by Wolf Specter
As I hit the freeway entrance, I pressed my foot down on the gas, disgusted with my own weakness. It would have been faster to shift and let my wings carry me away, but I knew if I put my dragon in control now he would never let me leave our mate.
I would have to go beyond my own territory if I had any hope of staying away from Wesley when everything in me wanted to be by his side. I headed east, toward the one dragon I considered a true friend. Maksim wouldn’t approve of what I’d done, but I trusted that I could rely on centuries of friendship to find a safe haven with him for a while. Hopefully it would be far enough to keep me from going back and letting my other self finish what I’d already started.
Or worse, selfishly use Wesley for my own pleasure up until the day my dragon ripped the hatchling from his swollen belly.
“Dane?” Maksim asked incredulously when he answered my knock.
Despite our history, I could feel flames rising within me as my dragon instinctively reacted to the proximity of another. The beast had already been fighting against me for the last day and a half. Now, denied our mate and surrounded by the scent of another’s territory, he clawed for release. It took a lifetime of control to keep my rippling body in my human form, and I watched in admiration as Maks seemed to hold himself together effortlessly despite my unexpected intrusion.
He hadn’t always had such control.
I’d met Maks centuries ago, before his dragon first awoke. At first, I’d thought he was human, and I’d been drawn to him without realizing why. He’d become the first real friend I’d allowed myself since discovering what I really was, and despite the territorial nature of our dragons, we’d remained close throughout the years.
When Maksim was born, his sire had fostered him with a human couple. In the way of our kind, he’d used his dragon’s power to compel them to care for the hatchling as if Maks had been their own. The couple had lived on the edge of my territory, and when the wily old dragon had slipped past my borders to deposit his child I’d been too inexperienced to recognize what the unfamiliar pressure in my mind meant. By the time he came back to collect his son, though, I’d learned to recognize the feel of another dragon and my other self had taken over, instinctively rising to meet the intruder and defend our territory.
“Nyet, youngling,” the silver dragon had scoffed at me when I’d shifted and flown to intercept him. “I come to claim my own, not fight you for your lands.”
My dragon hadn’t cared why he was there, only that another beast had dared set wing in my territory. I’d roared, flame jetting out in warning, but then I’d felt it — another dragon. And not just any dragon, to my shock the second one felt familiar: Maks.
I’d turned on a wingtip, ignoring the silver dragon that I’d considered a threat just a moment before and racing toward the scene of my friend’s transition. By the time I’d arrived, Maks had already shifted. His dragon hide was white, with just a touch of his sire’s silver, and as I’d flown toward him he’d been putting his human family at risk, thrashing about in terror and confusion. He kept jerking up off the ground and then falling back onto his haunches as his new body tried to sort out how to use itself, and fire spewed from his jaws in random, uncontrolled bursts as his spiked tail swept a path of destruction behind him.
I remembered exactly how that had felt, and my heart went out to him.
I dove toward him, spreading my wings to act as a shield for the small group of humans huddled in fear at his feet. I’d known only too well that his sire would encourage him to kill them, a way of ensuring that he cut all ties to his humanity and embraced the ways of dragonkind. Even if I hadn’t made it my mission to protect the humans living in my territory, I would have wanted to save my friend that pain.
“I didn’t expect to find you so far west,” I said now, as I finally calmed my other self enough to speak. “Last I heard you were in Nova Scotia.”
He laughed and threw an arm around me, welcoming me with genuine warmth. “Dane, it’s been too long. I came inland decades ago.” He stepped back, inviting me into his home with a sweep of his other arm and then leading me toward the back of the house.
“But… Wisconsin?” I asked incredulously. It was still within his territory, but not by much. And— “The suburbs? Why would you want to live—”
My mouth snapped closed in surprise at the sight of a human who looked very much at home in Maks’ kitchen. Other than Maks, I’d never let myself get close to the people in my life. It was too short-lived. Too painful, in the end. I’d certainly never lived with one. But in many ways, Maks was a braver dragon than I.
“Summers are nice here, and so are the men,” my friend answered with a shrug, patting the guy on the ass as he walked past him. “It’s wonderful to see you, Dane, but I can tell this isn’t a social visit.” He glanced down at my clenched fists, and I knew he could sense my dragon still fighting to get out. “Come out back and tell me why you’re here.”
I followed, collapsing into a patio chair next to his sunny little garden. It all looked so… normal. So human. I felt a pang of envy, for a split second imagining a home like this, with my Wesley in the kitchen…
I ran a hand over my close cropped hair and huffed out a breath, not sure what to say now that I was here. I pushed the thought of what I couldn’t have aside with a determined effort, ignoring the faint, ever-present sense of my mate that had lingered in my mind since the night I’d found him. I knew if I gave it my attention, it would flare into a burning need, tempting me to shift into my other form and race back to claim him the fastest way possible.
Maks waited patiently through my silence, but no matter how I presented it, he wasn’t going to like what I said. I might as well just tell him.
“My dragon found a mate.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head, overwhelmed by a surge of guilt. And longing. Wesley. “I thought that if it ever happened, I’d be able to resist, but…”
Maks narrowed his eyes. “Dane, tell me you didn’t.”
I could read the betrayal on his face, and I didn’t blame him for taking it personally.
When Maks had first shifted, he’d still been more human than beast, despite his new form. He’d trusted me, and together we’d driven his sire out of my territory, all the way to the eastern border of France.
The silver dragon had been furious about the loss of his heir, but to our relief he’d left us alone for years. The blink of an eye, in dragon time, but long enough that I’d been able to teach Maks what I knew about how to control his own killing nature. His sire hadn’t forgotten us, though, and the old beast was bitter about what his son had become: in his eyes, weak, and a disgrace to dragonkind.
He sent word when he’d managed to father another child, taunting my friend with the message of his plans for the hatchling.
Maks had blamed himself.
Mating for dragons was rare, and his sire wouldn’t have fathered another child for hundreds of years, if ever, had he been able to shape Maks’ destiny the way he’d intended. My friend wanted to find the child and save his new sibling, and he wanted me to help. We both knew that his sire would raise the babe to believe that it was his right to use, manipulate, and even kill humans for his own pleasure and convenience. It was the way of our kind.
Maks and I had been young — we still were, by dragon standards — and since we’d both rejected the beasts who would have mentored us, we’d learned most of what we knew about our natures through trial and error. Which meant there was much we didn’t know. It was foolish, if not outright dangerous, to go against a dragon as old as Maks’ sire — but neither one of us had been able to bear the thought of not trying.
We’d gone looking for him, flying high and fast past the territories held by other dragons and then boldly entering the cold, Russian empire that Maks’ sire claimed as his own. We were two avenging angels, naively thinking we could make a difference.
“What have you done?” Maks had cried in horror when our dragon sense finally led us t
o his sire.
The old dragon had felt us coming, of course. He knew about our “weakness” for humans, and as a testament to his cruelty he’d made sure that we found him just as he was taking the hatchling from the man he’d mated. We’d seen it happen as we flew in, and as soon as I was close enough I’d shifted into my human form and cradled the eviscerated corpse at the silver dragon’s feet.
When Maks first asked me to come, I’d argued against it. It was my fault that we’d been too late to save him.
Maks’ sire had laughed at our distress, holding up the very human-looking baby as my friend dove in to attack him. Of course Maks had pulled up, not willing to risk harming the fragile boy-child held possessively in his sire’s bloody claws.
“There’s really no other way to remove the hatchling. You can see that humans are just too frail, even if there were another way for the child to come out. He could barely handle carrying it this long,” he’d said dismissively, flicking bored eyes toward the emaciated body of his mate in my arms. “Don’t fret about that one. Humans are plentiful. Weak creatures. Expendable, but useful.”
I knew that my coming here was stirring up the memories for Maks, too.
We’d been too late to save the human, and too inexperienced to save his brother. His sire had gotten what he wanted, and eventually, the vindictive beast had driven us out of my territory completely, inciting war among the humans I’d vowed to protect until I finally surrendered, abandoning all of Europe in the hopes of allowing them peace. We’d fled here, to this continent that had only the faintest of dragon scent far to the north.
And Maks and I had both vowed never to mate.
“My dragon was stronger than I expected,” I told him now, and even though it was the truth it sounded like a weak excuse, even to my own ears.
Maks stood up abruptly, knocking his chair over and walking away from me. His control was slipping, and I watched as his body rippled and shifted. “What will you do?” he asked without looking at me. “How can you make this right?”
“I can’t,” I admitted, ashamed, not just because of what I’d done, but because of what I still wanted to do. “He took my dragon’s seed. The only thing I can do for him now is stay away.”
“That won’t save him, Dane.”
“I know.” I clenched my fists, hating what I was. Hating the dragon I’d been unable to conquer. Hating the child that even now was growing inside my mate, destined to kill him.
But most of all, hating that now that I’d found Wesley, I couldn’t have him.
5
~ Wesley ~
Dane was gone when I woke up.
Even before I opened my eyes, I knew. That strange heat that had filled me from the moment he’d first looked at me was gone, too. I shivered, even tucked under my blankets. It was the end of summer, and there was no reason I should feel as cold as I did.
If not for the tender ache between my cheeks and the sticky residue that I washed off in the shower, I would almost believe it had just been a dream.
When Tyler stopped by later that afternoon, I could see him casually checking the place out, but Dane had left no sign of himself in the apartment. There was no note, nothing was out of place, not even his scent lingered.
Once my brother had satisfied himself that we were alone, he headed into my kitchen to root around in my fridge as usual. I heard the refrigerator door open, and then the microwave hum, and eventually he came back out into the living room with a reheated plate of lasagna.
“You okay?” he asked with his mouth full.
I was still tired, and I unapologetically took up the whole couch, laying lengthwise with one of the decorative pillows he liked to tease me about clutched against my chest.
“Yeah,” I lied. I was still cold, and Dane’s absence left me feeling strangely empty in a way that wouldn’t count as “okay” even if I’d felt like trying to explain it. “But seriously — can you eat that at the table? At least pretend you’re civilized, Tee.”
“What are you, Mom?” Ty laughed, but he did as I asked. “Fuck, bro, this is good.”
“Thanks.” It was my favorite recipe, but at the moment it didn’t seem appealing. I hadn’t been able to eat anything since I woke up. Ty would have called it my typical moping-over-some-man behavior if I’d admitted it, and he would have been right. Except that nothing about my reaction to Dane felt typical.
“So… Dub, what was that all about yesterday?”
I felt my mouth twitch into something close to a smile despite myself. Ty’s plate was almost empty, and I was surprised my overprotective twin had managed to resist asking for even that long.
I tried to get away with an incoherent mumble and a shrug, but he wasn’t having it.
“Bennett knocked on my door hella early yesterday, insisting I bring him over…?” He managed to make the statement sound like a question, obviously inviting me to fill in the details.
All day, that emptiness I’d felt when I woke up to find Dane gone had kept me from thinking too hard about what had happened. Self-protective behavior, I knew. Missing someone that I’d just met sounded pathetic. Especially someone who had obviously just seen me as a quick hookup, however bizarrely intense it had felt at the time. God, the guy had barely even talked to me.
I’m claiming you.
The memory of that — and the possessive dominance with which he’d handled me — stirred my cock. I’d always liked sex, but the desperation I’d felt for Dane — and the bone liquefying satisfaction afterward — had been on a whole different level than anything I’d ever experienced before.
God, I’d begged him to fuck me.
And if I had the chance, I’d do it all over again.
Ty cleared his throat awkwardly, and I blushed, suddenly wondering how much of what I’d just been thinking had shown on my face.
“So, you like him?”
“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly sitting up. I rubbed my stomach, the question making it tremble with nervous energy. Dane had left without a word, I reminded myself. I didn’t want to like him.
As usual, my brother was like a dog with a bone. “Did you guys, uh, go somewhere after I left? Grab a coffee? Get to know each other?”
“No,” I told him bluntly. “Do you really want the blow by blow, Tee?”
My brother suddenly looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Ty had known I was gay for as long as I had. His attitude had always been one of casual acceptance and unconditional support… but nothing could make him awkward and uncomfortable faster than the thought that he might hear actual details about my sex life.
He shook his head, holding up a hand to stop me from saying anything more, then scraped his chair back and escaped into the kitchen with his empty plate. “Honestly, bro, I wasn’t trying to set you up when I took you to McNamara’s. I didn’t even know Bennett was gay,” he called out over the sound of running water. “But hey, as long as he’s got good taste, right? You gonna see him again?”
“I don’t know, Tee.” God, the butterflies in my stomach were doing somersaults now. I really didn’t want to care this much about a guy who couldn’t even leave me his number after he fucked me. Just thinking about it made me too jittery to stay on the couch. I got up, joining Tyler in the kitchen and leaning against the counter while he finished washing his dishes. “I think I’d like to,” I finally admitted. “It was… kinda weird with him, though.”
My brother looked at me sharply, and I tried to explain. “Not bad-weird, but kind of unexpected and—” I hunted for a word that would fit. “—overwhelming. The way he looked at me, and talked to me…” What was I supposed to say? I burned for him? That sounded so melodramatic.
To my surprise, Ty just nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“You do?”
“Yesterday, when you kicked me out? I kind of got that.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You felt it, didn’t you?”
“What? No! I just mean, I could see you were determined
to make me leave.”
“Shut up. You felt it. I made you feel it. Just admit it, Tyler. It’s a twin thing.”
He let out a slow breath, rubbing his temples for a second. “Fine.”
Oh. My. God. “Really?” I spluttered after a minute. “You’re actually admitting it?”
Ty grimaced.
“I want to hear you say it,” I insisted. “You felt something. From me. Through our twin-bond.”
“Maybe,” he finally muttered. Then, louder: “When you walked me to the door, there was a… moment. It reminded me of something.”
“Of what?”
“It was this weird thing that happened once in the unit. Something went wrong during a training exercise, and Bennett—”
He paused for longer than I had the patience for, obviously reliving the memory. “Bennet what, Tyler?”
“Uh, sorry. Bennett was there, and one of the guys got really messed up — remember Riley?” I shook my head, but Ty didn’t pause. “His weapon jammed, and he was hurt pretty bad. The medic was delayed. It could have been… bad. Like, he might not have made it kind of bad. But Bennett got up in his face, and he did something, I dunno, with his eyes and… his voice.”
My stomach clenched again, and I pressed my hands against it. “Could you be any more vague?” I snapped, irritated for some reason at the mention of Dane’s eyes. When they’d glowed — and didn’t that sound crazy? — it had been for me.
God. Pathetic. Now I was feeling possessive over a one-night stand?
Tyler shook his head, throwing me a lopsided grin. “Sorry. I don’t know how to explain it, Dub. It was just this weird thing. I’d almost forgotten about it, which is strange, because we were all pretty worried about Riley. He made it, though, after Bennett did whatever it was that he did. I only brought it up because when it all went down, my head felt really strange. Like something was pushing at it from the inside, and there was this weird… heat.”
