His hair was darker than Maks’s and his build was slightly smaller, but he had the same pale blue eyes as my mate—and he was smiling, which put me at ease.
“Я ищу Максим,” he said, then shook his head with a little laugh at my look of confusion and tried again in English. “I’m looking for Maksim.” His eyes dropped to my obviously-pregnant belly. “You are his human?”
This man looked young—even younger than Maks—but if he was a dragon, that didn’t mean much. His accent was Eastern European, and I remembered Maks’s comment about his father’s territory being there. I smiled in welcome. Maks had said that they’d had a disagreement, and I loved the idea that maybe the rift could be mended before our baby came. Family was important.
“Yes, I guess am,” I answered. “I’m his mate. Are you his father? Er, ‘sire,’ I mean?”
The man’s eyes widened, and then he burst into laughter. “Ah, human,” he said once he’d caught his breath. “No, I am not that old beast. I am Ivan, Maksim’s brother.”
Maks had a brother? I suddenly flashed back to Ty, Wes’s brother, and how head-over-heels that dragon-loving man was about his niece. I would love for our child to have an uncle, too. I wondered why Maks hadn’t told me.
I sent my mate the happy news through our bond.
I wasn’t prepared for what he sent back.
“Are you okay, human?” Ivan asked, coming close enough to clap a hand on my shoulder. “Does the child pain you?”
I clutched at my stomach as I tried to catch my breath and focus on the here-and-now, and not the sudden blast of fear and anger that had just erupted from my mate. I knew it wasn’t directed at me, but it had been so unexpected that it had almost brought me to my knees. I was still shaking.
Maks was not happy to hear that Ivan had come. He was terrified that his brother meant to hurt me. I had no idea why, but I trusted my mate, and he wanted me away from his brother. Now.
Unfortunately, I had no idea how to accomplish that.
Ivan kept a firm grip on my shoulder, and now I could see that his smile was predatory, rather than friendly. The eyes that I had thought were the same as Maks’s weren’t at all. Where Maks’s glowed with a warm, blue heat, Ivan’s were like ice.
“Where is my brother?” he asked, glancing behind me at the house.
“Close,” I said, wishing the answer were “here.”
Ivan smiled coldly. “I can tell he is close, but your answer means he is not on the island, nyet? Good. You will come with me then, human.”
He said the last part with the echoing vibration that I recognized as a dragon’s power to compel. If I hadn’t had Maks’s fire in me, I would have had no choice but to obey.
“No,” I said, shaking his hand off. “I won’t.”
His eyes widened in surprise at my resistance, but then we both realized that he didn’t need that particular power to make me do his will. In his human form, he was both bigger and stronger than me.
And then of course there was his otherself.
“Why do you want me?” I asked, backing away and trying to stall.
An ugly look flashed across his handsome face, and he spat something out in bitter Russian that I didn’t understand, grabbing for me again. The venom in his voice scared me, and I covered my stomach in a vain attempt to shelter the child within me from whatever he intended.
And then a shadow moved across us, and Maks was there, diving out of the sky like an avenging angel. Ivan cursed and leapt away from me, shifting as his feet left the ground and engulfing my mate in a blast of dragon fire as he launched into the air.
Our bond suddenly cut off, and my heart seized in fear.
Maks.
23
~ Maksim ~
I had never felt anything like the terror that filled me when I found out my brother had come for Devin. Thank God I was close, and the last stretch of ocean passed under me in a blur as I extended my senses ahead of me, pushing myself to reach him in time to save him from… I didn’t know what.
I didn’t know why my brother had come.
I didn’t know him at all, but I knew the way he had been raised.
Our sire saw humans as disposable. I’d watched the old dragon tear my newborn brother from his human father’s body, leaving behind the broken corpse of the man he’d used to bear his young without a second thought. I’d wanted to save my brother from growing up like that, the way Dane had saved me, but I hadn’t been able to.
And now, for some reason, he was here. With my mate, who had my child growing inside him. Devin had to be okay. Nothing else mattered but that.
When I finally swooped over the island, I could feel my brother with the subtle sense that we always had when another of our kind was near—and I felt the ripple of his dragon’s power. He was trying to force Devin to do something against his will.
I found them on the far side of the island, and he had his hands on my mate.
A burning rage filled me, and I dove toward him without any plan other than getting him away from Devin. My brother leapt at me, shifting and flaming the minute he saw me, even though he had to know that his fire wouldn’t harm me.
At least, that’s what I’d always believed.
I barely felt my brother’s fire as it engulfed me. Heat would never harm me, in any form, but to my shock I suddenly went mind-numb. With the flames dancing over my body, my dragon senses were gone. I was blinded on every level, with no idea where my brother was and no way to feel what he was doing.
Worse, it cut off my bond with Devin.
The sudden loss stabbed at my heart like physical pain, and I was flooded with the irrational fear that my mate had suddenly been harmed, even though I had just seen him safe on the ground below a moment before.
I flew upward, hoping to lead my brother away from Devin and to shake the flames off my hide. My vision cleared before my senses returned, and I saw that it was working. The silvery-blue dragon was chasing me up into the sky, and as soon as we were high enough I flipped in mid-air, diving under him, determined to stay between him and my mate.
I flamed at him, but he dodged the blast easily. For a split second, a twinge of sadness intruded on my rage. This was my brother, the babe I’d seen so briefly years ago. The way he moved told me that he’d been in aerial battles before, and I hated the thought of the life he must have lived under our sire’s tutelage. But when he feinted and tried to dive past me, toward Devin, any sympathy I’d felt disappeared.
It didn’t matter who he was. I wasn’t going to let him harm my mate.
I slashed at him, crashing into his shoulder and feeling his wing crumple between us as my claws found purchase in his flank. The flesh healed almost as soon as I tore it, but his wing stayed misshapen, and he started to tumble to the ground.
Go! I yelled at Devin through our bond—thankfully restored now that I was free of the other dragon’s fire. He raced for the house, and I followed my brother to the ground, landing to block him from going after my mate.
As he touched down, he shifted, his human shoulder dislocated and a grimace of pain on his face.
“Why are you here?” I demanded, keeping the form of my otherself to better protect what was mine.
Despite his obvious discomfort, he smirked, looking me up and down. “You look like him,” he said, his lip pulling back in an ugly sneer. “So pale.”
Our sire was silver, and I knew my brother was right, but I was thankful that my coloring and shape were the only legacy I’d inherited from the old beast.
My brother was trying to jerk his shoulder back into the socket, and I knew from past experience that trying to do so would be both frustrating and painful. His body’s ability to heal quickly was actually making it more difficult, locking the limb in place as his body sought stability.
I sighed and shifted. “Let me help, brother,” I said.
“Ivan,” he spat. “My name is Ivan. I make no blood claim on you.”
“Well, claim or no
t, you’re still my brother. Let me help.” I grabbed his arm and stretched it out, twisting and popping it back into the socket before he could protest.
He flinched and grumbled, moving away from me and rubbing at his shoulder.
“Why are you here, Ivan?” I asked him again, pleased to see the pain start to ease from his features.
“Your child,” he said. “I am going to take it when your human is ripe. Our sire’s blood runs in its veins, and he has tasked me with saving it from your soft-hearted weakness. We’ve been expanding our territory, and we will raise your hatchling to join us in holding it, as is its right and duty.”
My vision went red. My otherself raged inside me, any familial ties forgotten as it strove to burst free and drive this threat off of our land. I trembled with the effort of keeping my human form, but I couldn’t stop my dragon’s power from coming through my voice.
“No,” I said, the air shaking with the force of it. “I’ve never wished you harm, brother, but I won’t let you touch my mate or my child. Ever. I’ll kill you first, Ivan, brother or not.”
He laughed, and it was a sound that chilled my hot blood. “You’re wrong, ‘brother,’” he said, shifting as he launched into the air above me. “I care not for the human, but I will take your child.”
I roared, but before I could shift and block him he’d already taken off, winging out over the waves. I was torn between chasing him and protecting Devin, but my need for my mate won out. I raced for the house, letting my dragon sense track Ivan as he curved around the island and headed toward the mainland.
He wasn’t leaving. He was going deeper into my territory.
24
~ Devin ~
I didn’t know what had happened to our bond, but the rush of relief when it came back almost overwhelmed me. I didn’t ever want to be cut off from Maks again.
Maks’s urgency and my own fear for our child had me following his order to go to the house without question, but once there, I couldn’t tear myself away from the window. I watched them fight, and then talk, and then Ivan leave, all with my heart in my throat.
Danger and threat had never been a part of my life, and having them directed at the man I loved was worse than anything I could imagine. Through it all, I could feel fear and anger and a melancholy sadness broiling within Maks’s heart, and the minute he came through the door he crushed me against him.
“Did he hurt you, love?” he asked, even though I knew he could feel the answer for himself. I wasn’t hurt. Just scared.
“I’m fine,” I reassured him. “We both are. But what about you?”
He was still naked from his change, but for once, as I ran my hands over him, I wasn’t tempted to do anything more. No matter how many times I’d seen the evidence of his fast healing, I needed to convince myself that he was unharmed.
“He didn’t hurt me,” Maks said, offering me the same reassurance he’d needed. “But I’m afraid he’ll be back.”
“He wanted to take me somewhere. Why?”
Maks scrubbed a hand over his face, looking pained. “Ivan and my sire—all the dragons Dane and I had ever met, until Anik and Ben— they live very differently from us, love. They see humans as disposable, and have always manipulated humanity for their own ends. It’s why Dane and I left Europe. I had no idea my sire had been keeping tabs on me.”
Knowing the power that Maks’s dragon had to compel humans to do its will, the thought was terrifying—but I still didn’t understand what that had to do with me.
“It’s not you,” he answered my unvoiced question. “It’s the baby. He wants to raise it the way he thinks I should have been raised, to make our child part of his ‘legacy,’ the way he intended for me… and the way he obviously succeeded with Ivan.”
“No!”
“Of course not, love. We won’t let him. I just… need to figure out how to stop him.”
“Well, you’re not alone,” I reminded him. “You need to call Dane and Ben. Three heads will definitely be better than one, and you know they’ll have your back.”
Maks stared at me blankly for a moment, and then started to smile. I knew he considered the other two shifters his closest friends, but it wasn’t until that moment that I really realized what a solitary existence he’d led. I could feel it through our bond—it honestly hadn’t occurred to him to ask for help.
I shook my head. These dragons… so powerful, but still, they needed us—Maks needed me—because they weren’t just dragons, they were human, too.
I understood now that it was the part of them that couldn’t be fully whole without a mate. Maks had given me everything I’d ever wanted… love, a child… and things that I hadn’t ever dared to dream of… the seemingly magical abilities of his dragon. It was nice to know that I had something to offer him, too.
“You’re right,” he said, and he was agreeing with my suggestion about his friends as much as my thoughts. “I’ll call them now.” He pulled me to him for a quick kiss, then went to grab some clothes and call the other two dragons.
I knew they would come, and I had no doubt that we would find a way to keep our child safe from Ivan. But as Maks walked away from me, I could still sense a lingering sadness. His memories were open to me, and it was easy to see where his sadness stemmed from.
He felt guilty over what Ivan had become, even though it wasn’t his fault. Maks was confident that he would save me and our child, but who would save his brother?
* * *
Ben showed up the next day. I felt it through Maks’s dragon sense, a subtle pressure in my mind when the other dragon crossed into our territory—the same sense that, now that I’d learned to recognize it, told me that Ivan was still close, too.
I stayed in the house as we felt the other dragon approaching the island, and even though it “felt” like Ben, I breathed a subtle sigh of relief when the day’s fading light made his red hide glow as he landed down at the beach, proving his identity.
I didn’t know the northern dragon well, but Maks had told me a bit about his history. He was older than both Maks and Dane, and still unmated. For all his power and his tendency to let his temper flare when those he cared about were threatened, Maks insisted that Ben was the gentlest of all the dragons he’d ever met.
Unlike Maks and Dane, he’d been raised knowing what he was from birth. He was the child of fated mates, and his parents had never had any reason to foster him out the way the European dragons did. When his dragon had awoken, it hadn’t been a surprise, and Anik, his dragon-shifter father, had taught him everything there was to know about his own true nature.
Ben definitely knew more about what it meant to be a dragon than Maks, or even Dane—both of whom had rejected dragonkind in their youth. Everything my mate had learned about his otherself had been through trial and error, and there were no doubt things that he had yet to discover—the effect of dragon fire obviously one of them, as we’d found out the day before.
“That man does love dragons,” Ben was saying as they walked in the house, shaking his head and laughing. “Too bad he was born human.”
“Who?” I asked, but before he answered I realized that I already knew the answer. It’s not like there were all that many humans who knew that dragons existed among us… and I only knew of one who was enthusiastic enough to inspire that comment. “Oh. Ty, right?”
“That’s right, love,” Maks said. “Dane is taking Wes and Elise up to stay with Ben’s fathers before he joins us here, to ensure their safety.”
I sucked in a breath. “Do you think Ivan would actually go after Dane’s family?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he isn’t willing to leave them unprotected.”
“What does that have to do with Ty?”
“Ty wanted Dane to take him up north, too,” Ben answered me. “He wants to be the one to protect his brother and Elise.”
“Either that, or he just wants another chance to ride a dragon,” Maks said, laughing.
“I he
ard that he had a pretty extreme reaction to hearing that there’s a ‘bad’ dragon,” Ben said. “I think he was under the impression that our kind was all full of noble honor or something. He’s really bent out of shape about Ivan.”
“I take it Dane didn’t take him?” I asked.
“He couldn’t get leave.”
Ty was a soldier. He really was protective of those he loved, and it was the perfect career for him. It was also a lucky coincidence that he’d been stationed at the base in Washington State near his family for as long as he had, but being in the army meant that his time wasn’t his own. If his superiors said that he couldn’t go, that was the end of it.
“Will your father be able to keep Dane’s family safe?” I asked Ben.
I’d never met Anik or his mate, Mikkel. I had the vague impression that they were really old—Ben was over five hundred, which was mind-boggling in itself—and in my mind I was picturing two white-haired, doting grandparents trying to stand against Ivan’s flaming dragon. I shuddered.
Maks saw the vision in my mind and laughed. “No, baby, Anik isn’t that old.”
“My ata?” Ben asked. “He’s not even two-thousand yet. If you met him in his human form you would think he was in his thirties.”
“How long does your kind live?” I asked, my mouth falling open.
“A lot longer than that,” he answered, smiling softly. “And you too, Devin. Your mating bond ties your life to Maks’s. My father, Mikkel, was in his twenties when my ata found him. His aging has slowed to match pace with his mate, and I expect both will be around for a long time to come. A youngling like Ivan wouldn’t be a threat to them. My ata was fighting dragons centuries before that one was born.”
“Anik fought other dragons?” Maks asked, clearly surprised. “He seems so… calm. And I didn’t realize that there had been other dragons on the continent before Dane and I arrived.”
Scorch: M/M Gay Shifter Mpreg Romance (Dragon's Destiny: Fated Mates Book 2) Page 13
