by Paula Quinn
“We’re called Drakkon,” he corrected. “And no, I didn’t. The Red is real.”
Was the Red a man, too? Could she have seen him before—in the shop, at University? He could be anywhere. “So what, there’s a whole race of you out there? Dragon-shifters?” She held her palms to her head before she spun back around in the direction of the road. “No, seriously, this isn’t happening.”
He came up beside her. His voice was so low she hardly heard him. “It is.”
If it was, there was too much to consider. She was glad he hadn’t kissed her. “Then you’ve been eavesdropping on my private thoughts, playing some kind of game—”
No, he came barreling inside her head. I didn’t know how to tell you.
Stop it! Get out of my head!
“No one is supposed to know,” he said aloud. “I’ll probably get into trouble for telling you.”
“Get in trouble with whom?” she asked incredulously, storming toward Tarbert. “Dragon hunters who don’t exist?”
“They do exist,” he insisted. “The Bane is real.”
She recoiled, thinking of men without mercy hunting Jacob. There was so much she didn’t know. Her head was spinning in a hundred different directions. “Are they after you?”
He shook his head. “They don’t know I’m Drakkon.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I work for them. I’m one of them. Though I’ve never hunted Drakkon.”
River closed her eyes and was tempted to stop and punch him for bringing so much confusion into her life.
“Everything I told you so far is true, River.” His damned silky voice sounded in her ears. “I just haven’t told you everything.”
She turned to look at him as the road swung left and they followed the footpath to Urgha. No wonder he was so beautiful and breathtaking. He was Drakkon. How? How was he a dragon? “I don’t think I want to know.”
“Okay,” he said quietly, keeping pace.
They walked on in silence for a little longer. River was thankful that he didn’t try to speak to her in her head, but the silence was driving her crazy. What was going to happen now? He was a dragon! “There can’t be anymore listening in,” she said, glancing at him. “I need a place to hide from you.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” She laughed a little but she felt like crying. Had she really fallen for a guy who could turn into a dragon? A guy who knew what she was thinking all the time and didn’t respect her space? “Everyone needs their own private thoughts, Jacob. Even you.”
He nodded and crossed his wrists behind his back. “I’ll do my best. It’ll be difficult though. I like your thoughts.”
He didn’t look at her while he spoke but kept his eyes toward the small bridge coming up in the distance, and still he captivated her. She blushed trying to recall some of her thoughts he might have been privy to. “I’m sure you do like them, since we just met and you’ve been nothing but charming. Listen in after some time and you might not like it so much.”
“If you don’t hate me right now,” he said, glancing at her from beneath his brow, mesmerizing her with the slightest movement of his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “I don’t think you will after ‘some time’.”
He had every reason to be cocky about it, but he wasn’t. He was uncomfortable. He looked out of his element. How was that possible? Surely, there had been plenty of women in his life. “I don’t hate you,” she said softly, angry with herself for falling under his spell. “But I don’t trust you. You lied to me and you didn’t keep your promise about not reading my mind.”
“I’m trying to remedy those things right now,” he pointed out. “Your trust has value to me.”
“Why?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“I told you, River, I like you.”
“Me and how many others?” she scoffed lightly.
His gaze burned through her, heating her flesh, her blood. “Just you.”
Just her? Her mouth betrayed her and she smiled like some adoring fan. What was she doing? She’d sworn to herself never to be swayed by a guy’s looks again. Colin was devilishly handsome but, in the end, there was no substance. Jacob, on the other hand…what? What had he done besides promise her things and keep huge secrets? Huge.
And one of the promises he’d made, not to read her thoughts, he hadn’t kept.
She looked away and stopped smiling. “I feel like I know you less than I did yesterday. I don’t understand how any of this is possible. Or how you can be a dragon and a dragon hunter? I don’t even know if I believe that you’re Drakkon. I don’t know what to believe.”
“I am Drakkon.”
The hint of arrogance in his voice drew her gaze back to him. With his loose, white-gold hair drying in the breeze and flowing off his broad shoulders and his strong, angular profile, she could easily believe he was the majestic white dragon she’d seen.
“Prove it.”
He turned his head and crooked his mouth at her. “It’s too risky. I don’t know how dangerous I am.”
“How can you not know?”
“Because I’m new at this. At being Drakkon. I don’t know the extent of my desire.”
She stopped for a moment and turned to him, her wry smile belying the curiosity in her eyes. “What do you mean, you’re new at being Drakkon? You weren’t born this way? Someone turned you?”
He nodded, squinting in the sun. “It’s a long story, River.”
She stepped off the side of the road and sat down on a small bench for tourists overlooking the loch.
“I have time.”
He smiled down at her and drew both hands through his hair. “Okay then. Do I have your word never to repeat this to anyone?”
When she agreed, he sat next to her and started at the beginning.
*
Jacob’s intention wasn’t to tell River everything. She already knew more about him than anyone else. He realized with frightening clarity that he wanted her to know him…all of him. He was losing his heart to her and he had no idea what to do about it. It scared the hell out of him for more reasons than he wanted to think about, and was more thrilling than the first time he changed back into a man while flying. It was new and pure and his heart couldn’t help but want more of it.
Confessing to her was easier than he’d expected, more liberating than anything he’d ever dreamed. He’d been living behind a cavalier mask, learning to smile for the camera, disconnected from a world that didn’t know him and never would.
And then he’d seen her—the first human through his Drakkon eyes, standing tall against him like some mythical warrior goddess. The first, besides Helena and Garion, to speak in his thoughts.
He knew he was in trouble but he’d been in trouble before. Still, his heart had never been involved. He’d never been half-Drakkon. He was unfamiliar with the emotions roiling up inside him, like the need to possess her, to be near her, the desire to hold her, kiss her, make her his. Since returning to Harris, he’d found himself wanting to do things to make her happy. He wouldn’t read her thoughts again unless she allowed it. He’d broken her trust and he wanted to gain it back.
So he told her his secrets.
She listened intently, taking in every word, stopping him for clarity about Garion’s power and about The Bane a few times.
“Your father almost singlehandedly annihilated the entire Drakkon race.”
“Almost,” he agreed.
“Do you remember him?”
Jacob shook his head and set his eyes on the loch. “He wanted to kill Garion for his essence and use it to raise an army of Drakkon against mankind. He was a traitor to both his races. I take no pride that his blood flows through my veins. It’s a good thing Marrkiya killed him.”
“Marrkiya changed my father’s life, mine and Ivy’s, too.”
Her voice saturated him like mist from the clouds. He turned to look at her. He was falling in love with her face and all its little nu
ances; her intelligent, expressive eyes, her small, pert nose, and the beguiling contour of her jaw. She smiled. His gaze dipped to her mouth.
“It made us stronger. Closer.”
“I’m glad,” he told her. He admired her for seeing the good in something that cost her family so much. “You’re very courageous, River.”
“No—” she said, shaking her head.
“Yes, you are. You’re the bravest women I’ve ever met. The way you faced me and made your deal, and not just for yourself but for your village. Most hu—people have died of fright.”
“You don’t know me,” she whispered.
“I do,” he whispered back and smiled when she looked at him.
“You don’t know that I’m a coward when it comes to leaving here for good, or that the people I made the deal for haunt my memories with things they said or did to my father.”
“Despite what they did, they’re your friends…even family, or else you wouldn’t have stood up for them.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“You’ve forgiven them, River. There’s nothing holding you back now.”
Her smile was more radiant than a thousand sunrises. “Thank you, Jacob.”
He moved in closer and she laughed softly, filling his ears with music, and moved out of his reach. “Tell me more about you,” she said, stopping his advance.
He would be patient.
“Seeing a dragon burn your home and your family must have been life changing.”
“I never blamed him for raining fire on The Bane that night. Garion was a kid, too, and The Bane had just killed his first foster father, and two of his friends that he’d altered. They were children. My relatives burned them. That was when my life changed. When I knew that I sympathized with the Drakkon race. I couldn’t let anyone know. I couldn’t tell them that I’d always felt the desire to fly. They wouldn’t have understood.”
“So you grew up never belonging anywhere,” she said softly, her eyes wide and glistening like the summer sea, “or to anyone.”
He softened his smile on her. After all this, there was still compassion in her eyes for him. “I did all right for the most part,” he reassured her softly. “I made my own way.”
He told her about his life—things he’d never told anyone before her, like the meanings behind many of his songs, and why he wrote them.
“I grew up defiant and…” He looked away from her and laughed a little at himself, at things he hadn’t realized until now. “…basically pissed off at life. I had this blood in my veins from my father that made me more than what I was and I couldn’t grab hold of it. I longed to fly. I hated Drakkon for emblazoning its instincts on my soul, and mankind for keeping them from me. The anger landed me in detention facilities a few times but, eventually, I learned to shut it all off. When the Elders came to me with an offer to erase my criminal record if I rejoined The Bane, I agreed.” He glanced up at her from beneath his brows. “Now, everything has changed.”
She lifted her fingers to a lock of hair at his temple to brush it back. He tilted his face toward her touch and closed his eyes as he kissed her palm.
“Your dreams have come true.”
He opened his eyes at the sound of her tender voice and looked into the blue fathoms of her gaze. “Yes, they have.” But he was here with her. Should he tell her that she’d stepped into his path and now the sky didn’t feel as important? He wasn’t sure he wanted to voice that yet.
She lowered her hand from his face but he clasped it in his and stood up.
“We should be moving on. You’re going to be late for work.”
She didn’t pull her hand away and he suspected, without reading her thoughts, that she was feeling the same electrical charge as he was, coursing through her blood. He glanced at her again and smiled. Was her heart also filled to bursting with warmth and satisfaction?
She asked him more questions on the way to Tarbert, questions about Helena, the Elders, The Bane, and Jeremy the Red. He told her what she wanted to know.
The only thing he didn’t tell her was that he was immortal.
He didn’t know how he was going to tell her that.
Jacob, another voice broke through his head, we’re here.
Helena. He gritted his teeth and slid his gaze to River, who was oblivious to his conversation. What the hell was he going to tell them about her? What do you mean you’re here? He didn’t know why he looked up. They wouldn’t have flown here. You were supposed to give me a week.
Jacob, there’s another Drakkon in the sky and we still can’t find him on Garion’s Onyx. We don’t have a week. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not taking this more seriously.
“Jacob?” River tugged on his hand, bringing him to a halt, pulling his gaze to her. “What’s wrong?”
Now, where are you? His sister continued. Is it densely populated? Is there a place to stay while we plan this thing out?
“It’s my sister,” he told River, casting his sister’s voice to the back of his mind. “She’s talking to me, which means she’s in range. She and Garion are here.”
Her eyes opened wider and, like him, she looked up. He reached out and spread his fingers over the bottom of her tilted chin, down her neck.
At his touch, she lowered her gaze to his. He stepped closer.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.
“I’m not.”
He smiled, staring into her eyes. He should have remembered how this woman kicked fear in the face. But this was more than fear. This was Drakkon. The Red was flying around somewhere—maybe close. They needed to stop it.
Jacob told his sister where he would be and then, before he broke their connection, he told her he wasn’t leaving.
Not yet.
Chapter Thirteen
River didn’t have enough time to process everything Jacob had told her while they waited for the ferry to dock. She was about to meet, quite literally, the father of dragons—the new kind, at least. The kind that could change at will. She was about to meet a man who’d been hatched. She felt a little queasy.
“Will he be able to read my thoughts?” she turned to ask Jacob, standing beside her.
“I’m going to ask him not to,” he said on a low, rumbling murmur.
“And if he refuses?”
“He won’t.”
He sounded sure, but she didn’t want another man in her head finding out things about her without her permission. “Is there some kind of Drakkon law or code he has to follow if you ask?”
He lowered his gaze and his voice. “Something like that.”
She almost didn’t hear him. What was he trying to hide? “Something like what, Jacob?”
“If I—ehm—” He lifted his eyes to hers and, in them, she saw both the Drakkon, hungry for her—and the man, unsure if she was going to hit him. “—claim possession of you.”
She smiled and then laughed a little. “You realize how barbaric and ancient that sounds, right?”
He hooked one corner of his mouth at her.
Right, she conceded. Dragons.
She watched the people departing the ferry. There were about a dozen—tourists here for the day. Most of them were looking behind them at the couple leaving last.
River didn’t know what she’d expected to see when Jacob had told her about the Gold. How does one measure a Drakkon king by human standards? Even with her imagination, she would have fallen short if she tried. Garbed in the splendor of the sun, his hair lit like a gilded gold crown, Garion Gold looked more like a god than a king. His clothes were expensive and cut well to fit his tall, muscular physique. He carried three large backpacks on his broad shoulders and a smaller carrier in his hand.
His wife was no less beautiful and regal with wide, deep blue eyes and a mantle of pearly white hair shot through with bolts of gold piled atop her head in a thick bun. She wore a cable-knit sweater, a shade lighter than her eyes, snug-fitting jeans, and hiking boots.
“She doesn’t look like the k
ind of woman who can be possessed,” River leaned in to tell Jacob, keeping her eyes on the confident-looking woman on her way toward them.
“They’re life mates,” Jacob told her. “They possess each other with equal measure.”
She looked up at him, forgetting his family. “Life mates?”
Jacob suddenly went stiff. “Sorry. Helena.” He pointed to his head to indicate his sister was speaking to him. River narrowed her eyes and didn’t push it when he didn’t explain. Life mates, huh? It didn’t sound like something a guy who’d never had attachments would take kindly to. She guessed there were some things about being a Drakkon that, for Jacob, weren’t dreams come true. He clearly wasn’t comfortable with commitment. How long would he stay with her before he left?
The closer his sister and her husband grew, the harder it become to focus on anything else but them. How could they ever stay hidden from The Bane when they stood out like the sun and the stars in a fog? They appeared as surprised by her presence as she was of theirs.
You didn’t tell them about me.
Jacob turned to her, surprised to hear her in his head. I didn’t know what to tell them.
“Jake!” his sister reached them and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s good to see you.” She pinched her fingers on the tattered neckline of his sweater and tugged at it. “Though you look like a penniless drifter.”
Without skipping a beat or giving her husband a chance to speak—though by the way he was staring at Jacob, it appeared he might already be engaged in another conversation—she turned her striking smile on River. For an uneasy moment, she stared into River’s eyes as if she might know her.
“Helena Gold.” She made a half-turn. “My husband, Garion.”
Garion turned his topaz-colored eyes on River and her knees went a little weak. This tower of flames before her had power beyond compare. If not for Jacob, no man would compare. She heard a meow and looked at the carrier in his hand. A little, white Persian cat pulled his attention.
“And you are?” Helena asked her.
