“Are you hungry, Abigail? I can have something brought to us.” He started to move but I stopped him.
“No, I’m fine. I need answers more than food. Where are we? What are we?” I let my fingers linger on his skin where I’d reached out to stop him. Touching him felt so right.
He glanced down at where my fingers touched his skin and he paused. He’d changed clothes since we’d arrived. He was now dressed in some kind of black leather kilt made up of panels of leather, and his shirt was now the same soft black leather material of my blanket, laced at the throat. The loafers he’d worn were now black leather boots, laced tightly halfway up his calves. A man of stunning beauty showcasing just how powerful he was.
I think I might have drooled a little. Wiping at my mouth I sat up against the soft fur cushions that served as pillows. Pure sophistication and smoothness I was not.
“This is the land that is no more. What’s left of Tirfothwin. Many centuries ago, long before you were born, before even the Vikings were born, this land was above the sea. We had the best hunting in all of the known world, and people crossed from Tir Na Nog, to our land, and came and went to the lands far east of us. We were an advanced civilization, but not as modern as the current world. We didn’t have planes but we did have rudimentary ways of creating electricity.”
He paused to settle back on his hands, his legs stretched out before him. Very fine, muscular legs that the long panels of leather did little to hide. I eyed those beautiful legs as he started to speak again.
“I was the king of a disappearing world, a world that is now remembered only in the legends of the Vikings and the Danes. As the world warmed, our land became waves, and the people moved inland, until only the area now called Dogger Bank was still visible. We were at war with the Tuatha de Danan of Tir Na Nog by then, resources were scarce and they worried my people would overrun their lands. They closed our worlds off from the land of the humans so that our people could not get to them.”
“Sounds like the way people react to refugees now.” I observed, sliding down to lie on my side. I had a much better view of the tight muscles of his stomach and chest from there. I wanted to reach out and touch him, anywhere, but controlled myself.
“Yes, very much so. I went out on one final mission to try and convince the Tuatha de Danan not to cut off our worlds, to try to make them realize that my people were spreading out all over the globe, but they would not listen and they closed the portal before I could return to my kingdom.”
“Wait,” I interrupted as it finally sank in. “You’re a king?”
“I am indeed, Abigail. I’ve waited in that cave for thousands of years for the key to come and take me back to my people, if there were any left. You were that key.”
“But how?”
“You were the half-magical that could hold the sword the Tuatha de Danan made as the only key. Anyone else that held it without protection would be burned. Only a person of both worlds, a very special person, you, would be able to open the door.” He waited as I took that in.
“Why did my father want me then? He’s of that other world, right?” I was confused now.
“He refused to go Tir Na Nog because he is a traitor there. He has tried countless times to take over the realm, but he has always failed. He thought if he could control you he would be able to get into this realm and take over both from here. He didn’t even know if anyone was left here, the stupid man.” Wruin laughed a deep, warm rumble that did incredible things for all of my places that could tingle.
“How old are you?” The thought had suddenly hit me.
“I don’t know, I have watched thousands of years pass by, I slept for thousands more. I’d go out into the world occasionally, see what was happening, until I grew bored and went back to my cave. Your mother found me there when she was a small child and friendless. She saw me in both of my forms, she still believed in magic then. As she grew older her visits became less frequent, until that last time she came.”
He stopped and I knew the memories of that past were running through his mind. “She’d met your father, I could smell him on her, and knew the kind of man he was. I knew what his plans were when I sensed you growing in her womb.”
“Wow. You really are magical aren’t you?” I watched him in wonder, as he carried on.
“I am, yes. There are a few things I have to tell you now, Abigail, things you may not like, but cannot be changed.” He shifted restlessly before settling for sitting up so that he could look down at me.
I sat up too, his words made me nervous.
“I could sense you for one main reason.” He paused, his eyes now looking down at the smooth nails on his hand long fingers. “You are my mate.”
His eyes came up when I gasped, not sure what he meant, but getting the idea that it was important. “Mate?”
“Yes, our souls are tied together. We will be mates until the day we die.” He gulped as he watched me and waited.
“Okay. That explains that pattern on the sword then. You’re the dragon and I’m the woman he’s tangled in?”
“Yes, it was as the Tuatha de Danan planned. A woman whose soul was tied to the dragon shifter king would be the only one that could open the door. We only have one mate in our lives. You are mine.” His eyes drilled into mine as he waited for my response.
“Oh.” Simple was best when you were left speechless, I’d always said.
“Unless you had other plans.” His right eyebrow rose, the exact opposite of mine.
“Well, no, but we’ve only just met…” I paused and looked at my own nails. “I’ve, well, I’ve never been anyone’s mate. There wasn’t anyone that interested me enough.”
“Oh.” His own simple answer now.
“Have you, been with others that is?”
“Yes, but long ago. Women that I wanted to be my mate, but never were.” His nostrils flared as he leaned towards me. “They never smelled as beguiling as you.”
“I have a smell?” I couldn’t help the grin that spread over my face.
“You do, yes. I imagine it’s much the same as I smell to you.”
“I don’t know but it nearly drives me mad, the way you smell.” I gave him another smile, but felt my cheeks burn as I blushed at the admission.
He pulled back then, and cleared his throat. “Right. There’s more to come.”
“Okay?”
“You can’t go back home. We can travel between the magical worlds, but your world? It’s closed to us all again.” He wouldn’t look at me this time.
“Never? I can never go back?” I didn’t like that! I didn’t like that a bit! “But I can’t stay here forever, I have…well…” I stopped to try to think of what I’d left behind.
“When you spontaneously combusted, as Holly put it, you sealed the door closed and fused the sword inside of the lock. I have no idea how to open it again. Maybe one day we’ll find a way, but for now, you’re stuck here, with me.”
“Holly’s here at least. I guess, I guess there’s not really much to go back for is there? Other than the money, of course.” I didn’t like being penniless again.
“Money is not something you need worry about. I’m the king after all. I can magic up whatever we need. And you always have a home here. When my people were left with no other choice but to dig down, the dwarven clans got together with the dragon clans, my people, and they created this world while I was gone. They’ve modeled it on our old world, but it’s entirely new. Even I haven’t explored it yet.”
“Wait, if the Tuatha de Danan sealed your land and their land off how can we travel between other worlds?” My brain was slow to catch up.
“We can travel to other lands, the submerged lands of the ancestors of those you call the Maya and the Aztec, the lands of the snowbound in the Antarctic, anywhere but between our land and Tir Na Nog. It’s more complicated, though. I could not get back, because I was not in the land of your myths when the Tuatha de Danan sealed it off. If we go out, we cannot get back in. We can only t
ravel between magical worlds and never to Tir Na Nog.”
“Wow.” I felt my heart race as my brain jolted at the knowledge that so many other worlds existed. “That’s why you couldn’t get back in then? You were in the human world, not the magical world?”
“Exactly. There are many more worlds, they’ve just all hidden from the human world as time has passed. Your world is just not ready for these people anymore. You’ve built legends and myths around beings that you once interacted with but reject us now as fairy tales.” He paused and sighed, his face sad again. “You’ve lost the ability to believe in magic and have lost so much without even knowing it.”
“I can see you…oh!” Right, I’m half magical so I can see the magical world. “Where does that leave me then, Wruin? Where does it leave, Holly for that matter?” Would she ever be able to take off the boots?
“She’s seen it now, and been in the magical world. She will adapt to it, and thrive. Especially if Lothar has any say in it.” He chuckled then and I couldn’t help but smile in return.
“I think that’s a sealed deal, there.” I was still smiling, but Wruin was serious once more.
“You can always refuse me. We can live apart and I will ensure you have everything you ever want. No strings attached.” He looked away and I wondered what he wasn’t telling me.
“Will I,” I paused, wondering how to say it. “Will I be immortal too?”
“No, you will age, but more slowly now. Our timelines will match up once we mate, and we will spend the rest of our lives together. I don’t know how long that will be, I can’t promise forever, but we’ll have at least a hundred years to learn about one another. Probably many more. As your aging slows, mine will speed up; until we match a normal human’s lifespan. I don’t know how long that will take.”
“That’s a long time.” I was excited, but also afraid. That really was a long time.
“I know better than most.” His voice was quiet and drew my attention. “It’s been lonely without you, Abigail.”
“I didn’t realize it, but I’ve been lonely too, Wruin. You feel like home, do you know that?”
“Would you like to see your new home?” He asked, his eyebrow rising over his forehead once more. His eyes gleamed and he smiled a smile that made me want to tell him I wanted to explore something else. Him.
“Yeah, sure. That would be great.” I didn’t want to seem desperate so I took the coward’s way out. “Let’s explore.”
His smile became a grin as he stood up and offered me his hand. “Follow me.”
We went out onto a wide veranda that ran the length of the structure we were in, the highest building around, as far as I could see. Hundreds of feet in the air, I could see out over a world that was dimly lit.
“The drwarvens have managed to create the illusion of day and night with their magical little inventions. A lot of what you humans consider magic is only dwarven science and engineering, you know? We can conjure, but we can also create wonderful inventions.” Wruin led me up a staircase to a platform.
I saw the city laid out before me, tall tree-like structures with wide canopies supported a multitude of levels connected by bridges. I could barely take it all in.
“How have they managed to get food down here? How are the plants growing without sunlight?” I looked at Wruin, so many questions unanswered, some I didn’t even know how to ask because it was all so very complicated.
“There are ways, magical ways and science ways. When our world started to become inundated by the waves, and our people started to flee, we made tunnels down into the ground. Some of those are still used to fish, the plants you see are grown with the special lamps used to create the illusion of daylight. They nourish us all.”
“Wruin. May I ask something?” I wasn’t sure if my next question was insulting or not.
“Yes, Abigail?” He turned to me, his eyes as serious as mine.
“If you have all of this special magic and science, why didn’t you just keep the water from flooding your lands? Why not just make it go away now?” It seemed like a simple solution and I didn’t understand why they hadn’t done that before.
“We tried to use a dyke system for a long time, like the ones used in the Netherlands, but when the glaciers began to melt, there was just too much water. Lakes formed by the glaciers gradual melt off suddenly flooded, and broke their banks, which also added to global sea levels. We couldn’t science that away. We also couldn’t magic it away, we tried.” He looked away, his golden eyes sad.
“What happened?” I asked quietly, sensing a story.
“The water left us for a while, and it drowned a nation to the south of us. Millions died.”
“Oh no!” I looked at him in horror, seeing the burden he carried.
“Magic is a wonderful thing, but it can be cruel. We have to use it wisely. That is your first lesson.” He breathed deeply and I noticed the lights were growing brighter, a glow was on the horizon now. It went on for miles this place! An entire world beneath the ocean floor!
“Now, are you ready for that tour?” He gave me a cheeky but sly grin.
“Sure.” I smiled back, but the smile faded as Wruin disappeared. Before I could even blink a dragon had taken his place. His dragon.
“Oh my!” I whispered as the dragon, at least 12 foot tall, leaned its head down to the ground. I’d noticed he tended to change sizes, depending on where we were. Out here in the open he could have shifted into a massive shape, but I knew he’d chosen a smaller form so he wouldn’t be so overwhelming.
I stood my ground for a moment and then moved to him. His head lifted and those dragon eyes, with irises in the shape of diamonds, stared back at me. Wruin was in there, my Wruin.
I cupped my hand around his outer jaw, studying his shape, the look of him. “My very own dragon.”
Wruin’s head nudged me to the place between his massive wings, now tucked into his sides. I gingerly climbed onto his back and moved up to the place between his shoulders. Further down, his spine was a bony ridge of points but here there was almost a natural saddle between the ridges and I knew I’d be safe.
I heard and felt a rumble beneath me, and Wruin’s dragon head turned to look at me. Then he winked and I couldn’t help but laugh!
“You feel good on my back, Abigail.” I heard him say.
“You can speak?” I didn’t think he could.
“Of course I can. Quite a few things are possible in this world. Even this.”
The last part I heard only in me head and my eyes went wide. Then I screamed as he gave a mighty push and we took flight. I clutched at the ridge in front of me as his wings unfurled, and we shot across the city below.
Wind rushed at my face, my hair streamed out behind me, and I looked down at the biggest example of the will to live that I’ve ever seen. Below me were miles and miles of trees, real and manmade, some with flat canopies that were used for farming, others had houses and stores.
“Wruin,” I thought to him, hoping that was how this worked.
“Yes, my mate?” I heard inside my skull.
“Why can’t you just conjure food?” I responded.
“I told you, magic can be very bad. Jewels, money, these are things that we can take from the earth, or from bad people, but food is one thing we cannot take. When we take it, we take it from someone else. We might take it from a bad person or from a child, we never know, so we produce our own food. None of us want to be responsible for a child going hungry.”
“That makes sense.” I had started to realize this magic stuff was far more complicated than I’d imagined.
The lights grew brighter and became centralized, mimicking the sun rising in the sky. I saw the light reflected on rivers and lakes, and valleys and mountains appeared. What I saw reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Norway. Wruin carried me further, to an area of flat land, with a shoreline and waves, and then to an area of gentle hills, like the ones we’d left behind in Dorset. They had recreated the world they h
ad known, only this land was thousands of feet beneath the ocean. Incredible.
Wruin turned back towards the land and took us back to his home. As I climbed down from his back, he spoke again.
“My people have waited a long time for my return. I must go to them soon, learn what has happened since I left.” He shifted into his human form once more and I couldn’t help but admire that kilt again.
He didn’t look silly at all with those long panels of leather that went down to his knees. He looked like he needed to be straddled and oh…
He’d pulled me into his arms as my thoughts began to wander and his lips came down to crush mine.
“Yes, I do need to be straddled and fucked to within an inch of my life, Abigail.” I heard him in my head once more.
I gasped against his lips as he revealed he could share my thoughts. “One day, I might teach you to control it, my mate. For now, I’m enjoying it too much.”
He picked me up then and carried me down the stairs, to the soft pallet of furs. The room was still dark, curtain over the windows blocked out the light, but a soft candle-like glow filled the room as we walked in. I knew Wruin had created it, but didn’t care because he’d placed me on the pallet and was now between my thighs, rocking into the thick material of my jeans.
“Wruin,” I pulled away from him as his scent filled my nostrils and hunger flared deep in my stomach. Hunger for him. “Was that you in my dreams? Was that...real?”
“Almost real, my mate, but not real enough. Now stop talking with your mouth, there are better things to do with it.” He captured my mouth once more, and I gave myself up to the unimaginable, a dragon shifter making love to me.
My craving for him grew as he bared my chest to the air and his hot lips encircled my nipple. I cried out a sound, I couldn’t make words, as a new sensation shot through me. Pleasure that went straight down, down between my thighs and pooled into liquid heat.
“That’s it, Abigail, give it all to me.” I heard him in my head as my back arched, pressing the dark pebble of my nipple into his sucking mouth.
Wet, hot, pleasure coursed through me as he sucked harder, letting his teeth graze the sensitive peak. His hand dove down, beneath my jeans, beneath my panties, and straight to the spot that ached the most. The spot that had been pressing into him as he rocked his hips into me.
Brother Of The Dark Places Page 7
