Oh, My Dragon

by Lani Lynn Vale

Ian walked in fast strides straight for Mace, practically tossing me on his back as I held on for dear life.

  The minute he was situated behind me, we were in the air, Mace pumping his large, hulking wings and taking us far, far away from that shit hole place.

  Ian buried his face into my neck while I clutched at his arms.

  My fingernails were digging into the skin of his arms, but he didn’t seem to care, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing it. Now that I was safe again, everything that had happened over the last forty-eight hours began to overwhelm me. It was all too much, and I was on the brink of losing it.

  Thoroughly.

  We’d been in the sky for less than three minutes when I felt Ian tense behind me, causing me to turn to look at him.

  And what I saw over my shoulder had me damn near falling out of the god forsaken sky.

  “Shane!” I cried. “What in the ever-loving fuck?!”

  “Shane?” Ian echoed. “His name’s not Shane. His name is Merrick Brown.”

  And that’s when everything started to fall into place.

  Chapter 22

  I’ve made it from lying on the bed to sitting up on the side of the bed. There’s no stopping me now.

  -Ian’s secret thoughts

  Ian

  I was glaring at Shane—or Merrick Brown—like he was a bug about to be squished by my boot.

  Though, if I had my choice, I would be squishing him. Slowly. With my bare hands.

  God, I could gladly rip him apart, piece by piece, until he was nothing but a pile of twitching body parts.

  Keifer finally stood, placing a tired looking Blythe down on the chair he’d previously occupied, and pointed at Merrick.

  “It’s time for you to start explaining,” Keifer growled.

  Shane looked over at Wink in apology, and then turned back to Keifer.

  “My life before y’all was normal. Met Mattie and Wink. We became good friends, and then we lived our lives. Until I turned twenty-one, that was,” Merrick sighed. “It started before I was twenty-one, actually. Dogs started showing up randomly at my house. Cats. Fucking birds and squirrels. Then, while I was out in the woods, something happened to me and I was suddenly…more.”

  “You came into your powers,” Nikolai guessed.

  Merrick’s eyes flicked to the big man who was holding his pregnant mate protectively in the curve of his arms. Once he took in the big man, he nodded, then moved his gaze back to Keifer. “Right. I came into my powers in the woods. About thirty yards away from that cabin.”

  My brows went up, surprise leeching into me.

  That cabin was becoming more and more interesting by the hour.

  “Keep going,” Keifer said with barely hidden annoyance.

  Merrick grimaced.

  “My dragon came, but it was at a price.”

  “What kind of price?” Jean Luc asked this time.

  My lips twitched at sight of him.

  He was sitting awkwardly next to Mattie, being careful not to touch her. His entire body was stiff and looked uncomfortable as hell.

  He was as close as he could get to her without actually touching her.

  And it got me to wondering…why was he trying so hard? Was he afraid of what would happen if he did and a bond showed?

  But then Merrick’s words captured my attention once again.

  “My dragon, Sascha, was already owned. The moment our bond came through, though, the previous ownership—or forced compliance on his owner’s part—was broken and he was now mine.” Merrick looked down. “Sascha hated me. Hated me with a passion, and it took me nearly ten years of trying to win him over before he finally understood the benefits of having me as his dragon rider.”

  “But…?” Derek, Keifer’s advisor and another dragon rider, asked.

  “But, what I didn’t know, at the time, was that the ownership wasn’t completely dissolved. Although Sascha thought it was, it wasn’t. Robert had just been buying time until he needed the two of us again.” He dropped his head into his hands, looking defeated. “The moment came last year, and that’s when I woke up and realized that I didn’t have any other choice but do his bidding. He planted something inside of me that forced me to his will.”

  “The geis,” I supplied for the others.

  Merrick looked at me and nodded his thanks, his eyes skittering past Wink’s hot gaze before he could truly read the anger written all over her.

  “The geis,” he confirmed. “I had no choice. Everything that I did was by force, and if I didn’t comply, my sister or my friends became targets.”

  He gave a pointed look at Wink.

  “We were never once threatened,” Wink shot back. “And since when do you have a sister?”

  “He found my sister—who I hadn’t seen since we were split up in foster care—and thought she’d do just as well as the others,” Merrick frowned. “He tortured her and her mate, but the geis kept me from doing a damn thing about it. And I’ve spent the last month trying to make everything I fucked up right again. Found my sister’s mate’s dragon, too. But…,” he hesitated. “Can one of you close off this room so what I have to say doesn’t leave this room?”

  He looked out the window nervously.

  Derek waved his hand, and my ears popped.

  “Done,” he said. “Continue.”

  Merrick stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the lawn.

  All of the dragons were out there.

  Every last one of them that was a part of the sanctuary was on the back lawn.

  It was definitely a sight to see.

  When he got his fill of what he was looking at, he turned to stare at the room as a whole.

  “He has more dragons. At least twenty of them.”

  That statement dropped like a lead balloon in the small room, and the women gasped.

  “Fucking shit,” Keifer growled. “Goddammit.”

  Merrick nodded his head.

  “And I think…,” he hesitated. “I think that one of the dragons is the mated pair to another of your dragons.”

  My heart started to pound as I remembered the conversation I’d overheard earlier between Mace and Wink.

  Wink tensed beside me, and her eyes met mine, fear clouding them.

  Wink stood up, but didn’t leave my side.

  “It’s Daya, isn’t it?”

  Merrick looked up, his eyes connecting with Wink’s for the first time since he’d arrived at our sides earlier in the day.

  “It is.”

  “But she died. Mace said so,” Wink asked in confusion.

  “She is. Almost. She’s as close as she can be without actually being dead. A pile of bones and flesh, with no will whatsoever to lift her head or try to eat,” Merrick confirmed.

  “Then how is she still alive?” Brooklyn asked.

  “He’s keeping her alive, just like he did me.”

  Wink’s head whipped around, and her eyes bored into mine.

  “If he gets her loose…if he finds a way to get her out…can you save her?”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve only ever worked on a human body before.”

  Her eyes pleaded with me.

  “But you’ll try?”

  I nodded my head slowly.

  “I’ll try.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief and retook her seat.

  “What’s his agenda?” Blythe asked. “What is he doing? What is he trying to accomplish by enslaving dragons?”

  Merrick shook his head.

  “I’ve never been able to figure out why. All I know is what he made me do, and that was help the purists. He’s not one…but he’s something.” He paused, looking torn on what he was about to say. “And I’ve seen Farrow come into the area five times over the last six weeks.”

  I stiffened.

  Keifer did as well.

  �
�And has he made contact with Robert?” Keifer asked carefully.

  Merrick shook his head.

  Before I could stop her, Wink shot to her feet.

  “He was in your office,” she blurted. “He went through your files. Took some and then left when you showed up shortly after he started looking.”

  I closed my eyes as Keifer turned his angry glare her way.

  “He what?”

  ***

  I walked behind Keifer, sure that if I didn’t he would likely kill his brother before we got any information out of him.

  “Wait, Keifer,” I grabbed his shoulder. “You need to calm down. If you go in there all hot and bothered, he’s going to clam up before you get anything out of him.”

  Keifer gave me an evil grin.

  “That’s why I brought Jean Luc.” He pointed at the other man that was walking beside me.

  I sighed and picked up the pace, determined to get to Farrow before Keifer.

  Despite what he thought, Keifer wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t get the full story first before he killed him, and I didn’t doubt, for one minute, that he wouldn’t kill him.

  Farrow may be his brother, but Keifer was the king. He had everybody’s well-being on his hands. The sacrifice of one, even if it was his brother, was better for his people.

  I let him go and raised my hands when he continued to stare at me expectantly. “Just don’t come crying to me tomorrow when you feel bad.”

  His laugh made my stomach hurt.

  Yeah, it was doubtful he would ever come to me.

  “What’s with that look?” Keifer stopped and stared at me.

  My brows rose, surprised that he would even notice a change of expression on my face.

  “Nothing. Let’s go,” I grumbled, starting the procession of people forward once again.

  Nikolai, Derek, Jean Luc, Keifer and I were all on our way to Farrow.

  Farrow lived in his old girlfriend’s apartment, and it only just occurred to me how he was living there. Apartments cost money, and Farrow wasn’t working. He’d never worked, in fact.

  “How did he afford to get this place?” I asked the group as a whole. “I looked over Wink’s rental agreement when we first got together.” When I backed out of her lease for her and paid the early termination fees. “That apartment goes for upwards of twelve hundred dollars a month. That’s a pretty penny for someone who doesn’t have a job and hasn’t had one in his entire life.”

  Keifer’s cheek clenched.

  “I’ve been wondering much the same thing for a very long time,” Keifer grumbled. “And I haven’t come up with other answers. I’d hoped by making him responsible for doing the nightly security with you that he’d catch the protector bug, but it only seems to have put him off of doing his dragon rider duties instead of wanting more.”

  That thought had occurred to me after the one and only night I’d taken him with me on my patrols. He’d been uncaring, uninterested in learning and had decided, early on during that patrol, that this just wasn’t for him. Something which he’d said to me multiple times that night.

  “He could be selling information on you to pay his rent,” I offered.

  Keifer’s eye started to twitch.

  “That would be one of the better case scenarios,” Derek mumbled to himself.

  Not quietly enough for us not to hear him, though.

  The rest of the trip to Farrow’s apartment was uneventful, and we arrived at the apartment complex within five minutes. That was the benefit of being a dragon rider, though. We could skim over the freakin’ interstates and highways, where traffic was heavy enough that it was backed up for miles, while we enjoyed the freedom of gliding over the road being able to get anywhere without having to stop.

  Though guilt had hit me when we’d gone after Farrow instead of Mace’s mate.

  I knew when Mace finally realized that I knew longer than he, that he wouldn’t forget it. Especially if something happened to her while we were working to free her.

  I thought it best not to tell him anything until we had a better idea of the situation, and it was more than apparent that Farrow knew more than he was letting on.

  Not that he’d told us anything at all.

  Which surprised me, because Farrow was usually pretty open about his dislike for all things family and dragon rider related.

  We touched down, one after the other, in the back parking lot of the apartment complex, and dismounted.

  The moment we were free of their backs, our dragons cloaked themselves and disappeared from view, even though they were all still there.

  I could see each and every one of their DNA signatures. Even Farrow’s dragon, in the back of the lot, who looked bored and wished he could be anywhere other than where he was.

  “Farrow’s dragon is here in the back corner of the lot,” Nikolai pointed.

  “How do you know?” Keifer asked absently.

  Nikolai snorted. “Heat signature, brother dear.”

  Among his other powers, Nikolai could also read heat signatures. If he wanted, he could tell us exactly how many people were in the building we were heading into.

  And, apparently, he wanted to, because the next sentence out of his mouth said as much.

  “There are twenty people in the complex, all of them but two are on the bottom floor,” Nikolai explained.

  “Are there two heat signatures in Farrow’s apartment?” Keifer questioned as we started to take the stairs.

  Derek and Jean Luc took the north set of stairs that would lead to the opposite side of the hallway, and would make sure that Farrow didn’t try to make any great escapes.

  But, it turns out, the moment we let ourselves into Farrow’s apartment, that he wouldn’t be making any great escapes. At least not with his woman there, anyway.

  A woman who I’d seen dead with my own goddamn eyes.

  ***

  Farrow looked at his brother with his eyes filled with sorrow.

  “I needed her. She’s my heart,” Farrow apologized, looking at his brother like he was ravaged by the decision he had to make.

  And I was sure that he was ravaged. Had I been in his position, and seen my own woman get killed, then I would’ve likely done absolutely anything to change that fact.

  “How?” Keifer asked in a deadly quiet tone.

  Farrow swallowed, looked over at his girlfriend—cough zombie—and licked his lips.

  “It was a…” Farrow cleared his throat.

  “Trap,” the not-so-dead-woman, Macy, finished for him. “I was killed, and he was sitting there waiting for Farrow the moment he showed.”

  “He who?” Keifer pushed.

  Farrow and Macy looked at each other, and Keifer growled with impatience. “This isn’t a time to be contemplating a lie, Farrow. What you’d done has a fucking word, and it’s called treason.”

  “According to Dragon Rider Law, treason is punishable by death. There are no excuses here. Either you are found guilty, or you’re not,” Derek growled. “And your mate suffers the same fate as you. Now would be a good time to start talking.”

  I looked over at Nikolai, whose hands had fisted at hearing what Derek had just said, and I wondered if I’d need to pull him off Derek.

  Keifer, though, was the one to surprise me.

  He looked resigned, like this was what he knew it was coming to all along.

  Farrow’s face looked ashen, as did Jean Luc’s. Jean Luc’s parents had been on the receiving end of such a punishment; not by the dragon riders, but by his mom’s people.

  See, dragon riders weren’t the only big, bad entity on the planet.

  In fact, there were a lot of fucked up things in this world. Such as the skinwalkers.

  Skinwalkers weren’t bad, per se, but it was yet to be determined if they were good, either.

  Skinwalkers were born to the powers just like we were, but where our power came to us from our dragons, theirs came f
rom sacrifices. Most didn’t use sacrifices lightly.

  If a sacrifice had to be made, they’d use already dying animals.

  In very rare instances, in only of the gravest circumstances, then they’d use healthy animals.

  It was absolutely forbidden to use a human sacrifice.

  But that’s just what Jean Luc’s parents had done when they found out that he had cancer. They’d made a human sacrifice, and they’d saved Jean Luc by helping him into not only his dragon rider powers, but also his skin walker powers.

  “She’s not my mate.” Farrow looked over to Macy. “Yet,” he added. “Robert bargained, in exchange for bringing her back to life, that I give him information on dragon riders. I gave him some bogus lore, made some stuff up, and mostly told him about my own powers. I didn’t tell him a thing about yours.”

  “What about what we saw you taking from my office?”

  “Birth certificate,” he muttered, his eyes going to Macy’s. “You need a birth certificate to get married.”

  Keifer’s jaw clenched.

  “What else?” he pushed.

  Farrow shook his head. “I gave him what I had and he’s left us alone since.”

  “And what other powers does Macy have?” Keifer stared at Macy like he was studying a bug under a microscope. “Is she fully alive? What is Robert?”

  Farrow swallowed.

  “Her heart beats,” he was quick to inform us. “But he holds her life in his hand through an artifact.”

  “Something like this?” I held up the one we’d been able to strip of its power over Wink only hours before.

  That’d been Jean Luc’s doing.

  He’d been able to use his skin walker skills to pull the charm’s ‘life force’ out and put it back into Wink. I’d watched him do the entire ritual and had been amazed while watching him work.

  Usually, he was pretty secretive when it came to his skin walker abilities. He saw them as shameful. Something his parents had given him when he’d not wanted them. It wasn’t often when he practiced them. Only under very special occasions, he’d informed us.

  Lucky for me and Wink that returning her life force to her was a ‘special occasion.’

  Farrow nodded his head enthusiastically.