by Ophelia Bell
When Nikhil turned back to him, the pain lessened, but he’d been weakened too much to put up any defenses. Nikhil saw everything—all Marcus’s secrets were bared to his brutal master, including the impending visit from Evie’s brother and whatever dragons they could rally to come save her. His master’s laugh grated at his eardrums, taunting and wicked and somehow seeming to echo from some other dark place beyond his consciousness.
Nikhil glanced away for a moment, and Marcus moved, no longer caring about anything but reaching Evie, because if Nikhil had blood on his mind, he’d have to go through Marcus before he could get to her, and Marcus would rather die as her shield than watch her get ripped apart by this madman.
A hand wrapped around his ankle and hauled him back.
Evie let out an anguished cry and reached for Marcus. He twisted and sat up, raising his arm to ward off the large blade that Nikhil brandished – Marcus’s own hunting knife that had been discarded on the floor with the rest of his gear. Then the strangeness of the scene registered. Nikhil was half naked, barefoot and shirtless, and clad only in a pair of drawstring pants like the prisoners wore.
“I thought you were worthy of serving me, but no more. You will bleed for your treachery,” Nikhil said.
Before Marcus could react, the blade arced down, striking into the top of his thigh and slicing inward. His blood flowed hot and thick between his thighs. He struggled to reach down and stanch the flood, but his master’s iron control of his mind prevented him from moving more than a little.
In the haze of semi-consciousness he felt Evie’s warmth slip in behind him, her hands pulling at his head to cradle it in her lap. She was crying, small, hiccuping sobs in between melodic lyrics.
“Forgive me, my love,” he whispered as the world faded to blackness.
Chapter Three
Ked
Brooklyn, New York
The Same Day
Love at first sight wasn’t a dragon thing—the turul had the honor of that particular, crippling feature of their romantic lives. Dragons had the honor of choosing their mates, but Ked knew enough about dragon magic to know that some of the same rules applied to them, too. Fate so often chose for them, and she was pulling his strings at this very moment.
He stared at the photo for way too long. Evie North’s brothers had given the faded Polaroid to him just hours ago, moments before disappearing into the bedroom where Ked’s sister—they’re new mate—was recuperating. They hadn’t resurfaced in some time, but that was for the best. Ked’s newly pregnant sister needed her mates now more than ever, especially because the second they came up for air, they would be leaving on a rescue mission.
Ked itched to get moving now that he knew the enemy was likely already on his way to the same destination, if not already there. But he wouldn’t leave without Evie’s brothers, and they were still indisposed, so he forced himself to wait while he continued studying the photo.
It was hard enough for Ked to even process the static image of the turul woman in the photograph. He’d been away from the human world for so long. He cursed himself for his disorientation. He wished he could have left the Glade over the last few centuries and acclimated to the changes occurring in the world. If he had, he might not have wound up in this situation, where he was staring blankly at a too-realistic painting of a woman and getting a headache over how it worked.
The woman in the photo was his mate. And he couldn’t even process her tiny, beautiful countenance on the square piece of paper he’d been handed.
Evie.
His heart hurt looking at the photo, which was impossible. He didn’t have a heart. Contrary to what his siblings believed, he knew his chest had been occupied by a swirling void of nothing for centuries.
Still… something inside him ached to find this woman. The sensation was new and uncomfortable, but it felt right. She was his.
His pulse quickened and he clenched his jaw.
This beautiful woman—the image from his recurring dreams—was his. And she’d been taken from him.
The voices around him grew louder and he jerked to attention. Losing track of events probably wasn’t a good quality in an immortal. Ked forced himself back to the present and said something he hoped was at least coherent to answer a half-heard inquiry directed at him. He kept looking at the image of Evie, unable to tear his eyes away from her, hoping there might be clues in the picture that would help him know whether she would accept him.
She wasn’t alone in the photo. Beside her stood a hulk of a man in a pilot’s uniform, his gaze raptly set on Evie while Evie beamed at the camera.
That man was the enemy. Ultiori to the core, though maybe only a new recruit at the time, from the look of him. He looked so full of love and hope in the photo—with not a hint of the devious hunger possessed by the other Ultiori that Ked had encountered.
Marcus, he said to himself. Evie’s brothers knew him, had told Ked everything about him, including the fact that he was eager to see her rescued and had even given them the location of the Ultiori facility where she was held prisoner.
Yet Marcus had been her seducer. The Ultiori hunter who had stolen her away. The man Ked would gladly kill to get her back.
Evie was his. Fate said so. Or his dreams did, at least, and they were the only connection he had anymore to what Fate intended.
But the image of Marcus intrigued him as much as Evie did. Partly because of how he looked at her, and partly because his presence in her life back then was a conundrum. If he hadn’t already become a hunter, he must have become one very soon after the image was captured. Iszak and Lukas would have known him for a hunter, as would Evie, if he’d already joined the Ultiori ranks.
“Are you sure he wasn’t turned yet?” Ked asked, looking up from the photo to meet the gazes of the two turul males who grabbed seats across the table. Ked’s two brothers leaned against the wall nearby.
Iszak shook his head. “He was harmless. We’d have never let her keep seeing him, otherwise. She would have known better, too.”
Lukas nodded in agreement. “She had this crazy idea that she could find love with someone other than her true mate. Every decade or so, she’d get impatient and find some poor schmuck, blow his mind for a few years, then move on when the mystery wore off. She’s had more marriage proposals than we can count.”
An amused chuckle carried from the other side of the sunlit kitchen they sat in. Ked looked over to the back of the elderly woman who was chopping vegetables and shaking her head. She paused and turned, pointing the knife at Lukas.
“You two used to do the same thing. Ever since you were old enough to notice a pretty girl, you were chasing them, no matter they weren’t your Belah. I could set a clock by your escapades.”
“Oh, do tell me more, Nanyo,” Belah said, smirking at her mates as she entered the room, looking flushed and sated. She joined their grandmother at the counter.
“In time, my dear,” the elder North said. “Right now, your brother must focus on my granddaughter. What do you see in the photo, boy?”
Ked raised an eyebrow at the diminutive, but let it go. Sofia North may not have been even half his age, but she still commanded the respect of any matriarch. He’d have loved to have known her in her prime. He glanced back down at the photo of her granddaughter, wondering if the elder had been as beautiful when she was younger. His eyes shifted to Marcus again and he studied the young man.
“There’s something about him. Without seeing his aura, I can’t put my finger on it.” He wished he could have been there—Evie’s beauty shone as bright as any aura, but this man had a bearing that drew Ked’s attention as much as Evie’s did. The man’s fixation on Evie seemed familiar somehow, and it was more than just the look of a man devoted enough to give away his captive’s location to his enemy.
Ked swallowed, confused at the conflicting emotions that welled up inside him. Hi
s mouth watered as he thought of how Evie’s magic might taste when they made love. But Marcus… the hunter… his sly eyes made Ked itch to know his secrets, to delve into the darkest depths of the man’s soul and understand him completely.
Yet he was her captor, and if Ked were going to carry out the mission ahead of him, he’d have to kill Marcus and any other Ultiori who stood in his way.
“What did you see the day you met him?” he asked, directing the question at Sofia. The woman had a reputation as a powerful seer that was well-known among all the higher races. Ked had no doubt the woman knew much more than she was sharing about her granddaughter’s disappearance with this man. He refrained from using his powers on her, however, simply out of respect. If the woman wanted her granddaughter back as much as she seemed to, he had to trust her to share anything she knew that would help.
“I saw a young man in love with an ideal. He believed he was in love with her, but it was only her nature that drew him to her. It is the way of the blessing, of course. The blessing’s power drew her to him, too.”
Ked’s head jerked up and he stared at her. “Blessing? Are you telling me this man was a Blessed human? Did Evie know?”
“To be Blessed during a renunciation is a lonely time,” she said, ignoring his question. “Dragons won’t take mates so late in a cycle, yet his path was laid out for him from before his birth. He followed the only course open to him, as did my granddaughter.” Sofia’s voice never wavered, nor did she avert her piercing gaze from his as she spoke.
Ked’s vision narrowed as he stood and glowered down at the small woman. The room darkened, his shadow blocking out the light so thoroughly that not even the sunlight outside broke through. He ignored the alarmed exclamations of the others, even the warning admonition of his sister.
“Do you understand how grave an offense it is to divert a Blessed human from their journey to find their dragon mate? He belongs to my kind. And now the enemy has him. And if he is a Blessed, that means he isn’t merely a hunter—they have turned him into an Elite.” And whose blood runs through the man’s veins now? Is it more mine or one of my brothers’?
Sofia set her jaw and stared him down. “You would do well not to question Fate. While your kind were busy abandoning your children, my Evie was ensuring your Blessed found his path.”
“Straight into the belly of the beast. Even if he could have been redeemed, I’ll have no choice but to kill him now.” Ked didn’t hold back his anger, letting it spill forth, a roiling cloud of black in the already dark room. This meddlesome woman had been instrumental in not only her own granddaughter’s abduction, but the turning of a Blessed human into the enemy. The worst kind of Ultiori, too.
Sofia’s stubbornness was a beacon in the center of the void his powers had rendered, bright and determined to compete with his anger. She held up her kitchen knife to point it at him. The tip caught some errant scrap of light that seared his eyes.
“You are a fool, Immortal. Your own power has blinded you to the possibilities. The world does not operate at the extremes your magic seems to. Find a way between the darkness and the light, Ked. Your race’s Shadows understand this, yet you do not. You are too consumed by the absolutes to see how to balance them.”
A dull howling pricked at his ears, growing louder in the moments the two held each other’s gazes, both too resolute to be the one to look away first. Sofia’s hair suddenly whipped around her head from the gale-force wind that rushed through the room, seemingly from nowhere, buffeting Ked’s body so violently he lost focus. This was no normal wind, either. Within the din he heard the voice of one of the few powers greater than his and his siblings’—the words chilled him at first, before the clarity of them forced him to his senses.
Between light and darkness, between life and death, between power and submission, lies love and truth.
Ked’s skin prickled. It was an admonition, something he rarely had to endure at his rank. Sometimes he forgot that there were powers greater than the Dragon Council. The North Wind was a power he respected, and even feared. As a dragon, he depended on the winds. If he pissed one of them off, he’d be hurting. Few other higher powers could damage him or his race as much as the winds could.
He withdrew his darkness and sat back down with a sigh.
“We are allies, Sofia, and I intend to remain your friend. I will find your granddaughter. If Marcus is willing to atone, I’ll decide what to do with him after.”
Sofia’s shoulders sagged and she came toward him. She was so small. Most turul women were petite and bird-like. Only a few broke the mold. He’d observed her power growing from within the Glade for most of her life and had always admired her tenacity. She’d have made him a perfect mate in her prime. Her granddaughter was the one fated to be with him, though, and the one in the most danger now.
Sofia came around the table and rested her hands on his shoulders. “The path was never meant to be a straight one for them, nor for you. Yet it was the path they were meant to tread. You are their doorway to the next part of their lives.” She dug into his shoulders with her steely fingertips and leaned closer to his ear. “He is yours as much as she. Never sacrifice your heart for the sake of your soul when you can keep them both.”
Sofia went back to her cooking, her shoulders sagging. Belah gave Ked a stern glance before following, sending an admonitory message directly into his mind.
“She’s losing strength, brother. That wasn’t fair of you. Your power is too draining on a woman as old as her.”
He frowned and sent her a wordless apology, then turned his attention back to the other problem in the room.
“You’re my sister’s mates. I cannot, in good conscience, ask you to come, but I have a feeling she’d argue more strongly for me to take you than even you would—because she loves you.”
Lukas glowered at him. “Not even your sister could keep us from joining you if she asked us to stay. Perhaps that’s what you really mean to say? And you know she’s letting us go as much for your sake as for ours.”
Ked hated the admission—not that his sister had found love again after so long, but that she was willing to sacrifice it to see him find love for the first time in his life. He would do anything to avoid taking that away from her.
“We have a bigger issue, however,” he said. “The trip will take us hours and my fear is what state we’ll find her in when we get there. You said Marcus assured you she was safe, but Nikhil escaped.” He cast a quick glance at Belah, carefully choosing his words. “Since Nikhil may still be under the influence of some greater evil, we have to assume he is unstable. We need to fly quickly. My brothers and I can get there within a few hours, but you won’t be able to match our speed.”
“What if we don’t need to fly?” Lukas said. Standing again, he went to his grandmother. “You still have the potion you gave us before… the nymphaea blood that helped us teleport to where Belah was being held. We can use that.”
“No, child.” Sofia gave him a defeated look. “There was only enough for you to save your Belah. That was all I had.”
Magic as powerful as nymphaea blood would have been welcome just now. Ever since the Ultiori Elites had acquired the ability to teleport, or to drift, as they called it, the higher races had been at a distinct disadvantage. Ked and the mortal Shadows had the ability to sublimate their physical forms into smoke, and carry passengers along for the ride, but they were still restricted by distance. Unfortunately the nymphaea had been in hiding even longer than the dragons and finding an ally among them at such short notice was impossible.
“We will have to do without nymphaea blood and just hope we reach the Ultiori compound soon enough, but you two will have to ride instead of fly if you insist on coming…”
The tall, pale-haired Aodh stepped silently forward, his expression intent and a little chagrined. Ked looked up at his quiet brother, eyebrows raised.
In a deep voice that was no more audible than a whisper, Aodh said, “We need not fly, brother. I can take us there now, if you wish. I just need the location.”
Ked stopped breathing, his mouth hanging open in surprise. Belah came back into the room and simply stared at Aodh, while Gavra stood up straight and said, “The fuck you can. Dragon’s don’t teleport or fucking time travel like the nymphaea can. You want to explain yourself, brother?”
Aodh bowed his head. “Forgive me for keeping this a secret for so long. We have all carried heavy weights that we would rather not burden each other with. This is my burden.”
Iszak stood, angrily clenching his fist, which he raised, unfurling one finger to point at Aodh. “Burden my ass. If you can transport us around the way the Elites travel, you should have said something. We should fucking be there already!”
Ked raised a hand, the invisible force of his magic pushing Iszak back into his chair. In an even tone, he said, “Tell us how this happened, Aodh, but make it quick.”
Aodh nodded, spreading his hands and staring down at his fingers. “Early on when I was between human mates, I dallied with a nymph. A pretty little water sprite with a wicked, creative mind. She called herself Meri or Marnie or Marea, depending on her mood. We melded, and the exchange of consciousness while we were physically merged was even more enjoyable than any of the human lovers I’d had. So, we did it again, but the second time she begged me to taste her blood as well as her essence.”
Ked grimaced inwardly at the start of the confession, already seeing where it was going. He had no room to criticize Aodh for what had happened. He had his own dark secrets from his early life that few knew of. His brothers and sisters had not criticized him.
Aodh gave them all a humble smile. “I did not know that doing this would give her such power over me. She stole my body, leaving my spirit in the wind. It took the powers of Neph and Nyx and several of the other thiasoi chasing after her to bring her back—she did not want to give up the immortality and power she had in my dragon form. She was punished for it—exiled from the nymphaea’s Haven, but ever since that day some of her nymphaea powers have been a part of me. I have rarely had cause to use them since, but now I think it’s time.”
