The Surprise (Secret Baby Bad Boy Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  The white swiped at him longside again, and he dodged it again. She was small, and she was young, and she was terribly fast. But she wasn't fast enough to overcome the age difference, the experience difference. Alex had escaped more chases than the white had ever been in, and she wasn't smart enough to outfox him, no matter what she might have thought or wanted.

  A thermal caught him under his wings and pulled the green upward, and Alex had a long view of the mountain. He tried to guess where the cave system was. Where Diana's meager roost was. There were so many conflicting things running through his head all at once.

  She couldn't smell the magic. She couldn't have ignored it, if she could. There was no way that she simply failed to interpret, or that she'd smelled it without realizing. She hadn't smelled it, and that was wrong from the word go. It was downright impossible.

  On the other hand, she had a roost. She had a horde, as meager as it was. She was barely twenty years old, though. At that age, he'd barely gotten himself started.

  He ducked down lower. Lower still. He spread his wings, turned to avoid the white like a bullfighter, only to catch a blow from the black. The pair of them streaked to the ground in a tangle, and for an instant, he was afraid that Diana was entirely lost to them. She slipped out of his hands, twisted and tumbled, and from a hundred feet, there was no way. Not for a human.

  She screamed the whole way down. It tore at him, and he fought to free himself from the black's jaws, but it was futile. He'd gotten the point of his beak lodged into the massive bulk of Aleroth's shoulder. Short of letting him pull the arm right off, he wasn't going to be freed quickly and easily. They slapped into the ground hard, and Alex's mind raced.

  Thinking about humans, about their well-being, about how they might survive, was all too human. He'd been that way for a long time, now, and there wasn't any way that he could go back and pretend that he wasn't all of a sudden.

  The scream cut off an instant before he thumped into the ground. He told himself that it was because she'd been falling straight down, while they were at an angle. Regardless of the fact that the black was committed to pulling him to the ground, their wings still caught the wind, pulling them this way and that, tangling. That slowed them down.

  He hit the ground with a dull thump, and immediately forced the thoughts out of his head. Aleroth couldn't afford to let himself get killed. He'd already lost enough the past week. After a thousand years, he ought to have been used to loss. He'd lost and won several dozen fortunes. Political boundaries had shifted so quickly that friendships seemed to be made and lost in an instant. Alliances made and then broken as soon as the ink was dry on the paper.

  But nothing could change how he was feeling, and the sadness was only going to make his life harder. So instead, he did what he had to do. He forced himself to ignore it, forced himself to forget the sadness, and let the anger burn hot. It came easily, even to the lizard brain. He felt the fury screaming out of him, and turned his claws on the black.

  The feeling of scales slipping aside under his claws to reveal soft, sensitive flesh wasn't one he'd experienced in a very, very long time. But it wasn't something that he was afraid of feeling again if he had to, either. The black had just caused him to lose something very important, and the revenge was going to be sweet and complete. Then he would turn, he would take the white, and then it would be time to leave.

  Time was on his side. The red was older than he, and that meant he was smarter, he was stronger, and he no doubt had better resources. At the same time, Alex had spent the past twenty-five years tying a hand behind his back. The entire time, waiting for someone to come along and put him out of his misery.

  Now, though, things were different. If it were just about him, then that would have been one thing, but it wasn't. They'd not only put Diana in danger, they'd downright killed her. Unacceptable.

  He bit down hard on the white's neck. Red blood stained the glistening, shining scales and it started to flail, screaming out its death. The notes lost their musical quality as it started to panic and throw itself harder and harder at him, hoping to take him with it.

  But it was young, and it was inexperienced, and it was weak. Alex had been young, once. He'd been weak, once. But that was a long time ago. If anything, now he was too strong. Strong enough that for twenty-five years, he'd paid the price for that. There was a part of him that thought everything that had happened this past week was just paying penance for what he and Keleth had done, all that time ago.

  But he’d paid enough, now. No more.

  33

  No matter how tired he already felt, Alex wasn't done yet. So he only allowed himself a momentary rest. Cyanora had been a fool for throwing herself into the fray against an opponent she couldn't beat. When she'd done it, he couldn't understand why.

  That, at least, had changed. He could throw himself at the giant red without a moment's hesitation, now. But it wasn't wise. He would just have thrown his life away for nothing.

  The white circled above, looking down on the land. She seemed to be the more cautious of the two; perhaps that was what had allowed Alex to escape her so many times on the flight over. A lack of commitment on her part.

  He surged upward, the feeling of air under his wings a good feeling. He'd missed a great many things, but this was one of the strongest. The feeling of strength, of being exactly where he needed to be. He didn't need to think. He could get by just reacting, now.

  Off in the distance, a thunder clap dropped out of a dry, empty sky. Alex hoped that he was wrong. Hoped that the fight would end in a standstill, and that the female blue would get away. But he was afraid that wasn't very likely.

  There was no time for him to think about that, though. He narrowly avoided the diving white as she came down out of the sky, spotting him and heading towards him with her talons outstretched, like a bird of prey.

  He whirled and avoided it, and then caught her tail as it whipped past in one of his claws and pulled hard. The momentum went wild and she let out a scream of pain. Then Aleroth pulled, scrabbled the white up in his arms, and began a death-dive. He hurried it along with his wings. Hard towards the ground. As hard as anything. Just like Diana had experienced, he thought bitterly.

  Barely a foot off the ground he pulled himself up at the last moment. The white, though, tangled up on herself, wasn't so lucky. She landed hard on the rocky soil, and a nasty 'pop' echoed through the forest.

  Alex killed his momentum by letting his feet drag behind, through the earth. A hundred yards later, he turned and sped back. The white was slow getting up, and he took advantage of her weakness.

  His teeth dug in and his neck gave a mighty whip, and another pop released. Her wing hung uselessly, now. She was grounded, and she was going to stay grounded.

  The violence that had welled up in him came to a head; there was nothing to stop him. No reason, not any more. After all, the only thing he'd been avoiding it this long for was that he had something he needed to protect. Bigger concerns than taking out his vengeance on anything and everything.

  But she was gone, now. The black had ripped her right from his hands, and in spite of himself, he'd let her fall.

  The blood started out as a spray that ran across his green scales. The red stood out against them, but he didn't care. He dug in and stained the white with her own blood until she was the same color as her master. Then he let out another primal roar. It had been a long time since he'd let himself go like that. But the time to leave was long since past. If he was going to get away from the red, even for a moment, he needed to get gone.

  They'd come here for safety. And it was safety he was going to claim for himself, no matter how badly things had gone. He needed time to heal up. Time to make a plan. Time to make the red pay. Time to think about what this was all about.

  The trees around were tight. Too tight for a creature his size. He forced himself back into the little flesh-form of Alex Blume, and then started to move. His feet stung with the pine needles that stuc
k out at odd angles across the forest floor, but he ignored them and ran. Two miles up the mountain, and a mile to the east, maybe. He could cross that distance in fifteen minutes, on a good day. There, he'd find the cave structure.

  With Diana gone, it would leave little more than remnants of the power that had kept it sealed, but those remnants would be enough. It would give him the time he needed and that, in turn, would give him the chance to hit back. He was through pretending that he could just grieve for an old friend, pretending that none of it mattered. But he wasn't through running, not yet.

  Thunder clapped off in the distance and something roared, loud and powerful. Alex was breathing hard by the time that he made it to the place he was going. He had been wrong about the distance. It was five miles, not three. But he'd made it, and he'd made good time doing it. There was no reason to hold anything back for later, and he was too angry besides.

  The front door was easy to find. Better that than taking the hole in the roof, he thought. But it was locked. He put his shoulder into it. Diana had a key, but there was no keyhole here. Just a heavy wooden door that wouldn't budge for anything less than a truly hard hit. He soured, not daring to imagine what that could mean.

  There was another entrance, a few hundred yards up the mountain. He'd be able to get in that way, the same as he had last time. He crossed it in a matter of seconds and dropped in, hoping that he'd been able to get there fast enough that the red wouldn't have found him yet.

  Once he was inside, he moved out of the open-roofed library quickly. The soil was drier today, compared to before, but it was nice inside. Warm, maybe even hot.

  He frowned. That was wrong. He stepped through the door and into the hall. It was lit with electric lights, as it had been the day before. The doors were all closed, as they had been the day before. He took the door to the front room. It was empty. Same as it had always been, as far as he could tell, except for the evidence that once, someone had stocked it with things.

  Except that there were two big differences from how it had been the day before. First, there was a fire lit in the brazier. It was high and hot and must have led to some kind of chimney but he couldn't begin to guess where it might have let out. The second change was a heavy oaken bar across the door, stuffed into a pair of heavy steel brackets. It could only have been put there from inside, and then only if that someone hadn't left again.

  He frowned, turned, and re-examined the room. Again, he decided that it was empty. There was no doubt about that. Then he went back to the library. Empty and unchanged, except where someone had pulled away half of a shelf and a dozen or so books lay on the floor in a big heap.

  He looked at them for a long moment and then tried the third door in the hall. The one that Diana had hidden behind before.

  It was locked. He put his shoulder into it and this time it opened, despite its best efforts. The lights were on this time, and that was why it was very easy to see a positively tiny red drake collapsed in the middle of the floor.

  34

  Diana's body hurt. She'd never hurt so bad in all of her life, and that was including some very unpleasant episodes with people who she should have known better than to get involved with. There was one thing, though, that kept running through her head, over and over again.

  She should have been dead. She'd watched herself fall, like it was from far away. But she never left her body. She screamed the whole way down, and imagined how much it was going to hurt. But when the time had come for her to die, she was far away. Someone else was terrified. Someone else was screaming. She was watching it happen like a movie reel was playing, and she was just watching it in a comfortable, warm movie theater.

  The ground hurt. It hurt so bad that she passed out entirely, and when she woke up it still hurt so bad that she thought she ought to have been passed out even still. But she didn't. She just wanted to go home. The cabin had burned down, and her apartment was so far away. But the cave? The cave was right there.

  She crawled on her hands and knees part of the way, stood and walked part of the way. Her body felt off. Wrong. But she didn't know what to think about it and sure as hell didn't care. She just walked and hoped. Off in the distance, she heard the sound of dragons roaring, a few miles away. But she ignored those sounds. There were more important things to worry about. Things like how she was going to get the hell out of here without getting herself killed, for one.

  She found the cave the way she'd left it. Hidden a little, behind a copse of trees. The log of one of them fallen, blocked the path so she had to walk around it. But that wasn't so bad. After all, the walk had been long already, and a dozen more steps was hardly a big deal.

  She barred the door behind her. There were people on this mountain. People she had to be afraid of. Maybe things would be fine, but Diana knew instinctively that there was no way Alex would leave her if he could have stopped it. She'd survived by some kind of freak accident, and that was good, but he would have saved her for sure, if the option were open to him.

  The fact that he hadn't was all the proof she needed that he couldn't save her. Probably couldn't save anyone. That was fine. She understood it, at least, and that was as much as she could ask for under the circumstances.

  If he wanted in, then he would get in somehow. Anyone else who wanted in, she'd put as many obstacles between herself and them as she could manage. Then she slogged the distance between the door and her room feeling like she might still just about die after all. The pain receded, though, as she moved. In its place was a feeling of absolute lethargy. Every step was so hard.

  With a fall like that, if she'd somehow survived, she was almost certainly concussed. She was in extreme shock and running on adrenaline. Falling asleep was as good as dying right on the spot, regardless of whether there was someone with her or not. But if there wasn't, that would be even worse.

  But there was a reason that people knew all about it; they knew because people have trouble staying awake. And most people had slightly less damage than she had. Car accidents where the seat belt caught around their chest was common, for example. As opposed to 'flying at a speed near mach one and then being dropped from the height of a city block.' That seemed extreme.

  She laid down in the middle of the room. It was so tiring. She just wanted to sleep. She was supposed to be dead already; if she didn't wake up again, it would be like a net-zero. If she did, then she'd feel better. At least, she hoped so. She'd better feel good.

  Diana closed her eyes, and laid her head down in the soft soil and let herself fall asleep. There wasn't any stopping it, after all. She might as well just accept it. Enjoy it for what it was.

  Something in the blackness of a sleep that might have been death stirred and made a noise. Diana wanted it to go away. She was here in her place, surrounded by her books. Feeling comfortable. There was nothing to worry about here. She rolled away from the door. Her body was heavy, but it didn't matter. She was still asleep, for the most part. Nothing to worry about.

  A voice called out, in her sleep. "Diana?"

  She ignored it. She was good at ignoring things she didn't want to hear. Alex would have been welcome any other time, but she was too tired for him right now. Maybe later. She'd been sleeping so much, but she just needed another hour, maybe two. Then she'd be alright again. The cool felt so good, too. Once she got up, she'd have to face something else. The rest of the world, she guessed. The dangers that were waiting outside for her. There were so many.

  His voice was closer when he spoke again. More insistent. "Diana, is that you?"

  Couldn't he see her? That was a stupid question. Of course she was her. If he'd said, 'can you hear me,' or 'are you alright,' it would have made sense. But she was obviously herself. She was just sleeping. She wasn't even bundled up in her blankets. She thought for a minute about rolling over and telling him all of this. Or any of it at all. But that would mean admitting that she was awake. It would mean getting up.

  That would mean facing the world of stupid d
ragons and their stupid, petty fights. She'd have to try to avoid getting herself killed, which wasn't even possible.

  So she stayed silent longer, just curled herself up a little tighter, stretched one long leg out and let herself lay. Go away, she thought. Hoped that he'd hear her with the same telepathy that they'd used before. But she knew he wouldn't.

  "Diana," he insisted again. "Look at me."

  She stood up. Her legs wobbled under her, but she did. She felt wrong and tired and everything felt strange. But she was awake, with everything that brought with it.

  "What," she said. The words came out wrong. Odd. Alex didn't seem surprised by it.

  "You need to look in a mirror," he said simply. She made a dismissive wave at the wall switch, and Alex turned and flipped it. The lights came on, searing into her eyes. It hurt. Everything hurt. She needed to go back to sleep, but she was up now, and she was going to have to deal with that. In a little while, she hoped, she would feel better. More able to deal with the world around her.

  She looked into the big mirror over her armoire, and a dragon looked back. A red dragon, small. If Alex was the size of an SUV, the red dragon in the mirror couldn't have been larger than a sports car. She moved her head, and it moved its head.

  "What did you do to me," she asked. But she already knew the answer to that question. He hadn't done anything. Someone else had, when she was born. Twenty-one years ago.

  35

  Diana fought to restrain her anger, but it was a losing battle, and she knew it. "What did you do to me?"

  She was angry at everything. Angry at him, for dropping her. Angry at her father, for not explaining any of this when he was apparently so tightly interwoven. Angry at everyone who had put her into this tiny box where she was apparently never going to get out of, and now she was in the wrong body and it hurt bad. Everything felt like it might be broken and she wanted nothing more than to stop moving. Maybe make her way to a hospital. Not like this, though.