. Stay.

  She stayed, and I could tell she wasn’t very happy to be staying where I left her.

  Complain she did not. Happy she was not. Obedient she was. For once.

  Once I was far enough away, I urged her in the opposite direction I was standing in.

  Good girl. Keep moving toward Mace and I’ll meet you there.

  She lifted her lip in a silent snarl, then started to back away, using the chaos of the crowd making their way to the parking lot as a cover as she moved.

  “Why would I warn Keifer? I don’t even know what to warn him about,” I replied, then moved two giant strides in the opposite direction.

  I probably looked like a dumbass as I moved in such an erratic pattern, but I didn’t know who this guy was from Adam. I wasn’t going to give him a voice tag of where I was so he could use whatever powers I knew he had on me.

  The man’s eyes narrowed on the spot I used to be in, and then he subtly lifted his right hand.

  I could feel it—energy of some sort—as it passed me.

  It felt like a gust of wind as it moved in the direction I’d once been in, and I knew my instincts that told me to move were right.

  Take a picture of him.

  I didn’t wait around for him to tell me anything more. I wouldn’t be stupid and wait around while he did God knew what to me.

  Keifer wasn’t the only person I had to worry about anymore. He wasn’t the most important thing in my life. Wink was.

  “Keifer is my…” the man whipped his head around, staring narrow eyed in the direction of Mace and Wink.

  I picked up a large boulder off the ground, one that was used as decoration for the ugly water attraction that Wink had used as a backdrop for a few of her pictures, hefted its weight in my hand, and launched it at the man.

  It wasn’t a light throw, either.

  In fact, I’d put everything I had in that throw.

  And the man fucking caught it.

  Right out of the air.

  Then launched it right back at me with twice the force and three times the speed.

  I had just enough time to lift my hand to block the rock from hitting me directly in the face, and pain shot through my entire arm.

  So much pain that it doubled me over and stole my breath.

  Bone crunched, and blood started to flow from the wound of the rock’s collision with my arm. It took everything I had to keep myself upright as I moved in a hunched over position toward Wink.

  Mace, being the awesome creature he was, moved toward me, intercepting me about halfway and lifting me onto his back.

  “Go,” I coughed.

  Mace went, and the last thing I saw before the pain of my crushed arm stole my ability to stay aware was the man watching us go.

  With a mother fucking smile on his face.

  ***

  “What’d he look like?” Keifer sat back in his office chair and kicked his feet up, resting them on the edge of his huge black wooden desk
.

  My eyes flickered around the room, taking in Derek with his stoic, disbelieving eyes. Jean Luc—who was there, but not really there.

  That, likely, had a lot to do with my sister.

  My sister who, when I’d talked to her on the phone earlier about her house, had made mention of Jean Luc not just once, but over ten times.

  Then there was Nikolai and his wife, Brooklyn, who was sitting on his lap.

  Blythe was sitting on the desk next to Keifer’s feet, watching me warily, waiting for me to speak.

  “Tall. Black hair that hung down around past his eyes. Green eyes. Olive complexion. Scar on his right cheek,” Wink rattled off. “He was like a Keanu Reeves lookalike.”

  Keifer grunted.

  “What could he do?” Blythe asked, rocking back and forth from one foot to another.

  I lifted up my newly healed arm—thanks to my woman—and pointed at it. “Strength. Echo fucking location. I don’t know. He could guesstimate where we were standing even when I had my shield up.”

  “Fuck me,” Keifer growled. “Nikolai, any luck with the photo?”

  “I’m trying to sharpen the image, but until I can do that, all it looks like to me is Keanu Reeves,” Nikolai replied.

  Blythe snorted as did Nikolai’s woman.

  “That’s not helping, brother,” Keifer retorted.

  Suddenly, Brooklyn jumped up from her husband’s lap, clapping loudly, and bringing everyone’s attention to her.

  “That’s the guy…” Brooklyn’s face bunched as she thought. “That’s the guy from the cabin, I think. I don’t remember a lot, but I remember him. His face. And from what I’m getting when you project the info at me…it’s his voice that I remember the most.”

  In conjunction with my own powers, Nikolai and Brooklyn were able to figure out that I could project the memories I gathered from the things that I touched—and saw—to their minds.

  We hadn’t figured out how to project them to others besides them yet, but in time, I believed we would figure it out.

  “That’s all I got,” she grumbled.

  “And that doesn’t help me,” I agreed. “I’ve been spending the last few months trying to learn whatever I can about that man. I even took Wink to the cabin to see if she could get anything that I wasn’t able to myself.”

  “I wasn’t able to see anything that he didn’t see,” she looked at Brooklyn guiltily. “And I didn’t even see his face. Only a hint of what he might look like.”

  I patted her back.

  “She understands,” I said softly.

  Brooklyn nodded.

  “Nothing that happened to me in there isn’t already common knowledge,” Brooklyn shared. “Go ahead and share if you feel you need to.”

  I squeezed Wink’s hip, and she looked at me.

  “That man…,” she swallowed. “I only got impressions of him. Feelings, the same as Ian. We’re only able to go with what you are saying about the man’s appearance. Do you mind if we touch you?”

  “Kinky,” Nikolai drawled.

  Brooklyn thumped Nikolai in the chest with her hand, then walked over and placed her hand out, waiting for us both to touch it.

  I grabbed her wrist while Wink grabbed her hand.

  “What you’re going to want to do is think about the memory,” I instructed. “Otherwise everything we get off you will be whatever happens to be up first. And it could take years.”

  Brooklyn snorted, but closed her eyes and concentrated.

  At first I only got tiny trickles.

  Dragon riders and their mates were inherently good shielders. They could hide what they didn’t want to be common knowledge without actively doing so.

  Which was why at first I was only getting trickles.

  “Nikolai,” I opened my eyes. “If you don’t mind, will you touch her? I need her shields to come down to allow us to access what she’s trying to show us.”

  “Now it’s really getting kinky,” Nikolai teased.

  My brows lifted when he stood, but he didn’t touch her anywhere. He wrapped her up in his arms and buried his face into her neck.

  The moment his skin was touching hers, all of Brooklyn’s walls came down, and her world swirled and merged into ours.

  ***

  My head started to pound as my body became more aware of the pain I was in.

  However, my attempt to use my veil had worked, and I disappeared from sight only moments later.

  Rolling to my feet, I gritted my teeth against the pain in my arm and moved to the door, freezing when a man stopped in front of it, blocking my exit.

  The man was tall with dark black hair, a scar that ran the length of his jaw, and a wiry whipcord look to him. Almost as if he was a runner—a runner who didn’t eat enough before he worked his ass off.

  “She’s around here somewhere,” the man said. “You need to get up off your ass and find her.”

  That was directed towards my brother. Stupid asshole.

  I was happy to see him still writhing in pain on the ground, almost gleeful in fact.

  “Seriously?” the man asked. “What do I pay you for?”

  Josiah grimaced in pain and lifted his knees up under his torso before pushing up to his haunches.

  “Kill her,” he said gravely. “Fucking kill her. She’s ruined my life; she doesn’t deserve to live.”

  How in the hell had I ruined his life?

  I took a step backward and stepped wrong, bumping the small table at my side.

  My hand automatically went out to stop the lamp from falling, but it was the one that had been broken upon my arrival, meaning I screamed.

  Letting the lamp drop to the ground, I limped, slightly hunched over, to the side of the room, directly behind where my brother had managed to get to his feet, albeit pitifully.

  My brother looked around the room frantically, almost as if he was waiting for me to bean him over the head any second.

  And, technically, I would have…if I had something to use.

  I wasn’t sure I could lift anything at this moment in time.

  Instead, I sank down to my butt, letting my back slide against the wall until my backside met the cool tiled floor.

  “Listen, Robert,” Josiah said, a slight wheeze in his voice. “She’s not going to leave. Not with knowing who all is here. Let’s just get the good stuff started. She’ll show herself when she sees what we’re doing. She’s a nurse. Don’t they take oaths or something?”

  I gritted my teeth and let my head fall down to my knees, my broken arm dangling uselessly at my side.

  “Fine,” ugly Robert said. “I’ve got my stuff right here. I’ll take the geis off of him; you can see how to do it for next time.”

  My eyes widened in shock as they walked over to Merrick and picked him up by the arms, half dragging, half carrying him to the kitchen table that was only a few feet from my face.

  ***

  “Robert,” I said. “His name is Robert?”

  “Who’s Merrick?” Wink asked.

  Brooklyn stiffened and Nikolai patted her cheek.

  “Merrick is the man who tried to kidnap me,” Brooklyn swallowed. “That little snippet that you just saw was actually Robert—the man you saw in the park—taking the geis off of Merrick. The problem with that is that the geis was tied to his life force.”

  “And he died?” Wink asked in confusion.

  Brooklyn’s eyes flicked to mine once before returning to Wink’s.

  “No, Ian was able to save him.”

  “Then where’s he at?” Wink asked.

  “That…is a very good fucking question,” Keifer joined the party. “One that I’d love to know the answer to.”

  I picked up a paperweight off of Keifer’s desk, tossing it into my other hand as I watched Keifer.

  Then froze as my world, for the second time in five minutes, warped.

  And when I finally came to, nothing was the s
ame.

  Chapter 17

  A wise man once said, ‘Fuck this shit’ and lived happily ever after.

  -Ian’s secret thoughts

  Ian

  “This is the last time you go anywhere without a trio of guards on your ass,” I informed her bluntly. “I almost made a fatal mistake today, and I knew beforehand that I should be careful. I don’t know what made me say yes, but it definitely has something to do with the way you shoved your vagina in my face when you asked me if you could do the session.”

  She giggled, rolling over until her face was buried in my arm.

  “I don’t remember that being a problem at the time,” she murmured.

  I could tell she was now looking at me, her eyes studying my face.

  “You picked something up today while you were at Keifer’s.”

  I nodded my head. “I did.”

  “What was it?” she whispered.

  “Farrow.”

  “What about Farrow?” she persisted.

  I swallowed.

  “Farrow’s not so good anymore,” I said through parched lips. “What I saw today, if it’s true…it could be bad.”

  She sat up and I could feel her breathing on my face.

  “What did you see,” she asked again, poking me in the chest and booking no room for argument.

  I sighed and pulled her completely on top of me, wrapping my arms around her back and timing my breaths to hers.

  She felt so good against my chest.

  So good.

  Nothing would make what I was about to say any easier, but I had to say it.

  Had to get it off my chest.

  “I only saw enough to really suspect,” I cleared my throat. “But if what I suspect is true, then Keifer’s going to flip his lid.”

  She poked me in the ribs, and I chuckled.

  My erection, never one to go down when she was near me, jerked against her.

  She wiggled, but said or did nothing more as she waited for me to finish.

  I squeezed her hips.

  “Farrow is selling secrets.”

  “Selling what kind of secrets?” she growled. “If you don’t give me the whole damn story, I’m going over to Keifer’s house, walking inside, and heading straight for that paperweight.”