“Please,” he begged, bending his head low over hers and kissing her lips again. “Please …please…please …”
His words whispered over her lips, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if the movement he felt was his own mouth or if she was responding to his kiss. Eyes open, he stared at her as he kissed her again, and he nearly jumped to his feet when he felt a gentle press back against his mouth.
“She’s still in there,” he told Percy, lifting his head up to stare at the healer. “She’s still fucking in there. Get her back. What’s happening to her?”
Astounded, Percy shook his head. “I don’t have a read on her. I’m not making it up. My price has already been paid. I have no reason to try to get out of this now. She’s not there. I see nothing from her—nothing.”
“She’s in there,” Kean insisted. “She kissed me.”
“Maybe—”
“I didn’t imagine it,” Kean snapped, anticipating the man’s next words. He turned back to the love of his life, staring down into her perfect face. “Come on, baby,” he whispered. “Prove me right. Show me how strong you are. You’re so strong. You’re stronger than anyone I know. Come back to me. Come back. Open your eyes, Dhara. Look at me. Look at me.”
Sixty seconds slid by slowly, and there was no change. Percy was getting antsy, clearly eager to have his ruined night salvaged if he could get Kean and the unfortunate Dhara out of his house. Kean had to focus every cell on not letting himself leap to his feet and strangle the man who had failed him so completely, and who, in the face of that failure, could only think of his own comfort.
He was so focused on not strangling Percy, in fact, that it took him just a few seconds too long to realize that Dhara’s eyes were slowly opening, her lashes fluttering as she tried to look around her. The first thing he heard was actually a whispered word. Just his name, slipping from her lips like a breath of salvation.
“Kean …”
He looked down at her, finding Dhara in his arms, staring up at him through hazy eyes, her lips parted and pale.
“Kean …”
“Dhara,” he whispered back, unable to believe what he was seeing. “Dhara!”
She burst into tears in his arms, and Kean clutched her to his chest, holding her so tightly that a lesser woman might have snapped in two. As she sobbed against his chest, his own tears slid down his cheeks and soaked into her hair.
They were tears of relief, of love, and of disbelief, but mostly they were tears of sheer joy. Dhara had come back to him, and he was never going to let her go again.
Chapter Forty-Two
Dhara
Dhara couldn’t explain what had happened to her, no matter how she tried, sitting in Percy’s living room, bundled up in blankets on his couch. All she could say was that she had gone to the darkest, coldest, loneliness place she had ever been, and she’d laid down there and closed her eyes and waited for it to be all over.
She had just wanted the pain and the fear to stop. But no matter how hard she tried to release, she couldn’t let go and slip away.
“It wasn’t that I heard your voice,” she told Kean, her voice still weak. “I don’t remember hearing it. But something was holding me back from leaving. Begging me just as hard to stay as the despair was begging me to go.” A shiver passed through her, and she felt as though she was somewhere else, looking down on herself as she spoke. “I can’t explain it. The whole thing…it was as lost as I’ve ever felt. As hopeless as I’ve ever felt.” She shook her head, dropping her eyes. “I…I don’t know.”
Kean sat beside her, his hand resting her knee, his eyes intent on hers. It was as though he could sense that she needed space though, and he wasn’t crowding her, however desperate he was to have her in his arms. “Do you feel any relief?”
“I don’t know,” she said, staring intently at the beds of her nails. “I don’t know. I don’t feel anything.”
Kean turned to Percy, who was keeping his distance. “Did it work? Is she okay?”
“There’s no way to know for sure,” Percy muttered, hugging his arms against himself. “That’s the thing with Disgorges. They’re tricky. And sticky. They mess with your mind.”
“This isn’t the time for Cat in the Hat rhymes,” Kean snapped at him. “Tricky and sticky or not, you have to be able to tell if it worked.”
Percy shrugged, cutting his eyes away. “Ask her what she remembers. That’ll tell you if she’s pieced back together.”
When Kean turned back to her, Dhara anticipated his question. “I remember,” she said quietly. “I remember being beaten. I remember lying in bed, starving. I remember the comments and the leers and…all of it. I remember everything. I remember the desperation.”
Tears began to fall from her eyes again, sliding down her cheeks and dripping onto the blankets that surrounded her.
“I’m not who I thought I was. I’m a broken, abused, miserable little girl, who got whitewashed into thinking she could be something.” She looked away from him, years of shame and guilt crashing down on her all at once, replacing the nothing and making her wish for it back.
Kean did pull her to him now, holding her to him so closely that she could feel his heart beating against hers. “Don’t say that,” he whispered. “You’re the same you. They may have taken away your memories and given you different ones, but when they did that, all they did was change your perception of yourself. Not who you were. They gave you a chance to forget what other people had told you that you were worth and gave you a chance to figure that out for yourself.” He tipped her chin up, looking down into her face. “And look at what you did, Madam PhD scientist, studying disease and saving the world one sick person at a time. Look at how beautiful and smart and poised and generous you are. Look at how you’ve fought through this every single step of the way. Look at your capacity to love. Look at how hard I’ve fallen for you.” He smiled gently at her, stroking her cheek. “I would give my life for you, Dhara. Because that is how much you are worth.”
His words wrapped around her battered soul, soothing it enough to allow her to lay her head against his shoulder and close her eyes. “I just feel…so empty,” she whispered. “I want to feel like me again.”
“That’s what a Disgorge is,” Percy muttered, everything about his tone and his face suggesting that she was stupid for not understanding. “When the spell is done, it creates a hole in your mind where those memories used to be, and just like a hole that’s left in your body that shouldn’t be there, it can get infected. The magic becomes corrupted and diseased. What I just did—at the expense of two years of my life, by the way—was to clear out the corruption and the disease, and now you’re just left with a hole. It’s not as big of a hole because you have a lot of your memories back, but there’s always going to be an indentation there. It’s a mental scar. Don’t expect to go hopping and skipping with joy, okay?”
As Dhara looked at the grouchy little old man, she felt pity for him instead of anger, and she considered that a good sign. Anger had been such a big part of her life over the past few weeks especially. “I’m sorry that you had to go through this with me,” she said quietly. “It must not be easy for you either. If you felt how I felt…”
“It’s the closest feeling to total despair that you’ll ever find,” Percy said, looking away. “You feel it with the person.”
“I understand why you didn’t want to help. Thank you for what you did though.”
He seemed somewhat mollified, at least enough to jerk his head in a nod at her. “Seems like you’re back to yourself then.”
“I don’t think I know who Iam anymore.”
“Well, at any rate, I think all the old magic is gone,” Percy said, shoving himself to his feet. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but…” he gestured toward the door. “Enough is enough.”
Dhara nodded at Kean, who stood and picked her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest. “You sure you’re okay enough to go?” he asked. “We’ll stay as long as
you need.”
She was still shaky inside, and her emotions were more than muddled, but she was starting to get the sense that perhaps she was rid of the forces that had been possessing her. She did feel lighter. She had felt sympathy for Percy, which she hadn’t felt before. “I’m okay,” she promised. “I’ll be okay.”
Kean nodded, then looked back at Percy. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You didn’t give me a choice.”
“And I won’t give you one again if you ever tell anyone about what happened in here tonight aboutthe dragon or the healing you just did.”
Percy glowered at him. “Like I’d want to brag. You broke my dang house, by the way.” He gestured at several dents in the walls and the floors. “What about that, huh?”
“I’ll make sure you’re compensated for all of it,” Kean promised him. “The damage and your services. Compensated well.”
Dhara almost smiled when Percy’s face suddenly lit up with interest, whereas before it had been a lined mass of bitterness. It was nice to see the man’s bushy eyebrows perk up instead of hanging over his eyes like lifeless caterpillars. “Goodbye, Percy,” Dhara said, as Kean carried her toward the door.
They slipped into the night, darkness fully settled in the wee hours of the morning. As Kean walked with her, Dhara looked up into his perfect, handsome, rugged face and rubbed her cheek against his beard, nuzzling him lightly. She loved him still. As the numbness faded, that was one of the first things that came back to her. Whoever she was, she was in love with Kean.
“Take me home,” she whispered. “Can you? Tonight? I don’t want to stay here another minute. I just want to go home.”
He looked down at her, his chocolate-brown eyes deep with emotion. “Anything you want, it’s yours, Dhara. I thought I had lost you in there. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
She lifted a hand, touching his cheek. “I know what it’s like to be afraid. I’m sorry that I put you through all of this. That you had to reveal your secret. That we’re in this position now. In love, but destined not to ever truly be together.”
“Hush,” he murmured, kissing her. “We’ll talk about all of that when you’re stronger. Just know that I’m not leaving you, Dhara. I never, ever will.”
He carried her toward the clearing, where he could transition again and fly her home through the dark sky. They were quiet as he walked, Dhara replaying his words in her head—his promise to stay with her forever. She knew that he meant it. That he felt it. But he had an obligation, and she knew how important that was to him as well. The truth was, she wasn’t sure that they could have both. His obligation and their love.
So where did that leave them? Where did it leave her? She was a new person, finding her way in the world with a backlog of memories that stabbed at her heart and soul whenever she let her mind drift to them. She had to come to terms with herself again, and she already knew that she would have to go back to India and find the people who had done this to her—even if just to warn them to never, ever try this kind of spell on someone again.
How did Kean fit into all of it? Would he be in Boston, waiting for his mate and building a life with her while Dhara was figuring out who she was supposed to be?
The hole that Percy said would always be inside of her would probably leave her susceptible to strong emotions pooling in that dent in her mind. Right now, sadness flowed into it, hurting her all that much more because she was still so tender.
Life just wasn’t fair. Ever. She had never asked for the life that she’d led up to this point or for the supposed cure that had ended up almost killing her. And she had never asked to fall in love with a man who could never belong to her but to whom no other man would ever compare.
But that was her lot in life, and she would have to find a way to deal with it. All she could do for now was enjoy being with Kean while she still could.
The past had already tried to take over her life. She would leave the future to figure itself out and try to just stay in the present, where she was warm and wrapped in her love’s arms.
Chapter Forty-Three
Kean
“Hey, stranger,” Kean said, poking his head into Moira’s office and tossing a paperclip at her that he had brought with him for that express purpose. “How are you doing?”
Moira looked up from her computer, her eyebrows shooting up. “Well, if it isn’t loose lips! I hear you’ve been whispering supernatural sweet nothings in the ears of beautiful women.”
“Just one beautiful woman,” Kean said, stepping inside the room for just a moment. “You mad?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I was at first, but no. Look—I might have done the same, under the circumstances. You fall in love, you fall in love. But you know how much this won’t work, right? I mean, you’re prepped for that.”
Kean pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“There are rules, Kean…” Moira called after him as he left her office and continued on to Ronan’s.
“Rules are made to be broken,” Kean called back to her, as he opened Ronan’s door and walked in.
Ronan turned away from the window he was staring out of and arched an eyebrow. “That’s one way to greet me, I suppose.”
“Talking to Moira,” Kean told him, taking a seat. “You wanted an update, right?”
Ronan nodded, walking over to sit down in the chair opposite Kean. “Yes. How is she?”
“It’s been a few days, and she’s getting stronger,” Kean said, thinking of Dhara as she had lain in bed that morning, looking more like herself than she had in days. “She’s weak. There are a lot of crying jags. There are new memories that sometimes surface. She’s going through a lot. It’s not just the weakness that’s left from the stripping process, but the whole new life that she has to deal with now. It’s a lot. But she’s okay.”
“I’m glad that you were able to help her,” Ronan said. “It seems like it went better for her than it does for most, and I’m convinced that was because she had you there. Your energy and support probably protected her from a lot of the worst of it. Not everyone who deals with a Disgorge has that. Few do, in fact.”
Kean dragged a hand through his wavy hair, leaning back in his seat. “I’m just grateful she’s here and that she hasn’t had any more attacks. I’ve never seen anything like it, Ronan.”
“I know,” the other man agreed. But then he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands pressed together. It was Ronan’s serious stance, and Kean knew that the conversation was about to shift. “There’s the matter of what she knows.”
“She’s not going to tell anyone.”
“She probably won’t,” Ronan agreed. “But you know that we’ve survived this long and done as well as we have because we have lived in such total isolation. We breed only with ourselves. We never let anyone in on the secret. We have our own community. It’s how we work.”
“But—”
Ronan held up a hand, his face stern. “I’m not done.”
Kean shut his mouth, respecting the man as his friend, brother, and leader enough to allow him to talk until he was finished. He knew Ronan well enough to trust that whatever Ronan was going to say was in Kean’s best interest, but he had a distinct feeling he wasn’t going to like it.
“I think it’s time to change.”
Kean didn’t react for a moment, the words so different from what he expected that they took a minute to register. “To change?”
Ronan nodded. “Yes. I think that our isolation might have served us for a time, but if we want to continue to grow we need to adapt. Change.”
“Change,” Kean repeated, staring at his friend. “You mean be out in the open?”
“No,” Ronan said, shaking his head. “Not in the sense that we just don’t protect our secret at all. That would go very badly for us—and for everyone probably. But I don’t think it’s the end of the world to have human allies.” Ronan gave Kean a long look. �
��In fact, I want to find a way for us to mate with humans.”
“Children,” Kean said. “The next generation. With humans.”
“Otherwise, how much longer do we have to survive?”
Kean didn’t respond immediately, his brain working overtime to try to understand all the implications of what Ronan was telling him. “You’d been thinking about this before Dhara even came into the picture.”
“It’s something we need to look into,” Ronan agreed. “Regardless of Dhara. If we don’t find a way to mate outside of our own kind, then we’re going to die out, Kean. Are you in love with Dhara? Do you want to marry her?”
“Yes,” Kean said, not even having to pause for a second to think about it. “Of course, I do.”
“And does she feel the same?”
Kean cleared his throat, shifting around in his chair, suddenly irrationally nervous. “I…hope so. I think so. She loves me. But she doesn’t think she can accept being my love while someone else is my mate.”
Ronan smiled slightly. “Do you blame her?”
“Not at all.”
“I’d liketo see where this goes. If you two are happy together and want to make it work, then I want to see how it works for us,” Ronan said, moving forward in his chair, his eyes and face intense. “It just might be that your eternal happiness is the key to all of our eternal happiness.”
Kean was silent for a long minute, staring down at his hands as he thought through it all. “See…,” he finally said. “This was my plan the whole time. Fall in love, save the species. You’re welcome, honestly. I mean, you owe me a lot.”
Ronan laughed, leaning back in his chair, his eyes dancing like they had done before the responsibility of the Celtic Dragon Clan had fallen so heavily on his shoulders. “If it works, then I will owe you a lot. No guarantee, Kean. You understand that.”
“All I know is that I get to go home and tell the woman I love that I want to marry her, mate with her, and be only with her for the rest of my life.” Kean stood up, his own eyes lit up. “Ronan—this means everything to me. You know that, right?”
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